Joe stared back at her, implacable.
For a moment, she considered running out of the room, but only for a moment. Then she raised her head, never dropping her gaze. “You owe me for a half day,” she said flatly. “And the eggs.”
She turned on her heel and stalked out, pausing only long enough to grab her basket and her shoes from the staff room before she marched down the hall toward the exit. Darcy was standing beside the kitchen door. “What happened?”
MG shook her head, and ducked out the exit toward her car, still managing not to run somehow.
Bastard, bastard, bastard.
The words rang in her head, but she wasn’t sure who exactly she was thinking about—Todd Fairley or Joe LeBlanc. Probably both.
At least she managed not to cry until she was in the driver’s seat, and then she took the drive home at a snail’s pace, trying to watch the road through her tears.
Joe sat staring at the Silver Oak label. He figured if he kept his attention there, his burning desire to grab Fairley by the throat would pass. The man was still standing opposite him, apparently oblivious to how dangerously close he was to being throttled.
“I know what you’re going to say—she couldn’t have known which of the bottles was expensive because she doesn’t know wine. But all she’d have to do would be to look at the wine list and check the prices—the wine’s easy to find if you’ve seen the list, the bins are numbered.” Fairley gave him a faintly supercilious smile. “And she could sell it any number of places. Hell, she could even sell it online. Wine’s easy to move.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve been watching her for a while now.”
So have I, you son of a bitch.
Joe managed a shrug. “I’ll take care of it. Go back to the kitchen. You need to make sure they’re handling the last of the lunch crowd.”
Fairley looked slightly insulted. Joe wasn’t sure what he expected—maybe a medal. “I know you hired her. But we can do better. I can find us an extern who’ll do what she was doing and do it faster and more effectively.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” Joe narrowed his eyes. “Go on. Now.”
Fairley turned on his heel and walked out of the office. Joe ran his hands over his face, taking another in a series of deep breaths. He should go to MG’s now. No, he should wait until she’d had a while to cool off and until Fairley wasn’t keeping track of him.
He should call her. He found her number on the personnel form, then picked up his cell. But when he punched in the number, he got a message about the number not being in service. He tried again and got the same message. “Shit,” he muttered. “Goddamn shit.”
His office door banged open and for a hopeful moment he thought it might be MG come back to yell at him. But when he looked up, Darcy stood in the doorway, glaring.
“What the hell is going on here?” she snapped. “Did you fire MG?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Close the door.”
“Answer me, goddamn it!” Darcy looked like steam might come out of her ears at any moment.
“Close the fucking door, Darcy. And then I’ll answer you.” He kept his voice down with considerable effort.
She half turned and slammed the door shut. “Well? Did you fire MG?”
“No. I did not fire MG.” He massaged his forehead again.
“Then why did she go home?”
“I sent her home. Fairley accused her of stealing some wine.” He sighed, feeling very tired all of a sudden. “I wanted her out of the kitchen for a while until I could take care of some shit.”
“You wanted…” Darcy leaned forward, resting her hands on the desk. “You goddamned idiot. You fucking know MG’s no thief.”
Joe gritted his teeth to keep from yelling at her. “Of course I do. That’s why I sent her home. Now would you get the hell out of my office so I can think?” The burning in his gut was rapidly being joined by a pounding headache.
Darcy straightened, her forehead furrowing. “But…if you know she’s not a thief, then why the hell don’t you just tell Fairley to stuff it? He came back to the kitchen looking like he’d just gotten laid. Or knowing Fairley, like he’d just gotten a bigger toque.”
“Think about it,” Joe grated. “It’ll come to you.”
She stared at him for a long moment, frowning. “Fairley’s a thief,” she said finally. “He was trying to throw suspicion on her to divert it from him.”
“It’s possible. It’s also possible somebody else in the kitchen is stealing. In fact, it’s pretty much certain they are.” He blew out a breath, flexing his fingers out of the fist he’d formed trying not to punch out Fairley. “Fairley may well have tripped over MG by accident, but I don’t think so. I think the real thief set her up. I’ve known somebody was stealing for a couple of weeks now. Kit said the balance sheet was off.”
