Puzzling Ink

by Becky Clark

“No.” Rico shook his head emphatically, then reconsidered. “At least I don’t think so. But these types of mushrooms have reportedly been found all over Colorado. In Denver, in the suburbs—Aurora, Castle Rock, Monument, Colorado Springs. Anywhere there are oak trees.”

  Quinn chewed her pinky nail. “Any idea why Donnie sprang into action and had the presence of mind to get those mushrooms tested? You said he’s never shown initiative before.”

  Rico drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. “I’ve been wracking my brain about that since this started.” He looked at Quinn with lips pressed into a tight slash. “I just don’t know. It’s really not his MO.”

  Quinn fiddled with her necklace. “Maybe someone told him to.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  “Maybe you should keep a close eye on Donnie. Up until now you’ve always talked about him just being green. Maybe you can’t trust him.”

  Rico grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. Even in the glow of the distant streetlight Quinn saw his knuckles turn white. “The idea of not being able to—he’s part of the—you have to be able to trust—”

  Quinn put her hand on his forearm. “I know. And maybe we’re wrong. But until we know….” She squeezed his arm. “But you can trust me. You know that, right?”

  Rico nodded and smiled at her.

  They let that hang in the air a minute. Then Rico perked up. “At least the gravy at the diner tested okay. Jake and you are both off the hook for that, at least.”

  “So Wilbur wasn’t up to anything nefarious in the kitchen that night either?”

  “Nope. Says he was trying to help you, and I quote, ‘Not screw up anyone else’s order’ end quote. Corroborated by Silas and Larry.”

  “Well, isn’t he just a prince among men. I still don’t understand why they just didn’t switch burgers.”

  “I asked them all that. They honest-to-goodness didn’t think of it.” At Quinn’s skeptical face, he added, “You said yourself they’re complainers. Clearly they’re not problem-solvers.”

  “Wilbur snuck into the kitchen pretty readily.”

  “True. But I doubt he’ll be doing that again anytime soon. Said helping was for the birds.”

  “Sometimes I gotta agree with him.” Quinn untangled herself so both feet were on the floor.

  “Having second thoughts about helping me?”

  “Absolutely not.” She picked up her purse. I need this, she wanted to add.

  “Remember, though, that this is my job,” Rico said sternly. “There’s stuff I won’t be able to share with you.”

  Quinn smiled. She knew how to frame questions just right to make Rico answer her. “Sure. I get that. But I may think of things you haven’t thought of. And since you don’t have anyone over there to help talk things through, I’m happy to be your sounding board.” She already knew she wouldn’t be telling him everything she did in order to protect him and his job, if necessary. She didn’t want him to get in trouble if she bent any rules.

  Quinn leaned over and kissed Rico on the cheek before getting out of the car. As she made her way up the sidewalk to the front door she whispered to herself, “Thanks, Rico.”

  When she walked in the house, Georgeanne was arranging herself on the couch next to Dan. The TV was tuned to an old Murder, She Wrote episode. Quinn thought Georgeanne seemed a bit out of breath.

  “Were you spying on me?”

  “No.” Georgeanne’s hand fluttered to her face.

  Quinn cocked her head.

  “Maybe a little.”

  “I tried to stop her, Quinn,” Dan said.

  Georgeanne whacked him on the arm. “Who was the one who dug those out of the closet?” She pointed to a pair of binoculars on the windowsill.

  “Dad!”

  “Just doing a little bird-watching.”

  “At night?”

  “We were just worried about you, sunshine.”

  “How much did you see?”

  “There was more to see?” Georgeanne’s eyes opened wide.

  “Mom! Gross. And no, there wasn’t. Just enough kissing to make us realize we’re just friends and never going on a date again. Definitely no more kissing.”

  “I guess it’s good you figured it out.” Georgeanne looked like she might cry.

  Quinn laughed. “Jeez, Mom. You look like you’ll never see him again. He’s not going anywhere. We’re still friends. Nothing has changed.”

