Page 26 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

During the winter, though, Fishermen’s Market wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with customers.

For one reason, February wasn’t tourist season in Hastings Rock.

And for another, as I mentioned, the restaurant itself was shack-ish in its dimensions (and, frankly, its aesthetic—there were a lot of hawsers being used as décor).

And strangely enough, people didn’t love sitting outside in the cold, especially with the wind cutting in off the ocean.

In other words, for once in my life, it was easy to find parking.

When I stepped inside, a wall of sound met me.

Voices echoed in the small space: Cyd Wofford, our resident Marxist, was laughing at something Dr. Xu had said; JaDonna Powers and her husband (whom I thought of as Mr. JaDonna Powers) were talking loudly with Mrs. Archer about some sort of local road improvement; Princess McAdams (disappointingly, not a real princess) was tapping on one of the refrigerated display cases where salmon and crab and tuna and other fish (I’m not a fisherman) lay in neat rows, bellowing, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” while the harried staff tried to get past her to deliver plastic baskets lined with red-checked paper, each one holding a king’s ransom of fish and chips.

(I’m not even joking: it’s the best in the world.) The smell of malt vinegar and raw seafood and hot frying oil mingled in the air.

A neon crab flashed on one wall in a pattern that was supposed to make you think it was dancing.

It took me about zero-point-five seconds to find Millie, Keme, and Larry.

On the other side of the shack, a wooden cutout that had been painted to look like a shark stood near the wall.

It was the kind that you could stand behind and it would look like your head was in the shark’s mouth.

The summer before, I’d taken full advantage of it (I had pictures of me by myself, then with Bobby, and one time so it looked like Bobby was rescuing me—obviously that was my favorite).

Right then, Millie was coaching Larry with unfeigned enthusiasm.

No guns.

No knives.

Not a single laser.

Still, it was hard not to look at Larry and see a man being held hostage.

“BUT MAKE YOUR MOUTH WIDER!” Millie instructed.

Keme nodded. “Like you’re a shark.”

“LIKE YOU’RE A SHARK,” Millie repeated for Larry’s benefit.

From the opening in the cutout, Larry frowned. “But I thought I was inside the shark?”

“You are,” Keme said. “It’s like the alien from Alien .”

“What if I just smile?” Larry asked.

Millie let out a frustrated sound. “Here. I’ll show you.”

“You know, I think I’d better finish my meal—”

“NOT YET!” Millie barked.

Larry gave a little jump and cracked his head on the shark’s teeth.

By that point, my legs had started working again, and I crossed the dining room. Whatever I’d planned to say flew out the window, and instead, I asked, “What’s going on here?”

“We’re taking his picture,” Millie explained. “It’s for his TV SHOW!”

With a frown, Larry said, “I thought you said you were from the tourist bureau.”

“Mr. Lizard,” I said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but could I talk to you?”

“Gladly—” Larry began.

My phone buzzed. I glanced at it, and Bobby’s name showed on the screen. I dismissed the call.

Larry was extricating himself from the shark cutout, ignoring Millie’s protests and Keme’s silent threats. He looked like he was about to commit suicide by prawn if someone didn’t rescue him.

I said a few words that good little fishermen don’t say out loud.

Larry’s eyebrows shot up until his bristly black hair looked like it was about to pop off his head.

“Uh—I mean—hi, Millie. Hi, Keme. Good bumping into you, or something like that.”

“Something like that?” Keme asked.

“I need to chat with Larry now, so why don’t you guys go, um, play?”

Keme cracked his neck. (It’s surprisingly terrifying if you’ve never heard an adolescent mini-Hulk do it.) Then he said, “Go play?”

But Millie took his hand and said, “Okay! Bye, Dash! Bye, Mr. Lizard!”

And they were gone.

Larry and I moved over to a two-top where a half-finished captain’s platter was growing cold.

He had the slightly concussed look of someone who has recently had their first sustained interaction with Millie.

The lines around his mouth and eyes seemed deeper, and the sallow cast of his skin was even more pronounced.

He took a notebook out of his pocket and said, “Do you think she’d let me interview her? ”

It took me a moment to process that. “Millie?”

