My Name Is Venus Black(63)

The idea of a warm bar sounds like heaven to Tony, and the plan is worth a shot.

Before they hang up, Marco has another good idea. “Pretend to be looking for this Tinker Miller—and you’ll have a better shot at talking about the family without mentioning Leo directly.”

Tony gets back in his truck and scours his messy glove box for his work gloves—which of course aren’t there. The atlas back home had said nothing of this kind of cold in Everett. He begins to drive down Broadway slowly, looking for a bar that seems crowded but not new. He doesn’t want to find a bunch of young people too interested in one another to notice him. He’s after geezers and barflies, the kind who love a story and like to gossip.



It takes some driving around to find a bar that looks like a fit. The Pine Tavern smells like a mix of musty carpet, beer, and sweaty men. There are maybe twelve people in the place, mostly men, sitting up at the bar. Tony takes a seat at the bar near the middle. The bartender is male, pasty-faced, thirties. He’s already working on a beer gut.

Tony immediately overhears a customer call him Gary.

“Want a menu?” Gary asks. Tony can tell he hopes not.

“No thanks,” says Tony. “Let’s just start with a beer. Budweiser. Damn, it’s cold out there…so make it a warm one,” he adds.

Gary doesn’t even smile.

Tony decides he should be direct. “Can I ask you something?” he says when Gary places his beer in front of him.

“I suppose,” the guy replies, like he’s already bored.

“I’m looking for a guy who used to live around here and might have worked as a cook in a tavern or restaurant.”

“I’ve been here for ten years,” Gary says. “So shoot. What’s his name?”

“Name’s Tinker Miller.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Sounds like a fairy. Tinker Bell.”

“Sometimes he goes by Phil Brown,” Tony explains. “His real first name is Thomas.”

The bartender pretends to think. Shakes his head. “Can’t help you there.”

“I think he was related to that same Miller guy who got shot some years back by a teenaged girl,” Tony blurts out. Was that too much too soon?

But the reference grabs Gary’s attention. He grins. “Shit, yeah,” he says, suddenly animated. “That was fucked up.” Tony notices Gary’s got a big lump behind his lower lip. A plug of chewing tobacco.



“Yeah?” Tony is hoping for more without having to pry. He also wishes Gary would turn down the Kiss song that’s blaring from an overhead speaker.

“Take it you’re not from around here.”

Tony shakes his head. “From California. Tony’s my name,” he says, extending his hand like he would to a customer of his own.

Gary shakes it, but Tony can tell he thinks it’s weird.

Before Tony can think of how to get more details, Gary proudly offers them on a platter. “Yeah. Man, when word got out what happened—the town went crazy with gossip. Story was the stepdaughter shot her stepfather, blew his brains out all over their garage.”

“Aw, c’mon,” complains a guy sitting two down from Tony. “Some of us are trying to drink here.”

“She claimed he was abusive, so some people think she did a good thing. I think she should have fried for it.”

“Wow. So what happened to her?” Tony wishes now that he’d taken the time to wade through the microfiche to see what eventually happened to the unnamed thirteen-year-old.

“Hell, they just sent her to some kiddie prison, is what I heard. She’s already out, too. Was a big article in the Herald a while back. Lots of folks still think she should have got tried as an adult, locked up a lot longer.”

This is interesting. Maybe tomorrow, Tony can go back to the library and read more-recent stories.

For now he tries to steer things toward Leo’s mother. “What about the Miller mother? Any chance you know what happened to her?”

“I know their kid went missing. I doubt she stuck around.” Gary pauses then and cocks his head at Tony. “You got a lot of questions, fellow. For being new to town.” Then he goes around a corner, and Tony hears him spit.

“Just trying to find my man,” Tony calls out. He gulps at his beer. It’s time to back off. When Gary reappears, he asks, “Motel around here where I can land?”



“Lots of bedbug traps,” offers Gary. “But the Pacific Hotel is nice, and not too far from here.” He gives Tony brief directions. At first, Tony worries it will be too expensive, but once he flirts with the desk clerk, the price isn’t as bad as he feared. The last thing he needs is something itching. He hadn’t even realized bedbugs were real.





Inez wakes up on Friday wishing she could sleep in for once. Her work starts at 9:00 A.M. but she’s always awake by 6:00. It looks nice outside, but she knows it’s probably freezing, at least in the low thirties. When she opens the front door to get the Everett Herald, a blast of frigid air cuts right through her robe.

She grabs the newspaper off the porch steps and hurries back inside. She turns up the heat, sets the paper on the kitchen counter, and proceeds to make coffee. While she waits for it to brew, she allows herself to read only the front page. The rest must wait until she takes her coffee to her reading spot in the living room.