Murder at the Blue Plate Café (A Blue Plate Café Mystery) by Judy Alter

didn’t seem to mean much to her. She certainly didn’t get edgy or defensive. Once I hugged her and walked away, I dismissed the thought that Donna knew anything about the deadly properties of foxglove. She was too ditsy for that.
    ****
    A few days later, Rick Samuels came into the café about nine-thirty in the morning—too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. He strode right back into the kitchen, and I asked what he needed.
    He looked at the floor, then at the ceiling, anywhere but at me. “I’m here to do a health inspection. Mayor’s orders.”
    I thought I might choke but my first instinct was to laugh. “Health inspection. Are you trained in that field?”
    He stiffened. “We don’t have a health inspector in Wheeler, and the mayor doesn’t want to pay for someone to come from Tyler. I read about it on the web. I’m supposed to look for uncovered foods, rat droppings, check the temperature in the refrigerators and freezers, stuff like that.”
    “Have at it,” I said with a grin. “I have to get my pies in the oven.”
    He poked around in the kitchen for maybe thirty minutes, muttered his thanks for my cooperation, and headed out the door.
    I couldn’t resist. “Find any roaches?” I called.
    He ignored me and left.
    Marj came up behind me. “What was that all about?”
    “Mayor Thompson is out to get us again,” I said. “It won’t come to anything. She hasn’t a leg to stand on. This kitchen is as clean as it always was when Gram was in charge. Here, help me get the fillings into these pies. I’m running late.”
    Two days later my casual dismissal of Rick Samuel’s inspection came home to bite me. Mayor Thompson charged in, waving legal-looking papers and saying she was shutting us down for four serious health code violations: rat droppings, open containers of flour (I was using it, for Pete’s sake), flies (who doesn’t have them in East Texas in the summer?), and inadequate freezer temperatures. Since I checked the freezer and refrigerator temperatures every morning myself, I knew that was flat wrong. And I knew there weren’t rat droppings anywhere in my kitchen.
    “I’m closing you down as of now,” she screeched.
    Behind me I heard Marj gasp. “You don’t have the authority,” I said. “You’re the mayor, not the health inspector, and I have the right to appeal, first to the city council.”
    She seemed flabbergasted for a moment and then stormed, “Appeal all you want. It won’t do you any good.”
    As she turned to leave, I said, “Leave me those papers. I’ll need them for my lawyer. When’s the next council meeting?”
    She stared at me, holding the papers tight to her chest, and stormed out, saying, “You’ll be properly served with official papers.”
    “Can she really close us down?” Marj asked tremulously.
    “Have you seen rat droppings?” I asked with irony in my voice. “She just wants to run me out of business so she can buy the café at a fire-sale price. It won’t work.”
    That day Rick Samuels came in for lunch. Coincidence? I wondered. Or maybe not. He was his usual gruff self—for just a minute the other day I’d penetrated behind that façade, but now it was back. Without greeting anyone, he ordered a meat loaf sandwich and a small salad.
    “I’ll fix his plate,” I said to Marj back in the kitchen, “and take it to him. Watch me,” and I winked at her.
    I fixed a special salad, adding grated cheese and wishing the greens from my garden were already grown. As it was, I was more generous with the slivered red cabbage we always put in for color and crunch and with the cherry tomatoes—we usually only added one per salad. The ticket said he preferred mayo on his sandwich and wanted it on wheat—conscious of his health, maybe?—so I slathered the bread with mayo, cut it diagonally, the way Gram had taught me rather than straight in half (“The corners fit in your mouth better,” she’d said), and sashayed out to the counter to set