“Chief, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you before I accepted . . .”
“No problem. But there is one.”
“Sir?”
“Does your dad know?”
Peter shook his head, “no.”
“The problem is you’re going to have to tell him before he finds out, for one thing. And when he finds out, he’ll think you just might be getting a little too big for your britches.”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You’ve got that message?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Okay. Then I will take pity on you and tell you I already told him I was going to tell you to accept. But now you know how the phones work in here, I’d get on it. Call him and ask him what he thinks. Even money he’ll say go ahead.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Thanks again for lunch, Peter,” Coughlin said and walked out of the Grill Room.
Susan led Matt three blocks from the First Harrisburg Bank & Trust to a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant.
The place was spotless, and the waitress, a tall blonde about as old as Susan looked, Matt thought, like a visual definition of innocent and wholesome. She wore a starched white lace hat on top of her blond hair, which was parted in the middle and done up in a bun at her neck. Her white cotton blouse—buttoned to the neck—was covered with an open black sweater. Her black skirt was more than halfway down her calves, and her starched white apron matched the cap. No makeup, of course.
She smiled gently, and apparently sincerely, at Susan and Matt.
I wonder what she would do if she knew she was about to serve two felons?
“Are you going to have lunch with us?” she asked. There was a Germanic accent to her speech.
“That depends on what you have,” Matt said.
She looked at him curiously.
“Please,” Susan said and kicked him under the table.
When the waitress left, Matt asked, “Did I say something wrong?”
“She’s Amish, I think,” Susan said. “But whatever, she’s what they call plain people, and she would not understand your smart-ass wit.”
“How am I going to order lunch if I don’t know what’s on the menu?”
Susan inclined her head toward the waitress, who was pushing a large-wheeled cart toward their table.
“What a big-city sophisticate like you would probably call prix fixe,” Susan said. “As much as you want, all one price. But don’t be a pig; take only what you intend to eat. It hurts them when you don’t eat everything on your plate. They think you didn’t like it.”
“Yes, Mother,” Matt said.
There was an enormous display of food in bowls and on platters arranged on the cart.
Matt took roast pork, beef pot roast, potatoes au gratin, lima beans, apple sauce, beets, succotash, two rolls, butter, what looked to him like some kind of apple pie, iced tea, and coffee.
The wholesome waitress smiled at him approvingly, then served Susan approximately one-third as much food.
“Did you hear what I said about eating everything?” Susan said when the waitress had rolled the cart away.