Wags to Riches

by Ally Roberts

The girl’s face brightened. “Oh, that’s great. I’ll let him know.”

  “Well, I’d sort of like to tell him myself,” I said. I stole a glance into the restaurant, noting the majority of the tables were empty yet again. At least I knew she couldn’t tell me he was too busy to talk. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  The girl blew out a breath, sending her long bangs airborne for the briefest of seconds. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go find him.”

  She left me standing at the hostess station, but as soon as she was gone, I followed her into the restaurant, just inside the entryway. It was the first time I’d stepped foot inside Gunther’s place and I scanned the room, trying to make heads or tails out of what I was seeing. Tables covered with red-checked tablecloths lent a homey feel to the dining area, as did the planked, whitewashed walls and weathered floorboards underfoot. But the chandelier lighting and fine oil paintings of marine life and seascapes offered a completely different vibe. The classical music, a mundane version of an old Beatles song, made me feel like I was standing in the waiting room of a dentist’s office.

  I didn’t have much time to think about how all of these things went together—or, rather, how they didn’t—because Gunther was strolling toward me, a big smile on his face.

  “So,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “You liked the chowder.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but he didn’t appear to be interested in actually hearing a response.

  His smile widened, his mustache stretching in the process. “I knew you would,” he said. “I think we can now safely call you a convert.”

  “A convert?”

  “A convert to Shawnty’s. Your new favorite restaurant. Am I right?” He reached out and gave my shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Someone your age should be pretty well connected on social media. You can leave reviews, post about your experience, tell your friends. All that stuff.”

  I swallowed. “Actually, I’m not here about that,” I told him, my voice low. The restaurant only had a few guests, and even though I felt no obligation to Gunther, I didn’t want to broadcast the accusations I was here to bring against him.

  His smile dimmed and his brow furrowed. “You’re not? Then why are you here? Ella said you wanted to talk to me about the chowder.”

  “I lied.”

  The smile disappeared completely. “You didn’t like it?” His voice held a note of panic. “But it’s no different than Jonah’s!”

  I really wasn’t there to talk about the nuances of clam chowder.

  “I actually have a question for you,” I said.

  “About the recipe?” He folded his arms. “I’m afraid I can’t share that. It’s proprietary.”

  “Not about the recipe.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

  But I didn’t immediately press the home button, because I was suddenly aware that confronting a man of Gunther’s size—not to mention a man I didn’t know—was probably not the best idea. I had no idea if he had a temper or if he had violent tendencies and yet here I was, ready to start interrogating him about stolen money.

  It wasn’t the greatest idea.

  But it was also all that I had. And the alternative—Jonah storming over here—would inevitably be worse.

  I opened my phone and hit the icon for my photos. I turned the screen around so Gunther could see it.

  “Is this you?” My voice sounded a little wobbly even to my own ears.

  His eyes bulged. It was the photo Brenda had shown me. I’d had her text it to me and I saved it to my own album.

  “Where did you get that?” The color was gone from his face, and beads of sweat dotted the top of his bald head.

  My confidence surged by a fraction. He hadn’t ripped the phone out of my hand, and he looked more scared than angry about what I was showing him.

  “Can you tell me what you were doing at The Perfect Catch?”

  Gunther licked his lips. “N-nothing,” he stammered.

  I enlarged the image, bringing the envelope into focus. “Nothing?” I repeated.

  He was now as white as a ghost.

  Feeling emboldened, I held the phone closer to his face. “Then why are you holding an envelope full of cash?” I didn’t wait for a response. “I have a feeling that the Sweetwater Police might have some questions for you. Because I know Jonah Garrison does. About what’s in the envelope, of course, but about breaking and entering into his restaurant, too.”

  “Wait,” Gunther said. Panic seized both his voice and his expression. “I…I was at the restaurant. I admit it. But it’s not for the reason you think.”

  FIFTEEN

  I waited for Gunther to elaborate.

  Instead, he reached for my arm, wanting me to follow him out of the dining area and toward the kitchen.

  I balked.

  “Can we please not discuss this out here?” He scanned the restaurant and I did the same, noticing that a couple of the people at the occupied tables were eyeing us.

  He stared imploringly at me. “Please. The last thing I need is bad publicity. I promise I’ll answer your questions. Just not out here.”

  I relented. Gunther led me past the kitchen, where a couple of guys were standing around waiting for orders to come back. A server was leaning against the wall, scanning her phone.

  “In here.” Gunther shouldered open a door, revealing a small, tidy office.

  I hesitated. Was it a good idea for me to go into a closed room with a man I didn’t know and who I’d just accused of breaking into his rival’s restaurant?

  Gunther must have noticed. “I’ll leave the door open,” he promised.

  I followed him in but didn’t sit down when he motioned toward the seat across from his desk.

  He dropped into his own chair and rested his elbows on the desk surface. It was much cleaner than Jonah’s jumbled mess. A container of pens, a stapler, and a computer monitor were the only things on it. Behind Gunther, sitting on a low bookshelf, were stackable wire bins, filled with neat stacks of paper. And to the left, binders, all of them black, were lined up, labeled by year. I wondered if those were his financial records or supply orders or employee schedules…there were several possibilities.

