CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Melania’s Waffle Diner looked better in the evening than during the day.
The setting sun came through the front windows at an angle, softening the scratches in the tabletops and turning the chrome trim around the counter warm for a few minutes.
By morning, it would look tired again. Grease under the griddle hood.
Sugar crusted near the syrup pumps. Men in work shirts stirring mugs of coffee as if the spoon might solve something.
Evening forgave more.
The killer sat in a booth along the window with both hands around a cup of tea.
Not coffee.
Never coffee, unless forced into it by some wretched circumstance.
Tea had patience. Tea required restraint. A person selected it, waited for it, allowed the leaves to settle into the water at their own pace. Coffee made people loud. Twitchy. Full of false urgency. It turned ordinary citizens into irrational lunatics who believed bad decisions were productivity.
The killer lifted the cup and took a measured sip.
Too weak.
Melania’s served tea as if it were medicine for invalids, but even weak tea was preferable to coffee. It warmed the throat and settled the mind. On a night like this, a settled mind mattered.
The booth vinyl pressed against their back.
The table held the cup, a small metal pot, a folded napkin, and a plate with half a waffle, now cold under a neat square of butter.
Outside, pickup trucks moved along the road with their headlights on.
Beyond them, Elmsview’s storefronts were darkening one by one.
The county had begun to talk.
That was good.
Fear needed conversation. Without conversation, fear wandered. With conversation, it learned direction.
At the counter, two men in seed company caps argued quietly about corn prices.
Near the register, a waitress refilled glasses and carried plates with her hip turned to avoid the tight spaces.
In the booth behind the killer, three women had been talking for ten minutes, voices lowered in the way people used when they wanted privacy but still wanted the room to know there was something worth hearing.
The killer had not turned around.
Turning around was amateurish.
Better to watch the window reflection and listen. Three vague shapes sat behind them, framed in the glass over the darkening street. One woman had large earrings that moved every time she spoke. Another kept tapping the table with one finger. The third had a laugh that came out too hard, too often.
The conversation had started with church volunteers, moved through Victor Schmidt’s death, drifted into the price of school uniforms, and now, at last, found something useful.
“Sheila hasn’t answered me in six days,” the tapping woman said.
“Maybe she’s busy,” the laughing one answered.
“She’s not busy. She’s avoiding me. It’s strange.”
A spoon clicked against china.
“Strange how?” the woman with the earrings asked.
“Strange as in she’s cut me out of her life almost completely,” the tapping woman said. “All because I told the truth.”
The killer’s cup paused near their mouth.
Truth.
People used that word carelessly. They wielded it like a garden tool and were shocked when it cut someone open. Still, the word had power. Truth was a blade when held correctly. A mercy, if the hand was steady.
Behind them, the laughing woman made a small sound. “You enjoy saying the truth a bit too much, Connie.”
“I’m looking out for my friend.”
“You’re getting involved in a marriage you know nothing about.”
“I know enough.”
The woman with earrings lowered her voice. “What exactly did you see?”
The tapping stopped.
“I saw Bradley out with his bit on the side.”
A hush followed. Not real silence. The waffle diner continued around them with forks, plates, and low voices. But the booth behind the killer tightened around the sentence.
“Are you sure?” the earring woman asked.
Connie gave a dry little laugh. “I’ve got eyes, haven’t I?”
“That’s not the same as being sure.”
“It’s enough. We all know what Bradley’s like.”
“Do we?”
“Oh, come on. He’s always smiling at women like he’s doing them a favor. I saw him with her outside Whitcomb’s office. Young thing. Hair down her back. Skirt too short for any respectable workplace.”
The laughing woman said, “Sheila told me Bradley explained all that. It was an innocent after-hours coffee with an employee.”
The killer lowered the cup to the saucer.
An innocent coffee meetup again.
Of course.
Nothing good began with coffee after hours.
Connie’s voice sharpened. “You don’t hold hands with your employees.”
The earring woman sucked in a breath. “They were holding hands?”
“Plain as day.”
“Well,” the laughing one said, her amusement gone now, “that’s terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“Shame Sheila can’t see the truth,” the earring woman said.
“She sees it,” Connie answered. “She just doesn’t want to look straight at it.”
“Maybe she’s scared.”
“She ought to be angry.”
“People don’t always know what to do when they’ve been betrayed.”
Connie’s voice dropped. “I don’t want to lose her as a friend.
That’s the truth. I’ve known Sheila since we were girls.
I stood up at her wedding. I held her baby before her own mother got there.
And now she acts like I’m the enemy because I won’t smile and pretend Bradley isn’t making a fool of her. ”
The killer watched a truck turn across the street, its headlights sweeping the waffle diner windows. For one brief second, the glass showed the killer’s own hands wrapped around the teacup. Still hands. Calm hands.
Poor Sheila.
That name had a softness to it. A woman who might sit alone in a kitchen after midnight, staring at a phone, waiting for an explanation that did not insult her intelligence.
A woman surrounded by people who talked and judged and took pleasure from her humiliation.
A woman who needed the noise around her quieted.
Protected.
Rescued.
The killer lifted the tea again and smiled into the cup.
Bradley.
A plain name. A name that belonged on a business card, a church bulletin, a car loan application.
Men with names like Bradley often believed the world had been built to absorb their appetites.
They shook hands, complimented mothers, sponsored youth teams, and slid their fingers over the hands of younger women in public places because shame had become unfamiliar to them.
Perhaps Connie was wrong.
That had to be considered.
A proper mind did not rush.
Perhaps Bradley had done nothing beyond accept comfort from an employee after a difficult day. Perhaps Sheila had misunderstood. Perhaps Connie enjoyed the authority of accusation so much that she had built a whole crime from a touch.
Possible.
The killer set the cup down and ran one finger along the folded edge of the napkin.
But if Connie was right, then Sheila had already been failed. By Bradley. By friends who saw her pain as gossip. By a town that would watch the marriage spoil and call it private.
The waitress passed the booth. “You doing all right, hon?”
The killer turned a pleasant smile toward her. “Perfectly, thank you.”
“You want that tea warmed up?”
“No, thank you. I’m finished.”
The waitress moved on.
Behind the killer, Connie was speaking again.
“I just hope she comes around before he breaks her completely.”
The killer placed money on the table, enough for the bill and a careful tip. Then the killer took a small notebook from an inner pocket and opened it under the table.
Only one word went on the page.
Bradley.
The pen stopped.
After a moment, another word followed.
Sheila.
The notebook closed.
Outside, evening had deepened. The first moths struck the window and fell away, drawn back each time by the light inside.
The killer stood, smoothed the front of their jacket, and left the cold waffle untouched.
Perhaps there was something to be done about Bradley.
Perhaps Sheila needed protecting like all the rest.