by Meg Benjamin
Nando wasn’t altogether surprised when he dreamed about Kit that night. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. It wasn’t even a new dream—just the one where he saw her looking the way she had the first time they’d made love. Like a ribbon of gold against the white sheets, dark eyes made darker by desire, lips parted slightly to show a glimpse of white teeth, nipples rosy against the golden cream of her breasts. The dream didn’t last long, but it was enough to make him wake up aching and sweaty.
Sweet Jesus, is this going to happen every time I see her? If it did, he’d have to come up with some counter measures, like getting a mental image of his eighth-grade math teacher, a dead ringer for Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein.
At least they’d gotten the first meeting over with. Over the long run the best remedy would probably be to find somebody else. Another woman he could spend time with even if he did end up thinking about Kit.
Oh yeah, that’s a wonderful idea. It worked so well last time.
He rolled out of bed at six, after he finally gave up on sleep. He might as well go to work early. Helen’s coffee was better than his own anyway. He grabbed an energy bar out of the box on the counter and hiked over to the station.
The parking lot should have been empty at that time of day except for the cruiser and maybe Helen’s vintage Mustang, although she frequently parked it on the street. Instead, he saw Toleffson’s truck parked at the side. He picked up his pace slightly.
“What’s up?” he asked as soon as he was in the door.
Helen was frowning at her computer. “Burglary and vandalism,” she said shortly. “Over at the bookstore?”
“Docia’s bookstore?”
Helen gave him an eye-roll. “You know any other bookstore in this town?”
Nando grabbed the duffel bag with his crime scene kit and headed out the door.
Kent’s Hill Country Books was a three-minute walk from the station, which explained why the chief had left his truck in the lot. It didn’t explain why Ham had parked the cruiser outside the store, but Nando guessed it had to do with Linklatter’s obsession with showing everybody he was on the job. He pushed open the front door of the shop and found chaos.
Books were scattered everywhere. It looked like some had been torn apart, their pages flung around like confetti. One of the bookcases had been pulled loose from the wall. The cash register was on the floor at the front, and the items that had been on the front counter—pens, pencils, bookmarks, flyers—were scattered around it like flowers around a grave.
Toleffson stood at the side of the room with Docia, one protective hand resting on her shoulder. Docia herself looked like she was suffering from post-traumatic stress. Her eyes were wide, her lips trembling. One hand was pressed against her mouth.
The chief saw Nando across the room and waved him over. “Helen catch you up on this?”
“Not really. When did the call come in?”
“I found it when I got here this morning, around six thirty.” Docia’s voice shook and she swallowed hard. “I was going to get some work done before we opened. Now I guess we won’t be opening at all.” Her lower lip trembled.
Nando blew out a breath, hoping to god she wouldn’t start to cry. He never knew what to do with crying women. “How did they get in?”
Toleffson gestured toward the store room at the side. Nando glanced in. One of the windows had been smashed.
He looked back at the main room again. “Do we know what they were after? Anything obviously missing?”
Docia shook her head. “We don’t leave money here. We take the deposit to the bank when we close up each night. There were some ebook readers and MP3 players at the front that are gone. And the books…” She gazed at the carnage spread around her shelves. “I don’t know if anything’s missing,” she whispered. “I don’t…” She caught her breath on a sob, and Toleffson stretched his arm around her shoulders.
He turned back to Nando again. “I’m going to take her home. I’ll interview her there. You and Ham can do some preliminary processing of the scene. We’ll have to get Friesenhahn in on this so we can use the county lab and have their forensics people go over the place. I’ll call him after I get to Docia’s.”
Nando blinked. Calling in the county forensics unit for a burglary and vandalism case seemed close to overkill. But the county sheriff owed Toleffson all kinds of favors, so he’d probably okay it.
Toleffson narrowed his eyes as if he knew what Nando was thinking. Given the circumstances, he decided it was best not to ask any questions.
