Irish Stewed (8 page)

“I knew Lou would be here,” George commented. “Always here this time of day. Always orders the same thing.”

“So that’s all taken care of, and we don’t need to talk about Lou. But we still need to talk about Jack Lancer,” I said.

George shot a look at me over his shoulder. “Do we?”

I shrugged like it was no big deal when actually, I was beginning to think it was. “I hate being left out of the loop. And I am the boss.”

“Only until Sophie comes back.”

I couldn’t agree more and I nodded to prove it. “Only until Sophie comes back. But right here, right now, I’m in charge. And today’s going to be a crazy day what with the media circus and all. Which means if I don’t know what’s going on—”

“Nothing. Honest.” George slipped the pancakes and bacon onto a plate and rang a bell to tell Denice to come pick up the food. After she was gone, he turned to me.

“It happened a long time ago,” he said. “Before I came to work for Sophie.”

“Denice says you’ve been here twelve years.”

“Nearly.” He leaned back against the counter. “Before that, I had my own place. George’s Country Diner. South of here. Over near Struthers.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear George had once owned his own restaurant and now cooked for Sophie. This is a tough
business, and restaurants open and close at the speed of light. Sometimes it’s because a place stays hot for a while, then falls off customers’ radar. Other times, it’s money problems that make a restaurant close its doors. Often, people who get into the industry picture themselves meeting and greeting patrons, sipping wine in a corner, and watching the cash roll in. Long hours, staff problems, hot kitchens, and soaring food costs have a way of wiping that fantasy off the map!

“Jack Lancer, he lived over near Struthers then,” George said.

My head came up. “You knew him from your restaurant?”

George grumbled a word I couldn’t quite hear. “Thought he was God’s gift to the world. The Lance of Justice!” He spun to face the counter, his palms braced against the stainless steel. His shoulders heaved. “He used to come into my place once in a while, and you know, that son of a gun expected a free meal every single time. Because he was some big shot TV star!”

He spun back the other way, threw out his hands, and let them drop to his sides with a slap. “That guy’s got a plum job over at a TV station and he expects free meals out of a guy who was working sixteen-hour days and barely making ends meet. Can you believe it?”

I could. I’d seen that sort of attitude of entitlement—and worse—from the Hollywood crowd.

“And you know, the first time he said something about free food and how he’d spread the word around about my place and he gave me that smile of his and a big wink . . .” I got the feeling that if we weren’t in the restaurant, George would have spit on the floor. “The first time, I fell for it. I was only too happy to give him a free burger and fries. After all, he was the Lance of Justice!”

“But it happened again, right?”

“And again and again and again. And then the Lance, he’d bring his wife in and expect her to get free food, too. Or one of his girlfriends.”

The fact about the Lance’s affairs jibed with what Kim had told me about his private life, so I wasn’t surprised.

“I just couldn’t do it. I had rent. And utilities. I had suppliers to pay. I told him that, too, and you know what the Lance did?”

“Said bad things about your food?”

“Worse than that! That no-good, lowdown scumbag had the nerve to do a piece about my restaurant. You know, one of those ex-po-sés talking about how the service was terrible and the food was rotten.”

“Was it?”

Fire in his eyes, George shot me a look and pushed away from the counter. Good thing he realized I was just playing devil’s advocate because had he come at me, I wouldn’t have liked to think about defending myself with nothing but the loaf of white bread on the counter nearby.

“George’s Country Diner wasn’t no five-star restaurant, but it was clean and the food was decent and I didn’t overcharge nobody. Not ever.”

“Then the Lance of Justice couldn’t prove all those bad things he said.”

The sound that came out of George’s throat reminded me of thunder. “That didn’t stop him. He showed up at my restaurant one afternoon and even brought a cameraman with him. I tried to toss them both out on their keisters, and before I could . . .” It had happened twelve years earlier, but just thinking about it turned George’s cheeks a color that reminded me of the trickle of blood on the back of Jack Lancer’s neck.

“That creep had a little box with him, and he opened it up and released mice into the restaurant. Just in time for his cameraman to get shots of those critters running helter-skelter all over the place. The couple customers I had—they didn’t see Jack spill the mice out of the box—they ran out of the place without paying and they never came back. And Jack Lancer”—George ground the name out from between his teeth—“that so-and-so ran a story on the news that night all about how my place was dirty and should be closed. He went to the health department and showed them the footage.”

I guess George realized he had an ally when he saw the way my hands curled into fists. He shot me a small smile to thank me for the support. It didn’t last more than a second. “Folks stopped coming,” he said. “Just like that. Word spread and folks stopped coming and I had to close my doors.”

“So you really did have a reason to want to kill Jack Lancer!”

To George’s eternal credit, he did not deny this. In fact, he simply grinned.

It was so coldhearted a look, I swallowed hard. “The cops are going to find out that Owen Quilligan couldn’t have killed the Lance of Justice,” I told George without explaining how I knew. “My guess is when they do, they’ll come around and talk to you. I mean, if they know about what happened in Struthers.”

“Something you need to know about this part of the world. Nobody hardly ever leaves. Everybody’s involved in everybody else’s lives, and everybody knows everybody. The cops, they know what happened back in Struthers. Everybody knows.”

