Plantation Underworld, page 14
“Well, it looks like you’re off to a great start. This meal was positively top-notch, the service was excellent, and the setting is beautiful. I’m very proud of you, my dear girl,” Mr. Capshaw told his daughter. He made a motion to leave, saying that he did not want to hold Dollie and Jonas up.
Sara told her father she would take them back to the B&B. She wanted to show them around the Plantation. Ellen and Tim Capshaw went over to Dollie and Jonas to thank them for bringing them to the Tavern and let them know Sara would bring them back. Brenda said goodbye as she had to return to work in Richmond.
Tim and Ellen had taken a tour of the main house when they first came to visit Sara at Becksley. So, they walked the grounds with Sara to have a private conversation.
Her father asked her about the partnership with “this Harry guy.”
“He is a highly regarded chef in Florida,” she told them. “I ran into him again when I took a little vacation shortly after buying the Tavern. He was looking for a job and I was looking for a partner who could help me run this place and expand the business. He has a daughter that is staying here for the summer, but she’ll soon start school at Wallsley Academy in Williamsburg. He’s paying for all of that, so, right now, he isn’t able to contribute any capital, but his ideas and business knowledge has helped to turn a pretty good profit,” she said. “It should only get better from here on.”
“I wish you the best of luck, princess,” Tim said. He handed her an envelope and told her it should tide her over for a while. It was a check for $5,000.
“Oh, thank you, Daddy,” she gushed. “I’ll put it away for when and if I need it.”
He advised her to keep this to herself.
Tim and Ellen relaxed with wine and cheese in the sitting room at the B&B. He confided to Ellen there was something about Harry he didn’t like. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he was uneasy about his daughter’s involvement with him. Ellen agreed. They both hoped Sara would wait a long time before deciding to marry him. It would not displease them if she never did.
41
Summer flew by, and Ruthie began her sophomore year at Walsley in September 1981. Fall business was hit or miss. Harry spent quite a bit of time in Williamsburg, getting Ruthie settled at Wallsley.
Sara wanted to be better prepared for the Thanksgiving holiday than she had in the past. With the expanded dining room, she felt they could do much better. She certainly didn’t want to do a buffet, but she wasn’t quite sure how to step things up and make the Tavern a destination place for the holiday meal.
Megan set up a meeting with Sara and took the liberty of inviting Robert Andrews, the executive chef at the Richmond Plaza Hotel. Chef Robert believed in reciprocal business. He wanted to see the Horse and Carriage Tavern become a fine dining restaurant. He received many requests for referrals from patrons of the Plaza. He liked the idea of sending them on a sort of adventure. He detailed a game plan that would include a prix-fixe, limited-item menu.
“Have the typical Thanksgiving dinner as a choice,” he said, “but then add about four or five other unique options like duck, lamb, filet mignon, and an above-average seafood or fish dinner. More than 50 percent of your customers, that day, will order the turkey dinner, but having those other options will portray an upscale image.”
Chef Robert also advised her to schedule two-hour seatings and allow an hour in between each to allow the staff to reset the dining room. “You should start at eleven thirty, followed by two thirty, and finally five thirty. At $50 a head plus cocktails and wine, you’re looking at the possibility of $10,000 in business in one day. Have your chef get such a menu together and, if you want, I’ll look it over for you.” Now, my fee for this is lunch. What’s good today?”
Harry’s ego didn’t allow him to consult directly with Chef Robert, but he referred to Megan’s notes and came up with what he thought was an exceptional menu. It included the typical turkey dinner with all of the “trimmings,” veal meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes, gravy and roasted fall vegetables, New York strip steak, and bourbon-glazed salmon. Desserts included rum-butter pound cake, minted peach sorbet, and chocolate molten lava cake.
The eleven-thirty seating went quite well as they were only at half capacity. The two-thirty and five-thirty seatings were a bit more chaotic. They needed to have a more experienced chef preparing the specialty items. Emma and the sisters did an outstanding job with the turkey dinners. The waitstaff handled the crowds just fine and did their best to keep customers satisfied despite some long wait times for their food orders to come out.
At the end of the day, Megan sat with Sara to go over the day’s receipts. At approximately $7,500, the numbers fell short of what they had hoped for. The waitstaff, however, expressed great satisfaction with their tips.
