Don't Forget Me

by Meg Benjamin

  He sighed. Allie Maldonado was the greatest baker he’d ever worked with. Watching Kit smash her groom’s cake had been a major trauma. If anyone other than Allie herself had been at risk, he might have tried to come up with an alternative, like shooting the asshole. Allie had been pretty nice about it, given that he’d basically allowed the culinary equivalent of a Picasso to be destroyed.

  He checked his watch, then headed down the hall. He still had a good half hour before Kit was due for the lunch crowd, and he needed to do this when she wasn’t around to dither. No time like the present.

  Mabel glanced up as he walked in her office door. It was probably tough to transform her initial scowl into her usual artificially sunny smile, but she managed it. “Joseph, how nice to see you so early in the morning. I wouldn’t be here myself if it wasn’t for the Maldonado wedding. And how are the preparations going for the reception?”

  Joe leaned forward, placing his fists upon the edge of her desk. “What’s this bullshit about closing the restaurant, Mabel?”

  Mabel’s smile contracted to a grimace. “Oh dear, I’d hoped you wouldn’t hear any gossip about that. Nothing has been decided yet. It’s still very possible that the restaurant will only need to close for one more day a week rather than closing altogether.” She gave him a rueful smile. “I know I should have brought this up with you before, but we’ve all been so busy, haven’t we? And so much drama!”

  “Cut the crap, Mabel.” Joe straightened. “What are you trying to pull?”

  Her eyes hardened, but her smile stayed firmly in place. The woman was obviously a pro. “Well, to be blunt the restaurant is too expensive for the inn. It’s pulling down the rest of our profits. I’m going to propose three alternatives to Mauritz—cutting back on the days we’re open, closing the restaurant altogether or firing you.” She gave him a flint-eyed smile. “Your salary accounts for a major part of the restaurant’s expenses right now.”

  “All of that would make sense if the restaurant wasn’t paying for itself.” He gave her a humorless smile of his own. “In fact, of course, it’s more than paying for itself. And has been for the past two months.”

  Mabel’s smile didn’t waver. “I’m sure you wish that was the case. Unfortunately, it isn’t.”

  “Oh but it is.” Joe broadened his smile slightly to show more teeth. “You see, when we had our first conversation, way back before Kit Maldonado was hired, when you said you couldn’t afford to hire more wait staff or a professional hostess, and the wait staff you brought in was clearly incompetent, I started keeping track of the daily receipts in the restaurant. And I made copies for myself going back a few months.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure, but Mabel might have paled slightly. She managed a quick shake of the head, along with another patronizing smile. “Unfortunately, receipts don’t tell the whole story, Joseph. As I said, your salary is a major expense. So is the overhead in the restaurant—wait staff, maintenance, laundry, the cost of food, even the cost for printing menus. All of it adds up, and it undercuts the restaurant’s success.”

  “Yeah, I figured the restaurant’s expenses would probably be your excuse. So I kept track of the Rose’s expenses too. I contacted the vendors directly, and I made copies of everything. You forget, Mabel, I’ve been in this business for a lot of years. Sometimes in places where I was in charge of the front of the house as well as the back.”

  Mabel swallowed, her smile curdling. Her hand contracted to a fist on the desktop. “Nonetheless, I keep the books. I’m only too aware of how expensive the Rose has become. And I’ll be sending the records to Resorts Consolidated at the end of the month. They’ll make the final decision, of course.”

  Joe shrugged. “I really wouldn’t do that if I were you, but of course it’s your call. I’ve already taken the liberty of sending a couple of spreadsheets to Mauritz. I wanted to get his input on the hiring situation for the restaurant. I also recommended we start dinner service and a Sunday brunch. We’ll switch the closed day to Monday since Sunday is a big day for dining out. As I understand it, he’s all in favor.”

  “You don’t have the complete figures,” she snapped. “All the expenses. You can’t. I’m the only one who has them.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. That’s why I broke into your office a few times over the past couple of weeks. You really need a better lock on that door, and you sure as hell need better security on your computer.”

