Red Beans and Vice (8 page)

“Do you think this hatred is directed toward gay waiters, or personally toward someone who works for me? I’m concerned for my employees, and I don’t want a maniac to screw up my business with this bullshit,” Heaven said, more emphatically than she’d meant to. The poor guy didn’t need her to yell at him, just because he took the time to call and help.

“It could be one of those reasons, or another one,” he said quietly. “You are a high-profile woman. Your name and photo have been in the paper quite a bit. Many times this creates fixations, like the Jodie Foster stalker.”

“But this person doesn’t want me, they want to destroy me. I know you understand better than I what’s involved here. But I’m not a religion or a government that can survive this kind of opposition. If this letter was to get wide circulation, even if people didn’t really believe it, the damage would be done. If you were trying to figure out where to go to dinner and the nose-picking cook came to mind, you might choose another cafe, even if the choice was subconscious.”

“You’re right. And places like the
Kansas City Star
and city hall aren’t the most secure. I had a friend who was
an educator. Someone wrote a hate letter saying he was abusing young children. The letter was sent to the board of education office in his district. They discussed it with him, told him that they didn’t respond to unsigned accusations. But the letter got copied. Soon enough parents had seen it that they demanded the teacher’s resignation. He moved far away and has never taught again.”

Heaven felt sick. This was just what she feared. “What can I do? This is such a vulnerable position for me. I’m helpless,” she said.

“Do not give in to despair. If you do, this individual will have accomplished at least one of the things he was trying to do, and that’s to get the better of you. He didn’t say the waiters in all the restaurants in Kansas City were AIDS infested. He said the waiters in your restaurant were. That makes it personal.”

“But how can I fight this thing?” Heaven was in tears again. One trickled down her face.

“Tomorrow you are going to messenger the original letter out here to Michael’s office at the synagogue. Keep a copy for yourself, but send me the original. Then you are going to call your contacts at the
Kansas City Star
and at city hall and you are going to tell them that you will be down to pick up their originals in person in an hour.”

“What if they won’t—”

Howard Yukon broke in quickly. “It won’t guarantee that there aren’t already copies made. But it will stop the casual stopping-by-the-file-cabinet-to-view-the-gory-details kind of thing. And I’ve seen those photos of you in the paper myself. Don’t tell me a beautiful redhead can’t get her way with those boys downtown.”

Right now Heaven couldn’t talk a blind man into new
eyes. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. What if I need to talk to you, what if something else happens?”

“Just call Michael,” the voice said soothingly.

“Thank you. Can I ask one more question?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you have to have the original letter?”

Howard Yukon paused. “Sometimes I can feel them. I’ll know if it’s any of my regulars.” Then he hung up.

“D
o you think this is the original?” Murray said as he held a piece of paper up to the light streaming in the front windows at Sal’s.

Heaven shrugged. “I wouldn’t have a clue. I’m sure the copy paper at the
Star
isn’t the same paper as the original, but I’m not a paper expert.”

“So what happened?” Sal asked as he finished off a trim of an elderly man.

“Well, thanks to Murray, who called his friend and absolutely insisted that he give me the letter, it was easy. I went to the front desk. Murray’s friend came down with an envelope, gave it to me, and shook my hand. Said as far as he could tell it was a dead issue in the news department, except for a more general story that was still brewing.”

“You sure they don’t have copies all over the office already?”

“No, Sal. I could have made the man sign in blood but, if he didn’t have physical control of the letter at all times, he wouldn’t know whether someone else made a copy. I didn’t make him lie to me.”

“What about you, Sal?” Murray asked as the customer shuffled out. “What about city hall?”

“Heaven doesn’t even have to go down there. My guy
is dropping it off on his way home tonight. Said he didn’t know who had seen it, but he was willing to pull it out of the crank letter file, without a trace. Not that it hasn’t been copied, but not by my guy,” Sal said gruffly.

