SUGAR CREEK RESTAURANT and Bakery was so crowded that the sound of the customers made white noise like crowds at a sporting event or a concert. The waitress at the podium in front said, “We’re at a two-hour wait and longer for large groups. Sorry.”
Kaitlin said, “Our party is already here at a table.”
“Name?” the waitress said as if she didn’t believe Kaitlin.
“Livingston.”
“Oh, sure. Just follow Mandy. She’ll take you back.”
Mandy—who was either a second hostess or our waitress; only time would tell—took the menus the first woman handed her, and we followed her back through the tables and booths. The place was a lot deeper than the narrow front had hinted at, so we got to go through several rooms until we finally found Livingston sitting with his back to a wall in the center of a horseshoe-shaped booth. There was a dark-skinned woman in a black suit jacket sitting with him. His arm was across her shoulders, and their faces were so close together that her thick black hair had swung forward to hide her face completely and some of his. Her hand, with its perfectly red nails, caressed the side of his face. What I could see of his face was smiling.
He pulled back, and his professionalism came over him like he had put on another set of clothes. One minute all cuddles and romance, and the next Captain Livingston was there again. “Pamela, you remember Kaitlin.”
Pamela looked up at us and smiled with lipstick the same crimson as her nails. The black suit jacket framed a crisp white shirt, and there was an engraved gold nameplate on her lapel that read MANAGER. I was beginning to see how we’d managed a table during the restaurant’s busiest time of day.
“Of course I remember her,” Pamela said as she started scooting out of the booth. Since it was a deep booth, that took some doing, but she did it with ease, even grace. I’d have looked like a five-year-old getting down from the dinner table. Of course, when Pamela stood up, she was about six feet tall. Longer legs help the whole scooting thing, or so I’m told.
Pamela shook Kaitlin’s hand graciously. I could see she was wearing red designer flats that matched the lipstick and nails, so the height was all her. Her hair was black like mine, but a different shade and texture. I couldn’t imagine what kinds of hair products she used and what careful blow-drying she’d done to get her hair to lie in a smooth, shoulder-length hairdo. Maybe I was wrong, and Pamela’s hair in its natural state wasn’t as curly as mine, but I’d never met anyone with her skin tone and rich facial features who didn’t have my curls or more.
Livingston scooted out on the other side of the booth and introduced us one at a time. It wasn’t until Pamela was shaking my hand and giving me great eye contact out of big brown eyes that I realized she was wearing very nice and understated makeup, except for the red lips. But thanks to Jean-Claude’s lessons in color and style, I knew the red gave just the pop of color that the severity of the black-and-white outfit needed. You also had to be staring right in her face to feel the full force of her personality and let the impact of it change her from pretty to beautiful, or maybe it wasn’t beauty exactly, but whatever it was, the force of it made me smile as she shook my hand.
The only one who didn’t smile back at her was Olaf, and he frowned, which meant he felt her beauty, her personality, whatever it was, but he didn’t want to be moved by it. Or maybe he just didn’t like tall women, and I was way overprojecting.
“I’ll leave you to talk business, but unless it’s a life-or-death emergency, you’d better come find me and give me a kiss good-bye.”
Livingston smiled. He was wearing a line of her lipstick already. “Unless it’s an emergency, you know I will.”
Pamela used her thumb to rub the lipstick off his lips, which was a strangely intimate gesture. It made me sad that I wasn’t wearing my own shade of red and that I was too far away from any of my sweeties to paint it across their mouths. It’s funny what can unexpectedly make you homesick for the people in your life. I was suddenly almost aching to be home.
Livingston waited until Pamela had disappeared to the front of the restaurant before he sat back down. I was pretty sure he watched her ass as she walked away, but apparently, he was allowed to do a lot more than just watch, so it was okay. Then it was the fun of sitting down. When you have a bunch of police, or certain types of military, sitting down in public is harder than it sounds. The booth was against the wall, so that was good for everyone, but there were pros and cons to it all. Sitting in the middle of the booth meant your back was securely against a wall and you had a clear view in all directions; the farther from the center you were, the more easy viewing you lost on one side or another. Of course, if you were in the middle and there was an emergency, you were trapped behind the table. You couldn’t run either toward the emergency or away from it, depending on what was happening. You were sort of committed to doing something from where you were sitting. On the ends of the booth, you could move easily if you needed to, but you had your back toward one side of the room or the other. Did you keep your field of view and sacrifice maneuverability, or lose the view and maintain your ability to move? I expected that sitting arrangements would be complicated. What I hadn’t expected was for Olaf to complicate them even more. I shouldn’t have been caught off guard; that I had been meant I was in a certain amount of denial about him and me.
