The Lady and the Diner
By Kaye George
Gus Rucker finally took the break she knew she deserved. In fact, she had earned it a thousand times in the past week, and had barely sat down most days.
Collapsing into a booth, she took two deep breaths and surveyed her domain. Her diner was ready. At last. It was small, but fully furnished with newish booths and tables, and an actual new shiny white counter with red-seated stools. She knew that the kitchen, through the swinging door in the back, gleamed. It was ready to prepare three meals a day for the townspeople and the interstate travelers who would flock to her door as soon as her sign was turned on, telling the world that Augustine’s Comfy Corner was open for business, tons of business. It had better bring in tons of business. She was in danger if it didn’t.
Velma crept up, silently, as she always did, and took her place on the booth’s table, commanding Gus to look at her. So Gus obeyed, turning her head to admire Velma’s cushy fur, the cute little tufts between her paws, her bright round eyes, and her typical Rag Doll coloring, mostly creamy vanilla fur, with darker paws, nose, and ears.
“You’re a darling, you know that?” Gus scooped up the cat and cradled her to stroke her incredibly soft tummy.
Of course I know that, Augustine. Velma purred, closing her eyes in ecstasy. She always used Gus’s full name, for some reason that Gus had never figured out.
“You’re also easy, you know that?” Gus whispered.
That’s your term. Not mine. I’m friendly. And nice.
Gus had to agree with her pet. She was all of that. “It’s time, you know. Let’s do it.” She carried the cat to the shelf in the corner, gently placed her inside the padded home, and closed the mesh door. “See you later.”
Velma didn’t answer. She pawed at the bedding, curled up, and was soon snoozing.
Gus wiped the table Velma had been on, switched her outside sign on, then went to the kitchen to tell the crew they were open. Bray, the burly cook, nodded and grinned. The two servers, Faye Wong and Sudie May, slipped on their aprons, stuck their order pads into the pockets, and came out front, ready for duty. It was on!
#
The noon rush was over, Gus thought. “Sudie, why don’t you and Faye take a break and I’ll handle whoever comes in for the next little bit.”
Soon the two young servers settled into in a booth by the front window, having burgers for their own lunch, after catering to so many to the customers.
Gus hadn’t known if the customers would come or not, but, as the real estate agent had promised, this was an ideal location. The town, no more than a quarter mile up the road, was not large, but this bypass highway carried a lot of traffic.
A lot of truckers had been in, and also families. She recognized some familiar faces from the town, but some were probably passing by, on vacation, since it was late June. Almost everyone had cleared out now, but not before ordering piles of food and leaving healthy tips.
The only customer left was that tall, skinny man with the laptop at a table near the kitchen. He’d been there since breakfast time, consuming mostly coffee, plus a single pancake when he first arrived, then later a side salad.
No wonder he’s so skinny, she thought. She was awfully curious about what he was concentrating on so intently. He had barely looked up when Faye had come by to refresh his coffee, countless times. His eyes stayed on his laptop screen, his fingers occasionally moving on the keys, but not often.
Gus leaned on the counter, trying to figure out how to peek at what was occupying the man so thoroughly. Every time she had approached during the day, however, to see if he wanted anything, he’d turned the screen away. It was time to employ the big guns. Or, rather, the big gun, the soft, furry one. Gus walked to the corner and unlatched Velma’s door.
Yes, I know what you’re wondering, Augustine. Hang on.
The cat stretched, still in her crate, taking her sweet time, then leapt to the floor and sauntered over to the man’s table. When he didn’t notice her, she jumped onto the table, walked around, and got a glimpse of his screen before the man saw her.
“Shoo! What are you doing here? Ma’am!” He waved an arm at Gus. “Can you take care of this?”
She smiled and strolled to his table. “Velma won’t hurt anything. She lives here.”
“Is that sanitary?” He kept his eyes on the cat as Gus plucked her up and set her on the floor.
“She’s as sanitary as the people who come in here. And she only comes out when the customers are gone. I wasn’t sure you were ever going to leave, so I let her have a bit of freedom.”
