18
When Joe’s arm was around my waist I couldn’t help remembering our not-so-fake kiss by the pod, which threw me off my tambourine rattles. So I thought about Arlen Mather, and from there I remembered my mysterious summons to a meeting in the park. When the song ended, a few customers decided they were ready to take on the tarantella and swarmed us. Within seconds, with claps and shouted instructions, Landon put a dance class together.
I returned to the kitchen, where I stood right on the spot where I had found Mather, casting my mind back to that morning. How I didn’t recognize him; how I staggered around trying to make sense of a corpse on my kitchen floor. What else? I remembered accidentally turning on the Sinatra before Landon showed up. And for some reason I felt like I had cleaned up. But our cleaning service, Maid for You, had come during the night, and they’re especially great with the floors.
I turned in a slow circle, trying to get the picture. It had something to do with a cake … yes! Landon had made a cassata cake the day before the murder, and some of his silver sugar pearls had gone unswept. Needing something to do with my trembling hands, I’d picked them up as I tried to process the fact that there was a corpse in my kitchen, and …
Ignoring the culinary frenzy around me, I went over to the junk corner of the counter. When I lifted up the new junk mail, there they were. But as I peered at the decorations, I realized with a sinking heart that they weren’t silver sugar pearls. At all. They were little silver studs from what had to be Alma Toscano’s shoes—and they were evidence in a crime …
I told myself not to jump to conclusions. Jumping was way too timid. I was catapulting to conclusions, which felt better in every way.
“Don’t touch anything on this counter,” I warned the kitchen staff, who nodded at me, distracted. Then I went straight to the office to check the shift list for the wait staff. Maybe Alma had lost the silver studs while working the night before the murder, and Maid for You just hadn’t worked up to their usual standard. Yes, that was it. Most definitely.
My eyes scanned the shift list. On Monday, May 26, Alma Toscano had been the only server who
hadn’t
worked. Before I dragged Joe into these mental gymnastics, I decided to get whatever information my mysterious pal had promised me. So I slipped on a light jacket, stuffed my phone in the front pocket, and headed toward the back door. “Don’t touch anything on that junk counter,” I yelled to the temporary help, and when they rolled their eyes I realized it was like telling the
Titanic
passengers to lay off the shuffleboard after the iceberg.
I walked briskly along the flagstone path at the side of the restaurant and discovered that the front door had been propped open and the sounds of our Festa party were spilling out to the street. It was probably just a matter of time before the cops showed up. In the light breeze, an Italian flag that could have been seen for miles from the top of a castle fluttered from a holder Choo Choo had mounted on the bricks.
As I crossed the street, a Channel 5 TV truck pulled up out front and double-parked. I hurried past, grateful Maria Pia wasn’t around to see her beloved restaurant become the Bad Boy of Market Square. The towering locust trees acted like a natural sound barrier, muffling the street noises from the peace of the park. I glanced at my watch. The note said anytime after 7 p.m., and it was nearly eight. I cut across the grass to the public path, then passed the playground, where a baby lay sleeping in a stroller next to a young woman reading a bodice ripper.
Could she be A. T.?
I lingered and finally gave it a shot. “Hi,” I said meaningfully, “I’m Eve.”
When all I got was a “Yah?” I decided she was not my note writer.
I passed an old man cleaning up after his dog, then a gaggle of twentysomethings commiserating over the sorry lot of local men. Not one of them eyed me, so I figured no A. T. On a bench at the far end of the park, hunched over her big, shapeless bag, was Akahana. I’d always smiled at her but never gotten much in return, so I was surprised when she suddenly looked up and declared, “Eve Angelotta.”
I stopped in my tracks, then took a step closer. I felt like Moses at the moment he discovered plant life was capable of speech.
“I don’t have all day,” said Akahana. “Do you want to talk or not?”
I drew closer. “Did you send me the note?”
“Of course I sent you the note,” she barked. “I’m Akahana Takei—A. T.” She fixed me with a stern look, then went on. “I saw someone enter your place the morning of the murder.”
“You know about the murder?”
“I read the papers,” she said. “Mostly the
New York Times,
but the locals for entertainment. I circle all the errors.”
