by Kylie Logan
“You know, you could hire somebody to do all that prep work for you,” George grumbled on his way by with an armload of boxes of lasagna noodles.
“Yeah, I’ll do that. As soon as we win the lottery.”
He set down the boxes of pasta. “Don’t need to wait that long. If you’re smart. You could do what that fellow’s doing on the Internet. You know, about Meghan Cohan.”
I could be excused for being a tad confused. I’d been so busy talking to Gus and thinking about what he said and what our options were regarding the case, I hadn’t had one sip of coffee. Now I poured a cup, took a glug, and gave George a level look. “What are you talking about?”
“Saw some things on the Internet last night,” he said. “I was messing around. You know, on account of all the commotion around here. I wondered what everyone was saying about the Terminal.”
“And what are they saying about the Terminal?” I asked.
His lips puckered with the effort of remembering. “Good food. Nice service. A little crowded.”
“Because of the murder.”
“Because of the murder.” He nodded and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Then I looked a little more, and I found this.”
Since he didn’t hand it over, I had no choice but to ask, “What is it?”
“A listing on one of those auction sites. They got all sorts of Meghan Cohan stuff up there for sale, movie posters, and photographs, and autographs. You know how it is with these things, somebody dies and all of a sudden, everything they’ve ever touched or been part of is more valuable than it used to be. But then I saw this.” He turned the paper around and waved it in my direction. I could make out a picture and some text, but since I was still too far away to see what it was all about, I stepped closer.
I squinted, stared, backed up.
“Silverware?”
“Not just any silverware.” George flapped the paper to smooth out the folds and read the description printed under the picture.
“‘For sale, the place setting of silverware from the restaurant where Meghan Cohan spent her last night upon this earth, from the restaurant where she was killed.’”
My stomach swooped. “It actually says that?”
“You wanna know the asking price?”
I held up a hand because really, I didn’t. “How could anybody be that dishonest? And how could any buyer be that gullible? Why would anyone fall for a hoax like that?”
“Only, Laurel . . .”
I didn’t like the way George said that.
Like I hadn’t been listening.
Like it mattered.
A lot.
This time, he was the one who closed in on me, the better to show me the picture of the knife, fork, and spoon again.
He poked a finger at the picture. “Take a look. It’s our silverware, all right. Heck, I wash enough of it every day. I’d recognize the pattern anywhere.”
He was right, and this time, my stomach didn’t just swoop, it slid and dove and bounced back up again. When I took the paper from him, my hands were shaking.
“Who . . . ? How . . . ?”
George crossed burly arms over burly chest. “You’re a smart woman. Least I always thought you were.”
So did I. Which is why I was disappointed I had to think for a while before I blurted out, “Dolly!”
“Took you long enough.” George turned to the grill.
I raced over and angled myself between him and the order of sizzling pancakes he’d already put on for the breakfast regulars he knew would be stopping by at any minute. “You knew?”
“What is it you would say, Laurel? I suspected. She is the one who had a picture of Meghan Cohan’s car.”
“And she must be the one who took the picture of the freezer and gave it to the tabloids.”
George dipped his chin, the better to give me an eagle-eyed stare.
“She sold it to the tabloids.” I caught on soon enough and George lightened up that look. “And she took the silverware from the table where Meghan sat that night, and now she’s selling that, too. After I told everyone here not to talk to the press—”
“She’s not exactly talking to them,” George pointed out.
“But she is profiting from a terrible murder.” I wrapped my arms around myself, the better to control the shiver that snaked up my spine.
“What are you gonna do?” George asked.
“I’m going to . . .” Because I didn’t know what I was going to do, I stalked out into the restaurant.
As fate would have it, the first person I saw was Dolly, who’d just come in the front door.
I froze, and stared, the words right there on my lips.
You’re fired!
“What’s up, Laurel?”
Her greeting snapped me out of my thoughts. “Not a thing,” I assured her, and eyes wide in yet another easily recognized expression—Wait until I tell you!—I turned my back on her and went over to where Declan was just finishing up with the menus.
Yeah, it was sort of a weaselly way out of the situation, but I had a perfectly good excuse.
I was too busy thinking to do anything in the way of interacting.
Thinking about Dolly, the starstruck fan who seemed to know every detail about Meghan’s career.
About Dolly profiting from Meghan’s murder.
About the fact that suddenly, it looked like I might have another suspect on my hands.
* * *
• • •
SATURDAYS ARE ALWAYS busy, and that one was no exception. It wasn’t until after the breakfast crowd was gone and lunch was over that I had a chance to catch up with Dolly, and as it worked out, that was just fine. All those meals served and all that time, it gave me a chance to think.
Dolly and I were in the kitchen and with a tiny tip of my head, I suggested that George go outside and get a breath of fresh air.
He’s an obliging sort. One look at me, another at Dolly, and he knew exactly what was up. He skedaddled.
