by Ally Roberts
“Embarrassed? Why? Did he lose it or something?”
“No.” Tate shook his head. “He most definitely did not lose it.”
“Then what does he have to be embarrassed about?”
Tate chewed on the inside of his cheek, his green eyes staring off toward the ocean. He expelled a breath. “Someone stole money from his office.”
I was confused. “Like from his wallet or something?”
“No. He had a box he kept in there.”
“A box?”
Tate nodded.
“A box of money?”
Another nod.
“How much money?”
Tate bit his lip. “All of it.”
“All of it?”
“He kept his entire savings in cash in that box.” He sighed again. “And it’s gone.”
I gaped at him. All of Jonah’s money was in a box in his office instead of in a bank account?
“And now he’s freaking out,” Tate continued. “Rightfully so. Because without that money, his restaurant might be doomed.”
I couldn’t do anything but stare at Tate.
I had a lot of unanswered questions, but there was one thing I knew without a doubt.
Jonah Garrison’s restaurant was most definitely doomed if someone had stolen his entire life savings.
FIVE
I couldn’t stop thinking about clam chowder.
I mean, it was almost lunchtime and I was a little hungry, so it made sense. But I was also thinking about it because I couldn’t get Jonah Garrison off my mind.
Tate didn’t have many more details to add after he’d told me about Jonah’s missing box of money, but I obsessed over it the rest of the night and then into the morning as I walked Trixie and Duke.
I was sad for Jonah, of course, and more than a little curious about what had happened to the money. I’d asked Tate if the theft had been reported to the authorities, but he didn’t know. Jonah had been pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing, he said, and Tate hadn’t pressed. This surprised me, since Tate always seemed to be more than willing to offer advice and sometimes insert himself into situations I was struggling with.
But I would be lying if I said there wasn’t something else bothering me about the possible ramifications of Jonah’s missing money.
It was so small and so petty that I was embarrassed to admit it, even to myself.
Clam chowder.
What would happen to my clam chowder if Jonah’s restaurant closed?
I glanced into my grandmother’s kitchen, an inviting space filled with whitewashed cupboards and shiny mahogany floors and relatively new stainless steel appliances. It was the perfect setup for cooking meals at home, which I did most days.
But today? I wanted another bowl of chowder.
It wasn’t for purely selfish reasons, I told myself as I slipped into my shoes and grabbed the keys from the side table in the living room. And it wasn’t just because I worried that my chowder-eating days might be numbered.
No, I was doing my part to help Jonah. Maybe if more people visited his restaurant his profits would go up and he wouldn’t have to worry so much about that missing money. The flawed logic of this argument—how a four-dollar bowl of chowder wasn’t going to make much of a dent in helping to rebuild his lost savings—didn’t escape me, but I was going with it anyway.
At least that’s what I told myself as I walked toward the marina, my purse slung over my shoulder. The humidity was thick, and my shirt was already sticking to my back just a few blocks into my walk.
Davis, the busboy from yesterday, was outside sweeping the front entrance when I approached. He glanced up at me and then refocused on the pavement in front of him.
I checked the time on the clamshell-shaped clock above the hostess station. It was almost eleven o’clock, which I knew was a little early for lunch. I wondered if they were even open yet.
“Can I order food?” I asked Davis.
He stopped sweeping. “What?”
“Can I order food?” I repeated. Although with the heat and humidity trying to suffocate me, the idea of eating a hot bowl of chowder was becoming less appealing by the second.
He shrugged. “I guess. As long as you have money.”
“No, I mean is the restaurant open?”
“Oh.” It was his turn to look at the clock. “In a couple of minutes.”
I pushed my hair away from my face. Strands were beginning to stick to the back of my neck and I wished that I’d thought to bring a hair elastic.
“Hey.” Davis’s voice rose a little. “Are you that Wendy chick?”
That Wendy chick? That was a first. “Uh, yeah…” I said, a little taken aback.
“The one from yesterday, right?”
I nodded, still confused.
“I think Jonah wants to see you.”
“He does?”
Davis swept the broom from one side to another, creating a growing pile of sand and bits of leaf. “He should be in his office. You know where that is?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. I was sure I could find it.
Maggie was just putting her own hair up as I stepped inside the restaurant. A blast of cool air greeted me and I immediately felt better. A glass of ice water and I’d be as good as new.
She looked surprised to see me. “Oh, hey. You here to dine in today?”
“I’m actually here to see Jonah,” I told her.
She frowned. “You are?”
“Davis told me he wanted to see me.” I pointed into the restaurant, past the picnic tables that offered cafeteria-style seating and the smaller four-top and two-top tables tucked along the side wall that led toward the kitchen. “I assume his office is back there?”
She gave a slight nod, her brow still furrowed, and I could tell she was wondering why Jonah wanted to see me.
That made two of us.
