Knowing I would forget half of what he told me, Saul had taped up reminders around the kitchen as well as stuck a menu over by the buns. I pulled it out, hoping I could at least look it over before anyone else showed up. I’d barely cracked it open when I heard the carousel squeak as it turned. The back of Danielle’s head disappeared as I stared at the ticket she’d left.
Gulping, I walked back over to the window and pulled the ticket down. Looking at it did not help calm my nerves at all.
#3 in the hay w/ frog sticks
GAC & fruit cup
#5 86 K ring one
What? I felt my breathing speed up, because Saul hadn’t told me about any of this! Then I remembered it was Danielle who’d dropped off the ticket. She hated me. She wanted to make me miserable, make me quit. Remembering who I was dealing with forestalled hyperventilation, but didn’t exactly help me figure out what in the world I was supposed to be making.
If I’d had my phone with me, I would have put up with having to rewash my hands in order to Google whatever slang Danielle was using. Everyone else’s phones had been lying on the shelves in the breakroom, so I’d left mine in my backpack. I wasn’t sure what other options I had, aside from interrupting Saul’s dinner.
Determined not to be a nuisance, I attempted to puzzle out Danielle’s challenge. Hay could be onions. It would make more sense if they were French fried onions, which we didn’t seem to have. I looked around for anything else that might work. Shredded lettuce? I had no clue what GAC stood for, though fruit cup seemed basic enough. Maybe. It could be a trick. I hadn’t a clue whether 86 K ring one was one term, four different ones, or a combination of several. 86 seemed familiar, but I couldn’t remember what it might stand for. K…K might be Ketchup, or kraut?
Grasping for something, I figured the numbers should be easy enough to figure out. I snatched up the menu and scanned, but found no numbers anywhere. There were no combos, only dishes listed by names under different headings. It could have been chicken, burger, sandwich…I had no idea. I couldn’t even start the meat without risk of screwing up.
The carousel squeaked again and I jumped. Linnea froze at my reaction, her hand poised above the ticket she’d just released. “Everything okay?” she asked.
I hesitated. I didn’t want her to think I was an idiot, or had no idea what I was doing—even if it were true. But I had no one else to ask. “Do you know what this means?” I shoved the ticket at her, fingers crossed.
“Uh…” She stared at the ticket with a frown. “We don’t use that sort of lingo usually.” She squinted at the order. “I think maybe the first one has fries and the last one has onion rings, but I don’t know about the rest, and I’m only like seventy percent sure on the sides. I remember Saul joking about making us all learn to speak diner lingo, but he wasn’t serious. It’s a total waste of time.”
She handed the ticket back with a shrug. “Sorry. Just go ask Saul. He’ll know.”
Sighing, I knew I had to do it. Danielle wanted to make me look stupid and she was succeeding.
“What’d you do to piss Danielle off, anyway? You’ve only been here a few hours,” Linnea said.
“Sean hooked me up with this job.”
Linnea’s eyebrows rose. “Is that the only thing he hooked you up with?” Her gaze darted back toward the dining room. “Just looking at Sean is usually reason enough for her to hate someone. But I thought they broke up.”
“They did,” I said, sighing and wanting to kick both Sean and Danielle. Mostly Danielle. “And Sean is just a friend. We’re in culinary school together.”
“And that’s it?” Linnea asked. “Sean is a hottie. If I hadn’t been afraid of Danielle murdering me in my sleep, I would have pounced on him a while ago.”
“We went out once,” I said, trying not to sound defensive.
A hand slapped down on the counter and Danielle’s fierce eyes were suddenly boring into me. “Are you ever going to start that order?” she snapped. “How about you stop fantasizing about someone you haven’t even got a chance with and do your job?”
She span around and stormed over to the cash register where a couple was waiting to pay their bill. Linnea looked over at me, eyebrows sky high. “I think she heard that mention of going out with Sean.” She shook her head. “Better watch your back, girl.”
