Spoiled Rotten (11 page)

T
he sky was heavily overcast and the clouds promised a day of rain. Lying on my side I watched shades of watery light play listlessly on the bedroom floor. Reflecting on my state of affairs, I wondered what I'd do if I didn't own a restaurant. There were other businesses just as financially challenging, for example, art galleries and bookstores, but then where would I eat?

I shuffled down to the kitchen and remembered my oath to follow a better diet. After forcing down a guilt-induced breakfast of hemp granola and gagging on the thick pulpy residue of organic orange juice, I drove downtown to the market and parked in my usual spot in front of the Contraroses' vegetable store. The street was open to traffic again and the security tape had been removed. Eddie scared me half to death by coming around behind the car and rapping loudly on my window.

“I don't have nothin' to put in the car today,” he shouted, his face pressed against the glass.

I rolled down the window and blasted Eddie for sneaking up on me. Holding my hand over my heart, I asked if he was trying to kill me. Eddie looked terrified. I told him I was kidding around. I could be a real jerk sometimes and told him that, too. My apology worked like magic. He ran ahead, diving around vegetable bins stored under a sagging awning, hollering and waving for me to follow him inside.

It had been pouring rain since I got out of bed and the store's faded red-and-green striped canvas threatened to dump a bucket of water onto my head. I raced into the store, hard on his heels, when abruptly he turned around and stopped. I ran straight into his arms. He lifted me a foot off the ground in a bear hug and then, releasing me just as quickly, disappeared through a trap door to the fruit cellar below.

Getting additional information about Mr. Tony's death from Louis, Eddie's grandfather, proved to be futile, however. He didn't want to talk ill of the dead and crossed himself judiciously when I mentioned his name. A tangible mood of depression lingered in the damp market air, and with Superior Meats closed, business was slower than usual. The meat store was popular city-wide and drew a number of potential customers to the neighbouring establishments. Another empty building on the street looked bad. Besides a few curiosity-seekers, the market was dead.

Louise's cheese store was closed. I looked in the window through the sun-protected, yellow-cellophane-covered glass and saw a notice tacked to the register at the front. A community meeting was being held in St. Timothy's church around the corner on Spadina Avenue. Mrs. Wong came down the sidewalk toward me. We exchanged a few rounds of conversational Cantonese, phrases she had been patiently teaching me for years, and then I asked, in English, if she was going to the meeting.

Not only was she going to the meeting, but all the storekeepers were attending. Very important meeting, she stressed. With the former city representative dead and his underling in charge, the meeting would be important to their future. I asked her if I could come. She said I could be her friend. I assumed she meant guest and agreed to meet her at her dry goods store at 6:30 later that day. We would walk over together.

In the meantime, the customer who caused my restaurant to be closed down should be paid a visit. Although he didn't ask to get sick, I wasn't feeling very sympathetic toward the man. He was recuperating at St. Mike's and when Rick called the hospital in the morning to enquire about his progress, a nurse told him Mr. Randolph's quarantine was lifted.

“Was he seeing visitors now?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” she said merrily. “He was feeling much better.” Rick volunteered to go, but I said I'd probably better. Good public relations to have the owner of famed “death's door” eatery personally visit a happily recovering customer.

I picked up a bouquet of overpriced, albeit fragrant, miniature white roses in the hospital gift shop and consulted the directory before heading up to the ninth floor. Mr. Randolph was sitting up in bed eating lemon jelly and looking grim. This wasn't going to be easy.

“Hello, Mr. Randolph. My name is Liz Walker, mind if I come in?” I said with my biggest smile ever.

“I never mind talking to a pretty girl,” he answered, surprising me with an equally big smile.

“You might change your mind. I have to be honest with you; I'm the owner of the restaurant where you got sick.”

He put the jelly down on the night table. “Have they told you?” he asked me sternly.

Okay
, I thought,
here we go
. This is where he's going to tell me how much he's suing the restaurant for. I wished Rick had come instead.

