They Ate the Waitress Read online

  Finished reading, Nick popped a memory tab into the slot in his TV and sat down to watch a movie. Finally, it was time for his meeting with Reid.

  The offices of Scunner Consulting were built like an Art Deco prison. The bulletproof windows were barred. The eight-foot cement wall surrounding the property looked like it could keep out a burglar or a horde of Mongols. Nick stopped at the gate and introduced himself to the intercom. Questions were asked, lists were consulted, urine samples were taken. Finally, he was allowed inside.

  As he sat in the waiting room, he read some pamphlets about Scunner Consulting’s various charitable efforts:

  Save the Sasquatch

  Stop alien abduction

  Evict the homeless

  Stop abducting aliens

  Help the widows of Sasquatch victims

  Nothing about cannibalistic restaurants. Odd. He made a mental note to check the newsfeeds for records of their past protests.

  A woman in a yellow sundress took a seat on the other side of the room. She checked her watch, frowned, and impatiently tapped her foot. She pulled a rubber stick from her pocket and chewed on the end. It was a Flavifier, a kind of everlasting lollipop. The commercial claimed they helped users to relax, quit smoking, or quit overeating.

  “Pacifiers for adults,” Nick thought, smiling to himself. “How pathetic. – Damn, did I leave my cigarettes in the car?”

  Judy the receptionist checked her clipboard and cleared her throat. “Dr. Ridwick, Mr. Mason will see you now.”

  Nick didn’t move.

  “Dr. Ridwick? Dr. Glen Ridwick?”

  With a start, he remembered he was using an alias. “Oh, sorry. I’m ready now.”

  “This way, sir.” Judy glanced down at her clipboard. “If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of name is Ridwick? I’m a big genealogy buff, you see.”

  “Um… Dutch?”

  She smiled, bouncing excitedly. “Oh, I have family in the Netherlands! What part of the country is your family from?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  Nick brushed past Judy and walked into Reid’s office. The office was filled with overstuffed leather chairs and a long, granite-topped table. The walls were covered in paintings done in a new style called “non-goal-oriented, monochromatic drip art.” Some people thought the artist had simply taken a can of black paint and splattered it onto a white canvas. Of course, those people didn’t have enough money to buy avant-garde art, so what did they know?

  Reid sat behind a gigantic, oak pedestal desk. The panel in the front of the desk seemed much thicker than normal, probably bulletproof. “Good afternoon, Dr. Ridwick. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve heard about your efforts to put a stop to Hand to Mouth,” he said, taking a seat. “I’d like to help you, if I can. They need to be stopped. As a doctor, I’ve devoted my life to helping the terminally ill, but they treat them like farm animals. And not in a good way.”

  “Hand to Mouth,” Reid grumbled, folding his arms. “That place disgusts me. What they do is just sickening.”

  “Yes, it’s horrible. And expensive!” Nick made certain the office door was closed and that no one was listening. “Did you hear about the restaurant catching fire the other night? Was that…?”

  “Was that what? Us? No, of course not. Although, I can’t say I’m sorry it happened. Todd Sweeney certainly deserves it, and worse. Much worse.”

  Reid gave Nick a tall stack of pamphlets and some information on the next anti-anthropophagous restaurants meeting. Apparently “anthropophagous” meant “people-eating.” There was also a meeting about “coprophagous” restaurants. Nick was afraid to ask what that meant. Finally, Reid had a press conference to attend, so he had Judy walk Nick to the door.

  Nick drove home from the office, speeding, his thoughts choked with anger. His investigation of Scunner Consulting and Reid Mason had gotten him virtually nothing. “And I wasted a perfectly good, anagrammatic pseudonym. Those things are hard to come up with! Well, I don’t want to try breaking into that place. The security’s tighter than Sophie’s jeans.”

  His thoughts were interrupted by his buzzing transmitter. A representative from an arbitrator’s office informed him that Luke Bender had been found guilty of robbing Nick’s temporary apartment. Also, several expensive parrots had been stolen from Fur Sure a few months earlier, but they had been found in Luke’s home, hidden in the back of his sock drawer. Thus, he was on his way to a work camp, and would be locked away for quite some time.

