After a moment or two, I said, “I’m sorry I said that thing about bisexuals not getting laid.”
“Whatever,” she said.
“Why did you want me to meet Denny?”
“He’s a meth addict. You wanted to meet them.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think he tried to rob the church. He has a job, so I don’t think he’s broke.”
“That doesn’t matter if he’s addicted. Do you know how much a hit of methamphetamine costs?”
“No. Do you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Between ten and twenty dollars.”
I did some quick math in my head, or I tried to, I have to admit I was still foggy. Denny and I had done four or five hits—well, he had. I’d only done one or one and a half. So that’s how much? Between forty and a hundred dollars. That’s as many as ten haircuts. Provided his dad lets him keep all the money, which I seriously doubted. Even if he just did it once a week, that’s still a lot of money. Maybe he did try to rob the church?
And then the fog cleared a little, and another thing that had been nagging at me suddenly popped into my head. “When we went to see Ivy, she said Detective Lehmann wasn’t telling her anything. But you said he told her about the pizza.”
“Okay.”
“Specifically, there was someone Reverend Hessel was going to meet that night. A parishioner. We don’t know if anyone’s come forward.”
“That’s what he wouldn’t tell them?”
“Yeah.”
Or at least that’s what Ivy said he wouldn’t tell him. Now I wasn’t so sure.
She shrugged. “It makes sense that he wouldn’t. I mean, if someone did come forward you don’t want everyone to know who the last person to see Reverend Hessel was. Especially if that person’s innocent. It could ruin their reputation. You can’t ruin a pizza’s reputation.”
“Of course you can ruin a pizza’s reputation,” I said. Obviously, she knew nothing about branding.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Maybe Detective Lehmann is wrong. Maybe it’s not a drug addict. Who else might have killed him?”
“Well, Reverend Wilkie or Sue Langtree. He’d done them both out of jobs.”
“Someone from his past,” Opal suggested. “Maybe it’s someone from Chicago. Maybe he had mob connections.”
“Now you sound like my grandmother.”
“What isthatsupposed to mean?”
Just then, Megan arrived with our lunches. My omelet was more of a scramble. I was tempted to send it back but suspected that Megan would refuse.
“I heard a rumor your friend, Carl, killed his stepfather,” she said, instead of offering us catsup.
“He was with me when the murder happened,” Opal said between gritted teeth.
“And, of course, you would never lie,” Megan said, then spun around and walked away.
“Hmmm,” I said. “In California waitresses say crazy things like, ‘Enjoy your lunch.’”
“She’s just jealous.”
“Because she’s just a waitress and you’re—I never asked, what do you do for a living?”
“I work at Pastiche. It’s a boutique in Masons Bay. Which you know.”
