Chapter 3 - What the Diner Owed
At eight the following morning, Curtis texted Lila that she was suspended pending an investigation into the register shortage. At eight-oh-three, her employee scheduling app stopped working.
She showed the message to Owen while he buttered toast.
“You should call the cops,” he said.
“About missing cash I didn't take? I will. But first I'm getting proof.”
Lila photographed the schedule and downloaded every pay stub she could access. For months, a line labeled ADVANCE RECOVERY had taken between forty and eighty dollars from each check. She had never received an advance.
At ten, Tasha, the other morning server, met her outside the laundromat. Tasha had two young children and a habit of looking down before saying something that mattered.
“I thought I was the only one,” Tasha admitted. “Curtis said it was payroll fixing a mistake.”
“Did you ever ask for a loan?”
“No. And don't tell him I showed you this.”
The paper she handed Lila carried the same deduction. The dates lined up exactly.
A black sedan pulled up at the curb. Sal stepped out, alone. Lila almost laughed at the impossibility of him fitting into her small, hard-working world without rearranging it.
“I asked Curtis why you were suspended,” he said.
“You had no right.”
“He said you stole from him.”
“He's been docking our wages. There may not have been any money missing at all.”
Sal glanced at Tasha's pay stub. He didn't touch it. “Who handles the diner's financing?”
“Why?”
“Because my nephew arranged a business loan for Curtis last year.”
The sidewalk seemed to tilt beneath her.
“Your nephew has men looking for my necklace?”
“I don't know.”
“That's not good enough.”
He accepted the rebuke without defense. Then he pulled an envelope from his pocket. Inside was a photograph of Elena at about seventeen, laughing on a fishing boat, with Sal's arm around her shoulders. Behind it, in Elena's neat handwriting, was a date from twenty-nine years ago.
“She stopped speaking to me after something happened at Fulton Row,” he said. “I told myself she needed time.”
“How much time did you give her?”
He looked toward the busy traffic. “Twenty-five years.”
Lila could not decide whether that was cruelty or cowardice. Maybe those things looked the same from the daughter's side.
“Don't come near Owen,” she said. “And don't pay Curtis to make this go away.”
“I won't.”
She took the photograph but not his hand.
May you like
That night, Owen brought her the small cedar box again. “There was a false bottom,” he said. “I found it while fixing the hinge.”
Inside lay a brass key and a newspaper clipping about a fatal fire at Fulton Row. Across the clipping their mother had written three words: Ask who ordered.
