Copyright © 2008 Peter Swanson. All rights reserved.

Everything okay?" Bonnie asked the man five minutes after he’d been delivered his lunch. She was sidestepping by with a pair of Heinekens for table seven.

"No, it’s not," he answered, poking at one of the butternut squash raviolis--today’s special--with his fork.

She stopped. "I’m sorry. Is there something wrong with the food?"

The businessman looked up at her with sleepy, down-turned eyes. When he spoke his pale, razor-reddened neck quivered. "Is something wrong with the food, you ask me? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it--it’s inedible. Ask your chef how he managed to actually overcook the pasta and undercook the filling."

"I’m sorry about that," Bonnie said. "Can I get you something else?"

"Not unless you want to go to the restaurant across the street and get me something from there."

It was at this point that she knew that the rude, middle-aged man with the English accent in the dark gray suit was a lost cause. He wasn’t going to be happy and she wasn’t going to get a tip. "I’ll be right back, sir," she said and shimmied over to the two goateed men in open-necked shirts who had asked for the beers. After that she took an order from a table-full of young women who worked across the street in a day-spa. They came in fairly often for lunch. All but one ordered the Chinese Chicken Salad, and every last one of them ordered a Diet Coke with a lemon wedge.

After putting in their order, she made her way back out to the complainer. As she neared his table she watched him place one of the raviolis in his mouth and slowly chew.

"I’m happy to take that away and get you something else," she said.

"Never mind," he said and speared another ravioli. "I’m in a hurry."

She checked on him a little later, took away his spotless plate, and asked him what he thought of the weather. It was February but felt like April, temperatures cracking the seventies. "How many times do I have to tell you I’m in a goddamn hurry," he said. "It’s one o’clock, already," he added, as though she would know the significance of that particular hour. "Just bring me the bill."

She walked behind the bar that formed an imposing U in the center of the wood-and-brick restaurant and tallied his food and drink. She took an extra long sip of her iced tea, waiting a couple of beats, before returning with his bill. "What was up with him?" Bill, her second-favorite bartender, asked later, tilting his head in the general direction of where his table had been.

"Just an asshole," Bonnie replied. "No big deal."

What was surprising was that after he’d left she collected his empty glass and his credit card receipt--his name was Stuart Pinkingham--she found he’d left her a sizeable tip. Not just sizeable, but nearly thirty percent. Odd, she thought, then forgot all about him.

The following day, a Tuesday, warmer even than the day before, he returned at exactly the same time and sat at the same table. It was Bonnie’s section again--she had lunch shifts all week--and when she approached him with a menu, she decided to pretend he hadn’t been there before.

"Hi there, I’m Bonnie, and we have a couple of specials today. Let’s see, we have--"

"I’m not falling for that again," he replied. "Tell me something on the regular menu that’s passable. There must be something that people don’t send back to you in horror."

"The salads here are really good," Bonnie replied, and because he looked like the kind of man who didn’t eat salads unless they came with a lot of calories piled on top, added, "I recommend the Frontier Salad. It comes with grilled flank steak and blue cheese."

"I’ll try it, done medium-rare please," he said, shutting the menu and wiping the back on his neck with his napkin, "and is the house red at all better than the house white?"

"I couldn’t really tell you, but I can ask the barten--"

"Never mind. He’d recommend something at nine dollars a glass that tasted like yesterday’s piss. House red. It’s not too dry, is it?"

"I wouldn’t really know."

"Right, you’re just the waitress here. Why would you know anything?" He pulled a paperback novel from his suit pocket and started to read.

"Okay then," Bonnie said in a mutter, and spun to turn the food order in at the kitchen, and to let Bill know she needed a glass of red. Back in the kitchen, passing the order on to Lucy, the lunch chef, she said: "He’s back, the guy I told you about yesterday, who hated the raviolis."

"Is that his order?"

"Frontier, yeah. Use the gnarliest steak you have. He’ll complain anyway."