“Who is it?”
Joe shrugged. “I don’t know for sure yet. I’m not even sure what they’re stealing. Any ideas?”
She rubbed a hand across her chin. “Wine? It’s portable and easy to sell.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Only that’s what MG was supposed to be stealing. I don’t think the thief would call attention to it if that’s what he was doing himself. We’re going to have to check security on the wine bins as it is.”
“Could somebody be running a scam with the customers? Shorting the receipts and then taking the money? I knew a guy who did that when I was externing.”
Joe shook his head. “The losses aren’t coming from the front of the house—that’s all Kit and the waiters, and she runs a very tight shop.”
“If the thief wanted MG out of the way, it’s probably something in the kitchen,” Darcy said slowly. “Something she might notice.”
“Meaning it’s somebody who works around her.”
She blew out a long breath. “Okay, my money’s on Fishhead. The guy’s a first-class sleaze. But the Beav might be in on it—he hired him in the first place.”
Joe rubbed his eyes again. He was way ahead of her. On the other hand, he also thought Fishhead was a dick, which might possibly color his judgment. “Have you seen Dietz doing anything suspicious?”
She shrugged. “Hell, Joe, you know what the kitchen’s like. The only time I watch the guy is when he’s doing something for me, which isn’t often. He’s Fairley’s slave, not mine.”
“Right.” Which made it that much harder to nail him down. “Do you have MG’s number? I’ve been trying to call her, but I keep getting a disconnected message.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I ever got it. You should go over there.”
“Yeah.” Except, of course, that he couldn’t. Not as long as anybody in the kitchen might be watching. If he wanted to catch the asshole, the thief had to think he’d gotten away with it, that MG’s guilt was accepted. And he didn’t want to drop her back in the middle of what was looking like an ugly situation. “Look, are you going to be able to go out there and pretend you don’t know about what’s going on? I don’t want the thief to catch on before I can nail him.”
Darcy’s jaw firmed. “I can be mad as hell because of what Fairley did to MG. That’s realistic. Dietz already knows I think he’s an asshole, so he’s not going to expect us to be best buds.”
“Okay.” Joe nodded curtly. “Don’t tell anybody else about this. Once it’s over you can fill them in, but not yet.”
“Right.” She blew out a breath. “Go talk to MG. Trust me.”
“I will.” Just not yet.
MG sat in her living room, trying to breathe normally. She’d already gone through a list of things she could do to take her mind off her troubles—clean the chicken house, practice her numbers for the gig at Oltdorf tomorrow, maybe try to write some songs. Except she was too furious to do any of it. She didn’t trust herself not to smash up the chicken house, and she’d never lay a hand on the Martin when she was feeling this pissed. Which left her sitting in her living room, steaming.
Get out of here.
He hadn’t wanted to listen to what she had to say. Hell, he hadn’t even asked her to explain. Not that she could have explained. She had no idea how those two bottles of wine had appeared in her tote bag. She didn’t even know which bottles of wine were worth good money. Wine didn’t mean anything to her—she was a beer kind of girl.
She took a deep breath, trying to get her shoulders to unclench. Damn the Beav. Damn the Rose. Damn Joe LeBlanc. And damn herself for getting involved with all of them. She was a big girl now. She should know better than to depend on anybody except herself.
They’re all a bunch of assholes. All of them. Screw them all.
Gee, maybe she was closer to her Great-Aunt Nedda than she thought.
Someone banged on her front door, and for a wild moment, pulse-pounding moment she thought it might be Joe. So much for
Screw them all.
“MG?” Darcy’s voice echoed down the front hall. “Open this screen door, goddamn it, I don’t have a lot of time.”
MG pushed herself off the couch, heading for the front door. At least she’d have somebody to bitch to, even if it wasn’t somebody she really wanted to talk to right then.