  Dan slung his arm around his wife’s shoulder, but addressed Quinn. “We just really like Rico. Always have. We kinda hoped—”

  “I know, Dad. I kinda did too. But it’s way better this way. Trust me.”

  * * * *

  After the episode of Murder, She Wrote, Quinn said good night to her parents. “Oh, Mom … have you heard of anyone in town hosting or attending a murder mystery party on the day of the murder?”

  Georgeanne considered the question. “I don’t think I do, Quinn. But I can ask around, if you’d like.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  In her room she watched Fang navigate around his bowl while her laptop powered up.

  “Seems like you’ve settled in okay,” she said to him.

  Fang stopped swimming and opened and closed his mouth a few times. His billowy fins and tail delicately rippled the water, keeping him in place.

  “You just let me know if you’d rather be closer to the window instead of here on my nightstand.”

  A bubble escaped Fang’s mouth and drifted to the surface.

  “I’m happy to hear you say that, but the offer still stands. Just say the word.”

  Quinn watched as he took a leisurely lap. When he came back around, she asked, “You hungry?” She picked up her tweezers and the fish food. She counted twenty flakes into her palm then dropped one in the bowl, making sure it was in front of Fang so he could see it.

  After he gobbled it down she gave him another. She fed him one flake at a time. The eighteenth one he let fall to the gravel. And the nineteenth.

  “You’re full?” She offered him the last flake, which he nosed, then let drop.

  Quinn placed her index finger against the bowl, relieved to know how much he actually ate. Maybe she could do this.

  She settled against her headboard and did a search for any local Meetup groups who might have had a party. She wasn’t surprised to find there were no Meetup groups of any kind in Chestnut Station. She searched murder mystery Colorado July and got nothing. She deleted the July and tried again. Still nothing.

  She clicked away from the Meetup page and searched poisonous Colorado mushrooms. The first item that popped up was an article from a couple of years ago about poisonous mushrooms found in someone’s yard in Aurora, just like Rico said. The article cited the Denver Botanic Gardens, but offered a link to the Colorado Mycological Society website.

  They had loads of information and Quinn clicked on a map of all the places the poisonous mushrooms had been found in the state. None anywhere near Chestnut Station.

  She scrolled and clicked around some more and found nothing Rico hadn’t already told her. She watched a short, embedded video of a newscast about those mushrooms found in one of the Denver suburbs. They cut away to an expert who explained it wasn’t dangerous to touch the mushrooms, but went into some detail about what could happen if any of it was ingested. Quinn placed a protective hand on her belly. Gross. Cut back to the reporter with the poor, unfortunate couple in whose yard the mushrooms were found. They seemed as scared as if they’d uncovered an unexploded bomb.

  “What if a child or a dog had eaten one?” the woman asked.

  “We’re lucky we found it before anything bad happened,” the man said.

  They didn’t report how they’d found the mushrooms.

  Why, Quinn wondered, whenever she finished w
atching a news report or reading an article in the paper, did she have more questions than when she started?

  Chapter 9

  When Quinn got to the diner in the morning, after she gave Jethro his payment and ushered him back outside, she called Chris, the weekend cook, to beg him to come help out.

  “It’s Thursday. I don’t work ’til Saturday,” he said.

  “I know, but this is an emergency.”

  “But it’s not Saturday.”

  Quinn assumed any further conversation would travel this same roundabout. “What about Kristi? Is she there? Can I talk to her?” At least that way there’d be another set of hands. Quinn wasn’t wild about having to cook, but she would if she had to.

  “She don’t work ’til Saturday neither.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “Yeah. On Saturday when she comes in.”

  Seriously? He just hung up on me? Quinn looked at her phone in disbelief. Jake would hear about this.

  Quinn looked around Jake’s office. Tattling to him wouldn’t help anything, although he would definitely hear about this.

  The neat pile of ex-employee files remained exactly where Quinn had left them yesterday, an inch from the bottom edge of the desk and an inch from the side. The top file was centered, but at a quarter-turn from the rest. She plucked it off and opened it.

