Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (30 page)

She bent her head. “I know. You’re right. I should have done that in the first place, but I thought I could just pay for the tapes and be done with this. It never crossed my mind that this man was involved in anything like a Mafia.”

“I’m sure it didn’t,” Danny said. “I think it would be best to speak to the authorities in the United States. I just feel you
would be safer there. When are you supposed to see George again?”

“He’s coming for the contracts at noon.”

“You should be gone when he does. You should get back to America as soon as possible.”

“Do you know anyone in the FBI or CIA?” I asked.

She answered right away. “Yes. Our good friend John Long is FBI. He knew Peter from college.” She grimaced and looked out the window. “I hate for him to learn about this.”

“He can’t feel any worse than you do, Sally. And perhaps he can help.”

She nodded, and Danny asked me when we were scheduled to leave Ravenna.

“Giuseppe is supposed to pick us up at four o’clock and drive us to Milan. Our plane leaves tomorrow morning.”

“Go online, Casey, and see if there are any flights out tonight,” Danny said.

I turned on Sally’s laptop and logged on. “The last flight for Washington leaves Milan at three-thirty.”

Danny looked at his watch. “We can make it. I’ll drive you. Any seats available?”

I checked for an available seat, then changed my mind and asked for two. I couldn’t let Sally travel alone. If she did get kidnapped, at least I’d know about it and could get help or—I gulped—be taken with her. “Done,” I said.

“Pack up, Sally,” Danny said.

“I’ll tell Sonya we’re leaving,” I said.

“What are you going to tell her?” Sally asked.

“That’s there’s a risotto Milanese waiting for us and we don’t want to miss it. Pack!”

We were in the lobby twenty minutes later. Sonya didn’t question our early departure. She was working with John and
buried in details. “And, Sonya,” I added, “I’ve decided to go to Washington with Sally for a few days, so I won’t be flying back to New York with you.”

“That will be nice,” she said distracted by whatever she was working on.

“What an unbelievable start of a day,” I said to Danny in the lobby once we had checked out and were waiting for Sally to do the same.

“Looks like his was worse,” he said, cocking his head toward a man sitting nearby reading a newspaper. I looked over and then back at Danny. “What?” I asked.

“Look at his feet.”

I looked and saw that he was wearing one blue sock and one brown. I laughed. “I never know how people can do that. Don’t they look at their feet when they put their socks on?”

The man’s face was hidden by the newspaper. Danny said, “Maybe he wears thick glasses and didn’t have them on when he dressed.” He reached up and touched my hair. “Or maybe he had a beautiful woman in his room and couldn’t take his eyes off her as she dressed.”

I smiled. “That makes more sense.” I raised my eyebrows. “Then why do yours match?”

“I only have white ones.”

D
ANNY DROVE LIKE A
maniac, meaning like the Italians, all the way to Milan. Incredibly, along the way he and Sally discussed what they would make on the show they were scheduled to do together. Sonya was right about Sally; no matter what she was going through, she took care of her work. I, on the other hand, was busy looking out all the windows for Mafia.

Sally and Danny decided on Baked Alaska. It could be assembled
in the allotted time, was impressive to see, and allowed Sally to use her blowtorch. Danny agreed to follow the recipe in Sally’s book, so we just had to work out what parts of it we should show.

“How do you beat your meringue, Danny, by machine or by hand?” Sally was always interested in other chefs’ methods.

“Sweetie makes the desserts for the restaurant, so it’s been a while since I’ve done it. But I’ve always preferred a copper bowl and balloon whisk.”

“Me too. But maybe for the show we should use a standing mixer, because more people will have that.”

“That works for me.”

“What test do you use to see if they’re ready?” Sally asked.

“The egg.”

“Good. Me too.” Meringue recipes usually say to beat the whites until they are stiff but not dry, but a lot of people don’t know what that looks like, and it is easy to overbeat them. If you sit an egg, in its shell, on the meringue and it sinks in more than a couple of inches, the whites are not ready. If it doesn’t sink at all, they are overbeaten and you should beat in another raw white to compensate.