“We’d have to pretend it’s random, of course.” He started writing. “She’s just another patron, and I happen to ask her how her food is.”

“That depends,” I said. “How much time do you have? And how sensitive are the microphones?”

He didn’t answer and kept scribbling. I wasn’t an expert at reading upside down, but he only wrote four words, and they said, Blonde girl – IT factor .

I didn’t know a lot of things about my future. But I did know that if Millie was ever on an episode of Live with Larry Lizard , I’d TiVo the episode. Although TiVo wasn’t really a thing. I’d DVR it. I’d buy the collectible DVD. Something. The words circus fire came to mind.

That triggered another thought—and a possible way to get to one of the questions I wanted to ask. So, I said, “How’s the food?”

Larry glanced over at the half-finished captain’s platter. “The breading is crisp and flavorful. Not too oily. Everything tastes fresh; sometimes people cheap out because they figure that frying it will cover up the quality, but you can’t get away with that when you have a display case.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, sometimes people use fish that’s not quite as fresh, for example.

” Something in my expression made him say, “When you buy fish, you want to watch for certain things: firm flesh, the right color, mild smell. If it’s fried, you can’t tell as easily.

You want to know the real secret, though?

The eyes. You want them to be clear and shiny. ”

“Uh huh,” I said. I decided not to tell Larry my personal policy of not looking at the eyes of anything I was going to eat. “Did you learn that when you worked in a restaurant?”

“You pick up all sorts of things in this job,” he said absently as he jotted something else in the notebook.

“But you did work in a restaurant, didn’t you?”

He looked up at me, intent now, although the words remained casual. “You go somewhere like Mizzenmast, and you’re supposed to know. That’s half of what they pay me for—there’s a class of people who want to be able to say that they went to a restaurant where the chef trained in Japan, for example.”

“Wait, Talmage trained in Japan?”

Larry grimaced; I couldn’t tell if it was an answer to my question or connected to something else. He fished around in his pocket, brought out a prescription vial, and swallowed two pills. Then he looked at me and said, “You think I killed Sparkie.”

“I mean—” My brain failed to come up with any way of padding the issue, and instead, I heard myself say, “Did you?”

Larry barked a laugh. “No. No, although God knows I wanted to sometimes. I tried telling myself she didn’t have an easy life, but the truth is she was a stupid, greedy woman.

Did you know she worked at one of the restaurants Mal took over?

He ran it into the ground. The chef who had started the restaurant killed herself.

And Sparkie still married Mal. Years later, sure, but—” He must have caught the look on my face because he added, “I didn’t kill Mal, either. ”

“You were missing when Mal got shot, though,” I said. “And you had an argument with him shortly before he died. You argued with Sparkie, too, and now she’s dead as well.”

“Trust me,” Larry said with another barking laugh. “I’m a food critic. If everyone I argued with was dead, I’d be a serial killer.”

Silverware clinked. Chairs scraped against the floor. A woman shouted for more cocktail sauce.

“God.” He paled. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t do anything to anyone. I went outside for some fresh air; it happened to be the same time Mal got shot. And all I did was sit there with Sparkie. She was fine when I left.”

“What were you arguing about?”

“She said she knew who killed Mal.”

“What? Who?”

“I don’t know. She wanted me to help her. She said she thought the information would be worth a lot of money, but she needed help. I said I wasn’t interested, and I told her to go to the police.”

“She needed help?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Help with what? Blackmail isn’t exactly a complicated setup.”

Larry shrugged. “She was scared, even though she was trying to act tough. Sparkie’s not—” He paused.

“Sparkie wasn’t the type to take a risk on her own.

That’s why she trotted after Mal all these years; she wanted to open her restaurant, but she didn’t want to go to the bank, get a loan, any of that.

She wanted Mal to take the risk. And she wanted it to be easy. ”

“But she knew how Mal treated people. She knew what he’d done to other chefs.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think owning the restaurant was what Sparkie cared about.

Not really. There are plenty of people who want to say they own a restaurant.

Or some of them, they want to be there, where all the patrons can see them, because what they actually want is to look important, or to get attention, or something.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t want the thing they say they want. ”