French Fried

by Kylie Logan

  But then, I was pretty busy seeing red.

  I would have leveled Sophie right then and there if she weren’t thirty years older than me and limping, to boot. Instead, I followed along when she hobbled to the front door.

  “What you did was low, underhanded and dishonest, Sophie,” I told her.

  “Yes, it was.” She didn’t sound the least bit penitent. She stuck her key in the front door. “But now that we’re here, you’ll look around, won’t you?”

  I should have said no.

  I should have put my foot down.

  I should have opened my mouth and as so often happens when I do, I should have let what I was thinking pour out of me like the lava that spews from a volcano and incinerates everything in its path.

  Why I didn’t is as much a mystery now as it was then. I only know that when Sophie pushed open the front door and stepped inside the Terminal at the Tracks, I followed along.

  “Welcome.” She touched a hand to a light switch and the fixture directly over our heads turned on.

  Sophie beamed a smile all around.

  I did not share in her enthusiasm. In fact, I took one look around the entryway of the Terminal at the Tracks, and a second, and a third.

  That’s pretty much when I had to remind myself to snap my mouth shut.

  What I could see—at least here in the fifteen-by-fifteen entryway where customers waited for their tables—was a mishmash of kitschy faux Victorian, everything from teddy bears in puffy-sleeved gowns to posters advertising things like unicycles and mustache wax.

  And then there was the lace.

  Doilies and rickrack and bunting.

  Oh my.

  Brand spanking new, it would have been overblown and downright dreadful. With fifteen years of service under its belt, the lace was yellow and bedraggled. The teddy bear propped on the old rolltop desk that also served as a hostess station looked as if it could use an airing, and what had once been a magnificent floor made of wide, hardwood planks was scratched and dull.

  “I knew you’d love it as much as I do,” Sophie purred.

  Fortunately at that moment, a train rolled by, not twenty feet from the back of the restaurant, and the place shook the way LA had in the last earthquake I remembered. My sternum vibrated. My bones rattled.

  By the time the train was gone and my body was done with its rockin’ and rollin’, I pretended I didn’t even remember Sophie’s last comment.

  “There’s something special I need to show you.” She latched on to the sleeve of the silk shirttail tee I wore with skinny jeans and tugged me toward a glass counter with a cash register set on it.

  “Right here.” Sophie said, and tapped the glass next to the cash register. That’s when her smile fell and her silvery brows knit. “Well, it was here.” She chewed her lower lip. “It’s always here. I must have left it”—she waved in some indeterminate direction—“in the office. I must have left it in the office when I took the day’s receipts in there to file. You know, on Saturday, the last day the restaurant was open before I had to close.” Another puppy dog look. “Because of my knee, you know. And my surgery tomorrow.”

  Sophie gave the counter another pat. “The receipt spike,” she finally explained. “You know, the thin, pointy thing where we stick the receipts—”

  “After they’re rung up on the register.” I’d worked in enough restaurants in my day; I knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “This one is special,” Sophie confided. “About yay high”—she held her hands ten inches apart—“and made completely of brass. It was Grandpa Majtkowski’s. From his bakery shop in Poland. He brought it with him when he came to this country back in 1913. Imagine that, he came with one suitcase, one change of clothes, and less than twenty dollars in his pocket, and he still thought it was important to bring that receipt spike with him. And no wonder! It was all he had of home, all he had of the business he worked so many years to build, and—”

  A tap on the front door saved me from any more of the history lesson.

  Sophie didn’t seem to mind. In fact, when she looked toward the front entrance, she grinned.

  “It’s Declan!” Quicker than a woman with a sore knee should have been able to move, she scooted over and opened the door. “It’s Declan,” she said again, and she moved back to allow a man to step into the Terminal.

  Let’s get something straight here—I had spent the last six years of my life working as a personal chef to Meghan Cohan. Yeah, that Meghan Cohan, the Hollywood megastar. I wasn’t just used to catering to the culinary whims of the Beautiful People, I was comfortable rubbing elbows with them. When she was working on a film, I traveled with Meghan. All over the world. When she was bored, she’d take me along when she jetted to her place in Maui. Or the one in Tuscany. Or the villa in the south of France. I was in charge of Meghan’s diet regimen, and her parties and the late-night soirees that sometimes ended up getting talked about in Vogue or Elle or Cosmo.

  Meghan was powerful. She was gorgeous. And she allowed only powerful and gorgeous men into her circle.

