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Authors: Joanne Dobson
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would have called a land-office business—the parking lot so jammed you would have thought they were giving the food away for free. As I opened the restaurant door, my appetite was instantly aroused by the heavenly aroma of frying bacon. A tray of sandwiches floated past, carried at shoulder height by a slim young woman in tight black pants and a pink uniform blouse. I tracked her progress toward a section of tables at the rear of the restaurant. HOT TURKEY. HAM AND SWISS. GRILLED CHEESE . Each sandwich was plunked on a thick china platter and anchored with a mound of potato salad or a raft of slab fries; there wasn’t a portobello mushroom or a radicchio leaf in sight. I felt as if I had traveled from a far country and arrived unexpectedly at my gastronomic home. Commandeering the remaining counter stool, I grabbed a menu. ALL SANDWICHES SERVED ON HOMEMADE BREAD , announced a banner positioned kitty-corner across the cover.
That’s what I want
, I thought,
all sandwiches. Oh, and serve them on HOMEMADE bread
.
The counter waitress—Betty Anne, according to the white letters on her shiny black name tag—was sixty andskinny, with that run-half-off-her-feet look career waitresses get. Her gray hair was tight to her head in prim curls, and her pink open-neck uniform blouse revealed more wrinkled skin than I would have cared to show. With my eye on the mirrored pie rack behind the counter—HOMEMADE! announced the hand-lettered sign—I ordered coffee and a grilled cheese, bacon, and tomato sandwich. Then I turned my attention to my fellow diners; after all, I’d come to town to schmooze the locals. The men crowding the long counter with me didn’t look like talkers. Hardworking men, I thought, with hard-looking hands. Farmers, carpenters, plumbers. None of these people were going to give any information about their neighbors to a nosy woman from God-knows-where. My intrusion into the life of this community suddenly seemed presumptuous. The reality of the lives lived in this town by these laboring men and women made me feel silly playing detective—silly and a little frightened. But then Amanda’s words came back to me:
You’re a literary detective and this is definitely a literary crime
.
I gave myself a pep talk in a silent hard-boiled snarl:
Someone in this joint’s gotta know this Milly Finch broad, and I’m the dick that’s gonna make ’em squeal
. Sometimes I think I only know my life through the books I read.
The Homestead’s clientele was a mix of locals and exurbanites. At tables toward the rear of the restaurant, young women in pressed Gap khakis and pastel jerseys tended distractedly to preschoolers. I ignored them; they were not old enough or local enough to tell me anything useful about Milly Deakin Finch.
Other diners looked more promising, grizzled dark-clad men and hefty women in double-knit pantsuits who addressed themselves seriously to the business of refueling their bodies. These people looked battered bylife—by sun and soil and decades of a declining rural economy. At a corner booth one mature man—in his late fifties, maybe sixty—good-looking with a shock of thick white hair and a tanned weathered face, flirted with the floor waitress. As she delivered his burger and fries, he grabbed her wrist lightly and muttered something that made her laugh. I was too far away to hear the words, but the brief tableau was striking: the bulky, well-muscled man, bone-white hair startling against the dark skin, and the slender, pale young woman silhouetted against the large plate-glass window, united momentarily in laughter.
“So, Betty Anne,” I ventured to the waitress as she set the heaping china platter in front of me, “anything exciting ever happen in this town?”
“You kidding?” she replied. “Ya want more coffee?”
“Sure.” I nibbled a fry while she poured. “Thought I read about a murder around here somewhere,” I said casually, and bit into the sandwich.
“Oh, that.” Her
That’s what I want
, I thought,
all sandwiches. Oh, and serve them on HOMEMADE bread
.
The counter waitress—Betty Anne, according to the white letters on her shiny black name tag—was sixty andskinny, with that run-half-off-her-feet look career waitresses get. Her gray hair was tight to her head in prim curls, and her pink open-neck uniform blouse revealed more wrinkled skin than I would have cared to show. With my eye on the mirrored pie rack behind the counter—HOMEMADE! announced the hand-lettered sign—I ordered coffee and a grilled cheese, bacon, and tomato sandwich. Then I turned my attention to my fellow diners; after all, I’d come to town to schmooze the locals. The men crowding the long counter with me didn’t look like talkers. Hardworking men, I thought, with hard-looking hands. Farmers, carpenters, plumbers. None of these people were going to give any information about their neighbors to a nosy woman from God-knows-where. My intrusion into the life of this community suddenly seemed presumptuous. The reality of the lives lived in this town by these laboring men and women made me feel silly playing detective—silly and a little frightened. But then Amanda’s words came back to me:
You’re a literary detective and this is definitely a literary crime
.
I gave myself a pep talk in a silent hard-boiled snarl:
Someone in this joint’s gotta know this Milly Finch broad, and I’m the dick that’s gonna make ’em squeal
. Sometimes I think I only know my life through the books I read.
The Homestead’s clientele was a mix of locals and exurbanites. At tables toward the rear of the restaurant, young women in pressed Gap khakis and pastel jerseys tended distractedly to preschoolers. I ignored them; they were not old enough or local enough to tell me anything useful about Milly Deakin Finch.
Other diners looked more promising, grizzled dark-clad men and hefty women in double-knit pantsuits who addressed themselves seriously to the business of refueling their bodies. These people looked battered bylife—by sun and soil and decades of a declining rural economy. At a corner booth one mature man—in his late fifties, maybe sixty—good-looking with a shock of thick white hair and a tanned weathered face, flirted with the floor waitress. As she delivered his burger and fries, he grabbed her wrist lightly and muttered something that made her laugh. I was too far away to hear the words, but the brief tableau was striking: the bulky, well-muscled man, bone-white hair startling against the dark skin, and the slender, pale young woman silhouetted against the large plate-glass window, united momentarily in laughter.
“So, Betty Anne,” I ventured to the waitress as she set the heaping china platter in front of me, “anything exciting ever happen in this town?”
“You kidding?” she replied. “Ya want more coffee?”
“Sure.” I nibbled a fry while she poured. “Thought I read about a murder around here somewhere,” I said casually, and bit into the sandwich.
“Oh, that.” Her
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