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   "I think what you're doing is really something," she said with a sniff. "I mean, it says something about your friendship with Sarah, and I know how much she would have appreciated it. You're good friends. I don't know if you're right!" She gave a little laugh. "But you're good friends. And you know . . ." Renee hesitated, and I sensed that she was trying to decide if she should say anything further. I knew the instant she'd made up her mind. Her jaw tensed. Her eyes hardened.

   "If you're looking for somebody who could hate Sarah enough to kill her, try Lorraine Mercy. If she ever found out about Dougy and Sarah's affair, that woman . . ." Renee shivered. "I wouldn't put anything past her. She's a regular piranha."

       door shut. The better not to have to risk another confrontation with Jim. I tried not to think about him or about the way that just thinking about thinking about him tied my stomach in knots and made my pulse race. It was hard, but I managed. Partly because I kept busy plowing through all the work on my desk, partly because I kept thinking about everything we'd heard from Renee, and mostly because halfway through the day, with my stomach rumbling and demanding lunch and my ego telling me that if I dared a trip to the kitchen I might have to face Jim, I put my head down and took a nap.

   I dreamed about piranha. They were circling in a lake, and I was swimming in the middle of them. The one with the biggest teeth was wearing a navy suit, and her jacket and her skirt didn't match. While the others kept their distance, she got closer and closer, flashing her pearly whites.

   As only dreams can do, this one terrified me beyond all reasoning. I tensed. I was breathing hard. As Lorraine the piranha closed in on me, I got set to scream.

   I never had the chance.

   Just as Lorraine's scissors-sharp teeth were about to take a chunk out of me, I was miraculously pulled up out of the water by none other than Dylan Monroe. The fact that he was walking on the water no doubt says something about my psyche that I do not want to examine further.

   "I'll save you," Dylan said, in a Dudley Do-Right sort of way that made me laugh, even in my sleep.

   The next thing I knew, we were on land, and there was no water in sight. Dylan winked at me, "Get the message?" he asked.

   Did I?

   I was still wondering about it when I sat up and shook away the cobwebs.

   My shoulders ached and I stretched and rubbed my eyes. I'd fallen asleep on top of a pile of bills, and I straightened them, smoothing out the paper on top that I'd crumpled when I used it as a pillow. No doubt, my cheek had a crease in it to match.

   "Get the message?" I repeated the words in the same superhero voice Dylan had used in my dream and chuckled. "I might," I told myself. "If I knew what the message was and how I was supposed to get it."

   I checked the clock and decided that I'd slip out the back door as soon as I was done with the bills from the linen service. I pulled the bills closer and double-checked the company's numbers, punching the figures into my calculator with one hand while with the other, I drummed a pen against my desk.

   "Message, message, message," I mumbled to myself. Maybe it took that long for my subconscious to finally get through to my brain.

   "Messages!" I sat up straight, pushed the paperwork aside, and reached for the computer mouse. There might be e-mail messages on Sarah's computer and if there were . . .

   A few minutes later, I jerked back, stunned.

   There were e-mails left on Sarah's computer, all right.

   I was looking at one of them right then and there.

   It was from Dylan Monroe, and it began with the words, "You bitch, if I ever see you again, I'm going to kill you."

          "I can't decide between the fig and rosemary pot roast and the pea soup with crème fraîche."

   Not those possibilities. Those were the menu choices being considered by the man sitting at the table closest to the bar. It was three days after I found the message from Dylan. Heidi had called out with the flu, Eve was taking a week's vacation, and as unlikely as it would have seemed to me a few short months earlier, I was standing at attention, pen and paper in hand, waiting to take the man's order. While he shilly-shallied and I waited, I thought through all that I'd learned thanks to Sarah's computer and the e-mail saved on it.