Livingston went back to the center of the booth, which surprised me until I noticed that the table moved freely as he scooted into his seat. Obviously the table wasn’t bolted down, which gave him an option if he had to move fast. He could just tip the table over and get out. Despite what you see in movie shoot-outs, most tables won’t stop bullets from hitting you, because they are soft cover, not hard cover. Hard cover is what it sounds like, something so hard or dense that it will absorb or block bullets before they hit you.
Kaitlin slid in on Livingston’s left side, and Newman slid in on his right. I started to slide in beside Newman, and it would have been normal for Olaf to sit beside Kaitlin on the other side so we’d be even, but he slid in beside me. I scooted as close to Newman as I could get, or thought I had until Olaf moved all the way in and suddenly Newman’s sidearm was digging into my hip. I was also in danger of hitting my head against Olaf’s shoulder.
“Can someone please move down? I’m getting squished,” I said.
Everyone else moved down enough for me not to be in danger of getting stabbed by Newman’s holstered weapon. I moved over enough so that my face wasn’t pressed in against Olaf’s shoulder or any other part of him. Of course, I could only go so far before I bumped into Newman again, and I was not going to make them all scoot down again. I had enough room—we all had enough room—I tried to convince that part of me that wanted to crawl under the table and go to the other side of Kaitlin, but I wasn’t a child. I could do this with a modicum of cool. Sure, I could, and I told that tight feeling in the pit of my stomach that it could fuck off and let me be a grown-up.
I really expected Olaf to push the chance to sit close to me, but he didn’t try to put his hip or leg up against mine. Even with him behaving himself, it felt tight. I think it was the height difference, and his shoulders, though not as broad as Livingston’s, still crowded me. Olaf seemed to realize that he was a little close because he raised his arm and put it across the back of the booth. He wasn’t trying to be smooth or even aggressive; his shoulder was just at a bad height for us to be this close. With his arm up, we fit better. The span of his arm was so long that his hand went all the way past Newman to the edge of Livingston’s shoulder. God, Olaf was just so big. Even if he hadn’t been creepy, he was over my height preference for dating. I didn’t like to feel this physically overwhelmed just sitting next to someone.
“I don’t have cooties, I promise,” Kaitlin said. She tried to make a joke, but I saw her eyes flick to Olaf, then to me. She was doing some sort of girl math in her head, or maybe just girl-plus-boy math. I did not want her to come up with an answer on this one.
“Anita and I work together frequently,” Olaf said, “and I prefer dark hair to light.”
That last remark made me glance up at him. He was wasting a smile on her, the one that filled his eyes with warmth. To me, it was like one of those fireplace channels where you can watch TV images of a crackling fire. It was pretty to look at, but you couldn’t warm yourself by it.
“I always wanted to know what I’d look like as a brunette,” Kaitlin said, and she gave him a smile that said, Yes, I am flirting with you. Was she serious or just teasing him? He wouldn’t like either much.
“Brunette would be dark enough,” he said, still smiling at her.
She wiggled her eyebrows at him, which meant she was teasing, but enjoying it anyway. I looked into her gray-blue eyes and knew that as long as she stayed away from colored contacts, she was still safe from Olaf’s darker intentions. It helped me fight the tension that was trying to build in my shoulders.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to change the conversation. “You know how to fight, Blake,” Livingston said.
“Thanks. Just part of the job,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” Newman said. “We’re not supposed to get that up close with any of the supernaturals.”
I looked up at him and nodded. “True, but then I don’t think I’ve ever been on a lycanthrope—Therianthrope—case where we managed to get the rogue in a cage. Usually we’re hunting them and they’re hunting us, so we shoot them before they get that close.”
“So, you don’t learn serious hand-to-hand fighting for the job?” Kaitlin asked.
“Not in official training,” I said.
“Where’d you learn it?” she asked.
“Ted started teaching me, um, Marshal Ted Forrester. He was one of my mentors back when I first started.”
