“Any. All. Both. I just have to arrange things with my mother.”
“And there’s this whole language you’ll have to learn. Dinerese.”
She laughed, uneasily. “I took French in high school.”
Oh good, she had a sense of humor. I liked that.
“I don’t think that’ll help you much.” I smiled at her. “I’m sure there’s paperwork for you to fill out, but I’ll have to find it first. Do you think that you can train with Juanita for a couple of days?” I crossed my fingers, hoping that I could convince Juanita not to quit. “I’ll be training with you, too.”
“You mean I’m hired?”
“Anyone who can manage eight kids can certainly manage this kitchen,” I said.
She took my hand and pumped away. “I really appreciate this, Mrs. Matkowski. I’ll be the best cook you ever had.”
“Great! And call me Trixie.” And call me optimistic for hoping that I could talk Juanita into returning.
“Okay…Trixie.” She fished around in her little purse. “I’d like to pay you for the meals, and—”
“Absolutely not. It’s on me. I dragged you here when you were babysitting.”
I could swear there were tears in her eyes. She took a step forward and raised her arms like she was going to hug me, but then she dropped them and stepped back. “I am so happy to be working for you.”
She looked more relieved than happy, but if she wanted to stand on her feet and cook for a good seven hours at a stretch, I figured that Mr. Haberton must have been a real beast, and she really needed the money.
She seemed so young and overwhelmed. I could relate, well, at least to the overwhelmed part. I couldn’t help myself, so I pulled her into a bear hug. With a happy sigh, she hugged me back.
I had an urge to feed her, to put some meat on those protruding bones.
“You didn’t get anything to eat, Cindy. How about a—a—” I looked at the steam table. “How about a rounded cow on done dough with…um…red sauce?”
“A meatball sub with spaghetti sauce?” she asked.
I looked at her, astonished. I’d made the right decision; she was already fluent in Dinerese.
Just as Cindy walked out the double doors with her meal, in walked Nancy and Chelsea with several more orders. Before they could say a word, I held up a finger in warning.
“Okay, okay. English,” Nancy said, and proceeded to read each order and stick it to the metal clothespins. Chelsea did the same.
I used to wonder why waitresses in a short-order restaurant read the orders. Now I knew that it was for the cook to get her bearings. I began to pull out dishes and place them on the steam table and pull things out of the fridge.
I was finding my rhythm, which was good. It was just like cooking for my ex, times fifty.
“Trixie, I just want to give you a heads-up. All the pastries and pies are gone,” Nancy said, “and we’re low on ground coffee.”
“Would you check to see if there’s anything in the walk-in cooler that we can use? Or maybe the freezer?” I’d forgotten the huge freezer on the other side of the storage room.
“I already did,” Nancy said. “You gave away a lot of freebies. It was like a feeding frenzy.”
“Do you know where we get the pastries from?”
“Sunshine Food Supply.” Chelsea stuck out her tongue, and the gold ball piercing made a long appearance. She didn’t seem impressed with the quality of our dessert menu. “I know where you can get delicious, freshly baked stuff-pies, turnovers, brownies, and just everything. You name it, she can bake it.”
Chelsea was an avalanche of information. “Okay. What’s her name?”
“Mrs. Stolfus. Right, Chelsea?” Nancy asked. “The Amish lady?”
“Yup.”
“Mrs. Stolfus just moved to Sandy Harbor with several other Amish families. She’s totally the best baker.” Nancy nodded. “She sells her goodies at Chuck’s Gas and Grab on Route 3.”
I flipped over a steak and quickly sliced some onions to fry. “Okay. Give Mrs. Stolfus a call, will you, Chelsea?” I asked.
Chelsea and Nancy both laughed.
“What?” I slapped some American cheese on the burgers that I had been frying.
“She’s Amish!”
“Oh. No phone.” I put some buns in the toaster that reminded me of a Ferris wheel, ladled some chicken soup into a bowl, and quickly made an antipasto. “Do you know where she lives?”
“I’ll draw you a map,” Chelsea said.
