Steamed

was up to sooner or later, and he wouldn’t lose that much money in the process. And on the other hand, she did let Tim have Cassie and Katrina, and I know they were her top servers at Magellan.”
    “Listen, I have to get back to my tables,” Katrina apologized. “We should all hang out sometime, okay? Good to meet you, Chloe.”
    “Since I’m your official waitress,” Cassie said, “can I get you two something to drink? Or have you already figured out what to order off the vast menu?” she said sarcastically.
    We asked for bottled water and then ordered different menu items for each of the three courses so we could try everything.
    “Garrett must be miserable with this new menu,” Josh said. “He’s not the best chef, but he’s better than this. Honestly, I can’t believe—”
    “Josh, listen,” I cut him off. “That happened the night I was here with Eric. The check thing with Ian. He was working a table near ours, and the couple complained to him about their bill. But what was odd is that Eric jumped in and took care of it. And then he gave Ian some kind of warning, something about remembering what they’d talked about. At the time, I guess I thought Eric had taken it upon himself to scold Ian for screwing up the check and being a bad waiter. But now I bet Eric knew what Ian was doing.”
    “And,” Josh added, “Eric might’ve been getting a piece of the profits for keeping quiet about it. I mean, on a good week and with the high-end clientele, Ian could’ve been taking home an extra seven or eight hundred dollars. Fifteen, twenty dollars from, say, five tables a day? More from the bigger parties that come in and drink a lot and don’t pay attention to what they’re spending? That’s good money. Split that in half, and Eric still would’ve been getting money that he apparently needed badly.”
    Josh and I stared at each other.
    “Until,” I said, “Eric threatened to tell Timothy unless he got more money from Ian. Or until Ian just got sick of sharing his profits with Eric and he killed him.” We’d caught the murderer! I was sure it must be Ian.
    “But,” Josh pointed out, “for someone who owed as much as Eric did, he wasn’t going to make that much money off of Ian. Although it might have been enough to pay minimum balances on everything he owed.”
    I dug my cell phone out of my purse. “I’m calling Detective Hurley and telling him what we figured out.”
    Josh reached over and put his hand over my phone. “I’d rather you didn’t do that. It’s just going to upset Tim and piss him off that everybody knew about Ian and didn’t tell him. Besides, I’m still a free man. If I get hauled off to the slammer, you can tell Hurley, okay?” He smiled.
    I agreed to wait to pass the information on to the detective, but I did ask Josh why no one had informed Tim about Ian’s nefarious check practices. In particular, why hadn’t he told Tim?
    “Look, Chloe,” Josh sighed. “I’ve told you how tough this business is to be in. I just try to keep to myself. I do my job and let Maddie deal with everything else. I try not to rock the boat with anything, and I’ve got to pick my battles. Most people are out for themselves here, me included. And I’m not about to do anything to piss off Maddie and get myself fired. She pays me more than most restaurants pay their chefs, and I can’t go ratting her and Ian out to Tim. Same thing for Cassie and Katrina. They need their jobs, and who knows what Ian might think of to say to Tim about them. And I don’t think they care. They do their job, they get good tips, and they know they’ll be the last to be let go if the restaurant fails. Why mess with that?” Josh took my hands in his. “I told you, I’m not perfect. But you might do the same thing if you were in my shoes.”
    I had to agree. In the scheme of the world, maybe what Ian was doing wasn’t that big a deal. Unless it implicated him in Eric’s murder—and cleared Josh.
    Josh continued to hold my hands, and we talked until our appetizers arrived. I’d just finished telling him about the awful paper I had to write for school when Cassie placed plates in front of us.
    “Okay, here’s a salad with pears, candied walnuts, and blue cheese for you, Chloe. And the butternut squash soup for you, Josh.”
    The salad was pretty good. Nothing out of this world, but good enough. I watched Josh and was mesmerized by how serious he looked tasting his dish. And by how wonderfully