We actually got to Adornetto’s before Dana. I wanted to make sure our tables were far enough apart that she wouldn’t have any reason to know we were there too.
Citing his usual aversion to eating out as a waste of money, Jesse wouldn’t agree to come along with Faye and I and Marco was closing the store. That left Faye and me on our own to do a little matchmaking, if an intervention became necessary.
I half rose from my seat and peaked toward the door at the sound of each entrance until I spied Dana coming in.
“This is silly,” Faye was saying. “We can’t hear anything from here, so why are we...” She trailed off as she looked toward the back of the room.
I turned to see what she was seeing in time to catch a quick glimpse of Mel after she’d come through from the kitchen.
“That’s odd, that she would come in that way,” I whispered to Faye.
She shrugged, “She knows the manager and maybe she wanted to see if Hannah was working tonight.”
“Hannah bakes in the mornings,” I reminded her. “She has classes in the evenings. Surely Mel knows that.” I paused and unrolled my silverware as our server brought our salads.
We were a few bites each into the salad course when a commotion arose on the other side of the half wall that divided the main dining room. Someone called out, “What’s going on?”
“That was Dana who called out just now,” I told Faye. “I’m sure of it.” I stood to see if I could get any sort of a view but all I could see was the top of Dana’s head as she stood in the aisle on the other side.
“Where are you going?” Faye hissed at me as I stepped away from our table.
“To see what’s happening.”
I went over to the kitchen end of the wall and, staying mostly behind the last booth on the opposite side of it, I peered around the end. Mel had a guy on the floor and she was frisking him. I looked back at Faye, who was still seated at the table but watching me and I shook my head. Turning back to the show on the other side, I was just in time to see one of Mel’s men come through the front door with his gun out. A woman up front screamed then and a manager scrambled to the front area.
Scrambling myself, I went back to our table and an anxious Faye and relayed what I’d seen.
“What do we do?” she asked me.
“Mel will have to leave so, obviously, we console Dana. What else can we do?”