“I guess you made the coffee. It sucks.”
“Yeah, I did. Hey, it looks like you’ve got crappy taste, since you drank all of it. You want a refill?”
Kirsten had to laugh; the girl had a mouth on her. Like the redhead last night, like Suzzie with two z’s. This girl was pretty, fine-boned, with the greenest eyes Kirsten had ever seen. Nice, she thought, succulent, the way her daddy preferred them. Young, she thought, and probably dead broke. Kirsten bet she had a yearning to do a whole lot else that wasn’t this. Kirsten shook her head, put her palm over the top of her mug. “No coffee. Why aren’t you in school?”
“I graduated last May. I’m saving to get out of this dump. Hey, I’ll get you a piece of pie if you promise to give me a good tip.”
“What kind of pie, and who made it?”
“Strawberry. It’s fresh. Dave made it this morning before he got sick and went home. How about an extra-large tip for an extra-large piece?”
Kirsten smiled at her, a scary smile, but she didn’t know it. The girl took a step back and tried to mask her alarm with a shrug.
Kirsten said, “Sounds good to me.” It did, indeed. Kirsten realized she was starving, hadn’t eaten since—when? She couldn’t seem to remember. The past hours were a blur of panic and pain and rage. But life had to go on, that’s what her daddy would say, and so she’d eat a slice of strawberry pie, and then she’d see.
Ann Marie Slatter felt something cold slither through her when the weird woman smiled at her. The knife she was using to cut the strawberry pie slipped out of her nervous hands and dropped to the floor. She picked it up, wiped it on her apron. She gave the woman nearly a quarter of the pie, left only a sliver so Dave could complain about it when he came back, whenever that would be. He loved strawberry pie, particularly his own, and she knew he was looking forward to eating it when he got back.
“That big enough?”
“That’s very nice of you.” Kirsten cut a bite and ate it. Delicious. She ate steadily until it was gone. She sat back and rubbed her stomach. She said, “You won’t believe the size of the tip you’re going to get.”
Ann Marie shrugged again, tried to act blasé, but realized she was frightened to her bones. She wanted to run out the door and never see this woman again. She stared at the woman’s red hair, in thick, short spikes, and her face, it was dead white, like—something nagged at her, something just out of reach, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
The door to the diner opened, and Ann Marie was so relieved she nearly shouted with it.
Kirsten watched two older men stroll in, shrug out of their jackets, and slide into a booth. Hayseed farmers, one paunchy, the other skinny, both wearing faded jeans, flannel shirts, and boots older than she was. The bald guy, skinny as a windowpane, called out, “Hey, Annie, two coffees for Frank and me. I hear Dave’s living in the bathroom.” He said to Frank, all jowly, with a full head of stark white hair that looked weird with his dyed ink-black mustache, “I told Dave what those leftover nachos would do to him, but he ate a huge mound without stopping, even with the cheese cold and hanging in strings off his chin.”
Frank laughed.
Kirsten kept quiet, watched Ann Marie take them two mugs of coffee, these mugs not chipped, and the coffee was from a full pot in the back, nice and fresh, the little bitch.
The bald guy thanked Ann Marie. “Hey, I was telling Frank that the guy who was shacking up with Bundy’s daughter, you know, that crazy chick who’s killing women all over the country? He’s dead. The FBI shot him outside a bar in Baltimore. At least one of those crazies is dead and gone.”
Frank was stirring sugar in his coffee. “Talk about crazy—that guy had to be a lunatic to hook up with that nutty broad. As bad as her father, that’s what everybody says. Hey, what’s the guy’s name? The guy who was shacking up with her?”
Bald Guy said, “It’s something strange—I can’t remember.”
Kirsten said quietly, “His name was Bruce Comafield.”
“That’s right,” Frank said. “He worked for her step daddy, you know, that rich guy who wanted to run for Congress from California until it got out who his stepdaughter was?”
Bald Guy said, “Big surprise for him, I bet, both his stepdaughter and his aide. I’ll bet Stepdaddy’s glad the guy’s lights are out. What’s his name? Oh, yeah, Bruce.”
Kirsten couldn’t breathe. She watched the bald guy wag a skinny finger at Frank; why, she didn’t know.