I frowned. “It’s been almost a week. Why are you telling me now?”
If she were Italian, now was the moment she would have given me the two-handed gesture that says
The diameter of your head is two feet and it’s filled with mascarpone
. “Because at first I thought it was your grandmother!” The “you ninny” was left unspoken. “But there were other witnesses, and I don’t like to be troubled. Trouble interrupts my work. That morning, I made my way around Market Square and was in the alley by the Logan Building when I saw her again.”
“And you thought it was my grandmother.”
She sat up as straight as she could. “I did. I really don’t pay too much attention to other people. They don’t interest me, and I’m far too busy for that.”
Busy Dumpster diving? “What do you do?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound too baffled.
“I’m writing a book on the origins of consciousness. I work at night.”
I digested this bit of news. “So,” I said, bringing the conversation back around to something I could actually talk about, “can you describe this woman who wasn’t my grandmother?”
“Same height, same weight, same age.”
Biting back a critique of Akahana’s descriptive skills, I pulled out my phone and tapped to the pictures I had snapped during the tarantella. So as not to prejudice the witness, I showed her one of Vera. Akahana gave a tight shake of her head. “Not her.” I showed her one of Paulette. She seemed to pause and consider. “Too short.” I showed her one of Dana. “Not her.”
When I showed her one of Alma Toscano, Akahana’s face went flat and her hands went very still. After a few seconds, she said, “That one.”
Alma. Maria Pia’s old friend, Our Lady of Reduced Circumstances. But why?
I thanked Akahana and shook her hand. She promised me she’d talk to the cops, but only if they came to her, and she handed me a business card: Akahana Takei, PhD, Cognitive Anthropology. Three different phone numbers, two different email addresses, a website, and an address on West Fourth Street in Quaker Hills. I promised her a plate of my
fritto misto di pesce
the very next time I made it.
I found myself half running back to Miracolo. At the last Free Maria Pia meeting at Joe’s place, Alma had jumped right in to research Max Scotti’s past, maybe figuring she could fudge the info and lead us all away from the truth. But she hadn’t called the dead guy “Max.” She called him Maximiliano.
At the time I’d thought how funny it sounded, coming from the lips of flyaway old Alma, who probably never went anywhere more exotic than a local crap-for-crafts outlet. But it was easy not to see any further than the one, narrow little way I knew her. It was easy to overlook whatever else—about anyone—just didn’t seem to apply.
What had happened to her husband? Did she have children? Where did she used to live before whatever disaster befell her, and she moved to low-income housing and took a waitressing job at her old friend Maria Pia’s place, where she could barely keep up? To me she was just Alma, with her mini-malistic grooming and air of carrying a crushing burden that had nothing to do with platters of fine northern Italian food.
But somehow she had known the name Maximiliano. If she hadn’t heard it that morning at Joe’s, then that meant she knew the man. And if she knew the man, the question that was making me shudder was whether she had killed him.
But how was I going to figure that out?
Slipping around to the back of Miracolo, where groups of drunk, dancing customers and dancers were showing off for the local TV cameras, I tried to remember how we’d talked about Mather, which was the first time we learned his real name. Dana had reported to the group that she and Patrick had known him as a financial adviser, and that his name was Scotti. But did she say Max? Or Maximiliano?
Inside the double doors, I managed to get Joe’s attention and pointed at Dana, who was clearly having a great old time in front of the camera. He whispered in her ear, and, amazingly, she tore herself away and headed right toward me. I could tell from her pumped-up expression that Festa della Repubblica would, in her mind, forever be known as her Triumphant Return. I had her complete attention for maybe the next five minutes.
I guided her into the back hall and gripped her upper arms. “Dana, that morning at Joe’s. You know, the Free Maria Pia meeting?”
She nodded, radiating helpfulness.
“You reported on Max Scotti as a financial adviser you and Patrick had known, right?”
“Right.” She blinked, distracted.
“Well, how did you refer to him?”
“What do you mean?” she asked with a frown.
I was dimming her Triumphant Return with these imponderables.
“Did you call him Maximiliano?”