“They’re going to have Meghan’s funeral next weekend,” I said, as oh so casual as I could be.
She’d been rolling sets of silverware—yeah, just like the one she was selling online—in napkins, and she sucked in a breath and stopped working. She pressed both her hands to her heart.
“Are you going?” she asked me.
I hadn’t even considered it, but now that she mentioned it, I knew my answer. “No. A funeral should be for people who are near and dear to the departed. I’m an outsider. I always was in Meghan’s world. I have no business there.”
“There will be thousands of fans.” As if just thinking about it conjured images of how weeping crowds would line the roads surrounding Meghan’s mansion, Dolly’s cheeks shot through with color and her eyes welled. “Oh, how I wish I could be there! Not that I’d ever think to ask for the time off,” she added quickly. “I know I just started here and it wouldn’t be fair to take vacation days so soon.”
She paused for an appropriate amount of time here, waiting for me to tell her that of course she could take the time.
When I didn’t, Dolly hung her head. “It would be awfully expensive to get there.”
It was the most perfect opening I could imagine, but I wasn’t ready yet to ask about selling out Meghan and the Terminal to the paparazzi. Excuse the cooking pun, but I had other fish to fry.
“I know how disappointed you must be, but there will be plenty of press coverage. Besides, you’ve got something none of those fans who’ll be watching the funeral out in Hollywood will ever have. You have your memories of Meghan being right here on the last day of her life,” I reminded her. “You talked to her.”
Dolly sniffled. “I remember every minute of it.”
When she put a hand in her pocket, I cringed, expecting
her to bring out the word-for-word account of her encounter with Meghan. Instead, she pulled out a tissue and dabbed it to her nose. She tucked the tissue away, went to the sink to wash her hands, then went back to rolling silverware. But only for a moment. She stopped again, her head cocked, her eyes glassy with a faraway look. “I just wish I knew that night. I just wish I knew it was her.”
“So thinking about that night . . .” I leaned against the counter and grabbed some silverware, too, and started rolling. If there’s one thing I’d learned from a lifetime in the food industry, it’s that help is always appreciated. If there’s one thing I’d learned from being an amateur detective, it’s that appreciative people are more likely to talk. “What did you do? I mean, after work that night? I know what I did. That was the night I got home and found out my house had been broken into. I stayed up until the wee hours while the police searched the place and we did all the paperwork we needed to file a report. How about you? What did you do that night? What did you do the next night, the night Meghan was killed?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” Dolly jiggled her shoulders, the gesture all too awkward to be totally convincing. “Nothing much, I suppose.”
“Come on, Dolly. You met Meghan Cohan! Sure, you didn’t know it at the time, but you found out soon enough. If I was as big a fan as you are, and I found that out, I would have memorized every moment of that night, maybe written it down like you wrote down the conversation you had with Meghan. Just so I’d never forget.”
“It’s not important.” She wasn’t finished with the silverware, but she stepped away from the counter and checked the order window. There were no plates of food waiting to be taken out into the restaurant so she went the long way around the kitchen and got a bottle of water out of the fridge. She didn’t crack it open; she juggled it from hand to hand. “What I do when I leave here at night, none of that is very important.”
“If you did leave here that night.”
Aside from the fact that she tends to be a little too talkative, Dolly is a good waitress. Though she’s not especially efficient, she makes up for it with enthusiasm. What she’s not is especially quick on the uptake.
She stared at me staring at her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
Whatever wise person once said A picture is worth a thousand words really knew what he—or she—was talking about. I grabbed the computer printout George had conveniently left nearby for me and waved it at Dolly.
“You’re making money off Meghan’s death,” I told her.
Her face turned as white as the apron on a hook near where we stood, and Dolly sucked in a breath. Her green beaded earrings seemed to lose their twinkle. “How did you . . . ? How could you . . . ?”
“Am I wrong?”
The way her bottom lip quivered told me I wasn’t.
Yeah, I know, a detective is supposed to be objective. Hard-hearted. Quick enough to make deductions and steely enough so that those conclusions aren’t influenced by emotion. But heck, I couldn’t just stand there and watch her whimper.
I grabbed the water bottle from Dolly, opened it, and handed it back to her. “Drink,” I commanded.
She did, but even the icy water wasn’t enough to keep her voice from quavering when she asked, “Are you . . . are you going to fire me?”
“That all depends. Are you just selling pictures and information to the press? Or did you kill Meghan Cohan?”
She slapped a hand to her heart, and it was a good thing there was a high stool nearby, because Dolly collapsed against it.
“Spill the beans,” I ordered. “And do it fast before the dinner crowd shows up. That way I’ll know if I’m going to be down one waitress and I’ll have to work the floor myself tonight.”
She wrung her hands. A dramatic motion, I know, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen it used before to such striking effect. This should have made me more cynical, more suspicious. Instead, it only made me want to shake some sense into her.
I refrained, but even I couldn’t guarantee my patience would last. “Dolly!”
