Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(2)

Ronni did, Hannah thought, but she didn’t say it. She’s enough to set any woman off. “I wonder if Ellie knows where Bert is,” Hannah speculated.

“She knows. She’s over there at the kitchen door, just staring at Bert. If looks could kill, Bert would be a statistic. One of these days Ronni is going to get hers, and it won’t be pretty.”

“Right,” Hannah said, and then she leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “I just hope I’m there to see it.”

“Me too! Maybe someone ought to call Stephanie Bascomb, and Sally Percy, and Amalia Greerson, and invite them to come out here for lunch.”

“You wouldn’t!” Hannah said, giving her sister a long hard look.

“Probably not, but it’s fun to think about what would happen if somebody…uh-oh! Bridget got loose!”

Both sisters watched anxiously as Bridget raced back toward Ronni’s table. Cyril looked dazed, and Hannah had a sneaking suspicion that Bridget had bitten him on the shoulder since he was rubbing it through his shirt. It took him a moment to recover, and that gave Bridget time to reach her goal. Once she arrived, red-faced and panting, she hurtled herself at Ronni and grabbed her by the hair.

“Have you no shame?” Bridget’s voice took on the thick Irish brogue of her ancestors. “He’s got a wife and baby, and another one on the way. You leave my boy alone or you’ll answer to me!”

“You tell her, Bridget!” someone shouted, and it sounded like Ellie to Hannah.

“Knock it off, will you? We’re trying to enjoy our lunch here!” a diner shouted, and Hannah recognized the voice. It was her downstairs neighbor, Phil Plotnik, and he was sitting with a whole table of DelRay workers.

“Be quiet! Both of you!” a woman called out from a booth across the room. “And if you can’t, do us a favor and take it outside!”

Several other shouts for Ronni and Bridget to cease and desist came from various sections of the dining room. Almost everyone wanted the altercation to end, but it was pretty clear that there was even more trouble brewing when a half-dozen Jordan High students at a table in the center began to clap and whistle.

“Food fight!” one of the boys yelled, and all six of them started to hurl garlic bread and meatballs.

Pandemonium ensued in very short order. Waitresses squealed and ran for the safety of the kitchen, several metal pizza pans hit the floor with a clatter, and a plastic Coke glass sailed across the room, barely missing the tall, straw-cradled bottle of Chianti that Ellie had placed next to the cash register.

“Time to go to work,” Bill said, sliding over in tandem with Mike. “Let us out, will you? We’ve got to break this up before those Jordan High students do some damage.”

“And before Bridget and Ronni really hurt each other,” Mike added, and then he turned to Bill. “It’s your call. You outrank me.”

Bill didn’t hesitate. “I’ll take the Jordan High kids. You take the women.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Mike said with a grin. “Okay…let’s roll.”

Once they’d let Bill and Mike out of the booth, Hannah and Andrea sat back down to watch the men in action. For several moments it was a free-for-all as Cyril tried to pull Bridget away. Invectives from the women and the patrons alike rebounded. At the same time, Italian sausage, breadsticks, antipasto, and spaghetti vied for air supremacy. Andrea and Hannah leaned out to catch the action, ducking back when any edible ammunition came within their range. It took several minutes, and Andrea wound up with a splatter of marinara sauce on her arm, but it was clear the tide had turned and the long arm of the law was winning.

“Wow!” Hannah gasped as Mike dashed nimbly over fallen platters, food, and drink glasses to lift Ronni out of the booth. He grabbed her by the waist like a father dealing with a recalcitrant child, and carried her out the door.

“Wow is right.” Andrea motioned toward the table of students. Bill had just arrived at the table and as they watched, he disarmed them neatly by grabbing the edge of their red-and-white checkered tablecloth and removing their weaponry in one massive jerk.

“Good thing he doesn’t know how to do Herb’s trick with the tablecloth,” Hannah said, chuckling as she remembered her mother’s shock when Herb Beeseman, Hannah’s partner’s new husband and an amateur magician, had grabbed the edge of the tablecloth at the last dinner party they’d attended and whisked it away, leaving everything on the table intact.

Their lunch dates were nothing if not efficient, and in remarkably short order peace was restored. A squad of Bertanelli’s waitstaff hurried out to make the mess disappear, and within a matter of a minute or two, patrons were once more able to enjoy their lunch and hear Tuscan melodies over the sound system.

“That was fast!” Hannah commented. “Bill calmed those students down in nothing flat. Your guy’s good at this.”

“So’s yours,” Andrea responded, snagging one of the remaining pieces of pizza.

“He’s not mine. I’m not even sure he’s partially mine, not when Ronni’s living in the apartment right across the hall from him.”

Andrea picked up a slice of mushroom that had fallen to the platter and popped it into her mouth. “I don’t think Ronni will be around for much longer, at least not at the sheriff’s department. Bill called her in last week and told her that if he heard one more word of gossip about her and any of the married deputies, he’d fire her.”