“Everything in place?” I asked him in a low voice.
“I think so.”
Even though we were at the very back of the courtyard, I could still hear the commotion out on the street. Police flashers strobed through the side yard, and a bullhorn crackled.
The response was a swell of laughter.
I was strangely calm, my mind going back to the night when I had met Joe at this very spot, startling him as he balanced on the rim of the compost bin.
When I reminded him, and we were both picturing the moment he fell in, he winced.
“Ah, Kayla,” I said heavily.
“It was nothing,” he said, looking straight ahead.
I gave him a sidelong look. “Then it was nothing for three days.”
“Three nights,” he corrected.
“Ah—Kayla,” I said.
“Why do you keep saying that?” Joe asked.
I shot him a pained look. “Because she just went by out front, waving Choo Choo’s flag.”
He grunted. “I get the impression she has a knack for maximum disturbance.”
“Of me?”
“Of anything.”
“Was she worth it?” I turned to look at him. “Worth jeopardizing whatever you’ve got going with the blond beauty?” I actually wanted to know. “I’m not asking judgmentally. Really, I’m not.”
This last week had rocketed me right out of the judgmental zone. If Joe Beck wined, dined, and bedded the half of Quaker Hills that did not include me, why should I care?
“Blond beauty?” He looked like he was racking his memory.
“The good-looking blond you were here with the other night, with James and Olivia?”
Joe looked sincerely puzzled. “Are you talking about Anna Carson, my law partner?”
“You’re running around with your
law
partner now?” It was out of my mouth before I knew it, with a little too much volume.
“What do you mean, running around?” He sounded indignant.
“Dating.”
“Dating is not the same as running around,” he said with lawyerly loftiness. “Eve, my marriage ended five years ago. I date. But my law partner and I have never dated,
and
we’ve never run around.”
“Oh,” I said softly. “I guess that settles it.”
Just then the back door to Miracolo opened, and Alma Toscano stepped outside. Backlit, she somehow looked scary, and my pulse picked up. I couldn’t tell whether it was from seeing Alma starting toward us, who suddenly seemd bigger than I had ever quite appreciated, or from the new direction in my conversation with Joe.
Alma reached the table, where she loomed very large indeed. “Paulette said you wanted to see me?” She pushed at the Festa comb in her hair.
Now that she was here, she didn’t look quite so scary. Which may well have made Arlen/Max let down his guard, and maybe I wasn’t paying attention to the right things just then.
“Yes, Alma, have a seat,” I said coolly. Joe indicated the chair across from us.
She sat, then asked in a panicked voice, “Am I losing my job?”
“Well … ” I wasn’t sure how to answer that.
Joe jumped in. “We have something serious to talk over,” he said grimly, then accidentally knocked a biscotto off the table with his elbow. We both ducked to retrieve it.
“If your marriage ended five years ago,” I hissed at him under the table, “why do you still wear a wedding ring?”
“I was taking it to an estate jeweler,” he hissed back at me, snagging the fallen biscotto.
“Because of Kayla?” I whispered.
“Kayla was an aberration.” Then he shot me a wicked smile. “Think of her as my FedEx guy.”
I gasped. “You know about the FedEx guy?”
“Everyone knows about the FedEx guy.”
We resurfaced at the same time. While I sat there trembling with embarrassment, Joe turned to Alma. “We want to talk to you about Arlen Mather. Eve?” he prompted.
I stared at him. This part of the sting was completely unrehearsed. Why wasn’t
he
handling it? I didn’t know what was admissible in a court of law. Well, there was only one way to say it.
“We know you killed Arlen Mather, Alma.” With that, I sat back and tried to appear all-knowing. “And that his real name was Maximiliano Scotti.”
She stammered, “I-I-don’t know what you—”
“Dana called him Max at our last meeting. But you called him Maximiliano, something only his killer could know.” I was on shaky ground with that, but it sounded good.
