Refrigerator White

Refrigerator White

An Arthur Quinn Mystery

By Bill Williams

Chapter One- Introducing the Late Leslie Stewart

A pair of pillow- shaped pieces of ice skittered across the stone floor as I drove the fifty gallon ice bucket into the edge of the floor mat behind the bar. Ignoring the errant pieces, I picked the heavy cannister up by the handles and walked to the nearest ice well. With a flip of the hip, the contents of the bucket crushed into the well and I put the empty can back on the rollers. Setting up the bar was something I had done a few hundred times before. It had lost its charm some time ago.

I was heading back to the kitchen for another load of ice when I heard what sounded like crying. I would have been better off if I had kept moving, but Mondays can be full of unrelentingly bad news.

The glass door to the restrooms and telephones swung wide on easy hinges as I leaned into the little hallway. Leslie Stewart was holding her cell phone in her right hand and looked like she was trying to hold herself together with her left. She was about five and half feet tall with a pretty face and a slender built. Leslie was ghostly white and the black of her shirt and pants highlighted her pale skin. She reminded me of Snow White's repressed accountant of a sister. Her head turned as I walked in.

"I gotta go, Ami," she said.

"Sorry if I'm butting in, but..."

"Quinn, I'm sorry."

I beamed the cowboy smile her way, "I just thought I heard something."

Leslie wiped her eyes. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What kind of fucking guy just fucking fucks you and doesn't fucking call?" I sighed, feeling my face tighten, until now I hadn't been sure that Leslie knew the f-word existed. "I dunno. Guys with no morals."

Leslie's eyes started leaking and she shook for a second or two. Before I knew it, I had my arms around her and she was absentmindedly wiping her face across my chest leaving a faint makeup trail across my starched white T-shirt. The world stopped for us in the little hallway as she cried it out. After a few minutes, she started breathing normally again and pulled away saying, "I'm pregnant."

I was glad she was backing off. In the back of my head, I was afraid it might have been contagious. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure," she said. "I'm late."

"Are you sure? I mean do you always..." My thought faded away having brushed into that no man's land that we all avoid.

"Usually, I'm regular as clockwork."

My face twisted as I looked for the right thing to say. Coming up short, I said, "Whoops."

"Whoops is right," she said.

"So what are you going to do?"

Leslie stared off into space as if she was looking at a list of options hanging just behind my head. She was wearing tan lipstick. "I have to decide, don't I?"