A Side of Sabotage Read online

  Mrs. Billingsley and Groucho come and go. The Lewises enter and leave. And a new man arrives. He doesn’t look like someone from the Restaurant Hubert kitchen, but he’s not dressed like a typical summer tourist either. He looks sort of normal, like a guy who sells pain medicine on TV. I wouldn’t be paying him much attention, except he sits in his car a while before he gets out, and then stands in the middle of the parking lot and takes a picture of Gusty’s with his phone. That’s weird . . . Did I just see the Secret Diner?

  At about one o’clock, I see Ben and Dominic jogging down the road from the yacht club toward the café. They spent the morning sailing, so I’m sure they’re ravenous. At the same time, Mom pulls up in her sheriff’s cruiser and hurries in with a box. I yelp. “The new menus!”

  We drop all things Scottish and run across the street.

  Once Mom has the menus spread out on a table, the five of us kids crowd around. After searching for the description, I read it aloud: “‘Gusty’s original mélange of whitefish heads and cheeks. Yukon potatoes, leeks, parsnips, kale, and tomato poached in a rich golden-clam-and-smoky-paprika-infused broth. Kissed with sea brine and served with a fish head in each bowl. A true Maiden Rock experience. Flatlanders be warned.’”

  “Dad!” I call across the room. “You did it!”

  Dominic yells out to Dad, in his best version of a British accent: “My good man, I would like to try this new item on the Gusty’s menu. It sounds brilliant!”

  Dad walks proudly toward our table.

  “Can we try it?” I ask him.

  “Indeed. How many orders?”

  I look around the group. No one else raises their hands.

  “Two.”

  I look at the rest of my friends in disappointment. Ella, I understand. But even Ben’s chickening out!

  Other people in the restaurant are turning their old menus over, scanning them for the item that I just read aloud. We were going to wait until dinner to debut the new menus with customers, but Clooney takes the initiative and starts passing them out.

  Five minutes later, Dad is parading through the restaurant with steaming bowls of Gusty’s Fish Head Soup, now with fish heads standing up in the bowls like they’re about to leap out. Dad’s placed bouquets of brilliantly green curly-leafed kale in their mouths.

  Dominic leans over his bowl and wafts the aroma into his nose, stretches his arm as a wind up, and dives in with his soup spoon.

  “It’s even better than before!” he says with a sly smile on his face.

  I look at the flat-eyed fish staring up at me from my bowl. He’s saying to me, This is a heckuva thing. And I sort of see his point. It’s a little undignified. I hope people get what’s funny about Dad’s description and don’t think he’s trying to be something he’s not.

  Then the soup’s aroma reaches my nose. It’s rich and hearty and smells like home—with a twist. “It’s fantastic,” I say. Yes, this is just right. It’s fair play, and it’s funny.

  “What’s this?” Dominic asks. He’s holding up a crispy white disk with holes poked in it, which came as a side with the soup.

  “Aren’t you from civilization?” Zoe asks, rolling her eyes. “Those are pilot crackers. You eat them with chowders and soups and stuff. I might have been away for a while, but you never forget those.”

  Dominic takes a bite—or tries to. Pilot crackers are notoriously hard because they used to be sea rations. He finally snaps a bit off.

  “Soak it in your fish head soup,” I tell him.

  People at other tables are flagging down Dad and asking if he takes reservations for dinner.

  * * *

  The five of us hang together into the evening, when we walk along the beach, watching various summer people explore the outcroppings and guessing where they’re from: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, the moon. Or at least everyone else is guessing. I can’t help thinking about the inspector’s car at Hubert’s and how he was standing in the doorway, talking to Slick and laughing.

  That’s what’s bothering me, I think. He was laughing. With Slick. Then when he came to Gusty’s, he was all business. And those violations? So many, so minor, so stupid. Laughing with Slick. All business with Dad.

  I consider who I’m with before I say this out loud. If Mom or Dad were here, I might hold my thoughts, but Ella, Ben, and Dominic—they’re my frontline investigative team. Zoe might have some catching up to do, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

  “I think there might be a link between Slick and the stupid violations that inspector found.”