“Once you get the store locked down for the forensics techs, check around outside to see if the burglar left anything. Then start talking to the neighbors. Maybe somebody heard something.”
“You have any ideas about what time it happened?”
The chief shook his head. “Last night. Probably late. Nobody reported any suspicious activity on Main so far as I know.”
Nando started to nod, then paused. “I walked by here last night around nine or so.”
“Notice anything?”
Hell, he hadn’t been thinking about anything besides Kit Maldonado. A battalion could have marched through the bookstore and he might not have noticed. “Not that I remember.”
“Talk to the neighbors. Maybe somebody heard him smash the window.” He nudged Docia gently toward the back door.
“Right.” Nando sighed. This definitely wasn’t the time to lose his focus. Kit Maldonado had to be filed away under Past Mistakes until he’d finished his job here.
Processing the scene with Ham mainly meant keeping Ham from screwing up whatever evidence there was. Nando turned back to the room again, pulling his camera out of his duffel bag. The pictures wouldn’t be as high quality as the ones the county forensics people would take, but at least it would give them a record of their own at the station.
Ham was standing at the front counter, using an amazing amount of fingerprint powder to dust it. Since most of the people who’d bought books from Docia over the past few weeks had probably leaned on the counter, his chances of getting anything useful in the way of evidence were close to zero. At least he’d pulled on vinyl gloves. Nando pulled on his own.
“Why don’t you get started on the interviews?” Nando suggested carefully. “I can do pictures in here until the crime scene techs show up.” He wasn’t sure how much authority his new job title gave him over Ham, but getting him out of the bookstore before he could mess up any evidence seemed like a good idea.
Ham’s jaw firmed. He gave Nando a mutinous look. “Chief said to do preliminary processing. That’s what I’m doing.”
Nando gave a mental shrug and turned back to the vandalized store again.
He worked his way around the room, snapping shots of everything that looked like the burglar’s doing and checking to see if any other trace evidence had been left on the floor. How come he never found helpful things like matchbooks from the criminals’ hideout the way they did on TV? Why did real life have to be so messy?
Halfway back, he smelled something. He paused, checking beside the corners of the bookcases.
Ham stepped up behind him. “Smells like their sewer’s backed up. Better get a plumber in here.”
“It’s not the toilet,” Nando muttered.
Ham stepped forward and then froze. “Oh for Pete’s sake. Is that what I think it is? Smells like poop.”
“Smells like what it is.” Nando fumbled in his pocket for an evidence bag.
“That’s evidence?” Ham sounded scandalized.
“There’s DNA in feces, just like blood and semen.” Nando took a breath and collected the sample, trying not to think about what he was doing as he did it.
“So this guy took a crap in the bookstore and left us a sample of his DNA? Why’d anybody want to do that?” Ham gave Nando and his evidence bag a wide berth.
“My guess is it’s a message.” Nando deposited the sample in his kit to be handed on to the forensics techs when they arrived, then tur
ned back to the store again.
“A message?” Ham snorted. “What kind of a message is poop?”
Nando shrugged. “Maybe somebody really, really doesn’t like books.” Or really, really doesn’t like Docia Toleffson.
Kit’s first morning at the Woodrose was spent trying to figure out the computerized reservation software. Ms. Morgenstern have given her a brief introduction and then disappeared, apparently a lot more confident about Kit’s computer skills than Kit was herself. She finally downloaded an on-line instruction manual so that she could enter the reservations that had come through on the computer last night before digging through the others that had landed on voice mail.
By mid-morning she’d begun to worry about overbooking—apparently the software had no way to check for availability. She figured she could juggle things around for today, but tomorrow she’d definitely have to figure out something different.
Actually, the more she worked on it, the more Kit became convinced that the whole system needed to be replaced. The Rose should probably have been using a national reservation service rather than trying to limp by with something one step up from email on their web site. She’d discuss it with Ms. Morgenstern, but it seemed like a no-brainer.