“Then they probably will talk to you. You just need to stay cool and keep calm,” I told George. “Just tell them the
truth.” A thought hit and I gave the cook a careful look. “You do have an alibi for last night, don’t you, George?”

“Alibi? Sure.” George went over to the grill and grabbed his spatula again. “I was out. All night.”

“And not here.”

He shook his head. “Not here.”

“The cops will want to know where you were.”

“I was—”

Denice poked her head into the kitchen. “Hey, George,” she called, “Lou wants another stack of pancakes!”

He grabbed the mixing bowl and ladled batter onto the grill. “I was at my AA meeting over at St. Colman’s Church,” George told me. He didn’t wait for me to ask for the details. “See, after I lost the restaurant, I kind of hit rock bottom. Found comfort in a bottle and hardly came up for air for months at a time. So you see . . .” He deftly flipped the pancakes. “My restaurant closing and my drinking . . . well, I got Jack Lancer to thank for ruining my life.”

W
hen four men arrived at the door of the Terminal at noon and none of them were carrying notebooks, cameras, or tape recorders, I was encouraged.

Until Inez informed me that they were Stan, Dale, Phil, and Ruben, Terminal regulars who hadn’t missed a lunch at Sophie’s in three years, ever since the factory where they used to work closed down and they filled their weeks with passing the time, shooting the breeze, and wishing for the good old days when there was plenty of work on the assembly line along with overtime hours and health care benefits. Sophie’s was their daily lunchtime stop, and they’d linger over coffee until nearly four, Inez said. On weekdays, Sophie’s closes at five so where Stan, Dale, Phil, and Ruben went after they left the Terminal, I didn’t know.

Not that I’m complaining. Customers are customers and these four were customers who knew exactly what they wanted.

It was Tuesday.

They’d have the meat loaf.

Inez put their orders in and stopped for a moment to press a hand to the small of her back. “I’m glad there’s somebody here who didn’t just show up to hear the gory details,” she said.

I couldn’t agree more.

All morning I’d fielded questions from both walk-in customers and the nosy reporters who gathered outside, and except for a quick visit from Detective Gus Oberlin, who came to check out that heavy umbrella stand in front of the basement door, then mumbled and grumbled and huffed and puffed while he wrote in a little notebook, things continued much the same way all that Tuesday and started out the same on Wednesday, too.

More gawkers.

More reporters.

Few paying customers, and the few who did show up read over the menu and whispered to one another about how the panini sandwiches, wraps, and smoothies over at Caf-Fiends looked a whole lot more appealing than our same old, same old burgers, our fried egg sandwiches, and the day’s special, meatballs over rice.

By nine, I already anticipated another day of empty tables and loaded questions.

Bored and disgusted, I made my way to the tiny office next to the kitchen and honestly, I tried my best to accomplish something. I went through the latest invoices and checked off what had been delivered against an inventory list that Sophie kept.

“Cans of tomatoes. Check. A case of canned green beans. Check. Twelve cases of peanut butter.” I grumbled the words and checked the inventory, but as far as I could see, there
were no jars of peanut butter anywhere in the restaurant. And even if there were . . .

I grumbled a little more and wondered what on earth Sophie was thinking and how on earth she planned to use that much peanut butter, and while I was at it, I flopped back in the chair in front of Sophie’s gray metal desk, where an old computer shared space with samples of to-go utensils, takeout cups, and paper napkins thin enough to see through. The pile was topped with a brown teddy bear that sat precariously at the peak, dressed in a purple Victorian gown.

I eyed the bear.

The bear stared back at me.

The bear won; I dropped my head into my hands.

This was what my life had come to. A dumpy restaurant. An unimaginative (not to mention unappetizing) menu. And teddy bears wearing clothes.

It was official: I had lived the high life and now I’d fallen as far as it was possible to go.

“But then, what did you expect?”

I listened to my own question echo back at me and felt the old, familiar weight of my past bear down on my shoulders. Those last years working for Meghan, I’d been able to put it all behind me. But then, great clothes, fine food, and a breathtaking view off a balcony in Tuscany will do that.

It only made me feel worse when I remembered that the night before, I’d visited Sophie at the hospital and—fingers crossed behind my back—told her business was good and that we were handling the rush well, but not as well as we would once she was back and in charge. How would I feel if one of these days soon I’d have to report to Sophie that under my management, the Terminal had gone down the tubes?

*   *   *

“I kind of wanted a burger today.” Phil Plumline was nearing sixty, balding, and could stand to lose forty pounds. He wrinkled his nose and squinted at the handwritten page I’d passed out when he and his buddies came in for lunch later that same Wednesday. “What happened to the burger? Why isn’t it on the menu?”

At the same time I made sure to smile when I looked at the men seated at the round table, I reminded myself of the pledge I’d made just a couple hours earlier when I was feeling down and dejected: I was going to turn things around. For the Terminal and for myself.

Starting here.

Starting now.

Starting today.

Things were going to change.

“We’re trying some new things,” I told our regular lunch bunch. “Just a couple entrées for now, but I promise as the days go by, we’ll add to the list. I’ve got some exciting new dishes in mind.”

“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 glasses, 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 meatballs 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 meatballs 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 entrée 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. Hell in a handbasket. The place is going to hell 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 meatballs 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-shirt. 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 scraped 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 hello.

“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.