Joe kept up the pressure. “And you took on researching Scotti to control the information and lead us away from anything that would incriminate you.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Oh, really?” I overrode her. “It won’t take the cops long to figure out how you knew him. And from there, it’s a slam-dunk to know why you killed him.” Although, speaking for myself, I didn’t have a clue.
She just sat there, stony.
Then I drew back the napkin that covered the glass plate. In the low light, what looked like a scattering of little silver studs was exposed. And then I forgot my point.
Alma stared at the plate.
So did I.
Sensing an impasse, Joe pointed to the studs. “This is just half of what the cops recovered at the scene of the murder.”
“So what?” she bluffed. “I didn’t have anything to do with—”
And then Joe swept the beer bottle right off the table. In the mess of broken glass and spraying beer, he growled, “Quit stalling, Alma.”
Dazzled by such fine misdirection, I dove under the table and wrestled Alma’s right shoe off her foot. Scrambling to my feet, I held it up like a trophy and pointed triumphantly at the bald patch on the beige canvas vamp. “
This
is the shoe you were wearing the morning you killed him.”
She made an unsuccessful swipe at it. “You have no right to—”
I backed out of reach. “You were so busy with the marble mortar, you never even noticed that your, er, craft glue failed you in your moment of homicidal need.” Was I laying it on too thick?
Alma shot me a defiant glare. “You can’t prove anything!” she jeered, jerking her head toward the silver studs on the plate. Her hand darted toward them.
When she made a grab for it, Joe quickly pulled it away and slipped the napkin back into place. “Oh, yes, we can. The report from the crime lab just came back, and those studs show glue, canvas residue, and scrapes from a small set of pliers. While you’ve been here tonight, the cops have been searching your apartment.”
She looked trapped, and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
I leaned across the table. “Finding those pliers, and matching them to the studs found at the crime is just a matter of time. So why don’t you tell us why you killed poor Arlen, my nonna’s boyfriend, a fine man who made her happy?” How long would I have to trowel it on before she snapped? “He treated her like a queen and he loved Italian opera and Caruso, and Caruso records, and Caruso songs that were—”
She exploded. And not a moment too soon. I was about to nod off. “Oh, shut up!” she shouted. “Shut up, shut up, shut
up
!” Shaking with fury, she pushed herself to her feet. “You stupid little self-important prig!” I tried to tell myself she must be referring to Joe, but she did happen to be glaring at me. “What do you know about any of it! What do you know about anything outside of your precious stupid kitchen and your impossible grandmother, who twirls around and rakes it in and—and—bestows pitiful jobs on needy friends who once had more money than any of you will
ever
have!”
Joe and I sat very still while she hit her stride, describing how she and Jack Toscano, the sweetest, gentlest man on the face of this earth had been a high-powered Philadelphia society couple until that thief Maximiliano Scotti came along as their financial adviser. He had lost and mismanaged what he couldn’t just plain steal of their money, sailing close enough to the wind to avoid prosecution and finally disappearing. But not before Jack, after a few years of not being able to climb out of the ruins of their life, killed himself. In front of her.
That’s
what she’d had to live with. Every single day.
“When Scotti turned up again, calling himself Arlen Mather, he didn’t recognize me. Why would he?” Alma’s shaking hands swept through the air around her. “Look what he had made me!” She choked back a sob. “I even waited on him once, one night when you were off,” she jerked her chin at me, “and he still didn’t recognize me. So then I bided my time, following him—until last week.” She had a satisfied, faraway look in her eye.
Alma stood very tall, and I saw a flash of her former self. “After Maria Pia dropped him off out front, I quietly followed him inside, into the kitchen, and picked up the mortar. When he finally heard me and started to turn, I told him this was for Jack. And then I brought it down on his head. Again and again and again.” She let out a sigh of pleasure. “I haven’t felt that good since Jack and I attended the ribbon cutting for the Toscano Psychiatry wing at St. Joseph’s Hospital.” She gazed at us serenely.
