I snorted. “And Tastykakes grow on trees.”
Kayla and Dana crunched across the gravel together. I shot ’em a world-weary look.
Landon grabbed my arm and steered me toward Joe’s front door, which, lucky for Joe, did not have a cutesy sign reading Welcome Friends on it. “Suspend judgment,” whispered my cousin.
I kept my sunglasses on and, when Joe let us in, muttered something that had some of the right syllables to be taken for “Good morning.” With his jeans, he was wearing the kind of shirt that makes you think he likes the Great Outdoors. And he was barefoot. That morning I didn’t care for feet. Or Crate and Barrel coffee cups. Or gravel. He had all three. He also had a few sisal rugs, saddle-brown leather couches, bookshelves with actual books, and a wall of windows at the back so he could look out at the fog and the gravel while he sipped French-press coffee from those Crate and Barrel coffee cups.
“Cara mia!”
chirped Landon. “Your hair!” As he started raking his fingers through my hair, I realized that I hadn’t combed it. I accepted the offered coffee, my sunglasses in place. Let everyone think I had tied one on last night, or woken up with a migraine. Landon brought me a plate that held a toffee brioche, which I accepted wordlessly. A brioche on a plate is better than a Tastykake in the head.
Then I sat silently, shoulder to shoulder with Landon.
When Joe shot him a look like
What’s wrong with her?
Landon gave him a face that said
Dunno, this is how I found her
. I elbowed him and he winced. Once we were all assembled—Choo Choo, Paulette, Jonathan, Alma, Kayla, Vera, Landon, Dana, Joe, and I—Joe made his report. He had visited his client, Maria Pia, in jail yesterday afternoon and discussed the evidence with her. (Here he looked at me and I could tell he was itching to ask about the bracelet, so I slid my sunglasses down just far enough to give him the look that usually precedes an especially vigorous
malocchio
.)
Undaunted, he went on to tell us that he’d explained that she’d be arraigned on Tuesday—which meant she’d hear the formal charges and enter a plea of Not Guilty—after which she’d be out on bail. He’d assured her that we were all at work on the investigation, and that the blue kimono Choo Choo had brought did indeed look lovely on her.
Suck-up,
I thought with a smirk.
He looked directly at me. “Only because she asked.”
Then he called for a report on any recent findings.
Alma reported that Sasha Breen of Airplane Hangers was having her hair colored at the time of the murder—which Alma had verified—and that she’d agreed to display three pairs of Toscano’s Tootsies. We all clapped. Alma blushed.
Jonathan reported the results of his research on Mather. Dabbing his lips with a napkin, Jonathan told us about Mather’s golf handicap, his charitable donations for the past year, and his attendance at three different interior design trade shows. I wondered what light any of this might shed on the murder, but Landon gushed and we all clapped anyway, because we liked Jonathan a lot, and he seemed pleased.
Vera reported on Arlen Mather’s address, his delinquent taxes, and his political party.
Paulette pulled out a spiral notebook, put on purple drugstore readers, and made her report on the east quadrant shops. A stakeout of the blind bookstore owner yielded the info that he was cheating on his wife, but three different witnesses verified his alibi for the time of the murder. Repeated quizzing of the old lady who owned the card shop resulted in having to personally drive her to the ER, where Paulette was happy to report that she fully recovered. As for the Korean kid at the dry cleaner’s, she ended up following him to a martial arts class, where she learned he’s a second-degree black belt and decided to eliminate him from suspicion. “I mean, why would he have to use a mortar on his victim?”
“To divert suspicion?” Landon put forward.
Paulette waved it away. “Anyway, he was in his AP calculus class at the time of the murder. His teacher verified it, and we’re going out for drinks next Wednesday.” We cheered and Paulette snapped her reading glasses shut with a modestly pleased look.
Choo Choo reported on Maria Pia’s life in jail. Sympathetic whimpering ensued.
Kayla reported on a mole problem at the farm.
Landon reported on the evidence against our nonna, just so we all knew what we were up against. Neither he, Joe, nor I mentioned the silver bracelet.
When my turn came, I sipped my triple-ethical (organic, shade grown, fairly traded) coffee and said cryptically that I was pursuing inquiries. This grave pronouncement was met with some nods and furtive looks. So many furtive looks, in fact, that I found myself wondering what all
their
alibis were.
