Bread of the Dead: A Santa Fe Cafe Mystery by Ann Myers Page B

delicious,” she conceded, already digging in for a second bite. “But here, take this with you. You have an embarrassing typo on your menu.” She thrust it at me. I guessed the issue before I saw the red marks slashed across the laminated page. The chili vs. chile spelling debate. Indeed, she had scribbled out every e and added i and armies of exclamation points.
    â€œYou’ll want to correct this,” she said snippily. “I don’t like to patronize restaurants with sloppy errors, and I know others who feel the same way. I’ll try to hold off my Yelp review about this, but . . .”
    She let the “but” hang ominously. A red marker lay beside her tapping right index finger.
    I summoned the last dregs of perky. “Actually, here in New Mexico, we spell ‘chile’ with an ‘e’ because of the central role of the chile pepper, spelled with an ‘e.’ Like the famous Hatch green chiles, which I’m sure you’ve heard about. Our chile sauces and stews focus on the pepper, unlike say chili con carne in other parts of the country.”
    â€œI like Cincinnati-­style chili,” her friend said, glancing up from the cell phone that had attracted her attention throughout the chili vs. chile discussion.
    Thank goodness Flori wasn’t here to see the vandalized menu or hear New Mexico chiles mentioned in the same sentence as ground-­beef chili on top of spaghetti. Once, a customer had asked for the Cincinnati version. After the full details of the dish emerged, Flori nearly evicted the man for blasphemy.
    The lady in gold dumped syrup on her waffle. Although she didn’t seem to care about spelling grievances, she continued to have color concerns. “I’ve never had such a blue breakfast. Do you have any whipped cream to cover it up? I’ll need more plain syrup too. And a refill on coffee and more Sweet’n Low and fat-­free creamer—­hazelnut, if you have it.”
    Grateful for an excuse to leave, I commanded my sleep-­deprived brain to remember her requests and headed to table one, hoping the carne adovada hadn’t turned tepid. I immediately recognized the figure behind the newspaper. His cowboy hat hung on the back of the chair and his legs, in dark blue jeans, were crossed elegantly, one cowboy boot swinging over the other.
    â€œIncoming carne ,” I said brightly to alert Jake to my presence. I’m not the only person to blame for throwing around plates of hot food. You can’t trust customers, including respectable ones like Jake Strong. Customers make sudden moves that send their own plates flying. The kicker is that they get rewarded with a free meal.
    He quickly folded the paper and cleared a wide spot for me to land the plate in. Okay, so I once spilled a bowl of soup—­more specifically, red chile posole—­on handsome Jake Strong. It was right after my divorce and I’d just talked to Mom. In her usual fashion, she’d infected my mind with thoughts of If you don’t start looking for a man now, you’ll end up old and lonely . When I saw Jake, those thoughts turned to, Here’s a decent, employed, and gorgeous man; sure hope I don’t do something horrible like spill posole all over him . At that moment, another customer bumped into me and the embarrassing vision came true. Flori had wiped off Jake’s jeans with a wet towel and flirted brazenly with him. That’s when I got serious about the no-­dating moratorium. No worrying, no pressure, no spilling of hot soup or overheated emotions.
    Now, a hint of Jake’s cologne—­a delicious mix of bergamot and cedar—­wafted toward me. He pointed to his paper, snapping me back from cologne enjoyment to gloomy reality. “Such terrible news,” he said.
    Victor’s smiling face graced the front page of the Santa Fe New Mexican , right below the headline, RENOWNED LOCAL ARTIST