“It was a good learning experience,” Megan told her. “I’ll do a profit and loss on just this day to see where it stands, and we’ll be able to determine what needs to be done to improve and still make money. If we’re going to go after special-event business, we’ll need to bring our A game with food and service.”
42
Each year, regular business between Thanksgiving and Christmas slowed down quite a bit. With no events on the calendar, Megan became concerned about paying the bills. The P&L she did for Thanksgiving Day showed very little profit for the purchases expended.
“I’m not sure Harry knows how to properly cost out a menu,” she stated. “His food purchases exceeded what was actually needed, and he hasn’t shown any initiative to incorporate any of that inventory into specials for our day-to-day business. Most of it will spoil before being used since it can’t be frozen.”
“I’ll see if we can use some of it,” Sara said. “Ruthie will be here for the holidays, so he can feed her with it.”
Megan didn’t quite have the heart to tell Sara just how much they didn’t use, so she quietly told Emma and the sisters to take some of it for themselves while leaving enough for Harry to use. This man is costing her money, Megan thought, but she can’t see it right now. She needs to hire someone who knows how to run a kitchen profitably.
She could barely pay the bills and make payroll. She told Sara she would likely be unable to pay the rent for December. Sara told her not to worry about it. Mr. MacMilner and Nate knew it was slow during the winter. As long as they got their free lunches and occasional dinners, she didn’t think they would push her too much.
With the prospect of Ruthie being around for the midterm break, Sara decided to take her “surplus” and the money her father had given her to go to Hopeville to open an account and apply for a credit card. All of her business accounts were at the bank in George City County, and she fully intended to keep this one a secret.
With the months seeming to fly by, Sara found herself no further ahead. Harry was not as good at running the business as he had told her he was. That didn’t help her relationship with him. The volume of business had increased exponentially but they were not making any progress financially. She had no idea how to solve it.
Mr. MacMilner became less patient with her late rent payments since he could see the business increasing, yet Sara always seemed to be short of money. He suspected she and Harry had their hands in the till a lot more than they should have.
Harry claimed it was the cost of doing business that made it difficult to turn a decent profit. He even went so far as to declare the waitstaff as private contractors; therefore, they did not have to pay any payroll taxes for them. This cost Sara a sizeable fine from the IRS when she filed her 1983 return.
To add insult to injury, Megan told Sara she was returning to the bank. She was offered a much higher paying position, and she accepted it.
“What am I going to do without you?” Sara was practically in tears. “Can you recommend someone?”
“I don’t know of anyone,” Megan told her. “I will go over everything with you so you can take things over. You really need to get a proper cash register so you can keep better track of sales. It is far too cumbersome to add up the individual checks every day and post them in a ledger. You also need to hire a company to do your payroll. That way, you won’t run into any issues like you have.”
“I can’t afford to do that,” Sara replied. “But I will buy a cash register.”
Megan told her she could work for one more month and she would train her and the staff at the cash register. She would also show Sara how to do the payroll. Megan had no confidence whatsoever that this would work out. Sara just decided to do the best she could. If necessary, she would ask her father for help. He was pleased with the fact that she had stuck with it for this long.
One of the cost-cutting measures Sara took over the next year was to buy flowers from a wholesaler in Richmond. She began doing her own flower arrangements for the special events that were booked. She even made some for the main house.
Mr. MacMilner and Nate were quite impressed with her abilities. They both told her she could supplement her profits by opening a flower shop on the grounds.
“That building you used for storage a few years ago is sitting there doing nothing. We can spruce it up, and I’ll let you have it rent free until it gets going provided you call it Becksley Flower Shop. We’ll direct traffic to it from our tours. We’ll also put little information cards on the arrangements at the main house. You have enough staff working at the Tavern, so you can put your efforts into the shop. I’ll even see if one of the tour guides would like to assist you if you need it. I’ll pay for that too,” MacMilner told her.
They truly wanted to see her succeed. Both had always liked having a restaurant on the grounds, and they were especially pleased with the increase in special-event business. Of course, the old man knew it was largely because they included this feature in their advertising for the Plantation. He was smart enough to know that people who came to these events might even return for tours and activities with their families. To him, it could be beneficial if things were done right.
