5 Highball Exit by Phyllis Smallman Page B

looked down at the picture. She might be tough but it hit her. Emotion rippled across her face and she sucked her lips in between her teeth. Sunny hadn’t known Holly was dead.
    “How?” Sunny asked.
    Like all great storytellers, Aunt Kay took her time now that she had her audience’s attention. Using the bar, she pulled herself up onto a wooden stool and settled her behind on the seat that was undersized for her.
    Sunny was experienced in listening to thousands of stories, most of which she didn’t want to hear. She waited, without asking any questions and not showing all that much interest now she had herself under control.
    “That’s better,” Aunt Kay said, as she propped her short legs up on the top rung of the stool and got comfortable. She drank deeply from her glass.
    Sunny blinked. “How did Holly die?”
    “Suicide.” Sunny jerked back as if she’d been hit. “Oh, shit.”
    “That’s why I need your help.”
    “Holly wouldn’t kill herself.” Sunny’s angry and outraged reply was loud enough to have the drinkers down the bar looking up and taking some interest before they went back to their glasses.
    Sunny looked to me as if I might want to explain things.
    I shrugged and Sunny turned back to Aunt Kay, who said, “I need to understand what happened to her. I know so little about this last little bit of her life. I’m finding it hard to accept her death.”
    Sunny looked at me again. “Holly wouldn’t kill herself.” It was as if she was challenging me.
    “She left a note,” I said. “The police are pretty sure it was suicide but they’ll do an autopsy.”
    Aunt Kay cut in. “I had to identify her body. So distressing.” Her shoulders rounded and she seemed to shrink into herself. I wanted to hug her.
    Sunny picked up Aunt Kay’s half-empty glass, added ice and more soda and set it gently back in front of her. This time she even brought a little paper napkin to put the glass on.
    Aunt Kay smiled. “Thank you, dear. Can you tell me anything about Holly? Do you know where her baby is?”
    Sunny shook her head. “I haven’t seen Holly in months. People move on; you know how it is.”
    “Yes, but I know Holly.” Aunt Kay took a sip of her soda. “She was the kind of girl who kept in touch. Sometimes her idle chatter could be annoying, making you wish she’d forget she knew you.”
    The corner of Sunny’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I’m sure she called you,” Aunt Kay said softly.
    I wondered why Aunt Kay was so sure of this but Sunny gave an embarrassed shrug. “Well, yeah, she’d call in the middle of some program I was trying to watch and talk about the new nail polish she’d just bought or some person she’d met, tell me the whole life story of someone I didn’t know. She was a hard person to discourage.”
    She looked around. “Maybe I didn’t try too hard. She was always so damn cheerful and a lot more interesting than the people that I normally listen to.”
    Aunt Kay laughed. “That’s my Holly all right.” But just as quickly her smile disappeared. “If that was true, why would she kill herself? What had changed? Was she depressed?”
    “Like I said, I haven’t talked to her in months. Before that, she’d breeze in here and chat away like a bloody bird. Didn’t matter who was here, she’d chat to them all.” Sunny almost smiled. “It was like someone blew out a wall and let the fresh air in.”
    She glanced down the bar at the three men and then took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you a lot, but what do you want to know?”
    “Did you know Angel?”
    “Yeah,” and now Sunny’s face relaxed into her first real smile, the one that revealed where she got her name. “She was beautiful. Delicate, you know, with perfect little rosebud lips. Her face never looked, well . . . it was like a perfect little doll’s. She was . . .” her voice faltered and stopped. Someone called her name from the end of the bar. Relief flooded her face. “I have