Irish Stewed by Kylie Logan

exchanged looks with his companions. “That is, we aren’t actually looking to . . . We just want to snap some pictures and get a couple good quotesto go with them. We already had our coffee and muffins over at Caf-Fiends. It’s not like we actually want to eat here.”
    It wasn’t Inez’s fault that she was standing there slack-jawed and unsure how to handle things, but it was my responsibility to set an example. I snatched the menus out of her hands and tapped them into a neat pile against the rolltop desk. “Thanks for stopping in,” I told the young man.
    “You mean—”
    “I mean, it’s like that sign you see in so many places. ‘No shirt, No shoes, No service.’ Only here, we’ve added ‘No loitering.’ If you’re not a customer, you’re loitering.”
    “So you’re going to blackmail us into buying the crummy food in this place?”
    For all I knew, the food at Sophie’s was, indeed, crummy. In fact, I suspected
crummy
was putting it kindly. That didn’t excuse this guy for dissing the Terminal.
    I backstepped him and his companions toward the door. “Thanks for stopping by,” I said again. “We hope to see you another time.”
    They got the message and left.
    I turned from the door and found Inez grinning from ear to ear. “That was really cool.”
    “It was really rude is what it was.”
    “Not on your part.”
    My smile matched hers. “No, not on my part.”
    “You think we’re going to have to put up with that nonsense all day?”
    I didn’t think it, I was sure of it. I also knew one way we could at least reduce the possibility.
    I called a quick staff meeting and told George, Denice, and Inez what I had in mind. Within minutes, Inez and Denice were giving the restaurant a quick cleaning,concentrating on the little jut-out area where Jack had been killed. Once the fingerprint powder was all cleaned up, customers could speculate all they wanted about where Jack had been killed. While they were at it, I had the two waitresses get rid of a couple dozen lace doilies, three cobwebby teddy bears that were so high up on a shelf I don’t know how anybody ever saw them, and a giant china pitcher of fabric flowers that made it impossible for anybody standing in the doorway between the waiting room and the restaurant to see the people at the table in the far corner against the windows.
    Three people came in, one at a time, while they were working, and the girls took turns taking care of them. I noticed that the two Inez helped turned right around and walked out again and when they did, I gave her the thumbs-up. She’d apparently been paying attention when I sent that photographer on his way earlier; she knew how to identify the gawkers and tell them (politely, I hoped) that they weren’t welcome if they weren’t going to order.
    The third was apparently a regular and Denice got him a cup of coffee and pulled out her order pad. “Pancakes, bacon, and rye toast?”
    The man nodded.
    I just happened to be standing close by. “I’ll put the order in for you,” I offered and headed back to the kitchen. Of course I had an ulterior motive. In addition to seeing how the orders were handled and how George prepared the food, it gave me a chance to finish the conversation we’d started earlier.
    He looked up at me over the pancake batter he was whipping. “You didn’t come back here just to watch me work.”
    “No, I didn’t,” I said. “But I do need to get used to theroutine around here. It’s important for me to know how orders are prepared.”
    “Not much to makin’ pancakes.” He scooped up batter and dropped it on the hot griddle, waited for precisely the right moment, then flipped the four hotcakes. He already had bacon sizzling on the grill and he turned each strip over.
    “I knew Lou would be here,” George commented. “Always here this time of day. Always orders the same thing.”
    “So that’s all taken care of, and we don’t need to talk about Lou. But we still need