Honestly, I was ready for a respite from thinking about cannibals, amputations, and dead bodies-especially now that I had a juicy cheeseburger in front of me. Ralph must have been thinking something along the same line because, as he went at his beef goulash, he asked me about my hobbies, my background, steering our conversation away from the case.
“I grew up not too far from here, in Horicon. I like to rock climb, get out west to Yosemite when I can. I was a wilderness guide for a while in college, got my criminal justice degree: UW-River Falls. Ended up attending the police academy two weeks after I graduated.”
He eyed me. “And you’re what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”
“Twenty-five.”
Mentally, he did the calculations. “Then how are you a homicide detective already? A department as big as Milwaukee’s, it must usually take what, at least six, seven years on the force for that?”
I wasn’t really sure what to say. “I notice things. Thorne noticed that.”
Ralph gazed across the restaurant and gestured toward a man in a gray business suit four tables over, his empty dishes in front of him. “So, Armani over there; what do you notice about him?”
I glanced at him momentarily, then back at Ralph.
“He was expecting a petite woman whom he knows well, and whose company he enjoys, to meet him here more than twenty minutes ago. He’s disappointed that she never showed and is still holding out hope that she will. He ordered the fish and chips and a large Pepsi, drives the black Ford Explorer parked outside, isn’t a very big tipper, and is about to get a parking ticket.”
“What the-?” Ralph stared at me. “How do you know all that?”
“There were two menus on his table when we first came in. Two waters, but no one else ever showed. He ordered her a cup of coffee. He checked his watch four times and finally ordered his meal.”
“So he was expecting someone, okay, but how can you tell that it was a petite woman that he likes?”
I pointed to the main entrance on our left. “Whenever anyone comes in, he looks that way, but the door is backlit from the outside, so from where he’s sitting it’s not possible to see people’s faces when they enter. You’re left with-”
“Ah. Posture and frame.” Ralph caught on. “So, when a group of people or a man, or maybe a tall or large-framed woman enters, you’re saying he doesn’t look as closely at them.”
“But when a shorter, slimmer woman enters-”
“He watches her until she steps away from the door and isn’t backlit,” he concluded.
“Where he can see her face. Yes.” The door opened as we spoke, Armani looked that way as a six-foot-four guy lumbered in. Our man in the suit promptly glanced down at his watch.
“And you just happened to notice this while we were sitting here talking?”
“Yes.”
A pause. I took a bite of my cheeseburger. It really was good.
“But you said he knows her well. What tells you that?”
I swallowed, wiped some ketchup from my chin. “Remember the coffee on the table?”
“Yeah, he ordered it for her. So what?”
“You typically wouldn’t order coffee for someone you’re meeting for the first time and he knew she took cream and added it. You wouldn’t do that unless you’re expecting someone momentarily.”
“Cools it too quickly.”
“From what I hear, yes. And you don’t add cream to a woman’s coffee unless you know her well-it’s a bit of an intimate act. People are pretty protective about their coffee and what they put into it to…calm it. So he has-”
“A close relationship with her and he expected her right away.”
“So it seems.”
“And the Ford Explorer…Let me guess, his keys there next to the newspaper. You saw the vehicle parked out front when we came in. Guessed it was his?”
“Didn’t have to guess. You can tell by the key fob that he’s driving a rental. The Explorer out front has Maine plates and an Enterprise agreement form lying on the passenger seat.”
He blinked. “You saw that when we passed by?”
“Yes. He’s tanned; it’s November in Wisconsin.”
“And in Maine. So he’s not from either state.”
I shrugged. “Can’t tell for sure, but it helps give context.”
“And why’s he about to get a ticket?”
“Parking is strictly enforced in the blocks surrounding police headquarters.”
“Okay, I get that.” We both ate for a moment, then he stopped and lowered his heaping spoonful of goulash. “You said he had fish and chips and a Pepsi. There’s an empty tartar sauce packet on his plate, that’s easy enough. And now that I think about it, the menu lists only Pepsi products and there’s a little dark-colored pop left in his glass, so-”
“Soda.”
