Wanting Sheila Dead(77)

Gregor didn’t understand what people ate anymore. He really didn’t. He liked large slabs of meat, preferably called Porterhouse, and big flat fried potatoes. He didn’t want McDonald’s and he really didn’t want Macaroni and Cheese Florentine. And if a cheese was made from a goat so rare it only lived on a single Himalayan mountain, he thought they should all just leave it all alone. If the goat was a Buddhist—

He was very tired. He was very, very tired. He should not have gotten up in the middle of the night, no matter how urgent it had seemed. He should be sitting in the Ararat right this minute, bribing Linda Melajian to bring him bacon and sausage when Bennis’s back was turned.

Gregor could see David Mortimer sitting at a table near the back, against the wall. The tables were plain and serviceable, but there was a menu in the window. That was not serviceable. It included something called a “rose hip omelet.”

Gregor went in and looked around. There was no seating hostess, which was not surprising. There were not that many patrons. This was not a good area for the New Philadelphia. There were lots of college kids, but not the kind of college kids who ordered rose hip omelets.

Or quiche with feta cheese and violet petals, either. He was not making this up. That was the special, and there was a picture of it, along with a description of it, on a chalkboard on an easel at the very back of the room.

Gregor went to David Mortiner’s table and sat down. Mortimer seemed to be eating a whole wheat burrito with vegetables that looked like they had been invented for a Roger Corman movie.

“I thought it was a good idea,” Mortimer said. “You know. Get away from the usual thing. Also, I’m watching my blood pressure, and my cholesterol. You know how it is.”

“Um,” Gregor said.

A young woman came over without a notepad. That was something else that was endemic in the New Philadelphia. The restaurants all thought there was something wrong with waitresses carrying notepads. The young woman did have a menu, but Gregor wouldn’t take it.

“Coffee, please,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have hash brown potatoes and breakfast sausage?”

“Oh, yes,” the young woman said. “We have hash browns with rosemary, cooked in olive oil. And we have three kinds of breakfast sausage: turkey sausage with sage, vegetarian sausage with—”

“How about pork sausage, sort of spiced up?” Gregor asked.

“Oh, yes,” the young woman said. “Of course. We use thirteen different spices—”

“That’s all right,” Gregor said. “Why don’t you get me the hash browns, and the pork sausage, and whatever kind of coffee you have that comes black and heavily caffeinated.”

“It’s fair trade coffee,” the waitress said.

“Fine,” Gregor said.

David Mortimer watched the young woman retreat. “Fair trade is a tremendous deal to a lot of people,” he said. “They don’t like to think they’re contributing to the oppression of peasants in Latin America. It’s actually very good coffee.”

“If you want to make sure you’re not contributing to the oppression of peasants in Latin America,” Gregor said, “you’re going to have to do a lot more than buy coffee from self-consciously virtuous co-ops. In fact, buying from the co-ops might not be a good idea to begin with. I’ve had absolutely no sleep. I’ve just broken into a house in the dead of night. I’m completely out of patience. I hope this is important.”

Mortimer looked nonplussed. “Why did you break into a house in the middle of the night? And whose house did you break into? Are we going to have to do something about that to keep you out of trouble?”

“It’s nice to know that John Jackman thinks he has to keep me out of trouble,” Gregor said. “And I broke into Sophie Mgrdchian’s house looking for her address book. As to why I did it in the middle of the night, I was royally annoyed and I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t find an address book, by the way. And that tells me something.”

“Does it?”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “It tells me that you should tell the police and the mental hospital to find some excuse for keeping that woman locked up. And no, I’m not sure why yet. But I’m sure.”

Mortimer took a deep breath. “I’m not sure we can do things like that,” he said.

“No,” Gregor agreed. “You can’t. What did you want to talk to me for, and why did you want to talk to me out here, instead of just having me come into your office? It’s not like the mayor’s people aren’t used to seeing me.”