“Tony, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, you can’t come in here dressed like that,” Margie said, a cigarette hanging from her lipstick-painted red lips. In her right hand, she held a carafe of burned black coffee. In the other, a breakfast plate: three pancakes, two pieces of thick linked sausages, four pieces of extra crispy bacon, and hash browns, lightly browned. Margie couldn’t figure out why Tony liked his hashbrowns like that, but he did.

“Like what?” Tony, puzzled, put his smoldering cigarette in the nearest ashtray. He wore a pair of Navy blue work coveralls emblazoned with his name over the left hand breast pocket. Sure, they weren’t by any stretch clean, but they did look well-worn. A few grease spots darkened the cuffs of each wrist, but the noticeable stains were the ketchup and mustard drizzled down the front of the coveralls. It reminded Margie of bird poop, alternating in red and yellow. Somehow, he managed to miss his name tag. How? She wasn’t quite sure.

“You come in here dressed like that,” she pointed with the plate of food, “you is gonna leave grease stains on the stool. And that,” Margie pointed with her smoke still hanging from her lips, “I ain’t cool with.” Her left eye closed, smoke tendrils stinging her eyes. She blew the smoke away from her face, setting the plate down before the local Sheriff. Sheriff Johns spent the last three years stopping at least twice a week at the breakfast diner. Margie wasn’t the owner. She wouldn’t want that kind of responsibility, but she did help manage it. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but she made good money from tips, more than she could have if she went back to college.

Margie finished the first two years of college, completing all the general education requirements for most bachelor’s degrees. But halfway through her second year, she needed to work, and the small diner afforded her time for classes, a steady paycheck, and more than enough money in tips to keep a college girl funded through the remainder of the second year. In the first month of waiting tables, Margie made almost a thousand dollars. She finished that year and never went back to school.

“You gotta be jokin’ Margie. Have you seen some of the clowns that come in here?” He thought about pointing at the Sheriff, then decided it wasn’t worth it. As a convicted felon, getting a job as a tow truck driver was hard enough, but messing with the local Sheriff would’ve been asking for trouble. And Sheriff Cooper and Tony had words before his conviction. Sheriff Ryan Cooper was a bully in his junior year of high school. Tony was a senior and didn’t take kindly to Cooper’s attitude to the lower classmen, believing that messing with the younger kids wasn’t cool. It was dumb.

“Best cool it there, Tony,” Sheriff Cooper said, hardly looking up from his now cold cup of coffee. A thin film formed on his coffee from the cream and sugar he poured into it. Three creams. Two sugars. It was the way he drank his coffee. Margie made the mistake of refilling it once after he got it right where he wanted it, temperature and flavor-wise. “Make her mad, and you might find something other than pepper in your eggs, if you know what I mean.”

Tony rolled his eyes toward the Sheriff, picked up his smoke, and took a long drag. “So, you gonna seat me somewhere, Margie? Or should I just sit right here?” he pounded on the back of the barstool seat next to Sheriff Cooper.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the Sheriff quipped. “Might be the last thing you do before going back to prison.”

“Can’t get me for something I ain’t done, Cooper.”

“Oh. You never know, Tony,” he smiled, spinning around long enough to watch Tony stab his cigarette out in the ashtray. “No one is one hundred percent clean. Especially not ex-cons,” Sheriff Cooper finished his coffee, motioning to Margie for a refill.

“You two best stop it now before I call the police.” She was joking, and both men knew it. “You, sit down,” she said, pointing to the booth behind Tony. The tabletop was clean, an ashtray with a book of matches strategically placed between a napkin dispenser and the salt and pepper shakers. “And I don’t want to hear nothin’ about you startin’ trouble with Cooper, you hear?”

Before Tony was settled in the booth, Margie brought him a hot cup of coffee and a plate of food, almost like the Sheriff’s, only the hashbrowns were as crispy as the bacon. “What if that’s not what I wanted,” Tony demanded. “What would you do then?”

“I guess I’d eat it myself,” Margie spat back. “Not that you order anything different, anyways.”

“I might.” He picked up the fork lying on the napkin between the spoon and the butter knife. The only people in the diner, besides Margie, the Sheriff, and Tony, were the two cooks and two college-aged busboys. The young men kept themselves busy by cleaning and recleaning the kitchen, which made Francis happy. Francis didn’t like his name. Anyone making fun of him got punched squarely in the nose. Not hard enough to do any real damage, but enough to get someone’s attention. Once he almost punched the Sheriff but then thought twice about it.   

The Sheriff finished his food, and Margie refilled his coffee. “So. Any leads on that hit and run earlier this week?” Margie was talking about Mrs. Miller’s Grand Am getting hit earlier in the week. Mrs. Miller didn’t remember much about the accident. The driver hit her car so hard that it knocked her unconscious for a few minutes. When she finally came, she could not identify the vehicle or the driver. The Sheriff had no leads.

“I can’t talk about open investigations, Margie. You know that.”

“Well, you got any leads yet?” She winked at him.

Sheriff Cooper shook his head. “Thank you for breakfast, Margie.” He pulled out a twenty and left it on the table. The tab was just over five dollars. “Keep the change.”

“You sure about that?”

“Hey, Sheriff,” Tony said, standing up behind him. Cooper started to turn around, and Tony beat him to the ground, not letting up until the police officer was out cold, blood seeping from cuts over his left eye and what appeared to be a broken nose. Tony returned to the booth, lit a cigarette, and sat down, a smug look crossing his face.