Tales From the Lazy Luncheonette Casebook (A Sanford Third Age Club Special) by David W. Robinson

Author:David W. Robinson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: RETAIL AZW3
Publisher: darkstroke books
Published: 2020-02-12T08:00:00+00:00

Down at Heel

The morning rush was over, the draymen were long gone, the workers from the industrial estate opposite were at their daily grind, the office staff from the four floors above The Lazy Luncheonette would be tapping away at their computer keyboards, the sandwich orders had been delivered to various premises, and there were no customers in the café.

Lee was busy in the kitchen preparing lunches, Sheila and Brenda sat in silence at table 5, both immersed in magazines, and opposite them, Joe had nothing better to do than contemplate the crossword in the Daily Express and occasionally stare out at the rain spattered pavements of Doncaster Road.

It was that very rain, a persistent, if light drizzle, which kept the customers away. Mid-morning was never a busy time, but they could usually rely upon shoppers who were tired of the expensive and cardboard food on offer in the glitzy premises of Sanford Retail Park, and who would amble over to savour the freshly prepared fodder of The Lazy Luncheonette.

Early spring was, in any event, a trying time for trade. People were still not over the expense of Christmas and New Year, money was tight, and with Easter a few weeks away and summer holidays beckoning in three or four months, most wanted to hang on to their funds.

Sheila and Brenda were planning a week in Tenerife in April, and they had naturally invited Joe to join them, but he’d declined. Since Denise’s death and the attempts on his life, he’d taken to going away on his own, perhaps in the hope of meeting someone else, and Tenerife was not the ideal solution. His ex-wife, Alison, lived there, and while he had got on well with her the last time he saw her (a time when he was running from a crazed woman intent upon killing him) he had no desire to rekindle their dormant marriage.

Instead, he would be at home while his two friends shot off to the Canary Islands, and he was planning a week in Cyprus later in the year. George Robson had recommended a classy hotel in Paphos. George, a man to whom life was nothing more than a simple pursuit of pleasure in all its forms, could be relied upon to tell it like it was.

His thoughts were meandering around this very subject when the doorbell chimed, and a gust of chilly, March air rushed into the dining area. Joe looked up from his newspaper, Sheila and Brenda turned their heads, all in expectation of a customer, only to find his niece, Gemma Craddock, shaking the rain from her umbrella as she closed the door.

“Morning, Uncle Joe, morning, Sheila, morning, Brenda.”

Joe half rose to leave his seat, but Brenda beat him to it, moving behind the counter to pour a cup of tea for their visitor.

A slim, vivacious thirty-five-year-old, with a head of well-kept auburn hair, she had been even as detective sergeant now the nominal head of Sanford CID. Of all his extended family, she was Joe’s favourite, and he remained secretly proud of her progress in the Sanford police.

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