Nikolai nodded.
I bit my lip.
“Have you seated him somewhere where the cameras can see him?” I asked.
“Of course,” Nikolai said. “He’s near the entrance. Unless he complains about a draft and demands to move, we have him right under the eye in the sky.”
His phrasing made my lips twitch in a smile, but only for a moment. There was serious work to do now. We had to prove Luca’s innocence, and the best way to do that was surely to catch him in the act of trying to get a free meal again.
I took a plate out from under the counter and looked at it from all angles. It was clean. Cleaner than clean. I gestured to Nikolai. “Do you have your cell phone with you?”
Without answering, he understood what I wanted: he stepped forward and took a picture of the plate, showing how clean itwas. He stood patiently by and waited as I plated up the risotto, taking a picture at the end of it as well. It looked perfect. It was probably the best risotto I had ever plated.
“Right,” I said, handing it to him with a satisfied determination. “Let’s see him try to say that the plate was dirty this time.”
The satisfaction, however, did not last long.
Because not ten minutes after Nikolai had taken the plate out to the customer, he returned with a simmering anger on his face that made me very glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of it.
“He says there is shell in risotto,” he said. I had noticed previously that Nik’s accent got stronger and his grammar got worse when he was emotional in any way. I didn’t have either the heart or the courage to correct him.
“There was no shell in the risotto,” I scoffed. “What is he saying? Egg or lobster?”
“Lobster. He says he bit right into it and hurt his tooth.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I huffed. “Have you checked the footage?”
“Come with me,” he said, jerking his head back to the restaurant.
I understood why. The camera footage could only be viewed from one place. Grey’s office.
I made a quick gesture to Ainslie to take over plating and stepped out through the kitchen’s swinging door, fully into the restaurant. It always felt weird to do this in the middle of service. I felt like everyone was staring at me, so I kept my head down and my eyes on the floor. I didn’t know what was more horrifying: that someone might catch sight of me and complain about the food, or that they might catch my eye andpraise meabout the food.
Thankfully, it was only a short walk to Grey’s office, and we managed it without getting interrupted.
Grey looked up when we entered, and immediately made a face. “Oh, come on,” he said. “It’s the middle of service. Stop hassling me about the kid and go back to work.”
“You need to see something,” I said, instead of trying to argue with him: I wanted to get right to the point. “It’s on the camera footage.”
Grey grunted and turned to the bank of screens to his left; it was set up like a security booth, only Grey had never actually hired security. It seemed pointless. The only time we usually ever needed this footage would be if someone broke in after hours, or if someone carried out an illegal act on the premises and the police asked to see it. Neither of those things had happened yet.
“What am I looking at?” Grey asked. He sounded irritable still like he was resenting us for interrupting… whatever it was he did in here at his desk all night.
“Over here,” Nikolai said, moving over to one of the screens and tapping on the table where our rogue customer was sitting. I squinted my eyes at him. I didn’t recognize him – he just looked like he could be anybody. “We need to go back about ten minutes.”
Grey pushed a few buttons and rewound the footage from the live feed, then hit play again. “Well?”
“Hang on,” Nikolai said, holding up a finger. “Hang on… and… there!”
He gestured triumphantly at the screen as the diner looked around to check no one was watching him, reached into his pocket, drew out something wrapped in a handkerchief, andthen stuffed whatever it was into his risotto before returning the handkerchief to where it came from.
“He’s asking for a refund because he found something in his risotto?” Grey guessed.
“It’s him,” Nikolai said, looking at him like he couldn’t believe he needed to explain this. “The guy. The one who said Luca didn’t clean the plates.”
Grey turned to him and I could almost see the moment he realized he had been wrong. It was the moment steam started coming out of his ears. He’d made a mistake, and now he was going to have to own up to it and ask Luca to come back.
Grey cleared his throat.
