Murder 101 by Maggie Barbieri

Sully,” I said, and went over to the bar. I leaned in and gave him a kiss. “How’s things?” I asked. “Do you remember Max?”
    He looked at her. “Sure, I do. Max Barfly?” he asked, breaking into a toothy grin. He had given her that nickname in our freshman year and it stuck.
    She snickered. “That’s me.”
    “The kids don’t drink kamikazes anymore,” he said, sadly. Max had been the kamikaze shot queen for three years running; a bout with mono in senior year forced her to give up her crown. He balled the rag up and threw it into the sink behind the bar. “What can I get you ladies?”
    “Two dozen and a pitcher,” Max said. She turned to me. “What do you want?” She laughed; this was something I had heard a hundred times while we were in school. “Just kidding.”
    I led her to one of the wooden booths across from the bar. I sat and stuck my right leg out to the side to examine the damage from my roll on the pavement; my stockings were torn, and I had a nice bloody scrape on my shin. “I didn’t stick my landing like you did,” I explained as I got up to go the bathroom and wash up in the dark, dank, and smelly bathroom (Maloney’s had found a decorating motif and was sticking to it). I pulled off my panty hose, stepping out of one shoe and then the other as I extricated myself from my hose. I didn’t want to put even one bare toe on the bathroom floor; I had been to this bar enough times to know what went on in the bathroom and how infrequently the floor was mopped (never). I tossed my stockings into the garbage can and took some paper towels from the dispenser, wet them, and pressed them against the scrape on my leg, sopping up as much of the blood as possible and trying to get the area relatively clean. I ran the water in the sink and washed my face. When I was done, I emerged, cleaner and a little calmer than when I had entered.
    Max was hunched over a big plate of wings when I returned and a pitcher of beer sat in front of her. She had poured each of us some beer into the plastic cups that Sully provided. Her mouth was ringed in orange wing sauce, and she had her sleeves rolled up almost to her shoulders. She took a swig of beer and left an orange imprint around the side of the cup. “So good,” she murmured, as she tossed some bones onto the wing platter.
    “Nice,” I said, and picked up her bones with a napkin, creating a new burial ground for her discards. “Don’t you remember anything? You don’t mix old bones with new wings.”
    I picked up a wing and nibbled at it, not having as much of an appetite as I originally thought. I put the wing down and pushed my beer away. I’m not a big beer drinker; when Father Kevin and I come for wings, Sully always makes me an Absolut martini from a private vodka stash that he keeps in a locked cabinet under the bar. “So what do you think I should do now?” I asked her.
    She picked up a napkin and wiped her hands as much as she could; the paper ripped off and stuck to her fingers. “Keep thinking. I think the fact that your car was involved in this was random. But maybe not. Why would someone steal your car?” she asked.
    “Because they could?”
    “Probably.” She drank her beer and refilled her glass from the pitcher. “Shitty cars are easy to steal,” she said, looking at me for my reaction, which was to reach over the table and playfully smack her cheek. “I’m kidding!” She returned to the wings, pointing one at me as she spoke. “I hope the police figure this out, because I certainly can’t. And I’m pretty good at this stuff.”
    I didn’t know what made her “good at this stuff,” but I didn’t argue. We ate and drank in silence, Max polishing off twenty wings to my four. She drank the rest of the pitcher and proudly belched. “Let me wash up before I go back to work,” she said.
    While she was gone, I cleaned up the table, putting the chicken bones and discarded napkins onto the platter. My mind was racing with