“What?”
“We don’t call it pop here; that’s more of a Michigan deal. We call it soda. You should also know we call drinking fountains ‘bubblers.’”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. It’s a Milwaukee thing. And yes, Pepsi is the only dark-colored soda being served today. Nowhere near as good as Cherry Coke.”
“You still haven’t explained how you know he isn’t a big tipper.”
“The cost of that meal, drink, and a coffee plus tax compared to the bills he set on the table. Only an eight percent tip.”
Ralph examined the man’s table once again, this time even more closely. “But there aren’t any bills there.”
“His server already picked them up.”
He looked at me incredulously. “You’re saying she came by before I even asked you to prove that you notice things?”
“Yes.
“And you calculated all that then-the tip, everything?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know any of that would be pertinent to anything?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then how-”
I notice things.
I shrugged. “Luck, I guess.”
He opened his mouth as if he were going to reply, then closed it again and chose to go for some beef goulash instead.
Moving past the topic of the guy at the table and following along with our discussion from earlier, I asked Ralph what he did before joining the FBI.
“I was in the Army for a while. Rangers. Bunch of missions in the Middle East.” He was wolfing down his goulash in between words. “Man, I can’t believe you counted up what bills he laid on the table.”
Earlier, he’d referred to a guy watching a chick flick with his wife, and he wore a wedding ring. “So, married?”
“Yeah. Three years.”
“Kids?”
“No. You?”
“No kids, no wife. I am seeing someone though. Actually, today is the one-year anniversary of when we first met.”
He raised his coffee cup. “In that case, lunch is on me.”
I thought again about how I would be having dinner with Taci tonight, discussing something that she wanted to talk about in private, but I didn’t mention that, simply accepted Ralph’s toast. “Thanks.”
We were both well into our meals now and I brought up the topic I’d been curious about since we first met in the police headquarters lobby. “Ralph, I gotta ask you something.”
“Shoot.” He was in the middle of a bite of goulash.
I indicated toward his turtleneck. “No overstarched oxford. No tie.” I figured maybe he didn’t wear one because of the thickness of his neck and his broad chest-that any tie he wore would’ve ended up looking like a clown tie and his supervisors didn’t want that. “Isn’t it pretty much a uniform for guys who are Feds?”
“Got an exemption. I can’t stand the idea of wearing a giant arrow pointing to my groin all day.”
“Oh.”
He looked at me slightly suspiciously. “I mean, can you?”
“Um, no. Of course not.” Man, was I glad I didn’t have a tie on today either. “And when you put it that way, I don’t think I’ll ever look at ties the same way again.”
He took a giant mouthful of food. “It seems kind of desperate to me, a pretty blatant invitation to draw people’s attention to…Well, it’s kind of like-” He was talking with his mouth full of goulash again. “So, my wife, her best friend has this teenage daughter.”
“Right.”
“The kid is always wearing shorts with words written on the butt. What is that about? ‘Syracuse’? Are you serious? I could never respect a college that’s so desperate for students that it needs to advertise itself on the butts of teenage girls.”
Hmm. That was actually a pretty good point.
“And then she wears these sweatpants with ‘Cute’ back there. Is that supposed to be referring to…?”
“Um…Probably. Yeah.” I thought of a time I’d seen a girl wearing shorts with ALL-STAR imprinted on the rump and I realized I didn’t even want to know what she was trying to tell the world.
He shook his head. “I’ll just say this: I’d be at a loss with a teenage daughter. They’re a complete mystery to me. I’d be clueless.”
“You and me both.”
Ralph finished inhaling the goulash and I polished off my cheeseburger. We ate quickly so we could get back to the department, then headed out the door, past the Ford Explorer by the curb.
There was a parking ticket tucked beneath the windshield wiper.