Do or Diner: A Comfort Food Mystery (3 page)

“Hi, Nancy.” I held out a hand to her. “I’m Trixie Matkowski.”

“Oh!” She moved her order book over her mouth to hide a gasp. “You’re the new owner?”

“Yes, but don’t let me make you nervous.” I set my un-shaken hand down on the table.

“You won’t.” Nancy shook her head, and then tilted it toward Ty. “The daily special for you, Ty?”

“What is the special?”

“Monte Cristo sandwich. Ours is a ham, chicken, and cheese sandwich that’s dipped in egg and fried like French toast.”

He handed her the menu. “Sounds perfect. And a cup of coffee.”

She broke into a big grin. “Hot and black and thick enough to float a horseshoe.”

He nodded. “You’ve got it, Nancy, darlin’.”

She giggled and turned to leave, but when I loudly cleared my throat, she realized her mistake.

“I’ll have the same thing—the Monte Cristo special and coffee. Only I’ll take my coffee with cream.”

“Got it.” Nancy scribbled on the pad, then grinned stupidly at Ty.

What was wrong with some women?

Although I could appreciate a studly looking man, I wasn’t in the market for a relationship. Ty was simply one of my neighbors, and I was going to be nice and treat him as such.

I crossed my arms and leaned forward on the table. “So how did you land in Sandy Harbor, Ty?”

“I used to come here when I was a boy. Salmon fishing. My grandfather, father, and I. We always rented Cottage Number Four for a week, and we
always had a fabulous time—just us men. I felt so important, taking a week off from school.”

He had a brilliant smile, darn it.

He continued. “So when things got to me in Houston, I decided to move to the place that I’ve thought about the most throughout the years. Here.”

Looking out the window at the boat launch, I could imagine the three Houston cowboys rolling out their boat to go fishing.

Nancy set his coffee down carefully, and she was rewarded with a wink of a blue eye. My coffee slopped onto the saucer as she sped away.

“Can you believe that your aunt Stella remembered me after twenty years?” he asked me.

When he smiled, his whiter-than-white teeth gleamed, and the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes deepened, but I wasn’t noticing.

I nodded. “There weren’t many people she forgot.”

His cell phone went off, and he slid it from a clip on the waistband of his belt. Making a face when he studied the number, he then looked up at me.

“Sorry, Trixie, I have to take this.”

“Go ahead.”

He mostly grunted and made some garbled comments. Suddenly, he stood, grabbed his hat, and put it on. He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a wad of bills, and peeled off several.

He smiled. “We’ll have to try this again sometime. I gotta go. Duty calls.”

I was curious. “What duty is calling you?”

“The Sandy Harbor sheriff’s department.”

My throat tightened. “Please tell me you’re a criminal and not a cop,” I ordered.

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m a deputy sheriff.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” The words tumbled out before I could bite them back. I had a flashback to Deputy Doug and could hear the crackle of his official radio.

Ty raised a perfect brown eyebrow. “Kidding?”

“Nothing. Really. Nothing. Um…lunch is on me.”

I didn’t want him to think of this as a date or something like that. Also, I owned the place, so lunch was on the house. I pushed his money toward him, but he shook his head. I left his money as a tip for Nancy.

He tweaked his hat, pivoted on his boots, and walked away.

Yes, he was definitely born to wear jeans. Not that I cared. Not now, especially not now.

The Monte Cristo specials appeared. As I dug into my meal, a visibly disappointed Nancy packed Ty’s into a white foam container.

Finally alone, I made some notes in my notebook: “get estimates for floor, fancier garnishes on plates other than lettuce leaf and tomato, lightbulb out behind counter, offer chicken or turkey on Monte Cristo.” Leaning back into the worn red vinyl seat cushion, I looked out the window.

Then a bloodcurdling scream came from the kitchen.

I
leaped up from the booth, hurried up the aisle, and pushed the silver double doors that opened to the kitchen.

Scanning the room, I didn’t see anything out of order—well, other than Juanita standing on the top rung of a step stool. She brandished a bread knife in her hand like a medieval knight with a sword.

“Juanita? What? Are you all right?”

“M-mouse.”

I took several deep breaths and hoped that my heart would stop pounding in my ears and slide back into my chest where it belonged.

