Diner Knock Out (A Rose Strickland Mystery Book 4)

Praise for the Rose Strickland Mystery Series

DINERS, DIVES & DEAD ENDS (#1)

“Austin’s debut kicks off her planned series by introducing a quirky, feisty heroine and a great supporting cast of characters and putting them through quite a number of interesting twists.”

–
Kirkus Reviews

“With twists, turns and surprises that left me hanging on right to the end, I couldn’t put it down. I absolutely can’t wait to see what is in store for Rose and her quirky friends next.”

–
Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

“I strongly recommend picking a copy up to read this summer. I know I am looking forward to reading more books by this author. Five stars out of five.”

–
Examiner.com

LAST DINER STANDING (#2)

“Austin’s second course has the menu of feisty underemployed gal detective with a side order of romance down pat.”

–
Kirkus Reviews

“Fast, fun, and full of laughs!
Last Diner Standing
has it all—mystery, action, and a spicy dash of romance...a must-read!

– Ann Charles,

Award-Winning Author of the Deadwood Mystery Series

“No sophomore slump here in the second book starring spitfire Rose Strickland….This fast-paced and action-filled story kept me plowing through the pages as fast as I could because I had to know what happens next in this thrilling and riveting drama.

–
Dru’s Book Musings

DINER IMPOSSIBLE (#3)

“Set your phasers on humor! Author Terri L. Austin deftly juggles cops, criminals, and Klingons in
Diner Impossible
and leaves us with an ending guaranteed to delight Rose Strickland fans. This series will live long and prosper!”

– Diane Vallere,

Author of the Style & Error and Madison Night Mystery Series

“Rose slips into her amateur sleuth persona and the fun begins. I urge you to tag along. I promise you’ll have a grand old time.”

–
CriminalElement.com

“
Diner Impossible
by Terri L. Austin does not disappoint. Great characters in funny situations, a little romance, and a well-written mystery that will surprise you at the end!”

– Kate Shannon,

Rantin’ Ravin’ and Reading

“I loved the first two books in this series…But I think the third one, may be the best yet. The ending has an interesting twist and I can’t wait to see where Ms. Austin takes Rose in the next book. Five stars out of five.”

—
Examiner.com

DINER KNOCK OUT (#4)

“Rose’s impulsive nature is never overshadowed by common sense, and her quick wit and humor guarantee that readers will be delighted by this action-packed mystery.”

–
Kings River Life Magazine

“Full of lots of twists and turns, which made for a very exciting read….I will definitely be reading more from this author. Highly recommended!”

–
Obsessed Book Reviews

Books in the Rose Strickland Mystery Series

by Terri L. Austin

Novels

DINERS, DIVES & DEAD ENDS (#1)

LAST DINER STANDING (#2)

DINER IMPOSSIBLE (#3)

DINER KNOCK OUT (#4)

Novellas

DINERS KEEPERS, LOSERS WEEPERS

(in HEARTACHE MOTEL)

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Copyright

DINER KNOCK OUT

A Rose Strickland Mystery

Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection

First Edition

Kindle edition | October 2015

Henery Press

www.henerypress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Copyright © 2015 by Terri L. Austin

Author photograph by Lauren Snedden

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Related subjects include: cozy mysteries, women sleuths, murder mystery series, whodunit mysteries (whodunnit), humorous murder mysteries, book club recommendations, amateur sleuth books.

ISBN-13: 978-1-943390-11-3

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

A big thanks to the readers.

I appreciate your taking time out of your life to have

an adventure with Rose and the gang.

Mwah!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to all the team at Henery Press. I love your dedication and appreciate your hard work. To my beta readers and crit partners—you little vixens know who you are—thank you so much!

Chapter 1

Just for the record, patience isn’t a virtue. It’s a cop-out. I suspected the first person who coined the phrase had a high threshold for boredom. To me, patience equaled sitting on your ass, waiting for something to happen. And what if it never did? What if I sat and waited—patiently, virtuously—and life passed me by? Personally, I preferred to take fate into my own hands. My new boss, however, didn’t share my proactive philosophy.

Case in point: I’d been caged in this sweltering car, trapped with a very serious, very
patient
Andre “Hardass” Thomas for so long, my butt cheeks were starting to go numb.

“How much more time are we going to give this guy?” I asked. “We’ve been sitting here all afternoon.”