Sara didn’t actually work at the Tavern all that much, so she was excited about trying her hand at this. Becksley Flower Shop was open for business in three months. A year later, the shop was providing the floral arrangements for all the weddings and special events on the Plantation. She stayed away from local deliveries. It wasn’t a daily business, so Sara split her time between the two. When she did have orders, she was able to hire two employees to help do the arrangements with her guidance.
It was hard tracking the actual profits from flower sales because she rang them up on the Tavern’s cash register. But she seemed better able to pay rent on the Tavern on time. She charged a good bit less than other florists in the area so she would get the business.
When it came to daily sales at the restaurant, though, the totals were still disappointing. Having the cash register didn’t seem to help.
One Friday evening as she was closing, one of her night-and-weekend servers, Drew Williams, turned to her and said he would see her tomorrow if she was going to be there. Drew was in his early thirties, lived in Richmond in an up-and-coming urban neighborhood. He had a good job with the state, but he found the extra income from waiting tables quite helpful in allowing him to have the lifestyle he wanted. His apartment was decorated with modern, expensive items that gave the place a luxurious look and feel.
“Can you stay and have a drink with me?” Sara asked. “I just don’t feel like going home right now.”
“Maybe for a short while,” he told her.
“I just don’t understand why this place isn’t making more money,” she lamented. “We’re busy during the day, we have some evening business on weekends, and we have special events almost every month. I am barely able to pay the bills. I do take some off the top for myself and so does Harry but it’s not much. I just feel like I should be putting more away.”
“How do you keep track of sales?” Drew asked.
She explained how she or Harry totaled out the cash register every day. Admittedly, they seldom reconciled the cash and credit card receipts with the daily totals. Credit card payments were directly deposited to the business account, and one or the other made cash deposits when they felt they had enough.
“So, no one is actually keeping the books since Megan left, right?” he asked.
“I guess not,” Sara replied.
He asked her if she and Harry cut payroll checks for themselves.
“Not always,” she replied. “Harry says it’s best that we don’t so we don’t have to pay too many taxes.”
“And you’re sure that all of the orders placed in the kitchen are rung up on the register,” Drew stated.
“They’re supposed to be,” Sara said. “I never thought to check that. I wouldn’t know how.”
Drew suggested she start by reconciling the register every evening to expose any discrepancies. He offered to do this for her on the days and evenings he worked.
He got ready to leave, but Sara asked him to stay a while longer. They had a few more drinks while talking and getting to know each other.
Before they knew it, it was three in the morning. Drew said he didn’t know how he was going to make it in on time, so Sara invited him to sleep on her couch. He would have time to wash and dry his clothes for the next shift. He was up early enough to do just that and was out of the house before Sara, Harry, or Ruthie got up.
It was a busy Saturday, but Drew tried to keep an eye on things as much as possible. It certainly looked and sounded like the cash register was ringing with sales. There were no dinner reservations, so he was grateful for a potentially early day.
Sara arrived at the Tavern around three thirty. Harry was in Williamsburg with Ruthie.
As promised, Drew began to reconcile the register. He zeroed it out, counting up the credit card payments and then the cash receipts. He totaled up the tips for each server and distributed those. He then presented Sara with the totals for the day.
“It adds up,” he told her. “But some of these guest check numbers are unaccounted for or out of sequence. Do you keep track of those?”
“I probably should,” she said. “I didn’t think to do that. Why does that matter?”
“It might show that someone is not actually ringing up all of their sales, especially if those checks are being paid with cash. I can’t watch out for this during the week, but I can certainly put a stop to it on the weekends, if you want me to.”
“Let me think about it,” Sara said. “I don’t want to confront anyone just yet. Maybe you can just keep an eye on it without anyone knowing for now.”
He wasn’t sure he could do that efficiently without implementing some kind of controls on the paperwork. He assured Sara he would be there for her whenever she wanted to do something about it.
“It’s early,” Sara said. “Can you stay and talk for a while?”
“I can’t do what I did yesterday,” Drew replied. “I’m meeting up with some friends for a concert at the Coliseum. We’re going to see Metallica.”
“I wish I could go,” Sara said.
Drew asked if she and Harry were doing alright.
