Written in Stone (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

Gretel, leaving them a trail of bread crumbs.”
    “You’re givin’ yourself a bit too much credit, don’t you think?” Dixie turned, placed the coffee carafe on the counter, and faced Olivia again. “Chief Rawlings arrived at the same conclusion before you did. You told me yourself he gave you a head start so you could warn Wheeler that all hell was about to break loose. For a cop, the chief sure is kindhearted. Don’t you go messin’ with his feelin’s.”
    A flush of pink spread across Olivia’s cheeks. She hurriedly cut into her strata with the edge of her fork and filled her mouth with a bite of warm eggs, fresh tomatoes, and melted cheese.
    “I see what you’re doin’,” Dixie said, shaking her pointer finger. “Stuffin’ your face so you don’t have to tell me what’s goin’ on between you and Sawyer Rawlings. The whole town knows you’re an item so don’t bother denyin’ it. One of the chief’s neighbors saw you doin’ the walk of shame.
She
said Haviland spent the night too. Must be serious.”
    Olivia bristled. “There wasn’t the slightest trace of shame on my part but I’m not foolish enough to discuss intimate details with the biggest gossip in all of Oyster Bay. Meaning you.” The barb was softened by a smile, which was quickly hidden behind the rim of Olivia’s coffee cup. “Get back to the witch. That’s a far more interesting topic.”
    “No, it is not, but I’ll play along. Hold on.” Dixie skated over to the
Cats
booth and slapped a check on the table. She spent a moment chitchatting with an elderly couple clad in matching lighthouse T-shirts and was undoubtedly explaining for the millionth time why she’d decorated the diner using Andrew Lloyd Weber paraphernalia.
    Next, she pivoted and moved on to the
Phantom of the Opera
table. A jowly man in his late fifties dug around in the pocket of his madras shorts in search of his wallet. Ignoring Dixie’s question as to whether he enjoyed his food, he tossed bills on top of the check with dismissive little flicks of his wrist. His breakfast partner, a skeletal blonde in her early thirties clad in a miniskirt and a white tank top stretched taut over a pair of cartoonishly large implants, jabbed at the porcelain phantom mask with a long, curving fingernail.
    From where she sat enjoying her meal, Olivia watched Dixie straighten to her full height. After donning her skates and teasing her hair a vertical inch into the air, she was barely five feet tall, but what Dixie lacked in stature she made up for in fearlessness.
    “Y’all have a nice day,” she said tightly, her farewell clearly meant as a command.
    The top-heavy blonde grabbed her take-out coffee cup and shimmied across the vinyl seat, granting the diners in the opposite booths a clear view of her leopard-print panties.
    “Hurry up, babe.” The man in madras shorts began to walk away without waiting for his companion. He popped a toothpick in his mouth with one hand and jiggled a set of keys with the other. Using his elbow to push open the door, he let it go without bothering to see if his lady friend was directly behind him. She wasn’t. The door slammed in her face and she jumped back with a little shriek. Jutting her lower lip into a collagen-enhanced pout, she followed her man out of the diner.
    “High-caliber clientele,” Olivia teased Dixie after she’d cleared the couple’s table.
    Dixie wasn’t happy. “Cheap bastard. Doctors are the worst tippers.”
    “How do you know he’s a physician?”
    “The caduceus on his key ring.” Dixie pointed out the window. “And the vanity plate on his I-am-not-well-hung-mobile.”
    Olivia had been too absorbed rereading the latest chapter of her novel to notice the atomic orange Corvette parked outside Grumpy’s Diner. She peered at the showy convertible as the man settled into his seat and revved the engine. The vanity plate read, “NIPTUCK.”
    “Having seen the missus, perhaps the plate should say, ‘I Inflate You,’” Olivia said. “You could use the number eight and the letter
u
to save space.”
    “Lady Watermelons is
not
the missus,” Dixie corrected. “I saw a picture of the missus and the doc’s three kids when he opened his wallet. Such a cliché. Why do they come here anyway? Why not go to Vegas or Cancun?”
    Olivia shrugged. “He wants to show off his car. See?”
    The object of their derision was donning sunglasses as the Corvette’s soft top folded back. The doctor glanced around,