Heaven was slumped in one of Sal’s chrome-and-Naugahyde chairs. “And after we collect these so-called originals, and if there are copies, they could be copied again and again. No one is going to bother to check and see if it’s the real thing. It’s filthy sleaze and if a person is copying it, they don’t care about what’s right.”

“Don’t think like that, Heaven,” Sal said. “That hate-crime fellow, he gave you good advice about going around collecting the letters. It’s just too bad we didn’t think about it when we first heard other people had received that garbage.”

Heaven went over to Murray and took the letter out of his hand, kissing the top of his balding head as she tore it up. “It wouldn’t guarantee anything. It only takes two seconds to copy something. Thanks, guys, for your support during yet another Cafe Heaven crisis.”

“Don’t you think you should keep that, for evidence?” Murray asked.

“As I learned back in Criminal Law 101, because we have no chain of evidence, this is tainted and useless. We already have one copy in the office and that’s more than enough. I hate even touching it, and I’m taking the copy home tonight. I don’t want one of my employees to come across it by accident,” Heaven said as she stuffed the paper shards in her jacket pocket, went out the front door and headed back across the street.

Sal and Murray watched as the late-afternoon sun hit Heaven’s hair. It shimmered like fire.

H
eaven looked around. The house didn’t look too bad. She couldn’t believe Easter had crept up so fast. The last few weeks had flown by. Now the Fifth Annual Spring Renewal, Resurrection and Rejuvenation Brunch, held on Easter Sunday, was officially over. It had been a big success. Even under duress, worrying about the hate mail and about New Orleans, Heaven could throw a party.

Now she was alone. Hank had to go to the hospital and he would be there all night, working the emergency room. The dishes were clean or at least the last batch was in the dishwasher. All the empty bottles had been deposited in the Dumpster outside by the waiters from Cafe Allegro Heaven had hired to work the party. She didn’t want to ask any of her employees to work as they were all invited to be guests. There had been about a hundred people in and out of the house in the period from eleven to four. The last group left about five.

Heaven’s home helped her entertain. A two-story building constructed in 1890, it was an Italian bread bakery before Heaven moved in. The coal-burning bread ovens were still installed in the brick walls, extending from the exterior of the building like an ear. The first floor was one big entertaining/kitchen/living room combination. Before the restaurant, Heaven had run a catering business out of the space. It still had rows of baker’s shelves lined with platters and baskets and antique culinary treasures, such as Heaven’s collection of two hundred plus drinking glasses. When she had a big party like this, she put out a huge tray filled with all different kinds of glasses, from 1940s juice glasses to etched wineglasses, and let people take their choice.
Now she busied herself for a few minutes carrying glasses back to the shelves.

The phone rang. “Oh, shit,” Heaven mumbled and grabbed it.

“Mom, I’m tired and I want to go to bed. I thought you were gonna call after your party.”

It was Iris, Heaven’s daughter, who lived in England. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I started putting away glasses and I guess I spaced out. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Happy Easter, honey.”

“That doesn’t sound good. First, tell me about the party. What did you serve this year?”

Heaven always tried for a menu that skirted around the traditional Jewish Passover food and Christian Easter items. “I did a Zakuski table this year, very Russian.”

“Zakuski?” Iris echoed.

“In the really old days in Russia, before it was just potatoes and cabbage, on their plantations or whatever they called them, people would have food out on their sideboard all the time because when travelers would get to your house they were usually from far away, and they’d been traveling a long time and they were hungry. The steppes you know. So it’s the Russian version of Tapas, kinda.” “Like what?”

“Blini all piled up with mushrooms. Caviar, beet caviar, eggplant, pirogi dumpling things, and a Kilebiac, a salmon in puff pastry. Other stuff. These Armenian pastries filled with farmers’ cheese. Yum.”

“How exotic. Did you serve vodka?”

