Free Mr. Softee by Mike Faricy

sip of her Captain and Coke then stared.
    “Not all the time,” I said.
    “Awesome.”
    “First of all, Jennifer, thanks for calling Jill Lydell about the guys you saw in front of her place. Did you ever file a report with the police?”
    “A report?”
    “Yeah, it’s always a good idea to call them, let them know what you saw.”
    “Oh, well, I guess I sort of forgot to do that, kind of busy here and all, you know.”
    “Yeah, I can imagine it gets pretty crazy waitressing from six til l ten. Tell me what you told Jill.”
    “W ell, it really wasn’t that much, you know, least I didn’t think so at first, but then once I saw the news story about it being arson, I thought I should call her.”
    I nodded like I was following.
    “So you called her?”
    “Yeah ,” she smiled a large smile, nodded enthusiastically, took another big gulp of her Captain and Coke.
    “And what did you tell her?” I prodded.
    “Jill?”
    “Yes, Jill. What did you tell her, when you called?” I was trying to cover all the bases.
    “Just that I saw two g uys out there in front. I don’t know how long they’d been there. I think I was getting ready for bed.”
    “What time was this?” hoping to keep her thought process moving.
    “It was probably a little after like four, I think. I can’t really be sure because, well you know, the party that night.”
    “So a little after four, you see these guys in f ront of the Giant Scoop. What were they doing?”
    “Actually the y were watching me. I don’t have air conditioning in my room so the windows are open, you know, and I guess they were watching me get undressed.” She stated it as a casual fact, like it didn’t seem to bother her.
    “They were in a car?”
    “Yeah. Well actually not in it. The car was parked in front of the Scoop. That’s what we call the place, the Scoop. Anyway it was parked, you know like it was going to drive into one of the parking places in front of the building. Only the doors were closed.”
    “S o they were pulled in front of the garage doors?”
    She seemed to think for half a moment, drained some more from her drink, and then nodded.
    “ Yeah, yeah like they were ready to pull the door up and just drive in. Only they didn’t.”
    “Can you describe them, what they looked like?”
    “Well, they were both sort of big guys, you know. Not fat, exactly. More like muscle guys.”
    “Would they be like basket ball players or bodybuilders?”
    “K inda more the bodybuilder type, not skinny like I think of a basketball player.”
    “Were they wearing anything special th at might make them stand out? Maybe a certain baseball cap or possibly a shirt with something written on it?”
    “No, no , nothing like that, I think just jeans and you know, T-shirts, I think, but it was sort of too dark to really see them. I think one of the guys was bald, I remember that. Oh yeah, and the other one wore glasses, now that I think about it.”
    “The guy with glasses, did he have long hair?”
    “Oh wow, I’m sorry, I just can’t remember.”
    “What sort of vehicle did they have?”
    The bartender arrived, automatically stiffening her drink with a healthy pour from the Captain Morgan bottle.
    “It was big, some kind of like SUV. I think it was sort of white, shiny. I sort of can’t really remember, I mean I wasn’t paying that close attention. They were looking at me and I didn’t have anything on so I stared back, then just turned out the light and climbed into bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.”
    “Okay, so then did you wake up with the explosion?”
    “Well, no, not really. I guess I sort of slept through all that.”
    “ Then, did you wake up with the fire trucks? You know the sirens, lights, and all the smoke and flames?”
    “Yeah, see, I guess I sort of missed that part, too,” she said looking like she was trying very hard to think.
    “So , when did you learn about the fire?”
    “ Oh, when I got to work that evening,