Cold Morning by Ed Ifkovic Page B

“Talk to me about Annabel Biggs.”
    His eyes softened, his lips trembled, and for a moment he closed his eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”
    â€œYou cared for her?”
    He nodded. “Yeah. A lot. I mean, we only went out a bunch of times but we…you know, we laughed a lot. She was fun .” A heartbeat. “For a while.”
    â€œBut you fought with her.”
    He bit his lip. “Yeah, a lot. She was a wild cat, that one. At the end. I mean, out of the blue she said the fun and games was over.”
    â€œBut why?”
    He looked puzzled and scrunched up his face. “You know, it was real strange. She said something like—‘The trial is starting and I gotta focus. Got no time for you.’”
    â€œThat makes little sense.”
    He shrugged. “That’s all she talked about. The trial. The kidnapping—the murder. That is, when she had a little too much gin at the Oak Tavern, the roadhouse out on Elm Road.”
    â€œTell me what she said.”
    His hands shook as he lit a cigarette, for a moment watching the smoke rings drift upward. His fingernails were broken, dark, ragged, the fingertips yellowed from nicotine. Surprisingly slender hands on so big a man—and I shuddered, imaging those long graceful fingers around Annabel’s neck.
    â€œShe said she was here for the trial. A little secretive. I asked her why she left a good-paying job in Chicago—she said it was a fancy-schmancy hotel there—and she winked at me. ‘Big money.’ So I said, ‘How so?’ I mean, a job as a waitress is about the same.”
    â€œAnd what did she say?”
    Listening closely, her hands resting in her lap, Cora Lee echoed my words, “What did she say?”
    â€œMost times nothing, but then she’d brag about some big payoff. One time she whispered, ‘Lindbergh, Lindbergh’ like a song you got stuck in your head, but when I asked her what was what, she clammed up. But once she said that blackmail is a tool that gotta be used like a pointed gun. That made no sense.”
    â€œMaybe it makes a lot of sense,” I said.
    He glanced at his mother. “I dunno.”
    â€œAnnabel Biggs came here for reasons other than generous tips,” I added.
    Cora Lee looked over my shoulder into the hallway where Hovey Low watched us. “She was up to something.”
    Cody Lee went on. “She could be loud and noisy and pushy and…and she, you know, liked to bat her eyelids at guys. But it was all a game. I think.”
    My heart raced. “But talking of Lindbergh? A payoff? But what?”
    â€œYeah, but she never got to talking about it much. Too much gin and she falls asleep in the pickup.” His mouth flew open. “Wait. I remember—laughing, real silly, she said something about letters. A cousin’s letters. ‘Secrets from the pot at the end of the rainbow.’ Her words. Made no sense to me. Strange, no?”
    â€œWe ain’t gonna ever know,” Cora Lee interjected, her voice weary.
    I sat back, thought about his words. “But it does confirm my suspicion that she was ready for some windfall she thought she’d get.”
    Cora Lee spat out, “What she got was being strangled.”
    His mother spoke the words so quickly that Cody Lee winced, his shoulders sagged.
    Looking at him as he sat slumped over, his face wide with confusion, I realized how some woman might find him irresistible. The mooncalf eyes, the wispy hair slipping over a high forehead, the sudden dimples, the sheer bulk of him—the boy in the man’s body, but still harboring a child’s air of wonder. A seductive, lethal combination, perhaps a very real allure to a pernicious woman like Annabel Biggs, the local boy with the keys to a pickup. Some men were like chocolate sundaes, consumed with gluttonous delight but then forgotten when you left the ice cream parlor. Cody Lee Thomas was the