She looked downward and told him things were not the same between them since he brought Ruthie to live with them. She acknowledged that most of Ruthie’s time was spent in Williamsburg but when she was around, Sara saw her as a sneaky, manipulative brat. She never did anything to help around the house. She never even picked up her empty plate from the table, let alone do any dishes. Thankfully, Martha came to clean every week, so she didn’t have to worry about that.
“If I can hold out until she graduates, I will,” she said. “I doubt I’ll be able to, though. We’re over as a couple.”
Drew wasn’t at all surprised. He knew Harry made frequent trips to Williamsburg under the guise of supporting Ruthie in her activities. But actually, he often met up with his wife Darlene so the three of them could spend some weekends together. He witnessed Harry taking money from the cash register to finance hotel rooms.
43
As autumn of 1984 approached, daytime business during the week slowed down. There were only two tables occupied in the original part of the Tavern, none in the dining room.
Sara had decided to walk through the old part on her way to the kitchen when she spotted two very attractive women. She wondered if they were sisters or perhaps mother and daughter. Their plates had been cleared and it looked like they were still enjoying their glasses of wine. Uncharacteristically, she walked over to their table.
Sara seldom approached customers. She introduced herself and asked how their lunch was. The younger woman smiled and said, “It was excellent. My name is Laura Stevens, and this is my mother, Gina Moretti. You have a lovely place here.”
“Thank you,” Sara replied. “What brings you to Becksley?”
As Laura ordered two more glasses of wine, she invited Sara to sit with them if she had the time. Sara happily accepted.
“We live across the river in the same neighborhood as one of your former employees, Rose,” Laura said. “My mother retired a few months ago; she’s going stir crazy, so I took the day off from work to take her to lunch.”
Gina quickly chimed in, “I’d love to work part time in a place like this.”
Sara noticed a slight but charming accent. From her name, she guessed she was from Italy. Gina proudly said she was from Northern Italy but she had been an American for more than thirty years.
“I am a war bride,” she said. “I met my husband toward the end of World War II.”
“What kind of work would you like to do here?” Sara asked.
“If you carry the ingredients, I could make you delicious, homemade white and wheat baguettes for you to serve with your meals as well as soups and any kind of sauces you might need. I can help prepare for your usual menu items and I would keep your kitchen clean throughout the process.”
That alone piqued Sara’s interest. Her current kitchen staff sorely lacked in the cleanliness department, especially Harry on the rare occasions he worked.
Sara told her father she would take them back to the B&B. She wanted to show them around the Plantation. Ellen and Tim Capshaw went over to Dollie and Jonas to thank them for bringing them to the Tavern and let them know Sara would bring them back. Brenda said goodbye as she had to return to work in Richmond.
Tim and Ellen had taken a tour of the main house when they first came to visit Sara at Becksley. So, they walked the grounds with Sara to have a private conversation.
Her father asked her about the partnership with “this Harry guy.”
“He is a highly regarded chef in Florida,” she told them. “I ran into him again when I took a little vacation shortly after buying the Tavern. He was looking for a job and I was looking for a partner who could help me run this place and expand the business. He has a daughter that is staying here for the summer, but she’ll soon start school at Wallsley Academy in Williamsburg. He’s paying for all of that, so, right now, he isn’t able to contribute any capital, but his ideas and business knowledge has helped to turn a pretty good profit,” she said. “It should only get better from here on.”
“I wish you the best of luck, princess,” Tim said. He handed her an envelope and told her it should tide her over for a while. It was a check for $5,000.
“Oh, thank you, Daddy,” she gushed. “I’ll put it away for when and if I need it.”
He advised her to keep this to herself.
Tim and Ellen relaxed with wine and cheese in the sitting room at the B&B. He confided to Ellen there was something about Harry he didn’t like. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he was uneasy about his daughter’s involvement with him. Ellen agreed. They both hoped Sara would wait a long time before deciding to marry him. It would not displease them if she never did.
41
Summer flew by, and Ruthie began her sophomore year at Walsley in September 1981. Fall business was hit or miss. Harry spent quite a bit of time in Williamsburg, getting Ruthie settled at Wallsley.
Sara wanted to be better prepared for the Thanksgiving holiday than she had in the past. With the expanded dining room, she felt they could do much better. She certainly didn’t want to do a buffet, but she wasn’t quite sure how to step things up and make the Tavern a destination place for the holiday meal.