  Mabel’s eyes widened. He could hear the rasp of her breathing.

  “I wanted to find the figures you were looking at. The real figures, that is.” His smile disappeared. “Not the ones where you charged off the event center’s expenses to the restaurant.” He shook his head. “Sloppy, Mabel. Very sloppy. Running the event center at a loss is a really bad idea, by the way. My guess is Mauritz will think so too. And if he and his accountants should happen to find a certain amount of rake-off going on with your suppliers, they’d be very, very unhappy.”

  “I didn’t…” Mabel took a quick breath, folding her hands in front of her. “It hasn’t been running at a loss. And I haven’t been raking off anything. I may have accepted a few gifts from our suppliers, but that’s standard in this business. And it’s standard accounting practice to spread the expenses around the entire facility.”

  “Right. That’s a standard accounting practice called juggling the books where you secretly switch expenses from one part of the inn to another. Makes it look like the event center’s a champ rather than a loss leader. Particularly interesting since that center used to be very profitable from what I understand. Mauritz is likely to hold you responsible for taking it down, Mabel. He won’t be pleased.”

  She licked her lips, staring up at him, her brown eyes suddenly sharp. “What are you going to do?”

  “You mean who am I going to tell? Nobody. As long as you don’t send in those juggled figures to the head office.” He rested his fists on the desk again. “That means hands off the restaurant, Mabel. Sooner or later the auditors are going to catch up with you, you know. I’d recommend sending in the real figures and taking your lumps, but that’s up to you. They probably won’t fire you for letting the event center go to hell. Just reassign you someplace else.” Like their resort in Alberta. According to Joe’s sources, it was snowed in for a large part of the year. Mabel should have plenty of time to work on her promotional skills.

  “I’ll take that under advisement.” She sounded like she was gritting her teeth.

  “You do that. Incidentally, Kit will be hiring more staff over the next two weeks. And she should be taking over the management for the restaurant, including all the ordering, given that she’s better at it than you are. You’re lucky to have her. We need a couple more waiters and busboys, plus I could use a pastry chef, particularly if we start doing a brunch. Although we might be able to work something out with Allie Maldonado. Assuming she’s happy with her reception this afternoon.” He gave Mabel a lazy smile. “Speaking of that, I’d better get back to my kitchen.”

  He started for the door, then paused. “Do we have an understanding, Mabel?”

  She stared down at her desk for a long moment, then looked up at him with a ghost of her former smile. “Of course. I’m so glad we had this talk, Joseph.”

  “Oh me too.” Joe grinned at her. “Definitely.”

  Nando came back to the station after lunch. With any luck he’d get a large chunk of the Brody paperwork out of the way this afternoon so he could spend the evening with Kit. He felt a brief clenching in his chest as he thought of her and wondered how long it would be until that feeling went away. Probably until he could forget the look in her eyes as she’d confronted Brody with the cake. In other words, a very long time.

  Helen glanced up as he came in, then turned back to her screen. “Chief wants to see you.”

  “Is he in his office?”

  “Last time I looked.”

  Oh well, he could do paperwork some other time. He headed up the hall.

 
Toleffson was sitting next to the folding table, his chin in his hand, staring at the contents of the trash sack that was spread out in front of him again. “Come on in.” He gestured toward the chair on the other side of the table. “Help me make some sense of this.”

  Nando sank into his seat, frowning down at the pile of objects. “Making sense sounds kind of optimistic. I’m assuming Brody didn’t tell anybody anything.”

  Toleffson shook his head. “He’s being a hardass. Maybe he still thinks he’ll manage to get back here and grab it. Do we know for sure whatever he was searching for was in this stuff? Did he look at it?”

  Nando shrugged. “He didn’t look through it, but he had Allie open the bag and tell him what was inside, and he looked satisfied when she did.” His jaw tightened as he remembered. Smug son of a bitch.

  Toleffson sighed. “I’ve been picking through this junk for a couple of hours now, and I still don’t see what he was after.”

