All Shots by Susan Conant Page A

Consequently, it’s easy for me to resign myself to allowing Kevin to decide where we eat. The occasion has seldom arisen since he started going out with Jennifer Pasquarelli, whom he did not, I might mention, pick up over sushi at Loaves and Fishes. Still, she is exceptionally well nourished, at once buxom and trim. When they eat out, Jennifer drags Kevin to Asian restaurants and forces him to eat vegetables with foreign names. Jennifer is a Newton, Massachusetts, police officer, and she and Kevin met on the job. Actually, she was in trouble then because of her rude behavior to a Newton taxpayer, and Kevin was free this Friday night because she was in similar trouble once again. Specifically, when summoned to investigate a typical suburban crime, namely, the theft of a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament, Jennifer told the citizen to trade in his “goddamned status symbol” for a Ford or a Chevy and quit bothering the police about trivia. So, for at least the second time, Jennifer had been packed off to a training course on developing social skills for effective community law enforcement, and Kevin was free to pig out on meat.
    The restaurant he selected was one of his better choices, by which I mean that it did not have the reputation of giving its patrons food poisoning. It was a chain eatery in a big converted warehouse. The interior space was barnlike. The decor was based on rough wood and dead animals—rustic beams, deer heads, moose heads, stuffed pheasants—but the booths were cozy, the service was friendly, and the menu was extensive. The offerings did not, oddly enough, include venison, mooseburgers, or game birds, but there wasn’t an Asian dish among them, and the vegetarian items were in the pasta section and contained only what Kevin deems “normal” vegetables, that is, tomatoes and the like, and not bok choy, Chinese cabbage, or wild mushrooms. I ordered a Caesar salad and fettuccine Alfredo. Kevin went for a double portion of deep-fried mozzarella sticks to be followed by a sixteen-ounce steak with french fries. He was driving, so he had Coke instead of beer, but I had a glass of Merlot that wasn’t half bad.
    One of the appeals of the restaurant, from Kevin’s viewpoint, was the fast service. The drinks had appeared immediately, and we’d barely ordered the food when the server returned with our appetizers. I took the arrival of my salad and Kevin’s mozzarella sticks as a signal that he’d finally discuss the murder with me. On the way to dinner, he’d refused to say anything about it. His excuse had been that there were things he wanted me to look at, and when he’d parked his car, he’d retrieved a briefcase from the backseat and carried it in with him.
    After devouring a mozzarella stick, he shifted his briefcase from the floor to the seat of the booth, pulled out a sheaf of papers, and placed them on the table. “These are photocopies,” he said, as if to assure me that he hadn’t broken any rules about absconding with evidence. It struck me that he looked less like a gorilla than usual. The briefcase was one source of the impression. Also, he was wearing a khaki suit, a white shirt, and a flowered tie in colors that picked up the red of his hair and freckles, and the blue of his eyes. Non-ape colors: khaki, red, blue. And from the front, you couldn’t see that the suit jacket was stretched taut over his back and shoulders.
    “Am I allowed to look at them?” I ate some romaine, which was covered with hard granules of cheese. “Right side up?”
    “That’s why I brought them.”
    “This is my phone bill. Electric bill. Bank statement. I keep meaning to tell the bank to stop sending paper statements. I do all my banking online. Where did you get these?” I should explain that when Steve and I got married, he moved in with me, I kept my original name, and I didn’t bother to inform the utility companies of our union, so many of the household bills were addressed only to me. “What