18
AARON
“Sorry, but I just can’t be certain whether Rey Mendez was in the Cave that day. It was twenty years ago, and my memory’s not what it was. A Thursday, you say?”
I put Nolene Parnell in her mid-sixties, a sturdy, moon-faced woman with deep dimples and a ready smile. She’d been working in the yard when we arrived, her cheeks pink from the exertion. A natural hostess, she’d offered us sweet tea and led us to chairs and a table set out under a pergola in the backyard. Too cold to sit outside, really, but she was doing us a favour by talking, so I gave Romi my sweater and made the best of it.
“That’s right, a Thursday.”
“Rey used to come in for a drink most afternoons.” And the rest. Nonna said he used to prop up the bar every evening too. “A hard-working man like that has to unwi
