Chapter 25
I’d just delivered a turkey burger and two Sloppy Joe dogs to a clutch of birders when the entrance bell jangled once again in its steady medley of welcoming hungry lunch customers and bidding satisfied ones farewell. I glanced over to see Lou and her cycling friends from last week. After I smiled and waved them to an empty table, they clacked over in their cycling shoes, pulling off gloves, fluffing up helmet hair.
“Back for more, are you?” I smiled wistfully at their green-and-yellow jerseys. “I sure wish I could join you out on the road.”
Lou threw her braid back over her shoulder. “Why don’t you?” She stayed standing as the others sat.
I gestured around the store. “Way too busy. Dishwasher broke, too. And we’re hosting a big fund-raiser tonight”—I pointed at the poster—“or I’d go out for a ride after we close.” I raised a shoulder and dropped it. “What can you do?” I handed them all menus.
“Question for you,” Lou said. She pointed at the restroom door, so I followed her over. She paused in front of it.
“Were you able to contact Roberto?” she said in a soft voice.
“I tried. Heard back from his daughter that he’s quite ill. In a hospital over there.” My throat thickened.
“Oh, no.” She reached out and patted my arm.
“She sent me his room number and the hospital name a while ago, but I’ve been too busy to call. I’ll try him after the store closes.”
At the grill Danna stuck her hand in the air and twirled her index finger, our sign to each other an order was up. “Gotta run,” I said.
“Hey, good luck. Let me know how it goes, okay?” She pushed open the restroom door.
I told her I would and headed toward Danna. The next hour got crazy—cooking, delivering, making change, wiping down, and trying to keep up with the dishes. I might have to start serving on paper soon, myself. I gave a quick call to Adele to see if she could come by to rescue us, but she didn’t pick up. When I tried Phil, he said he was too busy, that Corrine had roped him into baking dozens of desserts for the fund-raiser. And that was the extent of my emergency help list.
But we made it through alive. I sold more corn fritter pans, managed to calm down a couple of hunters whose orders we mixed up, and nearly sold out of Phil’s Kahlúa brownies. By one-thirty my stomach was complaining something fierce, as usual, and only a couple of tables were occupied.
“Danna, take a break and eat, why don’t you?” I tried to elbow her away from the sink.
“Nah, I’m good. I ate during the lull, and I’m playing volleyball this afternoon. Don’t want to have a full stomach.” She adjusted the yellow bandana she wore tied in back under her dreads, which today she’d braided into a fat plait.
“You’re going to play volleyball after working like a maniac since before the sun came up?”
“Sure. My friends and me? We play every Saturday.”
I whistled and threw a turkey patty onto the grill. “Well, I’m going to eat. And I’m not playing volleyball at two-thirty, I’ll tell you. Although, I wish I could get out for a long ride one of these afternoons.”
“See? Same thing. We both need to stretch it out, get the heart rate up. We just do it in different ways.”
“You got that right.” A couple minutes later I sank into a chair with my lunch. I was halfway through it, munching on a crispy pickle, when Abe appeared in the doorway, this time wearing old jeans and a plaid shirt. I waved at him and he approached my table.
“Corrine roped me into hanging a banner across Main Street.” He shook his head.
“For the fund-raiser?”
“With the company’s cherry picker. Seems a little late, seeing as how it’s tonight.”
“No kidding. Right here in this restaurant, too.” I yawned. “I have work to do later. Will you be there?”
“Of course. It’s for a good cause, right? Hey, got any of those left?” He sat across from me and pointed at my burger.
“Sure. Turkey, beef, or veggie?”
“Beef, of course, with cheese on top. Where do I look like I’m from, California?” He laughed.
I laughed, too. He looked every bit the picture of a healthy Midwestern man, especially with that dimple going on.
“Back in a flash.” I grabbed one more bite of my burger, ignoring his plea as I walked away for me to sit and finish my own lunch first. It didn’t take long to fry up a beef patty, melt a slice of cheddar, and assemble the plate. After I laid on a dill, and scooped hot fries out of the fryer, I carried it over to him.
He thanked me and tucked in. I sat and did the same. When I finished my lunch, I said, “Can I ask you a question? You said something about Roy’s shotgun this morning. That’s what you use to go hunting with?”
“Sure is, at least for grouse. For deer you use a rifle.”
“What kind of gauge is the shotgun? Or maybe that’s the wrong way to say it.”
“His is twenty. So’s mine. So are most grouse shotguns.” He looked at me sideways, neatly wiping a drip of ketchup from the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Why are you asking?”
“Somebody shot at me last night in an alley downtown.”
“That sucks. You’re all right, I assume, since you’re working and all.” Abe gazed at me.
“I’m fine. They missed. But Buck recovered what he called a slug from the wall. Said it came from a twenty-gauge shotgun.”
“Not a grouse gun, then. Those spray out shot pellets.”
“Oh. But another kind of shotgun would shoot slugs?”
“That’s right. You’re thinking Roy might have shot at you?”
I nodded as if molasses had a hold of my head. “When I saw him standing in the doorway this morning before we were even open, with a big old gun hanging from his shoulder, it did not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, I’ll tell you.”
“He’s a bit odd, but I think he’s harmless. He’s been expressing a few unhappy thoughts about you, for sure, with regard to the store and all.” Abe narrowed his eyes. “An alley. Was it the alley behind the bank, the one near Walnut?”
“That’s it. Did you hear about it at the station this morning?”
“No, afraid not.” He selected a fry and slowly swished it in a figure eight through his ketchup.
“Then how did you know where I was shot at?”
He pointed the fry at me. Drops of red dripped one by one onto the table. “Those flats above the bank? That’s where Roy lives.”