“You were one of the first, weren’t you?” Livingston said.
“Vampire executioners?” I asked.
“Is that what they called you at first?”
“No, we were just vampire hunters. The job title didn’t change until after the law changed and made vampires legal citizens with rights. You can’t hunt citizens like animals, so they started calling us executioners.”
“Wikipedia says that the vampires nicknamed you the Executioner. Is that true?” Livingston asked.
I nodded.
A waitress with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail came up to fill our water glasses and hand out menus.
“Hi, I’m Hazel, and I’ll be serving you today.”
I looked at her name tag, and it did read HAZEL, which was an unusual enough name that she had to be the waitress Carmichael, the Marchands’ handyman, was dating. We hadn’t been waiting so long because of slow service; we’d been waiting for our potential witness to be free to wait on us. Brownie points to Livingston. Dating the manager hadn’t just gotten us a table; it had gotten us another person of interest.
Knowing who the waitress was made me notice her more. Hazel had hazel eyes that had more gray in the brown than green, as if the original color had faded. I wondered if her parents had known ahead of time that Hazel’s eye color would fade, or if she’d been born with her eyes that way. Was that even possible? Something had etched harsh lines at the corners of her eyes and the edges of her mouth like unhappy parentheses, but even with that, I put her on the young side of thirty-five. She seemed hard-lived rather than old. I caught a faint whiff of cigarettes as she moved around the table. Ah, a smoker; that will age the face and skin. She probably couldn’t even smell the bitter scent of it on herself anymore, but a nonsmoker like me, I couldn’t not smell it.
I’d have started interrogating her, but Livingston ordered his food, which meant the rest of us had to look at our menus ASAP. For future reference, I hate to be rushed when choosing food, especially at new restaurants. I ended up ordering pancakes, because pancakes are like coffee. They’re all good; it’s just a matter of how good. A side order of extra-crispy bacon, orange juice, a regular Coke, and coffee and I was set.
“Think you ordered enough caffeine?” Kaitlin said, smiling.
“Probably not,” I said.
That made her laugh. I was beginning to wonder whether she was just that cheerful or she was flirting with me. I wasn’t always able to tell when women aimed at me. The fact that women were included in my poly group at home still caught me by surprise sometimes. I was beginning to think that if I hadn’t been metaphysically connected to Jean-Claude and a half dozen other people who preferred women, I might not have ever found the same sex attractive. But then again, maybe I was just a late bloomer.
Olaf ordered an omelet with mostly meat in it, a side of fruit, and coffee. I wondered if he’d have ordered differently if we’d had more time to look the menu over. I know I probably would have.
When Hazel left with our orders in hand, Livingston took up the conversation as if we’d never stopped. “So, you’re the Executioner to the vampires.”
“Among other pet names, yeah,” I said, and sipped my water. Nathaniel was starting to pester me about not drinking enough water.
“Doesn’t that make marrying their king sort of awkward?”
“I thought it would, but it turns out that they’re used to being afraid of their rulers, so me being their bogeyman and their queen will probably seem like business as usual to them.”
“When do we question Hazel?” Newman asked.
“After we get our food and eat it,” Livingston said.
“Why eat first?” Newman said.
“I thought you were a regular cop before you became a marshal.”
“I was.”
“Then you know that you always eat first, in case you get another call and have to leave.”
Newman smiled and looked down at the table, nodding. “I can’t even argue. The food is good here. I didn’t know you were dating Pamela.”
“We both decided we were ready for people to know.”
“Well, congratulations.”
“Thank you and congratulations on the engagement.”
“You know all the local gossip now that you’re dating Pamela,” Newman said.
“More than I did before, but I had to swear not to use anything I overheard unless I run it by her first, or someone’s life is at stake.”
“Smart woman,” I said.
“She is,” Livingston said, smiling as if the fact that she was smart made him happy. Pretty is good, but pretty and smart are better.
“Frankie told me that the other marshals call Ted Forrester Death, and I heard you say you’re War,” Kaitlin said.
“Yeah,” I said, sipping my water and hoping the coffee got here soon. If I was going to have to answer twenty questions about myself, then I needed more caffeine.
Kaitlin turned to Olaf. “She said that Blake and Forrester were half of the Four Horsemen and that one of the others was Marshal Jeffries.”