  Nando sorted idly through the rubber bands and postage stamps. “Most of these are out of date. You got some twenty-nine centers here.”

  “Anything look rare and valuable? Worth coming back for?”

  Nando shook his head. “I remember most of these stamps, and I ain’t that old.” He picked up the legal pads, stacking them at the side of the table. “Let me clear away some of the stuff that can’t be what he was after so we can look at the rest of it. I mean, no way I can see legal pads being worth all that much, even if they were antique which these aren’t.”

  Toleffson watched him for a moment then shook each pad carefully, fluttering the pages. “And nothing’s hidden in here.”

  Nando made a new pile of stationery and envelopes, checking each to make sure they were empty. “This stationery was printed up after Brody took off, so it can’t be anything.”

  The chief squinted at the rubber bands and paper clips. “Those can probably go. Unless he melted down something valuable and made it into a paperclip.”

  Nando stared down at the paperclips for a moment, then stepped over to the file cabinet, removing a calendar in a magnetized plastic frame. He held the back of the calendar over the paper clips, then watched them all attach themselves to the magnet. “Looks like run-of-the-mill paperclips to me.”

  “Right.”

  Toleffson sorted through the ancient computer disks. “Most of these are fiscal year data, assuming the labels are right. I don’t know where we’d find a computer drive that would run these disks anyway.”

  “What about the thumb drive?”

  The chief shook his head. “It’s mine. I checked it, but nothing on it is earlier than last year.”

  Nando nudged a stray penny with his finger. “These coins yours too, Chief?”

  Toleffson shrugged. “Most of them. If I’ve got extra change in my pocket after lunch, sometimes I toss it in there.”

  “I do that too. Get rid of the small stuff.” He studied the spill of coins on the table. Pennies, nickels, dimes, a couple of quarters. He leaned closer, sorting swiftly through them.

  “See anything?” Toleffson leaned down next to him.

  “I’m not sure.” He stared at the coins spread out in front of him, copper, silver, some dull, some bright.

  “That’s a strange-looking quarter,” the chief murmured.

  They both leaned closer. The coin was dull silver. It seemed smaller than the other quarters, more worn.

  Toleffson placed his index finger on it, pulling it apart from the others so that he could study it. “Seated Liberty instead of George Washington,” he said, staring down at the coin. “That makes it nineteenth century, I think.”

  Nando squinted at the somewhat worn image. “Worth anything?”

  “Bound to be, but I don’t know how much.” Toleffson picked up the coin, peering at the date. “1878.”

  “So do you think this is it? Is this what he wanted?”

  “Could be.” The chief studied it again. “It’s the first thing we’ve found that makes any sense. When he asked Allie to tell him what was in the bag, did she mention the coins?”

  Nando closed his eyes, trying to remember. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure she did—along with everything else.”

  Toleffson nodded slowly. “So there’s a chance that this is it. Maybe a very good chance.” He picked up one of the envelopes and dropped the coin inside.

  “It fits with Brody, sort of. He had a thing for valuable historic stuff, judging from the map he tried to steal from Dub Tyler.”

  “Which means he might have stolen this too.” Toleffson blew out a breath. “If he did, there might be a police report somewhere.”

  “He stole a valuable coin and then tossed it in his desk?” Nando shook his head. “Why would he do that?”

  “Best place to hide it, in a way.” Toleffson leaned back in his chair. “Safe deposit boxes can be opened with a court order, plus they’re not great if you need to get at something quick. Houses and vehicles can be searched. But who looks through the junk in a desk drawer?”

  “He outsmarted himself again. He couldn’t get the map from Docia and he couldn’t get the coin this time.”

  “So maybe when his luck ran out after he ran away, he decided to come back here and pick this up. Commit some petty burglaries to make us think this was just one more in a string. Then take his coin and head for the hills again.”

  “And it might have worked except for Helen.”

