Chapter65
IT WAS SEVEN A.M.and Decker sat on his bed at the Residence Inn, once more going over the construction plans for the American Grill. He had sent off texts to Jamison asking her for help on a variety of questions. He hadn’t gotten responses yet on those, or the research he had asked her to do about the shell companies backing Rachel Katz’s projects. He didn’t know if he ever would.
He was slowly turning the pages of the construction drawings when he stopped and peered more closely at a particular page. Then he flipped back a few pages and studied the information there. Next, he grabbed another handful of documents and went down the list of line items. Finally, he picked up his phone and made a call.
Lancaster answered. “I’m just about to step into the shower, Decker, can I call you back? And I had too much to drink last night. My head is splitting.”
“It’s actually Earl I want to talk to.”
“Hang on.”
A few moments later Earl’s voice came on the line. “What’s up, Amos?”
“Got another construction question for you.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“I’m looking at the construction plans for the American Grill and invoices for construction materials.”
“All right.”
“You know the size of the place, right?”
“Generally. It’s a typical footprint for a retail restaurant operation.”
“Talk some more about that.”
“Well, I mean a four-exterior-wall, one-story basic rectangle. Cinderblock construction with brick veneer and a flat tarred and pebble-topped roof where the outside HVAC units are housed.”
“What sort of square footage are we talking?”
“For a sit-down restaurant as opposed to a fast-food place, about sixty percent of the space goes to the dining and bar area and forty percent to the kitchen, prep areas, and storage. The Grill, I would estimate, is about five thousand square feet, so about three thousand of that would be the dining and bar and the rest for kitchen, prep, and storage. Then you have your enclosed Dumpster area out back. The interior layout allows about fifteen square feet of space per patron seat. That’s the general rule of thumb in the industry. That way, the Grill could comfortably accommodate a couple hundred diners at a time. Which I think is around its fire code limit of customers at any one time.”
“Okay, how much concrete are we talking about for a place that size?”
“You’d pour your footers. That’s not all that much. Then you’d lay your block walls.” He gave Decker an estimate of the concrete, and the blocks required.
Decker looked at the line item on the page he was looking at. “The cinderblock count is pretty much spot on. But what if I told you the concrete outlay was way over quadruple what you just said?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Tell me a way that it wouldn’t be impossible.”
Earl was silent for a few moments. “Well, the only way to justify that much concrete is if they built a full basement, so their pour obviously would be a lot more. But why would a restaurant want a full basement instead of just footers and foundation you build on? You couldn’t possibly need that much storage.”
“Good question,” said Decker. “Hope I find the answer.”
He thanked Earl, told him to have his wife call back when she was done, clicked off, and looked down at the plans.
The American Grill was turning out to be far more special than he had previously thought.
A full basement for what?
And maybe whateverthatwas would explain why David Katz had built it, and why Rachel Katz had kept it all these years.
He went on his laptop and loaded in the name William Peyton and added the qualifier “the American Grill.” Nothing remotely relevant came up in connection with the longtime manager of the restaurant.
He took out his phone and pulled up the photos he’d taken of the traineesincluding the one named Daniel. The trainees who never stayed very long. Then his memories shifted to the guy who’d been staring at him from the kitchen. There clearly had been suspicion in that look.