When I barked her name, she winced.
“What is going on?” I asked her.
A tear slipped down her cheek. “You’re right. About how I’ve been meeting with reporters and giving them pictures and telling them what’s been going on around here. I wasn’t doing it to make money.” She brushed tears from her cheeks. “Not at first, anyway. At first, it was just a way for me to be part of the story. Imagine!” She managed a watery smile. “Imagine that when those reporters were writing their stories about Meghan, they were thinking about me, too. They had to be, because I was the one who gave them the information. It was a way . . .” She dragged out that tissue again and pressed it to her eyes. “It was a way for my essence and Meghan’s to be linked for all time.”
I wasn’t so sure about this essence business, but I did know profit when I saw it.
I reminded Dolly of this.
“Yes, yes.” She nodded. “You’re right about that. One of the reporters, see, offered me five hundred dollars for my picture of Meghan’s rental car. Five hundred dollars! And then another reporter, he asked about the freezer, and somebody else said I’d probably be around when the will was read and if I could just stand outside the door and listen . . .”
“And the silverware?” I asked. “You can’t possibly know it was the actual place setting she used.”
“But it might be, and if there was even the slightest chance it was hers, I would keep it forever and ever if I could.”
“But you can’t.”
“I can’t. I want to, but . . .”
But what, I didn’t find out. Not right then, anyway.
That’s because Dolly burst into tears and ran out of the kitchen.
“Great.” It wasn’t, so I grumbled the word. Not only did I wonder if Dolly was the murderer, but now I also wondered if I’d be waiting tables that night.
Chapter 18
I waited tables that night.
Not because I fired Dolly, but because by the time I scrambled after her into the restaurant, I was just in time to see her hightail it out the front door. She didn’t come back that evening. I wondered if she ever would.
I also wondered what secrets she’d taken with her.
“The folks at table eleven are waiting for their pizza.” Inez whizzed by, a pitcher of iced tea in one hand and a tray of food in the other, and thank goodness she’s professional enough to keep her voice down. I would have hated if the customers seated nearby thought we were falling down on the job.
Inez tipped her head closer to mine. “They asked why their waitress isn’t faster.”
“Their waitress isn’t faster because their waitress isn’t a waitress,” I mumbled, but didn’t waste any time. I picked up the order and delivered it along with my apologies, then scurried back to the kitchen where I belonged. In all my years in the food service industry, I’d waited tables only once. The very first day I did, I found out how grueling serving work is and decided to become a chef.
Behind the closed kitchen door, I rubbed a hand to the small of my back. “I’m not meant to wait tables.”
“Tough work,” George acknowledged. “Especially when you have two orders sitting there waiting for you.”
I did.
I took George’s not-so-subtle hint and grabbed the campanelle pasta and the pizza and headed back into the restaurant.
From behind the front counter, Sophie gave me the thumbs-up when I zipped by. It was enough to remind me that not only was she depending on me, but that I was a member of the team, and as such, I had to do what I could to make the best of a bad situation.
“Pizza.” I set it down in front of the man at table number eight who’d requested extra mushrooms (check), no olives (for sure), and not too much sauce (never!). “And pasta.” I gave that order to the man se
ated across from him. “Enjoy.”
“Where’s that other one?” The guy who’d ordered the campanelle looked past me to scan the restaurant. He was middle-aged, with a receding hairline and puffy cheeks, and he had an iPad open on the table in front of him that wasn’t there when he placed his order. There was a notepad there, too, the pages covered with writing that was pretty much illegible.
I’d been so busy taking their orders, I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to them earlier, but now, my Spidey sense sent a tingle like an electrical charge down my back.
I thanked my lucky stars that in all the years I’d worked for Meghan, I’d been careful to avoid the media as much as possible. Oh sure, my picture had been in the tabloids a couple of times. But apparently, not the one this guy wrote for. And not any one he read. He had no idea who I was, and that was just fine with me.
“If you’re looking for Dolly,” I told him, “she had an emergency and had to leave. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Maybe. How long have you worked here?”
“Awhile,” I told him, playing it cool.
“But I haven’t seen you before and I’ve been here plenty this last week. Lucky thing the food is good. Remember that place in Taos?” He looked at his companion and made a face. “Ate chile rellenos two weeks running and, I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t pretty.”
Rather than address that particular issue, I smiled. “I mostly work in the kitchen.”
“Yeah? Well, I was just wondering if maybe that Dolly, when she had to leave, maybe she said something to you about me stopping in? Maybe she left something with you? She was supposed to give it to me tonight.”
I propped the tray I was carrying against my hip, stalling while I tried to figure out my options. As far as I could see, I didn’t have many so I went with my first instinct: lie like an expert and don’t back down.
“She did say something.” I tried to make it look like I was thinking hard. “Something about a piece of paper or some information or . . .” Remembering Dolly’s history, I took a chance. “A picture?”
