Basil Instinct (26 page)

When I asked them who else was on hand, they looked at each other and came to the same conclusion at the same time: “Nobody.”

“Nobody.” I felt thoughtful.

Slash’s mouth twisted. “Yeah,” he said.

“Place was empty.”

Slash sheepishly admitted they scored some silverware. “Not that it was real,” he snorted. “Still, a guy’s gotta eat.”

I couldn’t make sense of any of this—how these kids knew silver from silver plate, or how utensils alone can fill a stomach—so I plowed on, trying really hard to keep my expression neutral. “Then what happened?”

They shrugged. “She told us to get lost—”

“Well,” said Slash, “ ‘Run along home’ is what she said.”

And Mitchell snorted, “Like we live in da hood.”

What was I going to do wit dese gangstas?

“And . . . ?”

“We blew the joint.”

And then they both remembered something that caused them to fall out laughing.

“Ssh, ssh, ssh.” I patted the air, worried that any sound of human joy would invoke Courtney Harrington.

Slash the K and Mitchell Terranova started pushing at each other playfully. “Yeah, she was standing in the doorway, like, you know?” said Slash, confidingly.

“Yes, I know what a doorway is.”

“Saying good night.”

“Yeah, when Dummy here—” a good shove at Mitchell, who was trying so hard to keep from blaring with laughter that bubbles appeared at the tip of his nose—“let a fork and spoon slide right through his pants—”

“—and hit the ground.”

This hilarity included some choice put-downs about which of the two of them had less in there to hold up their pants, which ended in a stalemate. “Then what?” I pressed.

“Old Georgia didn’t see a thing.”

“Just shut the door on us—”

And then, out of the mouths of troubled babes,
I got a key piece of information. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a glimpse of pink heading our way that could only be the muffler shop shirt of the misnamed Courtney Harrington. As my mind flew to a satisfying image of jamming one of the stools in the kitchen classroom up against the doorknob, Slash the K clicked his tongue stud against his back molars and repeated, “Yeah, she shut the door on us.” He scratched his chin, recollecting the moment. “And locked it.”

*   *   *

At 12:10 I sat inert in my trusty old Volvo, my box of my leather portfolio and sauce pots on the seat next to me. Never had making a béchamel sauce, a béarnaise sauce, and a simple brown gravy been so exhausting. Practically hunched over the steering wheel, and chewing the inside of my cheeks to keep myself awake—no way I was going to nap in the parking lot at Quaker Hills Career Center, where I could wake up suddenly in a ring of fire—I drove below the speed limit into town. There I found a metered spot that still had some time on it, in front of my favorite boutique, Airplane Hangers, and jolted back my seat.

When Courtney Harrington had caught up with me (having had no success trying to turn the doorknob to the kitchen classroom, much to
everyone’s stifled laughter), she had a question about office hours. As in: I was supposed to have some. So the students could meet with me outside the classroom to discuss their needs. For a
strega
wearing a muffler shop shirt, she seemed pretty sincere, but the notion that anything like office hours would meet any of those particular students’ needs made me erupt into hysterics.

Leaving Courtney with her mouth hanging open, I headed out the door, wiping my eyes.

With my seat back, I saw the Kale and Kayla Organics van zoom by on its way to the restaurant, where the flaky Kayla was delivering the day’s order of produce. Miracolo was reopening after the murder of Anna Tremayne, and I wondered what kind of dinner crowd we’d get that night, given the fact that it was our second murder in less than a month, even if my beef braciola
was on deck as the special as a lure for the squeamish. If I could stay awake to make it.

I catnapped for what turned out to be ten minutes and pulled myself out of the car, whereupon I was cornered by Dana Cahill, who kept tucking her black bob behind her ears, while she took me on about Grief Week. No mere catnap could steel me to any of Dana’s endless requests and suggestions. “Aren’t we done with Grief Week?” I felt myself sag against the car.

“Cut short, Eve, what with sudden deaths and whatnot.” This “whatnot” she punctuated with fluttering fingers. If she were honest, she’d just come out and admit she wasn’t done making neighborhood beagles howl at her tuneful slayings of splatter platters. Then she froze her shoulders in a gesture that I think was supposed to be appealing, and bared her cosmetically whitened teeth at me in a hopeful smile: “One more night?” She nibbled a cuticle.

I said graciously, “Whatever.”

