A Second Helping of Murder and Recipes: A Hot Dish Heaven Mystery by Jeanne Cooney

Val.”
    The priest arched his brows. “Oddly enough, from what I understand, Wally didn’t say a word. Nothing at all. Not to Little Val or to Raleigh Cummings.”
    “Really?” Margie seemed shocked.
    “That’s what I was told. Although when I talked to Raleigh, he had no trouble coming up with a few choice words about Wally. But none of it made much sense to me.” The priest paused. “I believe he’d been drinking. I thought I smelled alcohol on his breath.”
    Barbie pulled a napkin from the dispenser and wiped her mouth. “Tell me again, Father, when did you talk to him?”
    “Around noon on Tuesday. He was coming off his shift, and I was about to start mine.”
    Less than a second passed between the priest’s answer and Barbie’s next question. “Do you know if he and Little Val—or he and Wally—exchanged words later?”
    The priest chewed on the question as well as his toothpick. “I don’t know. Until tonight in there”—he pointed toward the middle room—“I hadn’t seen either Wally or Little Val for quite a while.” He held his hand up. “I take that back. I saw Wally in Hallock Wednesday afternoon.” He thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, that would have been yesterday. I was waiting my turn at the car wash. I was behind Hunter Carlson. He was washing that pickup of his—inside and out—and taking forever. But, no, I didn’t get a chance to talk to Wally. He was in his old Jeep. He just drove by. He appeared to be in a hurry.”
    “Was he alone?” Barbie wanted to know.
    “Yep.”
    “Hmm.”
    The priest twirled his stool around to face Barbie and me. “When it comes right down to it, I don’t think any of this matters.”
    Hard lines of worry marked Margie’s face. “What makes you say that?”
    “Well,” the priest replied, checking out the hallway before lowering his voice, “the sheriff came into the middle room a while ago to question Buddy.”
    Margie groaned. “If that don’t take the cake.” She pounded the counter with her fist. “He always assumes the worst of that boy. I swear that ever since Harold Halvorson became sheriff, most of the time he hasn’t known whether to wind his butt or scratch his watch.”
    And with those words hanging in the air, I attempted to finish my dinner.

 
    Chapter Eleven
    I walked Barbie and Father Daley to their cars. The sky was dark. Snow was coming down hard. And because of the blustering wind, visibility was poor. Both the priest and the newspaper lady were confident they’d make it back to Hallock without any trouble. Even so, they promised to proceed in a caravan. I’m sure they only wanted to placate me, but I didn’t care. Driving didn’t seem like a good idea, particularly for Barbie, who, storm or not, was a menopausal maniac behind the wheel.
    As for me, even though I hadn’t planned on traveling anywhere, my car still posed a problem. My overnight bag was in the back seat, and the sleet that had fallen earlier had formed a sheet of ice over the entire vehicle, freezing the doors shut.
    With only the light slanting from a couple of street lamps, I chiseled along the door handle with a pen I’d found at the bottom of my purse. After that I scraped ice with one of my credit cards. I warmed one hand in my jacket pocket, then the other. I hadn’t thought to bring gloves. It was only October, for God sake.
    True, I could have asked for help from someone in the cafe. But I didn’t want to chance a run-in with Buddy Johnson. Not a particularly friendly thought considering, at the moment, he was being grilled by the sheriff. But there it was. And, as penance, I was forced to struggle with my car door all by myself.
    Finally, after swearing under my breath and jerking the handle repeatedly, the door cracked open. With hands so cold they burned, I snatched my bag and rushed across the highway, a gust of wind nearly knocking me to my knees. Recovering with the grace of a drunk, I stumbled to the sidewalk, pushed