“Well, I don’t want her on my table.” He angled his screen away from her again, giving Velma a sour look. He didn’t say when he was going to leave, Gus noticed.
She carried Velma to a booth at the other end of the small room and petted her in her lap, whispering. “Okay, what’s on that laptop?”
It looks like he’s writing a novel.
“Really? He’s an awfully slow writer.” He didn’t seem to write a sentence at a time, merely a few characters, then a halt, then a few more.
Yes, there are only two pages, and a lot of question marks. But the first paragraph mentions a spy crawling through a vent to listen to some Russians. It looks trite, to me.
“So he’s writing a spy novel? Maybe he is a spy and is writing about his life.”
No, the character is blond and good looking.
Gus smiled. The writer in the back booth was neither good-looking nor blond. In fact, he didn’t have much hair at all, but what he had was dull brown. Poor guy, she thought. He must be having trouble with his writing. What did they call that? Writer’s block? She followed some novelists online, ones whose books she liked to read, and had seen that term. There was actually debate among them about whether or not writer’s block existed. But it must, she thought, since there were so many articles telling how to overcome it.
She whispered to the cat again. “I wonder if he’ll be here all day. He takes up a table that could bring in a lot more money if I could turn it over. It’s not as if he orders much.”
Maybe he’ll get hungry eventually.
Gus had to hope he would. It wouldn’t do to be rude and ask a customer to leave when her business was so new.
But, by the end of the day, through the dinner hour, he had ordered only an additional plate of toast, but had drunk many free coffee refills. She had to tell him she was closing to get him to move at all. He did take an occasional trip to the gent’s room, back by the kitchen, but not very many. The man must have had a bladder the size of a lake.
#
The second day for Augustine’s Comfy Corner wasn’t nearly as smooth. They only served a total of ten breakfasts, four of them to a family with two small children who ate off the kids’ menu. The thin, balding writer was in residence, though. At least, today, he wasn’t taking up space that could have been used by other customers, since the diner hadn’t been full.
Gus set Velma loose to spy on the writer again.
I’ll have to be sneaky this time. He might be on the lookout for me.
“You can do that. I’ve seen your sneaky. It’s good.”
Velma didn’t pussyfoot around this time. She jumped directly onto a place on the table where she could get a glimpse of the screen, just before he shoved her away. Her leap to the floor was, nonetheless, graceful. She sauntered away for about ten feet and smoothed her fur where he had violated her. Then she came to Gus, at the counter, to report.
He seems to have added two paragraphs. He’s very slow.
“Poor guy. I don’t think he’s happy, and I can see why.”
I gathered some other intel. Velma sometimes picked up terms from the detective shows Gus watched on TV in her small apartment upstairs. His name is Manchester Shakleton.
“That’s a mouthful. I wonder if it’s a pen name. Although why would anyone choose that for a pen name?”
#
On Friday, things got worse. Gus was serving a milkshake to a trucker at the counter when they walked in. Nate and Cal. Her two least favorite people in the world. They moseyed toward her, menace on their mean, low-browed faces, not taking their eyes off her.
She set the milkshake she was holding on the counter in front of the trucker and froze in place, retaining her grip on it. She was frozen inside, too, until the trucker said, “I’ll take that now, if it’s okay.”
“Sure.” She swallowed and let go of the tumbler, then wiped the sweat off her palms with her apron. Moving away from the customer, she made her way to the end of the counter nearest Velma’s spot. Even though the cat was caged, she felt a tiny degree more confident near her.
The bigger one, Nate, leaned his beefy arms on the counter, his muscles bulging out of his short-sleeved shirt. “How’s it goin’?”
His partner, Cal, shorter but strong and wiry, repeated the words. “Yeah, how’s it goin’?”
Gus managed a weak smile. “It’s okay. There have been a lot of customers this week. It hasn’t picked up today yet.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Nate gazed slowly around the room at the five customers, the two truckers at the counter, the writer at the back booth, and a couple near the front window—probably travelers stopping for lunch.
“I’m sure I’ll be able to pay you.” She tried to smile wider, but it felt fake to her. Probably because she wasn’t at all sure she’d be able to pay them.