Then Dana, who had waited for all the other operatives to wind down, stood up, smoothed her skirt, and informed the rest of them that the dead Arlen Mather was actually a man named Max Scotti. She and Patrick had known him as a financial adviser. And apparently Mr. Scotti was an opera lover.
Everyone reeled with all this new information. Energy surged; coffee cups were refilled.
Alma stepped up and insisted on investigating the personal history of Maximiliano Scotti.
Jonathan teamed up with Landon to go door to door in the deceased’s old neighborhood, wherever that may be.
“Mather’s?” asked Vera. “Or Scotti’s?”
Landon and Jonathan consulted briefly. “Mather’s.”
Vera said, “Then I’ll take Scotti’s.” Since that could be harder to find, she asked Choo Choo if he’d like to team up with her.
We all took his speechlessness for assent, and he spent the rest of the meeting with a glazed look on his face.
Paulette assigned herself the task of investigating Mrs. Crawford, citing the old crime-solving adage,
Cherchez la femme
.
“Good luck with that,” was all I said. When Joe laughed, I caught his eye—and his smile—and didn’t mind the bare feet or the gravel so much.
“Also Li Wei,” said Paulette, adding his name to her list.
Also Giancar-lo Cres-pi,
she scribbled.
Everyone seemed a little alarmed at her thoroughness.
“Vera,” I said suddenly, turning to her, “you were the first to arrive yesterday.” Now that Joe’s fine caffeine was zooming through my system, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off yesterday in Miracolo.
Vera nodded, interested.
“Did anything seem odd to you, in the dining room?”
I had the attention of all the other ops.
Vera tipped her head. “Like what, Eve?”
I shrugged. “I just keep having the feeling that maybe something else got stolen in the robbery. Only, I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Well … ” She tried to reconstruct the scene, “I came in … I told you how much better my brother Eric’s doing … we talked about Maria Pia … and I covered the tables with the clean linens.” Which was pretty much how I remembered it, too. She opened her hands wide. “No, nothing struck me, Eve. Just that all the opera stuff was gone.”
The others had gotten bored and moved to the table for more goodies, but I said, “Tell me again, Veers. Nice and slow. Don’t leave anything out.”
Step by step, she recounted how she had come through the front door, called out “Hi” to me where I sat at the back of the dining room, and set her jacket on a chair. She walked over to the empty shadow boxes, said a few things about what a shame, and so on—which I remembered, as well—but nothing struck her as otherwise out of place. Then she had come over to me, telling me about her brother, handing me the empty linens bags from the top of the pile, grabbing an armful of tablecloths. And while she had covered the tables—nothing missing, all cloths accounted for—we talked about Maria Pia.
Maybe it had something to do with that part of our conversation. Some little piece of information had almost triggered something, a memory, an observation, a—
At that moment Dana took center stage on Joe’s largest rug and made an announcement. “There is no easy way to say this,” she began oratorically. Chatter dried up and heads turned toward her, goodies stalled midair. “But I have decided to accept another position.”
This drew some puzzled looks.
“You’re leaving Patrick’s office?” asked Paulette.
“No,” Dana said patiently, “my presence there is indispensable to the operation, so I will always be the office manager.” She clasped her hands just under her chin. “I will be singing almost nightly at Le Chien Rouge.”
This announcement was met with a general outcry that could only be called tepid.
She turned to me, hands clasped like a supplicant. “Which means tonight will be my final performance at Miracolo.”
Something akin to a huzzah went up, which Landon then explained to her meant we were all thrilled for her career advancement.
Totally our loss, said someone.
Eloise Timmler’s gain, said I, remembering Mark’s gropes.
Whatever will we do? (This from Paulette, who hid behind a napkin.)
Leo the mandolin regular will just have to soldier on.
Brett on the homemade bass will just have to man up.
Awash in our support, Dana practically twirled, babbling about how she hoped we’d understand that these new demands on her time meant she could no longer participate in Operation Free Maria Pia, and that she hoped we’d stop by to hear her stylings of that little wren, Edith Piaf.