I heard a sound behind me, and a uniformed cop came out from behind the compost bin. As he handcuffed Alma and read her her rights, Joe and I grinned at each other in relief. The Festa della Repubblica revelers spilled into the courtyard, but when they saw what was going down, even the concertina stopped. As Alma limped away in the cop’s firm grip, she suddenly reached down, whipped off her remaining shoe, and hurtled it away from her. And then I saw Choo Choo take off through the crowd, and I smiled. He’d arrive at the police station well before the cruiser pulled up with Alma Toscano inside.
19
I sat alone at the table in the back of the courtyard, listening to the night sounds. Everyone had departed. Joe had taken off after Choo Choo, and Landon had taken off after Joe. Some of the revelers replaced the flag, while others called cabs. A few went back into the dining room and settled up their bills. And Paulette and Giancarlo brought me a shot of Laphroaig on a silver tray. Apparently they had fought over who got to present it.
Our beloved regulars drifted in at the usual time. The night air was warm, and I closed my eyes. I could hear the deep thrum of the bass, and a run on the bongos. Even the clarinet had shown up. Dana was warming up with scales, and I thought how wonderful it was to love something so much that it really didn’t matter if you weren’t very good at it. Mrs. Crawford was still at the piano, and it finally felt like this was the known world, after all.
Miracolo and Market Square and my beloved family.
Though I no longer needed legal services from my lawyer, that didn’t rule out other possibilities. I imagined us dancing alone in the courtyard, I in my hot red sheath, he in his floral swim trunks, while Mrs. Crawford turned “Your Eyes Have Told Me What I Did Not Know” into dance music.
As I finished my shot, I heard a distant commotion and what sounded like a drumroll made by dozens of hands. Shouts of joy went up inside. I stood up with a smile and headed back to the inviting lights of our restaurant. In the dining room, I heard a familiar voice complaining about that
strega
Alma Toscano, killer of perfectly nice boyfriends.
I’d die before I’d ever tell her that the perfectly nice boyfriend had called her an “elderly friend” to Calladine.
Then the raggedy little band started up, and as I stood for one minute longer inside the doors to the dining room, Landon popped his head in to say that Joe had gone home. That was okay; I could thank him later. The musicians started playing “Three Coins in the Fountain,” and our two divas started bellowing out the words.
When I pushed open the double doors, there she was, her fresh lipstick a little smudged, her skirts fully deployed as she twirled around the floor. My nonna. Sprung.
I headed over toward her … but there was the little matter of the cannoli, and I hesitated.
She caught sight of me then, stopped twirling, and stopped trying to outdo Dana. And without any hesitation, my nonna came over to me, spread her arms wide, and took me in.
Eve’s Recipe for the Rebel Cannoli
You can purchase cannoli tubes online or at a specialty store. They come in packages of four, and each tube measures 1x8”.
FOR THE SHELL
:
1
1
/
2
cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1
1
/
2
tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
1 egg, separated
1
/
4
cup Soave or Pinot Grigio (both are from northern Italy, so Maria Pia would at least approve of the wine, if not the cannoli)
1
1
/
2
teaspoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon water
Mix the flour and sugar. Cut in the butter. Into an indentation in the center, add the egg yolk, just
half
the egg white (set aside the remainder), the wine, vinegar, and water. Mix to form a dough, then knead for 10 minutes. Cover and chill for an hour. On a floured surface, roll out the dough nearly paper thin. Then cut the dough into rounds (about 3–4 inches’ diameter) using the rim of a margarita glass.
Roll each round securely around a cannoli tube. Beat a little water into the remaining egg white. Where the dough overlaps, brush both the underside and the topside with the slightly beaten egg white to seal. Fry in deep, hot canola oil (about 350°) until golden. Watch carefully! Remove and drain on paper towels. When cool enough to handle, slide each cannoli shell off its tube. Let cool completely before filling.
FOR THE FILLING
:
2 cups whole milk ricotta cheese
1
/
3
cup powdered sugar