Andre and I were staking out Ted Benson, husband of client Camila Benson, who suspected her husband was doing the nasty with another woman. But we’d fine-toothed every number on his cell, both incoming and outgoing. They were all legit.

While he was at work, Camila had given us access to his laptop. Other than a couple of standard porn sites, we found nothing illicit. No communication with another woman. Or man, for that matter. Still, Camila remained adamant. According to her, Ted had become preoccupied, distant, and they hadn’t been intimate in weeks.

Despite that, I wasn’t convinced he was cheating. After all, Ted and Cam seemed very ordinary to me. Very vanilla, much like their three-bedroom house with the white on white décor and their vegetarian, yoga-for-couples lifestyle. In a word, bland.

Nevertheless, Andre had spent the week tracking Ted from his home to the hospital, where he worked as a lab tech, then back again. No stops along the way, no shady behavior. As far as I could tell, Mr. Vanilla was keeping it in his pants.

But this afternoon, Ted altered his routine. After work he stopped by Ernie’s, a small bar on South Oak, and had been there ever since. For just as long, Andre and I had been parked along the curb beneath the broiling sun. I felt like a day-old fast food burger underneath a heat lamp.

“This guy is entrenched,” I said. “He’s probably in there watching baseball or something. Why don’t we just plant a GPS tracker on his car? Wouldn’t that be simpler?” Yes. It would. But Andre was insistent about training me in old school “police procedure.” The fact that he was no longer a desk cop apparently hadn’t sunk in yet.

“Do you find this boring, Miss Strickland?” Andre used that tightly controlled voice of his. The one that made my eyebrow twitch. “Is there somewhere else you’d rather be?”

Um…
yes
, as a matter of fact. I’d rather be almost anywhere. Except maybe the dentist. Or my parents’ house. Anywhere but locked in a car with Andre and his sparkling personality.

For the last forty-five minutes, I’d been fighting a full bladder and an empty stomach. Plus, wilting in all this heat and humidity was making me cranky. Unlike me, Andre never showed emotion or discomfort. He hadn’t shifted his position once, appearing as fresh and crisp as when we started this little excursion. His light blue button-down didn’t show a wrinkle. He never touched the bottle of unopened water at his side. He just sat. And waited. It wasn’t natural.

Yet for all his robotic ways, Hardass wasn’t hard on the eyes. In fact, if he could unbend his spine an inch or two, he’d be very attractive. His skin was the color of coffee spiked with heavy cream. High cheekbones and a chiseled jaw gave him a hot, rugged look. His sculpted lips could have been considered sensual if he ever stopped pressing them into a thin line of disapproval. And his lean, ropy muscles spoke of long hours in the gym. In theory, Andre should be quite a delicious package. But I wasn’t even tempted. He was too straight-laced for my taste—a tall glass of lukewarm tap water. Boy Scouts never appealed to me. I liked the bad boys. In fact, the badder the better.

When my stomach gave an embarrassing, protracted growl, I grabbed my purse and started digging through the contents. I shoved my hand past my wallet and a can of pepper spray to pull out an empty box of Tic Tacs. “Damn. Not even one mint.”

“Instead of focusing on food, tell me what you see.” I glanced over at him. We’d played this “tell me what you see game” often, and he never seemed to tire of it.

I kept digging through my purse and in a corner heard the rattle of cellophane. I snatched it out and grinned. “A fortune cookie.” I didn’t know how long it had been hiding in my hobo bag—could have been weeks, could have been years. At this point, I didn’t care. “Want half?”

He’d clipped dark lenses over his glasses so I couldn’t read the disdain in his eyes, but I could feel it. “No. Thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” Since the cookie had been mostly crushed, I poured the broken pieces into my mouth as though I hadn’t eaten in weeks. Then I read the little slip of paper. “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

No shit, Fortune Cookie Gods.
Tell me something I don’t know.

My name is Rose Strickland—Rosalyn, if you’re my mother or the IRS. I’m a twenty-four-year-old waitress and have been a part-time college student for, oh…ever. But I was taking a hiatus this summer. For the last couple of months, after my shift at the diner, I’d change into my superhero outfit—black slacks and whatever dressy, thrift store blouse happened to be clean that day—and head over to the Thomas Detective Agency to work with Andre. Although “working with” was a broad definition. Technically, I wasn’t a detective. Not even an associate. I was nothing more than an office lackey and occasional sidekick. To be honest, this gig had turned into a real brain drain.