I already had a murderer I had to watch out for. Now I had a shrieking, angry princess out to get me? I wasn’t sure how many more threats to my life and wellbeing I could take, but I was strangely more worried about Danielle than Ms. Sinclair’s killer. And I was probably going to get fired on my first day. Way to go, Eliza.
“So,” Saul said slowly, “how’s it going?”
I spun around, holding the ticket in front of me as if it were a shield that would somehow stave off losing my job. My gaze darted back to the one still hanging on the carousel. “I…uh, there’s…I don’t know…”
Giving me a funny look, Saul plucked the ticket from my hands and scanned what it said. Rolling his eyes, he sighed. “Danielle?” When I nodded, his eyes narrowed as he spotted her through the order window. Whatever was going through his mind, he didn’t share it with me.
Saul came over to stand next to me and pointed at the first order. “Single burger with sauerkraut and fries. Grilled American cheese sammy with a fruit cup. Double burger, no Ketchup, onion rings as the side. Got it?”
I nodded furiously.
“All right, get started. I’ll help you plate.”
After throwing three patties on the grill and locating the sauerkraut, I grabbed Linnea’s order—which was blessedly written out in plain terms—and started on that one as well. After that, the rush started and I didn’t have another coherent thought for at least two hours. Somewhere in the middle of what seemed like a million burgers and a truckload of fries, Danielle scurried out before Saul could corner her and Gwen arrived to take her place. The cryptic diner lingo tickets disappeared with Danielle and I started moving a little faster. It was almost nine o’clock before the dining room went back to a few random couples or singles and I was able to take a deep breath.
“You did good,” Saul said. His hand came down on my back a little too rough and I nearly pitched forward into the dishwater. “I’ll talk to Danielle about the lingo when she comes in tomorrow, but you were actually picking it up pretty fast in case she does it again. You did all right.”
“Thanks,” I said, sure the praise would make me happier if I wasn’t ready to collapse.
“Gwen’s in charge of locking up, but if you think you’ll be okay for another two hours, I’m going to head out. Shouldn’t have more than a handful of customers come in before closing.”
Swallowing my panic, I forced myself not to have a meltdown. “I’ll be fine.” I sounded less than convincing, but Saul only laughed and clapped me on the back again.
Part of me was proud he felt comfortable leaving me here to handle the last few customers. The rest of me thought he was crazy. I put on a brave face when he said goodbye and disappeared out the back door. Linnea swept through a few minutes later with her goodbyes as well. Feeling somewhat abandoned, I went back to washing dishes and tried to convince myself everything would be fine.
The swinging doors to the kitchen burst open, startling me, and Gwen strode through. “Looks like it’s just you and me now.” She smiled and leaned against the counter. “Sounds like Danielle was being her usual charming self tonight.”
“Yeah, she’s a peach.”
“Try not to let her get to you,” Gwen said. “She hates not being the center of attention. Sean dumping her made her go into monster mode, and you being all cute and smart just knocked her down a few more notches. It annoys her to no end that Saul likes you so much and hired you pretty much on Sean’s recommendation.”
I wanted to argue that I wasn’t completely inexperienced in the kitchen, but I had barely hung on by my teeth all night and wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Anyway, no guarantees Danielle will
ever quit being such a…what does Saul like to call her? Queen Bee?” Gwen laughed. “I could think of much worse terms. Just ignore her, though. Without Sean here, she’s bound to quit eventually and put us all out of our misery.”
The bell on the main entrance rang, and Gwen looked out the circular windows to catch sight of a young couple walking in. “Better get back out there,” she said before pushing away from the counter. She was all smiles as she sat them.
Drying my hands, I went back to the grill to wait for the couple’s order. It didn’t take long before Gwen handed over the slip of paper. “That guy was totally—”
The bell sounded again and we both turned to look at the door. Gwen sighed at the interruption while I nearly fainted at the sight of the intruder.
9: Pink Pepper
Ducking out of view, I told myself to breathe. Keep breathing. Don’t panic. Don’t draw attention to yourself.