I’d take a ride over to Mrs. Stolfus’s just as soon as I could.
Suddenly my back and feet started aching. I was never going to make it.
We still needed yet another cook. Maybe Stella and Porky could do twelve-hour shifts, or Stella and Juanita, but this thirty-something-year-old woman could not. As good as Cindy seemed to be, she still needed some time to get the hang of things. Me, too!
“Mrs. Stolfus lives on Route 173A in a huge white farmhouse with green shutters. There’s a green shed out front that says ‘Handmade Baskets’ on it,” Chelsea said, then must have noticed the blank look on my face. “I’ll draw you that map.”
“Thanks.” I prayed that she made hand pies.
Nancy walked back in with a load of dirty dishes on a cart. “The snowplow drivers are coming in. They’ll be mad that there isn’t any pork and scalloped potatoes tonight. And nothing sweet is left either.”
I took a quick inventory of the fridge. “Tell them that they can have steak and fries for the same price. And sweet corn is the veggie.” I shut the door. “Do we have any ice cream?”
“Yes,” Nancy said.
“And ice cream is free tonight for plow drivers.”
“Free?” Chelsea asked.
“Yes, free.” I was giving away a lot of things tonight. Why not ice cream, in the middle of a blizzard, to snowplow drivers?
I wiped my face with a paper towel. If I wasn’t so hot from being in the kitchen, I’d shiver at the thought of eating ice cream with snow falling.
Ty Brisco took that moment to walk into my kitchen. Chelsea and Nancy greeted him profusely, ogled him behind his back, and then reluctantly left the kitchen.
I wasn’t as welcoming.
“I see you’re busy,” he said. I surreptitiously studied him. He looked around; then he stared at me. “You seem tired.”
“I am.” I pulled off the next order, but a chunk of the paper stayed on the clothespin. I pulled that off and pieced it together. Four orders of the steak special: two rare and two well-done. I hid my face in the fridge as I unwrapped four New York strip steaks. “Did you come to arrest me, Deputy Brisco?”
“You know, I liked it better when we were just Ty and Trixie.”
I slapped the steaks on the grill a little too hard. One skidded across the hard surface, plunked into the deep fryer, and started sizzling. I quickly bailed it out. “That was before you accused me of being a murderer. Which I’m not. I’ve never even had a parking ticket before.”
“I know.”
I knew how he knew. “You ran a background check on me, didn’t you?”
“Yes. And on Juanita Holgado.”
Holgado was Juanita’s last name. Now I knew, but it didn’t make me feel any better to know that Juanita was a suspect, too.
“I just got back from the Happy Repose Funeral Home. Hal Manning, the coroner, definitely thinks that Cogswell was poisoned, Trixie. Hal doesn’t know what kind of poison yet, but the mushrooms are a good bet. The New York State Police lab will be testing them.”
I braced myself with my hands on the steam table before I fell over.
Ty tapped his fingers on the steam table, and I wanted to slap them with my spatula.
“Mushrooms were on the plate that Juanita served him. You saw them yourself. I’m sure that the state police will find traces on his fork, too.”
“But there aren’t any mushrooms here. You and I looked,” I said. “None. And there weren’t any mushrooms in the four b
ig pans of the special that Juanita had cooked earlier. The pans that you confiscated.”
“I didn’t see any there either. And we checked the garbage, too.”
I hadn’t thought of the garbage.
“So, they were just in Mr. Cogswell’s meal,” I said, sorting things out in my mind. Yeah, this was a puzzle, and my head felt like someone was hitting it with a hammer.
“Juanita. What did Juanita say?” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Some magazine article I’d once read said that doing that would help with headaches.
“She doesn’t have a clue as to how they got there. She said she scooped out the special from the big pan in the steam table to serve Cogswell. Juanita had been serving the special all night. We checked on all the other patrons who ordered it. Only Mr. Cogswell had a reaction, a fatal one.”
“I don’t know how the mushrooms got there either, Deputy Brisco, but this is my diner now, and I’m sure as hell going to find out who poisoned Mr. Cogswell.”
“No, you’re not, Trixie. That’s my job.”
