Part 9 (1/2)

”First Sophie has to go away for who knows how long. Then the Lance of Justice gets murdered here. Now this?” Phil slapped the menu down on the table and frowned. He sat next to Ruben, a forty-something guy with coal-dark hair and a scar on his left cheek. Ruben sat next to Dale, the oldest of the four regulars, a thin guy with a bent back and a quick smile. Dale looked at Stan, an African American with salt-and-pepper hair and dark-rimmed gla.s.ses, who slipped my new and improved (albeit abbreviated at such short notice) menu out from under Phil's hand, read it over, and shook his head sadly.

”No meatb.a.l.l.s and rice?” Stan asked and added, ”Alice is going to her sister's tonight and she's not going to be home to make dinner. I wanted something nice and filling to hold me over. I had my heart set on meatb.a.l.l.s and rice.”

”But the lentil and quinoa salad is excellent,” I told him, and pointed down to where it was listed. Between waiting for the food delivery from the supplier I'd made a frantic call to, listening to George grumble about how I'd lost my mind, and giving Denice and Inez a crash course in describing our new dishes, I hadn't had a lot of time. I'd handwritten fifteen entree lists and instructed the staff that diners would have to share the menus just like Phil, Ruben, Dale, and Stan were. The menus were a little more informal than I liked, but my handwriting was decent, and the paper I'd chosen from the stack under Sophie's printer was crisp and blindingly white. The menu made a statement: casual without being fried egg sandwiches. Personal and fresh.

Just like I envisioned our new and very much improved menu.

”The braised salmon with leeks and sumac is fabulous,” I told the four men, and hoped I was right. I'd left George in the kitchen with detailed instructions on how to cook the dish and trusted that when someone finally ordered it, he'd come through. ”My supplier just delivered the salmon and it's as fresh as it's going to get in this part of the country and-”

Ruben drew in a long breath. ”I can't help myself. I miss the smell of fried onions. George isn't frying any onions today. What's up with that?”

”It doesn't have anything to do with the Lance of Justice dying here, does it?” Dale asked. ”Good man. Such a shame. You're not the one who found him, are you?”

”She's the one who changed the menu.” Phil crossed beefy arms over his round belly. ”I'm thinking that says something right there. h.e.l.l in a handbasket. The place is going to h.e.l.l in a handbasket.”

It was.

Precisely why I'd decided to switch things up.

”They got pastrami on the menu today over at Caf-Fiends,” Ruben said. ”Saw the flyer up in their window when I parked my car down the street. I don't know about you guys . . .” He pushed his chair back from the table. ”But pastrami sounds better than this la-di-da stuff.”

Truth be told, my menu selections weren't all that la-di-da. But they were, apparently, a deal breaker.

I hoped when I sighed I didn't sound as defeated as I felt.

My words clipped behind my gritted teeth, I informed our regulars that while our specials were what we were featuring that day, of course they could also order off the old menu. When I walked away, I heard them giving Denice their orders: one burger, one fried bologna with extra onions, two meatb.a.l.l.s with rice.

The good news was that our four regulars were the beginning of a little minirush. The other good news was that the people who did show up had apparently caught wind of my new rule about loitering and not ordering. The bad news? Like our regulars, they turned their noses up at the new menu.

Three tables, three reporters at each. They ordered coffee.

Two other tables of elderly ladies, there to pay homage to Jack. They ordered pie.

A single man at a table by himself in the corner. I went over to see what I could do for him.

I saw that the man had the lentil and quinoa salad and breathed a sigh of relief. At least someone around here was willing to take chances, even if he had just picked at his lunch and half of it was left on the plate. He had his money counted out and on the table with his bill.

I reached for it. ”I can take that for you.”

He slapped a hand over the stack of singles. ”Denice waited on me. I want Denice to get this tip.”

”She will. I promise. I'm just helping out because she's busy right now.”

As if to prove me right, Denice whizzed by with a tray full of coffee cups for our resident reporters. She called out, ”Be with you in a sec, Marvin,” and hurried over to the tables along the back windows.

Marvin glanced up at me. ”I'll wait for Denice,” he said.

It looked like he might have to wait for a while. Another man walked into the restaurant and didn't wait to be shown a table. He was young, maybe twenty, with thick, curly hair the color of beach sand, and he was slim and wiry. His tan Carhartt jacket was open over worn jeans and a white T-s.h.i.+rt. He sauntered over to a table in the corner and flopped right down.

