Basil Instinct (11 page)

Gone.

I headed through the courtyard, eyeballing everything, looking for some evidence of—what, exactly? Theft, first. Scanning, scanning. Nope. Votive candles all there and intact. Hmm. Slipping on my delinquent hat, I even peered into the compost bin, just to see—ascertain, as Detective Sally Belts and Boots would say—whether they’d deposited some roadkill. Nope. Could it be Mitchell and Slash just wanted a peek at where I worked? Despite their tough talk, were they harboring a little crush on me? The psycho lambs . . .

On my way back inside, I spied a colorful can lying at the side of the building. I picked it up—an empty can of neon orange spray paint. Two feet away lay a half-full can of neon green spray paint. And then, of course, I looked up, and staggered
backward to get the full effect of the graffiti on the beautiful old red brick of the restaurant. It was an orange, eight-foot-high, pretty fair likeness of my face in profile, downing, with great relish, a neon green cannoli, or what I could only assume was a cannoli. Also in green was my phone number.

As I walked back to the kitchen door with spray paint cans in my hands, and my eyes narrowed to slits, I pondered the situation. If I called the cops then, we’d have the same problem on Nonna’s busiest day ever that we were already hoping to avoid by stashing poor Georgia for the time being. For now, I had no proof and no time, but plenty of conviction that the wall defilers were none other than Mitchell and Slash. Who didn’t know I had seen them.

Ah.

A grim smile played about my lips.

This . . . this was a job for the fictitious Don Lolo Dinardo. And it could wait until later.

Right then, though, once I was back inside the kitchen, I called Adrian the bouncer at Jolly’s Pub across the square, who owed me for a few free meals I’d given him. He was quickly enlisted to spray over the graffiti with as good a match to the brick as he could find at the local hardware store and to do it pronto. By me, Adrian and I were now square. Then I dropped the paint cans into a gallon-size ziplock bag and stashed it on the low shelf on Landon’s
prep table, just in case they’d yield some incriminating fingerprints later. Lastly: I’d talk to Choo Choo at the first opportunity about how—oh, yes, how—he could make good on his colossally stupid idea about teaching cooking to CRIBS kids.

Then I glanced at my watch and let out a little yelp. Were we really just three hours away from the arrival of the blue-haired psycho sorority? I threw myself into the prep work with manic glee, just to forget the billboard-size sketch of myself on the side of our restaurant left for all of Quaker Hills to see. And, with my luck, call me up.

In the couple of times I came up for air, I was vaguely aware of a babbling flow of humanity, whose questions I just waved away or ignored altogether. We were already up to our elbows in scallop batter and scaloppine, yelling across the kitchen to one another for time checks. But when Maria Pia paused in the creation of delectable chaos long enough to go back to the office with Paulette and try on the official Belfiere gown—“Not that it isn’t perfect,” murmured the confident Paulette—Landon and I paused, shot each other a wide-eyed look, and saw our opportunity. I cleaned off my hands with a dish towel so fast you’d swear I was wrestling a wildcat, then tossed the rag to Landon. Our pants got the rest of the stuff off our hands as we scampered off to the storeroom.

Looking around furtively as though we were busting into Tiffany’s, we slunk into the lighted room, where I had a quick, bad moment trying to remember whether we had forgotten to turn off the light. We leaned breathlessly against the back of the door.

“I can’t wait for this day to be over,” I whispered.

Landon suddenly said something useful. “I parked in the alley at the back of the courtyard.”

Bingo. We had a destination for Georgia.

“But we have to get rid of Choo Choo,” I hissed.

Landon looked at me anxiously. “You do mean just get him out of the kitchen, don’t you?”

My mouth hung open. “Of course that’s what I—”

“I can’t help myself, all right?” His words tumbled over each other. “Somehow I’ve got to make risotto and granita in three hours, okay? I didn’t even shave this morning.” He clawed his cheeks. “And I’m not sure I fed Vaughn.”

So my cousin was definitely off his game.

“Listen,” I said, my brain in overdrive, like I was telling my unit just how we were going to take out the enemy machine-gun nest. “I’ll get Choo Choo out of the way, and then we get Georgia’s arms over our shoulders so she looks like she’s drunk—”

“In case we run into anybody.”

The reality of that possibility made my heart
pound. How on earth were we ever going to pull this off? “Then we make a dash with poor Georgia out the back door—”

“To my car.”