At ten, Morgenstern appeared again, brushing the wrinkles out of her beige linen suit. “All right, dear, time to get the dining room set up for the lunch crowd,” she trilled. She gave Kit the usual sunny smile, then promptly scuttled back into her office again.
Fortunately, Kit had already taken a peek at the dining room on her way in that morning. Like the rest of the inn, it was elegance personified. The tables were set with pink linen cloths and green napkins, the crystal and silver sparkling in the sun. French doors opened onto a patio with a view of distant green hills. She guessed the patio would provide some great outdoor dining possibilities later in the spring, although it was too cool in the shade at the moment.
She stood in the center of the room now, trying to familiarize herself with the layout diagram she’d found at the hostess station. The French door to the patio creaked open behind her, and she turned to see Joe LeBlanc’s massive frame filling the doorway.
“Took the job, I see.”
Kit gave him her professional smile. “Yes I did. Now I’m trying to see where the server stations are.”
He glanced over her shoulder, then shook his head at the diagram. “That thing’s out of date. We don’t have five servers anymore.”
Kit raised an eyebrow. “For the off-season, you mean?”
LeBlanc gave her a slightly sour smile. “For any season. We got two, and you better hope they both show up. If one of them stays home to nurse a hangover, things go to hell fast.”
Kit did a quick calculation. Two servers would be responsible for around fifteen tables each, some of them with seating for six. All of a sudden, she really hoped they weren’t too busy at lunch. “What happened to the other three servers?”
“Quit when the restaurant went to shit. Weren’t enough customers to justify that many servers anyway, given the stuff coming out of Carville’s kitchen most of the time. Now traffic’s picking up again, but Morgenstern won’t hire any new staff.”
Kit’s shoulders tightened. “Maybe she’s waiting to see the monthly receipts.”
LeBlanc gave her a slow smile. “Yeah, well, maybe. Anyway, you got two servers and a busboy to work with. I give everybody a rundown on the specials at ten thirty. We open at eleven thirty.”
Kit checked her watch. That gave her fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom, check her makeup, and try to make her pulse rate slow down to something approaching normal.
Fifteen minutes later she stood in the kitchen with what passed for her staff. One of the servers, Elaine, was so young she looked underage for a dining room that served wine. The other, Phillip, was probably in his forties. He was also probably experienced, but Kit wasn’t sure at what. His face looked like he’d been through a lot of hell in some capacity.
The busboy was named Gabriel. He was maybe seventeen, but he clearly felt his age was no handicap to his budding career as a lady killer. Kit had told him gently but quite firmly that she didn’t get involved with people she worked with. Gabriel didn’t look like he was going to let that stop him.
LeBlanc watched her with that same sardonic grin he’d had in the dining room. One of these days she’d tell him just how annoying it was, but right now she didn’t have time. He stood in the midst of his own staff. Darcy now wore a chef’s coat and beanie. Two other dark-eyed men in white coats lounged against the prep table, looking both exotic and bored.
“Okay, y’all, listen up,” LeBlanc intoned in a voice that carried to the back of the kitchen. The servers came to attention. Gabriel reluctantly turned his gaze away from Kit.
“Soup of the day is wild mushroom bisque. Mushrooms are local. Try to mention that—we don’t want it hanging around after today. Special is broiled redfish with haricots verts and rice pilaf. Sandwich is a Spanish chorizo and manchego panini. Pasta is penne with Meyer lemon cream sauce and grilled shrimp.”
“We got any steak?” Phillip called.
LeBlanc grimaced. “We got some strip. Not much. Expect it to run out early. Push the Panini and the pasta—we got lots of both. And chicken. Always chicken.”
“Cooked how?” Elaine asked, eyes wide.
“However you want it, darlin’.” LeBlanc grinned at her. “Regular menu stuff. Mostly salads. Staff meal’s on the steam table.”
Kit watched the waiters and chefs head for the food. Her stomach felt too full of butterflies to squeeze in anything else.
LeBlanc raised a bristling black eyebrow. “You don’t like pasta? I can fix you up some of that wild mushroom bisque.”
