Copycat Killing

29

At quarter to six I was in the truck on the way over to Fern’s Diner. I didn’t know if it was a good idea or a bad idea, mostly because I knew if I thought about it too long I might just talk myself out of going.

The diner wasn’t somewhere I went very often, although I had been a couple of times with Roma for meatloaf Tuesday. According to Roma, Fern’s had been restored about five or six years ago back to its 1950s glory, or as she liked to put it, “Just like the good old days only better.” The building was low and long, with windows on three sides, aglow with neon after dark. Inside there was the requisite jukebox, booths with red vinyl seats and a counter with gleaming chrome stools.

Burtis’s black truck was in the back parking lot and he was perched on a corner stool inside, elbows on the counter, head bent over a heavy, white china coffee mug. He was wearing a green plaid shirt and his Twins hat. His hands were massive, I noticed, big enough that he could probably squeeze my head between his thumb and index finger and make my brains come out my ears, but I tried not to think about that as I took the stool beside him.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning, Kathleen.” If he was surprised to see me, it didn’t show.

The waitress slid a mug in front of me and held up the coffeepot with an inquiring look on her face. At the same time she put a huge, oval dish in front of Burtis that could best be described as a heart attack on a plate.

I nodded and she poured my coffee. “What can I get you hon?” she asked. She was wearing red pedal pushers, a short-sleeved white shirt with—I kid you not—PEGGY SUE stitched over the left breast pocket and red-framed glasses. Her hair was in a gravity defying, bouffant updo. I eyed it, wondering if there was any way Rebecca could get my hair to do that.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me that not only had I not had any coffee yet, I hadn’t had any food, either. I dipped my head toward Burtis’s plate. “I’ll have what he’s having,” I said.

The waitress nodded and went through the swinging door into the kitchen.

I put cream and sugar in my mug and took a long sip. The coffee was strong and hot, just the way I liked it. I gave a small smile of pleasure and wrapped my hands around the cup. I could feel Burtis’s eyes on me and I turned my head to smile at him.

“What brings you out here so early?” he asked. “I thought you favored that little place by the water.”

“I came to talk to you,” I said.

That got me a smile. “Oh did you now?” he said. He speared a half a sausage and it disappeared into his mouth. “I’m kinda tied up with my breakfast at the moment.”

“Take your time,” I said, picking up my coffee again.

I’d finished about half my coffee when the waitress came back with my plate, as loaded as the one she’d brought for Burtis. There were scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, fried potatoes with onions and tomato, and raisin toast. She topped up my coffee and headed down the counter to three men who had just walked in.

Burtis was watching me out of the corner of his eye. I picked up my fork and started eating. The eggs were fluffy, the bacon was crisp and I found myself wondering where they had gotten tomatoes that actually tasted like tomatoes at this time of year.

I was mopping up the last bits of potato and onion from my plate with a corner of bread when Burtis said, “What did you want to talk about?”

“Idris Blackthorne,” I said. “Harrison Taylor told me you were the one to ask what Idris was like back in the day.”

“Oh did he now?”

“He said you might be able to tell me about the way Idris did business.”

“Seems to me you’re friends with old Blackie’s granddaughter,” he said, staring down into his cup. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“Seems to me it would be bad manners to ask someone if her grandfather whacked a man over the head and buried his body out at Wisteria Hill,” I said, taking a long drink from my mug.

The words seemed to hang there for a moment and then Burtis laughed. “I guess it would at that,” he said.

I shifted sideways on my stool so I could look at him a little easier, leaning one elbow on the counter.

“Roma Davidson is my friend,” I said. “Tom Karlsson was her father and she wants to know how he ended up out in that field.”

“So you thought you’d poke your nose in and ask a few questions.”

“Pretty much.”

He gave another snort of laughter. “You’re honest girl, I’ll give you that.” Burtis wasn’t nearly as intimidating when he laughed.

The waitress came back and topped up our cups again. I added another packet of sugar to mine. “Burtis, I know Idris was…an entrepreneur. I know Tom worked for him and then suddenly he didn’t. What I don’t know is—”

“—whether Idris did have him whacked over the head and buried out behind the Henderson place,” he finished.

“Did he?”

He shook his head. “No. You see Idris had a reputation. It wasn’t what he did, it was what people thought he did that kept ’em in line, if you get my drift.”

I did. I poured a little cream into my coffee and stirred it. “I hear there used to be a fairly regular poker game happening out in those woods back then,” I said.

“There may have been.”

“I hear Tom Karlsson was a cheat.”

Burtis picked up his mug and drained it. “I don’t care for cheaters myself,” he said, putting his cup on the counter and sliding off the stool. “But I’ve heard that story. I also heard Tom broke a couple of fingers and had to give up playing cards.” He shrugged. “Those things happen sometimes.”

He pulled his keys out of his pocket. “One more thing. Back then, there was a road of sorts, rough but passable, that cut through those woods up there behind the Henderson place. If someone wanted to get back there they didn’t necessarily have to go past the house.” He tipped his hat to me and smiled. “You have a nice day, Kathleen. Come back and have breakfast again, sometime.”

He headed toward the cash register and I picked up my coffee. So if I believed Burtis, neither Idris Blackthorne nor the poker players had anything to do with Tom Karlsson’s death. And there had been a way to get Tom or his body up onto that ridge without anyone in the main house seeing anything.

Was Burtis telling the truth?

Was there any reason for him not to?

I slipped off my stool and walked over to the cash register. “Mr. Chapman took care of it,” the waitress said with a smile.

I walked back to the counter and left a generous tip. Then I went out to the truck. Assuming Burtis hadn’t been stringing me a line, I was back at square one.

So now what?

There was no sign of either cat when I got home. I headed upstairs to make the bed. Hercules came out of the closet as I was pulling up the spread.

“What do you do in there?” I asked. He looked at me blankly.

I dropped into the chair by the window and pulled the carton with Rebecca’s mother’s things closer. With all the turmoil of the previous few days I hadn’t done any more planning for the library centennial celebration. I hadn’t even asked Maggie for her ideas on what to do with Ellen’s drawings.

Hercules jumped into my lap, ducking his head under my arm so he could look too. I reached into the box, pulled out one of the journals and opened it. Hercules shifted so he could see the pages. Maybe he was reading too for all I knew.

Now that I understood what The Ladies Knitting Circle had actually been doing, Ellen’s oblique comments about the women made more sense. After reading a few pages I put the diary back and looked for the journal that spanned the time period when Tom Karlsson had probably been killed. It would have been easier if Hercules hadn’t decided to help. He kept moving around on my lap, trying to poke his black-and-white head inside the box.

“Just sit still for a second,” I said in frustration. “And I’ll get it.”

He made a huffy noise, but he pulled his head back and I was able to find the book I wanted. It started about six months before Pearl and little Roma had ended up at Wisteria Hill. A couple of times Ellen even wrote about seeing Pearl with Roma, and I wondered if she was the one who’d told Pearl about The Ladies Knitting Circle. And she mentioned Sam several times. It was clear she’d liked him and that she hadn’t thought much of Sam’s father. The day Tom disappeared there were several pages carefully cut out of the diary. The entries picked up more than a week later. Hercules put a paw on the seam.

“I see it, too,” I said. I looked down at the little tuxedo cat. “Do you think it was just a coincidence that Tom’s body was buried at Wisteria Hill—that it had nothing to do with what Anna and her friends were up to?”

He covered his face with a paw.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”