He did complain, actually calling Bonnie from across the dining-area by snapping his fingers in the air. She came over, her lips pursed.

"When I said medium-rare the funny thing is that I meant it. I didn’t want a piece of beef cooked so long it’s been turned to shoe-leather."

"I’m sorry about that. I’ll let the chef know. How is the rest of the salad?"

"You honestly want an answer to that question?" The man cocked an eyebrow and looked at Bonnie, and there was the slightest of smiles around one side of his mouth.

"I don’t know," Bonnie said. "My guess is that you have a complaint."

"The lettuce is gritty, the tomatoes are flavorless, the dressing is over-salted. The blue cheese, miraculously, tastes like blue cheese. And this wine, by the way, I wouldn’t serve at an art gallery opening. It tastes like Ribena spiked with gasoline."

"Sir, if you’d like to try something else..." The man waved her away with a dismissive backhanded gesture, then dug back into his salad. The steak, from Bonnie’s angle, looked distinctly medium-rare, but what did she know. Before she turned to leave she noticed the book he had been reading, and that now lay open, page side down, next to his plate. It was romance novel, the kind her mom used to read, with a cover illustration of a long-haired heroine in a corset, and a man with a half-ripped shirt. It was called Her Castle’s Keep.

The lunch slam had begun, and Bonnie had other tables to tend to, so it wasn’t until after the man had left, leaving behind another shockingly good tip, that Bonnie mentioned to the chef about the complaints.

"That steak was medium-rare. I remember thinking I undercooked it, if anything."

"He likes to complain. It’s his thing."

"You don’t think he’s a food critic, do you?"

"I wouldn’t know. He acts like one, but why would a food critic tear the food apart to his waitress? And why would he turn down an offer to bring him a new dish?"

"Don’t know, don’t care." Those four words, delivered in that order, were Lucy’s favorites, and had become a kind of restaurant staff mantra of late.

"Right," Bonnie said back. "Don’t know, don’t care." She didn’t either. The man’s rudeness had bothered her at first, making her feel distinctly condescended to, but now he’d become a little amusing. It was some sort of game with him, complaining about food he actually liked, and demeaning the wait-staff. At least he gave a little bit of definition to her day. She’d been a waitress at Stonewood’s Grill for over a year, and the weeks had started to blend together in a stream of indistinct faces, plates of burgers and sweet potato fries, spinach salads, and buffalo chicken wraps. So there was a little part of her hoping the obnoxious businessman would come into Stonewood’s the following day, and that they could continue their act.

He did come in the following day. After Shirley seated him at the table he requested, she hustled over to Bonnie, who was behind the bar helping Bill slice lemons. "Your boyfriend’s here," she said.

"Oh yeah. Same table?"

"You want someone else to wait on him?"

"God no. I’m looking forward to this."

Bonnie approached the table, order pad in hand. "Back again, I see," she said.

He glared at her, his menu already propped open in his hands. "Against my better judgment," he said. "I won’t ask you what you recommend, I’ll just have the soup and sandwich. Turkey club and the potato leek soup. I’ll be curious to see how your chef mangles this meal."

"I’ll be sure to pass on the message. What can I get you to drink?"

"I suppose it would be incredibly taxing to ask your bartender to make me a dry martini."

"I think he can manage. You want a twist or an olive?"

"Olive."

She delivered the food order as he’d requested, but when she asked Bill for a martini she said to make it overly sweet and with a twist. She immediately took the drink, filled to the brim, back to the man’s table and placed it ceremoniously in front of him, spilling a little onto the table. He glanced at it, took a sip, and said nothing to Bonnie. "Okay?" she asked.

"Drinkable," he replied. "But don’t get a big head about it." Then, and Bonnie couldn’t swear by it, he seemed to wink at her.

