When they reached the battered door, at least she didn’t argue about him opening it. He was on the left. He’d have let anyone on the left open it given the way it swung. He walked in behind her and took it all in, familiar from countless places in the past. Wood everywhere, darkened, stained and scratched by the years. A long bar, also scratched and stained, stools that had needed to be replaced forty years ago, the stench of stale alcohol, tobacco, sweat and other things he didn’t care to pick out. No scouring in the world would get rid of those odors now.
The jukebox was wailing some bluegrass, the bartender, maybe owner, looked like a leftover from gold-rush days. A number of old men gathered at a corner table, watching them suspiciously.
DeeJay took one look around, then strode up to the bar as if she owned the place. Cade stayed by the door. The Native ancestry stamped on her face could still cause problems in some parts. He waited to see how she’d be received.
“Coffee,” she said to the bartender, “and a menu. Please.”
The gray-bearded man hesitated only a moment, his old pale eyes darting to Cade, then he grabbed a ceramic cup from the stack on the counter and filled it from what looked like a fresh pot. He carried it to DeeJay, then slapped down a plastic-covered menu that was probably sticky. Weren’t they always?
Cade meandered over to take a seat by DeeJay. The bartender had issued the message We don’t want no problems here.
Good enough for him. He ordered his own coffee, and agreed silently with DeeJay that a burger was probably the safest thing to choose, not that the menu was big. Soon the smell of frying beef rose from the griddle and it was like someone let the tension out of the room.
Lunch without problems. Always a good way to go.
Then DeeJay astonished him almost to speechlessness. She lifted her head from her burger and said, “This is a great burger. Just the way I like them.”
The bartender froze and stared at her. He probably received a compliment once every hundred years or so.
DeeJay pushed her jacket out of the way, reached into her hip pocket and pulled out one of the phony business cards they had for this trip. “We’re travel writers,” she said. “We write about great places to stop. If you have a card, I’d like to tell folks about your burgers.”
Now the bartender’s jaw dropped. Silence fell from the far end of the room, except for Hank Williams Sr. wailing tinnily about cheatin’ hearts. You could almost hear the ice in the room crack as it thawed.
“Ain’t got no card,” the bartender said. “Take one of them menus, iffen you want.”
“I’ll do that,” DeeJay said. “Thanks.”
For her efforts they both received a complimentary piece of apple pie.
Cade let DeeJay pay, figuring this wasn’t the time or place to get into an argument about who was buying lunch, and it was all the state’s money anyway. When at last they stepped back outside, he drew in lungfuls of fresh cold air and remarked, “Great job.” He didn’t even sound grudging.
“The pie crust was heavy,” she remarked, her only response.
Stifling a sigh, he climbed back in behind the wheel and set them once again on the road to Conard City.
However long it took to catch this killer, it was going to be too long.
* * *