  “What?” Zoe says. “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw the inspector at Hubert’s kitchen door right before he came to Gusty’s. He and Slick were laughing and joking around.”

  “And the link would be . . . ?”

  Ella answers for me. “The link would be that somehow Slick put the inspector onto Gusty’s having some problems. Slick’s there all the time and he’d know what to look for. Or maybe he asked the inspector to think up some problems.”

  “To mess up Gusty’s the same day the Secret Diner thing is starting,” says Ben.

  “Exactly,” I say.

  “Maybe Slick bribed him to do it,” says Dominic.

  “OMG!” I say. “I bet he did—or Hubert did. Dominic, remember when we were standing in the parking lot and Hubert dropped Slick off? They were talking about all the people eating at Gusty’s, and Hubert said, ‘They won’t for long.’”

  “Oh, yeah!” Dominic says. “But if the inspector’s crooked—how could we prove that?”

  I concentrate really hard on this and come up with a brilliant idea. “I suppose one of us could get a job bussing tables at Hubert’s and gather evidence.”

  “Well, it could hardly be you, Quinnette Boyd,” Ben says, kicking up some sand at me. “And it can’t be me. I’d break all the dishes.”

  “My dad would never let me,” says Ella.

  Dominic says, “We’re not old enough anyway. I’m fifteen. Quinnie’s fourteen. Ella’s fourteen. Ben’s fifteen. How old are you, Zoe?”

  “I’m fourteen, but I wouldn’t want to do that anyway. It would be like spying.”

  “No, Zoe,” Ella says. “It would be like investigating.”

  * * *

  I have no idea what time it is when the phone rings the next morning. I do know that it’s still dark. Next thing I hear, Dad’s loudly putting on his shoes, saying a quick good-bye to Mom, and slamming the front door behind him. I wait to see if Mom will come to my room and tell me to wake up, but she doesn’t, so I get out of bed and go downstairs.

  I find Mom in her office.

  “Did something happen?” I ask her.

  “Oh yes.” She is scrolling down a dense-looking webpage about commercial dishwashers and copying down numbers. “That was Clooney. She got to the café to start the baking and found the dishwasher had flooded. The entire load she put in last night is still unwashed, and the floor is covered in soapy water.” Mom massages her eyes with her fingertips. “So, that little something happened.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m locating a service rep for the dishwasher.”

  “Should I go help Dad?”

  She turns to me, and for a second, I think she might cry. “Yes—thank you, honey. Go help your dad.”

  I text Dominic to meet me, then bang on his door on the way.

  “What happened?” he asks as he flies out.

  “The dishwasher broke, the floor’s covered in soapy water, and we have no clean dishes.”

  Together, we run to the back side of the café. Light spills out of the open kitchen door, and we hear the sounds of a vacuum cleaner and clattering dishes. I pause at the doorway and look in. “Dad, what are you doing?”

  “It’s a water vac, Quinnie. Sucks up the water,” he says.

  It looks more like he’s swishing suds from one side of the room to the other. “What should we do?”

&nbs
p; “Help Clooney so she can start baking.” We hesitate to wade into the swirls, but Dad says, “Go, go. It’s just soapy water.”

  Clooney is up to her elbows in a steaming sink. She gives us a thank goodness smile and peels off her big rubber gloves. “Here you go, kids.” She points to the counter, where another pair of gloves lies limp. “And here’s the thermometer. Keep the water in the second sink at one hundred eighty degrees to be sure the dishes are clean, clean, clean. But don’t put your hands in there. Use the tongs. Dry with these fresh towels.”

  We pull on the gloves and get to work while Clooney starts the cinnamon buns, blueberry muffins, and pies. A minute later, Ben and his uncle John drive up.

  Soon we’re all toiling at our assigned duties, including John Denby, who’s lying on the floor with tools and a printout of the dishwasher’s maintenance manual, trying to figure out what’s broken. About forty-five minutes into the task, a truck pulls into the parking lot and noses up to the café’s front window. Dad rushes out to meet the repairperson who has sped out on this crazy service call in the wee hours of the morning.