  “That,” Nick thought, “gives me an excellent idea. If I can’t go through the security at Scunner Consulting, maybe I can go around it…” He made a quick u-turn and headed for the pet store.

  A sign in the front window advertised their current sale: “Thirty Percent off All Emotionally Disturbed Toy Poodles – Puppy Antidepressants Free.” He stepped inside and was immediately approached by a salesclerk, a wispy man with frosted blond hair. His nametag said “Brice.” He was carrying a sleepy-looking, black cat and stroking it behind the ears.

  Brice assaulted him with a smile. “Welcome to Fur Sure. Can I interest you in a kitty today?”

  “No, I’m just looking for the pet food.”

  “Everybody can use another kitty!” he persisted. “This is Cloudy. She’s a two-year-old Persian we rescued from an abandoned apartment. I could tell you a lot of stories about this cat. You might say she’s a cat ‘o nine tales!”

  Nick didn’t laugh. “I have a large lizard at home,” he said, “and I need to buy some food for him. Do you have any crickets?”

  “Certainly. We have pet food of every category.”

  “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?” he asked innocently. He led Nick down the main aisle to a row of aquariums. “Here are our little buggies.” Bending down, Brice dropped the cat to the floor and watched it scurry away. “How many crickets did you wish to purr-chase?”

  “At least a gross,” Nick said, tapping on the aquarium glass.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Brice replied, “but we only have about a hundred in stock at the moment. Shall I order you some more from our catalog?”

  “Stop that! Just ring them up for me.”

  “Would you like an aquarium, as well? I’m sure you wouldn’t want the crickets to escape. That would be a cataclysmic catastrophe!”

  Nick grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him forward. “I swear to god, if you make one more cat-related pun, I will beat you to death with my bare hands and feed your corpse to the gerbils.”

  “S-s-sorry, sir,” he whimpered, pulling away. “I’ll ring this right up for you, sir.” Brice carried the aquarium of crickets to the counter and punched some figures into the cash register. “I noticed you have a pair of handcuffs on your belt,” he said nervously. “Are you a security patroller?”

  “No,” Nick grunted. “I’m a manhunter.”

  “How exciting. I wish someone would do something about the crime in this neighborhood! We’ve been having trouble with…”

  “With what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Having trouble with what?” he demanded, annoyed.

  “…A cat burglar.”

  Nick punched Brice in the mouth and watched him crumple to the floor. He tossed a few coins on the counter and, the aquarium under his arm, calmly walked out the door.

  Chapter Fifteen

  That evening, Nick returned to Scunner Consulting, parking his car across the street from the front gate. He changed into a pair of coveralls and a matching baseball cap, covering his face with a gas mask. The coveralls were new, but the gasmask was an old gift from an ex-girlfriend. She had given him the mask so they could play her favorite bedroom game, “the radioactive schoolgirl and the naughty hazmat team member.”

  Opening his trunk, he pulled out a large, steel tank labeled “Danger – Insecticide – Poisonous Gas – Not to Be Used to Inflate Pool Toys.” He strapped the tank to his back and headed for the gate. Stopping at the intercom
, he said, “Someone call for an exterminator?”

  The intercom buzzed and a frantic woman’s voice said, “Oh, thank god! Hurry up and get in here! They’re everywhere!” The gate squeaked open. He stopped at the front desk, where Judy the receptionist was busy panicking. “I can’t believe you got here this fast!” she said gratefully.

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood. An office building down the street was infested with lobsters. So, what’s the problem here?”

  “Bugs!” she squealed. “A team of bike messengers came by this afternoon, and they delivered packages to half the people in the office. The packages were full of crickets! We caught what we could but, by now, they’ve gotten into the air vents. Ooh, I hate bugs!”

  “Don’t worry, ma’am,” he said, tapping his tank. “I’ve got plenty of poison for all of them.”

  “Is it safe for us to be in here while you’re spraying?”

  “That depends – how often do you like to breathe?”