Max and Clyde, the handymen whom I’d met earlier, were chuckling by the back door. Juanita pointed the knife at them and swore in crystal-clear English.

I glanced uneasily at the pass-through window to the front of the diner, hoping that Juanita’s swearing couldn’t be heard over the clinking of the silverware and the murmur of voices in conversation.

“He was this big,” Max said, holding his palms apart widely.

“Bigger,” Clyde teased.

Then a string of Spanish phrases, probably not G-rated, hung in the air next to her English cursing, just like the instructions that came in every do-it-yourself project.

I held out a hand to take the knife from her. She bent down and carefully gave it to me. Then she stood, crossed her arms, and shook her head. “Where is the mouse?”

“Godzilla is in the Dumpster,” Max said.

Juanita pinched her lips into a tight, white line, yet her eyes twinkled at their joking. “Please get to work,” she said. “Adios.”

“I second that, gentlemen,” I said. “There’s a lot of work to do around here to get ready for spring. So, please get to it. Or clear more snow.”

Like a pair of children who’d just been chastised, they hung their heads and left the kitchen. But Clyde gave Juanita a sideways glance, and his expression told me that they weren’t a bit sorry for teasing her.

I held out my hand to Juanita, this time to help her down. She took it and backed off the step stool as regally as a queen.

“I don’t like mice,” she said.

“I don’t like mice either—not where I eat, anyway.”

She smoothed her pristine white apron, shaking her head. “Max and Clyde—they smoke. They smoke too much. And they open and close the back door all day long. They come in. They go out. And the mouse, it come in.”

“Have you ever had a mouse in here before?”

“No. No mouse. Never.” Juanita scooped up the knife again and began slicing a loaf of Italian bread.

I wondered for a moment if there really had been an actual mouse or if Max and Clyde were just playing a joke on Juanita and she’d fallen for it.

What was this? Fourth grade?

“I’ll speak to them,” I said, with more authority than I felt.

“Never mind. I quit.” Juanita shrugged.

Something drained out of me—my sanity.

“Juanita, I need you.” As much as I wanted to roll up my sleeves and start my life as a short-order cook at my own diner, I was just too tired for a baptism of fire. I wanted to gently glide into the kitchen and observe, study, learn, eat.

And stall, just a little longer until I got my bearings.

I put a hand on her shoulder. “I promise to talk to them and tell them that their teasing isn’t welcome, but don’t let them drive you away. Aunt Stella told me that you’ve been here a long time.”

“Seven years.” She smiled, standing taller. “Ever since I moved to Sandy Harbor.”

“And you like it here?”

She nodded.

“And how many times have you threatened to quit because of Clyde and Max?” I guessed that their pranks had been ongoing.

“More times than I can count.”

“Aah.” I was right. “Are you going to let them drive you out of a job that you like?”

“No.” She pulled one of the orders from a metal
clothespin, studied it, and pulled a sub roll from a plastic bag. She pointed it at me. “You talk to them. Now, out of my kitchen.”

I was just about to tell her that this was my kitchen, but I would quit while I was ahead.

Then it hit me. What was I going to tell the customers out front? I mulled that over for a while. If they found out that the Silver Bullet had a mouse—or mice—running around the kitchen, my new diner might become a ghost town.

I took a deep breath and pushed on the swinging metal doors. When I walked out in the front dining area, every pair of eyes met mine, staring and waiting.

I was confident that I could lie. After all, I learned from the best: my ex.

“Um…Juanita was listening to the radio—the weather report,” I announced. “She heard that we might have six more inches of snow. I guess she just fell apart.”

The patrons nodded, made comments in agreement, and went back to their meals. They could identify with Juanita. Like everyone in the Northeast, they all felt like screaming at Mother Nature. Enough snow already. Everyone—and I was no exception—wanted spring.

Spring brought the fishermen. Summer brought the families, the boaters, the tourists, and more fishermen. Fall brought the salmon and more fishermen. Winter brought the snowmobilers, cross-country skiers, and townspeople who had cabin fever.

And everyone would be hungry and would need to be fed. I hoped that the Silver Bullet would be hopping.

I needed to be ready.