Megan set up a meeting with Sara and took the liberty of inviting Robert Andrews, the executive chef at the Richmond Plaza Hotel. Chef Robert believed in reciprocal business. He wanted to see the Horse and Carriage Tavern become a fine dining restaurant. He received many requests for referrals from patrons of the Plaza. He liked the idea of sending them on a sort of adventure. He detailed a game plan that would include a prix-fixe, limited-item menu.
“Have the typical Thanksgiving dinner as a choice,” he said, “but then add about four or five other unique options like duck, lamb, filet mignon, and an above-average seafood or fish dinner. More than 50 percent of your customers, that day, will order the turkey dinner, but having those other options will portray an upscale image.”
Chef Robert also advised her to schedule two-hour seatings and allow an hour in between each to allow the staff to reset the dining room. “You should start at eleven thirty, followed by two thirty, and finally five thirty. At $50 a head plus cocktails and wine, you’re looking at the possibility of $10,000 in business in one day. Have your chef get such a menu together and, if you want, I’ll look it over for you.” Now, my fee for this is lunch. What’s good today?”
Harry’s ego didn’t allow him to consult directly with Chef Robert, but he referred to Megan’s notes and came up with what he thought was an exceptional menu. It included the typical turkey dinner with all of the “trimmings,” veal meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes, gravy and roasted fall vegetables, New York strip steak, and bourbon-glazed salmon. Desserts included rum-butter pound cake, minted peach sorbet, and chocolate molten lava cake.
The eleven-thirty seating went quite well as they were only at half capacity. The two-thirty and five-thirty seatings were a bit more chaotic. They needed to have a more experienced chef preparing the specialty items. Emma and the sisters did an outstanding job with the turkey dinners. The waitstaff handled the crowds just fine and did their best to keep customers satisfied despite some long wait times for their food orders to come out.
At the end of the day, Megan sat with Sara to go over the day’s receipts. At approximately $7,500, the numbers fell short of what they had hoped for. The waitstaff, however, expressed great satisfaction with their tips.
“It was a good learning experience,” Megan told her. “I’ll do a profit and loss on just this day to see where it stands, and we’ll be able to determine what needs to be done to improve and still make money. If we’re going to go after special-event business, we’ll need to bring our A game with food and service.”
42
Each year, regular business between Thanksgiving and Christmas slowed down quite a bit. With no events on the calendar, Megan became concerned about paying the bills. The P&L she did for Thanksgiving Day showed very little profit for the purchases expended.
“I’m not sure Harry knows how to properly cost out a menu,” she stated. “His food purchases exceeded what was actually needed, and he hasn’t shown any initiative to incorporate any of that inventory into specials for our day-to-day business. Most of it will spoil before being used since it can’t be frozen.”
“I’ll see if we can use some of it,” Sara said. “Ruthie will be here for the holidays, so he can feed her with it.”
Megan didn’t quite have the heart to tell Sara just how much they didn’t use, so she quietly told Emma and the sisters to take some of it for themselves while leaving enough for Harry to use. This man is costing her money, Megan thought, but she can’t see it right now. She needs to hire someone who knows how to run a kitchen profitably.
She could barely pay the bills and make payroll. She told Sara she would likely be unable to pay the rent for December. Sara told her not to worry about it. Mr. MacMilner and Nate knew it was slow during the winter. As long as they got their free lunches and occasional dinners, she didn’t think they would push her too much.
With the prospect of Ruthie being around for the midterm break, Sara decided to take her “surplus” and the money her father had given her to go to Hopeville to open an account and apply for a credit card. All of her business accounts were at the bank in George City County, and she fully intended to keep this one a secret.
With the months seeming to fly by, Sara found herself no further ahead. Harry was not as good at running the business as he had told her he was. That didn’t help her relationship with him. The volume of business had increased exponentially but they were not making any progress financially. She had no idea how to solve it.
Mr. MacMilner became less patient with her late rent payments since he could see the business increasing, yet Sara always seemed to be short of money. He suspected she and Harry had their hands in the till a lot more than they should have.
Harry claimed it was the cost of doing business that made it difficult to turn a decent profit. He even went so far as to declare the waitstaff as private contractors; therefore, they did not have to pay any payroll taxes for them. This cost Sara a sizeable fine from the IRS when she filed her 1983 return.