  “Hiya,” the repair guy says. “Got yourselves a little excitement, eh?”

  By this time, Dad has sucked up most of the water. The repairperson asks a lot of questions about our brand of detergent, and Clooney calls out that she’s been using the same blue box for years with no problem. About twenty minutes later, the machine’s back together. The repair guy says he can’t find anything wrong, but we should stick to the blue box. Dad doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he thinks Clooney may have used the red box next to it by mistake.

  Dominic and I load all the dishes we just washed and dried by hand back into the dishwasher—better safe than sorry, especially now—while Clooney arranges the chairs and tables for the day’s customers. By 7:00 a.m., the first one is walking through the door, and it happens to be the man who came alone yesterday, the one who snapped a picture.

  Gusty’s is ready to take his order.

  12

  For two days after the dishwasher crisis, everything at Gusty’s works like it’s supposed to. But my suspicions are growing. Is it a coincidence that we were flooded with suds right after the odd inspection violations? Is it a coincidence that the inspector visited the day the Secret Diner competition was starting? I don’t think so. But what proof is there? I keep working on that part of the equation in the back of my mind.

  Gusty’s is reasonably full at every meal, and my friends and I try to identify Secret Diner candidates. The man who took a picture of Gusty’s has been spotted eating there several times and driving past the café toward Hubert’s at other times. I check him over again. Not on vacation. No chitchat. He orders all the classics. Sometimes he looks at the food on his fork. He’s my number one choice for Secret Diner. I know he’s Clooney’s pick. She gives him the royal treatment—the Maine version, anyway, which isn’t exactly the finest kind of royal treatment. I’ve dubbed him Lone Man.

  The fish head soup is a hit. Although not everyone gets the humor in it, Ms. Stillford and Zoe’s parents laugh out loud when they see it on the menu. The Lewises put their heads together, point to it, and chuckle. But the joke is lost on Mrs. Billingsley, who complains that it’s decent soup but Dad should “get that weed out of the fish’s mouth. And the bowl still needs to be heated.”

  I’ve insisted on hanging around the café—no better way to monitor things—but I’m starting to think my buddies would like to do something else.

  “Just for a few hours, Quinnie,” Zoe says. “Please. This is making me a little bonkers.”

  “We could go sailing,” says Ben.

  “I don’t know,” Dominic says. “It looked pretty choppy out there.”

  “I could show you guys how to do some Scottish dances,” says Zoe.

  Ben grabs his throat and chokes himself.

  Dominic says, in his best Scottish brogue, “I dunnuh think so.”

  Ella looks the other way.

  I tell Zoe, “Maybe some time when there’s not so much going on. Maybe after the Secret Diner thing, okay?” I hold my breath to see if she dives into a funk, but she seems to shake it off. I think she knew the Scottish dances were a long shot.

  “We could watch a movie at my house, except my dad is writing and he really likes it quiet,” says Ella.

  “No offense, E, but I need to move,” Ben says. “Zoe, want to come running with me?”

  “I need fresh air too,” says Dominic.

  I decide to meet everyone halfway. “What about a walk up to Hubert’s and back?” I’m thinking of it mostly as a reconnaissance trip, but a walk would at least give everyone some fresh air.

  It’s quiet for a few seconds.

  “I’ll go with you,” Ella says.

  “Me too,” says Dominic.

  “I’ll run circles around you as I’m going by,” says Ben.

  “I’ll just see you guys later,” Zoe says.

  Great. I guess her feelings are hurt because no one wants to Scottish jig or whatever. But really, that’s a little much to ask.

  * * *

  By the time Ella, Dominic, and I get to Restaurant Hubert, we’re deep into a conversation about Slick and Hubert and their possible relationship with the inspector. Could Slick have broken into Gusty’s to sabotage the dishwasher, and if so, how? There was no evidence of a break-in. As we approach the restaurant, it looks quiet. There are only a couple cars in Hubert’s lot. We walk past the place, all the way to the historical marker on the point. We sit on the bench and watch the surf crash and swirl as we construct various conspiracy theories. I don’t really know how long we’ve been there when Mom calls my phone.

