Puzzling Ink

by Becky Clark

  “Same for me,” Mrs. Carver said. “And maybe some fruit? For both of us?”

  “Coming right up.” Quinn admired their appetites and silently blessed them for ordering the same thing. She found the bacon, feeling a bit guilty about Jethro, and cracked some eggs. She hoped nobody else came in so she could lock up again after the Carvers left. It didn’t feel right to have the diner open after everything that happened. And where was Jake? Had something happened to him too? She wished she knew where he’d gone yesterday. What if he’d had a car accident? But surely Rico would have received word about that and would have told her. Unless it had happened out in the boonies, loosely defined as a ten-mile radius from any point in town, a vast area with more scarecrows than people.

  Halfway through making the Carvers’ breakfast, she heard the door chime. She looked expectantly out the pass-through, but no Jake. Rather, the Retireds.

  “Don’t you guys get tired of this place?”

  Wilbur, Herman, and Bob all shuffled to their regular places with their backs to the wall at the rectangular table with a view of the entire dining room. Silas limped to his seat at one end.

  Quinn and Larry did a little dance while they tried to get out of each other’s way. Larry had a slight stoop, but he still towered over her. His ears, like all of the Retireds’, had grown long and dangly in the way of old men. He was completely gray, except for his hair, which was the color of ginger. He took his seat at the other end of the table. It always looked to Quinn like they were trying to re-create a geriatric Last Supper painting.

  Quinn handed out menus even though she knew they had them memorized. “Why do you guys always sit like that?”

  “On our butts, you mean?” Silas couldn’t resist a joke, bad or otherwise.

  Gregarious Bob said, “We don’t want anyone to miss seeing our handsome mugs.” He smoothed his movie star hair and flashed the smile she knew served him well during his long career on the stage.

  “Well, little missy, you of all people should know the Chestnut Diner is the place to see and be seen.” Wilbur’s words tumbled through his cement-mixer voice. “We like to do both.”

  Before she could even pour their coffee, two more groups came in. It was just as well, she figured. Jake needed his business to run, especially since after all this—if she wasn’t fired—she might ask for a raise. Besides, she needed something to keep her mind occupied. Since her OCD diagnosis she realized that if she could point her anxiety at something else, it wouldn’t boomerang back into her brain and sizzle in there like an overcharged battery. She may as well obsess about bacon and eggs until Jake showed up.

  She was busy in the kitchen when Rico poked his head in. Quinn stopped what she was doing. “Have you talked to Jake? I haven’t been able to get ahold of him. I’m starting to worry.” She scooped the Carvers’ scrambled eggs and bacon onto plates and set them aside.

  Rico pointed to the toaster. Smoke swirled toward the ceiling. Quinn jammed up the button and the sourdough slices popped up. Burnt black. Still smoking. She plucked one of the slices from the toaster and promptly dropped it on the floor. “Ouch!”

  “Who ordered Cajun-style toast?” he asked.

  “Ha-ha. You’re hilarious.” Quinn scooped the toast from the floor and tossed it into the trash. Using a pair of tongs, the rest followed. She pulled more bread from the bag and popped slices into the toaster. That would teach her to get cocky and try to do more than one thing at a time. “Have you heard from Jake?” she repeated while squinting at the knob, finally turning it from brown to light brown. At least that’s what she thought she did. The toaster was so old the writing had faded away.

  “Not yet. I came over hoping he was here. You really haven’t heard from him?”

  “Not a word.”

  An order of fried eggs on the grill started smoking. Quinn lunged for them before they went the way of the toast. Rico handed her a plate and she slid the eggs to it, just in the nick of time. She’d hide the lacy edges under some bacon and keep her fingers crossed.

  The diner door jingled and Quinn’s shoulders slumped.

  “I’ll get their menus and pour them some coffee, but then I’ve got to go,” Rico told her. “I know you’ve got your hands full, but when you hear from Jake, let me know.”