“Exactly. On three. One, two—”

“Three, already, three!” Landon couldn’t take the suspense.

I stuck my head out of the storeroom and peered around until I caught a glimpse of Choo Choo. “Hey, Chooch,” I called, “you better make sure the Closed for Private Party sign is up on the front door, okay?” When we heard an answering grunt, followed by some shift in the force we took for our monumental cousin’s leaving the kitchen, Landon and I turned to each other and said, “Go!”

We bounded to the back of the Miracolo storeroom, where we had shielded Georgia from view with a half wall of stacked boxes and cartons. Frantically pushing up our sleeves like any sensible person would do in order to drag a dead body, we stepped around the boxes to the stacked bags of semolina flour, where we had set poor defunct Georgia.

Only, Georgia was gone.

*   *   *

It was definitely mysterious, I don’t mind telling you.

And strangely terrifying.

Wordlessly, Landon and I scoured the storeroom looking for our fugitive corpse. We dug to the back of stocked shelves, wondering if she had somehow found a cozier crypt. Nothing. Nobody. Finally, tugging his hair into a state of emergency, Landon whirled on me. “Are you sure she was dead?”

It was actually a good question.

Was I?

Did I feel for a pulse?

Did I set a little mirror below her nostrils?

We stared at each other, paralyzed. “No, I’m not sure,” I whispered. Aside from the corpse three weeks ago and Ronnie Rosa, my high school boyfriend, who made me realize there’s actually quite a fine line between signs of life and a well-placed call to an undertaker, I’ve had no field experience with dead bodies. “Maybe Georgia was in a deeply meditative state.” I widened my eyes at him, full of meaning. If I could make Landon buy it, I had a prayer of hanging on to my sanity.

“In the foyer of Miracolo?”

“A fair question.” Was he going to be no help whatsoever?

“And where is she now? Why isn’t she out there in the kitchen with the rest of us, pounding veal and battering scallops?”

“Again,” I said primly, “a fair question. Maybe Georgia was . . . cataleptic.”

“What’s that?” Landon huddled toward me, all ears. Still open to possibilities of life.

“It looks like death. That’s all I know.”

“Well, how long does it last?”

“I don’t know.”

He chewed his lip, and I could tell he was thinking back to the Georgia Payne we had most recently experienced. “Does it include fixed and dilated pupils—”

“I don’t know!” I whined. Picky, picky.

“— and a body temp heading toward the—shall we say—suspiciously Arctic?” We both blew out air and stared fatalistically at the ceiling. “No,” said Landon darkly, “dead is as dead does.”

At that moment we heard Choo Choo calling our names and Landon and I clutched each other the way we used to back when we were eight and nine years old and our grandfather Benigno used to regale us with stories about
l’uomo nero—
Italian for bogeyman—which usually ended in tears and wet pants. Still, we enjoyed the clutching. Even then, Landon Angelotta was the best girlfriend I’ve ever had. But right then in the storeroom it seemed like
l’uomo nero
was back and he looked a lot like Choo Choo Bacigalupo. Which surprised me. I always sort of thought it was really Maria Pia.

We babbled. “Quick, hide.”

“Don’t let him come in.”

“Don’t let him find—”

What, exactly?

And then the beauty of our situation struck us both. Georgia was gone. Beamed up, vaporized (we checked quickly for a little pile of ashes—nope), reanimated and gurgling around the courtyard, or had dropped down to Starbucks for a triple Venti espresso to counteract the whole sleepy thing—who knew?

Swamped in relief, Landon smoothed his hair and I tugged at my jacket, smoothing it down around my hips. We were good. For the time being. I shoved a sack of arborio rice at Landon and grabbed a bottle of vinaigrette. Smiling serenely, we stepped out of the storeroom and held them up to Choo Choo, who was giving us the look he gets when a customer asks if we deliver.

Maria Pia returned to the kitchen—which still didn’t look quite like something FEMA would take an interest in, but give her an hour—cooing about her beautiful new gown. And when somebody—Paulette, probably, who thinks he’s “still sexy,” as she puts it, “albeit dead”—slipped a Frank Sinatra CD into the sound system, Landon gave me a baleful look. Cooking to Italian-American crooners relaxes our nonna. But to her, “relaxed” means
owning the Zone, which in turn means the
derecho
has struck but good.

