Diner Knock Out (A Rose Strickland Mystery Book 4)

by Terri L. Austin

  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.

  Gritting my teeth, I buckled my belt and we drove in silence to a Lego-like professional building on Woodland Avenue, where Andre rented a small, generic office on the main floor.

  After entering, he removed his dark lenses. “Start putting together a detailed account of our time for the client. Be thorough.” He disappeared into his office and shut the door.

  I sat behind my desk and booted up the office laptop. I went through my notes, ignoring the doodles. When Andre said detailed, he was talking thirty-minute increments. 4:03—followed subject to Ernie’s Bar. 4:33—watched the bar entrance—subject did not appear. 5:03— watched the bar entrance—subject did not appear. 5:33—well, you get the idea.

  After twenty minutes, Andre stepped out of his office with a weathered brown messenger bag hanging from his shoulder. “I’m going to head back to the bar and wait for Mr. Benson.”

  “I want to come.” While I’d been bored out of my gourd for the last few hours, I wanted to prove myself, make up for my mistake.

  “No. You stay and finish that report.” He dismissed me, just like that.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped and turned those cool hazel eyes my way. “What?”

  “I’m sorry about this afternoon. I should have been paying closer attention. I screwed up, and I take full responsibility for that.” I stood, so he wasn’t glaring down at me. “But if you take me back to the bar, I promise I’ll be on my game.” As he shook his head, I talked faster. “Just give me another chance. You don’t have to hold my hand all the time.” I’d been thinking about it ever since we returned from the stakeout. Andre had offered me this position, and even worked around my waitressing schedule at Ma’s. On some level, he must realize I could pull my own weight. “I want a job. A real one, out in the field. Not filing or background checks.”

  He pressed his lips together and crossed his arms. “Filing is a real job. That’s why I pay you in real dollars. You’re not ready to be out there on your own. And you’re not taking any cases without my supervision. I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Strickland.”

  Messing up today—and having Andre shoot me down on top of it—made me feel like an idiot. If I was being painfully honest, other than my snarky wit and deft hand with a coffeepot, I didn’t have a lot of skills. At least not until I began unravelling mysteries. That’s when I finally found my niche. I liked studying all the pieces and putting them together. Talking to people and getting them to open up about a case. I wanted to be better at it, more efficient. That was never going to happen if Andre kept me chained to this desk.

  After he left, I finished my report for Camila Benson and performed another background check. This one for a new employee at a title loan company. Then I went home, ate an off-brand frozen dinner, and went to bed.

  Yep, it was every bit as thrilling as it sounds.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning brought disaster. Like a category five hurricane kind of disaster. As I stood in the midd
le of Ma’s Diner and surveyed the destruction, I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. The entire dining room had been upended—chairs broken, tables overturned, pictures ripped off the wall and tossed to the ground. “I don’t understand what the hell happened.”

  Roxy Block, my best gal pal and fellow waitress, slogged toward the counter and, with a groan, hoisted herself onto one of the stools. Her bright blue curls, so bouncy and optimistic earlier this morning, now drooped in defeat. “They must have been possessed. I mean, they looked like real children, but…”

  “They were hell’s spawn. Ordinary kids can’t scale walls like that.” I blew out a breath and watched syrup drip, drip, drip off the fluorescent light panel and form a puddle on the floor. “Should we divide and conquer? You take the bottom half, I’ll scrub the top?”

  “I don’t care. I think I’m numb.” She tried to smooth out the rumpled bows covering her floral peach sundress, but they were beyond hope.

  Roxy’s clothes were always festooned with flounces and lace and the occasional stuffed animal. Though her wardrobe would be right at home in the Little Miss Princess Pageant, she wore those daring fashion choices with flair. Every day while I wound up with coffee-stained jeans and t-shirts coated in powdered sugar, Roxy managed to walk away unscathed. Not today, though. Dried, hardened eggs coated the toes of her white Victorian boots. A large orange juice splotch in the shape of Italy stained her skirt.