  “Roger that. And same with you.” Quinn flipped pancakes and almost wept when they were the right color. She buttered non-Cajun-style toast for the Carvers and dropped it on their plates. She started to run it out to them when she remembered they wanted fruit too. No time to slice anything, so she grabbed two bananas and laid them across the top of their eggs.

  She delivered the plates to them.

  “That’s an interesting presentation, dear.” Mrs. Carver lifted the banana from Jeb’s plate and set it aside, then did the same with hers.

  Quinn straightened, but didn’t move from the Carvers’ table. She hadn’t realized how many people were in the diner. It seemed like twice as many as usual. Seeing them sitting there, looking at her so expectantly, made her heart beat faster. She focused her attention toward the floor and began counting all the shoes in the diner. She started with sandals. Six women’s, two men’s. Then she started on the sneakers. She only got to three before Mr. Carver touched her elbow.

  “I said heavy on the butter. Barely any on here.” He lifted his sourdough to show nearby diners. “Would you call that heavy butter?”

  A couple people nodded, a couple shook their heads. Clearly an agree-to-disagree situation.

  The great butter debate was enough to shake Quinn from her ritual counting. Or maybe it was the smoke she smelled from the kitchen. She raced back to find a griddle full of pancakes beautiful on one side, but blackened on the other. She piled them up on her spatula and dropped them into the trash. Making sure no food was near a heat source, she took a deep breath and returned to the dining room.

  “As you can see, I’m here by myself today. So, here’s the plan for breakfast. It’s all-you-can-eat pancakes today. I’ll make them and set them on the pass-through and you just come up and help yourself.”

  “As long as it’s not what Jake made that guy last night!” someone said.

  A few people giggled nervously.

  So that’s why the diner was so crowded this morning, Quinn thought. Word already got out and people were morbidly curious. “The man who died last night simply had a heart attack,” she said. “Doesn’t have anything to do with the diner. Or Jake.” Yesterday she’d wanted kudos for running the diner alone, but today she didn’t feel it necessary for everyone to know she was in charge last night too.

  “How much?” a man called out.

  “How much what?” she asked.

  “How much for all the pancakes I can eat?” The man patted his ample belly.

  “Jake’s gonna go broke with you, O’Shea,” Silas hollered.

  O’Shea and the crowd laughed good-naturedly.

  “Five dollars?” Quinn knew Jake charged $7.59 for eggs, toast, bacon, and hash browns. Five bucks should work for everyone. A nice, round number. She saw some shrugs and nods and nobody left, so she headed back to the kitchen. She poured what was left of the batter into small circles on the griddle, then dumped water and more of the mix into the bowl, whisking it smooth. God bless pancake mix. She poked her face through the pass-through. “Feel free to help yourself to coffee too. And let me know when I need to make more.”

  Quinn got a rhythm going with the pancakes—pour, flip, plate, pass-through—enough to feel comfortable to step away and make more coffee.

  Jeb Carver stuck his head in the kitchen. “We’re ready to pay.”

  “Okay, one sec…” Quinn plated all the pancakes on her griddle but didn’t pour any more. She’d developed new respect for a hot grill. She wiped her hands on her apron. “I’m sorry about the butter.”

  Jeb followed her out to the cash register
. “Nah. You made up for it with that mound of bacon.”

  Quinn began to punch numbers on the register. “I don’t want you to blame me when you have a heart attack.” She wanted to claw back her words.

  “Nah.”

  When she hit the final button, the register tape was barely legible. The ink was faint and the paper had the telltale thick pink color that signified the roll was empty. Jeb held out a twenty-dollar bill. But the cash drawer hadn’t popped open like it should have. Quinn started jabbing buttons on the ancient machine, but it wouldn’t budge.

  She glanced at the credit card reader. The irritated yellow numbers scrolling across it yesterday had been replaced by angry red letters demanding she call for service now.

  Mrs. Carver came over to see what was going on.

  Quinn looked up at them helplessly, then around the diner.

