There’s a Traitor Among Us
From a bush outside The Cheesecake Factory, I can now confirm that Samuel Kraus, 41, has successfully navigated breakfast at The Cheesecake Factory without subsequent banishment.
At the roundtable, Kraus briefly came under fire for ordering both the Double Smash Cheeseburger Bites and the Bee Sting Flatbread Pizza.
“The pairing was odd to me,” said Marisol Birch, a faithful. “Honey and special sauce? Do we even know what’s in the special sauce?”
But Kraus swiftly deflected the attack, turning the suspicion back onto Birch: “Out of all the options at Cheesecake Factory, why would you ask for a quesadilla without green onions and chiles? It just felt shady.”
“Look, I don’t like spicy food,” Birch retaliated with an eye roll.
“Babes, it’s not that spicy,” said Shannon McKeller, a faithful.
Birch posited that McKeller was deflecting. “Shannon looked so exhausted. Would a faithful look so tired?”
McKeller wasn’t having it: “The menu is 21 pages! Of course I was exhausted.”
Birch, on the other hand, wondered why McKeller was assuming the menu was 21 pages, asking, “Would a faithful know it’s 21 pages? Did you count in the turret?”
McKeller noted that “they don’t give you Cheesecake Factory menus in the turret,” only prompting Birch to retort, “Did everyone hear that Shannon just said she never saw a Cheesecake Factory menu in the turret?”
The dispute continued, with McKeller getting increasingly heated: “I’m assuming! That would be weird as hell.”
Fortunately for McKeller, another suspect quickly emerged.
“I knew it was Tom because the way he was shoveling that Glamburger into his mouth…the food was going everywhere,” said Danielle Jones, a faithful. “It made me think if he eats that messy, then his behavior must be messy, too.”
Tom Clarmont, a faithful, was quick to defend himself. “It was the Mac and Cheese Burger! There’s no way to eat that without being messy.”
“I just feel like a faithful wouldn’t have ordered that particular menu item when there are more than 250 other options,” said Jones.
At this point, faithful Frank Hardy interjected with a hypothesis that Michelle Maya could be a traitor. “I find it a little weird that Michelle ordered the California Omelette all of a sudden,” he said. “I’ve never seen her eat eggs before. Like ever. I thought she was a vegan.”
“I ate the smoked salmon yesterday,” Maya retorted.
“That’s not eggs,” Hardy responded.
“But it should have shown you that I’m not a vegan.”
“Still weird that you got eggs,” Hardy noted. “Do you guys think maybe the murder in plain sight had to do with eggs?
“Harold got the Farm Fresh Eggs with Grilled Ham,” said Shansky. “Why aren’t you piling on him?”
“Maybe you guys are both traitors,” Hardy correctly suggested. (In fact, both Maya and Harold Chin are traitors.)
At press time, Christopher Wilson, a faithful, was banished for ordering the Hot Fudge Sundae instead of the popular chain restaurant’s signature cheesecake, which “seemed really suspicious, man, and I really hope we’re right about this,” according to fellow faithful, Pete Grimes.
In his exit speech, Wilson tearfully professed his commitment to the faithful and explained his decision. “I really like ice cream,” he said. “When the menu said it was the best hot fudge anywhere, I didn’t want to miss out. I wish I had ordered Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple cheesecake now. I was going to pay off my mortgage with the prize pot.”
The bush I hid in for this scoop was a Dagger Shrub.
There’s a Traitor Among Us.