LITMIR.BIZ

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challenged our liquor license, and one night several dishes were ruined because cayenne pepper was put in place of paprika. It’s like someone’s been playing pranks. It’s a lot of little things that can be explained away.”

      “But you don’t think these are just pranks?” I asked. Under her annoyance, I thought I detected something deeper. Something more like fear.

      She shook her head. “No. It’s starting to affect business, and I’m afraid our reputation will be ruined. And, Dino...” She paused, and she looked almost embarrassed. “I think I’m being followed sometimes.”

      That got my hackles up. “By who? Is someone threatening you?”

      “No, no threats. I don’t even know for sure. It’s just a feeling I have, like someone’s watching me. I think I keep seeing the same dark green car a lot. I don’t know, like I said, maybe I’m just being paranoid because things are going so badly right now.”

      “Do you have a lot of enemies?” Seth asked. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he blinked. “What? It’s a fair question. One you would generally ask.”

      “None that I know of,” Gigi said.

      “How about the employees?” I asked. “Anyone been acting suspicious? When’s the last time you hired people?”

      “We hired three new servers over the summer, but one has already quit and the other two are marvelous, I can’t imagine they have anything to do with it. Everyone else has been around for nearly a year or more, long before any of this trouble started.”

      “Fire anyone recently?”

      She shook her head.

      “What about the server who quit?” I asked. “What’s the story there?”

      “It’s not Kevin,” she said with a smile. “He was awarded a scholarship he wasn’t expecting and quit to go to school in Miami.”

      “How about pissed off customers?” Seth asked.

      Gigi sighed. “Yes, we’ve had a few of those, but they all seem to be as a result of the problems. I’ve tried to think if there was anyone who might have had a reason to do this before all the trouble started, but I haven’t come up with anything yet.”

      “You keep workin’ on it,” I told her.

      “Do you think you can help, Dino?” She took a sip of her amaretto.

      “Yeah, I do. I don’t think you’re paranoid, either. Someone is definitely screwing with you. I want you to be careful, all right?”

      She nodded. “What do we do now?”

      I slid a card out of my wallet and handed it to her. “Here’s my number, if you need it. I’m gonna stop by tomorrow, and then I’ll start digging around.”

      “Thank you, Dino. I really appreciate this.”

      “Hey, I’m always willing to help out a friend.”

      She smiled and stood up. “It’s late, and I should be going. I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

      I got up too, and said, “Yep. I’ll walk you down to your car.”

      I led her to the door, while Seth took care of the bottles and Gigi’s glass.

      Outside on the street, she stood by her car and turned to me. “It’s good to know I still can count on you, Dino. It means a lot to me.”

      I shrugged and grinned at her. “I’m just that kind of guy.”

      Then she stepped forward and slipped her arms around my neck, giving me a warm hug. I squeezed her back. She wore different perfume than she used to, and I wondered what else had changed about her. Ten years was a long time.

      She kissed me on the cheek and smiled with relief. “I feel better already,” she said. “At least I know I’m not just imagining things.”

      “You’re not,” I assured her. “I’ll figure it out, I promise. Are you going straight home?”

      She nodded. “Marco is closing the restaurant tonight, so it should be fine. I hope.”

      “Okay, then, drive safe.” I held the door for her while she climbed into her car and watched as she drove off. When she turned the corner, I waited a few more minutes and went back inside.

      Upstairs, Seth was standing by the front windows. He turned as I shut the door. “So that was the infamous Gigi.”

      “Ah, yes it was. And you could have been a little nicer, for the record.”

      “Hey, I was fine. I was not about to fawn all over your ex the way you were.”

      I rolled my eyes. “By no stretch of the imagination was I fawning over her. I was polite, like I always am to ladies.”

      Seth pushed away from the windowsill and looked down his nose at me. “I saw you playing kissy face out there.”

      He had slipped into what he calls his “extremely gay” persona, which I was glad to see, because he’s incapable of being very serious when he does. I was willing to cut him some slack, because I supposed being face-to-face with your boyfriend’s ex when she’s playing the damsel in distress could be a little unnerving.

      “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I said. “Come here, I’ll show you what playing kissy face looks like.”

      I reached out to grab the collar of his t-shirt and pulled him into as hot a kiss as I could muster. He moaned and melted against me, so I figured I had it right.

      When we broke, I asked, “You didn’t happen to notice if it looked like anyone followed her, did you?”

      “I did notice,” he said, “and I didn’t see anyone. If there was, they were too crafty for me, because I was watching for that.”

      “So was I. That’s good, I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

      “You think she’s in danger?”

      I shook my head. “I have no idea. None of the stuff sounds physically threatening, but I do think someone’s messing with her, and it could escalate.”

      “Well, man, you know I’ll do anything I can to help, right?”

      “I appreciate that,” I said.

      “Damn straight. Now let’s go to bed and play kissy face.”

       Chapter 3

      When I finally chased Seth out of my apartment the next morning, it was ten past eight. He was late for work, but it was too early for me to get started. I fixed coffee, showered and dressed, and ate a quick breakfast. That used up an hour, and I still had a few more to kill before Salvatore’s would be open and I would be able to get to work on Gigi’s case.

      In the meantime, I could get a start on Seth’s. I poured another cup of coffee, sat down at my desk and switched on the laptop. My commute was still the length of my living room because progress on the office downstairs was slow, and I had to fit his job in between paying work.

      I ran a few basic background checks on Frank. I have some software and a couple of internet services I subscribe to, because they all have slightly different areas of effectiveness, and I can usually save a lot of time running several searches at once.

      Not surprisingly, his credit was trashed. He had way too many credit cards, all maxed out, and the bulk of those had missing payments. One of them had already filed an order to garnish his wages. Not like that would do them a hell of a lot of good. The guy bounced from job to job. He was currently listed as a part-time employee of a remodeling company, but I knew for a fact he did a lot of his work for cash under the table. Just to round things out, he also owed back taxes.

      Frank didn’t have too much of a police record. Mostly it was traffic violations, including a decent

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