Which would land us all in the
pasta fazool
later, but for now, at least, she kissed me and sprang back up the block. At least I was rid of her. As I headed down the sidewalk toward Miracolo, where Kayla was double-parked outside while she unloaded the van, I thought about what I (hated to admit I) had learned at the jumpy, knobby knees of Slash the K and Mitchell Terranova. The boys had left Georgia Payne alive at the restaurant—minus a purse—also some of our place settings—where she was alone. And as they left, she locked the door.

I passed some lunch crowd turistas and avoided a group of polo-shirted Jaycees who were self-importantly figuring out street decorations for the Fourth of July. They were trying to come to some agreement about just how many miles of red, white, and blue twinkle lights to string up—here
they prowled around looking for outdoor outlets—when I got the full impact of what Slash had said. If Georgia/Anna had locked the back door to Miracolo when the boys left, then her murder wasn’t a stranger killing. Either she had known her killer and unlocked the door for him . . . or her. Or . . .

Whoever killed Anna Tremayne had a key.

My hand settled on the front doorknob to our beautiful family restaurant just as the implications hit me. I’d need more than a brass knob to keep me upright. How was I ever going to get through my workday with the shakes?

16

Brushing by cousin Kayla, who was dressed in her classic powder-blue shorts overalls, today with a preposterous silver bandeau top, I breathed a quick “Hi” and headed for the office at the back. She called something after me about needing to talk about potato blight—as long as whatever she had to tell me didn’t involve office hours, I was okay—and kept on unloading bins.

I closed the door to the office, pulled out my cell, and dialed the Quaker Hills PD. When they put me through to Detective Sally Fanella, who sounded like she was wrestling with a twelve-inch sub with everything on it, and the sub was winning, I asked her about the anonymous call to the sheriff’s department. “How do you know about that?” she asked with a certain amount of suspi
cion in her voice. Then I heard some rustling of paper napkins.

I told her Fina Parisi was a friend of mine. Which, the second I said it, I realized was true.

Sally Fanella grunted. “Sheriff brought us up to speed, of course, since it’s our jurisdiction.”

“And the caller?”

If I could see her, she’d be shrugging. “Male. Nervous. Clocked in at ten forty-five. What more can I tell you? But now you can tell me—why the interest? Got something to add to your statement?”

As if.

Did I need to put a call in to Joe Beck? And if so, was I calling on him to do his lawyer thing for me, whatever that was? Or was I accusing him of something—something other than questionable taste in women, if he was still sneaking around with Potato Blight Girl? Because it was Joe Beck who knew about Anna T.’s hysterical blog. And it was Joe Beck who knew about the suspicious “death” at the Belfiere meeting two years ago, after which a scared—okay, hysterical—Anna Tremayne disappeared underground, going so far as to have her tattoo removed.

And it was Joe Beck who knew that Anna was threatening to publish an exposé of the two-hundred-year-old secret cooking society called Belfiere. Had she waited it out, she might have discovered that
the worst that could happen from the “poison game” was suspension from the club, and being cut off from the traditional homemade hooch.

It was Joe Beck.

But why? Why would he set the authorities on Belfiere—without telling me?

Did he have something to hide that did not include my cousin Kayla?

Could he have had something to do with Anna’s murder?

Even worse: Was all that kissing part of a plot to throw me off the track?

And as I walked in circles around the office at the back of Miracolo, I felt colder than anyone had a right to feel in the third week of June in Quaker Hills, Pennsylvania.

“No,” I said with a sigh a little bigger than I expected. “Nothing to add, Detective Fanella.” Somehow I got through the routine workday at Miracolo Italian Restaurant without any detectable goof-ups. At one point in the prepping process for the beef braciola entrée special, I think I dozed off while I was rolling the sliced and pounded and seasoned flank steak. There was something just a little too lulling about the rolling action to keep me conscious. Fortunately, enough neurons fired off to jolt me awake before I slid off the stool and landed my face in a meaty patch of fresh diced garlic.

While Choo Choo worked, huffing, on some zabaglione for the dessert special, he called back to me that he had seen Lanners walking into the law offices of Patty Pantuso, Nonna’s estate attorney, earlier today. When I pinned him down—always difficult with the mountainous but slippery Choo Choo—he thought it must have been before eleven o’clock.

