Free Findings by Mary Anna Evans Page B

blot on his reputation.”
    “Do you remember what Wayland Curry looked like?”
    “I could never forget his wormy little face.”
    Faye thought those were pretty harsh words, coming from ladylike Emma.
    “Could he have been one of the two men you saw on the night Douglass died?” Ross asked.
    Emma shook her head. “I wish I could tell you he was, but like I said, Wayland is wormy-looking. He’s way too small to be one of those men.”
    The sheriff regained control of the conversation. “What about Wally? Was he the right size?”
    “I didn’t actually know the man, so I can’t…oh. I guess you need me to look at him, don’t you?” Emma swallowed hard. “If it will help, I’ll look at the body and see if Wally could be one of our killers.”
    “I’ll go with you, Miss Emma,” Joe offered.
    “No, I’ll go. I want to go,” said Faye, though her stomach churned at the thought of spending more time in the company of a corpse. If Emma could do it, then she could.
    “All right. I’ll take you two ladies over there. Now. Back to Wayland and Nita…let me see…” The sheriff plucked a paper out of the stack and studied it. “Here’s my notes on the tattooed pair. They alibied each other. Big surprise. And nobody noticed either of them leaving the room. Liz says she’d taken their order and served it, both within ten minutes of Wally’s death, and the two of them were sitting there both times she went to the table.”
    “Speaking of Liz…” Emma started. After a moment’s hesitation, she went on. “I don’t know her, but I understand she’s friends with everybody here. So I hate to ask. But you say she used to work for Wally and that he wasn’t always a nice person. So…”
    “Liz was definitely behind the counter the whole time Joe and I were eating,” Faye offered. “We were talking to her. After that, who knows?”
    The sheriff held up another piece of paper. “She gave me records of her cash register receipts for the whole evening, so we’ve got the time of each transaction. And we’ve got the names of the customers, except for them that paid cash.”
    Ross looked over his shoulder. “Looks like Liz was pretty busy.”
    “Let me see that.” Faye reached for the paper and ran her finger down the column of numbers. “There. See those two cash transactions? That has to be me and Joe. She’d checked out a half-dozen others in the twenty minutes before we left. And four more customers paid her after that, just in the time it took us to go out to my boat and start cleaning it up. She didn’t have much time to go outside and stab Wally.”
    “Liz isn’t the only one that ever works the register.” Everybody looked at Joe. This was the advantage of keeping quiet most of the time. On the rare occasion that Joe spoke up in front of a crowd, people listened. “Chip works the register sometimes.”
    “You got a point,” the sheriff said. “Liz almost runs the whole show—cooking, waiting tables, taking the money—but Chip does the food prep…which takes him into the back room and out to the meat locker and the utility shed. That keeps him out of people’s sight on a regular basis. And he helps her out at the register when she’s busy.” He held up the list of receipts. “She sure was busy the night that Wally died. Which I guess means they were both pretty busy. Everybody in the place mentioned seeing Liz and Chip during the last few minutes before the killing. Their alibis aren’t air-tight, but they’re better than most.”
    Emma was talking again. “Do you…do you think that Wally killed my husband? What did Faye say he said while he was dying? ‘I’m sorry about Douglass…’ And didn’t he say something like ‘Tried to stop…’ What was he trying to stop? Maybe he wished he’d stopped beating a defenseless old man.”
    “We don’t know, Emma, but his last words make him a prime suspect. That’s one reason it’s so important for you to go look at his body.