She shook her head. “Not hungry right now. If there’s anything left after the lunch crowd, I’ll eat then.”
LeBlanc peered at her. “You’re not nervous are you, darlin’?”
Kit flexed her shoulders. “I won’t be after this meal. After I get used to the place.”
He shook his head, his sardonic grin returning. “Darlin’, this place has been limping along with Mabel as hostess for a month. Anything you do will be an improvement, believe me. Particularly if you actually know what you’re doing.”
“Mabel?”
“Morgenstern.” LeBlanc’s mouth twisted slightly. “Ol’ Mabel may have a lot of great qualities, but running a dining room ain’t one of them. Come to think of it, I’m not real sure what the others might be.”
Kit swallowed hard as the butterflies took another pass around her stomach. The Rose was nothing like Antonio’s Fine Mexican Cuisine. Her mom wasn’t around to pick up the slack if she had any problems, and the customers undoubtedly wouldn’t cut her a break if she screwed up. She peeked out the kitchen door toward the hostess station. Four women in Ralph Lauren were staring around the dining room, obviously trying to locate someone who could give them a table.
“Show time,” Kit whispered, assuming her best professional smile.
By the end of the lunch shift, Kit had come to two firm conclusions—the Rose could be the best restaurant in Konigsburg with a little work, and two servers weren’t enough.
After the first half hour, she’d been dividing her time between seating customers, pouring water, tea and coffee, and occasionally helping Gabriel clear tables, which meant discouraging his not-particularly-subtle passes and avoiding the occasional wandering hand.
After his fifth attempt to impress her with muttered promises of his sexual stamina, Kit’s patience snapped. “Listen, kid, I’m old enough to be your big sister,” she snarled. “And if you don’t stop hitting on me and start doing the work you’re paid for, you’ll be looking for alternative employment as a boy soprano. Now zip it!”
Gabriel had given her his version of puppy eyes, but Kit ignored him. She didn’t have time for hurt feelings. Hell, she didn’t have time to breathe!
Ms. Mabel Morgenstern had looked in during the height of th
e rush, waving cheerfully when she saw Kit with a water pitcher but wisely choosing not to stop for a chat. Other than that, she saw no one but customers and wait staff.
She soon figured out that Elaine was at the beginning of what passed for her food service career. She was sweet and friendly and likeable and only borderline competent. Phillip knew what he was doing, but he wasn’t likely to warm up the customers with an expression that made him look like a former serial killer. Still, when a group of six came in, she put them on Phillip’s station, although it would bring him close to capacity, since only he was remotely capable of handling a group of that size. She hoped his tips would make up for it.
The rush began to die down around one thirty, although they still got a few groups of four and some couples.
When she’d run the last credit card and watched the last table of four head through the dining room entrance, Kit collapsed into one of the booths near the bar. If this pace kept up, she’d forget about looking professional and start wearing running shoes.
LeBlanc appeared beside her, carrying a bowl and a couple of plates. Apparently he’d been a waiter in some earlier incarnation. He placed the bowl in front of her. “Mushroom bisque. Saved you a bowl. The server corps managed to move the rest of it.”
He dropped down opposite her, putting a plate of cheese, bread and fruit in the middle of the table while he set a large Panini in front of himself. “See what you got yourself into, darlin’?”
Kit picked up her spoon. “This is insane. If it’s like this at lunch, why aren’t we open for dinner? Surely we’d pick up some of this crowd.”
LeBlanc’s smile curdled. “You got that right. I don’t know what the hell Mabel’s waiting for. You want a fine dining experience in Konigsburg, right now it’s Brenner’s. It’s taken us a while to build back up from where that asshole Carville left us, but word’s gotten out little by little. We could definitely give Brenner’s a good run for the dinner crowd.”
“Do you do breakfasts too?”
He shrugged. “We buy pastry from your aunt, and either Jorge or Leo comes in early to make omelets. It’s mostly for the inn guests anyway.”