  Mrs. Carver opened her purse and pulled out a small coin purse. She fished around until she came up with six quarters. She plucked the twenty from Jeb’s fingers, placing it next to the register and piling the quarters on top. “That’s all right, dear. Thank you for a lovely breakfast.”

  The Carvers stopped by a couple of tables and carried on short, whispered conversations with the diners on their way out.

  “Folks, there seems to be a problem with the cash register,” Quinn said. “Can you all just pay with exact change today until I get a chance to fix it?”

  “When’s Jake coming back?”

  “Soon, I hope,” Quinn said. “But until he does, I’m all you’ve got. So if you want pancakes, I’m happy to make them until you tell me to stop or until I run out.” She glanced around the diner. “And the cash—”

  Three or four people spoke at once.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Cash works.”

  “No problem.”

  “Not a big deal.”

  The folks in Chestnut Station might be a morbidly curious bunch, but they were easygoing and tolerant and Quinn wanted to hug each one of them. She went back to the kitchen to make more pancakes. Everyone seemed to be handling this fiasco just fine, so Quinn began to calm down. The rhythmic movements of repetition soothed her and she achieved a sort of Zen state, brain fully zeroed in on pancakes. The diners were busing their own tables, pouring their own coffee, and eating pancakes like they were actually enjoying themselves.

  Whenever she had a few seconds, she dialed Jake. Where was he?

  Quinn caught snatches of conversations from disembodied voices wafting through the pass-through. As she listened, it became very clear that everyone wanted to talk about the events of last night, even though they had no idea what had actually happened. A man dropping dead in public was certainly a novelty in Chestnut Station.

  Nobody seemed to know who the dead man was. Nor did they know Jake hadn’t been here. The conversation became less guarded, as everyone realized they weren’t the only ones with prurient interest in what happened. The entire diner became one big coffee klatch. The customers were so comfortable with the accommodations and the conversation that they could have been sitting in someone’s living room.

  “I bet he choked.”

  “Maybe. But wouldn’t someone have noticed?”

  “And I know Jake can Heimlich people, because he did it on me once. Laughed too hard once and sucked a cough drop down my windpipe.”

  “It was a heart attack. Have you seen the way we eat around here? Jeb Carver just ate an entire pound of bacon before he went to his cardiologist appointment this morning.”

  “I heard he got into a brawl in the parking lot and his face got smashed with a brick.”

  “Jeb?”

  “No. The dead guy.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Quinn heard Silas say. “Ain’t nobody brawling in Chestnut Station.”

  Quinn set out more pancakes and scooped up the pile of cash that had accumulated in the corner of the pass-through. People piled it up there before calling out goodbye and thanks to her before leaving the restaurant. It was full of tens and twenties. Quinn hoped everyone was overtipping for their pancakes and bottomless coffee. If Jake thought five dollars was too little to charge, she’d just hand over her tips for the day.

  The conversation died down and Quinn glanced up. Wilbur stood in the middle of the diner, holding court the way her grandpa used to.

  “There was no brawl, no choking, no heart attack. And no Jake.” Wilbur waved a hand toward Quinn. “This little lady was cooking last night too. Just like now,” he added ominously.

  The only sound in the diner was the last gasp and gurgle of a new pot of coffee finishing its brewing cycle.

  “Lie down with dogs and you’ll get up with fleas is all I’m sayin’.”

  Quinn froze. Was that an accusation? The image of Wilbur in the kitchen last night materialized in front of her. She moved away from the pass-through and leaned against the prep table where nobody could see her. Heat waves shimmered above the stove, but Quinn made no move to pour more pancakes. It seemed to her the air suddenly felt heavier. She had trouble filling her lungs.

  Wilbur’s voice rumbled through the air. “You ask me, you’re taking your life in your hands here.”

  Quinn couldn’t breathe. She thought she belonged here. These were her people. Her hometown. But if they thought she could—

  “Don’t be a ninny, Wilbur. Quinn no more killed anyone with diner food than…than…you did,” Larry said.