Chapter 4
I’m sure as hell going to find out who poisoned Mr. Cogswell.
That was sure a bold statement coming from me. I didn’t know where to start, but when the word got out that my food was responsible for killing the health inspector, the Silver Bullet wouldn’t be worth scrap metal.
“Leave this to the professionals,” Deputy Brisco said. “I was a detective in Houston for the major crimes unit. I can handle this with some help from the state police lab. Stay out of it, Trixie.”
We were on a first-name basis again, I guess.
“Look, Ty, I don’t like being a murder suspect.”
Really, this wasn’t all about me. It was about “the vic,” as they say on TV. His poor family. “What about Mr. Cogswell’s girlfriend. Did she take it hard?”
“Surprisingly, no.”
“No?”
“She was as cold as the ice on the lake.”
“Maybe she’ll have a meltdown later—when it sinks in,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” Ty said, pacing the kitchen. He paused, then turned to me. “Look, Trixie, I’ll try to keep this as quiet as possible, but you know that Sandy Harbor—”
“Is a small town.”
“If you can think of anything that would help in the investigation, please let me know.” He was just about to push the double doors that led to the restaurant when he turned back to me. “And I’ll handle it.”
I didn’t respond. Why lie? I was still going to do some investigating on my own. Minor stuff. I’d stay out of his way.
He left the room and immediately returned. “Would you put on the steak special for me? Rare.”
“Aren’t you afraid that I’m going to poison you?”
“I don’t eat mushrooms,” he said. With a dazzling, white-toothed smile he was gone.
But not really gone. He took a seat at the counter right in the middle of the pass-through window. I had a perfect view of him, and he had a perfect view of me.
I picked out a nice T-bone for him, sank some of my hand-cut fries into the fryer, and pulled out a plate from the top of the stack. Because I was feeling extra generous, I decided to make garlic bread for him. I sliced a couple pieces of Italian bread, spread some axle grease on them, sprinkled on some freshly minced garlic, parsley, and some grated cheese, and slipped them into the pizza oven to toast.
It was getting quiet in the diner. The snowplow drivers had left, and Deputy Brisco was the only customer left. I wanted to grab a cup of coffee and sink into a booth, but I’d never get up if I did. Besides, I didn’t want to talk to Ty Brisco anymore.
I pushed a rack of dishes through the industrial dishwasher and turned it on. Nancy or Chelsea could have done that, but they were busy vying for the attention of the cowboy cop.
Good for them. I, however, had never learned the fine art of flirting with the opposite sex. I thought about my history with Deputy Doug and concluded that he’d needed me—needed me to help him pass high school, then four years of state university, then to help him get through the police academy.
Then he needed me to make babies. When that didn’t happen, he moved on.
As the steam of the dishwasher blasted my face and wilted my hair even more, I felt a pang in my heart.
I’d experienced it before. It was the pang of loss. Not the loss of Doug or the loss of my marriage, but the loss of never having had children.
I would have been a great mother. I love kids, love the cute things that they say, the cute things that they do. When they get older and turn out good, they are a joy to be around. Then they gift you with grandchildren to spoil.
I’d thought of adopting, but I must have known my marriage to Doug wasn’t going to last. I’d just known.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t conceive; I just hadn’t. But Doug sure was a straight shooter with his girlfriend, Wendy. Then again, at age twenty-one, she was quite a bit younger than I and obviously more fertile.
Ty held up his coffee mug, and Nancy just about flew over to refill it.
“You little ladies take such good care of me,” he drawled.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said under my breath. I told myself that he was a novelty in the northern tundra; that was why everyone seemed to gravitate toward him.
I, however, was immune to his charms. I was a suspect, and I’d better figure out something soon—anything.
As I waited for his steak to cook, I played with garnishes. I made some pepper shavings by grating a pepper with a cheese grater, cut some carrot curls, added some cherry tomatoes, and arranged it all on a bed of kale.
Finally, his order was completed, and I rang the bell for one of the waitresses to pick it up. Apparently, Nancy won the toss.
