Cities of the Dead by Linda Barnes Page A

attractive. She conjured up opening night, the first delighted customers—and then she remembered, and her face fell into sober defeated folds.
    â€œAnd you and your husband lived here as well?” Spraggue prompted.
    â€œOn the second floor. We haven’t done a thing up there. All our time, all our energy, went into the restaurant.”
    â€œI’d like to see your own place. Kind of a homey angle for the story.”
    â€œBut it’s a mess. Boxes still packed, no pictures on the walls—”
    â€œI understand, Mrs. Fontenot. I won’t take any photos.”
    She shrugged, as if no one could possibly understand. But she gave in, saying, “Well, at least up there, I can make some coffee. You’d like some coffee?”
    â€œVery much.”
    â€œI don’t think you told me your name. Or if you did, I don’t remember.”
    â€œEd,” Spraggue said. “Ed Adams.” It came to him as he said it that the name was from some forties Alan Ladd film noir, a journalist who found a body in a cheap hotel room.
    â€œYou’re not from around here.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI can tell by the accent.”
    Spraggue wasn’t used to thinking of himself as having an accent.
    Upstairs, the paint was dingy yellow. No pictures on the walls, as Mrs. Fontenot had pointed out, but you could tell where the last tenants had hung theirs by the faded rectangles. The windows had plain white shades, no curtains. All the furniture looked hand-me-down—springs sprung, upholstery tattered.
    â€œWe were going to do so much up here,” Jeannine Fontenot shouted from the tiny galley kitchen. “I found the most perfect wallpaper, pale blue with yellow roses. We were going to furnish from scratch, just throw all this junk out.”
    More money, Spraggue thought. He studied two Plexiglas-framed photographs on the dusty coffee table. One was Joseph Fontenot; the other a faded snapshot of a small child, a girl, as the frilly white dress and elaborate ringlets made clear. She smiled up at the photographer with such joyful innocence that Spraggue hated to think of her growing up.
    â€œNow,” Fontenot’s widow said, settling onto the couch with a mug of chicory-flavored coffee in one hand, “what do you want me to tell you?”
    â€œEverything,” Spraggue said easily. “Background. I hope you don’t mind the tape recorder. It helps my memory and I want to get any quotes just right. Anything that you say is off the record will stay off the record.” He smiled down at her and wondered if he weren’t overdoing the smarminess just a bit. His image of one of those gossip-sheet “reporters” was pretty negative, sort of a greased eel. If he’d had time to costume the part he would have chosen a shiny suit and a loud tie.
    â€œI guess it’ll be okay. Makes me a little bit nervous. What do you mean by background?”
    â€œI want to do the sort of piece that will let our readers know exactly what kind of a man your husband was. Where he came from. How he lived. His accomplishments. When someone is killed in such a spectacular fashion, right before the presentation of an award he might have won—”
    â€œ Would have won. No ‘might’ about it. In the category of best chef, my husband might as well have been running alone. There was no one close.”
    Mrs. Fontenot did have something in common with her husband—a belief that he could do no culinary wrong. She bit her lip and continued, “Maybe that’s why …”
    â€œWhy what?”
    She thought about her words before she spoke, and then she pitched her voice low, as if a whisper would outwit the tape recorder. “There is so much jealousy in this place. You wouldn’t think it. You would think there would always be room for one more, for a man or woman of talent and taste and style. But my husband—you wouldn’t think it to meet