“I'm very, very sorry you got food poisoning at the restaurant, Mr. Randolph. We don't know how it happened. I shop for everything fresh and we take extreme precautions when handling food. We have all the coloured boards for cleaning and preparing foods. I mean we have red for raw meat and yellow for fish and green for produce. We have sanitation units at all the food stations and I, I …”

“Please stop, Mrs. Walker. I have something to tell you.” He held up a hand, halting my babbling soliloquy.

“Call me Liz.” I was trying to be friendly.

“My wife is sick, too.”

“What?” I gasped. “She wasn't at the restaurant, was she? I thought you were alone. Somebody must have got it wrong.” I would kill Rick for not telling me.

“Nope,” he said, “my wife got sick at home after eating a chicken sandwich. The same chicken I made my sandwich from the day before. She was out of town at an old girlfriend's the day I went to your restaurant for dinner. Never been a big fan of cooking for myself, not very New Age, I'm afraid, and I've been to your place a few times and liked the food. Anyway, now she's sick. After that power failure we had from the storm last week she forgot to throw out the mayonnaise. She only buys the whole egg kind and it had turned ripe with salmonella.” He drew in a breath and suddenly looked a hundred years old. A thin wisp of gray hair fell limp across his cheek; a puff of air from his curled lips removed it.

“She's down the hall in room 9E if you want to say hello,” he suggested shyly.

It was my turn to be angry, except I felt for the guy. I didn't say a word.

“I'm so sorry, my wife is, too. If your business has suffered in any way, I feel responsible. I would be willing to call the newspaper and tell them it had nothing to do with your restaurant. The hospital is contacting the health board to allow you to open again as soon as possible.”

He seemed sincerely upset and he wasn't solely to blame for causing the restaurant's unfortunate closure. My chef was mysteriously linked to the slaying of Anthony Vieira and the fatal poisoning of a notable public city official. The sequence of events after Mr. Tony was found butchered would lead everyone to the conclusion that we were just as likely to be responsible for the food poisoning of one of our customers. “Something fishy going on there, better stay away, they would say to each other,” nodding their heads in agreement. I gave Mr. Randolph a kiss on his smelly forehead and sent his wife my blessings for a speedy recovery.

I was so excited that the restaurant was going to reopen I couldn't wait to leave the hospital and return to work. First I needed to phone Rick to tell him to notify the staff. Having left my cell in the car, I asked an orderly outside the door if there was a public phone on the floor and he pointed to the end of the hall.

Halfway down the hall, Maria D'Agnole from the butcher shop ran straight into me. She was crying so hard, she didn't recognize me. When I asked her if she needed help she shook her head and practically jumped in the elevator when the door slid open. Obviously she had just received some bad news. I hoped it wasn't her father. The girls at Mr. Tony's were talking about his health one day and I listened in. I think some days I was invisible to them, just a number holder waiting for my order to be filled. I heard a lot of stuff that way.

I headed for the phones and looked into the patient's room from which Maria had fled. I expected to see her father, Mr. D'Agnole, lying in the bed with a heart monitor beeping faintly, not a beautiful golden-haired woman, around thirty, lounging on top of the bedcovers. Instead of the prescribed hospital garb, she had on a hot pink peignoir set, which offset her tawny skin. A food show, on the tiny television suspended at the end of her bed, held her complete attention.

The patient's names were displayed in large print on dry-erase board outside all the rooms and Mrs. Cecilia Vieira was the only name on the board. I saw this woman once before in Superior Meats and assumed she was one of the store's young recruits who were constantly passing through. I knocked lightly on the doorframe before entering a few steps into the room. She turned and poised with a chocolate halfway to her mouth, gave me the once-over from top to bottom. Was it just me or did everyone who ever worked at Mr. Tony's learn how to give the evil eye? I twitched involuntarily.

“Hello, Mrs. Vieira. I was just visiting another patient on this floor and I recognized your name on the board.” Lamely I pointed to the door with a silly half-grin. If this woman didn't stop glaring at me soon, I was going to leave by backing up step by step until I was in the elevator. She had one powerful mojo going on and I didn't want to get hexed in the back when I tore out of there. Then she smiled. Time stood still. Instead of being repelled, I felt the tractor beam pull of her eyes pull me into the room.

