Steamed

confusion or discomfort. “Hey, guys! What’s up, Josh?” She was as perky and adorable as I remembered. I glanced at Josh to see his reaction as she leaned in for a hug.
    Josh hugged her back. “Hey, kiddo! How you been?” Good. I sensed more of a brother-sister friendship here than anything flirtatious.
    “Well, I’m still working, so that’s good. Ian and I are the only full-time waitstaff left. Katrina works part time. Actually, she’s here tonight. You’ll have to say hello.” Cassie turned around and called over to yet another beautiful woman, who immediately came to our table. Katrina was tall, with long, thick hair that fell down her back in a cascade of unfrizzed curls. Was I the only woman in the world who couldn’t get her hair to be either straight or curly and not some mess in between? I stared at her scalp in search of extensions, which were the only plausible excuse for having such phenomenal hair. Nope, hers looked real.
    Katrina and Cassie sat down with us at the table and traded restaurant gossip with Josh for a few minutes. “They both used to work at Magellan,” Josh explained, “and they came over here with Tim when he opened this place up. Ian, too.”
    Katrina snorted, “I don’t know why Tim wanted him. Ian’s a dirtbag.” She pointed at me. “Does Chloe know about him?”
    Oh, I loved gossip! “No, what about him?” Eager for juicy details, I looked to Josh.
    He sighed. “See, while Tim was in the process of opening Essence, Madeline figured out that Ian was scamming Magellan out of money. Instead of just firing him, she sent him over to Tim’s place without warning him.”
    The two servers nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” Cassie said. “Ian was making good money from it, too.”
    “How did he do it?” I was totally ignorant of how cash registers and credit card machines worked.
    “Well, in a couple of ways.” Katrina leaned in with excitement. “Ian would run the customer’s tab through on their credit card and then have them add their tip and sign for it. The check stays open on the computer until the end of the night. Ian is the headwaiter, so he’s one of the only people who can void out items on the register. He’d just go back and void out an item or two, run the check through with the same total, and pocket the extra money for a bigger tip. Forging a signature isn’t that difficult. When the customer gets their credit card statement, everything looks right—except that the restaurant got a smaller percentage of the money they paid, and they’ve inadvertently left Ian a bigger tip. Same thing if the person pays in cash. After the customer leaves, Ian can void out their old check entirely, as though that table was never there, or ring up a new charge with a smaller total, and pocket the difference in cash.”
    “Yeah,” Cassie explained. “See, some people totally go over their check with a fine-tooth comb, and others just sign whatever you put in front of them. Lots of people don’t ever look at their credit card statements. Ian just had to be able to read his tables well and figure out if he could pull it off. And most of the time he got away with it.”
    “So how did he get caught?” I asked. “I mean, when you ring stuff up at the cash register, you’re alone, right? There’s nobody there watching you every time.” As someone who could barely jaywalk without guilt, I was amazed that someone else could engage in felonious activity on a regular basis without having a nervous breakdown.
    “You’re right,” Katrina nodded. “Nobody’s watching you at the register. But I think Ian got a little sloppy. And greedy about how much extra cash he could take home. And some of the diners caught mistakes in their checks. I guess Ian sometimes added extra items to checks, miscellaneous items or extra drinks, so that the customer would pay for a higher amount. Once in a while, Ian would have trouble with a table, or the customer would ask to speak to a manager, which would’ve been Ian himself. Or Madeline. Sometimes he could just explain it away as a mistake on his part and not bring Maddie into it, but after a couple of times, she figured him out and fired him.”
    “And let him work for Tim?” I said in disbelief.
    “Right,” Josh said. “I think it was her little dig at Tim for filing for divorce. Mostly they both handled it politely, but that was her underhanded way of sticking it to Tim. She probably figured Tim would figure out what Ian