There were a couple of men already in the kitchen, slicing and dicing vegetables and fish. Large saucepans simmered on the stove, the smell of melted butter and cooked garlic heavily scenting the air. My stomach growled.
Past the kitchen and down a short hallway were two doors opposite each other. One was slightly ajar and I could tell it was used as some sort of storage room. Aprons and linens lined the shelves, as did boxes of paper products and cleaning supplies. The other door was closed.
I knocked twice.
“Come in,” a voice said from inside.
I pushed the door open.
Jonah was seated behind a wood laminate desk stacked high with papers. A massive plastic cup from one of the local gas stations sat next to his elbow, along with a half-eaten hot dog loaded with relish. My first thought was why in the world he would eat something from a gas station when he had an entire restaurant kitchen to make his own food?
He looked surprised to see me. “Wow, that was fast.”
I didn’t bother with a greeting. “What?”
“Sorry.” He smiled apologetically. “I told Davis that if he saw you in the restaurant any time soon to let you know that I wanted to talk to you. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.”
“I came by to order some clam chowder,” I explained. “He was outside sweeping and told me you wanted to see me.”
Jonah picked up his soda and sucked down a mouthful of its contents. “I do.”
“Why?” I blurted out. I was dying to know.
He sighed. “Because I need help.”
“Is this about the missing money?”
He motioned to a folding chair situated across from his desk. I sat down, letting my purse slide off my shoulder and to the floor.
“You’re the one who helped figure out who killed Tony, right?”
I hesitated before offering a slight nod.
“So you, like, solve mysteries, right? Because you did that with Caroline Ford, too.”
I chose my words very carefully. “I’ve helped figure out a couple of things, yes. But my real job is as a dog walker.”
“Help how?”
He scowled. “Help figure out who took my money. Or at least help me figure out how to get it back.”
I stared at him. “Why me?”
“Because I know what you did for Tony and Caroline,” he said gruffly. “I want you to do the same thing for me.”
Jonah was asking me to help him find his missing money, and to figure out who was responsible. He seemed to think I was some sort of detective; if not in name, then at least by ability.
The problem was that I really felt as though it had just been dumb luck that had allowed me to figure out both Tony and Caroline’s cases. Sure, I’d been a little relentless in my snooping—sort of how Trixie was when given a bone—but I didn’t have any special skillset that had factored in to me solving those particular crimes. Desperation had driven me to some degree with those cases, because either I or someone I knew was being falsely accused—or at least suspected—of committing the crime.
Besides, those were about dead bodies, not missing money.
Jonah must have noticed my hesitation because he cleared his throat and added, “I’ll pay you.”
I looked at him.
“I mean, I’d like to pay you,” he continued. He slumped forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “And I will, if the money is found.”
“Have you contacted the police?” It was the same question I’d asked him the day before when I’d found him outside the restaurant, and he’d never answered.
“No.”
“Why not?”
He grunted. “I have my reasons.”
I wondered what kind of history he had with the Sweetwater Police Department. If it was anything like what I’d experienced during my brief time back on the island, I couldn’t fault him for being reluctant to ask them for help.
I didn’t press, and asked a different question instead. “What about insurance?” I didn’t know anything about insurance but I imagined that he probably had some sort of theft rider for the restaurant.
He shook his head.
“You don’t have insurance?”
“No, I do,” he said. “It covers restaurant assets, not my personal savings account. That’s what bank accounts are for.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him about that statement. I looked around the cluttered office, at the cluttered desk and the walls lined with bookshelves brimming with books and knickknacks, and file cabinets whose drawers appeared to be so stuffed, they weren’t closed completely.
Jonah picked up his hot dog and stared at it for a minute before taking a huge bite. He swallowed it down with a gulp of soda and said, “Because I don’t trust banks.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Just don’t. They’re all a bunch of crooks.”
“So you don’t have a bank account?” I didn’t know how this would even be possible, especially considering he ran his own business. Did he just pay everyone in cash, like the marijuana growers in Colorado did?
“No, I have an account,” he said. “For the restaurant. I need one to pay employees and suppliers, and to pay the rent and utilities for the building. And taxes.” He made a face. “But my personal savings? There’s no way I’d trust it to a bank.”
I thought about pointing out how the alternative—storing all of it in cash in his office—hadn’t proved to be much better.
“How much money are we talking about?” I said instead.
He set the hot dog down. “Twenty thousand.”
“Did you say…twenty thousand?”
He nodded glumly.
I let out a slow breath. It was way more than I’d thought.
Jonah just stared at the remaining bit of hot dog.
He seemed so distraught that I scrambled to think of something to say, to find some sort of silver lining. “Okay, but you said you have an account to pay restaurant expenses. So this wasn’t your operating capital or anything.” I was pleased I remembered the term. Apparently I did retain at least one bit of information from the 100-level economics class I’d taken years ago.