“Make sure of that. We’ll be back next week.”
“Next week,” Cal echoed, cracking the knuckles on one hand, then the other.
After long menacing stares, they turned and left.
There was nowhere to sit behind the counter, and Gus needed to collapse, so she came around the end of the counter and climbed onto a stool. Her spaghetti legs barely carried her there.
Velma’s thought came from the crate. Don’t let them scare you. Be brave.
“You see the size of those guys, right? Why on earth should I not be scared?” After she sat for a short moment, she rose and got Velma out of her cage, nestling her against her neck and cheek, feeling the comfort of her thick Rag Doll fur, so soft, so soothing. Touching and cuddling Velma calmed her mind so it could stop rattling in fear, and think.
How had she gotten into this mess? She had to have a payment for those two thugs in a week. If she didn’t, she had no idea what the consequences would be. Probably not a surcharge.
Why had she listened to her cousin and borrowed her startup money from these goons? Eddie had told her he’d borrowed from them and it was a good experience. Then, before she could think about it, there they were, with a paper for her to sign, and a big check. A check so big, she was blinded by what it could do for her. How it could help her get her place opened. The first installment wasn’t all that large, but it was due soon.
When Eddie had come by her apartment recently with his hand taped up, he refused to say what had happened, but Gus had wondered if it had to do with the two thugs they were both now involved with.
At noon the diner was about half full. Sudie and Faye were mostly refilling drinks and Bray, in the kitchen, had time on his hands. She could tell because he was whistling. He did that between his flurries of cooking and baking.
Two women came in together and sat to look at the menu Sudie gave them. One of them jerked her head back after a glance around the room. After a few whispered words, the other woman went back to the lone man’s booth in the rear. She stood until he noticed her, then sat across from him and they had what looked like a heated conversation. There was snarling on both sides and he slapped the table so hard the woman drew back, then got up. A grim expression on her face, she stalked back to her friend and they eventually ordered.
Gus fidgeted, twisting the seat of the stool back and forth. After hours tonight, she would have to go over the finances carefully, to see what she had earned. And to figure out how much would be left after paying her three employees.
Don’t forget to budget for buying new supplies for next week.
Oh yes, and that. Had she taken in enough? She sure hoped so.
Do you realize how many of your customers are writing novels?
What? Gus stared at her cat. How could she know that?
Some of them are leaving their minds open. Unlike Mr. Man over there.
Mr. Man? Who was Velma talking about?
Manchester Shackleton. I told you I found out his name.
Gus had to smile at the moniker Velma had given him, Mr. Man. But no, she didn’t know others were writing novels. Nor that Velma could so clearly see into the minds of others. Gazing across the tables and booths, she noticed that at least five diners were staring at open laptops, including the woman who had spoken with the lone writer. They were eating, unlike “Mr. Man,” but they were also working on something. Maybe novels.
You could help them.
Gus got up to talk directly to her weird telepathic pet in the pet cage. “How can I help people write novels? I’m a failed accountant.” She had found out, after studying for and taking that first job, that she hated working with numbers. That was the worst part about owning this business, too. The numbers. The money.
AI, Augustine. It’s been in the newspapers you buy for the customers to read. I read them too, you know.
Actually, Gus did not know that Velma could read. Was there anything she couldn’t do? “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know what you can and can’t do.” As always with the cat, she barely mouthed the words. Velma could tell what she was saying without them.
After that, Gus spent a lot of time on her own laptop, in the lulls between rushes, researching Artificial Intelligence, writer’s block, and legal ramifications. What she learned was that it was difficult, and likely to get even harder, to detect the presence of AI in creative endeavors. Some people thought it enhanced human products, others thought it was cheating, while many others thought that creative quality was bound to go down if too many writers, musicians, and others relied on it.
But, from what Velma had found out, there were at least four or five, maybe more, of the writers who regularly plied their trade in the diner who were stuck. Some wanted to develop their plots further, add complications. Others thought the characters they were creating were trite and wooden, and wondered how to make them come alive. Who knew there were so many writers in such a small town? Most of them were women, but three men showed up regularly to open their laptops and labor away for a few hours, getting some food and a lot of coffee.