  Toleffson shrugged. “I’d like to say we’d have caught him anyway, but who knows? Right now I’ve got to get home and change for Allie’s wedding, but I might make a couple of calls before I go. You going to be at the wedding too?” He raised an eyebrow at Nando.

  He gave him a dry grin. “Wouldn’t miss it. The reception anyway.”

  Kit stood in the back of the room at the event center, studying the decorations. She still didn’t think much of them, but the place smelled great and the swags of lavender and silver chiffon looked elegant along the sides. The chairs were already filled for the most part. The people on the groom’s side were almost all from Konigsburg, with a couple of women who must have been relatives, given their unfortunate resemblance to Wonder. The bride’s side had a full complement of Maldonados, all of them grinning and waving at Kit whenever they caught her eye. There were also three or four faces she recognized from the Food Network and Bravo, along with a lot of other people who looked like they spent time in kitchens. Kit blew out a quick breath, hoping that Joe had the food under control. He’d have a lot of people eating his stuff who knew the difference between morels and baby bellas.

  “Catarina?”

  Kit jumped, swiveling to stare behind her. Her father was standing in the doorway. “Your mother’s looking for you.”

  “Oh.” She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. “I’ll see if I can find her in a few minutes. I need to make sure the bridesmaids and groomsmen get set up.”

  He nodded slowly. “Alicia said you were the one who’d designed the wedding for her. Probably wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t stepped in when you think how long she’s been stalling.”

  “Oh well, I was glad to help.” Kit licked her lips, surprised at how nervous she felt all of a sudden. “So how’s South Padre?”

  Her father shrugged. “Seems fine. Your mother’s happy. She’s got the grandkids to spoil. You should come visit.”

  She smiled. “I’ll try to when I get a spare weekend.”

  “So you’re working here now?” He gestured back up the hill toward the inn.

  She nodded. “I’m managing the restaurant. It’s been…interesting.”

  “Kind of different from San Antonio, I guess.”

  Kit took a breath. “Yeah, very. The restaurant was floundering when I got here, although they have a wonderful chef. It’s doing better now, but we’re still not out of the woods.”

  His forehead furrowed slightly. “What was the problem?”

  “Inexperienced staff and not enough of it. Problems with figuring out who
was in charge of what. And they hadn’t computerized the reservations yet.”

  “And you had to take care of all that?” He frowned. “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “It was. I’m still working on the staff issues. But we’re doing better than we did before.” She gave him a tentative smile. “Between my coursework at UTSA and a lifetime of watching how a really good restaurant functions, I figured out what they needed pretty quickly. Thanks for teaching me the right way to run a restaurant, Papi. It’s been a lifesaver.”

  Her father stared at her for a long moment, then he swallowed hard. “You always were a good student, Catarina. So are you happy here?”

  She sighed. “Overall, yes I am. I’m learning a lot, Papi.”

  He gave her a slightly crafty smile. “Lots of restaurants in South Padre, you know. Places you could work if you wanted to try somewhere else. In fact—” her father leaned forward, “—there’s this little taqueria down near the beach. Just a counter and a few tables. Great location. I’ve been talking to the manager. I could see maybe a Mexican seafood grill. Fish tacos. Snapper Vera Cruz. Camarones Diablo. That kind of stuff.”

  Kit blinked. “You’re opening another restaurant?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Thinking about it. I mean, a man can only play so much golf, Catarina.”

  “Oh, Papi.” She shook her head. “You’re hopeless. Have you mentioned this to Mami?”

  “Not yet. Have to work out the details. I could use a good manager.” His smile widened. “Interested?”

  She shook her head again. “I’m committed here. They need me. And you need to break the news to Mami before you go any further.”

  Her father rubbed his chin. “Good idea. I’ll wait until she’s all teary over Alicia, give her a couple of glasses of champagne. Keep it in mind, chica. I meant what I said.”

  Kit felt the familiar prickling of tears. “Gracias, Papi.”

  “De nada, querida.”

  “Antonio,” Allie’s voice sounded from down the hall, slightly tinged with panic. “Where are you?”