Deadly Detail by Don Porter Page B

luck?” she asked.
    I gave her an appropriately doleful headshake.
    The program ended and she switched off the set.
    “New clothes in the bathroom, next to a hot shower and a disposable razor.” I took that to be a hint. I did feel like a new man by the time I put on the dress slacks and shirt she had picked out. Nice threads: tan slacks, blue shirt with button down collar, and no little pictures of alligators or logos confirmed her good taste. She hadn’t asked my size, and our mutual loss washed over me again. Stan and I wear, or wore, the same sizes and she knew it. I stepped back to the bedroom in all my sartorial splendor and was greeted with appropriate applause.
    “Alex, I’m going crazy. I spent most of the afternoon crying. I know that won’t bring Stan back. I’ve got to think about here and now, and you’ve got to help me. Do you happen to know who broils the best lobsters on the planet?”
    “Matter of fact, I do. That would be The Broiler, if we can get a table.”
    “We probably can. We have reservations in twenty minutes.”
    I nodded and extended my left elbow, she took it and I led her out. The pistol was on my right. Angie was caught in a culture warp and struggling. The one thing that her Athabaskan Indian ancestors have in common with the Eskimos on the coast is that the men die violently and early. In the villages, it’s hunting or fishing accidents. Angie and Stan had reached for an urban, or Gussak lifestyle, so she hadn’t expected to be widowed in her twenties. Now it had happened to her, just as it had to her mother before her, and she was struggling for the Indian stoicism that should have been her heritage.
    It was only eight blocks to the restaurant, but six stoplights, so we made it with three minutes to spare. A neat young man wearing a tuxedo greeted us with a friendly smile. He plucked two menus from his podium and led us past the gleaming cavern of the bar to a corner table in the dining room. We didn’t bother with the menus. Naturally, we both ordered the broiled African lobster tails. That was the whole point of going to The Broiler.
    “You know, Alex, they have a bottle of 1971 Pouilly Fuissé, and tonight you can drink white wine without having to keep looking over your shoulder.”
    I nodded to the waiter; he nodded back and went to fetch the bottle. So, Angie did know I was an unforgivable bumpkin for drinking the wrong wine, and she hadn’t said a word. I really appreciated that. I once had a fling with an actress in New York who would have thrown a tantrum, caused a scene, and refused to eat with me. I was giving Angie points for being much more the sophisticate.
    Our waiter poured a sample and I deferred it to Angie. She sipped and smiled. How could she not? The only wine in the world better than a 1973 Pouilly Fuissé is the 1971. He poured and left in search of our lobsters.
    “Total bust getting into the freight records? You were gone so long I thought you must have made it. I pictured you as their new night janitor.”
    “Pretty close. I’m on the payroll, today and tomorrow, and I had the records all to myself, but there weren’t any late shipments, going or coming. Someone was there late for some other reason. All we have to do is figure it out.” We both sipped and both smiled. “By the way, I work again tomorrow, approximately noon until six. What say we decontaminate the pickup and retrieve your canoe, if it hasn’t already been liberated?”
    She nodded and scooped her glass out of the way. The waiter set down trays with our lobsters and local potatoes, baked and stuffed. If you know The Broiler’s lobsters, then you know why there was no more conversation, and why we were miserably full but still smiling when we drove back to the hotel and crawled upstairs to our room.

Chapter Seven
    I looked that pickup over like a Missouri farmer about to buy a mule. One advantage of machines from the Eighties is that you can look up from underneath and see past