Sassafras, Part 8


Joan


While I was waiting for Deana I went ahead and called the coroner, but didn't learn anything. The person answering the phone didn't know when the coroner would finish, and didn't know when the coroner would have time to talk to me, but she would make sure he got my message. He would call me back. Eventually. Right, sure he would.

I wasn’t in a very good mood when Deana finally showed up, but Brian and Ashley were so cute I couldn't stay upset. He had spiky red hair and was just old enough to toddle all around the parking lot. Ashley looked so cute all dressed up in a fluffy pink outfit with a little hood that had bunny ears on top. Deana finally bribed Brian into calming down with promises of pancakes swimming in syrup.

"What's wrong with Brian's eye?" I asked as we walked up the sidewalk.

"What," she asked. "Oh, there's nothing wrong with his eye. I wanted to show you Ashley's Halloween costume, and he wanted to wear his, too, but I convinced him to just wear the patch. He went trick or treating as a pirate and now he wants to be a pirate when he grows up. Hey, Brian, what do pirates say?"

He ran up to me, held his hand up like a hook and said "Argh!"

When we walked in it seemed like the whole restaurant went silent. I could see a big poster hanging from the counter with pictures of Jenny and different customers. On the counter were flowers and a coffee can that they were collecting money for Billy in. Don wasn't working yet, but it seemed like everybody else that worked there came over to say how sorry they were about Jenny. Some of the customer's who didn’t even know me came over.

Finally everybody went back to their own business and Deana and I could relax. I hadn't seen her since I came back for Mom's birthday last year. She looked the same, dark red hair, freckles, and a nose just a little bit too big. It made her whole face look out of proportion, but that just made her look sort of exotic.

There was a row of coffee mugs brought in by the regulars hanging behind the counter. The waitress picked up one that said World’s Greatest Daughter and one with a dragon on the side and brought them over. She set the Daughter cup down in front of Deana, and the dragon cup in front of me. “Here, honey,” she said, filling them with coffee. “This was your sister’s cup. I think she would want you to have it.”

"So," Deana said after the server took her order for silver dollar pancakes for Brian, "tell me what you've been doing in New York. Have you found Mr. Right yet?"

"No, I've just met a couple of Mr. Wrongs, a Mr. Hell No, and a Mr. What The Hell Was I Thinking.”

Deana laughed. "You would think with all the millions of men in New York you would be able to find somebody. Brian, put that down. You don’t put ketchup on pancakes, honey.” She took the ketchup bottle away from him before he could squirt it all over the table. "Do you remember what I said happens to bad pirates?"

"Walk the plank! Walk the plank!" he said, jumping up and down in the booth and clapping his hands.

"That's right. If you don't behave you're going to walk the plank." She looked over at me. "So, do the police have any idea who hit your sister?"

"No, not yet. They have some evidence but no leads." I sat looking at my coffee. "I can't believe she's gone. She was always so happy."

“Well, don’t sit around waiting for the police to solve the case,” she said, sending a death stare to the two cops who had just got out of the booth in back of me and walked over to the cash register. “Ever since Captain McFarland had to go on disability the police force has gone to hell in a hand basket. All they ever do is write tickets up at the new highway. That new captain, Detective Sneider, is a real asshole, too.”

“Did I tell you my husband was on the town board two years ago?” she continued. “He found out before Detective Sneider started working here he was being investigated by the St. Louis police department for using excessive force and tampering with evidence, but he quit before they ever charged him with anything. Bob tried to bring it up at one of the town board meetings, but none of the other board members wanted to rock the boat. They all love Sneider because as soon as he started he talked the board into annexing the new highway. He had his officers on 24-hour patrol. They made a couple of pretty impressive drug busts at first, confiscated a lot of money, enough to afford that fancy new police station and two more police cars. They have bulletproof vests and stun guns now. They act like this is Miami Vice or something.”

“The last couple of years all they do it give speeding tickets all day long, but at least they quit hassling the people who live here. The mayor told them if he had one more complaint about somebody getting a ticket for rolling through a stop sign he was going to fire every last one of them. Remember when we were in school, and there were only two police officers, and one only worked Friday and Saturday? Can you believe there are five police officers now? One of them is in California right now training to get a drug-sniffing dog. A drug-sniffing dog,” she snorted. “Why do we need twice the police force when we have a third of the population?”

"Brian, leave him alone," she said, pulling his sticky hands out of the man's hair who was sitting in the booth in back of her.

"I'm so sorry," Deana told him.

"Oh, that's okay," he said. "I think I'll survive.”

Deana leaned over and whispered "Mr. Right?"

"Mr. Maybe," I admitted. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at him when he turned around because Brian had been standing on the bench pulling his hair, and from the back I couldn’t really get a very good look at him, just black hair and a blue shirt. At least he wasn’t wearing a baseball cap, and I didn’t see any earrings or tattoos. He looked good from the back, but I wasn’t going to date the back of his head.

"I think you're just too picky," she said. "What's wrong with him?"

"Well, besides being a total stranger you mean?"

"You're as bad as your sister. I tried and tried to set her up with friends of Bob's, but she was always too picky."

We talked for about 45 minutes. I watched Deana handle Brian and Ashley like a pro. Sometimes it looked like she had three hands and eyes in the back of her head. I wondered if I would ever have kids. Even three years ago, before her stroke, Mom had kept dropping hints about how I wasn’t getting any younger. I had just been so busy in New York, I hadn’t had time to think about anything but work. Now I wondered if Deana was right. Maybe I was being too picky.

Eventually Deana had to take Ashley to a doctor's appointment. I sat there in the booth for a couple of minutes after they left, sipping a cup of coffee and trying to decide what chore to tackle next, when my phone rang. It was the coroner. I asked him what his official cause of death was. He said it was hit and run, with alcohol as a contributing factor. I asked him what that meant, and he said she had been drinking.