  I did a swift shake of my head. It didn’t matter what was in those binders. What mattered was what Gunther had to say about the photo I’d shown him.

  “So talk,” I said.

  Gunther ran a hand over his head. “I don’t really know where to start.”

  I crossed my arms. “Well, you can start by telling me why you broke into Jonah’s restaurant.”

  He winced, and I didn’t know if it was a reaction to the words I’d spoken or the tone I’d used.

  “I didn’t break in.” He took a deep breath. “The door was unlocked.”

  “Were you invited in?”

  He shook his head.

  “Was anyone expecting you?”

  Another shake.

  “Did anyone know you were there?”

  Yet another shake.

  “So you might not have broken in, but I would say you were, at the very least, trespassing.” I paused. “And that doesn’t address the envelope you were holding.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “Why would you think it had money in it? Do you think I robbed the register or something?”

  He sounded genuinely confused, but I tried not to let that sway my thinking. If he was feeling cornered, his best defense would be to deflect or to feign innocence. Still, I had to admit that his bewilderment was convincing.

  I answered his question by asking one of my own. “What was in the envelope?”

  Gunther glanced down at his desk. “His recipes.”

  I leaned closer and cupped my hand around my ear. “His what?”

  He looked back up at me. “His recipes. I took his recipes, okay?”

  This was not the answer I’d expected to hear. “Why?” I managed to ask.

  Gunther sighed. “I thought if I had better food, or at least the s
ame food as Jonah, that people would want to eat here, too.”

  “How exactly did you take his recipes?” I couldn’t imagine that Jonah had a recipe box stashed somewhere in his commercial kitchen.

  “He has a recipe box where he keeps all his personal recipes,” Gunther said.

  Apparently, I was wrong.

  “So you took all of his recipes?”

  “Not all of them,” Gunther said defensively. “Just three. His clam chowder, fish stew, and crab cakes recipes.”

  He reached under the desk and opened a drawer. He pulled out an envelope that looked exactly like the one in the photo. He reached inside and pulled out exactly three recipe cards. They were written on index cards in even block lettering.

  He looked at me, his expression turning a little hopeful. “You ordered the chowder. Could you tell it tasted the same as Jonah’s?”

  I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t there to discuss chowder. I had more questions for him.

  “How did you know about the recipe box?” It didn’t seem like something that would be common knowledge.

  He busied himself with the container of pens, shuffling his fingers through them. It was clear he was trying to avoid answering the question.

  “Maybe you’d feel better about talking to Detective Simcoe about this,” I suggested.

  He jerked his head up and stared at me.

  I waited.

  “Fine.” He sighed. “Carmen told me.”

  “Carmen?” I frowned. “His old assistant?”

  Gunther nodded.

  “Why did she tell you?”

  He gave a half-shrug. It was clear he wasn’t comfortable discussing it. “We talked shop sometimes. She mentioned the box in the kitchen, how it was this old metal recipe box covered in grease and how it had every single recipe Jonah used. There’s a binder, too, of course. That’s what the cooks use when they first come aboard. But the box is in the kitchen, too.”

  “And so you just decided to go in and steal the recipes? How did you know where it was in the kitchen? Or when would be a good time to go get it? How did you know the restaurant would be unlocked?”

  He squirmed in his chair. “She might have mentioned where to look and when would be a good time to go…”

  “Why would she tell you all of that?”

  “Look, she was upset with him.” Something flashed in Gunther’s eyes. “He was always harping on her about being late and stuff.”

  I stared at him. “But why would she tell you this? Are you guys friends?” I paused. “Maybe a little more than friends?”

  I couldn’t see it—Gunther had to be at least ten years her senior, if not more—but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something going on between them.

  Gunther’s face turned beet red. “We’re…we’re friends.”

  That felt like code for more.

  “So I admit, I took the recipes,” Gunther said. He held his hands up in surrender. “Not even going to try to deny it. And you can accuse me of trespassing, too. But I didn’t break into Jonah’s place—the door was unlocked. And I definitely didn’t take any money. The only area I went into was the kitchen. I swear on my mother’s grave. I wouldn’t steal money from a till. I’m a business owner myself. I know how hard it is to make a living at this.”

  I didn’t know what to make of what he was telling me, but it was becoming harder and harder to see him as the person responsible for stealing Jonah’s life savings. He’d admitted to being in the restaurant, and he’d shown me the contents of the envelope. He professed to not know a thing about the missing money and just assumed it was from the cash register, not from Jonah’s office.

  With all that in mind, I was pretty sure Gunther didn’t have anything to do with Jonah’s missing money.

  But Carmen?

  I had a feeling she was another story.

  SIXTEEN

  I was itching to find a way to pay Carmen a visit.

