Beautiful Villain

“Is it because you were mopping my floors?” She asks, looking around.

“Maybe.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to.”

“Well, thank you.”

“It was nothing.”

She laughs and shakes her head.

“Well, it wasn’t nothing. It looks incredible,” she tells me. “Just look at this.” She waves an arm around her tiny little home. “It’s so beautiful. Seriously, how did you manage to do this?”

“I had some time.”

“I don’t think my house has been this clean since I bought it,” she says.

At that, I only laugh.

“Well, it was a nice distraction from my inability to find out anything new online. I tried looking up old classmates online that didn’t really like Sammy much, but the problem is that pretty much everyone did like him.”

“He was a good guy.”

“I just don’t know how anyone would have killed him,” I sigh.

I’ve been over this five million times in my head. Over and over, I’ve gone over this. The problem is that I don’t really have any suspects. I don’t really know anyone who would have wanted him to die.

“Me neither,” she says. “After he died, I followed the newspapers when they were talking about it, but…”

“No one had much to say.”

“Not really. It seemed like it was an open and shut case. At least, that’s what everyone said.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think that there are always a lot of different sides to every story,” she says carefully. “And sometime, it’s hard to see the other sides if you don’t know who all the players are.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Maybe we can get the old police reports,” she says with a shrug.

“I don’t know if that will help.”

“Your attorney might have copies,” she says. “Or notes they can give us.”

“I’ll call tomorrow,” I tell her. It’s already after business hours, and I know that we’re both tired. Tomorrow is a fresh day that offers a new start, and I’m willing to bet that it’s going to be a good time to get a move on things.

“Okay,” she says. “So, what are you cooking?” Finley looks over toward the stove.

“Oh, shit!” I jump up. “The noodles.”

They’re almost boiling over. I hurry over and start franticly stirring. Finley doesn’t react. She just watches me calmly.

“You like cooking,” she says carefully. It’s an important observation: mostly because I haven’t cooked in years. I didn’t exactly have a lot of chances to cook in prison, but yeah, I used to love being in a kitchen.

“I was a cook when I was in college,” I tell her.