  “Michael Breckenridge. The guy who wouldn’t talk to me,” she muttered.

  She used her cell to call the number again. She recognized his voice. “Don’t hang up on me! My name is Quinn. I work at the Chestnut Din—” Seriously? Again? She angrily punched in the number. It went immediately to voice mail. She picked up Jake’s desk phone and dialed. Same thing. “He blocked me? On both phones? What is his problem?”

  Quinn dropped the receiver into the base and leaned back into Jake’s chair. Clearly, this guy does not want to talk to anyone from the Chestnut Diner. Could he carry an old grudge against Jake? Enough to set him up for a murder?

  She called Rico from her cellphone. “Do you know of any ex-employees of Jake’s who might have a grudge against him?”

  “All of them? But I can’t talk now, Quinn. Call you later.”

  She texted him. What kind of partnership is this if you give me the bum’s rush? She inserted a tears-squirting-out-of-the-eyes-laughing-face emoji so he’d know she was joking. Kinda. I wanted to tell you there’s an ex-employee of Jake’s I want to look at closer. She deleted the last few words and retyped I want you to look at closer. Call me when you can.

  Of course, none of this got her any closer to opening the diner or having a more successful day. She slapped her head, remembering she hadn’t called the credit card people or the cash register people. She opened Jake’s bottom drawer and felt for the manila envelope of cash she’d hidden down there. Nobody would think there was a bunch of money under two empty water bottles and a handful of carryout menus from local restaurants. Hiding the menus was probably a good idea. Wouldn’t look good to customers that you craved other restaurants’ food. Made sense, just didn’t look good. “Bad optics,” like they said in politics.

  Clever concealment or not, she needed to get to the bank to deposit it. But when was she supposed to do that? Maybe if she could clone herself, at least temporarily.

  She remembered that a friend worked temp jobs all through college. She loved the flexibility and likened it to being a substitute teacher, working only when she wanted to.

  Quinn typed temp service for restaurants in her search engine and after clicking around, found listings for food service staffing. She found a Denver phone number that looked promising.

  “I’m calling from the Chestnut Diner and I need a cook and maybe a waitress today to help me.”

  “Today?”

  “Yeah, like now.”

  “That might be difficult. Is this for a permanent position?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I’m sorry, we’re only working with businesses who are temp-to-hire.”

  “Then that’s what I am.”

  The woman on the other end paused. “Regardless. I don’t think we have anyone available for diner work like now.”

  “When will you have someone?”

  The woman sighed. “Ma’am, this isn’t Domino’s. You can’t just call up and order a line cook to be delivered in thirty minutes. There’s vetting. There’s paperwork.”

  “Honestly? I just want a warm body that can flip burgers and has a passing knowledge of a small restaurant kitchen. I don’t care if they’ve been vetted. I don’t need their paperwork. I’ll accept the consequences.” I’ll just get Rico to run background checks on anyone they send me.

  The woman sighed again. “Not vetting for them. Vetting for you. You have to enter into a contract with us. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

  “Oh. How long will it take?”

  “A month? Three weeks, at the earliest. The gal who does the contracts is on maternity leave and we’re swamped. Do you want me to set up an appointment for an interview?”

  “No. Never mind.”

  Quinn hung up and scrolled through the listings again, this time more carefully. Many companies specified the businesses they worked with: hospitals, universities, senior living places. None mentioned supplying short-order cooks for a diner whose owner was sitting in jail and whose waitress was in over her head. Way over her head.

  The front door rattled and Quinn jumped up. She should have had the coffee going and breakfast prepped long ago. At least she remembered to stop at the grocery store and buy an industrial-sized box of pancake mix.

  Here goes nothing, she told herself as she pasted a welcoming smile on her face for the breakfast rush.