  Instead, I was sitting in my living room with my mother. Trixie was running circles around us, clearly unhappy that her and Duke’s afternoon walk had consisted of a brisk and shortened twenty-minute jaunt after I’d met up with Gunther. I wanted to walk them first, get it out of the way, and then tackle how to get in touch with Carmen. Jonah had called and texted, multiple times, and I’d held him off by telling him I would have a suspect to turn over to the police by that night.

  I probably shouldn’t have promised him that.

  Because when Trixie and I got back, my mother was outside my house. In tears.

  After establishing that no one had died, I led her into the house and she’d parked herself on the couch in the living room. An hour later, she was still there.

  “I just had such high hopes,” she said with a sigh.

  I nodded as sympathetically as I could. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  She wrung her hands. “And I know how important her job is, but I’d like to think her family is important, too.”

  “It is.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek. She didn’t bother brushing it away. I think she liked the fact that she was crying over my sister’s decision to postpone her visit home.

  Mom looked at me. “She said she’d reschedule for the fall. Do you think it will happen?”

  I had no idea what Greta would do. Despite the fact that she was my only sibling, we weren’t exactly close. I rarely heard from her, and I didn’t think it was because she always seemed to be halfway around the world. She could be in Savannah and I didn’t think her texts or phone calls would have been any more frequent. We just weren’t close.

  “I’m sure she will,” I said, with much more confidence than I actually felt. But I’d been playing the role of comforter and listener for the last hour now, and I didn’t know how many times we were going to go over the fact that Greta had scrapped her plans to come home this summer.

  My mom had told me Greta’s reasons—she’d started a new job in Morocco, with some kind of expedition and adventure group, and she didn’t think she could get time off before September. It made sense, at least to me. But I knew my mom had her heart set on having both her girls together during the summer. When I’d pointed out that we still would be together, just a month or two later than planned, she’d just sniffed and said, “It’s not the same.”

  But it was.

  My phone buzzed next to my leg and I glanced down at it, knowing exactly who it would be.

  Jonah.

  I’d missed about seven text messages from him since I’d come back from my walk with Trixie.

  My mom got to her feet.

  “Are you leaving?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, I just need to use the bathroom.” She gave me a crestfallen look. “Unless you want me to leave?”

  “No, no.” I shook my head, immediately swamped with guilt. “Of course not. You can stay as long as you like. I was just asking.”

  She sniffed and nodded, and then headed toward the powder room down the hall.

  I grabbed my phone and quickly read through Jonah’s messages, my alarm growing as I got to the last one.

  I’ll confront him myself

  I tapped out a quick response.

  It wasn’t Gunther! Sit tight. I’ll have info for you in a little bit, I promise.

  I raked a hand through my hair. Trixie brought me her rope toy and dropped it in my lap. She barked, her tail whipping back and forth. She wanted to play.

  I sighed. I felt like I was failing at everything right in that moment. I’d let Jonah down by not being able to give him answers regarding his money. I’d let my mom down because she was upset by my sister’s news and I apparently wasn’t doing a very good job consoling her. And I’d let my dog down by giving her, at best, a mediocre afternoon walk, which was now resulting in a dog who very much still needed to play.

  My mom returned from the bathroom and dropped back to the couch. She looked ready to continue her sulk fest and I decided it was up to me to try and switch gears.

  “So, what have
you been up to?” I asked. “Feels like forever since we’ve been able to catch up.”

  She gave me a pointed look. “I’ve been around…”

  I hung my head. It was a well-deserved jab. I was horrible about calling or stopping by. I made a mental note to try to be a better daughter, especially since Greta was going to be MIA for a while longer.

  She cleared her throat. “Let’s see. I planted some new flowers in the garden the other day, some beautiful petunias. The prettiest purple I think I’ve ever seen. Oh, and I’ve been busy with the women’s group at church. We had a prayer breakfast last week and we’re starting to plan for our annual rummage sale in August.”

  I tried hard to listen, to not tune her out. To stay engaged.

  “And how is work?” I asked. Trixie pawed at my leg and I glanced at her. She had a tennis ball in her mouth now and her eyes were pleading with me. Play with me.

  “Oh, it’s fine.” My mom smiled. “Nothing too exciting there. Oh!” Her expression changed. “Except Betsy came by last week to do a story on us!”

  Betsy Lewis was a reporter for the Island Gazette, the local paper.

  “Was that for The Sweetest?” I asked, remembering there was a ballot in some of the recent issues for people to vote on their favorite business establishments on the island.

  My mom raised an eyebrow. “We’re the only chiropractic office on the island…”

  “Oh.” I chuckled. “Well, then I guess you win by default.”

  Trixie whined, the ball still in her mouth. I frowned at her. “In a minute.”

  “She was there doing a piece on chiropractic care,” my mom explained, oblivious to Trixie’s desire for attention. She didn’t even give her a second glance. “She talked to Dr. Haney and a couple of the massage therapists, too.”

  “Did the article already run?” I hadn’t seen the latest issue of the paper.

  My mother nodded. “It was in this week’s edition.” Her expression brightened. “Oh, there was another great article in the paper this week, too! About student loans. Did you read it?”

  “I haven’t seen it.”