“We can be there in ten minutes,” he said, and shut the cell phone. He peered past me into the main section of the restaurant. “Have you seen our waitress?”
“No, but we can probably just guesstimate the tab if it’s that urgent.”
“It’s not. Raymond has a few things he found that he wants to discuss with us, but he certainly hasn’t cracked the code, as it were.”
At that moment, our waitress did appear, probably to do the customary “how are things going?” check-in. She looked a little surprised when Paul requested the bill, but nodded and said she’d take care of it right away.
Maybe she’d seen something in his face that I hadn’t, because she did return with greater than usual haste and set the bill down on the table. He and I both reached for it at the same time.
“I said I was taking you
