Page 79 of Half Baked

“What did the newspaper call him when he got arrested?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Is it bad I never looked? It happened in Chattanooga, and no one around here knew she was involved with him, so no one else was talking about it. I only heard from Andrea that he’d been convicted, and it was barely in passing at that. I told her she’d dodged a bullet with that one, she agreed, and that was that.” She paused. “I truly can’t believe she started seeing him again. When did she start?”

“A few years before her death.”

“Was she still seeing him when she died?”

“Mrs. Lebowski said the only time he ever stayed over at our house while I was there was the night before she was killed.”

“Oh, Andy,” Annemarie said with a sigh as she looked up at the ceiling. “What were youdoin’?”

“Do you think Gordy was capable of murdering Andrea?” Noah asked.

Annemarie gasped. “Maybe? I never knew him to be violent, but you never know about a person. Not to mention, he’d done time. It changes a man.” The look on her face suggested she knew firsthand.

“Her murder was never solved,” I said, jumping in. “The more I hear about her past, the more I wonder if it wasn’t some random person who killed her like the cops suggested, but someone she knew.”

“Last I heard, they thought it was Martin Schroeder,” she said. “He was always a major creep. I could see her rejecting him and him killing her because he was pissed.”

Little did she know that my mother wasn’t his type. She’d been about twenty-five years too old.

“They say it wasn’t him,” I said. I didn’t give her the details of how I knew. “It must have been someone else.”

She pursed her lips for several long seconds. “Everyone loved her. I don’t know who could have killed her.”

Noah looked lost in thought, then said, “Gordy might have lived in Chattanooga before his arrest, but from the sounds of it, he was at Andrea’s a lot. I wonder if he moved to Cockamamie after he got out of prison.”

Annemarie looked clueless. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. We fell out of touch, like I said, and even if we hadn’t, she knew I disapproved of him. I doubt she would have told me anything.”

“Do you happen to have any photos of Gordy?” Noah asked.

She frowned and shook her head. “No. We didn’t take any photos when we were out. It’s not like nowadays when everyone’s snapping photos with their phones.”

“Do you know if Gordy wore a necklace?” Noah asked.

Her nose scrunched as she considered it. “Honestly, I don’t remember. It’s been too long, and I didn’t pay that much attention.”

Noah leaned forward. “When you and Andrea hung out, did you ever go to a bar called the Mad Hatter’s?”

Her eyes widened. “Why are you askin’ about that place?” she asked, her face pale.

“I heard you guys went there,” I said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you heard, but that ain’t true.”

“So you two didn’t go there before going to Chattanooga?” Noah asked.

“Look,” she said, then licked her lips. “That place was bad news. You know why it shut down, don’t ya?” She took another drink from her forgotten Diet Coke before setting it down on the table. “It got shut down because the owner was murdered.”

“When?” Noah asked, his body tense.

“I don’t know,” she said, looking nervous suddenly. “But it doesn’t matter because we didn’t go there. Besides, he was murdered long after Andy and I stopped hangin’ out.”

We were silent for several seconds, the air so full of tension I could feel it when I sucked in a breath. I was worried she’d kick us out, so I quickly thought of a question to change the subject. “I know Mom was best friends with Dawn when she died. Were the three of you friends back then? You all worked at the high school together.”

She released a nervous laugh. “Andy knew Dawn from growing up together, but they weren’t all that close when you were little. I think Dawn judged her for bein’ a single mom.”

“So Mom wouldn’t have shared information about her partying and her boyfriend?”

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