Six Feet Deep Dish by Mindy Quigley

Author:Mindy Quigley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 16

Sonya and I had barely finished our conversation when a car whooshed into the restaurant parking lot, breaking the steady rhythm of the rain. I walked to the window, where I saw a beat-up Ford Focus of indeterminate color—greige, maybe?—rumble to a stop. “That’s Rabbit’s car,” I gasped. “I forgot he said he was coming in this morning.”

“Guess the Five-O haven’t gotten to him yet,” Sonya said. “Do you want me to call Capone?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes, but wait about ten minutes. I want to talk to Rabbit myself.”

“Didn’t Capone explicitly tell you to back off the Nancy Drew act?” Sonya said.

“Rabbit is my employee. I can’t throw him to the wolves without talking to him first. I’ve dealt with a lot of shady characters. I’ve got a pretty good sense when someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”

Sonya chuckled. “That’s an understatement. I’ll never forget when that vendor at Kyōten tried to pass off Oklahoma Angus for Kobe beef. Remember? He was so scared, he accidentally called you ‘mommy’ at one point while you were haranguing him.”

I threaded my fingers together and cracked my knuckles. “Let’s hope I can live up to my reputation.”

I ran down to unlock the restaurant, glad I hadn’t yet given Rabbit his own key. If he turned out to be guilty, that would be one less thing to worry about. Rabbit entered the kitchen a moment later, while I was still toweling the rain off my face. He, too, was sodden. I threw him a kitchen towel.

“Thanks. Cats and dogs,” Rabbit said, wiping his face. When he finished, he turned to me. “What’s on the agenda for today, chef?”

“Follow me,” I directed. I walked through the swinging door into the dining room and indicated that Rabbit should sit at one of the tables. No sense in beating around the bush. I sat down opposite him. “I need to know if you stole my aunt’s pills.”

Rabbit’s eyes widened and his brow creased in confusion. “Miss O’Leary’s pills?”

“Yes. The pills you saw on the counter yesterday. You seemed very interested in them. They’ve gone missing. Did you take them?”

“No!” Rabbit practically fell out of his chair in his scramble to deny the accusation. He took a breath and repeated, “No, ma’am.”

I leaned closer, pressing my forearms on the table between us. “Do you deny that your eyes went straight to those pills yesterday?” Here, I saw some hesitation. Rabbit’s eyes flicked around the room like lightning bugs in a jar. “Well?”

He hung his head. “No, I don’t deny it.”

“Why were you so interested in the pills?” I demanded, raising my voice a notch.

Capone seemed to have perfected the good-cop persona. That wasn’t my style. I’d clawed and scraped to the top of my profession in overheated, macho kitchens. “Nice” never won anyone a Michelin star.

“I didn’t take them. I swear it on my daughter,” he pleaded.

“So, you just have a casual interest in pharmaceuticals?” I asked.

“Force of habit, I guess,” Rabbit replied.

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