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of him.”
    I smiled. “My hero.”
    Gary laughed and pulled his hat off the file cabinet. “You bet, and your hero’s hungry. Let’s go to Goddard’s for butter burgers.”
    Leave it to Gary to realize I needed comfort food. Goddard’s Pharmacy boasted an old-fashioned lunch counter specializing in The Better Butter Burger: A quarter-pound hamburger on a toasted Kaiser roll topped with a slab of melting butter. Thick malts and shakes were served up in old-fashioned metal cups that got all frosty on the outside. A veritable feast of cholesterol and fat. How could I say no to that?
    But first, I had to make a call. I used Gary’s phone to call L’Cafe. The woman who answered had heard what had happened to the last espresso machine, and efficiently arranged for a tech to pick up a loaner and meet me at the store with it at three.
    That arranged, Gary and I headed over to Goddard’s, which was on the opposite end of the strip mall from Uncommon Grounds. I’d heard that Mrs. Goddard had been worried when Way announced we were moving into the mall. She probably felt we would give them a run for the coffee dollar. She needn’t have worried. Goddard’s was where the seniors in town met daily and, personally, I didn’t think they could be blasted out of their booths.
    Sure enough, the stragglers from breakfast were still there at nearly noon, nursing their bottomless cups of coffee. Rudy was in the “power booth” in the corner, talking animatedly to someone I couldn’t see. In the next booth over, Pastor Shepherd sat with Henry Wested, a resident of Brookhills Senior Manor. The senior living facility backed up to Poplar Creek and served as the dividing line between upstream and downstream. Neutral territory, like Switzerland.
    People were staring at Gary and me, and why not? Here was the number one murder suspect dining with the police chief. Who knew what could happen? There might even be an arrest. What a bitter Butter Burger that would be to swallow.
    Gary and I waved to the assembly and took a booth in the back, careful to avoid the seats that were invisibly, yet indelibly, earmarked for the regulars. I had once seen four-foot ten-inch Sophie Daystrom and the rest of her octogenarian posse run a tourist who had innocently settled into “their booth” clean out of the lunchroom.
    Safely seated, I ordered a Better Butter Burger with extra fried onions (just let Pavlik try to get near me again) and a chocolate shake. Gary had the Better Butter Burger Biggie plate with fries and a pineapple shake.
    “I assume you had a chance to talk to Caron before Pavlik arrived?” Gary asked.
    “Yes, and thank you for that,” I said.
    He wasn’t going to let me off that easily. “So what did she have to say for herself?”
    Eh, a moral dilemma. I hated to lie to Gary, but even if Caron had done something stupid—adultery, not murder— Bernie shouldn’t have to suffer public humiliation because of it. Normally, I’d trust Gary with this secret, but I knew his professional ethics would take precedence over friendship. Gary took his moral obligations very seriously.
    Me, less so. “She said Roger left something there on Friday and she let him in on Saturday to get it.” And she had said it. It just happened to be a lie.
    “Roger was there Saturday, too?” Gary’s voice rose and then fell, as heads turned. “Why in the world didn’t she say anything?” he whispered.
    “I guess she didn’t think it was important. She’s pretty upset, you know.” I leaned across the table. “Gary, we both know Caron didn’t kill Patricia. And certainly not with an espresso machine, for God’s sake.”
    Our food came then and Gary didn’t answer as our waitress slapped the heavy white plates onto the table. Reaching into her apron pocket, she thumbed carefully through a stack of grease-stained checks before finding the right ones and dropping them on the table.
    We salted, ketchuped and mustarded our burgers in silence. Gary