  “I think I’ll have my tubes tied,” she said. “I wouldn’t survive eighteen years of that.”

  “I hear you.” On the road to an away game, a Little League team—including one girl who could belch Katy Perry songs—had taken over the diner at nine. They were so hyper I wanted to slip Ritalin into their OJ. For the next hour and a half, the parents ignored their offspring sprinting between tables, shoving food in each other’s faces, and making repeated leaps for the ceiling fan. When one freckly boy lobbed a sausage at Ma—the diner’s owner and my nearly eighty-year-old boss—she’d finally had enough.

  Bristling with anger, Ma marched herself up to the adults’ table and stared at each of them through her trifocals until a chilling silence settled over the room. “I have never had someone throw food at me in my own damn diner.” Plucking the sausage link from the top of her head, she threw it down like a gauntlet onto one of the dad’s plates. “And I’ve been in business over fifty years. Now you people either get your kids under control or get the hell out.” She slammed her hand on the table for emphasis, making silverware jump and cups rattle.

  They chose the latter, leaving Roxy and me with a tsunami of a mess to clean up and no tippage to show for it.

  I jerked out two bus tubs from under the counter and shoved one into Roxy’s arms. “I blame the parents. If I had pulled a stunt like that, my mother would have stuck a grapefruit spoon in my jugular and called it a day.”

  “At least we don’t have to go home with them. Can you imagine?”

  I shuddered. “No, I cannot.”

  For the next two hours, in between taking care of a few regulars, Roxy and I busted our humps. I found hardened pieces of bacon shoved into napkin holders. At one table, the kids had used ketchup like finger paint. Apparently, they had an arsenal of four letter words in their vocab. Just for the record, I was not a bitch. Nor were my boobs that big. Sadly.

  While I grabbed a ladder and used a knife to scrape waffles and syrup from the ceiling, Roxy scrubbed the tables until their scratched chrome edges glowed in the sunlight. We both wiped down the plate glass window, removing all traces of sticky little handprints. I got down on my hands and knees to scrub the black and white checkerboard floor, and Roxy mopped up behind me.

  Once we were through, the dining room smelled of disinfectant. I stood back and cast a satisfied eye over our handiwork. Unless Ma decided to do some major renovations to the place, the diner would never look new. The faded wallpaper and outdated décor prevented that. But at least order had been restored.

  Fortunately, we closed at one p.m. On the dot, I crossed the room to flip the closed sign. When I reached the door, Roxy’s new friend, Sugar, jerked it open, causing the bell to tinkle. Sugar de la Tarte. Not her real name. As a burlesque performer and internet pinup girl, she needed something more memorable than Laura Turnbull.

  Although I’d never met anyone as colorful as Roxy, Sugar came very close. Where Roxy favored little girl ensembles with ribbons and frills, Sugar wore tight 1940s retro dresses that emphasized her waspish waist and va-va-voom hips. Today, she’d coerced her raspberry red hair into a Victory roll. The yellow halter dress was so tight, it was shrink-wrapped to her body and showed off her impressive knockers. Sporting a very meta tattoo of a vintage pinup girl on her right forearm, Sugar definitely stood out in a crowd. Next to these two exotic flowers, I was a daisy in the garden of life.

  “Heya, Rose.” Sugar pulled me into a hug. The smell of her expensive perfume enveloped me. “How are you?”

  I disengaged and took a step backward. “Good. You?”

  “I’m fantastic.” She slinked over to the counter and patted Roxy’s arm. “It smells like a bleach factory in here. Rough morning?” She hitched up her pencil skirt, exposing a long, pale thigh, and smoothly slid onto a stool.

  “Terrible,” Roxy said. “Kids are the worst.” She slid her gaze in my direction. “Except Scotty.”

  “Understood.” My five-year-old nephew had me twisted around his finger, and he knew it, using it to his advantage as often as possible.

  Sugar placed her perfectly manicured hands on the counter. “That sounds awful. Want to postpone this afternoon?”

