I held up my cup. And found myself holding my hand in midair while Muriel stared transfixed into my empty cup. I glanced in myself, half expecting to see the crystallized residue of some obscure poison, or perhaps a cryptic message spelled out in coffee grounds.
She finally shook her head and started pouring.
“I keep hoping I’ll remember more of what they were talking about,” she said.
“Who?”
“The PI and that dead lady,” Muriel said.
“They were talking?”
She nodded.
“Here?”
“No, back in the parking lot behind the drugstore. Couple nights ago. I was walking to my car after I closed up. And for that matter, they weren’t just talking. Looked to me like they were arguing.”
“About what?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t catch more than a few words,” she said. “They were at the other side of the parking lot, and they weren’t yelling. More like snarling and hissing at each other. Only thing I caught was when the PI fellow lost it for a second and snapped out something like, ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?’ And then they looked around and saw me and pretended to be smiling at each other. And he said, ‘Let me see you to your car,’ loud enough to make sure I could hear, and they both left.”
Interesting. And a little disconcerting, since I rather liked Stanley Denton. Not to the point that I wanted him to succeed on his assignment, of course. But I didn’t see him as the killer, and I was strangely upset at the thought of him becoming either a victim or a suspect. And from what Randall said, Colleen Brown was civil, professional—if not a joy to work with, at least not a pain like most of her colleagues.
What had two of the very small number of apparently nice and decent people on the Evil Lender’s staff been arguing about?
“You told the chief about this?” I asked.
Muriel frowned thunderously.
“I did. Fat lot of good it did,” she grumbled. “He won’t hypnotize me.”
“He won’t what?”
“Hypnotize me. I filled him in this afternoon, after I heard about the murder. He barely listened, and paid no attention when I told him maybe if he got one of those hypnotists, they could help me remember what else those two said.”
“I think for a hypnotist to help you remember it you’d have to have heard it in the first place,” I said. “If you were all the way across the parking lot, how could you have heard it?”
“Well, I didn’t consciously hear it,” she said. “But how does he know I didn’t hear it subliminally? You know, like those tapes you play to help you lose weight and stop smoking. You can’t hear them, no matter how hard you listen, but everybody says they work.”
“You could have a point,” I said.
“Chief says they don’t have a hypnotist on staff, and don’t have the budget to hire one,” she said. “So the evidence that could break the case remains locked in my subconscious.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so I just nodded and tried to look grave. It helped that when my mouth twitched with the uncontrollable urge to grin, I could hide it by sipping my coffee.
And then a mischievous thought struck me.
“Ask Dad,” I said.
“Beg pardon?”
“My dad went through a fascination with hypnotism a while back,” I said. “I have no idea if he learned how to do it, but even if he didn’t, he might know someone who does. And you know how he is when he gets fascinated with something. Maybe if you convinced him of the importance of your subconscious, he could do something about it.”
“Now that is a helpful idea.” Her tone seemed to imply that she’d been fending off a barrage of unhelpful ones all day.
“Time I hit the road.” I picked up my cup and slid off the stool. “What do I owe you for the coffee?”
“I was throwing it out anyway,” she said. “Drive safely.”
It was nearly eleven when I finally got home. I was exhausted, ravenous, guilt-wracked about dumping the boys on Michael for so long, and eager to see him and them.
Well, at least I got to see Michael.
“We missed you,” he said. “But Eric was a big help, and the boys have been bathed, fed, and read to almost as well as you could do it.”
“Eric’s working out, then?”
“He’s catching on, but he’ll need a lot more stamina to keep up with the Dynamic Duo. He collapsed a little after they did.”
“I’d love to follow his example,” I said. “After some food. Anything that’s not fried chicken, fried fish, or barbecue. I had a lovely salad for dinner, but that was five hours ago.”