“Yes,” he said, and sipped his water. Maybe he wanted something stronger, too.
“It’s you and Marshal Spotted-Horse. I would not forget such a great name, but I can’t remember which of the horsemen you are.”
“He’s Plague,” Newman said.
“Why are the four of you named the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?” Livingston asked.
“Doesn’t my Wiki page say?” I asked, and didn’t manage to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“It’s mostly vampire stuff and your love life,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Friends told me to stop looking myself up online, especially with all the publicity about the wedding, so I don’t know what people are saying about me.”
“Probably best you don’t know,” Livingston said.
“So friends keep telling me,” I said.
“I promise not to look you up online anymore if you’ll answer my questions,” he said.
“Depends on the question, but sounds fair.”
“Why the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”
Olaf answered, “The four of us have the highest kill counts.”
“And we’re some of the most senior marshals still on the job,” I added.
“You both seem awfully young to be the most senior,” Livingston said.
I looked up at Olaf, and he noticed, so he looked down at me. I’d never really thought about how old he might be. He seemed sort of ageless, not literally like a vampire, but as if he would always be like he was when I’d first met him. It had never occurred to me to wonder if he was closer to Edward’s age or mine. He had to be somewhere in that nearly ten-year age difference, didn’t he?
“What?” he asked me.
I shook my head, and said to Livingston, “There were never many of us, but once they added a physical requirement along with the shooting requirement, that took out most of the real old-timers. They could shoot, but they couldn’t pass the obstacle course and calisthenics part.”
“Some of them are teaching classes to the newer marshals,” Newman added.
“I was glad when they invited them to teach you new guys. That much field experience shouldn’t go to waste.”
“A lot of them are stake-and-hammer guys though,” Newman said. “Old-fashioned doesn’t begin to cover their methods.”
“The hunter that taught me the ropes was like that.”
“I thought Forrester was your mentor. He’s known for his gun knowledge,” Livingston said.
“You get that off his Wikipedia page?” I asked.
“No, he worked a case that a buddy of mine was on. My friend is a gun nut, and he loved Forrester’s arsenal. He said that Forrester even used a flamethrower.”
“Yep, that’s Ted,” I said, shaking my head.
“So, he wasn’t your first mentor?”
“No, Manny Rodriguez was. He taught me how to raise zombies and how to kill vampires.”
“What happened to him?” Newman asked.
“His wife thought he was getting too old and forced him to retire from the hunting side of things.”
“It is not a job for old men,” Olaf said.
“I guess it isn’t, but I wasn’t ready to fly solo when Manny retired. I was lucky I didn’t get killed doing jobs on my own at first.”
“When did Forrester start training you?” Livingston asked.
“Soon enough to help me stay alive.”
“Ted spoke highly of you from the beginning,” Olaf said. “He does not give unearned praise. Are you being humble?”
“No, I don’t . . . I really did have some close calls when Manny first retired, or maybe I just missed having backup.”
Hazel brought our coffee and my Coke. “I’ll be back to fill those waters up, and with the juice,” she said before she left again.
I so wanted to start questioning her, but this was Newman’s warrant and everyone else besides Olaf was local. They knew Hazel. I didn’t. I’d let them play it for now.
The coffee was fresh and hot and surprisingly good for a mass-produced cup. I did add sugar and cream, so it wasn’t great coffee, but I didn’t add much, so it wasn’t bad either. Olaf put in way more sugar than I did, so his cup would have been too sweet for me. He didn’t take cream. I guessed we could be snobby about each other’s coffee habits later.
“But it was Forrester who taught you how to fight empty hand?” Livingston asked.
“I had some martial arts when we met, but he started me on more real-world training that worked outside of a judo mat or a martial arts tournament.”
“I thought he was out of New Mexico,” Livingston said.
“He is.”
“And you’re in St. Louis, Missouri.”
“I am.”
“Hard to train long-distance.”
“I have people I train with at home.”
“How often do you train?” Kaitlin asked.
“At least three times a week in hand-to-hand and blade.”
“Really that often?” Newman asked.
“Yeah. How often do you train?”
“I go to the range two, three times a month.”
“Any martial arts?” I asked.
“I go to the gym three times a week.”
“Weights?” I asked.
“Interval training with weights and cardio.”
