Irish Stewed Part 8

"Unless you're ready for lunch. We can accommodate you if that's the case. Today's special is meat loaf. It might take a while since we don't have the oven going yet, but we can serve it up for you along with mashed potatoes and green beans. If you don't mind waiting, that is."

"I don't want to . . ." He exchanged looks with his companions. "That is, we aren't actually looking to . . . We just want to snap some pictures and get a couple good quotes to go with them. We already had our coffee and m.u.f.fins over at Caf-Fiends. It's not like we actually want to eat here."

It wasn't Inez's fault that she was standing there slack-jawed and unsure how to handle things, but it was my responsibility to set an example. I s.n.a.t.c.hed the menus out of her hands and tapped them into a neat pile against the rolltop desk. "Thanks for stopping in," I told the young man.

"You mean-"

"I mean, it's like that sign you see in so many places. 'No shirt, No shoes, No service.' Only here, we've added 'No loitering.' If you're not a customer, you're loitering."

"So you're going to blackmail us into buying the crummy food in this place?"

For all I knew, the food at Sophie's was, indeed, crummy. In fact, I suspected crummy was putting it kindly. That didn't excuse this guy for dissing the Terminal.

I backstepped him and his companions toward the door. "Thanks for stopping by," I said again. "We hope to see you another time."

They got the message and left.

I turned from the door and found Inez grinning from ear to ear. "That was really cool."

"It was really rude is what it was."

"Not on your part."

My smile matched hers. "No, not on my part."

"You think we're going to have to put up with that nonsense all day?"

I didn't think it, I was sure of it. I also knew one way we could at least reduce the possibility.

I called a quick staff meeting and told George, Denice, and Inez what I had in mind. Within minutes, Inez and Denice were giving the restaurant a quick cleaning, concentrating on the little jut-out area where Jack had been killed. Once the fingerprint powder was all cleaned up, customers could speculate all they wanted about where Jack had been killed. While they were at it, I had the two waitresses get rid of a couple dozen lace doilies, three cobwebby teddy bears that were so high up on a shelf I don't know how anybody ever saw them, and a giant china pitcher of fabric flowers that made it impossible for anybody standing in the doorway between the waiting room and the restaurant to see the people at the table in the far corner against the windows.

Three people came in, one at a time, while they were working, and the girls took turns taking care of them. I noticed that the two Inez helped turned right around and walked out again and when they did, I gave her the thumbs-up. She'd apparently been paying attention when I sent that photographer on his way earlier; she knew how to identify the gawkers and tell them (politely, I hoped) that they weren't welcome if they weren't going to order.

The third was apparently a regular and Denice got him a cup of coffee and pulled out her order pad. "Pancakes, bacon, and rye toast?"

The man nodded.

I just happened to be standing close by. "I'll put the order in for you," I offered and headed back to the kitchen. Of course I had an ulterior motive. In addition to seeing how the orders were handled and how George prepared the food, it gave me a chance to finish the conversation we'd started earlier.

He looked up at me over the pancake batter he was whipping. "You didn't come back here just to watch me work."

"No, I didn't," I said. "But I do need to get used to the routine around here. It's important for me to know how orders are prepared."

"Not much to makin' pancakes." He scooped up batter and dropped it on the hot griddle, waited for precisely the right moment, then flipped the four hotcakes. He already had bacon sizzling on the grill and he turned each strip over.

"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 G.o.d'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 att.i.tude of ent.i.tlement-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 sc.u.mbag had the nerve to do a piece about my restaurant. You know, one of those ex-po-ses 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 n.o.body. 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. n.o.body 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."

Chapter 8.

When 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 pa.s.sing the time, shooting the breeze, and wishing for the good old days when there was plenty of work on the a.s.sembly 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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, meatb.a.l.l.s over rice.

By nine, I already antic.i.p.ated 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 b.u.t.ter." I grumbled the words and checked the inventory, but as far as I could see, there were no jars of peanut b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 entrees 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."