  “No,” Roxy said. “I’m excited to see your new act.”

  “Good, I could use your opinion. You have an eye for what works.”

  I slipped behind the counter and grabbed the coffeepot, lingering as I waited for Roxy to fill me in on her plans. But she kept chatting about Sugar’s upcoming burlesque showcase, leaving me completely out of the conversation.

  “Hey guys.” I held up the coffeepot. “I’m headed to the kitchen.”

  They stopped talking, and Roxy wrinkled her nose. “Um, thanks for sharing?”

  I shouldn’t have butted in. Now I felt silly and awkward, like a glove with six fingers. Without another word, I turned and swept through the door connecting the dining room to the kitchen.

  The lingering smells of cinnamon, pancake batter, and smoky bacon greeted me. These were the scents I associated with comfort. It smelled like home.

  Ma’s son, Ray, scrubbed the grill. A blond bear of a man, he’d grown up in the diner and never left. He seemed happiest with a spatula in his hand.

  I emptied the coffeepot in the industrial-sized sink and handed it off to Jorge, who loaded the dishwasher. “See ya, guys.”

  Ray, a minimalist when it came to words, grunted, but Jorge winked at me. “Later, Rose.”

  Before leaving, I walked to where Ma stood at the stainless steel counter. With a pan full of raw chicken before her, she glanced up and continued to rub a mixture of oil and savory-smelling spices into the meat, coating the pieces until they glistened.

  “With all that massage action,” I said, “I hope you and that chicken were on a first-name basis.”

  She snorted. “This is my specialty—Chicken a la Ma. I only make it for funerals and births. That’s it.”

  “I hope it’s the latter.”

  “Nope, not this time. Doreen Metzer passed last night, God rest her. I’m taking this to her husband.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ma. Why didn’t you say something this morning? Roxy and I could have held down the fort.”

  She peered up at me. “No you couldn’t, not with those wild kids running amok. Anyway, I’m fine. Doreen and I weren’t exactly friends. More like acquaintances.”

  “Still, I think it’s nice that you’re doing
this.”

  “To be honest with you, toots, I have an ulterior motive. Doreen’s husband is quite a catch. Now that she’s gone, he’s up for grabs.”

  “Seriously? Ma, he’s grieving. Give him some time.”

  “I can’t lollygag over something like this. Don’t think I’ll be the only one running after him—that Byron’s a looker. Still has a nice, thick head of hair and he seems relatively healthy—a pacemaker and a bum knee, but that’s not too shabby. All the widows in town will be making a play for him.”

  I stood speechless for a moment. “So the ladies in your circle don’t even wait until the body’s cold?”

  “Nope. Time is of the essence.” As her eyes narrowed, deep wrinkles creased the skin surrounding them. “This chicken’s not the only trick I’ve got up my sleeve. I bought one of those pushup bras. Black lace. Whether it’s the chicken’s breasts or my own, I’m going to bag Byron Metzer. Count on that.”

  A vision of Ma in her new bra flashed through my brain, but I quickly shut it down. I didn’t want a ticket on that ride. “Okay, then. I’ll leave you to it. Godspeed on the bagging.”

  When I stepped back into the dining room, Roxy and Sugar were gone. I was glad Rox had a new friend. Really. She and Sugar had a lot in common. They could have said goodbye, though—that part stung a bit. However, I couldn’t stand around and ruminate. If I didn’t hurry, I’d be late for my second job, which would earn me a long-winded lecture on punctuality from Hardass. So I put a little hustle in my bustle, quickly changed into my office attire, and sprinted out the door.

  When I arrived at the office, Andre was gone. Waiting for me was a terse note and a stack of names that needed clearance for a temp agency. Perfect.

  After making a pot of fresh coffee, I fell into my chair and started digging into each name, checking to see if anyone had a criminal record, neglected to pay their taxes, or collected too many traffic tickets, and then I scoured their social media sites. Employers frowned on youthful indiscretions. Once those dick pics were out in the ether, they stayed there, waiting for someone like me to find them.