  He strolled through the office, squirting random objects with gas. The employees pulled their shirts over their noses and fled to the break room. Soon, the main hall was empty. Finding himself alone, he shoved the hose under Reid’s door and turned on the gas. After a few minutes, he heard a loud thump. Warning labels to the contrary, he had actually filled the tank with surgical anesthetic. He kicked open the door and found Reid collapsed on the floor, drooling a map of Bolivia on the carpet.

  An oak filing cabinet was bolted to the floor in the back of the office. Nick dropped to his knees, examining the lock. “Hardened steel casing, eleven pick-resistant spool pins, extra-narrow keyway… Looks very secure.” He lifted the gas tank over his head and hurled it at the cabinet. The wood shattered, oak splinters flying.

  Digging through the files, he found some credit card numbers that he thought might come in handy later. A thick, manila folder was marked “Financial Records.” He laughed to himself. “Mason probably kept this in here to keep it safe from computer hackers.” There were records of several small payments made to Gordon Dunmore, a large payment made to Clayton West, and two very large payments sent to someone named “Donald Canard.” These payments had been mailed to an address in an office building just blocks away from Renée’s apartment.

  There were also records of donations made to Scunner Consulting. Tens of thousands of dollars, deposited every few months.

  “These dates look familiar,” he thought. “Wait, these are the same days on the ledger I found at Gabrielle’s. She was making deposits into Reid’s bank account, not her own! Looks like she’s been funding Reid’s crusade against Hand to Mouth. …Renée yelled at Gabrielle for harassing the waitresses. Was she upset enough to want revenge? If so, was she just trying to destroy the restaurant, or did she want something more? If someone in the group is responsible for Renée’s murder, Gabrielle may just be an accessory.”

  He checked his watch. Reid would be unconscious for another hour at least, but there was nothing else in his office to search. “Well, Gordon’s the first suspect on this list. I should find out how he earns his pay.”

  On his way to the door, he noticed he still had some anesthetic left in the tank. He slipped the hose under the break room door and turned on the gas. He strolled back to his car, happier than he had been in days.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nick set his navigation system to drive him to Gordon’s apartment. It was late enough that Gordon would be home from work. Hopefully, he would go out for the evening. Nick parked across the street and waited. Finally, Gordon’s blue pickup pulled out of the lot and rolled down the street. Nick switched his headlights from “bright” to “nonchalant” and followed at a safe distance.

  Gordon pulled into the gravel parking lot of a small bar. Nick watched him go inside, waited a few minutes, and then went to the door. Neon tubes flashed the words “The White Horse.” A drug bar. Usually, there would be the logo of a drug testing laboratory in the window, showing that an independent body had examined the business for drug purity, safety, and other important consumer issues. The only thing The White Horse had in the window was a sign reading “Official meeting place of the Vancouver Solipsism Club – Join us now! Meet interesting people!”

  Nick walked inside, scanning the room for Gordon. Heavy smoke and bad lighting made it difficult to see. He decided to try a flashlight. The walls of The White Horse were gray stone covered in graffiti, stains, dirt, and what appeared to be blood. The unfinished pine tables looked as if they had been taken from a prison cafeteria. Inexplicably, the ceiling was covered in footprints.

  Sitting at the bar was a familiar-looking, blue-skinned woman: Heather, the RA from Jessica’s school. “Oh, holy hell,” he moaned. “I can’t let her see me. …Wait, it looks like she’s paying her bill. I should hide somewhere until she leaves.” He turned off his flashlight and ducked into the men’s room. It was empty but smelled strongly of recent guests. He drummed his fingers on the wall and counted the seconds. The door squeaked open.

  “Nick! I thought I saw you come in here. Listen, I need to talk to you.”

  “I know. I forgot to release you from the bed.”

  “I was there for fourteen hours, Nick. By the time one of the girls found me, I had already wet myself. Twice. It was the most erotic experience of my life.”

  “I’m so sorry. I needed your key card so I could get into a friend’s dorm room. I’ll understand if you want to have me arrest– Wait, did you say erotic?”

