He was watching her. And soon, she’d be taking him home
with her.
“What?”
“Just…thank you.”
His tone had lowered. Warmed.
So had her insides. Her lips were dry. She licked them. “Arriving at destination.” Thank you, Bonnie.
“Yeah, I remember him.” Chester Brown wasn’t quite as old as Amelia, but the black man had to be pushing eighty. If he hadn’t already arrived. He glanced at Jack’s picture through a screen and without spectacles. “That’s Jack Colton.”
Ramsey’s radar went off. Why did Brown remember a man everyone else had forgotten?
“What can you tell us about him?” Lucy asked. They’d introduced themselves, shown their badges.
Chester had yet to unlock the screen door he stood behind.
Standing on the man’s front porch with Lucy, Ramsey sized up Chester Brown.
He lived in a small home, in an older, not so clean neighborhood. A home with a well-manicured, healthy yard, freshly painted black wrought-iron railing and clean window boxes. Chester had on old-as-the-hills brown polyester pants, but they were pressed and clean and without holes. As was his matching plaid button-down shirt.
“I can’t tell you anything unless I know why you’re asking.”
“We aren’t at liberty to divulge information from an open investigation, sir.” What did Brown have to hide?
Ready to stress the fact that Chester Brown could be found liable in any wrongdoing if he interfered with an investigation by withholding information, Ramsey heard Lucy beat him to the punch.
“We’re trying to help clear up a misunderstanding,” she said as he continued his scrutiny and saw wide-open, clear brown eyes gazing at him with the honesty of the cautious.
“Jack’s in some kind of trouble?”
“Not as far as we know.” Lucy’s nurturing tone was all for the older man.
Lucky man.
“I don’t know that much about him.” Chester Brown spoke slowly, but his voice was strong. Steady. “I managed the cafeteria at UC,” he said. “Been retired fifteen years now, but back then there were a certain number of student work positions held open for athletes as part of a scholarship program. Jack Colton came in on a baseball scholarship and was assigned to me.”
“You had a lot of kids assigned to you then?” Ramsey looked nowhere but at Brown. The man was a bug under his microscope and he wasn’t going to miss anything.
“Five to ten every semester.”
“But you remember Jack.”
He could feel Lucy staring at him. He brushed off the awareness.
“Yes, I remember him.” Chester Brown was frowning now, his tone more reserved.
“I—” Ramsey started in his sternest, don’t-mess-with-me voice.
“We’d like to know what made him memorable to you, and anything else you could tell us about him,” Lucy interrupted.
Chester looked at her as though searching for something, his expression still concerned.
Ramsey stared.
“He was a good kid—”