“Of course. I put the vodka bottles in milk cartons full of water in the freezer. And I put flowers in the water so the vodka looked very festive, in an iceberg of flowers.”

“Sounds like Martha to me, Mom.”

Heaven bristled. “People were putting their vodka in icebergs long before Martha Stewart.”

“So, what’s the problem? You said you had a lot on your mind.”

How much did she want to tell her daughter? “Someone wrote this horrible unsigned letter about Cafe Heaven and also sent it to the newspaper and to the health department.”

“Mom, what did it say?”

She decided to paraphrase. “That our waiters had AIDS and our cooks put nose boogers in the food.”

“Mom, that’s horrible!”

“Yes, it is. There’s virtually no way you can stop people from doing something like that. And it can ruin your business.”

“The newspaper isn’t going to print that crap is it?”

“No, but who knows what this sicko will do next. And I have to leave town next week.”

“Where to?”

“New Orleans. I’m cooking at a benefit for the oldest nuns in America.”

“Poor old dears,” Iris said sweetly.

“The order is old, not the actual nuns. But that’s not going too well either.”

“Tell me.”

“I went down there a few weeks ago to a planning meeting and while we were there in the convent, someone wrote bad words in red paint on the convent walls and stole the eighteenth-century cross they brought from France and put termites on their historical staircase.”

Iris giggled. “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t laugh but
you just painted quite a picture. Did all that happen at once, the graffiti and the cross and the termites?”

“Not quite. But enough about me. You left a message and said you had a good new gig?” Iris had been writing since she finished up at Oxford. Her father was a well-known English rock star and she was writing about music for magazines.

“I go to Brazil next week for a magazine kind of like
Tattler,
I don’t think they have it in America. I get to stay two whole weeks and write a what’s-going-on-in-Brazilian-music piece. Won’t that be fun?”

“Just be careful—tourists are always getting shot on the beach in Rio—and don’t go to any late-night clubs by yourself.”

“Mother! You’ve got a lot of nerve fussing at me about being safe. Some nut is writing hate mail to you and you’re heading off to New Orleans where another nut is after the nuns. Nothing that could happen on the beach in Rio could compare. Besides, you-know-who will be with me most of the time.” You-know-who was Iris’s boyfriend, another member of her father’s band and a man as old as her father. It infuriated Heaven.

“Then you’ll have bodyguards and a driver and all that. Good,” Heaven said shortly.

“Mom, let’s not hang up mad. I’ll be fine and I’ll call you from there next week, if I know where you’ll be.”

“I’ll put the phone number at my hotel in New Orleans on your machine in England. You can get it off that. Or call the cafe. They’ll have my numbers.”

“I’m worried about you, Mom. Have you told that detective friend of yours about this?”

“No, but that’s a good idea, Iris. Bonnie couldn’t come to the party today or maybe I would have thought
of that when I saw her. Now go to bed, honey. Alone, I hope.”

“As alone as one of your nuns, Mom. Be careful. I love you.”

“Love you too, honey,” she said as Iris hung up.

Heaven, dialing, could hardly wait to talk to her friend Sergeant Bonnie Weber, of the Kansas City Police Department. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.

Bonnie would know what to do.

“I
don’t know what to do,” Bonnie said between bites. She and Heaven were having lunch at the Classic Cup, a bistro owned by one of Heaven’s friends, Charlene Welling. Charlene had sent them lots of food: a Cobb salad; a bacon, lettuce, tomato and Brie sandwich; two bowls of two different soups and a piece of grilled salmon with a mango salsa on top. They had it all in the middle of the table and were grazing. “I’m a homicide cop. What do I know from poison-pen letters?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. You’re always going to those conferences and I know they aren’t always about murder. Now that you’re a big shot sergeant.” Heaven couldn’t resist teasing her friend a little bit. Bonnie had resisted taking the sergeants’ exam for several years, saying it would take more time away from her family. But now that her kids were in high school, she’d moved up.