Sally turned around to look at me. “Are you taking notes, Casey?” I was so busy keeping Mafia watch that I hadn’t written anything down, and I would need it for the scripts.

“I’m starting now,” I said, looking for my tote. Then I remembered that I had packed it in the trunk. “My tote’s in the trunk.”

“There’s a pad in my backpack on the floor,” Danny said, accelerating to pass three slower-moving cars; they were only doing ninety.

I unzipped his backpack and stretched the top open to look for the pad. It was clearly visible, right under the photo of Kim
the greeter, greeting me from the beach, in a barely there bikini. I glanced up to see if Danny was looking in the mirror before turning the photo over. It was one of those make-your-own-postcard photos, and on the back she had written, “Wish you were here” followed by several
X
’s and
O
’s. Just in case that wasn’t tacky enough, she’d planted a lipstick kiss in a totally hideous, cotton-candy shade of pink over the address. I could feel the heat of anger rising and bit my lip to stop the stream of Italian expletives begging to be released. Well, what had I expected? I knew what he was like. We had been together in completely unreal circumstances and I had had him all to myself. That would not be the case back in the real world. I would have to share, and I’m not a sharing kind of person. I decided to say nothing and slipped the photo back into the backpack before taking out the pad.

“Did you find the pad?” Danny asked without turning around.

“Got it,” I said.

A
T THE AIRPORT
, D
ANNY
talked the young woman at the security gate into letting him take his dear old mother, Sally, to the gate. The guard actually began to bat her eyelashes. As I went through the gate, she was telling the monitor checker that
she’d
like to be his dear old mother.

When the plane was ready for boarding, Danny held me back while Sally went ahead. He took out a business card and asked me for a pen. “Here’s my home number in Ireland. Call me. Anytime for anything. I fly from there to New York tomorrow night. Let me know you’re okay.”

“I will.”

“And you’ll make sure Sally calls her friend in the FBI right away?”

“Done.”

He put his arms around me and pulled me close. “And you’ll make sure you won’t get on that plane and decide to downgrade me to ‘nice’ again?”

I kept my tone light. “You are nice.” He tipped his head back and squinted at me. I continued, “And sweet and thoughtful. And helpful—”

“Stop! I sound like the Easter Bunny.” He played with my hair. “You know, our schedules in New York will make it hard to find time to be together.”

So that’s how he plans to deal with it. Scheduling. I wondered which part of which day he planned to give me. I stepped back from him and said, “Look, Danny, I’ve had a great time with you. It was a blast. But I’m not thinking about going out with you in New York.”

The frown he gave me made me wish I were facing a Mafia hit man instead. “And just what does that mean?” he asked.

I gave him a peck on the cheek, a cursory hug, and said, “Danny. It was great, but I have to run. The plane’s finished boarding.” And I started toward the runway.

“Wait a minute, Casey.”

“I have to go,” I called over my shoulder. “I’ll phone you from Washington.”

Boy, I’d handled that well, I thought, and then concentrated on the more immediate issue: getting Sally home safely.

O
NCE THE PLANE WAS
in the air, Sally and I both fell sound asleep. For the first time that day, I felt safe. We were out of harm’s way, and I slept soundly for two hours. When I woke up, Sally was still sleeping and I carefully climbed over her to go to the restroom. On my way back to my seat, I saw him. He was sitting in an aisle seat with his legs partially in the aisle.
His socks were blue and brown. He was asleep with his hat pulled down over his eyes so I couldn’t see much of his face, but he was young. Hit men are always young. I tried to remember the shoes, the pants; they seemed the same. I asked myself, what were the chances that two different men wearing mismatched blue and brown socks would be in our hotel in Ravenna and then on our plane to Washington? None. Sally was being followed. Correction:
we
were being followed.

I returned to my seat with my heart racing and not a clue about what to do. It was a long time before I could think beyond being hacked up and delivered to my parents in a trash bag. Okay, I told myself. Take it slow. Think it through. I figured he couldn’t be armed on the plane, and if his goal was to get Sally, he’d wait until she left the airport. If Sally called the FBI from the airport, maybe they’d send someone to get us and we wouldn’t have to leave the terminal alone. But what if they wouldn’t send someone? Plan F, as in we’re fucked. I decided not to tell Sally about the blue-and-brown-socked man but to convince her somehow to call her friend in the FBI from the airport. I stayed awake for the rest of the flight, enjoying the only comforting thought I had: George Davis getting to the hotel and finding Sally gone.