And then there was that balloon payment to Aunt Stella due on Labor Day. I didn’t want to touch what was left of Wendy’s “get out of Philly” money to pay Aunt Stella. I wanted the Silver Bullet Diner and the Sandy Harbor Guest Cottages to make a profit as a result of my own hard work and creativity—just to show myself that I could do it.

I slid back into the booth and took a bite of my cold Monte Cristo. To her credit, Nancy appeared again and volunteered to heat it up for me. I thankfully handed her the plate.

I went back to my notes, but I couldn’t concentrate and found myself staring outside instead. Max was running the snowblower, clearing a path from the diner to the parking lot where the snow had drifted. Clyde was using a shovel on the stairs and sprinkling some kind of deicer on the steps to melt the snow. I remembered that salt wasn’t used around here due to environmental issues.

Looking left, I noticed a food-delivery truck backing in alongside the kitchen next to the ice-covered boat launch, and I hoped that it wouldn’t get stuck in a drift. I wondered who took inventory and ordered supplies. Probably me. I made another note on my pad to ask someone.

As I looked over all my notes, I wondered yet again if I was in way over my head.

If only Aunt Stella could have stayed longer to
show me the ropes instead of booking a world cruise so soon, but Greece, Rome, and the Vatican drew her like a magnet, like a plate of pierogi and fried onions drew me.

Nancy, the waitress, returned with my sandwich and a brown paper grocery bag. She set both down in front of me. The bag immediately tipped over, and several envelopes slid out and hit the floor. Nancy scrambled to pick them up and return them to the overflowing bag.

“Mail,” she said. “Stella didn’t have time to look at it all, so Juanita said to give it to you.”

“Thanks.”

I eyed the bag but decided to eat my sandwich while it was still warm. When I’d finished, I picked up a handful of mail from the bag. The envelopes were mostly addressed to Stella Matkowski. They looked like bills. And they looked old. Some had
SECOND NOTICE
or
LAST NOTICE
stamped on the front.

My Monte Cristo sandwich sat like a cinder block in my stomach. I had to take care of the mail, and quickly. I decided that I needed to get settled into Aunt Stella’s office—now
my
office—in the main house. There was a laptop sitting on a big rolltop desk, and with any luck, she might have a spreadsheet set up or some kind of program that she used.

Gathering everything, I stuffed myself into my coat, pulled on my gloves, swaddled my scarf around my head and walked to the front of the diner.

I picked up a menu by the cash register. On it
was a scribbled note that the evening special was pork and scalloped potatoes. Yum. Pork and scalloped potatoes had been my mother’s specialty for years. That was, until Mom decided to hand over her overstuffed cookbook—filled with favorite recipes from the Matkowski family, Aunt Stella’s Timinski ancestors, and my mother’s Bugnacki family—to me.

Then pork and scalloped potatoes became my specialty. It was a dish that was always served at most of our family gatherings. It was hearty and easy to keep hot for latecomers or anyone who might drop in. I didn’t exactly know who started the tradition, but when I thought of family getting together, I thought of pork and scalloped potatoes served in a big turkey roaster.

It seemed like the Silver Bullet Diner could do better than a note scribbled in black felt marker and paper-clipped to the menu. Maybe a handout with the whole week’s specials would be better. Or a nice whiteboard. Or one of those funky neon blackboards. I could even search Web sites for cute ideas to make the diner even homier.

And I had some ideas for specials and new menu items that I couldn’t wait to introduce. The menu hadn’t changed in more than thirty years. Maybe it was time to put my mother’s cookbook to use.

Or maybe I shouldn’t mess with a sure thing.

Before I left, I tipped Nancy and noticed Tyler Brisco’s uneaten meal nicely boxed in a white foam carton with his name on it. Should I leave it for him
in his apartment over the bait shop? He probably would be hungry when he came back from whatever crisis he was handling in Sandy Harbor.

A crisis in Sandy Harbor? The biggest problem that ever happened here, according to Aunt Stella, was tangled fishing lines. And once, when a fisherman was casting on the bridge, his line got caught on the antenna of a passing car and the pole was yanked from his hands. He called the Sandy Harbor sheriff’s department to stop the car. After all, he had a top-of-the-line Henderson Fishblaster Plus rod, and he wanted it back.

I decided to let Nancy handle Ty’s dinner. She seemed to have the hots for him.