   Was Dylan our guy? Had he killed Sarah in a jealous rage? The message I'd found certainly seemed to point that way. So did the fact that Dylan had lied. Any number of times. He claimed that his work in Afghanistan had caused him and Sarah to drift apart. He said the decision to break off their relationship was his. He told us flat out—hadn't he?—that he blamed himself for Sarah's death because he knew she was heartbroken, and it was all his fault.

   "Tell me again, hon. Is the crème fraîche made here? Fresh?"

   My teeth clamped tight around a smile, and firmly ignoring the
hon
, I pulled myself away from my own possibilities to handle those of the man I was waiting on. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind customers asking questions. Like everyone who worked at Bellywasher's, I was proud of our menu selections and like the cook I wasn't, I was amazed at the magic that went on in the kitchen. But the word ag
ain
was as much a clue here as Dylan's e-mail was to my investigation of Sarah's murder. This customer had already asked about the crème fraîche—twice—and always in the same tone of voice. Like he thought I was lying and if he pinned me down, I'd crack.

   I kept my smile in place and went through the song and dance.

   Fresh. Absolutely. Made on the premises. Every day.

   Of course, I said it a whole lot nicer than that.

   "I don't know." As if it would provide the answer he was searching for, he squinted at the menu in his hands. "Tell me about the pot roast one more time. Those figs, are they dried?"

   I could have been brutally honest and admitted that I didn't know. Instead, I did a quick eeny-meeny-miny-mo, decided on dried, and told him so.

   While he thought about it, my mind wandered back to Dylan. His e-mail had provided me with proof that when it came to his relationship with Sarah, he wasn't just stretching the truth, he was pulling it apart and cobbling it together into a whole new shape.

   Yeah, the big breakup had come while Dylan was in Afghanistan. A quick check of the date of the e-mail and a phone call to his producer at the TV network showed that much was true. The rest? Something told me the very fact that it was the only message Sarah saved said something about the situation. And it wasn't something pretty. I wondered if she felt as if she might need a little insurance once Dylan returned from overseas. Thinking that Sarah had been afraid of Mr. Big Smile and Perfect Hair gave me the creeps.

   "Pot roast."

   I jumped at the sound of the customer's voice, and wrote down the order quickly with the hope that once it was on paper, he wouldn't change his mind. That taken care of, I turned to his companion.

   The woman had passed on my earlier offer to take her order first, saying that she needed time to think. Now, faced with a decision of her own, she played with the string of pearls around her neck and pouted. "Well, I wanted a Pisco sour," she said. "But the man at the bar . . ." She looked over to where Jim was chatting with a customer. "He claims you've only got Chilean Pisco."

   What's that saying about discretion being the better part of valor? I'd been around Bellywasher's enough to know that Pisco was a type of South American brandy. As to whether Chilean Pisco was a good thing or a bad one . . . well, I couldn't say, so I didn't respond.

   It was apparently the wrong move.

   Disgusted, the woman flicked her menu across the table in my direction. It slid and skittered and ended up on the floor. I bent to retrieve it and saw out of the corner of my eye that Jim had taken notice. He'd stopped talking and was watching what was going on.

   All the more reason for me to behave like the employee of the month.

   Struggling to get a smile in place and keep it there, I stood. I found the woman looking at me with her chin raised and her lips pressed into a thin line. I wondered if she realized how the expression accented the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth.

   "Peruvian Pisco is far superior," the woman said. "If you have any aspirations toward ever being a decent restaurant, I'd think you'd know that."

   Smile or no smile, boss watching or not, there was only so much I could take. "We aren't a decent restaurant," I said, and just as I expected, her eyes went wide. "We're better than a decent restaurant."

   She didn't like being shown up. Her top lip curled. "Of course, it all depends on your definition of decent. In my mind, that means a restaurant where the staff is trained to treat customers with respect," she said. "Either that never happened here or you were absent that day. If your proprietor had any class at all, I think he'd pay attention and hire staff that minds its manners."

   Criticizing me was one thing. I could live with that. And let's face it, I probably deserved it. But questioning Jim's reputation and his professionalism?

