Page 82 of Half Baked

She stared at me like I’d asked her if she’d stuffed the crown jewels in her purse, then gave me an exasperated look. “Maddie, do you remember a man named Gordy hanging around? Of course not. You weren’t a small child. You would have known if your mother had a boyfriend.”

“Mrs. Lebowski says he came over when I was staying at a friend’s house or with my aunt and uncle.”

She shook her head. “Sounds like this Mrs. Lebowski is suffering from dementia,” she said with a laugh. “You and I would have known if she’d had a boyfriend.”

“Did you know she had a boyfriend when I was little?” Then, I couldn’t help adding with a slightly snide tone, “You were best friends, after all.”

Her face fell. “You’ve been talking to Annemarie.”

“Yes.”

She turned to look at the snarl of cars still trying to escape the parking lot. “Annemarie likes to poison things.”

“What does that mean?” Noah asked.

She turned to look at him. “It means she likes to be the center of attention. Andrea hated leaving Maddie in the evenings and weekends after she’d been in daycare all week, and Annemarie had no problem with hanging out at your house all the time. She liked that Andrea was a captive audience. She probably would have loved to keep things status quo, but then Andrea met someone in Chattanooga, and Annemarie didn’t like it. So she latched onto Mel and didn’t let go.” She bobbed her head forward. “She found someone else to worship her.”

“Worship?” Noah asked.

Rolling her eyes, she amended, “Okay, maybe not worship. More like being captivated by her.” She shifted her weight. “Look, Annemarie can be a lot of fun, and Andrea needed that. But the moment she wasn’t the sole focus of Andrea’s fun, she moved on.”

“What do you know about the man Andrea met in Chattanooga?” Noah asked.

Her mouth pinched. “That was a very long time ago, and years before she was murdered. It seems pointless to dredge it up.”

“Humor me,” I said. “I want to know everything.”

She paused. “Look, all that happened ages before her murder, and she outgrew it. She realized she wasn’t eighteen anymore, and she had a little girl to think about. She stuck to the straight and narrow after that.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked in confusion.

Dawn shifted her weight and looked uncomfortable as she said, “Her boyfriend was arrested and used as a key witness in a big drug dealer case. He served some time, and she realized she’d put you in danger. She stopped going out after that, or at least she kept it closer to home with girls’ nights out at friend’s houses and the like.”

“Do you happen to remember his name?” Noah asked.

Her face scrunched up like she was concentrating. Finally, she said, “Not really. His nickname was Gordy, like you said, but I’m pretty sure his first name was Gordon.”

“Think hard,” Noah said. “We really need that last name.”

Pursing her lips, she shook her head. “I think it was Somato. Gordon Somato.”

“He was from Chattanooga?” Noah asked.

“He lived there when Andrea met him, but I think his family is from Atlanta.”

“Do you know what happened to him after he got out of prison?” Noah asked.

“As far as I know, he’s still in there.”

Her gaze landed on the traffic, and she stepped back. “I really need to go.”

“One more thing,” Noah said with urgency in his voice. “Do you know if Andrea frequented the Mad Hatter’s when Maddie was a teenager?”

Dawn stared at him for a moment blankly, then burst out laughing. “That’s hilarious.”

“It’s a serious question,” I said.

“And my answer is no,” she said, her laughter dying down. “That was a notoriously rough place. She would have been eaten alive there.” She started to get in the car. “Now I really have to go.”

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