  “Oh yes,” she breathed. “It was amazing! I had never had much experience with bondage before, but you showed me a whole new world of sensual pleasures. The only downside is, now that I enjoy being restrained, I’ll have to buy all sorts of equipment. Do you know where I can get a straitjacket?”

  “I know a place where they might give you one… You know, we never did get a chance to make love. Come over here.” He took her hand and led her across the room. Pushing her against the wall, he slowly, seductively, handcuffed her to a urinal. “I’ll be back in a day or two. Don’t go anywhere!”

  Nick stepped out of the men’s room, spotting Gordon immediately. He was sitting on a stool in front of an enormous, coin-operated hookah. “Well,” Nick thought, “it doesn’t look like he’ll be clear-headed enough to recognize me from our brief meeting the other day.” He took the stool next to Gordon and said, “Hey, pal, do I know you?”

  “Don’t think so,” he mumbled.

  “Oh, my mistake. What’s in the hookah?”

  “Some Vietnamese stuff, very nice,” Gordon said, jabbing a thick finger at the huge, green marijuana leaf painted on the side of the hookah. “They said it’s a strain originally brought over by vets coming back from ‘Nam.”

  “Sounds great.” Nick put a five dollar coin in the slot and wiped the end of his hose. There were no disposable mouth pieces. He would have to put his lips where many, many mouths had been before. “It’s disgusting now,” he thought, “but in a few minutes, I won’t care anymore.”

  The two men smoked in silence. Nick watched Gordon closely, attempting to judge the fine line between “loss of inhibitions” and “can’t follow a conversation, let alone remember anything helpful.” Their smoke floated up to join the great cloud at the ceiling, where it was sucked into the ventilation system and released out a vent on the roof. The wind carried the smoke to a nearby tree, where several squirrels suddenly became hungry and confused.

  After an hour or so, Nick said, “You know, I never introduced myself. I’m Dr. Glen Ridwick. I’m with Scunner Consulting. Mr. Mason wanted me to ask if you would do another job for him.”

  “Doing what?”

  “The, ah, same thing you did before. Exactly like that.”

  “You need more information?” Gordon asked, scowling. “Already told you guys everything I know about those people. Can’t get any new info because I was fired for stealing office supplies. And money. And a refrigerator.” He shook his head sadly. “Didn’t think they were watching.” />
  “Oh, darn. And we really needed your help to fight the good fight against overpriced, poorly-lit restaurants for well-to-do cannibals. Anyway, who did you give this information to? I’d like to talk to them.”

  “What information?”

  “The info you had about your friends at Hand to Mouth. The reason we paid you.”

  “I paid for what?”

  “Oh, god. I waited too long!” Realizing he had to buy some time for Gordon to sober up, he grabbed Gordon’s arm and helped him walk the five feet to the nearest table. He waved over a nearby waitress, a heavily-tattooed blonde with a pair of lip rings. “Do you have any actual food in this place?”

  “Sure, honey. French fries, chicken wings, shrimp cocktail, onion rings, pickled eggs, grilled swordfish with mango chutney served on a bed of Russian caviar…”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “No, really!” she said. “Pickled eggs!”

  “Fine. Two shrimp cocktails and two coffees.”

  “No,” Gordon grunted, banging a meaty fist on the table. “Tea. Want a tea!”

  It took twenty minutes for the waitress to return with their order. Gordon seemed marginally more alert. “This is good stuff,” he mumbled around a mouthful of shrimp. “Every time I have seafood, I think about this girl I used to know. Erin something. She never wanted to eat anything when we went out, only when we were making love.”

  “That’s awfully weird.” Nick didn’t want to hear the rest of the story, but he didn’t want to risk alienating Gordon before he found out what else he knew.

  “It’s not that unusual,” Gordon said slowly, still somewhat stoned. “Lot of people associate food with sex, love, comfort.” He paused to finish his glass of tea. “It’s oral fixation, like Siegfried Freud… People learn it when they’re babies. That’s why people like to kiss. Putting someone in your mouth makes you feel more in love. That’s also why cats carry their kittens in their mouths. That, and they don’t have hands… What was I talking about?”