Puzzled to Death by Parnell Hall Page A

answer. So I can’t have you snooping around Joey Vale’s house.”
    Cora took a sip of Bloody Mary. “Chief. Say no more. I understand perfectly. You made your point. And you have my word. I promise you. I won’t go near your crime scene.”

T HE R AINBOW R OOM WAS A LONG, LOW, CINDER-BLOCK building with neon in the windows and a front-door sign that was higher than the roof. It was dark when Cora got there, and the sign was blinking. The parking lot was half full and seemed to have as many trucks as cars. Cora pulled in between a green pickup truck and a white minivan, locked her car, and went inside.
    The Rainbow Room was pretty much what Cora expected: a horseshoe-shaped bar, booths along the walls, a pool table, a jukebox, and a noisy cluster of bowling and basketball machines. The clientele was mostly working-class men.
    There was a space at the bar, and Cora squeezed in. The bartender wore his hair short in front and long in back and looked too young to drink. He rubbed his closely trimmed mustache, said, “What’llya have?”
    “Gin and tonic,” Cora ventured, wondering what she’d get. The glass the bartender grabbed was a bad omen—an eight-ounce tumbler that might have served for a scotchand soda but was a far cry from the tall, cool, frosted glass she was accustomed to. But Cora accepted it without comment, offered a ten-dollar bill. The bartender rang it up, slid her change across the bar. The modest price of the mixed drink underlined what a step down the Rainbow Room was from her usual haunts.
    “Thanks,” Cora told him. “Could you help me out?”
    The bartender frowned. Other customers were waiting for his service. “Whaddya need?”
    “Joey Vale.”
    His eyebrows raised momentarily, then his eyes flicked around the room. “Shooting pool,” he grunted in reply, and moved on down the bar.
    There were two men at the pool table. A large man in work boots, overalls, and a New York Knicks T-shirt, and a smaller, wiry man in blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a heavy red-and-black checkered shirt. The shirt was untucked and unbuttoned, even the sleeves, and as the man bent over the pool table to line up a ball it hung off him like a sail.
    Cora turned to the man on the barstool next to her, a geezer wearing horn-rimmed glasses and nursing a beer. He looked at her and his eyes lit up behind the thick lenses. “You’re the breakfast-cereal lady. You solved those murders. Is that why you want Joey?”
    “I’d like to talk to him.”
    “He didn’t do it. The cops thought he did, but he didn’t. How do you like that?”
    “And how do you know that?” Cora countered.
    “Joey told us.”
    “What did he tell you?”
    “Just that. The police thought he killed her, now they know he didn’t. Something about time of death. Turns out we’re all witnesses.”
    “To the fact he was here last night?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And was he?”
    “Sure. Joey’s here every night.”
    “Yes, but did you see him here last night?”
    “Oh, sure.”
    “The whole time? Could he have left at some point, gone away, and come back?”
    “Joey? Nah. He always sticks around.”
    “Last night in particular?”
    “Every night in particular. He’d lose his place at the table.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    The geezer pointed. “You see on the side of the pool table there? Where the coin slot is? There’s a row of quarters lined up on the edge of the table. Those are the people waiting to play. You sit around, you sip your beer, you watch your quarter move up. When it gets to the head of the line you better have three more quarters ready, ’cause it costs a buck a game.”
    “And Joey was shooting pool last night?”
    “Played him myself.” He frowned. “Either last night or the night before.”
    “Is that right? And which one did you say was Joey?”
    “Don’t believe I did, but it’s the guy in the floppy shirt.”
    “Uh-huh,” Cora said. She watched the man in the dangling shirt line up a shot on one