When Andre first approached me about working for him, I had visions of myself kicking in doors, trailing bad guys, solving crime all rogue style. I wore tight jeans and high-heeled boots in this scenario. I’d naively thought this job would be exciting.

It wasn’t.

At the very least, the cases should be interesting.

They weren’t.

Despite the fact that I’d solved a few mysteries on my own—successfully, I might add—Andre wouldn’t take off the training wheels. Consequently, I wound up doing a lot of filing, performing background checks, and every once in a while, tagging along with my new mentor. It was the polar opposite of exciting.

“What do you see, Miss Strickland?”

I squirmed in my seat and finally crossed my legs. If I didn’t find a bathroom soon, this wouldn’t end well. “I see six cars parked on the opposite side of the street. The same cars that have been sitting here since we pulled up. Five cars in the parking lot. The windows to the bar are shuttered, and I can’t see what’s going on inside.” I glanced at the four-way stoplight in front of us. “Traffic’s moving slowly, but it’s six thirty on a Thursday evening so that’s not surprising.”

“Is that all?”

I banged my head against the back of the seat. “I’ve made a note of all the plate numbers from the cars in the lot. I’ve clocked eleven people entering the bar since we’ve been here—all on foot. No one’s exited in the last hour.”

“What should be our next course of action?”

“I can only speak for myself, but I’m going inside to use the restroom. If you have a problem with that, take it up with management.” I hopped out of the car before he could protest and jaywalked across the street.

A neighborhood watering hole, Ernie’s squatted in the middle of Huntingford’s south side business district and was only a five-minute hike from Huntingford General—where Ted Benson worked.

A fun fact about Huntingford, Missouri: people who depended on state aid went to General. Those with healthy bank accounts checked into its north side counterpart, Huntingford Memorial. That pretty much summed up my town in a nutshell. Wealthy citizens lived uptown, while the rest of us eked out a living south of Apple Tree Boulevard.  

As I walked through the bar’s parking lot, I dodged potholes as big as moon craters. The remaining blacktop had melted into a gooey mess, leaving the soles of my flats tacky with tar. Good thing I wasn’t wearing kick-ass boots, now wasn’t it? That’s me, Rose Strickland, finder of silver linings.

I pulled open the glass door and stepped into the dim interior, taking a minute to stand in place and drink up the cool, dry air. I drew a few glances from the patrons before they quickly lost interest in me.

Lynyrd Skynyrd played over the speakers, almost drowning out the hum of voices, and flashing neon beer signs livened up the dingy walls. The after-work crowd from the hospital was here to represent. Men and women dressed in colorful scrubs sat at various tables and noshed on fried cheese sticks. My stomach growled in protest. That fortune cookie wasn’t cutting it.

A gaggle of mechanics, wearing grease-smeared t-shirts, sat at the bar and watched the ballgame on an ancient TV anchored to the ceiling. No big screen for Ernie’s.

As I scanned the place, I noticed my boy, Ted Benson, was MIA. I headed to the far side of the bar to make use of the facilities. And as I entered the small alcove, I shot a glance at the men’s room. I wanted to report back to Andre that I’d exhausted every possibility in my search for Ted, so I walked to the door and eased it open, taking a peek inside. Fortunately, the urinals were empty. Smelly, too. The floor…ugh. Why did men have such terrible aim? Was it really that hard to point and shoot?

The door to the only stall stood open. I looked inside, just to be thorough. No Ted.

He had to be out back, having a smoke or a breath of fresh air. His wife hadn’t mentioned a nicotine habit, but maybe he was hiding it. She seemed extremely health-conscious. Was this Ted’s big secret? An occasional beer and cig? Mr. Vanilla—living on the edge.

After using the ladies’, I returned to the main room and spotted an exit near the pool table. Stepping outside, I glanced up and down the side street. There was no sign of him anywhere. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach.

Damn it. Ted Benson had flown the freaking coop.

I’d watched that front entrance faithfully, and he hadn’t left. Plus his car was still in the lot. So where had he gone and why? Did he know we were tailing him? When I broke the news to Andre, he was going to be grimmer than usual.

I walked back inside and strolled toward the bartender. Dude had been growing out his hair since the Berlin Wall was still a thing. Streaked with gray, just like his chest-length beard. All that man hair sprouting in every direction was a bit daunting.