“Are you okay?” Gwen asked as she leaned over the counter.
If I told her the guy that just walked in broke into my apartment building over the weekend in order to sneak into my dead neighbor’s place, and that it was quite possible he had killed her, too, that would not stay between us. If it got back to Saul that I was a big time liability, he might fire me. I’d fire me. Some scary, possibly homicidal killer was standing in his dining room right now.
“I just, uh, whacked my knee on a drawer handle.” I stood slowly, careful to stay out of view.
“Ouch, I’ve done that,” Gwen said. “Anyway, I better seat that guy, but remind me to tell you about that weirdo at the other table. Total creeper!”
She darted away then and I scurried off to the side where I was almost positive no one could see me. It took me a few minutes before I remembered I had to cook the creepy guy’s order and got back to work. Every few seconds, I glanced up at the window. I was keeping my head down, but the grill was right in front of the window and made it impossible to stay completely out of view. Hopefully he couldn’t recognize me just from the top of my head. I’d never been so thankful I wasn’t tall before.
My heart was pounding as I hit the bell for the order and Gwen picked it up. I had this irrational fear that he’d know I cooked it, know I was back here. The entire time I was cooking his burger, I wondered what the odds were that he randomly stopped at Saul’s. Maybe he came in here all the time. It could have nothing to do with me.
The odds of that being true were worse than the odds of Danielle baking me cookies tomorrow and wanting to be best friends.
Double checking to make sure there were no other orders that might come in, I raced to the breakroom and grabbed my phone out of my backpack. My fingers were shaking as the screen came to life. I intended to call Sonya and ask her to come pick me up, but I saw a text from her first and tapped on it.
At the hospital with Grandma. Chest pains. Happens a lot, so I’m sure it’s nothing, but I’ll be here for a while. Call me when you get off work. I want to know how it went with Queen Bee.
My stomach sank. My next thought was Sean, and I was dialing before I finished contemplating whether or not I wanted to involve him in this. I was likely to lose him as a friend if he ended up hurt again because of me. The call went straight to voicemail. Hanging up before leaving a message, I considered my next option. Officer Williams!
I wasn’t keen on the idea of him showing up here and making a scene, but he was better than nothing. My chances of making it home on the subway with a possible killer on my tail were not something I wanted to think about too hard.
“Hello?” a voice yelled. I pulled the phone away from my ear. The yelling and the blaring music made me cringe. “E…liza, that…you?”
Groaning, I realized Officer Williams wasn’t working at the moment. In fact, it sounded like he was at a club, well on his way to a hangover. “Are you drunk?” I demanded.
“It’smy night off,” he slurred. “Whatchyou want?”
“Nothing,” I said before hanging up on him. Fat lot of good he was. Ever.
Standing there with my phone in my hand, I struggled to come up with someone else I could call. The police had abandoned watching the building after only two nights, and cleared Sonya to have the blood and the rest of Ms. Sinclair’s apartment cleaned up that morning. All their focus was going toward Lucas and whatever sketchy business he might have been involved in. The apartment had been discounted as a source of help, which meant nobody was all that concerned about protecting it. I could call and tell them the guy who attacked Sean and me was sitting in the diner. Maybe that would work.
Rushing back to the kitchen, I slid to a stop near the swinging doors and peered out the circular windows to scan the dining room. Creepy couple. Check. Possible murderer…gone. I stopped breathing. It felt like I was choking. About ready to go into full panic mode, I just about keeled over when Gwen pushed through the door next to me looking ready to burst.
“There you are,” she said, grinning. “I have got to tell you…”
“Where’d that last guy go?”
“What?”
“The guy who ordered the guacamole burger. Where did he go?” I demanded.
Gwen shrugged. “He decided not to stay, so I put his food in a takeout box, and he left. Why?”
Struggling to breathe normally, I shook my head. “Just wondering. He was kind of scary looking.”