“It is when your industrial freezer is on the fritz and you were planning to dip into your own savings to pay for a new one…” He sighed. “And it is when you have your own expenses—rent and car payments and other bills—that can’t be paid now because the money is gone.”
Yet more reasons to keep money in a bank account, I thought. But now probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up.
I still wasn’t sure why Jonah had asked me to help, but that didn’t seem like a good question to ask at the moment, either.
“Where was the money kept?” I asked.
His eyes widened in alarm. He looked as if I’d just asked him to reveal the country’s nuclear codes.
Maybe he wanted to use the same hiding place if and when the money was recovered. I shuddered at the thought, once again floored that anyone would think it was a good idea to keep tens of thousands of dollars in cash on hand.
I tried a different question. “Did anyone know where you kept the money?”
His answer was immediate. “Yes.”
“Who?”
“Carmen Diggs.”
“Who is she?”
His expression darkened. “My assistant manager. Well, my former assistant.”
SIX
“Former assistant?”
Jonah nodded.
“What happened?” I remembered then that Davis had mentioned a woman named Carmen, and how he said the restaurant had taken a dive after she left.
He picked up the last bit of his hot dog and stuffed it in his mouth, then sucked the relish off his fingers. “She worked for me for about six months. She was a great employee at first. Really whipped things into shape around here, you know? It got to the point where I didn’t know how I’d managed to run the place without her.”
“Sounds like you really liked her,” I commented. “So why did she leave?”
There was a quick rap on the door and I turned around in my chair. Brenda, Tony Lamotte’s girlfriend and one of the restaurant’s servers, was standing in the doorway. She’d gotten a new haircut since the last time I saw her, a chin-length bob, along with some highlights, and the transformation was pretty remarkable. I knew she was much older than me, but with her new hairstyle and some artfully applied make-up, she looked stunning.
“There’s some guy here to see you,” she said to Jonah. Her eyes drifted in my direction, widening as she recognized me. “Oh, hi, Wendy. What are you doing here?”
“Jonah and I were just chatting.” I searched for a reason I might be sitting in her boss’s office. I didn’t think it was common knowledge that his entire life savings had gone missing. “He was…uh…telling me about the cooking classes he’s offering.”
“Cooking classes?” she said blankly.
I turned to look back at Jonah. I knew Maggie had mentioned it to me the day before; I wasn’t making it up.
“It’s something new we’ve started up,” Jonah said. He frowned at Brenda. “Didn’t you see the note tacked up to the bulletin board?”
Brenda shook her head. “Guess I must have missed it.”
“I’ve done two of them now. One last week and one yesterday.” His frown deepened. “Weren’t you working yesterday?”
Brenda thought for a minute. “Oh…is that why there were some new folks in the kitchen yesterday afternoon?”
Jonah nodded.
“I thought you were training a bunch of new cooks or something.” She giggled. “Well, classes sound like fun. I hope you’re charging for them and not offering ‘em up for free.” She dug a pen and a pad of paper out of the front pocket of her half-apron. “I’m heading to the floor. Don’t forget about the guy waiting to talk to you. He said something about freezers.”
Jonah made a face and mumbled something under his breath, and I felt a twinge of sympathy. The guy was probably either a repair
man or a sales rep hoping to sell him a new freezer.
That Jonah didn’t have money to buy.
“Let him know I’ll be out in a minute,” he told Brenda. “We’re almost done here.”
As soon as she left, he turned his attention back to me. “Where were we?”
“You were telling me about Carmen. I asked why she left.”
“She didn’t leave.” He rubbed his forehead. “She was fired.”
I tried to mesh this bit of news with the glowing testimonial he’d just given me about the woman who’d worked in his restaurant. “Why? If she was such a good employee…”
“Because things changed.” There was an edge to his voice. “The last month or so, she just wasn’t the same person she used to be.”
“How so?”
“She was always late or calling in sick. And when she was here, she seemed distracted. Was constantly checking her phone and excusing herself to go make phone calls or send texts.” He shook his head. “It was clear that this job wasn’t a priority for her.”
“So you fired her?”
Jonah ran a hand through his curls. “Not right away. I liked Carmen, and I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was going through some sort of rough patch, needed some time or some help with something. We had a long talk a couple weeks ago and I asked if this job was important to her. She said it was, and she promised that she would do better.”
I assumed that didn’t happen.
“But nothing really changed,” Jonah said, confirming my suspicions. “I warned her over and over again that she was on thin ice. Wrote her up repeatedly, and gave her multiple final warnings.”
It sounded as though Jonah had kept Carmen on far longer than he should have.
“Last week was the final straw. I had a few people in the kitchen for my first cooking class. A couple of regular customers had signed up, and even Owen Simcoe was here for it.”
“Detective Simcoe?”
Jonah nodded. “He’s wanting to lose weight and figured one way to start would be to get better at cooking good food at home.”