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I stared at him, but Ricardo refused to meet my eyes. The cop pulled him around toward the paramedic as the officer spoke. “You realize that if he dies, you will be charged with homicide.”
“He won’t die! I only gave him enough to make him sick.”
I gasped. “Ricardo! Why would you do that?”
“Why do you think? I was never going to get the head chef position with you here. I need you out of the way. I was hoping Randolph would fire you for negligence.”
I stepped forward and smacked him across the face. A moment later, one of the police officers was pulling me back from him. “You deserve to be in jail! How could you do that to someone? How could you do that to me? After everything that I have done for you! You tried to ruin my reputation! You screwed around with all of your co-worker's lives and with our customers! They trusted us to feed them healthy food, and you poisoned them!”
“What meal was it, Ricardo?” the paramedic asked again. “We know it was a chicken meal.”
Ricardo clamped his mouth shut, but one of the waitresses stepped forward. “I served four chicken meals about ten minutes ago.”
“How many other chicken meals have gone out in the last fifteen minutes?” Anton asked as he glanced over the rest of the waitstaff who had gathered right inside the kitchen door.
“I had two, but I just put them down on the table.”
“I had one; the rest of mine have been beef and seafood,” another waitress stated.
I turned to Malick. “How many chicken meals have you plated in the last fifteen minutes?”
He seemed to think for a moment. “Only seven.”
The paramedic nodded and turned toward the waitstaff. “Please take me to the tables where they were served.”
While he rushed out into the dining room, Anton hot on his heels, Ricardo was ushered out of the kitchen in handcuffs. A police officer asked where the employees stored their things, and I showed him, pointing out Ricardo’s items. He gathered all of his things, stating that they were going to keep them until they got a search warrant to go through them.
“How did he do it?”
“The guy on the phone said that he came back here and put a glove on. He had watched enough to know they don’t normally wear gloves, and not in the locker room. Then the guy was in his stuff briefly before he hurriedly walked out of here and to his station. He stuck his finger into the food, then removed the glove.” He walked over to a trash can and lifted a few things before retrieving a plastic baggie with a glove inside from the trash. “And put it into a baggie, tossed it here, and then went to wash his hands.”
The last few minutes ran through my mind. I remembered him walking away and coming back, then I glanced up as I put a seafood platter next to a chicken plate and saw him washing his hands.
“I know what plate it was. The other diner at his table had a seafood plate.” Malick nodded and rushed out of the kitchen into the dining room.
“So Ricardo was getting the E. coli on his finger and then putting it into the food?” I rubbed my temple. “I can’t believe he would do that to me. Of everyone in my kitchen, it was him that I trusted the most.”
“I’m sorry about that. I need to get a little more information from you if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah, let me get the kitchen shifted around.” I turned back to the kitchen, but as I looked around, the staff was already back to work. All of them quiet, several frowning as if they couldn’t believe what had happened. Well, stand in line. “You guys know what to do.”
I turned and walked into my office. We had been short before, and we were on the decline with meals coming in at this time of night, so I knew that they could handle it.
The officer and I sat in my office, and I explained everything that had happened while giving him copies of all the reports from the Health Department and explaining about the cameras.
“Those cameras were a good idea, and the guy on the other end was observing. As soon as he saw something out of the ordinary, he called us.”
“Do you know who called?”
He glanced at his notes. “Mike Johnson, Safety Zone Security.”
I nodded. Not sure why I was disappointed that it hadn’t been Harvey, but I was.
He asked me a few more questions and then said that a detective would probably be in touch with me the next day. I stared at the phone. I needed to call Randolph, but it was after three in the morning there. It would have to wait until tomorrow afternoon.
I returned to the kitchen, where the conversation immediately died as I stepped into the room. I inhaled and then released it slowly.
“I’m only going to ask this once; was anyone in here aware that he was doing that?”
