I is for Infallible

Today's post is mainly for the benefit of the reader to recap, in case you want to follow along from here without going to the recap page. Normally I wouldn't info dump on my readers. :)

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Dinner hour was too busy for Clayton to pick Beth’s brain on what else she may know about Malcolm Sinclair and the day before when Margie Webster came into the Lamont Café with him. It was twelve hours since Margie’s body was found and already the waitress had heard about the girl’s death. If Clayton found out any of his deputies were blabbing in the diner about Margie’s head not being attached to her body, he’d have their asses and their badges.

Clayton sat in his patrol car on idle trying to decide what to do. He still had an hour to kill before it was time to meet Pepper back at the station to find out what she learned at the book club—if she was allowed to stay. It might be too soon to stop at coroner Wilde’s office for a report or too late for Herbert Wilde to still be there. It was a tossup.  He went back through the scribbles in his notepad.

The last time anyone saw Margie alive now appeared to be Beth at the diner. Margie had stopped at McCormick’s Boat Rental at 8:30 AM on Friday morning looking for her Ernest Hemingway book of poems that she couldn’t find. Around 9:00 AM she was seen by Beth, the waitress at the Lamont Café, when the book club came in for coffee to go before their field trip. Both her boss, Steve McCormick; and Beth, the waitress, indicated Margie seemed agitated. Although a few of the locals were a part of the book club run by Malcolm Sinclair, no one seemed to know how to become part of it or where the club was headed for their field trip on Friday. Her parents were clueless about what their daughter was up to other than they had forbid the twenty-five year old Margie to associate with Malcolm Sinclair and his bookies, as Pepper called them. Margie Webster is next seen when she is found dead in a field along a hedgerow the next morning at 7:00 AM when Joe Burnhart was spreading manure on his field. Her head, severed from her body, held in place by a polka dot scarf, and dressed in clothes not like her to wear. In other words, Clayton had a whole lot of nada to go on.

The sheriff’s decision was made. He turned off his patrol car. The diner closed soon and his best source of clues at the moment would be Beth. She knew her customers, knew what they wanted on any given day without asking, just by their mood. Beth was the best waitress Clayton had ever come across, her memory was infallible. What Clayton hoped to find out from Beth is what Margie was wearing Friday morning when she came in and what the local gossip was about Malcolm Sinclair. He had to do something constructive while he worried and waited for Pepper to return from Malcolm's--hopefully still in one piece.

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Today's word - I is for Infallible - is brought to you by Kai Fisher.

If you would like to catch up, here is my 2013 A to Z Mystery Recap.  

This post is part of April's Blogging From A-Z Challenge and Camp NaNoWriMo. The rest of the A-Z bloggers can be found pinned in the links section of my sidebar. Hope to see you tomorrow!

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