Many of them conferred with each other, but they mostly stayed away from Mr. Man. Two more times, people went back to talk to him and always left with angry expressions.
At the end of the next week, Gus managed to give her first payment to the thugs, Nate and Cal, when they came around late in the day. But her initial success might have been due to the novelty of her eatery. People had been checking it out. Not all of them were returning.
Her new idea could pull some of them in, she was sure of it. She found the ideal designer, one who would take small installment payments over the next year. She worked hard, burning up the phone lines and the email exchanges, until Robby arrived, sooner even than Gus had hoped.
He didn’t look much like a person. He moved on four wheels and his “body” was a long metal rectangle. But he did have a head and hands, of a sort. He had to be plugged in overnight and loaded with paper. There was a slot in his “tummy” where, Gus assumed, the paper would come out.
She went outside and propped up a sign:
NOVELIST? WRITER?
THIS IS THE PLACE FOR YOU.
COME MEET ROBBY, YOUR NEW ASSISTANT
There were more writers than even Velma had known about. That morning, many of them appeared for the first time, flocking in, to Gus’s great gratitude and relief. This was going to work.
One newcomer approached Gus before taking a seat. “What’s going on here?”
“I’ll show you.” Gus drew the remote from her apron pocket and pressed one of the buttons.
The mechanism, which had been quietly waiting under the shelf where Velma spent her day, came to life—so to speak—and wheeled across the floor to where Gus and the new customer stood. His voice was robotic and monotone, probably intentionally. “How may I help you?”
The customer, a woman who was probably in her thirties, dropped her jaw. She bowed her head down slightly to see Robby’s painted-on face better and her long, straight hair swung forward. Then she looked at Gus. “What do I do? What do I say?”
“Let’s get you seated.” To Robby, she said, “Wait a moment.” The manual had come with stock phrases to elicit his responses and she had studied the most of it the night before.
“Oh. Kay.” His intonation made it two words.
When the customer was in a booth with a menu, Gus sat across from her.
Should she confess? Yes, she probably should. She leaned forward across the table. “You’re the first one to use him, so I’ll stay and see how this goes.” Then she pressed the button again and summoned Robby to the booth.
Again, he said, “How may I help you?” That was his standard initial greeting, obviously.
Gus signaled that the writer-customer should speak. “I’m working on a romance plot. I need a meet cute setting.”
After a whirring sound, Robby’s hand-claws shot out and grabbed a sheet of paper that spewed from his middle. Gus could see the printing on it, as could the other woman, but he also spoke, saying what the document said. Maybe, Gus thought, that was for blind people? Or if he ran out of paper?
“Cute meet should take place in a pleasant setting. Consider a rustic inn or an antique shop.”
The customer spoke. “This is awesome. I know just the setting for a rustic inn.” She handled the sheet of paper like it was a precious document.
“Glad to be of help,” Robby interjected.
“Oh, thank you,” the woman said. “So, rustic inn. What season should I choose?”
Another whir of gears and another paper, grabbed by his metal pincher claws and held out to her. “Christmas time is best. Followed by summer vacation.”
“I need to get this into my story.” The woman opened her laptop and started typing.
Gus whispered. “Are you set for a bit now?”
“Oh yes!”
“That is all,” Gus said, giving Robby his cue to go back to his docking station.
But he didn’t stay there long. When Gus got up from the booth bench, she could see that half the diner had been tuned in. Several were ready to use Robby right then. She could see that she would have to devise a system. Maybe the writers could take numbers. But for now, she went to the next booth and offered Robby’s services.
Making the rounds of the booths and tables, Robby was put through his paces, spewing out papers and ideas for science fiction, mystery, suspense, and one medieval history novel. He provided the authors setting, characters, and even some dialog. The customer/writers all seemed pleased with his help.
Mr. Man, as Gus thought of him now, even approached her and asked what was going on. But when Gus summoned Robby to his booth and the robot gave the man some ideas about where to conceal bodies, Mr. Man sneered. “That sounds terrible. I would never use anything so stupid.”