Denice was busy. Inez was back in the kitchen. I went over to greet the young man.

”Can I get you something to drink?” I asked him.

”Waiting for . . .” He lifted a hand toward where Denice was refilling coffee cups at one of the tables filled with elderly women. ”Uh, Denice. I just wanted to tell her . . .” The kid was obviously not used to casually shooting the breeze. In fact, he was so nervous talking to me, his voice rose just a tad. ”I got a computer she's been looking at. I wanted her to know. You know, so she doesn't go out and buy one for herself. I got it,” he said again. ”And, Denice, I need to tell her that. She's . . . she's my mom.”

”Oh.” Not the most graceful of replies, but I had a good excuse. I'd known George, Denice, and Inez for a little more than twenty-four hours, and except to know that Inez's Mauro was three and inclined to tummy problems and that George hated Jack Lancer and had a tendency to tip the bottle, we hadn't gotten to the personal stage yet.

”I didn't know Denice had a son,” I told the young man. ”I'm Laurel.”

It took him a few seconds to realize it was his turn. The kid scratched a hand along the back of his neck. ”Ronnie,” he said. His gaze followed his mom when she zoomed around the reporters' tables, refilling coffee cups and asking them (I knew it wasn't for the first time) if they'd like to look over the menu. ”I'll . . . uh . . . wait for . . . uh . . . her.”

Apparently, it was the theme of the day, because Marvin repeated his intention of waiting, too, when I went back to his table and told him I could get him his change while Denice was busy.

Fine.

I caught Denice's eye and pointed to Marvin so she'd know he was set to check out, and she'd just headed that way when Gus Oberlin walked in.

Three tables, three reporters each, remember.

That meant nine news-hungry types, and they all jumped out of their seats at the same time and hurried over to surround Gus. Phil, Dale, Ruben, and Stan didn't want to miss a thing; they got up and went over there, too, and the old ladies sc.r.a.ped back their chairs and bent their heads so they wouldn't miss a word.

Denice was trapped on one side of the restaurant and I was on the other, and I hated to make a customer feel trapped, too. I threw caution to the wind and scooped Marvin's bill up off the table, told him I'd be right back with his change, and squeezed through the crowd gathered around Gus and to the cash register in the waiting area. By the time I repeated the procedure in the other direction (squeeze, sidestep, squeeze some more), and got back to Marvin's table, he was gone. To the men's room, I imagined, since there was no way he could have gotten out the front door without me noticing. I left his $1.75 change near his coffee cup and, my mission complete, I strode over to break up the press frenzy.

”You're going to need to take this outside,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the questions the reporters threw at Gus. ”This is not a press room, it's a restaurant. And you're disturbing our customers.” (This, of course, was not precisely true since our few customers-except for the old ladies-were part of the crowd.) ”Outside, people. Now.”

Since it was the most I'd said to any of them since they'd walked in, the reporters (I noticed Kim Kline was one of them) apparently took this as a sign that I'd had some sort of change of heart. A couple of them turned to me, tape recorders on, pens poised above notebooks.

”Do you think he really did it?” a man asked. ”Owen Quilligan, do you think he really-”

I spun away and found myself face-to-face with a woman in a pink suit. ”Tell us what it was like, that moment of cold awareness when you looked into Jack Lancer's dead eyes and saw-”

When I turned away from her and found my nose pressed into a yellow-and-orange-striped tie stained with coffee splatters, I was actually relieved.

”Detective Oberlin.” I nodded my h.e.l.lo.

”Ms. Inwood.” When Gus nodded, it reminded me of one of those National Geographic videos of a glacier inching its way toward the ocean. ”I just wanted to . . .”

Whatever he wanted to do, he didn't want to tell me in front of the crowd. Gus motioned me toward the office and we edged out of the pack and made our way over there. Before I shut the door behind us I noticed some of the reporters had already sat back down. A few others went outside, no doubt to lay a trap for Gus the moment he walked out the door.

”Just need to go over things again,” the detective said.

”Sure.” I motioned him toward Sophie's one and only guest chair, then realized it was piled with papers. I gathered them up and set them on the floor, then invited Gus to sit.

”Not staying,” he said. ”Just wanted to ask about that umbrella stand.”

The office was tiny and Gus took up most of it. Since he didn't sit down, I didn't, either, and we stood toe-to-toe. Or more precisely toes of his scuffed black loafers to toes of my snakeskin flats.