She laughed, laying a hand on my arm. “Why would I call him that?”
Was I slow on the uptake? “Because it was his name?”
Dana smiled. “I called him Max. That’s the only name I ever heard for him. It’s how he introduced himself.”
I stepped back. “Are you absolutely sure, Dana?”
She smoothed my hair. “Yes, darling, I’m sure. Now I’ve got to get back to my interview.” And she was gone.
One last little thread …
I put a call through to Maid for You and got Marvin. Once I reassured him that I wasn’t calling to cancel tonight’s cleaning service, and that I had no complaints about any of the maids—not him, not Buddy, and not Derek—then he relaxed and listened to what I had to say. My question made him need to consult his booking ledger, and I heard him thumbing through the pages.
“Miracolo, Miracolo, Miracolo,” he muttered, pronouncing it “Mira Cola.” He finally found the booking for the Monday night before the murder. Marvin himself had been on the job. And no, nothing unusual to report. No silver bracelet in the dining room. No cake decorations or silver studs on the kitchen floor. He was absolutely sure, because he had taken the opportunity to try out his new shop vac and was pleased to report that it could suck up Yankee Stadium if he pointed it in the right direction. I thanked him and hung up.
So the kitchen floor was clean by the morning of the murder.
Which meant that Alma’s shoes hadn’t shed their studs until the time when she came in behind Arlen Mather, picked up our black marble mortar—my heart started pounding—and bashed in his head.
But was it enough for the police? There was Akahana’s identification … there were the silver studs on the kitchen floor. I could dig for the link between Alma Toscano and Max Scotti, but wouldn’t it still seem circumstantial? I needed more evidence, something so strong that it would trump whatever the cops had on Nonna.
It was time to call in some help.
*
Joe listened to me without saying a word while I laid it all out for him in Miracolo’s office. The testimony of Akahana, Marvin, and Dana. The evidence of the silver studs at the crime scene. Then whatever we could dig up about Alma’s connection to Max Scotti, except that might take some time—and Maria Pia was due to be arraigned in the morning. I started pacing, which didn’t seem to help Joe’s thinking.
The noise in the dining room suddenly started to become more distant, so we looked out the double-door windows into the nearly empty dining room. Going through to the front door, we watched Choo Choo and his flag disappear up the street in a crowd of customers fervidly singing the Italian national anthem with grappas in hand. Landon skipped along by Jonathan. Leo, the regular mandolin player, was at the front of the mob with a concertina. It was the barricade scene from
Les Mis,
but with a whole lot of alcohol and no particular ideals.
And then I heard the sirens.
Suddenly Joe turned to me. “What we need,” he said urgently, “is a confession.”
The perfect plan. We quickly plotted, and at the end of thirty seconds we each had our jobs in the sting operation. Joe went off to take care of his, which had something to do with Paulette and whoever turned up in the police cruiser.
I dashed back inside, past the few people still in the dining room. Mrs. Crawford, lost in a jazz riff. Paulette, standing in the open front doorway, watching the spectacle. Li Wei, in a tarantella trance despite the lack of music. A few elderly patrons tucking in to their tiramisu. And Alma Toscano, just sitting there.
Time to get ready. Operation Nab Alma was up and running.
I went into the kitchen and grabbed one of our glass dessert plates, then darted into the storeroom for a couple of clean white napkins, and the key item—the closest thing to thumbscrews for Alma that we could improvise. I ripped off my tarantella apron and hair comb and stashed them on a shelf.
I took two minutes to collect myself, doing some deep breathing and watching the second hand make its way around the face of my watch. When I was as collected as I was going to get, I slipped a jacket over my dress and, props in hand, went out to the courtyard to wait.
I only hoped Joe had done his job.
By prearrangement, I took a seat at the black wrought-iron table closest to the compost bin. The votive candle was burning low, but there were two tiki lights doing the job nearby. I set the glass plate, which I had covered with one napkin, in front of me, then set down the other napkin. Then Joe ran toward me along the side of Miracolo, pulled a chair closer to me and sat, setting down a bottle of beer and a couple of pistachio biscotti.