seymoure

Lots More Questions, Not Many Answers

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? - it is the same the angels breathe.”

-Mark Twain

Chester and I went to some restaurant and had a fairly wordless dinner.

Vern Decker had shown us a heroism, and tragedy in spite of it, that sobered both of us up. I liked the man. A lot. He might have been me if money hadn’t started throwing itself at me.

I never did anything worthy of all that money. A small amount of it, I hope I deserved, but nothing like the millions that flooded into my hands.

I had tried to do good works with most of those riches, but could I have done more? That kept me up many a night.

But, as always in human endeavor, it took the work to keep my head level. It felt good to be challenging a puzzle. It was just sad that it had cost a good friend’s life before I got involved.

I had ordered chicken fried steak. I have found that most people are wrong about restaurants they don’t know. They will tell you, “Eat where the truck drivers eat, they know!” Unfortunately, I have found that to be bad common wisdom. Where the truck drivers eat usually has something to do with something beyond the food. The prettier waitresses, the cheaper prices; there are many things that are a better lure than the quality of the food. Another misconception is “You can’t go wrong with chili. Everybody can make chili.” That is a hideous mistake. Depending on where you are in the country, chili can be a gastronomic land mine just waiting to make you sorry you have a hundred miles before the next rest room. I will note that Texas is the home of Cheyenne without limit. But New Mexico is the home of chili verde that is the best around.

I had ordered chicken fried steak because it is the measure of how good a diner really is. If they serve a pressed, pre-frozen patty with tasteless white stuff they call gravy, then the rest of their menu will be wanting. If the steak is hand-made, hand battered, lapping over the edge of the plate with gravy that tastes like there was some care taken in its creation, then the rest of the food will likewise have had some love added somewhere along the line of its progress.

While we waited for our lunch to arrive, I had some phone calls to make. The most important was to Gary Barton’s home office. I used the same dodge; I was closing the case for the elevator company. I just wanted to know something about the man. Mostly, what was he working on when he died? It took several transfers before I reached anyone who could answer my query. He had taken the assignment of checking out a few deaths that the company was having to pay out on. All of them were, it seemed, food-related poisonings, but they seemed to be unrelated. Just end-of-term files that needed to be tied up before accounts could be cleared.

I bribed a bit of help. For $50 he would xerox me copies of those particular files. He didn’t understand how the things were related, but for money he would be willing accept that I was just doing what Barton had been doing. Tying up loose ends was a nice blanket explanation. Everything would be in my hotel room by the end of business hours today.

Chester came by to tell me the food was at the table. I decided to delay the other calls until I had eaten some hot food.

When I returned to the table, steam was rising from my gargantuan serving. The aroma was one that made me hungrier than I had been just a moment before.

The side dish was buttered okra.

Something that told me that somebody in that kitchen was from the South.

I had not put any pieces of the case together as yet, but at least I had found someplace I was going to eat at again. At the beginning of a case you must take any tiny triumphs you can get.

Back to the Beginning

Continue on to Chapter 12