“That’s more than you were doing when I first met you, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“You’ve put on muscle.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
“Is that all you do?” Olaf asked.
“Yeah. What do you do?” Newman asked.
“More,” Olaf said.
“Blake only trains three days a week. Why are you giving me attitude and not her?”
“She trains in close-quarters combat three times a week, but that is not all she does.”
Newman looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Three days a week for weights, sometimes with cardio between sets, sometimes straight weights,” I said. “I run at least twice a week, three if I have time. I do gun training of some kind at least twice a month, and I try for every week.”
“So you’re in the gym or training every day of the week?” Newman asked.
“I try to take one day off a week.”
“How can you keep that up?”
“How can you be happy with three days a week of cardio and weights? Seriously, Newman, what kind of workout are they using in training now?”
“What were they using when they grandfathered both of you in?” he asked.
Olaf and I looked at each other. “They needed to keep as many of us as possible until they could get you newbies trained and in the field, so the physical requirements were the regular ones for the Marshals Service.”
“Same for me,” Newman said.
“They were talking about doing a physical-training program that would help prepare new recruits for the job. Are you telling me that they didn’t do that?” I asked.
“Once we become marshals, as long as we keep meeting physical requirements, there’s no forced PT.”
“That’s typical of most law enforcement,” Livingston said.
“They don’t force us to train,” Olaf said.
“Well, no, but”—I tried to think how to put it into words—“but if you don’t train and train hard, you won’t make it in this job.”
“Do you mean you’ll fail when you get retested?” Kaitlin asked.
“No, I mean if you can’t run, fight, just have the stamina to make it through a hunt, you’ll get hurt or worse.”
“It’s not just that, Anita,” Olaf said. “The new executioners lack mentorship. They have only classroom experience with the monsters and no one to show them how to stay alive in the field.”
“They are sending the newest marshals out with older marshals now,” Newman said.
“They haven’t asked me to babysit anyone, so who are they asking?” I said.
“They contacted me,” Newman said.
“You’ve been doing this barely two years.”
“I know. That’s why I told them that I didn’t feel I had the experience to help anyone newer than myself. I told them that I’d found you, Forrester, Jeffries, and Spotted-Horse to be the most help to me. They didn’t like me crediting working with all of you as a reason I was better than most of the marshals that joined at the same time I did.”
“Why don’t they send out the Four Horsemen with the new recruits?” Livingston asked.
“They do not trust us,” Olaf said.
I nodded and said, “Yeah, what he said.”
“Don’t trust you how?” Kaitlin asked.
“They think we will corrupt the recruits,” Olaf said.
I glanced up at him. “Not the word I’d have chosen, but yeah, that’s sort of it. They think we’ll train the new marshals to be as independent and lone wolf as we are.”
“Will you?” Livingston asked.
“Probably. Almost all of us that were grandfathered in were freelance operatives that were only marginally with the police. I was a consultant with the police, but a lot of the other marshals were bounty hunters before they got badges. Those of us that passed fitness training and the firearms test were grandfathered in, but that didn’t make us police officers. We don’t have the training, and most of us don’t even have a police background.”
“What background do you have?”
“Military,” Olaf said.
“Magic,” I said, “or technically psychic gifts that made us good with the undead or shapeshifters or both.”
“So none of the people grandfathered in was a cop first?” Livingston asked.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“No,” Olaf said.
“Surely some police were hunting vampires before the laws changed and made them legal citizens,” Livingston said.
“They were some of the first, actually,” I said.
“So why weren’t they grandfathered in?” Kaitlin asked.
“One, cops weren’t allowed to be bounty hunters. Two, they were dead.”
“So you’re saying that you’re better at this job than regular police,” Livingston said.
“Yes,” Olaf and I said together.
“That’s just insulting all your brothers and sisters in blue,” Livingston said.
“I’m not insulting them. I’m stating that police are trained to save lives. Most officers can do their twenty years without ever having to shoot anyone. I know every shooting makes the news now, but if you do the math between how many police are in this country and how many people die by gun violence, it’s mostly civilian-on-civilian crime. Police are trained to keep the peace. You need to think very differently to do our job.”
“You were a cop before you became a marshal, right, Newman?” Livingston asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re good at the job.”
Newman shook his head. “My first hunt in the field was with the Four Horsemen. I got to see how the job is supposed to be done, not what our bosses want the job to be.”