Darcy scowled at her through the wire screen. “Come on, hurry up. I ducked out of the kitchen for a half hour, but I need to get back there and make sure Fishhead doesn’t poison my chicken stock.”
MG flipped the latch on the door. “Why are you here exactly?”
Darcy sighed, stepping past her. “Which tells me Joe hasn’t been here, right?”
MG’s shoulders clenched again, almost painfully. “No. He threw me out. He’s not likely to drop by.”
“Yeah, he is. Come on.” Darcy marched down the hall to the kitchen. “You got any cold beer?”
“Sure. In the refrigerator. Help yourself.”
Darcy pulled out a bottle, then turned back, resting her rear end against the refrigerator door. “So are you okay?”
Compared to what?
“Oh sure. Other than the whole ‘you’re a thief, get out of my restaurant’ thing, I’m doing just great.”
Darcy sighed. “Okay, the thing is, you shouldn’t worry about that. I mean, really.”
MG blinked. “I shouldn’t worry about having been fired for theft—by a guy I’ve been sleeping with who told me to get out?”
“Right.” Darcy frowned, sipping her beer. “I can’t tell you anything. I mean I’m not supposed to, and on this one, I’m doing as I’m told. But you shouldn’t worry. That’s the whole thing. Joe should have talked to you, but he couldn’t get you on the phone. Your number’s been disconnected.”
MG shook her head. “No it hasn’t.” At least she didn’t think it had been. Then again… “Hell, I may have missed a payment. I’ll have to see about getting it reconnected.”
“Okay, I’ll pass that information on.”
MG folded her arms across her chest. “Why isn’t Joe here to get this information himself?”
Darcy took another swallow. “It’s complicated.”
“No it isn’t.” MG clamped down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
Not now, damn it!
“He either believes me or he doesn’t.”
“He does. But he can’t…” Darcy ran a hand through her neon green tips. “Goddamn it, this feels like high school. Just be a grown-up and take it from me—he can’t be here right now, but he’ll explain it all. Eventually.”
“Eventually.” MG felt a quick spurt of anger burning through the misery.
Fuck him. And see if I ever do that again.
“You can tell him from me not to bother.”
Darcy took a final swallow of her beer. “You missed out on the whole ‘be a grown-up’ part, I see. Never mind. One or the other of you will get this all straightened out at some point. Now I need to get back to my kitchen.” She pushed by MG, heading for the front door. But she paused before she walked out. “You playing tomorrow night?”
MG nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll come and see you. I could use a little distraction.” Darcy turned on her heel and stomped out the door.
MG blew out a breath. Come to think of it, she could use a distraction herself right now.
Chapter Seventeen
MG opened her set Wednesday night with Hank’s “Movin’ On” and never looked back. She covered Audrey Auld’s “Shove It” and Bonnie Raitt’s “Real Man” and she sailed through Emmylou’s “Born To Run,” strumming so hard she broke a nail. The women in the audience were grinning. The men weren’t. She didn’t give a good goddamn.
When she walked off stage to enthusiastic female applause, Dewey gave her an exceedingly nervous smile. “Interesting set there, sugar. You going to do more of that in the second half?”
She blew out a breath. “Nah. I’ve calmed down now. I’ll do a bunch of love stuff to make up for it, okay?”
Dewey nodded, looking somewhat happier. “Sure, sure. Whatever works for you, sweetheart. Just, you know, a lot of folks are here on dates.”
“And they don’t feel like hearing a lot of ‘You cheated, you lied, you dog.’ Yeah, I can see that.” She blew out a breath, reaching for her bottled water.
“They might like to hear some of your own songs,” Dewey said slowly. “If it ain’t more of this cheating and lying stuff. That one you played the other night got a real good reception.”
“I might have something.” Actually she had the song she’d tried out on Joe, “The Right Guy,” but she wasn’t sure she could get through it without gnashing her teeth. “I’ll do more love songs, Dewey, I promise.”