Free Mr. Softee by Mike Faricy Page B

dinner?”
    “Tha nks, but I don’t want to impose,” sounding disingenuous.
    “I’ll see you at seven, bring a bottle of wine, white. You’re having chicken tonight.”
     
    Chapter Twenty-Two
     
    I thought about my conversation with Aaron. I had the feeling there was more to Bernie Sneen’s death than some drunk staggering along the railroad tracks. The little bit of information from Jennifer McCauley was nagging in the back of my mind. Eventually I placed a call to Detective Manning and left a message.
    Manning returned my call maybe forty-five minutes later. I was asleep on the couch when the phone rang.
    “ Detective Manning, returning your call.”
    “Thanks fo r calling back, Detective,” I said trying to wake up and sound helpful at the same time.
    “What can I do for you?”
    “I wonder if we could meet, maybe away from your office. I have some questions.”
    “You have questions ? Interesting. I’m awfully busy, I really don’t have that kind of time, but I’m down here in my office the rest of the afternoon if you wanted to add anything to your statement.”
    “You ever grab coffee in the morning?”
    “Possibly.”
    “I’ll be at Nina’s, Selby and Western, tomorrow morning.”
    “How early?” he asked.
    “You name it,” I said.
    “Seven.”
    He was yanking my chain, seven in the damn morning was a lot earlier than I had planned.
    “I’ll be there,” I said, hiding my disgust at the early hour.
     
    Chapter Twenty-Three
     
    Trying to think positive on a hot evening, I showed up at Jill’s with two bottles of chilled wine. She hadn’t been kidding on her location. She was directly across the alley from the now boarded-up Giant Scoop building.
    Her home was a neatly kept, Cape Cod-style house with a redbrick front, two dormers on the second floor, dark green siding with gold trim. I guessed it had been built about 1948.
    “There you are,” she said at the front door. She was barefoot, wearing white shorts and a pink T-Shirt with the Giant Scoop logo across the front. She gave me a peck on the cheek then relieved me of both bottles of wine.
    “God, who have you been talking to?” she laughed .
    “What?”
    “Lucky guess,” she said, but didn’t comment further.
    I followed her into the kitchen. The cabinets were probably original to the house, birch, with a recent high gloss finish. White Formica countertops against soft yellow kitchen walls, a cozy but efficient room. She picked up a platter with chicken breasts marinating in something dark.
    “Wine glasses are in that cupboard,” she nodded . “Open one of those and pour me a glass, please. Then, if you could put the wine in the fridge. Oh, help yourself to beer if you’d prefer.”
    I poured her a glass of wine, took a bottle of Summit beer out of the fridge for me. I wandered out the back door onto a very nice deck. The backyard sloping gradually down toward the alley was contained within a white picket fence. Well-tended flower gardens ran along three sides of the yard. A rear gate with an arbor way opened to the alley. Some sort of vine thing with pink flowers wound around the arbor. I knew it wasn’t a rose, but didn’t know much more than that. I handed her the wine glass, condensation was already dripping down the sides.
    “ Oh, god I need this, what a day,” she said after a healthy swallow.
    “I’ll bet . It looks like you’re never very far from work.” I nodded toward the Giant Scoop. Other than the plywood over the windows and rear door there was no real outward sign of damage in the back.
    “Yeah well, I was raised in this house, that place was always there . I think I started working at about age five.”
    “Five,” I chuckled.
    “Really. I would go over there and help my grandpa count stock, arrange the boxes. I was a good little worker.”
    “I bet you wer e. And you just stayed with it?”
    “Yeah, more or less . You know, went away to college, the U, accounting if you’re wondering. A