To add insult to injury, Megan told Sara she was returning to the bank. She was offered a much higher paying position, and she accepted it.
“What am I going to do without you?” Sara was practically in tears. “Can you recommend someone?”
“I don’t know of anyone,” Megan told her. “I will go over everything with you so you can take things over. You really need to get a proper cash register so you can keep better track of sales. It is far too cumbersome to add up the individual checks every day and post them in a ledger. You also need to hire a company to do your payroll. That way, you won’t run into any issues like you have.”
“I can’t afford to do that,” Sara replied. “But I will buy a cash register.”
Megan told her she could work for one more month and she would train her and the staff at the cash register. She would also show Sara how to do the payroll. Megan had no confidence whatsoever that this would work out. Sara just decided to do the best she could. If necessary, she would ask her father for help. He was pleased with the fact that she had stuck with it for this long.
One of the cost-cutting measures Sara took over the next year was to buy flowers from a wholesaler in Richmond. She began doing her own flower arrangements for the special events that were booked. She even made some for the main house.
Mr. MacMilner and Nate were quite impressed with her abilities. They both told her she could supplement her profits by opening a flower shop on the grounds.
“That building you used for storage a few years ago is sitting there doing nothing. We can spruce it up, and I’ll let you have it rent free until it gets going provided you call it Becksley Flower Shop. We’ll direct traffic to it from our tours. We’ll also put little information cards on the arrangements at the main house. You have enough staff working at the Tavern, so you can put your efforts into the shop. I’ll even see if one of the tour guides would like to assist you if you need it. I’ll pay for that too,” MacMilner told her.
They truly wanted to see her succeed. Both had always liked having a restaurant on the grounds, and they were especially pleased with the increase in special-event business. Of course, the old man knew it was largely because they included this feature in their advertising for the Plantation. He was smart enough to know that people who came to these events might even return for tours and activities with their families. To him, it could be beneficial if things were done right.
Sara didn’t actually work at the Tavern all that much, so she was excited about trying her hand at this. Becksley Flower Shop was open for business in three months. A year later, the shop was providing the floral arrangements for all the weddings and special events on the Plantation. She stayed away from local deliveries. It wasn’t a daily business, so Sara split her time between the two. When she did have orders, she was able to hire two employees to help do the arrangements with her guidance.
It was hard tracking the actual profits from flower sales because she rang them up on the Tavern’s cash register. But she seemed better able to pay rent on the Tavern on time. She charged a good bit less than other florists in the area so she would get the business.
When it came to daily sales at the restaurant, though, the totals were still disappointing. Having the cash register didn’t seem to help.
One Friday evening as she was closing, one of her night-and-weekend servers, Drew Williams, turned to her and said he would see her tomorrow if she was going to be there. Drew was in his early thirties, lived in Richmond in an up-and-coming urban neighborhood. He had a good job with the state, but he found the extra income from waiting tables quite helpful in allowing him to have the lifestyle he wanted. His apartment was decorated with modern, expensive items that gave the place a luxurious look and feel.
“Can you stay and have a drink with me?” Sara asked. “I just don’t feel like going home right now.”
“Maybe for a short while,” he told her.
“I just don’t understand why this place isn’t making more money,” she lamented. “We’re busy during the day, we have some evening business on weekends, and we have special events almost every month. I am barely able to pay the bills. I do take some off the top for myself and so does Harry but it’s not much. I just feel like I should be putting more away.”
“How do you keep track of sales?” Drew asked.
She explained how she or Harry totaled out the cash register every day. Admittedly, they seldom reconciled the cash and credit card receipts with the daily totals. Credit card payments were directly deposited to the business account, and one or the other made cash deposits when they felt they had enough.
“So, no one is actually keeping the books since Megan left, right?” he asked.
“I guess not,” Sara replied.
He asked her if she and Harry cut payroll checks for themselves.
“Not always,” she replied. “Harry says it’s best that we don’t so we don’t have to pay too many taxes.”
“And you’re sure that all of the orders placed in the kitchen are rung up on the register,” Drew stated.
“They’re supposed to be,” Sara said. “I never thought to check that. I wouldn’t know how.”
Drew suggested she start by reconciling the register every evening to expose any discrepancies. He offered to do this for her on the days and evenings he worked.
