Page 18 of A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch
“It would be really helpful if you could make a new statement.”
I was making an assumption, but it seemed logical that it would be. She was shaking her head even before I got the whole sentence out.
“Why not? She obviously treated you badly and it’s not fair that the winery might have to pay her.” I waited. She didn’t say anything, so I asked. “Are you afraid of her?”
“Well, she did kill a man.”
“Would you like to tell me about that?”
“No. I wouldn’t. It’s time for you to go.”
On the way home, I thought about what to do next. Dorothy wouldn’t be at the house for another two hours. I could slip upstairs and take a nap like I usually did in the afternoon. But then, well, I was kind of excited. There was no way Bobbie’s fallwas the fault of the winery. It wasn’t about some fragile old lady they’d gotten drunk who then slipped on their wet bathroom floor. It was about an addict who went into the ladies’ room and did something stupid. She didn’t stand a chance. I’d just finished my first job, and I’d done really, really well.
I stopped at Cuppa Mud in Masons Bay. The little coffee shop had a cement floor painted gray, walls painted white, and a counter made of raw wood. There were a lot of plants.
In fact, more plants than people. There were only three people there. I got a latte and sat in a corner. I took out my cell phone and called Hamlet.
“Hello,” he whispered. There was a lot of ambient noise in the background.”
“Hey. Where are you?”
“I’m in a park. Do we need to talk now?”
“Real quickly then… Bobbie LaCross is a drug addict who went into the ladies’ room at Three Friends, stuck her foot in the sink to rinse off a mosquito bite, and lost her balance. The whole thing was her own fault.”
“Good job,” he said. I almost asked him to repeat that, but I’d heard it just fine. “Make some notes and email them to me. I’ll talk with the client tomorrow. And send me an invoice.”
I wanted to extend the conversation, hopefully he’d compliment me another three or four times, but, in a cloud of fake lavender fur, Opal sat down across from me. Her hair was now cobalt blue with white smudges here and there. She noticed me looking at them and said, “They’re supposed to be stars. If you say one word, I’ll break your arm.”
Interesting choice of words.
I needed to ask Ham how much he was paying me, but he said he had to go, which might have had something to do with his being in a park in the middle of winter, so I agreed and hung up.
“What are you doing here?”
“Pastiche is practically across the street. I saw you walk in, so I decided it was break time. I mean, it’s the dead of winter, I’m not even sure why we’re open. So? Was he there?”
“Was who where?”
“Denny. Was he at the meeting?”
“Why do you think I went to the meeting? Did someone tell you I was there?”
“I knew you’d be curious. That’s why I told you about the Thursday meeting. You went, didn’t you?”
I was so tempted to say no, but instead I said, “Your friend Richard was there. Boy, does he look bad.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Youwerefriends.”
“Until he stole half the reward money.”
“He what?”
“You heard me. I had to put half the money up myself.”
“You told me you put in five hundred.”
