Cold Day in Hell by Richard Hawke Page B

by. He moved like a lava flow, nabbing three pastries at once and continuing on without a word. “Lots of people here were very fond of Robin,” Martha continued. “I guess you could tell that. The community really rallied around her when all that horrible trial stuff began happening. Except we didn’t see a lot of Robin during most of that. She wasn’t going out much, it was too big a hassle for her. The way she was being hounded. But we’d get word how she was doing from Edward.”
    “Edward?”
    “He’s the elder who spoke about Robin in meeting.”
    “The guy with the mustache?”
    “Yes.”
    I scanned the crowd and found the man in question standing in conversation with the Asian American woman who’d been crying off and on during the meeting. Another man was standing just behind them, leaning against the wall with his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his faded jeans, as if hoping to be mistaken for James Dean. He was about my height and build, with longish stringy blond hair, a narrow nose and a noticeably small mouth. There was a slightly rodentlike quality to his face, and he appeared to be following the conversation closely, though I couldn’t tell if he was part of it or merely eavesdropping. The man named Edward was impassioned, punctuating his words by slapping the back of one hand down into the other, over and over.
    “You say he’s an elder?” I asked Martha. “Obviously you’re not talking about his age. Does that mean he’s a muckety-muck in the Quaker hierarchy?”
    She laughed. “I guess you could put it that way. Edward is one of our leaders. We call them elders.”
    “And you’re saying that he stayed in touch with Robin while she was going through her difficulties?”
    “We’re a community. We’re a family. That’s part of the role of the elders, to be available to members of the family who are in distress.”
    “Does Edward have a last name?”
    “Well, of course he does. It’s Anger.” I gave her a look. “No, I’m serious. That’s his name.”
    “Ed
Anger
?”
    “Edward Anger. You say it enough times, it sounds completely normal.”
    I looked over again at Edward Anger. He’d taken the young woman’s hands between his. “Who’s the woman?”
    “Oh, that’s Michelle,” Martha said. “Michelle Poole. She’s a friend of Robin’s.”
    Edward Anger released the woman’s hands and steered himself into the crowd. I turned to Martha. “Permission to unvolunteer.”
    She gave me a peculiar look, then laughed. “Oh. Sure. Thank you for helping. It was nice meeting you, Fritz.”
    “Same.” I swung around from behind the table and made my way across the room. The rat-faced James Dean was on his way to the food table. Our shoulders bumped by accident, but only one of us murmured, “Sorry.” Not him.
    I stepped over to Robin’s friend. “Michelle?”
    “Yes?”
    “Hi. My name is Fritz,” I said. “I understand you were a friend of Robin’s.”
    Her face could have been a piece of porcelain. Not a blemish to be found. Her jet-black hair was cut in one of those forever-mussed styles—in Michelle’s case, an “I might look like I just rolled out of bed but don’t I look great” look. Her eyes were quite large, particularly for a person of Asian extraction, her mouth was small, her cheeks liable to cause riots among women of weaker bones. She was wearing a stylishly ripped T-shirt, one side way down off the shoulder, over a black leotard and a pair of faded blue jeans that might as well have been wrapped around two pipes as a pair of human legs.
    She eyed me with caution. “Yes.”
    “I was wondering if we could talk.”
    The caution melded into clear suspicion. “About Robin?”
    “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into what happened to Robin. It would be wonderful if—”
    She interrupted me. “I know who you are.”
    “You do?”
    “You’re the detective. You live across the street from Robin’s.”
    “I don’t actually live