“I walked ’em to their table.”
“You did, yeah. I just recognized them a minute ago.”
“Bad folks?”
“The worst.”
Baffled, she shook her head. “But, sugar, we know you weren’t followed.”
“I wasn’t, but maybe you were. Or maybe someone else who’s protecting Rose was followed.”
“Devil himself would have a hard time finding Rose if he had to depend on getting to her through us.”
“But somehow they’ve figured out who’s been hiding her for a year, and now they’re closing in.”
Glowering, wrapped by bulletproof confidence, Mahalia said, “Nobody’s gonna lay one little finger on Rose.”
“Is she here?”
“Waitin’ for you.”
A cold tide washed through his heart. “You don’t understand the two in the restaurant won’t have come alone. There’s sure to be more outside. Maybe a small army of them.”
“Yeah, maybe, but they don’t know what they’re dealin’ with, honey.” Thunderheads of resolve massed in her dark face. “We’re Baptists.”
Certain that he could not have heard the woman correctly, Joe hurried after her as she continued through the kitchen.
At the far end of the big room, they went through an open door into a sparkling scullery where fruits and vegetables were cleaned and trimmed before being sent in to the main cookery. This late in the restaurant’s day, no one was at work here.
Beyond the scullery was a concrete-floored receiving room that smelled of raw celery and peppers, damp wood and damp cardboard. On pallets along the right-hand wall, empty fruit and vegetable crates, boxes, and cases of empty beer bottles were stacked almost to the low ceiling.
Directly ahead, under a red Exit sign was a wide, steel exterior door, closed now, beyond which suppliers’ trucks evidently parked to make deliveries. To the left was an elevator.
“Rose is down below.” Mahalia pressed the call button, and the elevator doors slid open at once.
“What’s under us?”
“Well, one time, this was the service elevator to a banquet room and deck, where you could have big parties right on the beach, but we can’t use it like the joint did before us. Coastal Commission put a hard rule on us. Now it’s just a storeroom. Once you go down, I’ll have some boys come move the pallets and empty crates to this wall. We’ll cover the elevator real nice. Nobody’ll know it’s even here.”
Uneasy about being cornered, Joe said, “Yeah, but what if they come looking and they do find the elevator?”
“Gonna have to stop callin’ you Presentable Joe. Better would be Worryin’ Joe.”
“After a while, they will come looking. They won’t just wait till closing time and go home. So once I’m down there, do I have another way out?” he persisted.
“Never tore apart the front stairs, where the customers used to go down. Just covered the openin’ with hinged panels so you don’t really see it. You come up that way, though, you’ll be right across from the hostess station, in the middle of plain view.”
“No good.”
“So if somethin’ goes wrong, best to skedaddle out the lower door onto the deck. From there you have the beach, the whole coast.”
“They could be covering that exit too.”
“It’s down at the base of the bluff. From the upper level, they can’t know it’s there. You should just try to relax, sugar. We’re on the righteous side, which counts for somethin’.”
“Not much.”
“Worryin’ Joe.”
He stepped into the elevator but blocked the sliding door with his arm in case it tried to close. “How’re you connected with this place, Mahalia?”
“Half owner.”
“The food’s great.”
“You can look at me the way I am and think I don’t know?” she asked good-naturedly.
“What’re you to Rose?”
“Gonna call you Curious Joe pretty soon. Rose married my brother Louis about twenty-two years ago. They met in college. Wasn’t truly surprised when Louis turned out smart enough to go to college, but I was sure surprised he had the brains to fall for someone like Rose. Then, of course, the man proved he was a pure fool, after all, when he up and divorced her four years later. Rose couldn’t have kids, and havin’ kids was important to Louis though with less air in his skull and any common sense at all, the man would’ve realized Rose was more treasure than a houseful of babies.”