“What do they want it to be?” Livingston asked.
“They want cops that kill on command like the dog half of a canine team attacks, but the rest of the time, we’re supposed to be good dogs, man’s best friend, until they tell us to kill again.” His face as he talked got more and more unhappy.
“Wow,” Kaitlin said, “that’s grim.”
“It feels grim,” Newman said.
“But you’re not dogs. You’re police officers,” Livingston said.
“And that’s the problem, sir. Part of the time, they want most of us to be regular marshals, but then they push the button, and we’re supposed to become something else—something that I don’t understand how to be. And the fighting you saw Blake do in the cell, that’s her training with Forrester and Jeffries and others like them. No one is teaching that to the rest of us.”
“You’re saying that you need to be more like SWAT than regular police,” Livingston said.
Newman shook his head. “No, sir. SWAT is still about saving lives, containing the violence, but that’s not what the preternatural branch does.”
“Preternatural branch goes out with SWAT to serve warrants on known preternatural citizens,” Livingston said.
“Only after the marshal goes through extra training closer to our Special Operations Group, SOG. Once you pass that, you can be picked to accompany local SWAT on regular police warrants to known or suspected supernatural citizens.”
“You sound like you’re quoting,” Livingston said.
“I am.”
“Have you gone out with SWAT?” Kaitlin asked.
“No,” Newman said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes,” Olaf said.
“Sounds like a good idea to send the supernatural experts out with SWAT on warrants like that,” Livingston said.
“It is. It’s a great idea,” said Newman, “except we’re supposed to be protecting SWAT in case the supernatural citizen goes completely rogue and tries to kill them, but most of the newer marshals are greener than me. They think like cops, and that’s not what a SWAT unit needs if the monster tries to eat them.”
“What do they need from the marshals?” Livingston asked.
“They need them to kill the monster, not contain it, not handcuff it, not put it in a cage or into the back of a cruiser. This job isn’t police work at all. It’s closer to special operations units like SEALs or Delta Force. Or maybe it isn’t even that. Maybe we’re just assassins with badges, like Blake says, but whatever we are, it’s not police. When they nicknamed Blake War, they were being honest about what the preternatural branch does. It’s war. It’s deep, dark, behind-enemy-lines shit that our government is allowing us to do right here on American soil. But you have to want to be a SEAL, and you have to know what one is and what one does. Same for any of the other special operations units. You don’t end up on one of them by accident. They don’t recruit you for regular service and then throw you out into the dark with Delta Force and expect you to be okay.” When Newman finished talking he was not looking at any of us but staring off into space, and whatever he was seeing inside his head wasn’t anything good.
I looked at the side of Newman’s face. I wanted to touch his arm, to let him know he was all right, but it would have been a lie. I caught Livingston looking at him, too. Our eyes met for a second, and I think we both thought the same thing: Newman needed a new job.
“Newman, Win, you can go back to being regular police or transfer to the other side of the Marshals Service,” I said.
“You said ‘back to’ like it’s a step backward, lesser.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and tried to think of something to say. “I’m an assassin with a badge, Newman. I couldn’t be a regular cop. I don’t have the temperament or training for it.”
“And I don’t have what it takes to be an assassin with a badge,” he said, and looked at me. His eyes were shiny, and if it had been allowed, I’d have said he was nearly in tears. But I pretended I couldn’t see them, and he pretended they weren’t there. Even if the tears started, we’d all pretend we couldn’t see them unless Newman let us know it was okay to acknowledge them.
He excused himself for the bathroom. Olaf and I would have moved, but Kaitlin started the scoot-out first, so we let Livingston and her clear the way for Newman. I watched him walk away until he turned a corner and was lost to sight.
I don’t know what we would have said out loud, because the juice and the food all came at once. The bacon was perfectly crisp, like a hard look would make it fall apart, and Kaitlin was right. The pancakes were great. We all ate as if Newman hadn’t bared his soul moments before. One, we were all hungry and the food was that good. Two, how would it have changed anything to talk about it?
When Newman came back to the table with his face damp but clear, he sat down to his food as if nothing had happened. That was our cue to do the same. We talked about the food and made harmless small talk until the food was gone and Hazel came back to the table to ask if there was anything else we needed. Why, yes, there was. Let’s talk murder.