He got ready to leave, but Sara asked him to stay a while longer. They had a few more drinks while talking and getting to know each other.
Before they knew it, it was three in the morning. Drew said he didn’t know how he was going to make it in on time, so Sara invited him to sleep on her couch. He would have time to wash and dry his clothes for the next shift. He was up early enough to do just that and was out of the house before Sara, Harry, or Ruthie got up.
It was a busy Saturday, but Drew tried to keep an eye on things as much as possible. It certainly looked and sounded like the cash register was ringing with sales. There were no dinner reservations, so he was grateful for a potentially early day.
Sara arrived at the Tavern around three thirty. Harry was in Williamsburg with Ruthie.
As promised, Drew began to reconcile the register. He zeroed it out, counting up the credit card payments and then the cash receipts. He totaled up the tips for each server and distributed those. He then presented Sara with the totals for the day.
“It adds up,” he told her. “But some of these guest check numbers are unaccounted for or out of sequence. Do you keep track of those?”
“I probably should,” she said. “I didn’t think to do that. Why does that matter?”
“It might show that someone is not actually ringing up all of their sales, especially if those checks are being paid with cash. I can’t watch out for this during the week, but I can certainly put a stop to it on the weekends, if you want me to.”
“Let me think about it,” Sara said. “I don’t want to confront anyone just yet. Maybe you can just keep an eye on it without anyone knowing for now.”
He wasn’t sure he could do that efficiently without implementing some kind of controls on the paperwork. He assured Sara he would be there for her whenever she wanted to do something about it.
“It’s early,” Sara said. “Can you stay and talk for a while?”
“I can’t do what I did yesterday,” Drew replied. “I’m meeting up with some friends for a concert at the Coliseum. We’re going to see Metallica.”
“I wish I could go,” Sara said.
Drew asked if she and Harry were doing alright.
She looked downward and told him things were not the same between them since he brought Ruthie to live with them. She acknowledged that most of Ruthie’s time was spent in Williamsburg but when she was around, Sara saw her as a sneaky, manipulative brat. She never did anything to help around the house. She never even picked up her empty plate from the table, let alone do any dishes. Thankfully, Martha came to clean every week, so she didn’t have to worry about that.
“If I can hold out until she graduates, I will,” she said. “I doubt I’ll be able to, though. We’re over as a couple.”
Drew wasn’t at all surprised. He knew Harry made frequent trips to Williamsburg under the guise of supporting Ruthie in her activities. But actually, he often met up with his wife Darlene so the three of them could spend some weekends together. He witnessed Harry taking money from the cash register to finance hotel rooms.
43
As autumn of 1984 approached, daytime business during the week slowed down. There were only two tables occupied in the original part of the Tavern, none in the dining room.
Sara had decided to walk through the old part on her way to the kitchen when she spotted two very attractive women. She wondered if they were sisters or perhaps mother and daughter. Their plates had been cleared and it looked like they were still enjoying their glasses of wine. Uncharacteristically, she walked over to their table.
Sara seldom approached customers. She introduced herself and asked how their lunch was. The younger woman smiled and said, “It was excellent. My name is Laura Stevens, and this is my mother, Gina Moretti. You have a lovely place here.”
“Thank you,” Sara replied. “What brings you to Becksley?”
As Laura ordered two more glasses of wine, she invited Sara to sit with them if she had the time. Sara happily accepted.
“We live across the river in the same neighborhood as one of your former employees, Rose,” Laura said. “My mother retired a few months ago; she’s going stir crazy, so I took the day off from work to take her to lunch.”
Gina quickly chimed in, “I’d love to work part time in a place like this.”
Sara noticed a slight but charming accent. From her name, she guessed she was from Italy. Gina proudly said she was from Northern Italy but she had been an American for more than thirty years.
“I am a war bride,” she said. “I met my husband toward the end of World War II.”
“What kind of work would you like to do here?” Sara asked.
“If you carry the ingredients, I could make you delicious, homemade white and wheat baguettes for you to serve with your meals as well as soups and any kind of sauces you might need. I can help prepare for your usual menu items and I would keep your kitchen clean throughout the process.”
That alone piqued Sara’s interest. Her current kitchen staff sorely lacked in the cleanliness department, especially Harry on the rare occasions he worked.