Robby had remained silent after the insult, until Gus dismissed him with the standard phrase. “That is all.”
The days flew by in a flurry, with Robby zooming here and there. Gus stopped keeping track of him, having decided to let the customers use the remote to summon and communicate with him using the page of standard Robby prompts that Gus had printed out for them. The cook and two servers were exhausted at the end of each day.
A couple of times, Robby had gone over to Mr. Man, although Gus was sure the robot hadn’t been summoned. Mr. Man yelled, “Go away,” one time. Another time he kicked Robby and nearly knocked him over. Gus had come running and told him not to ever touch Robby again.
At the end of another successful Robby day, Gus was floating, happier than she’d been since the high when she first opened her place. Robby was parked under Velma’s shelf. After Gus plugged him in and refilled his paper tray tummy, she let the cat out. As the last customer left, Faye turned off the outside sign.
“This is fun!” Faye said. “Almost makes me want to write a novel.”
“It is fun, isn’t it? I hope this will give us a lot of new business.”
“And repeat business,” Sudie said, clearing the table behind them. “They’ll have to keep coming back to get more ideas, right?”
“I guess.” Gus picked up some dirty plates at the next table. “You’d think they would eventually catch on, though. You know, learn to write their own stuff.”
“We’ll see, won’t we? It would be great if that cranky guy would quit coming, though.” Faye went to get the mop and bucket and all three woman started to clean up, happy in their victory.
Bray, the chef, had cleaned up the kitchen and taken out the garbage, then used the gent’s room. He came bursting out of there into the dining room, a look of horror on his face. “I just went to… He’s in there… You have to go see. Right now.”
Gus ran behind him, down the short hallway to the restrooms, closely followed by the two servers.
There was a body, all right, staring sightless at the bathroom ceiling, one leg twisted at an impossible angle.
What do you know. It’s Mr. Man.
“Velma, you shouldn’t be here.” Gus scooped her up, but not before observing that the cat was right. It was their original fiction writer, Manchester Shackleton. A man who must have had many enemies, and one serious one.
Gus punched 9-1-1 on her cell phone, then dashed to the dining room to leave Velma there. When the cops arrived, Bray, Faye, and Sudie were standing with her, gazing at the bloodied body of the writer.
The police took statements from everyone, then wanted to know when they had noticed the victim was not at his booth in the diner. No one had noticed. He was easy to overlook, since he sat in the back and never ordered much. They had all learned to mostly ignore him.
The one who seemed to be in charge, a tall, thin, wiry guy, Officer Bennett, asked Gus to give him the names of all the customers for that day. They had moved into the dining room where Gus and her employees sat at the big corner booth while the two officers stood.
“Oh gosh. I can’t do that off the top of my head.”
“Can you give me any names at all?”
She thought of mentioning Nate and Cal, her thug loan enforcers, but decided that wasn’t a good idea. Her cousin Eddie had come by, so she gave him his name.
“But you have receipts, don’t you?”
Gus considered that. She was the one who took payments at the cash register as the customers left. “Some of them pay with cash. But I can get the credit card information. It won’t take long. I’ll have to go through them and get you some names. I’ll get them from my office.” She had already taken the cash and receipts there when Bray made his discovery.
“Officer Monroe will accompany you.”
The uniformed soft-looking blond woman with a serious face standing behind Officer Bennett stepped forward. “Officer Monroe,” she said unnecessarily. Why did Gus need to be accompanied, though? “Is my office a crime scene?”
“For now, the whole place is a crime scene, until we can determine what happened where. It looks like he was killed here. But we’ll have to tape it off until Crime Scene lets us know what they find.”
As she spoke, a van with the letters CSI on the door pulled up in front and technicians invaded the place.
Eventually, Gus and her three employees were allowed to move about and retrieve their belongings under supervision. Officer Monroe followed Gus to her office and watched her go through the receipts. Velma went with them and curled up on the floor beside the desk.
“Any of them stand out?” she asked. “Did any of the customers quarrel with him?”