  I wasn’t sure who this Declan guy was, but I knew that one look, and Meghan would have welcomed him with open arms.

  Tall.

  Dark.

  I won’t say handsome because let’s face it, that’s a cliché and Declan’s looks put him far beyond platitudes.

  His hair was a little too long and tousled just enough that had we been back in LA, I would have suspected he’d just come from some tony salon. He had an angular face defined by a dusting of dark whiskers, and he wore jeans and sneakers and a black leather jacket over a red plaid flannel shirt. Untucked. All of it was casual enough while at the same time it sent the message that whatever else Declan was, he was comfortable in his own skin.

  None of which mattered in the least bit.

  Not to me, anyway.

  No matter how handsome the locals might happen to be, I’d already decided there was no way I was staying.

  Declan came inside the Terminal and closed the door behind hm.

  “I saw the light on,” he said to Sophie, “and no one’s usually here this late at night. I just wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

  “Aren’t you just the best neighbor ever!” Sophie twinkled like a teenager. “Declan’s from the Irish store.” She looked out the window, toward the store, and I saw the lighted windows of the gift shop that was across the street and kitty-corner to the restaurant. From here, it was impossible to see exactly what was in the display windows on either side of the front door, but there was no mistaking the crisp green colors touched with a smattering of orange, or the wooden sign that hung above the front door, a gigantic green shamrock.

  “Of course, everything’s fine. I was just showing off the place.” She closed a hand over the sleeve of his jacket and piloted him nearer. “Declan Fury, this is Laurel Inwood.”

  Add a thousand-watt smile to that description of Declan. And a handshake that was warm and firm enough to send the message that he was no-nonsense, practical, and far more sure of himself than 99 percent of the actors (yeah, even the ones who play tough guys in the movies) Meghan had introduced me to over the years.

  “So, you’re finally here.” Declan had a baritone voice that managed to caress even the most ordinary greeting. “I know your aunt’s been looking forward to your arrival.”

  I’m afraid my smile wasn’t nearly as broad as his. Or as genuine. I refused to look at Sophie when I said, “She’s not really my aunt.”

  “Oh.” Declan pulled his hand back to his side, not as embarrassed as he was simply curious. “I guess I’m confused because Sophie always refers to you as her niece.”

  This time, I did take a second to slide Sophie a look. I wasn’t surprised to see something like contrition in her pursed lips and her downcast eyes.

  Which didn’t mean
I believed it was genuine.

  “That makes me wonder why Sophie was talking about me at all.”

  Contrition be damned! Just like that, Sophie was back to her ol’ grinning self. “You know we’re all just as proud as punch of everything you’ve accomplished.” She patted my arm. “Laurel’s famous,” she told Declan, and then, because she apparently saw the sparks shooting from my eyes, she was quick to amend the statement to, “Well, practically famous.”

  Maybe Declan was also a better actor than most of the ones I’d met out in LA. He pretended not to notice the undercurrent of annoyance and avoidance that flowed back and forth between me and Sophie. In fact, when he turned back to me, it was with a smile sleek enough to send prickles up my spine.

  Not that it mattered, I reminded myself.

  Since I wasn’t staying.

  “Well,” he said, giving me a quick once-over from toes to top of head and apparently approving of what he saw since his smile stayed firmly in place, “it’s nice to know there will be a practically famous chef holding down the fort while her aunt is in the hospital.”

  He had a short memory.

  And he smelled like bay rum and limes.

  I shook away the thought and the way the scent always made me think of tropical islands and warm sea breezes.

  “Sophie’s younger sister, Nina, was my foster mother for four years,” I told him. “So you see, Sophie and I, we’re really not related.”

  His smile never wavered. “Except you don’t have to share DNA to be family, do you?”

  “I’m just showing Laurel around,” Sophie said, and she wound an arm through mine. “You know, because I’ll be gone six weeks and someone needs to run the place.”

  “That doesn’t mean that someone is going to be me.” I untangled myself from Sophie’s grip when I said this, the better to look her in the eye so she knew I meant business.

  “We obviously need to talk, me and Laurel,” she told Declan. “There might be some rocky road ice cream in the freezer, and I don’t know about you, but I think heart-to-heart talks always go better over rocky road.”

  Declan stepped toward the doorway that led into the main part of the restaurant. The woodwork around it was painted dusty blue, like the trim on the outside of the station, and there were lace curtains in the doorway that were tied back on either side with purple ribbon. He poked a thumb over his shoulder into the darkened room. “If you like, I can take a look around before you settle down for your heart-to-heart.”