  “Where are you?”

  “On a walk with Ella and Dominic. We’re at the point.”

  “Something’s wrong with the refrigeration unit. Your dad needs a hand. Can you head over and help him out?”

  * * *

  I walk through the back door of Gusty’s at the heart of lunchtime. Dad is frantically shifting meat into ice chests. Clooney is slapping the lids on and handing the chests to Owen Loney, who brushes past us to carry them to his pickup.

  “What happened?” I ask Dad, but he doesn’t answer due to the fact that he’s sticking a thermometer into the meat packages. “Can I help?”

  Clooney calls to me. “Quinnie, can you get these orders out? Except table six—I’ll do that one.”

  At table six sits Lone Man, of course. I leave him to Clooney, but that still gives me plenty to do. The dining room is almost full.

  I won’t lie, I love this. I’ve wanted to be a server at Gusty’s forever, but Dad has said I have to wait until I’m fifteen. But this refrigerator emergency is giving me my chance. I roll up my sleeves and start checking the tickets against the plates coming up.

  It’s a whirlwind. Dad, Clooney, and I are slipping and swaying around each other as I rush out orders of Gusty burgers and lobster fries, clam chowder, fish head soup, lobster rolls, crab cakes, fried oyster sliders, BLTs, grilled cheese, garlicky coleslaw, pickle-pea salads, brown-sugar baked-bean slices, blueberry pie, and whoopie pies. Phew.

  The problem is the whirlwind doesn’t last. On a normal day at the start of the summer season, the lunch rush would last from eleven forty-five to one o’clock. Now it’s twelve forty-five, and Clooney is at the cash register checking the last few people out. What’s even more frightening is that a whole blueberry pie is still in the case. Usually Dad has to bake fresh for the afternoon because he sells out at lunch. Maybe the fish head soup isn’t working.

  By one fifteen, another repairperson is in the kitchen, this time a guy examining the walk-in cooling unit.

  I try to ask what happened, but the conversation is too intense. All I can do is listen.

  The repair guy is asking what the temp was when Dad noticed it.

  Dad says, “I walked in the cooler at about eleven this morning and I could tell immediately that it wasn’t quite cool enough. I looked at the therm
ostat, and it said forty-five. We never let it get higher than thirty-eight. That’s when I called. I transferred all the meat to nearby refrigeration at the proper temps, but I’m worried the cooler’s gone on the fritz or the compressor’s out or something.”

  “Do you lock this door?” the repairperson asks and points to the small tumbler lock on the base of the unit, to the right of the refrigeration door.

  “No,” Dad says. “No need to. Only two of us come in there. Why?”

  The repair guy separates the curtain of plastic strips that dangle in front of the open door and motions for Dad to follow. “Well, the temp gauge is in here, you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who sets it?”

  “I do,” says Dad.

  “So, you set it at forty-five.”

  “No. I set it at thirty-eight.”

  “I don’t know then, because the compressor is fine. It’s cooling to the same temp you see on the temp gauge.”

  Dad leans around the door and checks out the temp gauge, and yells, “Clooney!”

  Clooney hustles to the scene. “Ayuh?”

  I can tell Dad is trying to moderate his tone. “Did you by any chance raise the temp in the cooler?”

  “Sure didn’t,” she says with a little surprise in her voice.

  “Well, it’s set for forty-five, and I set it for thirty-eight.”

  “Still didn’t,” she says.

  The repair guy senses the tension rising. “Really anybody could have bumped into this in here, knocked a shoulder into it. Maybe that’s what happened.”

  Dad shakes his head. “Yeah, maybe. Thanks.” He fiddles with the gauge and then walks out of the cooler and closes the door. “Let’s get this thing cooling back down. Any charge for the call?”

  “That’s alright, Gus,” the repair guy says. “I didn’t have to fix anything.”

  “Can I give you lunch? On the house?”

  “How about a lobster roll and whoopie pie to go?”