15
When the meeting broke up fifteen minutes later, Landon and I thanked Joe and headed for the door. “Oh, sure thing,” he said casually, turning to say something to Alma. Not for a second did it look like he was going to peel me off my attentive cousin and harangue me about withholding evidence. With a sigh, I realized he had written me off. I only hoped it was because he was concentrating all his energies on Nonna’s bail and eventual defense.
On the drive to Miracolo, I debated tonight’s dinner specials with Landon. I settled on potato gnocchi and
maccheroni con la trippa,
a delicious sausage soup from the Piedmont area. Landon bickered with me a tad over the wisdom of making soup at the end of May, but I insisted we could crank up the air-conditioning. After all, it was intoxicatingly fragrant. And Maria Pia’s dime paying the utilities. Landon relented.
We spent a lovely afternoon having a three-way gnocchi-making race, Landon, Choo Choo, and I. By the time we were done, we set aside our gnocchi boards and counted: Choo Choo, who had very agile thumbs for such a big guy—and the secret of making good, light gnocchi lies in the thumb—beat us by about fifteen gnocchi. Landon decided on two different aromatic sauces to pair with the gnocchi and got busy with tomatoes.
By the time we opened our doors, the wait staff had arrived. And finally Mrs. Crawford, decked out in white silk pants and a navy silk tunic with a mandarin collar and powder-blue embroidered lotus flowers. Her wiry hair was swept up off her neck with a couple of chopsticks. Jonathan was back on duty as sommelier, which put a spring in his cute little step, and Choo Choo had changed into his maître d’ outfit. I was strictly black pants, black chef jacket, and black toque.
We looked sharp.
We were sharp.
The first half of the evening went so smoothly, you’d think we had been professionally choreographed. Nothing boiled over, nothing broke, no double bookings, no drunks. At eight o’clock, I stepped back from the Vulcan range and took a few deep breaths. My
maccheroni con la trippa
was nearly gone, enough for maybe three more servings, but the wonderful smell of the succulent sausage remained like a delectable ghost.
I looked around. Li Wei was bopping along to his iPod, and Landon was plating two orders of the gnocchi. Life was good. I ambled over to the double doors and peered through the glass into the dining room, where Mrs. Crawford’s chopsticks were failing, although her fingers were not. Only one empty table. It was very satisfying to hear the chatter, the pleasurable laughs, the soft jazz.
And then I noticed the group of four at table 7.
It was Joe Beck.
And James Beck.
And James’s wife, Olivia.
And another woman. She was wearing a white silk blouse with a deep ruffled neckline and a black pencil skirt. The bling was gold. The hair was gold. She looked like someone who had grown up with money in a household where even the cupcakes were monogrammed.
She could have been a horseback-riding Bryn Mawr debutante, whose idea of slumming was spending summers on Martha’s Vineyard with Mumsy and Daddy. But could she dance Sutton Foster’s entire routine for the title song of
Anything Goes
? Could she make
maccheroni con la trippa
from scratch? Could she even pronounce it?
But I had to admit, she did kind of look like she went with Joe.
I heaved a sigh.
I could go right out there and meet her. After all, I’d paid a buck to hire Joe as my lawyer, so it might be okay to interrupt their split of champagne and thrust out a hand. She would lift her professionally waxed brows at me, and Joe would explain that I’m the head chef. Then she’d ask politely whether I had to go to school for that.
On second thought, I’d just stick to the kitchen.
I watched Joe make a toast, then James made what must have been a witty response, because all four of them laughed. When I realized that my nose was actually pressed against the window, I sprang back in horror. The Becks—“monied” folk, as Uncle Dom would have called them—lived in a world that would never include me. I was just someone who made food for them, in the back, out of sight. They would never see my face or even know my name. Sooner or later, even my “lawyer” would forget it.
A buck goes only so far.
*
The rest of the evening flew. I kept my head down when Li Wei broke a wineglass, and I kept my head farther down when I b——d the veal I was pan-frying and had to start the order over. Alma got a handsome tip from the Becks, then they left. When the dining room was empty, Mrs. Crawford evaporated. Fewer late-night regulars than usual turned up. Dana got through her swan song with a minimum of missed notes, then half cried a farewell and full-out pitched her new gig into the mic.