Kate eyed Maggie with skepticism. “I know I’m low on options, but I don’t have time to train someone. I need experience.”
“I wait on our guests at the B and B all the time.” This didn’t impress Kate. Seeing the opportunity slipping away, Maggie lied, “And I waitressed in college. In New York. Brooklyn. A tough crowd. Very tough.”
Kate relaxed. “Oh. Yeah, the Brooklyn customers can be rough. But don’t you have a full-time job?”
“I’m taking a couple of days off. If you need me after that, I can do the night shift here.”
A patron called to Kate for his check. “You’re hired,” she said to Maggie. “Apron is in the kitchen. There’s a tablet in the pocket.”
“A … tablet?” Maggie paled. She’d seen the tech device at restaurants, and they looked intimidating.
“Ugh, right, you waitressed back in the last century. Yes, a tablet. Order goes to a monitor in the kitchen, bill goes to Trick here.” Trick gave an amused salute. Kate craned her neck toward the door and uttered an epithet. “Party of six walked in. Go, go!”
Maggie scurried into the kitchen, where she donned her uniform of apron and tablet. She took a deep breath and marched onto the restaurant floor.
The next two hours were a blur of taking orders, delivering food, apologizing for delivering the wrong food, delivering drinks, and apologizing for delivering the wrong drinks. Watching the kitchen staff in action gave Maggie a new respect for all of them. They worked at their stations without a break and with laser focus, producing dish after perfect dish. Finally, blessedly, lunch service was over, heralding a welcome break before dinner service. Maggie bussed a four-top, clearing it of a mess left behind by a couple with two hyperactive children. She picked up some loose change and cursed. “Seventy-five cents on a sixty-dollar check? I know these people. They’re getting a spitter on their next visit.”
Becca, who’d come out of the kitchen with the rest of the kitchen staff and was nursing a drink at the bar, gave a weary smile. “Working for tips is the worst. One of the waiters at our New York place once got left a MetroCard on a two-hundred-dollar check. He went to use it and it was empty.”
“Considering a new MetroCard costs a buck, he still did better than me.” Maggie brought her bin of dirty dishes into the kitchen for the dishwasher, then went back to the dining room and collapsed into a chair.
“Get some rest before the dinner shift,” Luis advised. He picked up an unused napkin. Pushing back his black hair, he swiped the napkin over his damp, dark skin. “I know that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Maggie, exhausted, drove home to follow Luis’s advice. The hectic afternoon gave her no time to commingle with her Chanson coworkers. She knew from JJ that restaurant staff often caught a drink together at the end of the night to unwind. She’d take a nap, serve dinner, and suggest a nightcap if no one else offered the idea.
As soon as she reached the apartment, Maggie fell into bed. Agile little Chi mix Jolie jumped onto the bed, snuggled into the curve of Maggie’s back, and passed out alongside her. Maggie woke up an hour later to the sound of a voice gently calling, “Chère? Chère?” She rubbed her eyes. Bo stood over here. “You all right? You’re not a big napper. Are you coming down with something?”
“No.” Maggie yawned and stretched. She planted her feet on the floor with a groan, feeling every minute of the lunch shift on her body. “It’s a long story, but I waitressed at Chanson’s this afternoon.”
Bo raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
Maggie limped to the bathroom, where she splashed water on her face. “JJ’s in a bad way. Kate needed an extra hand. A few of them, really. I thought if I spent time with the restaurant staff, I could at least pick up some intel about who sabotaged Junie’s.”
Bo assumed a thoughtful expression. “Hmm … I’m trying to remember when we hired you as an undercover agent.”
Maggie gave her husband a playful swat. “I’ll be careful. I might be able to dig up something you can use. People reveal stuff in a casual setting that they hold back during an interrogation.”
“Oh, now you’re a criminal behavior expert.”
“You know I’m right.”
The couple left the bedroom for the kitchen. Bo took a can of beer out of the refrigerator while Maggie reheated a cup of coffee in the microwave. “I’ve got a stalker update,” Bo said, now serious.
This gave Maggie a jolt. “I was so busy today I forgot about that.”
“You can bet I haven’t—and won’t, until I’ve locked up whoever it is. We traced the flowers to three different florists in the parish—not the shops. Their drivers. It’s the same story with all three of them. The delivery guys admitted that they found the arrangements next to their trucks with fifty-dollar tips and delivery instructions.”
“But the shops didn’t sell the flowers?” Maggie asked, confused.
“No. We think the suspect bought them at different grocery stores in the area. A person is way less memorable going through a grocery line than buying one-on-one from a florist. We’re checking with cashiers, but the fact it’s so close to Valentine’s Day makes it hard for someone buying a dozen roses, more or less, to stand out.”
“Whoever’s doing this put a lot of thought into it.”
Maggie drained her cup. But the buzz she felt wasn’t from the coffee. It was from fear. Her cell chimed with a text alert. She checked and saw a message from Vi: Need you to come tomorrow. 10 a.m. Bring bottle of single malt scotch. And talent.
Maggie’s face fell. Bo noticed. Concerned, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
Caught, Maggie faked a smile. “Nothing. I mean, I thought it was bad news, but it’s good news,” she tap-danced. “That was from Vi. I was afraid she needed to cancel our next lesson, but she just wants to move it up to tomorrow morning.”
