Free Murder By The Pint (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 1) by Belle Knudson Page A

retail or in any job where you serve the public: You don’t correct a child's behavior when that child's parents are nearby. You just don’t do it. There's a liability there that no one on a retail or wait staff salary wants to deal with. All that was needed then was a parent nearby distracting the attention of anyone looking. And I think I know who it was."
    #
     
                  Tanya and I got down to Junior's just as he was locking up the joint. I pounded on the door. Junior came bounding over gesturing like a madman.
                  Muffled curses and questions came through the glass. "What is it? What are you doin'?"
                  "Please," I said, my face a mask of abject pity, "Junior, we need to come in."
                  He opened the door a crack and poked his head through. "You gotta be kidding me. First, the police show up and now you. Oy vey ist mir. "
                  It then struck me that because the place was officially closed, Junior was officially Sol Lipshitz again.
                  "You meshuggenah kids need to get a life."
                  "I'm thirty-eight years old."
                  " Pssshh, thirty-eight," he said, dismissing me with his hand. "I got a shaving brush that's older than that."
                  "Junior," I said, "we need to come in. It's a matter of life and death."
                  "Of course, what isn’t? Sure, come on in. Ask me to fire up the ovens while I'm at it."
                  "No need," I said, stepping into the restaurant.
                  The place smelled heavenly even after hours. I don’t know how anyone can get tired of the perfume of a pizza parlor.
                  "We need to see your receipts," I said.
                  He looked at Tanya. "She put you up to this too?"
                  Tanya held up her hands. "Don’t look at me. I'm only here for the ride."
                  "Okay," Junior said, rubbing his expanse of a sauce-stained belly with his meaty hand. "You want receipts? I got receipts."
                  He opened the cash register and extracted a long, uncut roll of receipt tape.
                  "This has all the transactions from the entire day. You're lucky I didn’t have to change rolls." He smiled. "Have fun. I'll be in the back contemplating suicide. Don’t worry."
                  I took the roll of tape and sat down with Tanya at a table for two.
                  "She paid around eight-thirty," I said.
                  "Yeah, you still haven't told me who."
                  "The woman."
                  "Ok, can you be more specific?"
                  I flipped through the receipt tape, trying to decode cash register language to read the time.
                  "Why can’t they just list the date and time normally. It's in military time. Eight-thirty, that's what? Twenty-fifty?"
                  "You know," said Tanya, "you should consider yourself lucky. Pizza places usually don’t have sophisticated registers like this one. And you haven't told me who."
                  "Who what?"
                  "The woman. Who's the woman?"
                  I continued scrolling through. "The woman was this tall, statuesque blonde in a mini-dress. You couldn’t miss her. The two meatheads behind the counter were all agog at her."
                  "Men," she said.
                  "Exactly. The point is she was a distraction. Her kid, or someone's kid, seized the opportunity to insert the note into the box."
                  "Sneaky."
                  "Here it is," I said, laying the roll down for her to see. "Okay then, we're out of luck. She paid cash. I was hoping for a name on a credit