Though still irritated at losing Ted, I stretched my lips into a friendly grin. While I may not be underwear model gorgeous, I wasn’t a troll either. With long blond hair and blue-green eyes, my cute factor almost made up for what I lacked in the mammary department. Men usually responded to my flirting, and this guy perked up as I approached. Hopefully he could shed some light on Ted’s disappearance.

“Hi.” Leaning my elbows on the scarred wood surface, I tilted my head to one side and batted my lashes for good measure.

“Hey,” he said, giving me a onceover. “You new? Haven’t seen you in here before. Name’s Frank.” He held out his meaty paw and I shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Frank. I’m Rose. Actually, I’m wondering if you know Ted Benson. He’s one of the hospital crowd.”

Removing a damp rag draped over his shoulder, he made a swipe across the bar. “Yeah, I know him. Don’t tell me you’re the wife?”

“Nope.” I whipped out a business card I’d had made on the sly, without Andre’s knowledge. Naughty me. In fancy font, it stated my name and cell number. By not using specifics or a title, it gave me some wiggle room to bullshit my way through certain situations. Like now. “Ted’s got a little money coming to him. An annuity from a great aunt. Someone from the hospital thought he’d be here.”

“He probably left. He does that every now and again.”

My grin faded. “He just walks off? Where does he go?”

“Don’t know. Don’t ask. It’s none of my business.” Frank flicked the edge of my card with his thumb. “He’ll wander back in a few hours. Always does. Then he’ll probably drink one last beer before calling it quits.”

I’d been stuck in a hot car with Andre for
hours
, while my target sneaked away. Camila had been right. Ted was up to no good. Why else would he pull a vanishing act?

I pushed off the bar. “Well, thanks. If he turns up again, will you let him know I stopped by?”

“Will do, Miss Rose.” I couldn’t be sure under all that hair, but I thought he winked at me.

I walked outside into the hot, still air and crossed the street. Once I climbed into the white Suburban, I turned to face Andre. “We missed Ted. He left by the side door. Bartender said he won’t be back for another few hours.”

“Yes.” He checked his watch. “He slipped out an hour and seventeen minutes ago. Picked up by someone driving a nondescript gray sedan. They headed in the opposite direction and were too far away for me to read the license plate.” He started the engine, buckled his seatbelt, then waited in silence for me to do the same.

I sat frozen. “Ted left over an hour ago? You
knew
he left, yet instead of following him, we’ve been sitting in this sauna? You might have mentioned it.”

“I was waiting to see how long it took you to notice.” Andre Thomas was freestyling on my last nerve. He’d cast himself in the role of Mr. Miyagi and I was Daniel-san. He got off on treating me like a flunky, and I was getting tired of it. “Perhaps, Miss Strickland, if you’d been paying attention instead of doodling in your notebook like a thirteen-year-old girl, you’d have seen him leave the scene too.”

Heat prickled my cheeks. Not from the temperature, but because I just got spanked. And the worst part? Andre was right. I should have been paying attention, but I’d let external conditions and boredom distract me.
Good job, Rose.

While I was more pissed at myself than at him, he didn’t escape my ire completely. It irritated me that Andre was still playing by the old rules. He wasn’t a cop anymore, so why wasn’t he talking to Ted’s coworkers, friends, and neighbors? Get all the gossip on Ted and follow up—that’s what I’d do. What good was a supply closet full of electronic gadgets if he never used them? True, a tracker on the car wouldn’t have helped this time, but what about adding a stealth app on Ted’s phone, to track his calls and texts? Was that asking too much? Evidently it was, because every time I made the suggestion Hardass looked down his nose at me.
“That’s not how I operate, Miss Strickland. We’ll do this my way.”

I slid him a side-eye. “So you’ve let me sit here all this time, just to teach me a lesson?”

“Yes. Now fasten your seatbelt.”

There it was. The condescending attitude that pissed me off so much. So why didn’t I quit on the spot? Because A) I was too stubborn, B) I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction—all right, A and B were pretty much the same thing—and C) though I’d solved a few criminal cases on my own, I’d also been beaten and nearly killed on two different occasions. If I was going to keep detecting, I wanted to be smart about it. Although I disagreed with his methods, I knew Andre could teach me a thing or two.