  The crowd laughed and rallied to her defense. Relief flooded Quinn’s body. She poured coffee into a carafe, but before stepping into the dining room with it, she dialed her phone. “Rico? Talk to Wilbur. He was alone in the kitchen last night. He acted like he was trying to help me, but it seemed bogus. Maybe he did something to the gravy.”

  Chapter 5

  By the next morning Quinn was sure she’d worn out the contact buttons on her phone for Jake, and still she hadn’t heard from him. She sat at the kitchen table creating another crossword puzzle.

  The puzzle wasn’t due to Vera at the Chronicle for a few days, but it calmed her. The theme she’d chosen was Murder, which had been on her mind since she’d remembered Wilbur in the diner kitchen.

  Quinn normally enjoyed choosing themes, as they set the tone of the puzzle. They could be anything: A broad subject like murder, a multipart quotation or poem, hidden words, protest songs, cartoon dogs…the list was infinite. The more obscure the theme, the harder the puzzle. But whichever theme she chose, there were some common principles. In Quinn’s typical 15x15 puzzles, she tried to have four theme entries with a minimum of 40 letters. The theme entries were usually the longest words in the grid, ideally with a letter count of 10, 11, 12, or 15. If a theme entry was 15 letters, it could only go in the center of the puzzle. All the theme entries must be symmetrical in length and have the same number of letters, so they could be paired together.

  She looked at her brainstormed list of words related to murder: poisoning, homicide, slaying, conspiracies, manslaughter, premeditated, crime of passion, with malice aforethought, pump full of lead, bump off, triggerman, hired gun. She narrowed it down to four 12-letter words and one 15-letter word, wondering if she was a skilled enough constructor to use all five as theme entries.

  She wouldn’t know until she tried. Quinn pulled up a blank grid on her laptop. The house was quiet and still. Unlike Quinn, Georgeanne and Dan slept. The hum from her computer would normally be so quiet as to be inaudible, but in this magical time before sunrise, it might as well be a jackhammer.

  It didn’t stop her from jumping out of her skin when she heard a quiet tap at the kitchen door. She used an index finger to part the curtains and look out, even though she knew it was Rico.

  “I saw the light on,” he whispered.

  “Yeah. I’m not sleeping much.” Quinn sat down again at the table. When Rico remained at the doo
r she popped up out of her seat like a jack-in-the-box. “What’s wrong?”

  Rico stepped across the threshold and automatically slung his duty cap between his elbow and ribs. He stood at attention with his cap under his arm. His mouth worked, as if he had practiced the words he wanted to say, but couldn’t budge them loose.

  “What? Is it Jake? What happened? Did you…find him?” Quinn braced herself with one palm flat on the table.

  “Yes.”

  You knew it was bad when there was a one-word answer to a multipart question.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “For Pete’s sake, Rico! Tell me!”

  Rico took a deep breath and his police training kicked in. Just the facts, ma’am. “I arrested Jake a few hours ago for the murder of Emmett Dubois.”

  “You did what?” Quinn collapsed into her chair with a thud.

  Rico’s professional bearing wobbled a bit. “Arrested Jake for the—”

  “I heard you the first time. Now sit down and tell me what you’re talking about.” Quinn gestured to a chair at the table.

  Rico placed his hat on the table and sat. As soon as he did, he turned back into Rico the person instead of Rico the cop. “I caught him going into his house around midnight—”

  “Is that illegal?”

  “No, but he knew we were looking for him and he was…there’s no other word for it…sneaking into his house.”

  “Sneaking?”

  “Yes. It was obvious he was trying not to be seen.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s what we want to figure out.” Rico drummed his fingers on the table. “Have you talked to him since the…you know?”

  “You mean, since that man had a heart attack in his diner?” Quinn’s voice rose.

  “That man was a guy Jake used to work with in some fancy restaurants. And he didn’t have a heart attack.”

  “What? Of course he did!” The alternative made no sense.

  “Quinn. It was no heart attack.”