I cleaned up the area, fussing too much. When I looked up, Ty gave me a “thumbs-up” sign as he chewed on the steak that I’d made him. He sported a big grin as he cut off another piece of meat. I just loved cooking for people who appreciated it.
Now what?
I knew what I would do. I’d bake. I’d bake something to keep our customers satisfied until I could get some goodies from Mrs. Stolfus. I thought of the snow outside and decided to make my mother’s snowball cookies. How appropriate, considering the snowstorm raging outside.
Mom had made them every year at Christmas until she “retired from cooking and baking” and hit the road in the motor home.
I knew the recipe by heart—butter, flour, egg, extract and morsels like chocolate, peanut butter, or minis—but I got out pen and paper and increased it ten times to have enough for the diner.
I don’t know how I managed to stay upright, rolling and baking thousands of little balls, until Juanita—thankfully—arrived in the morning. Cindy Sherlock arrived soon after. It turned out that Juanita knew Cindy and her family from church.
Small town.
I helped Cindy into a pristine white apron, then excused myself and, yawning, stumbled to the back door. I hadn’t noticed that the door had been unlocked all night, most likely since the EMTs carried Mr. Cogswell out, and that anyone could have walked in.
I tamped down my paranoia. Probably no one locked their doors in Sandy Harbor, New York.
Small town.
I asked Juanita to shake the snowballs in powdered sugar when they cooled, and I bundled up in preparation for the walk back to my house. Maybe I’d stop at my car, fetch a couple more boxes, and bring them inside. I quickly dismissed that ambitious idea. I was pooped.
As I climbed the stairs to my house, all I could think of was the squeaky brass bed in the guest room. I wanted to snuggle under the down comforter and sleep for two days.
A horn beeped, shocking me out of my dream of blissful rest, and a man bounded out of a blue SUV. He came toward me climbing over the snowbank that surrounded the parking lot. He wore bright yellow boots that came up to his knees, and he was agile in spite of his heavy frame. He was carrying something.
As he got closer, I
saw that he was carrying a bouquet of spring flowers.
He had a thick black moustache that looked like a snowbrush. It was wet with snowflakes in various stages of melting. Melting snow dripped down his chin, and he wiped it with the sleeve of his navy blue peacoat.
“I’m Rick Tingsley, the mayor of Sandy Harbor. I also own the restaurant in town, the Crossroads. I heard that you bought the Silver Bullet and the cottages from Stella—the whole point. On behalf of the town, I want to welcome you to Sandy Harbor.”
He gave me the flowers and extended his hand. He had on gloves that were cut off at the knuckles, so some of his fingers showed.
We shook. “I’m Trixie Matkowski. Stella’s my aunt. Porky was my uncle. I bought the diner and cottages from my aunt.”
“Yes, I know. I tried to buy the point from Stella. Hey! You’d better get those flowers in water,” he said. “And get them out of the cold.”
“Yes. Yes, I should. They’re beautiful. Thank you.”
Turning to go up the stairs that led to the front door, I heard him loudly clearing his throat. Pausing, I remembered my manners.
“Would you like to come in, Mr. Mayor? I’ll put on a pot of coffee.” In my mind, I was begging him to say no. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any sweets to go with it.” Maybe that would deter him from accepting.
“That would be nice. I’d love a cup.”
Darn it.
As I pulled the wad of metal keys from my pocket and searched for the right key to open the door, he stood right behind me. He was so close that I felt his cold breath on my right ear. Ick.
“The flowers are just beautiful,” I said, and meant it. “It must have been difficult to find spring flowers in little Sandy Harbor.”
“Nah. Chuck’s Gas and Grab had ’em.”
He didn’t step out of his boots once we were inside, and I was just about to tell him to do so, but he was already on his way into the kitchen, dripping snow and ice-melt granules in his wake.
I hadn’t moved from the living room. I just stood there, stunned at his boldness.
“I’ll make this short and sweet.” His hands were splayed on my counter, and he leaned like it was a podium and he was making a speech.
Do or Diner: A Comfort Food Mystery Page 5