Gus was able to pick out the receipts of the writers who had had words with the dead man.
Those writers were accusing Mr. Man of stealing their material. I never told you that.
No, she hadn’t. But now, Gus gave that information to the officer, leaving Velma out of it. She was sure none of those writers had murdered him and she said so.
While the officer was still there, Gus tallied the receipts and cash so she would be able to make the bank deposit. It was Friday, so she would have to use the outside drop box. Or maybe she would wait until Monday.
“Officer Monroe, can Velma and I go upstairs soon?”
“What’s upstairs?” She and another cop had done a cursory search of the diner and kitchen, and hadn’t seemed to find anything out of place, other than the ketchup and mustard bottles waiting to be refilled. Bray was good about getting food put away quickly at the end of the day, or before, since no one ordered much when it was near closing time. He always left that task for the very end.
But no one had gone upstairs.
“That’s where we live. Velma and I.”
“Um, and who is Velma?”
She immediately introduced herself by twining herself around Officer Monroe’s left leg.
“That’s Velma. She’s my cat.”
The police woman looked surprised. “Oh. And you live upstairs? Can you stay somewhere else tonight?”
There was a motel at the edge of town. Gus could probably go there, but really didn’t want to spend the money. “I would have to get some things first. Cat food, and my toothbrush, and stuff. I guess I’ll have to bring the litter box.”
“Let me ask if you can stay here. Wait in the office. I’ll be right back.”
“Velma needs to eat soon. And get to her litter box.”
Eventually, the officials went over the apartment and Gus and Velma were permitted to spend the night there. The stairway to it was in the rear and led to the back door. They were told to use only that door if they needed to go out. Augustine’s Comfy Corner would have to remain closed the next day.
That would hurt. They did good business on Saturdays. She and Velma hunkered down, or up, in the apartment. With the door open, Gus kept track of the team still working below, now with spotlights. Velma was able to creep most of the way down the stairs and report back. When they passed by to the back door, which they were now using, they bore bags of things they had collected. Two of them were taking photos. Others went out the door bearing the body of Mr. Shackleton, zipped into an ugly black bag.
When they had all left and it was once again quiet and dark in the diner, Gus couldn’t resist going back down to look at the scene. She couldn’t imagine they would be back to collect more material. Nor could she imagine what was in the evidence bags they had taken away. She carried Velma with her for companionship.
The whole men’s room was cordoned off with the usual yellow crime scene tape. So she stood outside that and gazed in at the room, trying to remember exactly what she had seen.
He had been lying, crumpled, in the center of the room. She knew Bray would have cleaned it after he used it, usually his last job of the day, if he hadn’t found the body there. So it would not have been pristine when the technicians had gone over it. There had to be lots of DNA, but how would it be useful?
She wondered how Mr. Man had been killed. There had been some blood on his body, and a puddle of it still stood on the floor, but not a large one. She hadn’t seen a knife, but his face, neck, and torso had been punctured with something, making holes in his shirt. She remembered spots where the blood oozed out. As far as she could remember, a weapon hadn’t been left there. If a knife or utensil from her kitchen had been used, the officials would have taken it, so something else had made those wounds.
The next Monday, as she turned on her sign, she saw that the police had tacked up a paper notice on her door. It asked the customers who had been in the diner on Friday to contact the police. Would that be bad for business? She had already missed two days, the whole weekend. Officer Monroe had called Sunday night to tell her she could reopen. That brought her a huge sigh of relief. She would have to make another payment to Nate and Cal this coming Friday.
The place got only half the usual customers that day, but the ones who did show up buzzed with chatter about the murder, comparing their experiences at being questioned at the small police station in town.
The sooner this is all over, the better it will be for your business.
Gus agreed with Velma. This needed to be resolved so everything could get back to normal.
Throughout the day, she would see people come to the diner’s front door, read the sign, then turn away. She hoped they were going to the station to comply, and not shunning her diner because of the dead body. The news stations and the local newspaper headlined the death, saying the police were asking for information to solve the crime. So, it was officially a murder. It had to be. A person would never inflict wounds like that on himself.
