Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [76]
“Didn’t it upset your mother when people said unkind things to you like that?”
“It would have killed her if she’d known. We just never told her.” Miranda chewed on the inside of her bottom lip.
He started to say something when the waitress appeared with their order.
“Can I get you something else?” she asked.
“Actually, yes.” Miranda smiled up at her. “Is Ronald Johnson available?”
“He’s here,” the waitress replied, “but I’m not sure if he’s busy. Are you friends of Ron’s?”
“Sort of.” Miranda slipped her ID out of her pocket and laid it on the table. The waitress’s eyes widened slightly, then flickered from Miranda’s face to Will’s, then back again.
“Could you tell him that we’re here, and that we need to speak with him about someone who used to work for him?”
“Sure.” She nodded. “Sure . . .”
She disappeared into the back room.
Before three minutes had passed, Ron Johnson, a balding man in his mid-fifties, with acne-pocked skin and thick glasses, appeared at their table. “You the folks who wanted to speak with me?”
“We are if you’re Ron Johnson,” Will responded.
“I am. What’s this about someone who used to work for me?”
“Curtis Channing.” Miranda slid over on the wooden bench and patted the seat next to her. “Can you join us for a few minutes?”
“Curtis Channing.” Johnson sat. “I should have known it would be him. I read all about him. The papers were full of stuff about how he killed those women back in Pennsylvania, and how they traced him to some murders out here. I should have figured someone would be asking about him one of these days.”
“We understand that he used to work for you.”
“Yeah, yeah. ’Bout five, six years ago. The Red Door in Wynnefield.”
“We heard you fired him.”
“Yeah, well, he wouldn’t work the last shift. Midnight till seven in the morning.” Johnson shrugged. “You work at the Red Door, you work all the shifts. The place is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You can’t opt out of the last shift.”
“How did he take getting fired?” Will asked.
“As I remember, he just sort of nodded his head. Said okay. Took his apron off, hung it up, and left.”
“That’s it? He just left? He didn’t argue, plead for his job, threaten you?” Miranda frowned.
“Nah, that wouldn’t have been like Curtis. He never reacted to much of anything. Everything sort of rolled off his back, you know what I’m saying? Never saw him get angry with anyone. Just did his job, kept to himself. He was a good employee, except he refused to work late shift, so I had to let him go.”
“He never got into arguments with any of the other employees? No bad blood between him and any of the others?” Miranda persisted.
“Not that I was aware of. Honestly, a more laid-back guy you’ll never meet. Just did his thing, and when it was time, he moved on.”
“You ever see him after he left the Red Door?”
Johnson shook his head. “Not until they flashed his picture on television a few months back. You coulda knocked me over with a feather. I said, no way is that Curt Channing. No fucking way.” He turned to Miranda somewhat sheepishly. “Sorry. Forgot for a minute I wasn’t in the kitchen.”
She waved it off. “Can you think of anyone Channing might have had a problem with back then? Anyone he might have wanted to hurt. Someone who’d gotten in his way outside of work, maybe.”
“He never talked about himself. Now that I think about it, he didn’t talk much at all. He’d just come in, do his job, leave. Next day, same thing.”
“How about the women on the job? How did he act toward them, do you remember?” Will asked.
“Respectful. Pleasant. Never even cursed when one of the waitresses was in the kitchen.” Johnson shook his head. “No complaints about him. Some of the other guys, yeah. But never Curt. It just doesn’t make sense, you