W
HEN WE LANDED
,
JUST
before six
P.M
., I tried to keep my eye on the two-socked man but lost him in the crowd. I had never gotten a really good look at his face and the floor was a sea of indistinguishable feet. I stayed close to Sally, and as soon as we cleared customs, I stopped her.

“Sally, call your friend John from here.”

“I think we can wait until we get home.”

“I’m not moving from this airport, Sally. Please call him.”

“This is foolish, Casey. Let’s go.”

I sat down on the floor. “I’m not moving.”

She tapped me with her size eleven foot. “Well, at least move out of the line of traffic. I’ll call.”

It took Sally a while to connect with John and when she finally did, she told him in an unsteady voice that she had learned some upsetting news about Peter and would like to talk to him about it. She listened a moment and then hung up the phone.

“He told me to wait here. He’s coming to get us. He said he’d call when he’s at the airport.”

Twenty minutes later, Sally’s cell rang and John met us at the exit door. He greeted Sally warmly, loaded our luggage into the trunk, and helped us into the back seat. I leaned back and sighed with relief. John slipped into the driver’s seat and fastened his seatbelt—and then
he
got in. The man with two different socks. John started to drive, and I reached for the door. I knew I couldn’t pull Sally out with me, but I could scream. There were plenty of people around to hear. If the car sped off, I could get the plate number and call the police. The door was locked from the inside. Oh God! Oh God! It would be the trash bag for us. I reached for my cell phone. But who would I call? Could 911 trace a moving car? Could I get out “We’ve been kidnapped from the airport by a make-believe FBI agent and a man with a blue and a brown sock” before they got out the hacksaws?
“Stop!”
I screamed.
“I have to pee!”
I was pretty sure I just had, in my pants.

John slammed on the brakes and turned to look at me. “Okay. But I’m going to have to send Agent Roark with you.”

“Who?”

The man with two different socks turned around, and John introduced him. “This is Tom Roark, with the CIA. He’s been following you since Ravenna.”

“But how did he know to do that?” Sally asked.

“Let’s wait until we get you home, Sally. We have lots to talk about. Meanwhile, let’s find a bathroom for Casey.”

“It went away,” I said, having no desire whatsoever to get out of the car with or without Agent Roark’s protection. “By the way, do you have another pair of socks like that at home, Agent Roark?”

He looked down at his feet. “Shit. I did it again.”

Ready for the times to get better.
—Crystal Gayle

F
orty minutes later, we pulled up in front of Sally’s house and she let us in. Sally lives in a quintessential Georgetown row house tucked away on a cul-de-sac just a block and a half from the stores and restaurants on Wisconsin Avenue. The three-story brick house had been Peter’s before they married, and together they had renovated it into pure charm. The first floor had an entrance-way, a den, and a guest bedroom that I would occupy for the next few days. It was the second floor that blew me away. There was a huge kitchen with a dining table that would seat twenty in a pinch. Sally and Peter had knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make it that big. They said they had no need for a formal dining room; if you ate there, you hung out in the kitchen and either helped cook or enjoyed watching the show. At one end of the kitchen, French doors led to a small balcony overlooking the garden, and in the garden was a giant magnolia tree with branches that you could touch from the balcony. It was breathtaking to sit at the table and look out at that tree, especially when it was in
bloom. The four of us sat there now, and it was hard to remember what it had been like to sit there and feel cozy and comfortable instead of panicked.

John asked Sally to start at the beginning and tell them what was going on. When she had finished explaining about Peter selling information to some guy named Boris, about George blackmailing her, about the tapes, and about the trip to Yugoslavia, she was visibly spent.

John turned to Agent Roark and said, “Tom?” Tom nodded, and John stood up and went over to Sally. He put his arm around her and said, “Sally, Peter was not a traitor. Not by a long shot. He was working for us.”