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Chapter 1
It only took one stolen glance at her boss’s laptop screen for Molly Resnick to realize her career was over. The unplanned intrusion into her restaurant’s back office had been exactly that and would have remained so had it not been for the tri-folded paper on the floor taunting her OCD with its sharp corner poking beneath the door. If it had been anyone else’s office, she’d have assumed the poor thing had been the victim of a breeze through the small open window. Because it was her boss’s office, however, odds were good that the messy precursor was due to his gorilla-like organizational skills instead.
Jeffrey Buchanan may have been the owner of the most popular restaurant in Northern New Hampshire, but he had the coordination and care of a male silverback foraging through the African forests. Instead of snapped shoots and torn leaves, papers, coffee cups, and empty wrappers from a week’s worth of breakfast sandwiches littered his habitat.
Marie Kondo he was not.
Molly used to think it was a big fat blessing that Aurora’s health department stuck to inspecting only the restaurant’s food service spaces. Now, however, with the weight of the municipality’s raised seal pressing against her palm as she clutched the court document and analyzed the screen in front of her, she wasn’t so sure.
A writ of seizure and sale. They were words she’d never heard in that combination before. More to the point, they were words she absolutely couldn’t reconcile with the restaurant’s banking information that had been left up on the screen.
Zero after zero after zero, all preceded by a glaring negative sign. All painted with the angry shame of New England’s favorite sinful color: scarlet.
Molly tore through the court notice again and desperately sought out what she was missing, because surely, she had to be missing something.
To: Police Chief Ethan Montgomery of Aurora, municipality of Drake County, or court-appointed bailiff.
Under an order of this court, you are directed to seize and sell the real and personal property of JEFFREY BUCHANAN, OWNER/OPERATOR OF SERENDIPITY RESTAURANT, LLC, and to realize from the seizure and sale, the following sums with compounded interest . . .
Numbers and names blurred into a kaleidoscope of confusion after that. Molly obviously identified the restaurant’s address, but the other properties and figures made no sense. Establishments she’d never heard of in zip codes she couldn’t afford to breathe the air in, let alone live in. Vehicles whose makes and models had more numbers than names attached to them. Even two other restaurants elsewhere in New England.
What did make sense on some horrific level was what a bank statement looked like when debt, overdraft fees, and nonpayment notices piled up.
And these were all for the restaurant’s business and payroll accounts. The restaurant she was the current sous-chef at and had been working her hind quarters off for, hoping to be tapped as the new chef de cuisine once the current one retired within the next year.
Outside the office door, the usual sounds of the midmorning prep stations did little to dislodge her stomach from her throat and punch it back down to her abdomen. Soft taps of blades on boards and cleaned ceramic being stacked rankled, rather than reprieved. Two hours ago, she’d thrown her feet into her black Danskos, cinched her apron, and readied herself to be elbows-deep in her morning produce inspection. Those early hours had always been reserved for her precious sanity and the rote aspects of inventorying ingredients.
Now? With her holding a modern-day wanted poster sporting her boss’s name, and a bank account statement ensuring that next week’s paycheck, not to mention the food orders she’d just approved, wouldn’t be funded? Well, she hadn’t realized just how precious her taken-for-granted sanity truly was.
And like all other precious things, it had turned out to be just as finite and far too costly.
Molly froze, bent over the cluttered desk, even as adrenaline fueled her limbs to flee. Mr. Buchanan had rushed out of his office about twenty minutes ago with a phone clutched to his ear. Would he be back? Were the police on their way? Did she simply shut the door, join the staff, and do her paranoid best to pretend like she could muddle through the Wednesday lunch and dinner services without having a panic attack?
As soon as the questions fluttered through her mind, a deeper, louder question bullied its way to the forefront, causing her to strangle the court-ordered career death warrant in her grip.
Why is it always a freaking man?
And just who the hell insisted on lining up a blockade of Y chromosomes in front of her whenever her culinary profession’s advancement was on the line? She’d knocked every one of them down, of course, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t tired of the routine.
Molly leaned into the familiar indignation with the long-held practice of equal parts disbelief and disillusionment. Then she dropped the writ, shoved herself away from the laptop, and forced her flyaway waves back behind her ears.
This was not happening. This was absolutely not happening.
On the third deep breath, she composed herself enough to show her face to the staff. She was just about to leave the office when her phone went off. Benny, her butcher chef and kitchen ride-or-die, flashed across the screen, and some of that earlier dread pushed its way to the surface.
“Benny? Everything okay? You’re off today.”
“Are you alone, Mol?”
She shifted the phone against her ear. “Um, I can be.”
“Good. Get it done and let me know when you’re settled.” The deep timbre of his warning belied any false bravado she’d been working herself up to, effectively giving her permission to freak the heck out.
She sank back into the office and shut the door. “I’m alone.”
Benny didn’t speak. Instead, rhythmic tapping filled their air space until it was punctuated with a melodic swoosh. “I just sent it to you.”
Molly pulled the phone away from her ear and opened up the article he’d just texted. She’d only managed to comprehend a few of the words in the headline before her palms turned clammy, threatening her grip on the phone.
