Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [23]
The waitress came back with my pie and his ice cream sundae.
“Whaddaya think?” she said.
“That’s it,” said he. “That’s exactly it.”
I was slow to dig into my pie. An uncharacteristic sudden loss of appetite. I watched as Odd began his approach to the sundae, the black ‘n tan. He ate a couple spoonfuls and looked up at me.
“Well?” I asked.
“Too sweet and gooey. I never did like desserts and sweets much. I like salted stuff.”
“This time around,” I said, a little sarcastically.
“Don’t bust my balls, Quinn.”
Enough guys say that to me enough times, and one day I’m likely to believe I am a ball-buster, but that day hasn’t come yet.
“Let’s say you were one of these yonkos, in your other life. Which one were you? I mean, what if you were the old hermit, who lived on the hill? What if you killed those kids, I mean, in that life? You gonna turn yourself it? They gonna prosecute you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous…but if I am, then don’t I have to find a way to remove the stain…somehow?”
I gave him a withering look, and he snapped at me.
“Look, dammit, if it’s not that, what is it?”
“Intuition, good guesses, a little psychic stuff working, everybody’s supposed to have some. ESP and all that.”
“This is way beyond ESP. Way. It’s like we were sent here by somebody or something for a specific reason.”
“We were! Da frick! We were sent by the lieutenant to bring home Charles T. Houser. And, by God, that’s what we’re gonna do tomorrow morning, if I have to sit next to him and hold the bucket while he pukes.”
“We still have ‘til then,” said Odd.
9.
In the ladies’ room, I pulled off my bear T-shirt and wiped myself down with moist paper towels, trying to lower my whacked-out thermostat. I said a few Hail, Mary’s and Our Father’s by rote but not without sincerity. The soul is not something I never thought about before, even doubted after a particularly bad day on the job, but I always wound up accepting the trajectory as laid out by the church: it comes into being at conception, occupies a vessel for the blink of an angel’s eye, and then ascends into heaven or descends into hell or gets lodged for a million years in purgatory. The recycling of the soul was the stuff of tabloid papers and cheesy TV shows, not something to be taken seriously. And yet, at a certain level, it sounded good. Who ever gets it right in just one lifetime? And what better way to walk in someone else’s shoes than to walk in someone else’s body? But do the math. There are five billion people in the world, soon there will be six billion. Where do the extra billion souls come from? Unless it’s not one soul each. Maybe we all share the same soul matter, and share it with all living things.
By the time I came out of the ladies, the lunch crowd was filling the cafe. More idle fishermen, more old Indians, some retirees in for the specials. Odd had given up our table and was standing at the end of the counter, talking to the old man who had remembered the Stauffers and the sundae thing.
I was on my way to collar him, when I saw Frank wheel in Angie and head for the last vacant table, where Angie’s chair would replace one of the cafe’s. They didn’t recognize me until I was next to them.
“Well, look at you,” squealed Angie. “Don’t you look cute? Now, you’re fitting right in, aren’t you?”
“Where’s your…’partner’?” asked Frank. I was beginning to think a leer was his permanent facial pattern.
“At the counter, makin’ friends.”
They swiveled around and found Odd.
“Oh, doesn’t he look good too? Isn’t he a hunk?” said Angie.
“Old man Drinkwater,” said Frank. “He’ll talk your ear off. Have you had lunch? They have a killer tuna melt here. Join us.”
“We already had something,” I said. “What’s the word on our cottage?”
“Well, the word on your cottage is…it’s yours,” said Frank happily. “Go for it.”
“There’s Molsons in the fridge and cotton sheets on the bed and the Bee Gees on the hi-fi, just so you don’t have to go into a strange and quiet place.”
“Great. Listen, Frank, I