The problem of the disappearing Georgia Payne was forgotten for the next couple of hours. I peeked into the dining room as Vera was lighting the votives and Li Wei—slicked back and decked out—was moonwalking to Frankie Avalon’s “Bobby Sox to Stockings”—a particular favorite of Maria Pia Angelotta—while Corabeth nibbled her nails in excitement. Paulette had L’Shondra Washington, who was thrilled to get the call, in a corner, where the two of them—with plenty of furtive glances—looked like they were planning the overthrow of the government. I gave Paulette the benefit of the doubt and figured she was bringing my student up to speed on what she likes to refer to as dining room “choreography.”

Still, from the oddly murderous look on L’Shondra’s face, I wasn’t convinced she understood we were all on the same team. Jonathan was locked in an argument with Giancarlo about whether Umbria or Piemonte produces the better grape. Tonight the gleaming bar was shrine free, even though Grief Week still had three days to go, and Dana Cahill and the regulars knew we were closed to the public. (I still half expected to see Dana breeze in, since she never thinks the words “private” or “members only” exclude her.)

Mrs. Crawford, who I was pretty sure knew we weren’t expecting Maria Pia’s nonexistent mah-jongg club, was dressed in black. Black without yards of gold embroidery or silver chiffon or Swarovski crystal beads. Just . . . plain . . . black. Below the knee, nothing shiny, a neckline that started north of her cleavage. With her wiry hair pinned back, she was the picture of a church organist. What gives? Why the change? I had a bad moment, then, wondering whether Mrs. Crawford had stumbled onto the contents of the storeroom, and this was what she wears to a send-off for the formerly vertical.

Then I remembered Maria Pia had requested that the piano repertoire for the evening be all opera. But opera as elevator music. Just a bland background—“of notes,” as my nonna had put it. At which Mrs. Crawford looked calculating, which worried me a bit.

When finally Nonna was satisfied that the meal was “respectable,” which means the dazzling aromas of onions, Parmesan, and marsala were filling the kitchen, she disappeared into the office, slamming the door behind her, to get ready for her big night. Landon happened to go into the walk-in freezer to check on the
granita di c
affè
,
when I heard a squeak. “Eve! Eve could I get some help in here, please, with this—this—side of beef?” What
was he doing moving sides of beef—here I glanced at my watch—just thirty minutes from the witching hour—otherwise known as half an hour before the Belfiere Bat Association showed up? Wait a minute. We don’t even
have
sides of beef . . .

I walked stiff-legged to the freezer as Choo Choo sidestepped gracefully from the saltimbocca to the salad to the risotto, stirring, tweaking, humming. At the precise moment I stepped inside the Miracolo version of the Yukon in December, I found Landon grappling with Georgia Payne, who had about as much color in her cheeks as Morticia Addams, and Nonna chose that moment to clang out our names. “Eve!
Bella! Cara!
Landon!
Bellissimo
!
” On Maria Pia’s good-looks scorecard for her grandchildren, Landon was always at the top.

Our nonna was definitely on the prowl for us.

I joined Landon in grappling with Georgia. “How did she get in here?” I hissed at him.

“Well . . .” He gritted his teeth, trying to reposition his hands, which were groping her in places that was bringing pleasure to neither of them. “I’d say we can lay to rest the hypothesis that Georgia may not be”—he winced and bit his lip—“dead.”

With that, her poor head lolled and her chin rapped me in the collarbone. And I could swear I pulled something in my back as I tried to lift her by the hips. Visions of a worker’s comp claim danced
like a skull and crossbones in my head. Although, for the life of me (sorry, Georgia), I couldn’t figure out how to describe the nature of the work-related injury.

Muscle strain from grappling with coworker’s corpse?

Effects of head-butt by deceased sous che
f
?

I was just deciding to pay another dollar for a face-to-face with Joe Beck on this matter, when someone jiggled the handle to the freezer door. The look Landon shot me was the one I remembered from our childhood when—thanks to our grandfather, who apparently couldn’t tell squeals of delight from those of abject terror—
l’uomo nero
was just about to burst into the room. Landon danced the frosty Georgia over to a corner obscured by shelves of grass-fed, cage-free, antibiotic-free (but still dead) chicken breasts, where he propped her upright with his body. I heard a little whimper, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Georgia.