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Al (Al & Karen) Thursday
I started my part of the investigation right away, even though we didn’t have official lists yet. I remembered who’d I’d picked to interview, and most of them passed by every day around the same time.
I’d been up since four, since every way I tried to lie in bed made something hurt. Not wanting to wake Karen, I’d got up quietly, gone outside, turned on the heater, and lit my first cigarette of the day. If I can get out without her hearing me, she’ll sometimes sleep until five.
The first few hours were quiet, but around daylight I started seeing walkers. The serious ones wear earbuds and stride right by, too intent on exercise to be sociable. Others, more laid back about their heart rate and all that, stop to talk. Some even sit for a while, sharing stories about yesterday or yesteryear. The men I’d chosen from Julie’s list were that kind, likely to stop, if not today then within a week or so.
The first guy I talked to was Wayne from Crane Street. I heard him before I saw him, since he converses almost non-stop with his walking companion. “Behave yourself, Angus, or the next time we pass by the adoption place, I’m dropping you off.”
He didn’t get an answer, and I didn’t expect he would, since Angus is a dog. Wayne seems to go a little slower each week, but he keeps it up, and I give him credit for trying. The dog has much younger legs and not much self-control, so they carry on a running feud about how fast the pace should be. The dog pulls at his harness. Wayne pulls back. The dog slows for a few seconds before he strains to hurry ahead again.
When Wayne slipped the loop of Angus’ leash over our porch post, climbed the steps, and sank into a chair, I surmised that dog-walking is getting to be too much for him. His breath whistled through his nostrils, and a faint sheen of sweat showed on his brow. Angus followed him up the steps, sniffing in the corners. Wayne growled a command to sit, but Angus took his sweet time before obeying.
“Nice morning,” I said.
“It didn’t get as cold last night as it did the one before. I’d have stayed in until it got warmer, but Angus here had other ideas.”
“Pets do like to be the boss.”
“I try to teach him things, like when to be quiet and how to behave in public. But Ginger spoils him rotten, so anything I try to do gets me nowhere.” His frown might have been irritation, might have been near-sightedness. “I’ll tell you something, Al. Pets are like kids. You have to teach them how to act so they’ll be welcome when they go out into the world.” Glaring down at Angus he went on, “If you let them be brats, nobody wants to be around them.”
“You aren’t wrong there.”
Wayne sniffed a couple of times, something he does a lot. I suspected allergies and hoped it wasn’t to dog dander. “Ginger was a good mother to our kids, but now?” He shook his head. “She spoils this little guy rotten.” He paused, chewing at his lip. “I don’t fight with her about it though. Angus is all we’ve got to care about these days.”
“Are you interested in a cup of coffee?”
“No thanks. Can’t have sugar, which makes coffee undrinkable as far as I’m concerned. I’m not supposed to have caffeine either.” He ended with the old joke: “I’m at the age where if I put something in my mouth and it tastes good, the docs want me to spit it out.”
I saw an opening. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Eighty-one next month.”
“I suppose you’ve been around lots of cities, huh?”
He frowned at the question. “Sure. Why do you ask?”
I felt my ears start to burn. I couldn’t remember the last time I deliberately lied to someone, and one of the good things about getting old is being able to be honest. No boss to please, no girls to impress, no stud-muffin friends to compare yourself to. You say what you think or you keep your mouth shut.
Still, I had to follow through. “Karen and I were talking last night about some relatives of hers that used to live in Nashville.” I stopped. “You ever been there?”
“Yeah,” Wayne said. “I lived there after high school.”
Could I be so lucky as to find our target on the first try? “When was that?”
His brow knitted briefly. “Well, I graduated in ’57, so I was there from then until 1960. Is that when your people lived there?”
“No. They were there in ’67.”
Wayne nodded. “By then I was in Ohio. All my life, I worked for Kroger, and they gave me my own store up in Sunbury in ’64.” After a pause he added, “They’d give you a pin for every ten years of service. I still got all five of mine.”
As Wayne talked about his old job, I realized I had no way of knowing if what he said was true. Were we going to take these men’s word for it when they said where they were in ’67? If so, the whole project seemed pointless.
Ten minutes later, Wayne limped down my steps and went on, muttering at Angus to slow down and go straight. Karen came outside, sat down opposite me, and lit a cigarette. “I heard most of that. Do you think we can cross him off the list?”
“It would be nice if we could confirm it somehow.”
“Ask Ginger, maybe?”
I shook my head. “I say we give the information to that cop and let him decide what needs more investigation.”
Later that day, Karen talked to Julie about it. “She thinks she can check the information on the store’s website, though she’s not sure if there’ll be information on managers from that far back.”
“That’s good. The more people we eliminate entirely, the easier it will be for the cops to zero in on who’s left.”
“We’ll consider Wayne a question mark,” Karen said. “The rest will be up to Julie.”
“She’s going to be busy for a long time if she tries to check everybody’s story.” I grinned, adding, “Lucky for me, I can’t help. Don’t have a clue how to turn on a computer.”
“If you were a true product of the ’60s you’d know the answer to that,” Karen said. “You say, ‘I love you, computer’ and that turns it on.”
