Sting

He offered him and Hick coffee, and they accepted. After declining cream and sugar, Joe began the interview by asking him if Jordie Bennett was a regular customer.

He laughed, flashing remarkably straight, white teeth. “No. Her showing up here tonight made history. She walked in, my jaw dropped. That’s why I noticed the time. Ten p.m. on the dot.”

Joe and Hick looked at each other, thinking, Like she was meeting someone.

Joe went back to the bearded man. “She’d never been here, but you recognized her.”

/> “Soon as she cleared the door. She and her brother are the closest thing we have to celebrities in this town. People who didn’t know them already sure as hell did after that Billy Panella mess. Y’all haven’t treed him yet?”

“Working on it,” Joe said tightly.

“Find the money?”

Joe ignored that. “The shooting victim, had he ever been in here before last night?”

“Not that I recall, and I have a talent for remembering faces. Especially faces like his. Ugly son of a bitch.”

“Uglier now,” Hick murmured.

“Yeah,” the bartender said with a small sound of regret. “When the kid came running in here, yelling and puking, I went outside to see what was what.” His beard only partially concealed his grimace. “I’d seen the like in Iraq. Only good thing about going out that way is that you never know it. This poor bastard turned his back to the wrong guy, I guess. When they came in, I knew right off that both were carrying, but I never would’ve—”

“How’d you know they were carrying?” Joe asked.

“I have a talent for that, too,” he said without false modesty. “I spot someone packing, I keep an eye on him. Or her. But those two didn’t seem to be looking for trouble.”

“Ms. Bennett, was she packing?”

“No. Purse was too small and her clothes fit her too good.” He flashed a man-to-man smile, which Joe was hard-pressed not to return.

“Tell me about the other guy.”

He squinted one eye. “Better looking than his pal, for sure. In fact, they didn’t strike me as two who’d be friends. They were as different from each other as daylight from dark.”

“How so?”

“Every way. The fat guy seemed more easygoing. Looked you in the eye when talking to you. He drank beer and went through a bowl of popcorn. The other one never touched it. He drank two shots of tequila. Oh, sorry about the glass.”

They’d learned from Morrow that the bartender had washed it as soon as his customer had emptied it, so there was little hope of lifting prints from it for identification. The beer bottles Mickey Bolden had drunk from had gone into a barrel with other trash, but they hadn’t been needed to ID him.

“What else about the two?” Joe asked.

“The fat guy talked a lot more. The other one didn’t say much at all. Avoided eye contact. Never caught him smiling. Looked like a man with a lot on his mind.”

“Taciturn,” Joe said.

“If that means ‘Do not mess with me,’ then yeah. Wore the warning like a sign around his neck.”

Hick asked, “Did you notice any reaction from them when Ms. Bennett came in?”

“I really couldn’t say because my attention was on her. I remember serving them another round after her arrival, though. The beer drinker seemed to be in no particular hurry to finish. But the other made quick work of his tequila, then went over to the jukebox.”

He told them that Mickey had made a phone call, and when he concluded it, he paid their tab with cash and joined his buddy at the jukebox. Soon after that, they left together.

“Neither said anything to Ms. Bennett?” Joe asked.

“No. And I’m certain of that, because by then the kid had moved in and was hassling her. I was on the verge of telling him to back off when she up and left.”

“How long behind the two men did she leave?”