Amanda Matetsky - Murder on a Hot Tin Roof

I did. And when I found myself at the corner of Seventh and Christopher-at the wide-open entrance to Stewart’s Cafeteria-I staggered inside to get a glass of iced tea. And to read my morning paper. And to see if Blackie and Blondie were there. And to check out the clientele and the chicken run for suspicious-looking characters.

Blackie was there, but Blondie wasn’t. I wished it were the other way around. (Blondie had been the talkative one, if you recall, and Blackie’s lips had been sealed tighter than a pharaoh’s tomb.) I nodded to the ebony-haired busboy (there certainly wasn’t any point in questioning him again!), bought an enormous glass of iced tea at the counter, and then carried it toward the bleachers-the chairs and tables near the row of windows that looked out on the now-vacant sidewalk where, according to Abby, the chickens usually liked to strut.

There were three customers sitting in that area of the cafeteria. All of them were male. Two were together at the table nearest the door, chowing down on bacon and eggs (sunny-side-up, if you must know). The third man was sitting sideways at the very last table in the back, nibbling on a piece of toast and staring out the window in a trance. I couldn’t see his face full-on, but one peep at his pudgy, pug-nosed profile, and his thick, slicked-back blond hair, and I knew who he was.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Sinclair!” I said, approaching Willy’s table with a big smile on my face. (And it wasn’t a fake smile, either. For some reason I didn’t fully understand, I was genuinely glad to see the strange, funny-looking fellow.) “Remember me?” I asked. “I met you yesterday at the… uh… at the…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. At the bloodbath? At the slashing? At the scene of your neighbor’s hideous murder? Nothing seemed acceptable. I finally gave up and asked, “May I join you?”

Willy had turned his head toward me, but he was still in a trance. His enormous blue eyes were looking straight through me, and his mind was someplace else entirely. He took a tiny bite of his toast and chewed it vigorously, but he seemed totally unaware of his actions. Setting my tea down on his table, and my newspaper and purse down on an extra chair, I took the seat directly across from him and leaned my face so close to his I could have counted all his freckles.

“Hello, Willy?” I said, peering smack into his distant eyes. “Are you okay?”

The nearness of my voice (not to mention my nose) must have jarred his sleeping senses, because he came to in a start and focused on the first thing that came into his sight-my looming kisser.

“Eeeeeek!” he shrieked, looking shocked and horrified-as if he’d just seen a ghost. (I guess my makeup had worn off.) “What are you doing? Get away from me! Shoo!”

“Sorry, Willy,” I said, backing off in a flash. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was just trying to get your attention.”

“You sure succeeded!” he cried, voice still shrill and trembling. “Mercy me! I almost fainted dead away.” His Southern accent was more noticeable now than it had been yesterday.

“You were lost in another world,” I explained, “and you didn’t respond when I spoke to you. I got a little nervous.”

“Yes, but

I’m the nervous one now!” he squealed, throwing his hands up in the air. His piece of toast flew out of his fingers and thwacked against the wall behind him.

“I can see that,” I said, smiling.

Willy leaned over, picked the toast up from the floor, and daintily dropped it on his empty plate. “Well, I’ve got a lot on my mind, you know! The police think

I killed Gray! You should have seen how they treated me yesterday. They gave me a really hard time after you left.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, checking his face and arms for scratches and bruises. He was clean as a whistle. “They didn’t hit you, did they?”

“No, this time they just pummeled me with questions and accusations. For hours and hours and hours. I was so scared and exhausted when they left, I curled up in a ball on the carpet and cried myself into a coma.” He gave me a shamefaced smile, then dabbed the perspiration off his upper lip with his napkin. “And I stayed there all night long, honey. I didn’t get up off the floor until six thirty this morning, when Flannagan phoned and started pounding me with questions again.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Humpf! You name it, he asked it. First yesterday, and then again this morning. How long had I known Gray? Did we spend much time together? Am I a homo? Was Gray a homo? Had we been screwing each other? Was I jealous of his other boyfriends? Did we hang out at the same bars? Did we eat at the same restaurants? Was I obsessed with him? Was he getting sick of me? Who were his friends? Who were his enemies? What did I want from him? Did I want him dead? Did I kill him for revenge or just for fun? Did I enjoy gashing his throat, and stabbing him in the gut, and watching his blood spill out on the floor?”

I hated to admit it, but these were the same questions I wanted to ask Willy-except I would have phrased them in a gentler way, and omitted the last three altogether. (Which compels me to make yet another admission: As much as I’ve always prided myself on not jumping to hasty conclusions, I had already made up my mind that this whimsical little potbellied man was no murderer.)

“Sounds pretty rough, Willy,” I said, reaching across the table to touch his stubby, freckled hand. I felt very sorry for him-both for the way he’d been treated by the police and for the way he would always be treated by society. “But you can’t really blame Flannagan for asking so many questions,” I added. “It’s his job, after all. He’s the one who has to track down the killer.”

“Yes, but he’s convinced

I’m the killer, so how much tracking do you think he’s going to do? I’ll tell you how much! None! He’s just going to hammer me with relentless gibes and interrogations until I cave in and confess to a crime I didn’t-and never, ever, ever would-commit.” He paused for a few seconds while he gnawed one pinkie nail to the nub. “You want to know what he was grilling me about at six thirty this morning, honey? My blood type, of all things! Can you believe it?! What does that have to do with anything? He even demanded the name of my doctor so he could get positive proof.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked. “Do you even know what your blood type is?”

“I sure do, honey,” he proudly pronounced. “I donated to the big Red Cross blood drive last month, and they gave me the best grade of all-an A.”

I SAT AND TALKED TO WILLY FOR ANOTHER half-hour or so, trying to steady his frazzled nerves and dig up some new leads at the the same time. I failed at both endeavors. Willy remained as jumpy as a jackrabbit, and I was left as clueless as a Keystone Cop. Aside from his incriminating blood type (which, in the interest of preserving Willy’s shaky sanity, I chose not to explain the importance of just then), he didn’t give me any new information at all. (I’m talking zilch. Zero. Or, as Abby would say,

bupkes.)

I asked Willy if he’d ever met any of Gray’s friends or relatives-specifically his girlfriend, Cupcake, or his Actors Studio cohort, Binky, or a persistent fellow named Randy, or somebody calling herself Aunt Doobie-but Willy swore he’d never even heard those names, let alone met the people they belonged to. He also insisted that-in spite of his own enormous crush on “the gorgeous golden-skinned god next door”-he had no firsthand (or any