Page 53 of Wham Line
“Wait, Talmage trained in Japan?”
Larry grimaced; I couldn’t tell if it was an answer to my question or connected to something else.He fished around in his pocket, brought out a prescription vial, and swallowed two pills.Then he looked at me and said, “You think I killed Sparkie.”
“I mean—” My brain failed to come up with any way of padding the issue, and instead, I heard myself say, “Did you?”
Larry barked a laugh.“No.No, although God knows I wanted to sometimes.I tried telling myself she didn’t have an easy life, but the truth is she was a stupid, greedy woman.Did you know she worked at one of the restaurants Mal took over?He ran it into the ground.The chef who had started the restaurant killed herself.And Sparkie still married Mal.Years later, sure, but—” He must have caught the look on my face because he added, “I didn’t kill Mal, either.”
“You were missing when Mal got shot, though,” I said.“And you had an argument with him shortly before he died.You argued with Sparkie, too, and now she’s dead as well.”
“Trust me,” Larry said with another barking laugh.“I’m a food critic.If everyone I argued with was dead, I’d be a serial killer.”
Silverware clinked.Chairs scraped against the floor.A woman shouted for more cocktail sauce.
“God.”He paled.“I didn’t mean that.I didn’t do anything to anyone.I went outside for some fresh air; it happened to be the same time Mal got shot.And all I did was sit there with Sparkie.She was fine when I left.”
“What were you arguing about?”
“She said she knew who killed Mal.”
“What?Who?”
“I don’t know.She wanted me to help her.She said she thought the information would be worth a lot of money, but she needed help.I said I wasn’t interested, and I told her to go to the police.”
“She needed help?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Help with what?Blackmail isn’t exactly a complicated setup.”
Larry shrugged.“She was scared, even though she was trying to act tough.Sparkie’s not—” He paused.“Sparkie wasn’t the type to take a risk on her own.That’s why she trotted after Mal all these years; she wanted to open her restaurant, but she didn’t want to go to the bank, get a loan, any of that.She wanted Mal to take the risk.And she wanted it to be easy.”
“But she knew how Mal treated people.She knew what he’d done to other chefs.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think owning the restaurant was what Sparkie cared about.Not really.There are plenty of people who want tosaythey own a restaurant.Or some of them, they want to be there, where all the patrons can see them, because what they actually want is to look important, or to get attention, or something.You’d be surprised how many people don’t want the thing they say they want.”
That struck a little too close to home.One of the things you noticed if you spent enough time in the writing world was that there were a lot of writers who didn’t actually write.They talked about writing.They told everyone they were a writer.Sometimes, they’d even had a book published.Sometimes, that book had even been a success.But they didn’t write anymore.And there were the kinds of people Larry had described, the ones who wanted fame or money or status, and the writing was simply a stand-in for that.
“Look, I get that you’ve got a job to do,” Larry said.“Er, so to speak.But you’re barking up the wrong tree.I wouldn’t have killed Mal.Or Sparkie.”
“A lot of people believe that about themselves,” I said.“But the truth is, almost anyone is capable of killing under the right circumstances.What were you and Mal arguing about before he died?”
Larry’s mouth twisted into a smile.
JaDonna Powers brayed laughter in the background.
A trio of kids sprinted past us toward the shark cutout.
At the display case, a middle-aged man with a bad combover was pressing the bell again and again.
Larry was still smiling that awful smile.
“If you’re really innocent—” I began.
“I’m dying.”
The man at the counter was still ringing the bell.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but the words were automatic, detached, half a question.