Until that moment, Stuart Pinkingham had been one more obnoxious customer, an irritation, and a story for her to tell her boyfriend at night when she got back home. But the kind words about the wrong martini and the wink had transformed him into something akin to a mystery man, a bloated unattractive version of the romantic novel hero who sweeps into town and rescues the heroine from a life of drudgery. This man was a surprise, and Bonnie, at the ripe old age of 29, had thought that surprises were a thing of the past.

Predictably, he had terrible things to say about the turkey club and especially the soup. And predictably he left an over-generous tip.

On both Thursday and Friday of that week, two gray days (winter had returned), Bonnie looked forward to Mr. Pinkingham’s noontime arrival, wondering what he’d order and what he’d have to say about it. He didn’t disappoint her either day, arriving on time, and leaving in a huff. She also enjoyed checking out the book he brought to read. It was a different paperback every lunchtime, but invariably some trashy mass-market with a salacious cover. "In a rush again today?" she asked on Friday as she collected his credit card.

"Only to get myself to a hospital and have my stomach pumped."

"It couldn’t have been that bad. You ate the whole thing."

"Tell your chef that putting cranberries in his meatloaf doesn’t make it Californian, it makes it unfit for human consumption."

"The chef is a she," Bonnie said, not for the first time.

That day he doubled the final tally of the bill, leaving her a hundred percent tip. It was the last time he came to Stonewood’s.

***

The following week she had lunches again. When he didn’t show up on Monday she assumed that he had been on a business trip, and a little part of her felt snubbed, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned on Friday that it would be his last visit to the restaurant. But late afternoon, after the lunch rush, and before the after-work crowd, two plain-clothes police officers came into the restaurant, presented their badges, then showed around a picture of Stuart Pinkingham. They showed it to Bill first, who nodded that he knew him, and directed them to Bonnie, saying she usually served him.

"You know this man?" asked the male half of the pair. He looked more like a middle-school science teacher than a police officer, wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that tilted dramatically to one side.

"Sure," Bonnie said, looking at the photograph. It was a formal portrait, Stuart Brook’s fleshy head bobbing above a Navy suit. It looked a few years old, his hairline a fraction less receded. "He came in here last week, every day, for lunch."

"Every day?"

"I think so, yeah. Why?"

"So was he in here on Friday for lunch?"

"Uh huh."

"How long was he here for?"

"He came at twelve and he left a little after one o’clock."

"You sure?"

"I am. Why?"

"How can you be positive he was in here at exactly those times. It’s busy here for lunch, isn’t it?" This was the female police officer, who did look like a police officer. She had shoulders that were about a yardstick wide and hair that looked like she got it cut at the barbershop.

"He was memorable, believe me. Plus, he came every day at the same time, right at noon, and he always left right around one o’clock, or a little after."

The police officers did not seem pleased by her response, and all three stood by the bar for several seconds in silence. "Did he do something?" Bonnie asked.

"His wife was killed Friday at about twelve-thirty."

A ripple of grim excitement went through Bonnie. "Do you think he did it?" she asked.

"Right now, he’s just a person of interest," the un-enthralled male detective said, a police radio squawking at his belt.

Over the next few days she followed the story with interest in the local papers and on the morning news. Stuart Pinkingham, an English citizen, had been comptroller of a small not-for-profit corporation that studied environmental impact. His wife, Amelia, American-born, had been an independently wealthy member of the company’s board, plus an amateur horticulturist. They had both married late in life and had no children.

They shared a three-bedroom Tudor-style house in a neighborhood of brick houses just west of the city. Mrs. Pinkingham’s mother, ninety-five years old, lived with them, occupying a self-sufficient in-law apartment toward the rear of the property. She was the one who heard the shot fired at exactly thirty-six minutes past noon on Friday. She assumed at the time that it was a car backfiring. Even if she had been concerned, there was little she could do about it; the deterioration of her lower joints meant she could not get up or down stairs.

Amelia Pinkingham had been shot in her own bedroom, one bullet through her heart. She was found by her husband, laying on the floor, next to the opened closet door. The assumption was that the murderer was hiding in the closet. When Amelia had opened the door, he fired, then took off with the weapon. No other evidence had been found.

