Читать книгу Just Try to Stop Me - Gregg Olsen - Страница 24

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Hello Deli was one of those restaurants that prided itself on its use of fresh ingredients. Enormous posters of fruits and vegetables misted with water adorned the walls. Brad Nevins and Kendall Stark sat under an image of an eggplant that had to be at least five feet in length.

“I hear the eggplant is good,” Brad said with a smile.

“Really? They have eggplant here?” Kendall smiled back.

A young man named Terry brought them water and ran through the daily specials with the enthusiasm of an undertaker.

“I’ll let you chew on that for a minute,” he said.

Kendall settled on a soup and salad combination, and Brad decided a meatball sub would hit the spot.

“Chelsea Hyatt owns this place?” Kendall asked.

“Yeah. Though it’s not Hyatt anymore. She’s had a few husbands. No. 3, I think. Last name is Morgan.”

“She and Brenda knew each other quite well,” Kendall said.

“Yep. Thick as thieves, those two. Probably accurate in every way.”

“Grew up together?” Kendall asked.

“Nope. Supposedly met after Joey and Brenda got married. Brenda was working at the front desk at the Allstate office on 3rd and Chelsea was some kind of an aspiring agent—though she had a clerical job too.”

Terry came back, and they ordered.

“Anything to drink?” he asked.

“Water’s fine,” Kendall said.

“I’ll take a beer. Mac and Jack’s if you have it on tap.”

“We do. Twenty-two ounce or sixteen?”

“Sixteener.”

As they waited for their food, Kendall caught a glimpse of Chelsea. She was a ketchup-colored redhead with cat-eye glasses and distressed jeans. It was either the look of a hipster or the look of a woman who raided her aunt’s closet.

“Chelsea never testified at trial, did she?” Kendall asked.

Brad shook his head. “Nope. She disappeared right after the murders. Went to St. Croix or some paradise like that. Laid low. Came back here long after the dust settled.”

“They really wanted to find her,” Kendall said.

“Yeah, they did,” Brad said. “But they didn’t. And I guess they didn’t need her after all. Got a conviction. That’s all that mattered.”

The food came. The soup looked good. It was a broccoli cheese concoction with freshly made sourdough croutons for crunch. The salad, however, was a sad affair. All limp iceberg lettuce and carrot shavings. The meatball sub was the superior choice, but not the kind of thing Kendall would eat while conducting an interview about a criminal case. Sauce on the front of her blouse would evoke blood spatter.

And that wouldn’t be good at all.

“She didn’t do any media, did she?”

He picked at his food. “Chelsea said she had nothing to tell, but I think she was scared about what she knew.”

Kendall set down her fork. Good-bye Deli would be a better name for the restaurant.

“How come you think that?” she said.

“She sent us a sympathy card right after Joe and Kara’s funeral. She added a note to the standard ‘thinking of you at this difficult time’ imprint. It said something along the lines of ‘I’m personally sorry for your loss.’”

“Personally?”

“Yeah,” Brad said, while chomping on his sub. “Weird, huh?”

“Very.”

“Elise ran into her after she came back to town. It was here. She opened up this place. Elise said that Chelsea told her that she didn’t mean anything by using the word ‘personally’ and that she’d used it just to emphasize that she was sorry for the pain we were going through.”

Interesting.

“Did you know her?” Kendall asked.

“She was in Joey’s class. We’d run into her over the years at school events, but no, for someone who was ‘personally’ sorry, she sure didn’t have much of a connection to us.”

Kendall finished her soup, which was ten times better than the salad, and got up.

“I’m going to see if she’ll talk to me,” she said.

“Good luck,” he said. “She’s pretty buttoned up. Hasn’t said a word about Brenda that I know about. Never been in the papers. Or TV. Radio silence, that one.”

* * *

Chelsea Morgan indeed was a hipster. She had not raided her aunt’s closet. As she leaned over the computer behind the counter, a feather tattoo on her shoulder caught the light.

Definitely a hipster’s move.

“Chelsea?” Kendall asked.

Chelsea turned around. “Is everything all right with your meal?”

“Oh yes,” Kendall said, knowing that there was no point in saying that the salad was terrible. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

Chelsea looked at the detective warily and logged off the computer. “What can I help you with?” she asked.

Kendall told her who she was and that she was in town to find out more about Brenda Nevins.

Chelsea looked away. “I knew her a long time ago.”

“I know,” Kendall said. “But you might know something about her that will help us find her.”

“No,” Chelsea said. “I really wouldn’t be able to help.”

Kendall persisted. “Why is that?”

“Because I don’t want to get involved,” Chelsea said, her eyelids fluttering. “I don’t want her after me. She’s on the run now, and I don’t want to give her any reason to make a pit stop in my corner of the world.”

“Have you heard from her?” Kendall asked.

“Absolutely not,” Chelsea said. “I wouldn’t expect to hear from her. She and I are not friends.”

“I know you saw her in prison, Chelsea.”

Chelsea’s face fell. She looked away at Terry, who was taking an order from a couple across the restaurant. Her eyes scraped the rest of Hello Deli and landed on Brad Nevins. She broke her gaze and looked back at Kendall.

“Look,” she said, “I can’t have this conversation here.”

“Where can you talk? When?”

“I can meet you at River Front Park. There are some benches by the wading pool. I’ll see you there in an hour.”

“All right,” Kendall said. “I’ll be there.”

Kendall returned to the table where Brad Nevins was waiting.

“She’s going to meet me,” she said. “I’ll stop by your place after. Now, how do I get to River Front Park?”