   I knew better than to respond to the acid in her voice, just like I knew better than to care if Chile or Peru held bragging rights in the grape-growing contest. None of it mattered. I couldn't help it—I snapped.

   "Oh, Jim knows all about manners and professionalism," I assured the customer, my voice as sweet as the smile I cast down on her. "He just isn't interested in catering to snooty people with no manners and bad attitudes and—"

   Before I could get another word out, Jim's arm was around my shoulders. With a hurried, "Excuse us," to our customers, he spun me around, whisked me into my office, and closed the door behind us. It wasn't until I heard it snap shut that I realized what I'd just done.

   The blood drained from my face. My legs turned to rubber. I guess Jim knew what was bound to happen next. He pulled my chair away from the desk and tucked it behind me. When I collapsed into it, he told me he'd be right back and went out into the restaurant.

   For a couple minutes all I could do was sit in stunned silence, listening to the rough sounds of my own breathing. When I heard the door open again, I didn't bother to look. I knew it was Jim.

   "I'm sorry," I said. "I lost my temper. I should go out there and apologize." When I started to get up, he put a hand on my arm.

   "No need," he said. "They're gone."

   I was relieved that I didn't have to face the customers again but sorry that I wouldn't have the chance to set things right. I was appalled at my own bad behavior. I could imagine how Jim felt, and the least I could do was save him any further discomfort. I grabbed my purse.

   "It's all right," I said. "I won't make you fire me. I'll quit first and save you the trouble."

   "OK." He crouched down in front of me. "If that's what you want to do, I will'na stop you. But just for the record, I had no intention of firing you."

   "You didn't?" I was pretty sure I'd heard wrong, and I stared at him, just to make sure. His expression was somber. Except for the glimmer in his eyes. "Why not?" I asked. "Why aren't you going to fire me? I deserve it. I'll prove it. I'll go after those people and tell them I'm quitting because of the way I treated them."

   His hand was still on my arm, and he tightened his hold to keep me in place. "No need. I asked them to leave."

   "You asked—" Of all the things he could have said in response to the situation, this was the most surprising. I thought it over for a few seconds, but no matter how I tried to make sense of the situation, I was more baffled than ever. "You asked? Them? To leave?"

   Jim laughed. "They had a lot of nerve talking to you that way."

   "But you asked? Them?"

   "I knew she was trouble the moment I seated her, and when I saw her chuck that menu at you . . ." Jim's hazel eyes darkened with annoyance. "I told them if they couldn't treat my employees well, I did'na want them back."

   "And they said?"

   "Something about what a Philistine I was and how they'd take their trade elsewhere."

   "And you said?"

   "I'm fairly sure it was good riddance." He laughed and sat back on his heels. "Sorry to have to put you through that."

   "You're sorry?" I scrubbed my hands over my face. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I never should have lost my temper."

   "They never should have pushed you into losing it."

   "And you're being very kind."

   "No. Kind is not what I'm being." Jim got to his feet. He turned away from me, and I suspected that if my office was bigger, he would have taken a turn around the room. The way it was, with my chair pulled away from my desk, there was barely room to move. He drew in a breath. "What would you say," he asked, "if I told you I wanted to change a few things around here?"

   "A few things, but one of them isn't that you want to fire me?"

   "I don't want to fire you." He said it slowly, and maybe that's what finally got the message to penetrate. Feeling a little less mortified, I sank back in my chair.

   "I'm tired of the likes of them," Jim said, glancing toward the door. I knew he was picturing the man and the woman who'd made me lose it. "I've always dreamed of a fine restaurant, but I never thought . . ." Again, he hunkered down in front of me. This time, he took my hand in both of his.

   "Annie," he said. "I don't like these people. They're rude and demanding. They're ill-bred and ill-mannered. I've tried to make a go of it. I've tried to tell myself that I'm being too particular and that if I just give it another few weeks . . . none of it has made any difference."