Noah had often heard the term greasy spoon tossed around. Everyone knew about such a place, and for the most part everyone had also avoided such a place, or at least gone in, seen what was offered on the menu and ran out the door, able to tell the tale of their close encounter with salmonella and a fat fryer that hadn’t been cleaned since the place had been built. Noah had heard of them, but always steered clear of them, which was a feat in and of itself he realized, he wasn’t in some small town or some simple village, he was in a city that still ran on bad java, all you can eat portions of cholesterol-enriched fare large enough to choke an African elephant, and the endless throng of day laborers who show up for hurried meals of hash browns and toast, both indistinguishable from the other on their plates.<br/><br/>Noah knew a lot of diners that people called greasy spoons, some cutesy attempt to make them sound more eclectic, to draw in a crowd. He had eaten at them, marveled at how ungreasy the food was. And he had laughed at the term, figuring the people fearing greasy spoons did so in jest. Until he followed the cop to his favorite dive. It WAS a greasy spoon, not a quaint working class joint, not some tourist trap diner, but a true greasy spoon, hell it was a greasy PIT. He could imagine the oil slicks at the bottom of dishes served by inept line cooks. The lack of hair nets keeping the food clean. The pet roaches crawling over things.<br/><br/>Truth be told he had been to cleaner crime scenes before. And that was saying a lot since medical examiners didn’t tend to get called in on the clean and simple natural causes deaths. The kind one would find in a place like this, heart attacks, clogged arteries, maybe a brain aneurysm from thinking about how dirty the food was…<br/><br/>CJ sure seemed ready to have an aneurysm about it all. “It’s not so bad… we rarely get any cases where someone died at one of these places…” Noah said with a grin before he picked up his food and dug into it. When in Rome… try not to die of salmonella… He didn’t say that part of course, he had a feeling that his already uttered attempt at reassurances had already pushed the attorney further from eating his food than he was already. And to be honest, while Noah was willing to give the food a try, he wasn’t about to try forcing CJ to do the same, if he got food poisoning he would want the lawyer in tip top shape to help out with his lawsuit against the place anyway!<br/><br/>As the stripper made her way across the small stage like area and proceeded to show why the guys undoubtedly called her Juggs behind her back, Noah looked away and shook his head. “So, we here cuz you wanted to check in on your sister on her lunch break or something?” He nodded his head towards the stripper and grinned at the cop. “Or would you rather explain why a guy who eats at a place that legally should be closed by the health inspectors somehow knows about vague chemicals like valerian?” Noah added, his smile just as bright. Logan was a big tough cop, no doubt, but Noah liked to think he could give as well as he could take. In fact sexually Noah could, but again he wasn’t heading down that path, least of all in a greasy diner with a woman stripping for apparently her own enjoyment.<br/><br/>“A lot of people had opportunity, it’s not hard to drug someone, especially with a hard to trace drug…” That was his helpful insight into the case. He had found the proverbial smoking gun. That was his job. It was up to the cop and prosecutor to take evidence and hard fact and stretch it into motives and theories. He did fact, they told stories.<br/><br/>Noah was far from up on his police lingo, you just didn’t need to know criminal codes and such in the medical examiners office. But he was smart enough to know when a burly cop like Logan said to get up and call 911 it was best to listen. So he nodded and moved quickly, but as casually as he could out of the booth seating. And without any fanfare or any looking around the place he headed for the restrooms. He could only imagine how dirty they would be as he pushed the grimy door open and stepped inside. It was worse than he imagined, and whatever was about to happen outside the restroom he knew that CJ would be happier amongst that then amongst the scene of some sort of fecal matter food fight.<br/>