“Guess he wasn’t too sick for that,” said Choo Choo in his uninquisitive way, then added: “Although not for nothing is Patty Pantuso called Hot Pantuso.” At that, my cousin grinned and nodded, privately enjoying whatever visions of Patty were dancing in his brain. The fact that Landon is gay didn’t seem to enter into his deliberations on that score.

I gnawed on some flavorful toothpicks while I considered this bit of information. Best-case scenario, Landon was just running an errand for Maria Pia. Yes, that was it. Only, when our Nonna arrived, slightly the worse for wear after her Belfiere induction, it wasn’t the case. Nothing like homemade hooch topping off an evening of costumes and attention to make her facial features look like they’d slipped a little. Even her outrageously thick and buoyant hair looked like it didn’t have the will to spring very far from her face.

Still, Maria Pia Angelotta was nothing if not a trouper, even when it wasn’t required. She winced
and kissed Choo Choo and me, fluttered a vague hand at Paulette, and cast a shuttered eye around the kitchen. Had it been in flames, she might have noticed. But as it was, she slunk down the hall to the office, where I followed her and poked in my head. “Hey, Nonna, been in touch with Patty Pantuso lately?”

As she sank into one of the leather couches, she sent me a look like I had just asked her to find the square root of a prime number. “No, why would I? She’s a vegetarian.” Which gives you a sense of just how much sense Nonna was making the day after. Still, I decided it meant she had not deputized Landon to pay a call on Hot Pantuso.

Which meant that Landon Angelotta had business of his own with her. First I’d ever heard of it. What could it be? Choo Choo, when questioned closely as he groaned over the zabaglione—he likes making desserts in inverse proportion to how much he likes eating them—didn’t have a clue. But he shrugged, which on Choo Choo looks like the kind of mudslide villagers fear, and added that maybe it had something to do with Uncle Dom’s estate.

Well, okay, but Uncle Dom, Landon’s father, died several years ago and his estate had long been settled. It’s what made my darling cousin/brother/best friend a wealthy young man.

So, why now? And then my fingers paused mid-toothpicking the braciola when my brain flipped the whole thing and I saw a totally different possibility. Landon was out sick—maybe he wasn’t malingering—he had too good a work ethic—maybe he was really and truly sick. As in very sick. As in seeing Hot Pantuso for a Last Will of his own.

After that extremely disturbing thought, I finished all my preps in a wooden way. No more dozing. All the servers—including Corabeth—turned up. So did the enigmatic Mrs. Crawford, a vision in pale yellow taffeta and a Kate Middleton kind of hat with a veil. I had a half-hour break before the customers showed up, and when Maria Pia did appropriate coddling things with Giancarlo Crespi—she had lured him back to Miracolo simply by reminding him with a kiss on his cheek just how far back they went—I closed myself in the office and paged through the documents of Anna Tremayne.

Dividing up everything into little piles across the desk, I had ended up with categories I loosely called Identity, Relationships, and Professional. The last was by far the least interesting, what with unenlightening résumés, clippings, publishers’ replies, tax returns, and so on. Nothing new there. At the top of the Identity pile I set her birth certificate. And in the Relationships pile I put any
correspondence that seemed more personal than anything else. I paused over a few jotted notes from a wine merchant named Claude, who seemed to be feeling her out about how she felt about his wines, his prices, his wonderful self. On top of Claude’s feelers I set what was clearly a torrid love letter, dated nearly forty years ago. No envelope, just a one-page, handwritten, combustible kind of document that began with “My Darling.” From there, it got more inventive.

Sadly, the only person ever mentioning “tender loins” to me was my butcher, and this fellow was always pretty clear that, make no mistake, what we were discussing was bovine. I waved the love letter I’d discovered in Anna T.’s things, gently cursing the writer for not naming names, but maybe I had never had the kind of relationship where names weren’t necessary. This notion, plus the one that Landon’s bucket list might include—“See Hot Pantuso about Last Will and Testament”—was downright depressing.

Setting down the love letter, I studied the birth certificate. From that pink, rectangular document I learned that Baby Girl Anna was born in Philadelphia County on October 4, 1975, mother Annelise Tremayne, father Donald Tremayne. I quickly checked the signature on the love letter from nearly forty years ago: scribbled, but it looked
like “Don.” So the love letter was written by Don to Annelise. And out of their romance came Baby Girl Anna, who went through changes, from celebrity chef to glove salesclerk, from Belfiere hysteric to . . . murder victim in the foyer of my Miracolo.