“Don't mind me, honey. I was trying to remember where I've seen you before. Now I know. You used to come into the store to shop. You own that cute little restaurant down on Queen Street, don't you?” Her voice was cigarette-husky. It took me a second before I could answer,

“Yes, that's my restaurant. It's called Walker's Way. I hope I'm not disturbing you. I wanted to offer my condolences. I'm very sorry for your loss.”

“Don't be. My husband won't be missed, not by me, anyway. I'm free at last and once the will is read next week I'll be rich, too. I get all his property and I can do anything I want with it.”

“I'm sure that's some consolation, but you must be very frightened. First someone takes his life and then you and Stephen Albright are poisoned. I'm sorry to hear about the councillor. I didn't know him, but I take it the two of you were close. Sounds like someone might be targeting you.”

She popped the chocolate into her mouth and chose another from a two-layered box sitting on her lap. Were the chocolates gifts from friendly well-wishers, or perhaps a secret admirer? I wanted to ask her about her affair with the late Stephen Albright, but was too much of a chicken and felt I had already said enough. I didn't want to get eyeballed again. Swiftly she thrust the candy at me, and, pointing under the bed, said, “Help yourself, I've got lots. There are two more boxes, down there somewhere.”

I bent over to take a look and straightened. What was I doing? Who cared if she had a stash of chocolates under the bed? Between her vivid good looks and the sultry voice, the woman was a calculated distraction. Not many men would be able to resist her sexuality. I took a candy to be polite and joined her in watching a show demonstrating the fine art of fondue cooking. After twenty seconds of mind-numbing film footage, I thought,
fondue this
, and made a private gesture at the television set.

Then I asked Mrs. Vieira, “I ran into Maria D'Agnole in the hall a few minutes ago. She seemed terribly upset. I thought maybe she had been visiting you and wondered if she was all right? I know her father has been ill.”

“Listen, sweetie, I didn't even know she had a father. I told her that now that Tony's gone she shouldn't expect any more cash for her favours. She was his whore — as if the world didn't know — and the fun was over.”

That was harsh. Maria never looked like she was having fun to me. More likely, she had been playing up to Tony because she wanted to keep her job. I took a chance and said to her outright, “Seems like everyone who knew your husband is under suspicion. My chef is being treated as their prime suspect. I've been questioned and I know the Superior Meats employees have been interviewed. Of course the residents of the market are very upset with this investigation hanging over their heads. I guess I don't have to tell you about that, do I? I mean, the wife is usually the first person they accuse.”

“Yeah, well, they're not, and I shouldn't be discussing this with you in any case.”

“Why not?”

“Because the police warned me not to talk to anyone and I don't know you from Adam.”

Our conservation was ending on a low note. Mrs. Vieira's smile had vanished, and, not wanting to cause her any painful memories or invoke a curse, I wished her well and left. I noticed the same orderly who gave me directions to the phone was standing outside the door again.

“Find the phone alright ma'am?”

I nodded and smiled. I get called “ma'am” one more time today and I'll scream.

My new priority was getting the restaurant open. My existence depended on it, not to mention my staff's. We all have loans to keep up, bank loans, car loans, student loans, shark loans, all of the above. My engines were revving.

I beetled it through the main lobby of the hospital, agilely side-stepping patients dragging drip poles, solemn-faced nurses, and lost visitors with flowering plants in their hands. I saw the sign for the cafeteria and knowing Walker's was closed, thought a nice cup of tea and a cinnamon Danish might hit the spot. I made a hard right toward the pastry cart.

Maria D'Agnole was sitting at a table in the far corner. I put a teabag in a Styrofoam cup, filled it with boiling water from a spigot attached to an enormous copper drum kettle, and paid for it. I forgot about the bun.

“Hi, Maria. Mind if I join you?”

“Hi, um, I'm sorry, I forget your name. Please sit down.”