Since the murder Stuart Pinkingham had been questioned by the police on several occasions. The media speculation had been that the murder was connected with a series of home invasions that had plagued the area over the last year-and-a-half. But there was also speculation that mild-mannered Mr. Pinkingham was guilty, and that it was only a matter of time before an arrest was made.

An entirely different police detective visited Stonewood’s Grill on Tuesday, wanting to take another statement from bar- and wait-staff, in particular from Bonnie, who reiterated her assurance that he was present at the restaurant at half past twelve.

"Is it possible he left the restaurant at any point during the meal?" The detective, a state police officer this time, asked.

"It’s possible, but not long enough to go home and shoot his wife."

"That’s not what I’m asking. All I’m asking is if it were possible that he left the restaurant for fifteen to twenty minutes in the middle of his meal. Maybe after he ordered food and before it came."

Bonnie made the gesture of thinking for a moment, even though she didn’t really need to. "No, definitely not possible. I brought him a drink. He drank it and read, and waited for his food."

The new detective glanced at his note book. He had a facial tic that pulled down one corner of his mouth when he wasn’t speaking. "Apparently you said he was memorable. Can you tell me exactly why he was?"

Bonnie told the Detective how he would order food and complain about it, then eat it all and tip big. She said he did the same thing every day.

"This started on Monday?" he asked.

"Uh huh."

"And he complained on Monday?"

"Oh yeah."

The detective’s eyes, that were like two dull marbles buried deep in a face of clay, lit up suddenly as he looked at Bonnie over his poised notebook. "Thank you very much," he said.

***

Much later, after Stuart Pinkingham had been arrested and charged with murder, and after the trial, and after Bonnie’s testimony (Stuart sitting blankly in his well-pressed suit, showing no emotion and making only occasional eye contact), and after the verdict (guilty of murder in the first degree), and the sentencing (life imprisonment without parole), after all that, Bonnie finally got the full story. What had tipped off the authorities had been the fact that he had established an alibi for each day that week. It had been clear that his behavior at Stonewood’s Grill, making himself known and remembered, was to create a solid alibi. And it had worked. The gunshot had been heard at half past twelve and Stuart Pinkingham had been eating lunch at half past twelve, complaining about his meal. His alibi could not have been tighter.

But Stuart Pinkingham had laid a trap for his wife, a gun that would go off when she opened her closet door. He knew that she often went to the closet to get a sweater before heading out of doors. And she would be heading out of doors every day that week sometime past noon and before one o’clock, since she did daily volunteer work at the local hospital and needed to be there by one. Pinkingham set the trap each morning, a gun secured to the back of the closet (they found the drill holes), its trigger activated by the door being pulled open. What had initially foiled his plan was that the week had turned out to be freakishly warm, and Amelia Pinkingham did not go to get a sweater until Friday, and colder weather, had arrived.

The gun was never found but a small pulley was, half burned in the basement wood-burning stove, presumably used as part of the mechanism for firing the gun.

What swayed the jury the most was Bonnie’s testimony. Her description of a condescending curmudgeon ran so counter to other reports of Stuart Pinkingham’s general demeanor that the jury was forced to determine that Pinkingham had been play-acting in order to establish an alibi.

Bonnie, in general, enjoyed her involvement in the case. The notoriety she had received was akin to being the prettiest girl at the party, and she liked watching Court Television to see the way she’d been drawn by the court illustrator. One day they got the color of her blouse completely wrong.

If she felt bad about anything, it was for putting the final nails in Stuart Pinkingham’s coffin. By all accounts his wife was an insufferable bitch, and he was merely trying to find a little peace in his later years. Still, he had planned and committed a cold-blooded murder. He never spoke in his own defense and never gave an interview, but reports from his jailers, and the officers he came into contact with, was that he was a perfect gentleman.

Everyone said that he rarely spoke and he never complained.