“What can I get you ladies to drink?” A beefy young man slid plastic-covered menus across the tabletop.
I opted for ice water. Ivy grinned. “I’m going to be bad,” she said to me in a stage whisper. To the waiter, she said, “Give me a large soda. Lots of caffeine and none of that diet stuff. I want the fully leaded version.”
“Gotcha.”
He started to turn away and Ivy put out a hand. “And we’ll want an appetizer while we make up our minds about lunch. Let’s say an order of onion rings. And some ranch dressing to go with.”
I pushed my menu over to her. “How about if you order for me? I’m not allergic to anything that I know of, and the only thing I don’t like is mushrooms.”
Her face lit up. “You are a treasure. Barb and Cade are so health-conscious. Every time I manage to drag them out here, they read over the menu a hundred times before ordering a side salad. And then they sigh when it shows up and it’s nothing but iceberg lettuce with a little cheese on top.”
I smiled, but I was thinking about allergies and cats and boyfriends and futures. Then I shook my head and cast my gaze about the darkness.
“Restrooms are over there.” Ivy tipped her head sideways. “You’ll want to shade your eyes going in. It’s as bright in there as it is dark out here.”
She was right. The glaring fluorescent fixtures that some heartless soul had installed on the ceiling were bright enough that I squinted from entry to hand washing. Then, just as my eyes started to adjust, it was time to leave.
When I pushed open the door with my elbow, light flooded out into the dining room, illuminating the scars in the worn booths and the scratches on the floor. It also brushed light across the face of the sole occupant of the booth in the dining area’s farthest corner.
I stopped. Peered into the gloom. Couldn’t make up my mind. I backed up and opened the restroom door again. This time, when the light came across the man’s face, he turned away, pulled his hat down lower, and rearranged his sunglasses.
But it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d painted his face purple with blue polka dots. It wasn’t his face that I recognized so much as his large, rotund shape, his bulky shoulders, his massive arms, and his sausagelike fingers.
Hmm.
I walked closer. He hunched over his drink. I slid into the booth across from him. He bent his head lower and sipped through his straw, making a gurgling noise at the bottom of the glass.
“Didn’t your mother tell you not to do that?” I asked.
Trock Farrand flicked me a glance. “Dear heart. What are the chances of you going away and pretending you never saw me?”
“Isn’t your show all about organic food and healthy eating and sustainable living?”
“What television show doesn’t have some small element of fiction?”
The waiter came over, his arms laden with plates. Platters, really. Fried fish. Fried chicken. French fries. And a plate of fried something or other that could have been anything from cauliflower to cheese.
I gestured at the array of unhealthy, but undeniably yummy, food items. “This is what you call a small element?”
Trock tossed aside his sunglasses and looked at me earnestly. “Minnie, my love, my paragon of a bookmobile librarian, my shining star, what can I do to earn your silence? If word gets out about this little incident, my credibility will be a thing of the past and, like the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon, it will never return.”
I eyed the plates and said nothing. I was not going to out this man to anyone, but he didn’t need to know that. Not yet, anyway.
“Minnie, Minnie, Minnie, please understand. I am a man with a deep need for fried food. There are only so many days I can go without. If I do not ingest items such as these lovelies on a weekly basis”—he cast a longing look at the cooling items—“there is a strong possibility that I will curl up and die.”
He caught my sardonic glance. “Well, perhaps I won’t die, but I will become irritable and annoying and even more difficult to work with than I already am.” His quirk of a smile gave me the distinct feeling that his on-set antics were intentionally staged. “If I get more irritable, the show will suffer, and in all honesty, my sweet, it’s in enough trouble as it is.”
My first instinct was to suspect him of straightforward Minnie Manipulation. My second was to think he was telling the truth. He didn’t even look at the food for seven straight seconds, but stared at his hands, a bleak expression on his face.
“Are those mushrooms?” I asked, pointing.
He brightened. “Nothing remotely that healthy. Cheese, my dear. Large chunks of sharp cheddar cheese.” He pushed the plate over. I picked up one piece and dipped it into a white goo that I assumed was ranch dressing.
“Let’s make a bargain,” I said, holding the delectable morsel in front of me. “I’ll keep quiet about your eating habits if you tell me everything you know about Carissa Radle and her boyfriend.”
He looked at me with brown basset hound eyes. “Can’t we make another type of bargain? Perhaps one of those Faustian varieties will do.”
“Carissa.” I popped the glorious hunk of cheese into my mouth.
“Even from our short acquaintance, I sense that you are a woman of your word. You swear upon your honor that you will not pass my current location to members of the press, any social media site, or worst of all, the suave and debonair Mr. Scruffy?”
I gave him a single nod, then firmly said, “Carissa.”
He sighed, added malt vinegar to the fries, and started talking. “We have many spectators at the local shoots as a matter of course. Carissa had been showing up on a regular basis. It was fine at first, but then I realized her presence was slowing down the filming. Slow filming means more time on the set means higher costs.”
“You sound like Scruffy,” I said.
“For good reason.” Trock waved a fry at me. “He’s my son. Don’t be fooled by the last name. You didn’t think I was christened with this name, did you?”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but now that he mentioned it, Trock Farrand did sound made up. “Carissa,” I said.
He smiled, his white teeth appearing Cheshire cat–like in the dim light. “I predict you will go far. It is focused minds like yours that get results. Carissa. Yes. I finally had to ask her to stay away. It wasn’t her, but the aftermath. Every time she watched a filming, that man would appear the next day, asking questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Odd ones. Who had Carissa talked to, had she talked to anyone in particular, what had she said?” He studied his plate and chose what I thought was a small piece of chicken. “It made everyone on the set uncomfortable because Carissa had told everyone she was seeing an athlete, and this young man was clearly not the athletic type.”
“Why didn’t you just ban him from the set?” I asked.
“We don’t have the budget for real security, and the network is already threatening to cancel the show. The contract is up for renewal in two months, and if I can’t deliver these last episodes on time…” He buried the last of his sentence in a huge bite of fried chicken.
“So Carissa was more or less a threat to the renewal of your contract?”
He chewed and nodded.
“You know,” I said, “that’s not a bad motive for murder.”
He swallowed, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a wad of receipts. “Perhaps. However, I have a lovely alibi. The night she died, I was down on Torch Lake, eating at the Dockside on the deck’s farthest corner. Their fried shrimp are delectable.” He sorted through the flimsy pieces of paper. “Here, love. There is no possible way I could have signed that credit card receipt and driven all the way up to Chilson to kill that poor woman.”