Page 47 of Knot Playing Fair 2

“Yeah,” I said to his retreating back. “Maybe so.”

TWENTY

Mia

IT FELT REALLY STRANGEto be back at the restaurant, trying to hammer things into shape for some nebulous future grand reopening. The building still smelled like pest control chemicals; no amount of cleaning and scrubbing seemed to be able to get rid of it completely.

Nat sniffed the air in the dining room, frowning. “Really? I can barely smell it now.”

Shaniqua Jones looked over her shoulder, pausing in her self-appointed task of wiping down what I’d come to think of as the ‘roach wall’ for the third or fourth time. “Spoken like a beta. No offense, but sometimes I have no clue how you people function without a working nose.”

Nat only raised an eyebrow at her. “If it means I don’t have to smell organophosphates below a certain concentration, I’m actually fine with it,” he said. “Too bad our alpha and omega customers won’t feel the same.”

“I mean... it’s better than it was earlier, I guess?” I offered, aiming for optimism and falling somewhat short.

“Thank goodness for that,” Nat said.

The lingering smell was only one item on a seemingly endless list to be dealt with. There were the new menus to be printed, now that I’d collaborated with Shani on the changes. In additionto my Byron-flavored pizza rounds, coconut-lime drunken porgy, and cinnamon-bergamot chocolate lava cake, my sous-chef had contributed a smothered oxtail recipe served over dirty rice, along with a shrimp and andouille gumbo that was todiefor.

We’d done inventory in the kitchen, where depressingly little could be safely salvaged after a major pest control operation and an extended closure. We couldn’t really restock until we had a firm reopening date, but I’d at least started making lists for our various suppliers.

And then there was the staffing situation.

“Take a break, you two,” Nat suggested. “You’ve been at this for hours.”

Shani and I flopped down at one of the tables without argument. Nat joined us.

“I want both your opinions on the prospect of bringing in new hires,” he said. “There are some ethical considerations here, and I’m not entirely sure how to approach them.”

In addition to losing Joe—not that his absence could really be considered a loss after what he’d done—we’d also lost our line cook Toby and another waiter, Paul. Honestly, I was surprised we hadn’t hadmorepeople abandoning ship, but the others had reacted to the news about Joe’s betrayal and SSG’s possible involvement with anger rather than fear.

Restaurants tended to harbor behind-the-scenes drama... but they could also become as close-knit as family. It was heart-warming and sobering in equal measure to see how passionate our core group of employees had become about the Elderflower Inn. We were asking them, in so many words, to risk an unknown level of potential danger by staying on, with a bunch of criminals apparently hell-bent on shutting us down by any means necessary.

But now we had to fill the shoes of those who’d either been fired, in Joe’s case, or decided to leave, in Toby and Paul’s.

Shani looked thoughtful. “There’s another point to consider before you start advertising the open positions.”

I nodded in agreement. “Completely aside from the ethics of bringing new people into a restaurant that’s got a giant target painted on its back, as soon as we publicly post the openings, there’s nothing to stop SSG from trying to plant more moles. We can’t guarantee that checking applicants for suspicious wrist tattoos would be enough to stop them.”

“Believe me,” Nat said, “the thought has occurred to me.”

Shani tapped her fingernails on the tabletop in a thoughtful rhythm. “Hmm. I might have a solution for that part. Give me a few days to organize it?”

I looked at her in surprise. “What kind of a solution?”

---