Bo’s expression cleared, happiness replacing worry. “I did good, huh?” he said, with a touch of self-satisfaction.
Maggie, amused by the rare sight of her husband puffed up, kissed him. “You did great.”
Bo had eagerly returned the kiss, but Maggie was forced to put the brakes on their romantic interlude when she remembered the Doucet gala committee was scheduled to meet at Crozat that evening. She texted the committee members a change of location to Chanson’s, explaining that she would be waitressing. The question marks she got in response to the odd situation were answered with a simple text of Helping JJ.
The women met up at the restaurant at five, before the dinner rush began. “You didn’t get any more flowers today,” Ione whispered to Maggie as they settled in for the meeting.
“Maybe whoever’s been sending them heard the police were looking into it,” Maggie said. “Here’s hoping that scared them off.”
“I’m sure it did,” Ione said with a conviction Maggie knew her friend didn’t feel, because she didn’t feel it either. Ione pulled a folder out of her tote bag. “All righty, let’s get subcommittee updates. Refreshments?”
“We’ll be supplying all the sweets,” said Lia, Fais Dough Dough and Bon Bon proprietor.
“And I’ve got an army of food donations lined up,” Ninette said. “Appetizers, casseroles, gumbos, jambalayas. It’s gonna be a feast.”
“Good to know,” Vanessa said. She helped herself to a fistful of popcorn shrimp. “I’m eating for two now. ’Least that’s the excuse I’m using until I pop out Quentin or Quentina Junior.”
Ione shot her a look. “Tell me you’re not really gonna name some poor child Quentina.”
“ ’Course not. If it’s a girl, she’s gonna be Tookie. After my mama.” Vanessa pressed her lips together to keep from crying. Her mother, a tiny, peppery airboat operator rarely seen without a cigarette dangling from her leathery lips, had recently passed away from lung cancer. Maggie and the other women murmured condolences and support.
Ione gently pivoted focus back to the meeting. She went down her list, getting updates on invitations, decor, and entertainment. “Charlotte,” she said to Grand-mère, “how’s it going with procuring silent-auction items?”
“I have a big announcement on that score.” Gran fluffed her silver hair. She couldn’t have looked more pleased with herself. “Lee had some … plumbing issues … so we paid a visit to his urologist, Dr. Berg in Ville Platte. I’m pleased to share that the good doctor has kindly offered to donate an incredibly special procedure to our cause—a vasectomy.”
There was a collective jaw-drop, and then the women burst into laughter. “Brilliant.” Gaynell wiped tears from her eyes as she chortled. “I bet that raises a ton of money—from wives.”
“Can we bid on it for someone else?” Ione said, laughing so hard she developed a case of hiccups. “Because I can think of a few people who’d be doing the world a service by undergoing the procedure.”
“Stop,” Vanessa begged. “I’m gonna laugh this baby out of me right here.”
“You can’t.” Maggie gasped for air as she laughed uncontrollably. “I’ll get stuck cleaning up after you.”
“My goodness,” Gran said. “If I had known the reaction this would generate, I’d have asked Dr. Berg to donate two vasectomies.”
This engendered more peals. “We’re only laughing because she said the word vasectomy,” Lia snorted. “How old are we?”
There was a sudden wall of sound. Maggie glanced toward the front of the restaurant. A tour bus had disgorged its load of passengers. Kate and Lisa, the one waitress the restaurateur had managed to hold on to, frantically tried to seat them all. Kate caught Maggie’s eye and mouthed, “Help!”
“Sorry, all,” Maggie said to her friends. “I’ve been summoned.”
Maggie spent almost two hours trying to prove to herself and her customers that she wasn’t a terrible waitress. She failed. But the tourists were good-natured and big drinkers, which helped ease Maggie’s embarrassment about her ineptitude. Unlike her, Scooter was in his element, putting on an oyster-shucking show he could have taken on the road. Orders delivered and a lull in new arrivals allowed Maggie a short break. She staggered over to her friends, picked up an almost-empty pitcher of Pimm’s Cups, and gulped the dregs of it. “Y’all didn’t have to stick around, but it was nice knowing I have friends here. Lord knows I wasn’t making any from the customers, and I don’t blame them.”
“We’re having a fun time watching the oyster guy,” Gaynell said. “We got the table closest to him. I’m like to leave here covered in oyster juice.”
Scooter juggled two oysters to roars of approval from the patrons.
Maggie took another gulp from the pitcher. “At least someone here knows what they’re doing.”
“You have many talents, chère,” Gran said in a comforting voice. “But best to leave waitressing to the professionals.”
“I think what Maggie’s doing to help JJ is awesome,” Vanessa said. “It’s like that show where bosses go undercover, only it’s Maggie.” She spread her hands to mime a marquee. “Undercover PI. And this episode is called ‘To Catch a Killer.’ ”
An oyster clattered to the floor. Scooter’s work glove slipped off, following the oyster onto the floor. He clutched his left hand and yelled profanities. Diners watched horrified as blood shot out of a wound caused by the shucker missing the oyster and instead impaling his now-naked hand.