Leftovers by Chloe Kendrick

was like the Navy SEALs trying to steal my Grandmother Ida’s mashed potato recipe. I couldn’t see it.
    “So what suggestions do you have for this? Now that it’s out in the open, it’s not like I can go back and say that I was wrong.” I doubted that any newspaper would print my retraction in the light of two murders and an assault.
    Land moved toward me. “You can stop getting involved. You can stop visiting people who were attacked and stop making suggestions to the police. Just do your job, and keep your head down for a bit. Maybe this will all blow over.”
    I gave a lot of thought to what Land said as I finished up the coffee and prepped for opening. I had more or less decided to follow his advice when we opened for the day.
    The air was crisp and clear outside, and it appeared to be a fairly calm day. I could focus on making the food truck more profitable and leave the murders to the police.
    I was just finishing up with the morning crowds when a woman approached the window. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her face. She had dark, flowing hair and a thin body. She wore a dress of some manmade fabric and high-heeled shoes. She could have worked in any of the buildings around here. Yet I was struck that I should know her somehow.
    She looked at the menu for a long time before speaking.
    “I would like two hot dogs and a cup of coffee. Are you the woman who saw my sister die?” she asked unceremoniously.
    Immediately it came to me. She resembled the woman who had been shot in the square. There was a strong similarity in terms of her nose and eyes. The difference was that her features were animated, where the other woman had been dead. She was beautiful in a rather exotic way. I wondered if she could be Basque, like Land, which made me wonder how much he knew about these women. Could the woman killed by the sniper have been coming to visit Land? Everyone had assumed that she’d been coming to visit me, but since she was a different person, there was no reason why she couldn’t have been coming to see him instead.
    I cleared my throat and spoke slowly. “I saw her get shot, yes. But I wasn’t the only one around. There were policemen who saw it much more clearly.”
    She laughed, but it wasn’t a humorous laugh. It was a dry, brittle sound that worried me. “Do you really think that the police would tell me what had happened? They have been of no help at all.”
    After my experiences with Detective Danvers, I could easily believe that. “I don’t have much to add. I was pretty far away when it happened. At first, I just thought that she had tripped and fallen. It wasn’t until people started screaming that I realized it was something more.”
    She nodded. “So it was a quick, painless death. That’s good to hear.” It seemed like an odd thing to say, but people grieve in different ways. I wasn’t about to judge how anyone coped with the death of a loved one. Still I wasn’t sure I’d judge a death solely by the speed of it.
    “I honestly don’t know much to tell you,” I said. “Were you two close?”
    “We were. We’ve lived in this area about six months, so neither one of us knew very many people. So we spent a lot of time together.” Her eyes watched me carefully even as she spoke.
    I put on my best mourning face. I did feel sorry for this woman, but it was hard to show any true grief when you’d only just met someone. “I’m so sorry. Why was she coming downtown? Did she work here?”
    The woman shook her head. “No, she had business with the immigration department. We’re from overseas, and my sister wanted to extend her stay. She was on her way across the square when she was shot.”
    “Where are you from?” I asked, trying to be polite and ask a few questions while I was at it. I could hear just a trace of an accent that I didn’t recognize. It was nothing like Land’s accent, so I didn’t have a clue as to its origin.
    She named a small province of Russia.