Gwen considered my comment, then shrugged. “The guy you should be worrying about is the one who came in with that skanky girl. Seriously nasty guy. He practically forced her to sit next to him and he had a hold of her ass the entire time I was leading them to their table. Then, when I delivered their order, he had his hand up her skirt when I walked up. Guy is a total perv.”
She went on talking about the skeezeball and his date while I only half listened. My mind was whirring, wondering if I had just been freaking out over nothing. I was ninety-nine percent sure it was the same guy, but I supposed I could have been wrong. It seemed incredible that he would pick this diner completely by chance. His leaving abruptly made me think even more that he’d seen me and decided to bolt. Maybe he’d only come in to make sure I was here, then took off to find a place to grab me as I walked to the subway entrance, at eleven o’clock at night, alone.
Trying to tell myself it was good he was gone fell pretty flat. I was more scared now than I had been before. There was only one person left I could call. I didn’t want to do it. In fact, it kind of pissed me off that I didn’t know anyone else in this entire city that I could call. I had no other choice, but Gwen was still talking. How she didn’t sense I was on the verge of losing it, I had no idea. I nearly collapsed in relief when the bell rang, announcing hungry diners, and Gwen scurried out to meet them.
Knowing Gwen would be at least a few minutes getting them seated and filling drink orders, I brought up Baxter’s number and hit send. One ring. Two. Three. My heart threatened to give out on me. Four rings. Fi—
“Eliza? Why are you calling me at ten at night?”
It would have been awesome if I’d been able to pull off casual. Tell him who I saw calmly and ask for a ride home so I didn’t die between here and the apartment building. It would have been absolutely fabulous if I had sounded like I was a strong, competent city girl who wasn’t afraid of the dark and what it held. Instead, I lost it.
“He was here, Baxter. In the restaurant. He saw me, maybe. He left. He ordered to eat here, then I tried to call Sonya and when I came back he was gone, and Gwen said she boxed up his food and he took off. What if he’s waiting for me? I think maybe he is. It would be too weird if he showed up here by accident after sneaking into Ms. Sinclair’s apartment, right? I don’t think I should ride the subway home, but Sonya’s at the hospital with her grandma and Sean didn’t answer and Officer Williams is drunk, and even though you don’t like me, I’m scared and I need you to pick me up from work, okay?”
Silence.
More silence.
“What?” Baxter demanded. “Who saw you and why d
o I need to pick you up from work?”
“The guy who broke into the apartment and hit Sean!” I hissed.
“What?”
I thought it was mildly ridiculous that he hadn’t heard me that time, since I practically yelled it right in his ear. “The guy who…”
“I heard you,” he snapped. “I was surprised, not asking you to repeat yourself.”
And how was I supposed to know that?
“Do not leave the diner until I get there. Do you understand me?” When I didn’t answer right away, he got even grumpier and snapped at me. “Did you hear me? Eliza! Stay in the diner.”
“You’ll come?” I asked, surprised even though I had been crossing my fingers and toes that he would.
Baxter sighed. “Yes. What time?”
My legs felt limp. “Eleven.”
“Fine,” he said. Then he hung up.
Resting my forearms and head on the counter, I sucked in a long, ragged breath. I wasn’t going to die tonight. Hopefully. Baxter wasn’t exactly a guarantee. It was a much better idea than me going home alone, even if it meant I’d be subjected to lectures on who knew what on the way. I was certain he’d find reasons this was my fault, too. Everything was my fault in his eyes. He probably blamed my moving into the building for Ms. Sinclair getting killed. Upset the precarious balance or whatever.
I didn’t care by that point. He could lecture me all he wanted on the drive home, so long as he got me back to my apartment safely. It wasn’t like listening to him would be any worse than talking to Bernadette lately. She, at least, didn’t blame me for the rash of violence in the building, but I got the impression she thought I’d brought some kind of bad juju with me. I couldn’t help resent that a little, since she was the one who pushed me toward leaving my life of safety behind and reentering the real world, as she put it.
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