Shame

hide her impatience. That would only prolong his questions. “Not really. I talked with Mr. Parker for about an hour. He appeared to be in a state of shock.”
    “Can you clarify that?”
    “He acted dazed. What seemed to bother him most was that the world was about to learn he was the son of Gray Parker.”
    “Did he say or do anything out of the ordinary?”
    “Where is all of this going?”
    “Please answer the question.”
    A short sigh. “He said that the man who identified himself as Mr. Sanders on the phone asked him, manipulated him even, tocome over immediately and cut down an acacia tree. I’d be curious about when that call, or even if that call, was made from the Sanderses’ house, because—”
    The detective didn’t let his interview get sidetracked. “Did Mr. Parker converse with anyone else at the doughnut shop? Pay particular attention to anyone there?”
    “No.”
    “Did he buy anything? Doughnuts? Coffee?”
    “No.”
    “What about you?”
    “I had two doughnuts. One was an old-fashioned glazed. The other was a buttermilk bar. I thought both were excellent, but I’d give a slight edge to the buttermilk bar. Now, I’d like to know—”
    “Who waited on you?”
    Elizabeth took a decorative apple out of the fruit centerpiece on the table. The apple almost felt real. She was frustrated enough to want to bite into it and leave teeth marks. “A girl. A young woman. I don’t know her name.”
    “Please describe her.”
    There. That was it. Elizabeth wanted to deny the feeling, the insight, but she knew with a certainty that this was what the detective had been leading up to. Even worse, she knew where his curiosity was taking him. Elizabeth looked at Holt’s poker face, his death mask.
    “Ms. Line?”
    “She matches the body found at the Presidio. She’s the one who was murdered.”
    Holt neither confirmed nor denied her surmise. “Could you describe this counter clerk, Ms. Line?”
    Elizabeth remembered the girl’s dimple, and her red cheeks, and her cheerful manner. But the detective wouldn’t care about those. For his report he’d want race, height, and weight first, then hair color, eye color, and any distinguishing marks.
    “White female,” she said, speaking without inflection, “five foot five inches, a hundred and twenty-five pounds.”
    Friendly. Very human in the best sense of the word. And young. So very young.
    In the same dead voice, Elizabeth continued. “She had curly light brown hair. Her hairnet didn’t hide how frizzy it was. Blue eyes, I think.”
    And that dimple. Only one. It had flashed on and off like a welcome sign.
    “Anything else?”
    Rosy cheeks, the kind that appeared on some women when they exerted themselves, even when they laughed. But in death you wouldn’t see those cheeks. They’d be muted now, white.
    “No.”
    “Did Mr. Parker interact with this woman at all?”
    “What’s her name?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “What’s the woman’s name? I don’t want to call her the doughnut girl, or the clerk, or the victim. I’d like to know her name.”
    Holt didn’t respond right away. He appeared to be deliberating on the right thing to do. Then, decided, he flipped his pad back several pages, looked, flipped over a few more, and found what he was looking for.
    “Brandy Wein,” he said.
    “As far as I know, Mr. Parker never talked to, or even looked at, Brandy.”
    “What time did you leave the doughnut shop?”
    “Ten thirty.”
    “And where was Mr. Parker?”
    “He was still seated when I left.”
    Had the son spared her like his father had? Maybe she just hadn’t given him the opportunity to kill her. Brandy Wein hadn’tknown what Elizabeth knew, had no warning. Elizabeth fought off her nausea.
    “...many other people in there?”
    She caught enough of the detective’s question to be able to answer it. “We were the only people who took a table,” she said, “but there was a steady stream of people coming in for doughnuts.”
    Elizabeth took out her own pad and started making notes. She did it to steady herself, for her sanity, but Holt was disturbed by her scratching.
    “I’d like your full attention, Ms. Line.”
    Without looking up, she said, “You’re not the only one working here, Detective. I need to make my own notes. But I’ll try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. And perhaps you’ll pay me the same courtesy.”
    “You mean like your courtesy in conveniently forgetting what kind