Chapters (42)
So what happened then?” Fiji asked him. It was three days later, and they were sitting in her little kitchen. Fiji had invited Manfred and Bobo over to share a roast for Tuesday supper. She didn’t often buy expensive cuts of meat, but sirloin top roasts had been on sale at Kroger in nearby Davy, where the Midnighters went to shop. She’d cooked it traditionally, with new potatoes and carrots around the meat, and she’d made lots of gravy, and biscuits, too. It was so good that Manfred and Bobo had both had second helpings of everything.
“Then all the police who had been downstairs investigating a murder/suicide came up to my room,” Manfred said grimly. “It took me about an hour to explain what Rachel and I had been doing. They assumed I was some kind of gigolo. I guess they were hoping that I’d had a connection with the couple who’d died the night before, though they’d already questioned me about that.”
“Man,” said Bobo. Tall, fit, blond, and with a gorgeous white-toothed smile, Bobo was much more like someone’s idea of an ideal lover. In point of fact, Bobo was not vain and did not seem to be aware of how attractive he was. “With the lady in her sixties? That must have been embarrassing.”
“I was too scared to be embarrassed. By that time, I figured if they only thought I’d been having an affair with Rachel, I’d be glad.”
“Did you call Olivia? You said you’d seen her in the hotel.” Fiji poured more iced tea into Bobo’s glass.
Manfred had not discussed Olivia’s connection to the murdered couple, much less his near certainty that she’d killed them both. He felt both angry with Olivia and a little frightened of her (when he thought about the Devlins), but he didn’t think laying that on his friends would be right. He chose his words carefully. “I figured I’d just drag her into trouble with me if I called her. I have to admit, I really wanted to see a friendly face, so I definitely thought about it.” For exactly a second. He didn’t believe Olivia’s face would have been too friendly if he’d involved her. And he’d had a bad moment, a second really, of thinking, The Devlins died and now Rachel died. Coincidence?
“And what did the cops say?” Bobo asked.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” Manfred shrugged. “Rachel didn’t have a mark on her, and the hotel staff knew what I was doing, having people into my room. I didn’t exactly tell them I was a psychic, but one of my appointments did.”
“What about your other appointments? What did you do about them?” Fiji asked. Her mind was a great one for tangents.