  * * * *

  The morning went predictably poorly. The regulars—especially the Retireds—were getting tired of fetching their own coffee and the novelty of paying cash for pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon had definitely worn off. Especially because there weren’t any eggs or bacon left. She should have bought more when she bought the pancake mix, but she could have sworn there was plenty. How in the world did restaurants know how much to buy? Was there some formula, like with the fish food? Some egg-to-person ratio everyone but her knew? Quinn tried to talk people into breakfast chili, but she got no takers.

  And when one starving lady who claimed to be “over carbs” finally agreed to have breakfast salad, Quinn had to return to tell her that it had wilted. She couldn’t, in good conscience, even serve it for free. The woman left in a huff.

  Since when do people get tired of pancakes so fast? This is a diner, for pete’s sake.

  Word was clearly getting around that there was no good gossip at the diner, nor was there good food. Or any service.

  Quinn had mixed feelings about having fewer customers. On the one hand, it meant less work and fewer people complaining about… well, everything. On the other hand, it meant Jake was surely going to lose his diner and Quinn was going to lose her job. And if she lost her job, she’d never be able to move out of her parents’ house, since there were no other jobs in Chestnut Station. And because she had no savings, she couldn’t go back to Denver either. Not that she wanted to.

  She didn’t have a choice. She had to figure out this diner thing at the same time she’d work to help Rico get Jake out of jail. If she could just figure out which direction to point Chief Chestnut, she could get busy on her crossword puzzle plan.

  She’d start with learning more about the dead man. Between customers she searched Emmett Dubois’s name online. The first hit was a testimonial he wrote for Loma’s interior design business: Loma worked closely with me and my team. She readily accepted our input and carefully explained the entire process to us every step of the way. Ours was a large project and we couldn’t have been happier with the final results. I heartily recommend Loma and Partnership Design! —Emmett Dubois


  A link to Loma’s website was included, so Quinn clicked it. She scrolled through pages and pages of luxurious design jobs Loma had done. The work was eye candy and it made Quinn long for a place of her own to decorate.

  She returned to the search page for Emmett Dubois and found his name linked to a restaurant in Denver called the Crazy Mule. She checked their hours. She’d have plenty of time to get there after she closed the diner. Who better to talk to her about Emmett than his employees?

  * * * *

  It took her about an hour—technically an hour and a quarter, if you included the time she spent checking all the locks, making triple-sure everything was shut off, and verifying the refrigerator continued to work—but she found the Crazy Mule in a semi-industrial part of town, not too far from Interstate 70. She found a space right up front in the parking lot. It was a big, sprawling place, but wasn’t busy. Quinn was seated quickly, near the beverage station toward the back. Her waitress promised coffee.

  While she waited, Quinn glanced around the interior, comparing it to the Chestnut Diner. Where the Chestnut Diner was clean, bright, and cozy, the Crazy Mule had certainly seen better days. This decor did not match the opulence shown on Loma’s website. I must have the wrong Emmett Dubois. The carpet was threadbare and stained, and most of the vinyl seats had at least one spot repaired with duct tape. It seemed vaguely familiar to Quinn, but the restaurant wasn’t really in a part of Denver where she had hung out when she’d lived here.

  The customers seated near her covered a wide spectrum of demographics—hipsters, young parents with kids, a few men in suits, and at least one family with a couple of bored teenagers traveling through Colorado. The map spread on the table and the exhausted adult faces were a dead giveaway.

  The waitress brought coffee in a chipped mug with a faded crazy-looking mule logo on both sides. “Know what you want, hon?” She pulled a pen from behind her ear.

  “Actually, can I talk to the manager?”

  “I’ll ask him to come out.”

  “That would be great. Thanks.” On the drive to Denver, Quinn had already decided that her cover would be to ask about Loma’s interior design work, since Emmett’s testimonial referred to “his team.” It didn’t seem right to come right out and ask about Emmett, but an in-person testimonial might work. She hoped the manager wouldn’t ask her a boatload of questions. She didn’t want to keep track of too many fibs. It wouldn’t be a lie to say she’d love to hire Loma and she was intrigued by Emmett’s reference. Short and sweet. And completely true.