Read Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) for Free Online

salmon. She has a couple of additions and special requests, but nothing too complicated. Danny just repeats everything she says, smiling as he pretends to successfully commit it to memory.
    “And for you, sir?”
    “I’ll start with the special salad. But I don’t want the cheese, and maybe half as many croutons as normally would be served.”
    He’s still nodding.
    “I’d like kalamata olives instead of black ones, pitted, and let’s add cherry tomatoes, shaved carrots, and red onions.”
    Still nodding.
    “Is there oregano on the special salad?” I can see Laurie rolling her eyes, but I can’t stop now.
    He shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask the chef.”
    I nod. “Please do. I’m violently allergic to oregano,” I lie. “I can get oregano poisoning and go into spasm. You can substitute basil.”
    “Basil doesn’t make him spasm,” Laurie adds.
    “Right, basil,” I say. “No, on second thought make it thyme. In fact, the chef can throw in parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”
    “What kind of dressing do you have?” I ask, and he reels off about ten of them. “See if the chef will mix the balsamic and lemon vinaigrettes. And I’ll have that on the side.”
    I torture him even more on the main course, Mediterranean chicken, changing everything about it except the shape of the plate it comes on. Even with all that, I can’t get him to cave and write things down.
    When he leaves, Laurie says, “That was quite a performance. What are you going to do if he gets it wrong?”
    “I’m going to be really annoyed.”
    “What if he gets it right?”
    “I’ll be even more annoyed. All I really wanted was onion soup and a hamburger.”
    She laughs. “You could use some serious mental therapy.”
    “Maybe I’ll have Tara come visit me,” I say. “Which brings me to Nicky Fats.”
    I tell her everything that has transpired. Laurie had worked on the original case with me; it was one of our first times working together, and preceded our romantic involvement.
    She had left the police force just a few months before working with me on the case, and definitely retained a pro-prosecution attitude. If someone was arrested, she felt it was probably for a good reason. I think deep down she still has that feeling, though it has lessened considerably. Especially since she herself was once wrongly arrested and subjected to a murder trial.
    I’m sure she believed Joey to be guilty at the time, though I don’t think she ever verbalized it. So I’m surprised when I finish my spiel and she says, “I’ll help you look into it, Andy.”
    “You think there could be something to it?”
    “I doubt it,” she says. “But we really never dug into Solarno’s life.”
    I nod. “I know. That’s been bothering me.”
    “We had very little time,” she says. “We had to make choices, and we made the logical ones. But that doesn’t mean we were right. So we make up for it now. But Nicky’s death doesn’t figure to tie into this.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because you were alone with him, and he was dead before you told anyone what he said. It seems unlikely that with his shaky mind he called someone in and said, ‘You’ll never guess what I just told Andy Carpenter.’ And even less likely that the person killed him for it.”
    “You’re right,” I say, “but it still bothers me.”
    “Because of the apparent coincidence.”
    I nod. “Yes, that. But one other thing. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and Nicky is sitting there watching television. I doubt that he’d left that place in a month. He had crusted sauce on his shirt that looked like it was there since the Capone era.”
    “So?”
    “So all of a sudden he decides to take a shower? Was he getting ready for a date? Where was he going, the senior prom?”
    “I’m not sure the ‘why would he take a shower’ defense would work on appeal. We might need something more.”
    “That’s why I chose to live with a crack