When you live intown, you learn to keep your street smarts handy but even a dame who’s been around the block a few times, even a brazen hussy named Sher, can find herself face to face with trouble.

To be exact, it wasn’t Big Trouble in Little China; it was Sneaky Stuff at That Thai Place. And the racket went down like this…

It was one of those hot and muggy nights where you think you’ll cool off in a little café. What could go wrong? My son was with me. A not-very-talkative guy waited on us. We ate. It was good.

I handed over my credit card - not to the waiter, who seemed to have disappeared - but to a woman who asked for it. I had that feeling. That Feeling. You know, when something Isn’t Quite Right.

She took the card to the back of the joint.. and stayed. I waited and waited and waited..

Why was it taking so long to get my card back? There were only maybe eight other people in the restaurant. I watched the time on my phone - five minutes, seven, eight…

“ I don’t like this. It’s odd.. certainly enough time for someone to copy down my credit card info,” I said to my son.

“Oh, mom. NOBODY is copying your card,” he said while rolling his eyes and never stopping texting on his phone.

Call it intuition. Call it paranoia. Call it: Damn, I was right! I woke up at 6 a.m. I had urgent messages from Chase.. Yep, my card info had been stolen.

Someone had been busy through the night, making fraudulent credit card purchases – or trying to. They didn’t have my address or zip code so the crooks were stymied. They did have my security code which is on the back of the card. And I hadn’t used the card anywhere else in months, except at Publix where I swipe it myself.

I’m no Sherlock but I’m no dumb blonde either, although I can play the part when a caper calls for it.
And this one did.

I waited until almost lunch time and parked the Jag in front of The Thai Place That Will Not Be Named’s door. I walked in and immediately saw him - my waiter from last night.

I smiled. I gushed about how good the food was. Have I mentioned I’m a damn good actress when my heart’s in the part?
"Hi, remember me? I sat with my son in the last booth on the left back there," I said, sweetly.

The wiry, nervous fellow never smiled. Not once. He nodded but looked like he had seen a ghost.

"The food was great! But I left something here ( i.e.meaning my credit card number) and I need to talk to the manager," I said.

The waiter looked ashen. "I can help you," he said, his face like a mask. "No, that’s ok. I want to talk to the manager, thanks," I smiled. “The food is really good here!”

The guy went in the back, came back to the front of the restaurant and said the manager was too busy to see me.

"That's fine. I'll wait," I said.“No problem.”

The guy returned to the back of the place again and in less than 40 seconds the manager - I was supposed to think he was the manager - came up to talk to me.

He was a doughy, lumbering fellow whose face made only one expression: blank.

He said nothing and didn’t make eye contact.

I smiled and said how good the food was, yet again.

No response.

I asked for his name.

Finally, he spoke. "Huy," he answered.

I asked if he would write down his full name. He said he would but he only wrote down "Huy" on a slip of paper.

I gave him my full name and asked him to please do the same and write down his last name.

He nodded. He appeared to write something on the paper, folded it and handed to me. I put it in my pocket.

I explained what had happened, that a young woman picked up my credit card and took it to the back and was gone an inordinate amount of time -- and this a.m. there had been attempts at fraud on my credit card. The manager, or whoever he was, finally spoke: "Oh.. we had a new cashier. It just took her extra time to do the charge."

He had nothing else to say. Not another word.

On the way home, I looked at the folded up piece of paper he had handed me that was supposed to have his full name written on it. It only said "Huy". He had drawn over the "H" repeatedly while he pretended he was writing his full name on the paper.

Back home, I did some sleuthing.

I called the office of the owners of the restaurant. The woman who answered listened to my tale and said sharply, "We don't have those kinds of employees" .. she would not give me the name of the manager but she said she would call me back.

She didn’t.

I sent an email to the owner of the restaurant (and is behind a couple of other dining spots in town) who wrote back a snitty, laced-with-a-veiled-sense-of-threat of the Legal Kind response.. He said I was making “serious accusations” and he wanted to meet with me personally.

Excuse me? Drive out to the boondocks? Why? I answered that I had made no accusations but I had related facts and anyone would be suspicious. And I am. Facts aren’t always clear – or pretty – and can be really annoying, especially when people think they can run a scam on someone, but they picked the wrong dame. OkokOK, I didn’t actually say that last sentence. A woman from the company called. She was effusive. She said she would be suspicious, too. She told me she drove all the way into town and talked to the staff and they acted the way they did towards me because they were “afraid of losing their jobs.”

Really? I had walked into the restaurant smiling , giving compliments and was met with ashen faced, nervous people who were afraid to give me their real names?

File this under: Things That Make Me Even More Suspicious.

Meanwhile, on our local NextDoor email group thingie, a man named Rob Glancy started a thread asking if people had had their credit card numbers lifted, copied, whatever, recently – over 70 people in the area posted similar tales as mine and his. Apparently this is a Big Scam afoot and is suspected to involve, perhaps, some wait staff in various close-in neighborhood establishments.

Ol’ Glancy was mad. And he went to the cops. He went to the press. Good for him! There’s a link below to a story the local TV folks did. I will use cash from now on in restaurants, not credit cards. And I will NEVER go back to That Thai Place With The Weird Staff.

And I will continue to trust Those Feelings – you know what I mean... when a joint’s not on the up and up and an ill wind whispers in your ear:

“Be careful, kiddo.” ---Sher