Page 35 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

“How about this?” she said, a smug little grin on her face. “I’ll tell you what it is, and you decide if your news is more important than mine.”

“Fine,” I said. “What is it?”

“Dad’s got a girlfriend.”

TWENTY

I followed Lizzie into her bedroom and closed the door. “It was inevitable,” I said. “A bunch of them have been coming to the restaurant almost every night and circling him like flies on shit. Which one is it?”

“None of the usual suspects. This one’s a dark horse. Her name is Connie Gilchrist.”

I shrugged. “Never heard of her.”

“Me either. Dotty said she moved into town about a month ago. She’s renting a house over on Oriole Drive.”

Dotty Briggs was one part night manager, one part den mother, one part hawk. Not much happened at McCormick’s—or in Heartstone, for that matter—without Dotty digging up all the dirt.

“What else did Dotty tell you?”

“Connie is about forty, honey-blond hair, pretty smile, nice body?—”

“I don’t care what she looks like,” I said. “I want to know how someone shows up in town, and a month later she’s got her hooks into our father.”

“Herhooks? That sounds a little harsh. You don’t know anything about her.”

“Fine,” I said, sitting down on the bed. “Tell me what you heard.”

Lizzie turned on a lamp and killed the overhead light. “Okay,” she said, lowering her voice. “It was a dark and stormy night...”

“Damn it, Lizzie, does everything have to be a joke with you?”

“It’s not a joke. I’m trying to paint a picture here.”

“Sorry. It just sounds like the opening of a 1940s movie. Go on.”

“Anyway, Dotty said one night about three weeks ago it was pouring like crazy. The place was practically dead—almost as many staff as customers—and this Connie walks in. She’s definitely not a barfly looking for someone to pay for her drinks. She’s classy—nice clothes, perfect makeup, even though it’s raining. She sits down at the bar and orders two Manhattans. Dad makes them and offers to bring them over to a table. She says no thanks. She met her husband at a bar. They were both drinking Manhattans.”

“So, where’s the husband in all this?” I asked.

“Dead. He died a year and a half ago. Apparently, this little ritual with two drinks is her way of celebrating their life together.”

“That’s perfect! The grieving widow meets the grieving widower.”

“Relax. That’s what Dotty thought at first. Her antenna went up, but she said all they did was talk. Connie drank half of one drink, half of the other, and left after about an hour.”

“And I’ll bet she came back the next night,” I said.

“You’d bet wrong, sister. She hasn’t been back since.”

“You just said Dad’s got girlfriend.”

“Did I say that? Oh yeah... maybe that’s because you always think what’s on your mind is more important than what’s on mine, so I might have beefed up the facts a little to get your attention.”

“Well, now you’ve got it. What happened?”

“Dotty couldn’t listen to every word, but mostly they talked about what it’s like to lose a spouse, and before Connie left, she gave Dad the name of a bereavement group she was going to.”

“Dad hates the idea of support groups.”

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