Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

She scribbled quickly and efficiently, taking it all in. “Don’t you find it a big change, coming from government work, and then running a diner?”

He sipped from his coffee. “Found it an improvement, if you’ve got to know. People in government tend to be stiff-necked, can’t do anything without getting paperwork done in triplicate, or having completed stepladder safety training or diversity training or some other training. Tell you, it was a relief to leave after all those years. And here? Well, the BS level is pretty low. Has to be, at a diner. I mean, either the eggs are cold or they’re not, or the coffee sucks or it doesn’t. If it’s real, it’s real.”

“And your customers?”

Another sip from the coffee cup. “Real people, too. Not thinking about sticking a knife in your back, or tossing you under the bus, so they can get a better performance review or a step increase in their salary. Up here, if a guy says he’s gonna plow your driveway in the winter, he does it. If a guy says he’s gonna vote for you, he does. If a gal says, don’t worry, I can do your books and it’ll cost you this much every week, that’s what happens.”

Elaine said, “So you find most people are good up here, your customers.”

“Well, it can’t be a hundred percent. If it was, it’d be nirvana, and this place sure don’t look like nirvana now, does it?”

He laughed, but his smile quickly went away when Elaine decided to try again, from the beginning. “So, what exactly did you do in the government?”

No more smiles. No more laughter. “Oh, this and that.”

“I see.” Her heart now pounding, now looking to the file folder on the tabletop, next to her orange juice.

Once she had gotten the assignment, she knew that it was a chance to get back into the game and, by God, she was going to do it right. So she had spent more than the usual time getting prepared for the interview, by going to the local newspaper office and looking through clips about the Have a Seat diner, and then doing an Internet search on the diner and its owner, Jason Lovell, and when she had started, well, something wasn’t quite right. There were little faint trails of something more than just a retiree taking possession of a diner. Something a bit more... And she found out one bit of information, which led her to something else.

Something else that she had thought about the time Casey went after her with a leather belt because she wouldn’t iron his shirts.

After another ten minutes or so of interviewing, asking the right questions about the customers and characters in the diner, the challenges of getting to the diner at four a.m. in a blizzard to set up, and the usual and customary questions about running a small place in a small town, she glanced up at a clock. Okay, she thought. Time. Here we go. She took a deep breath, pushed her knees together to stop the shaking, and went to the file folder.

“Actually, Jason, I was wondering if we could talk about what you did before you came up here to Montcalm, a little more background,” she said, opening up the folder.

Hunched over the top of the booth’s table, Jason shrugged again. “Not much to say. Pretty boring stuff. Just government work, and I just put my time in until retirement came knocking.”

“I see. And where exactly did you work while in the government?”

He stared at her. But unlike Casey’s eyes, there was nothing evil or shifting there. Just a calm curiosity as to why she was doing what she was doing. “Here and there. Nothing special.”

She slipped a sheet of paper out, one of several she had collected over the past few days, in doing the research, research that had led her down some very strange paths indeed. And by relying on her Rolodex and other contacts, she had managed to find her way down those paths and eventually find her way here.

“Some people might disagree,” she said. “Working for the Central Intelligence Agency, all those years, sounds something very special indeed.”

And sheet one was an article showing a Congressional hearing from a few years back, concerning some controversy involving the CIA, and sitting behind one of the witness chairs — with a bit more hair and better clothes — was the man in front of her, though in the photo caption he was identified as Robert Jason Lovell.

He looked down, seemed to smile for just a moment, and then looked up. “Now I’ll say something I’m sure you’re familiar with hearing. No comment.”

“What did you do in the CIA, Jason?”

His face was friendly, but the words were not. “Sorry. No comment. Today, tomorrow, next century. No comment.”

Back to the file folder she went, willing her hands not to shake. She slid out two more sheets of paper. He looked down, and for a moment, just a moment, he stared at them with some sort of expression in his face, a passing expression that could be pride. Or something else.

She leaned over. “A newspaper article, and another photo. Of you in Afghanistan. You belonged to an outfit called the Special Activities Division, part of the CIa’s National Clandestine Service. Highly secret, highly covert. They conduct all sorts of classified military-style missions, including guerrilla operations, sabotage, and assassinations, from shooting people in the head to poisoning their hummus. Stories that never get made public, never make it into the newspapers. An elite group of killers. Am I right, Jason?”

He looked to her and she had expected many types of reactions, but not this one. No anger. No fluster. Just calm and collected. “No comment, Elaine. Like before. And I believe this interview is finished.”

She was suddenly thirsty, picked up the glass of orange juice and took a healthy sip. “No, Jason. It’s not. I have one more thing to ask you. And then you can tell me if the interview is finished or not.”

That was when it came clear to her, in doing that additional piece of research, that she had found a local connection to the Have a Seat diner and its spook owner. At first she had thought that she had stumbled onto a story that could even make a national publication — killer spook now makes killer omelettes, that sort of thing — but that damn thread of research led her to another place, and another place, and one early morning, having refused to sleep with Casey because of an earlier incident involving not enough gas in the car, which was followed by an arm twisting that still made her shoulder throb, the idea of the story was overtaken by something else.

She had sat in her office that morning, two a.m., the creature who was called her husband gently slumbering about six yards away, and she allowed a bit of hope to seep into her.

A bit of hope.

Another breath, not worrying now that Jason was seeing how nervous she was, for indeed, she was quite nervous. Four more sheets of paper were brought out, four more sheets that were fanned out in front of her.

Jason looked at them, and then looked to her. Not a word.

Elaine took a breath. “Henry Collins. Jake Winters. Robbie Couture. Paul Dudley. Four local men, four men who’ve died within the last eighteen months. These are their obituaries.”

Jason stared. Silent.

“I found their obituaries because they all appeared in the Montcalm Gazette, and because they all had one thing in common. All four were regular customers, the newspaper said, of the Have a Seat diner.”

Jason kept on staring.

“But I dug a bit further. There were other areas of commonality, as well. They were in their forties or fifties. They weren’t marathon runners, but they didn’t have any history of disease. They just... died. All four died, of apparent heart failure. What are the chances of that occurring, Jason, that four local men, four customers of yours, all died within a span of eighteen months?”