Ruth Hadley made him the minute he walked in the door. It was just before eleven and the breakfast crowd had pretty much cleared out. Outside, the Bullseye Diner sign was so caked with drifting snow and ice that the vivid display had been reduced to little more than a glowing memory.
Andriatta and Corso settled into a booth down at the far end, directly across from the register. Ruth finished cashing out the pair of Pennsylvania state troopers, wished them well by name, then squeaked her way over to where Corso and Andriatta sat. “Nice to see you come back,” she said, turning over their coffee mugs and filling them with coffee. Corso allowed how he, too, was glad to have returned and introduced Andriatta as his friend and colleague.
“Concubine,” Andriatta corrected with a smile.
“Well, that’s a lot more fun now, isn’t it?” Ruth said, matching her tooth for tooth. She pulled an order pad from the pocket in her apron. Patted herself down for a pen, found one, clicked the end and waited.
“What can I get for you folks?”
Corso ordered scrambled eggs and rye toast. Andriatta opted for a short stack of pancakes, a side of bacon, eggs up with hash browns and wheat toast.
“Y’all expecting somebody else?” Ruth asked with a wry smile.
“She’s a woman of her appetites,” Corso said.
“How nice for you,” Ruth said before turning and heading back behind the counter. She tore the order from the book, clipped it to a little spinning contraption, then disappeared through the swinging kitchen doors.
“Was that aimed at you or me?” Andriatta asked.
“No idea,” Corso said. “I guess it cuts both ways.”
Andriatta sat back in the booth and thought it over.
“I think she’s got a crush on you.”
Corso was horrified. “She’s a thousand.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? A woman’s gonna think what a woman’s gonna think. Age got nothing to do with it.”
“Come on. Get real.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
They were still tossing the idea back and forth when the squeaking of Ruth’s shoes announced the arrival of breakfast. When Ruth had gone, Andriatta lowered her voice. “Did you see the way she looked at you?”
“You’re crazy.”
“You must be blind.”
“She’s a married woman.”
“Oh…like that stops anybody these days.”
Corso chewed a piece of toast as he watched Ruth make the rounds with the coffeepot. When she returned to the register, Corso slid to the end of the booth.
“I’ve got something I want to ask her,” he said.
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Stop it.”
She forked in another mouthful of hotcakes and laughed.
Corso got to his feet and moseyed over to the cash register. She was straightening money in the register drawers when he leaned his arms on the counter.
“Now what can I do for the famous author?” she asked.
Corso put on his best conspiratorial face. “You said something about getting a real steal of a deal on a piece of property down in Florida.”
Her expression took on a sly quality. “Did I?”
Corso leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Yes, ma’am, I believe you did.”
She raised a painted eyebrow and looked at him from the corner of her eye.
“What if I did?”
“You mind if I ask how that happened.”
“We knew somebody who knew somebody who was strapped for cash.”
“Mind if I ask for a name?”
“Which one?”
“The one you knew.”
She considered it. “I think I better ask my old man,” she said finally.
Corso watched as, once again, she disappeared through the swinging doors. A minute passed, and then two, before she reappeared and crooked a beckoning finger at Corso, who ambled down to the break in the counter and followed her into the kitchen.
He was short, not much over five feet, a wiry specimen dressed all in white, except for the dabs of egg yolk adorning the front of his apron. Looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. The hair on his chest and the hair from his beard met just below his prominent Adam’s apple. His expression said he wasn’t all that happy to make Corso’s acquaintance. “You got a problem with something?” he wanted to know.
“Nothing that’s got anything to do with you,” Corso assured him.
“So why all the questions?”
“I’m still working on what happened to Nathan Marino.”
His scowl deepened. “He got blown to shit. That’s what happened to Nathan.”
“I hear he was a nice kid.”
“Nice kids are a dime a dozen.”
“His family has a right to know what happened to him.” Before he could answer, Corso went on. “I hear you’ve got a couple of girls of your own. Something like that happened to one of them, I’m betting you’d want to know what happened.”
He took a deep breath. “So what’s that got to do with Florida?”
“All right…let me do this another way. Was Randy Shields the guy who knew somebody in a bind?”
Ruth and Myron exchanged meaningful glances. “What if he was?” Myron asked.
“Was he?”
A muted bong sent Ruth scurrying out to the front of the diner.
“Yeah,” Myron said. “It was him.” He cracked eggs two at a time, dumping the contents into a stainless-steel bowl, dropping the shells into a trash can beneath the counter. “He come in one time. Got to gabbing with Ruth.” He shook his head in disgust. “My old woman got a bad habit of sharing her business with people she don’t know.” He pulled half a dozen pieces of bacon from a tray, slapped them on the back of the grill and weighted them down. “She tells him we been thinkin’ about retiring down to Florida. He tells her he might know where we could get us a prime piece of real estate.” He shrugged. “Just sorta happened from there.”
“Seller was a guy named Short. Paul Short.”
“If you already know all this shit, why you in here busting my balls?”
“I just needed to make sure.”
“The sale was good,” Myron said. “Went through title and escrow and everything. I don’t wanna hear about how there’s something wrong with the sale.”
Corso held up a hand. Scout’s honor. “Far as I know there’s no problem.”
Myron walked to the window, spun the little steel carousel and pulled down a couple of orders. “Randy Shields come into the diner often?” Corso asked.
Myron scrambled the half dozen eggs with a whisk. “You want gossip you better talk to my old woman,” he said. “That’s her end of the business.”
Corso thanked him for his trouble and pushed his way through the doors just as the eggs hit the grill.
Andriatta was forking the last morsel of what looked like a piece of lemon meringue pie into her mouth as he arrived. She looked up at Corso.
“Waiting makes me hungry,” she explained.
“I’ll settle up and we can get out of here,” Corso said.
“I’m going to hit the loo. I’ll meet you in the car.”
Corso arrived at the cash register just as Ruth was ringing up the elderly couple at the far end of the counter. She favored him with a small smile. “I’m guessin’ you’ll be on your way back to Seattle here pretty soon,” she said.
Corso handed her the bill. “Pretty soon,” he said. “Just got a few loose ends I want to tie up.”
She punched open the register and then leaned part way across the counter. “That Nathan Marino…he deserved way better than he got.”
Corso nodded. “I believe he did.”
“Can’t say that about many of us, can you?”
“No, ma’am…I don’t believe you can.”