Do you remember the shape of the wounds?
“I’m not sure,” Gus murmured. “They were all bloody. I couldn’t see them that well.”
Think about it.
Gus did, through the day, but didn’t come to any conclusions. Each wound seemed to be shaped like a pair of crescents, but what would make cuts like that?
Robby was summoned a few times, but not as many as on last Friday. Gus let Sudie go home in the middle of the day, since she asked, and there wasn’t enough business for two servers. She worked the counter and the cash register, as usual, and watched some of the customers summon the robot now and then.
Gus was impatient, fidgety, hoping for a call from the police telling her they had nailed the culprit. By midafternoon she couldn’t stand it any longer. She dialed the number that was on the card Officer Bennett, the thin, wiry one, had given her.
“We’re still investigating.”
“So, you’re taking DNA and everything?”
“We are, but it won’t do us any good. There was no DNA recovered. None at all. I’ve never seen anything like this. Hey, scratch that. I shouldn’t have told you. It’s just so…strange.”
Gus pondered that while she made a few milkshakes and a sundae.
Late in the afternoon, Faye dropped a plate coming out of the kitchen. Gus rushed over to help her clean it up, grabbing a roll of paper towels from under the counter on her way. She and Faye crouched for a minute or two, swabbing away.
As Gus rose to dispose of the dirty paper towels in the plastic sack she had set nearby, her backside bumped against something. When she turned, she saw that it was Robby, coming from the kitchen.
How odd, she thought. Why was he here? What had he been doing back there?
He rolled past them, his little metal hands sticking out in front of him, ready to grab the next paper he produced.
She went to Bray, in the kitchen. “Did you summon Robby in here?”
“Robby? Oh, that robot. No, and he’s a pest sometimes the way he rolls around in here, in my way. I was going to mention that to you.”
“That’s strange. He’s supposed to park himself by his charger between his jobs. Maybe I’ll have to read through the manual again.” That thing was 75 pages longShe would do it in her apartment tonight.
As she paged through the instructions manual in her bedroom, Velma curled up beside her on the floor. But she lifted her head and got Gus’s attention before she was half through it.
Do you hear that?
Gus listened. Someone was downstairs. Was someone breaking into her diner? The money wasn’t there. Would they vandalize her place? She had to go downstairs to look.
Take me with you.
She didn’t want to. Cats were rather fragile, as beings go. But Velma jumped from the table to her shoulder and would not be dissuaded.
“Okay, but if there’s any danger, stay right where you are.”
Gus crept down the back stairs and tiptoed through the kitchen. She was heading for the dining room when the kitchen doors opened. With a faint whir, Robby appeared.
“What are you doing?” she shouted. He stopped and turned his painted face toward her, but that wasn’t one of the standard phrases he understood. He went to the back door, turned around, and returned to the dining room.
Robby was apparently unaware of her, even though she had yelled at him. She followed him as he returned to his corner and docked himself for charging.
He stood there, complacently, quietly gathering electricity for the next day. She stared at him and wondered what was going on.
Look at him. Carefully.
She did. And she saw his little claw hands. Exactly the shape of the wounds on Mr. Manchester Shackleton’s body.
Gus reached over and unplugged him, her hand shaky, expecting him to protest somehow. Then she ran upstairs, knowing he wasn’t completely out of juice and might resent what she had just done. The way he must have been insulted by Mr. Man.
When the police came and measured him, then bundled him up and took him away, she was conflicted. He’d been great for business. But he’d been terrible for Mr. Man.
She would have to think of another way to build up her business. Buy ten meals get one free?
THE END
Kaye George is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer who writes cozy and traditional mysteries and a prehistory series, which are both traditionally and self-published. Her two cozy series are Fat Cat and Vintage Sweets. The two traditional series feature Cressa Carraway and Imogene Duckworthy. The People of the Wind prehistory mysteries take place within a Neanderthal tribe. About 50 or more short stories have also been published, mostly in anthologies and magazines. With family scattered all over the globe, she makes her home in Knoxville TN.