  “No need!” Sophie’s warm laugh bounced up to the ceiling fans that swirled overhead. “You know this is a safe neighborhood.”

  Declan leaned forward just enough to take a peek beyond the entryway and into the pitch-dark restaurant. “Maybe so, but it is late and—”

  “And you need to get back to whatever it was you were doing before you took the time to come over here and check on an old lady like me.” Sophie led him back to the front door. “A good-lookin’ guy like you, you must have better things to do on a warm spring night.”

  Declan tipped his head, and when he smiled, the air between us sizzled. “Then, good night, ladies.”

  “Isn’t he the dreamiest?” Sophie giggled once he was gone.

  Her back was to the door. Otherwise, I wondered if she’d still think he was dreamy when she realized that Declan didn’t go across the street to the Irish store. In fact, he walked along the front of the Terminal, turned at the far corner, and headed into the side parking lot.

  Once he was out of sight, I turned back to Sophie just in time to see her shuffle her sneakers. “Rocky road?” she offered.

  I let go a sigh of pure frustration. “You’re not going to bribe me with ice cream, Sophie. I told you, I don’t appreciate being lied to. All those years, you came to California to visit and you showed me and Nina—”

  “Pictures of the restaurant.” She looked up at me through those unruly bangs. “Yes, I know.”

  “But it wasn’t this restaurant.”

  Sophie’s cheeks flushed pink, but I wasn’t about to let that keep me from saying my piece.

  “You showed us photographs of a lovely place out in the country. Linen tablecloths, soft lighting, a fabulous wine cellar. That’s the place I thought I was going to be helping out with while you were recuperating. This place—”

  “This place is all I have.”

  Yes, her comment would have tugged at my heartstrings.

  If I had heartstrings.

  Unfortunately for Sophie and lucky for me, I didn’t.

  That didn’t mean I was completely insensitive. “I said I’d take you to the hospital tomorrow morning, and I will,” I told her.

  “And you said you’d be running the restaurant after that.”

  “It’s not going to work.”

  Her shoulders drooped. “I know. I guess I knew all along. But still, you’re here. Let me show you around.” Her limp more pronounced than ever, she walked through that lace-curtained doorway and turned on the lights in the main dining room.

  What I saw was pretty much what I expected.

  Five, six, seven, eight . . . I counted . . . tables lined up against the far wall next to the windows that looked out over the railroad tracks. None of them covered with linen. Four tables to my left and two doorways, one marked KITCHEN and the other, OFFICE. To my right, six more tables, more lace, more kitsch, and once I skirted the jut-out wall that marked the back of the waiting area, windows that looked out at the street and gave a bird’s-eye view of the light that shone on that green shamrock across the way.

  And one customer.

  I froze and looked at the man lying facedown on one of the tables.

  “Uh, Sophie.” She was already shuffling back to the kitchen in search of ice cream, and when I called out, Sophie hitch-stepped back the other way. “There’s a guy here.”

  “A guy? That’s impossible. That’s—”

  She got as far as where I stood and she froze, too, looking where I did, at the table against the wall where a man in a brown jacket was slumped, his head on his arm.

  And that receipt spike of Grandpa Majtkowski’s sticking out of the back of his neck.

  “Oh my goodness!” Sophie wailed.

  If I didn’t act fast, I knew I’d have another problem on my hands, so I pulled over the nearest chair and plunked Sophie down in it before I dared to close in on the man in the brown jacket.

  From this angle, there wasn’t much to see. In the light of the faux Tiffany chandelier directly above the table, his neck looked as pale as a hooked fish. Well, except for the thin river of blood that originated at the spot where the receipt spike was plunged into his spine.

  I dared to put a finger on his neck, but even before I did, I knew I wouldn’t find a pulse. His skin was ice and there were tinges of blue behind his ears and on the fingers of the hand that hung loosely at his side.

  I fumbled for the phone in my pocket and dialed 911, hoping that when the dispatcher answered, I could make the words form in a mouth that felt suddenly as if it had been packed with sand.

  And all I could think was the one thing I knew I wouldn’t dare say to Sophie or to the cops—this gave a whole new meaning to the word terminal.

  Kylie Logan is also the national bestselling author of the League of Literary Ladies Mysteries and the Chili Cook-off Mysteries.

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