Clara started to burble. I clenched her arm.
“When did you see him?”
Teague had been paying close attention to our reactions from the start, but now he let it show.
“In the dining room. After Glenn and Kirstin joined our table. He came in from the hall door in the back room. He leaned partly across the table Glenn and Kirstin had been at. Our server was right behind him. Got him upright and out of there.”
“Because he was drunk and fell against the table,” Clara said in triumph.
“It might have been a fall—” His tone added that it might not have been, too. “—but he wasn’t falling down drunk.”
“Not drunk?” came out of my mouth.
“Not falling down drunk. Fifty-fifty he could have passed an FST — field sobriety test. When he came forward across the table, he put his hand around Glenn’s water glass. Didn’t knock it over. Didn’t juggle it. And as the server drew him back upright, he had the presence of mind to take a napkin with him to dry his hand.”
I hadn’t seen that part with the water glass from my angle. But I had seen the napkin.
Possibility thudded hard in my chest. A napkin could have been right near the steak knife and used to cover it.
“Anything else?”
He studied me a moment. “Yes. The server was tailing him. Not an accident he was there that fast.”
“Oh, that’s so interesting,” Clara burst out, unable to contain herself. “Don’t you think that’s interesting. Sheila?”
I kept my eyes on Teague. “Anything else?”
“Your guy held onto the napkin. Slid it into his jacket pocket. The one away from the server.”
“Did it…? Did he fold it into his pocket?”
“No.”
“So it could have held—?”
“Clara.”
“No reason to stop her, Sheila. I can put a clue or two together. You’re thinking he pocketed Glenn Selka’s knife off the table. Used that as the murder weapon without wiping out the prints.”
And then he stopped, darn him. I prompted more with, “Could he have done that from what you saw?”
“Yes. But I also can’t say he did. Who is the guy? Other than one of your former classmates, Clara.”
“Marcus Etchells. Exchanged less than pleasant words with Josepha.”
“Also other people. I mean he exchanged less than pleasant words with other people, but so did she.”
“So no smoking gun … or smoking knife in this case.” He stood.
“Where are you going?”
“You know I’m going to the sheriff’s department to tell them what I saw.”
“No smoking knife, as you said. You don’t know anything more than you did before we came over and—”
“I know there’s a possible connection to the case. I wasn’t looking for connections, because it’s not my job. But it is my responsibility to report what I saw after you two pointed out the connection.”
Clara opened her mouth, then closed it.
Eventually, back at my kitchen table and administering chocolate to ourselves, she said, morosely, “It is one of the reasons we like him so much, his doing the right thing even when we’d rather he didn’t.”
“I don’t know about like. But I respect it. And we can’t complain too much, since he’s going to the sheriff’s department to tell them that the person who mostly likely took the murder weapon from The Tavern is the person whose alibi is them.”
* * * *
“Ohhhhh.” Clara’s exhalation made the word multi-syllabic. “You’re right. That’s awful.”
I couldn’t resist. “Especially for them.”
“But even if Marcus did those things to get the knife and give himself an alibi, how did he commit the murder?”
“He didn’t. We saw Josepha Viedux leave the hotel after he was in the deputy’s custody. He wasn’t released until half an hour or so before the body was found. She’d been dead longer than that. Not to mention, there were already people at Senior Hill, setting up before he was released. He couldn’t have done it. But he must know what happened to the knife next. How it got in the hands of the murderer and who that murderer is. All we have to do is figure out how to get him to spill the beans.”
“That’s all.”
Ignoring that uncharacteristic pessimism, I added, “We need to talk to our server.”
“Oh, I forgot. Rich called while you were editing the videos to show to Teague, and said he’d talked to every server except the guy who had our table Friday night. He finally came in for a shift tonight and Rich plans to talk to him after.”
The young guy with the hair over his forehead.
I jerked upright, unable to stay seated. Aware of both dogs jumping up and looking at me with a mixture of concern, confusion, and hope that I’d do something interesting.
Cursing myself did not meet their definition of interesting.
“What an idiot. Total, absolute, complete idiot. I thought he looked familiar, but I didn’t connect it with what happened. He was right there and I saw clear as anything when the server—”
The scene came sharp before my eyes.
The server’s expert retrieval of the drunken stumbler, the two faces almost beside each other. Almost…
“A double, triple idiot. Total, absolute, complete idiot. I almost had it Saturday night, too, then it slid away.”
“What are you talking—?”
“Do you know what that server’s name is?”
“No. Why?”
“Can you call Rich and ask?”
“Okay.” She said it carefully, as if mollifying a lunatic.
“Now. Call him now.”
“Okay, okay. I’m getting my phone.” She found a number with maddening deliberation. Rich apparently answered immediately. After far too many pleasantries for my taste, like saying hello, she finally asked the question. “Rich, that server, the one you haven’t talked to yet, what’s his name?”
Her eyes and mouth went round.
“Yeah? … Okay. That would be great. Thank you, Rich. I’ll talk to you then.” She ended the call. “His name is Toby. Toby Etchells. And he’s Marcus’ son. How did you know, Sheila?”
“Know? I didn’t. I haven’t known anything.”
“Don’t go on a doubting tangent. How did you know that kid was Marcus’ son?”
“That’s why I’m such an idiot. I should have recognized Marcus at the reunion as the table stumbler. I should have spotted the resemblance when I saw them together at The Tavern. When he scooped up Marcus, their faces, were right there, close together.
“That stumble — what I thought was a stumble Friday night — was deliberate. Marcus grabbed the knife, with that napkin over his hand to cover it. But it wasn’t until the fact that Rich hasn’t talked to him sparked the thought the kid was avoiding him that I envisioned it again, seeing their faces together, and recognized the resemblance. And holding up Marcus was a practiced move—”
“Because he’d done it a lot considering how much Marcus drinks. Wow. Just, wow. So, a son — that’s someone who might have killed for Marcus out of love. And that’s how Marcus could have an airtight alibi, but still be behind it, though why would he kill Josepha?”
“A secret. Just like we’ve thought all along. The bill Josepha was going to make people pay, including him.”
“But what?”
Something flickered at the edge of my mind.
Clara said, “You saw them — Marcus and his son — together. Gut feeling, do you think the son’s in on it?”
“He was angry, embarrassed. Trying to get out of a potentially awkward situation as quietly and quickly as he could. We have to confront him. Tomorrow— No, wait. We’re running out of time. They’ll scatter. We have to confront them all. All at once. Call Rich back. See if he can arrange for a farewell breakfast tomorrow for — us, Marcus, Debi, Mary Jo, Fae and Lovell, Wesley, Glenn and Kirstin — that’s ten, with Marcus’ son serving.”
“But—”
“Just see if he can do it.”
He could.
Now all we had to do was get him to confess so the murderer would, too.