The Wedding Soup Murder: An Italian Kitchen Mystery (11 page)

“I certainly do,” he said. “But I’m already
sponsoring a candidate.” He cocked his head and seemed to be studying my face.
Oh, please don’t be a reader of mysteries,
I thought. My photo was on the back of all my books. But when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “You know,” he said, “at the meeting, they did put out a call for those who need sponsors—”

“She’s shy,” Sofia interrupted.

“I understand,” William Fox said. “But it would probably be best for your friend to attend another meeting.”

“No!” I said, my voice panicky. “I mean, thank you, really, you’ve been very kind about us showing up unannounced”—I shot Sofia a look—“but I think I’d like to go about this my own way.”

He nodded. “Well, we all have to find our way, don’t we? And now I’ll bid you ladies good night.” He turned, lifted one hand, and shuffled back down the sidewalk.

My hand shook as I reached for the car door. The minute I pulled it shut, I turned to Sofia. “Are you crazy?” I exploded. “You just identified me as an alcoholic!”

“It’s anonymous, Vic. Calm down.” Sofia started the car and smoothly pulled away from the curb, her hands steady on the wheel.

“You’re not even nervous,” I said. “It’s unnatural.”

She shrugged. “I’d make a great cop. Wish your brother saw it that way.” She glanced in the mirror. “Is that Fox still outside?”

“Who else with Albert Einstein hair would be standing outside in his bathrobe and pajamas?”

“Ooh, sarcasm. Watch it there, SIL.”

“Sorry,” I said with a sigh. “I just feel bad about doing this tonight. The meeting, snooping in his garage—all of it.”

I dug the card from my pocket, my eye drawn to one of the twelve steps on the list: “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Stung by the words, I wondered what I’d find in a moral inventory of my own. As I watched William Fox’s figure grow smaller in the distance, I regretted ever getting involved with the mystery of Elizabeth Merriman’s death.

O
n Saturday, there was a small item in the paper about Merriman’s wake and funeral. I toyed briefly with the idea of going, but since my “moral inventory” was coming up short these days, I changed my mind. I’d have no reason to go there except my own curiosity. How might Toscano act, for example? Would he sit up front as “family,” meeting and greeting people who’d come to pay their respects? Or would some long-lost relative appear to fulfill that role? Would William Fox show up? Belmont Club employees? Dr. Chickie? In my books, Bernardo often attends the funerals of the victims, and usually learns something incriminating from one of the mourners. I thought about my worldly-wise detective in his linen suits and trademark Panama hat; lately I’d begun to wish he were real, as I could use all the help I could get.

I biked down to the restaurant along the boardwalk so I could lose myself in the sight and sounds of the ocean, because it often it helped me think. Elizabeth Merriman had been dead a week. I had a pretty good
idea of when, how, and where she died. Dr. Chickie and William Fox each had motive and a history with the victim. Kate Bridges, while no fan of Elizabeth’s, didn’t appear to have a clear connection to her or an obvious motive. And Jack Toscano, who by all reports was close to the victim, may have gained by her death. All four were on the scene that evening. Had one of them killed her? Or was there someone else at the reception, a staffer or a guest still unknown to us, who took an opportunity to murder an old enemy? Because one thing was clear: Not one person surrounding this case had a good thing to say about Elizabeth Merriman. And that left the field wide open.

I brought my bike around to the back of the restaurant, as Nonna had indicated that my battered old Schwinn was an eyesore and I shouldn’t leave it in front. I also wanted to see if Cal’s truck was in the parking lot, but the only vehicles were Lori’s minivan and Tim’s motorcycle. So Tim was riding it again, most likely as a way to show off for Lacey. I came in through the kitchen, where Tim was working on lunch prep.

“Hey,” he said, without looking up from his work.

I peeked over his shoulder to see him using a meat rub made with Nonna’s dried herbs. “Short ribs, right?”

“Yup.”

“Are you making them over orzo? With carrots? I love them that way.”

“Right again.” He turned and gave me a grin. “You’re learning, Vic.”

“I try,” I said, but my cheeks were warm from the
compliment. “Maybe one of these days I can actually cook something.”

“Maybe. But in the meantime, you mind heading to the pantry and getting me more dried thyme? You know what thyme looks like, right?”

“Of course I do,” I lied. All the dried stuff in Nonna’s pantry looked alike to me; in fact, back in May, I’d been convinced there was something more menacing than cooking herbs hanging from the rafters of that room. “Be right back,” I called, taking my purse with me. (It had my phone in it.)

Once inside, I was struck by a series of images. Tim and I as teenagers, stealing a kiss in the corner. Tim and I as adults, spending a night in here that took us both by surprise.
No time for this, Vic.
I slipped my phone from my purse and searched “thyme.” Once I had the image up, I studied the dried bunches of herbs and grabbed a handful of the likeliest candidate.

“Here it is,” I said, setting it down next to Tim.

He turned to face me, his hands on his hips, but smiling. “You looked it up on your phone, didn’t you?”

“I may have.” Some treacherous impulse had me smiling back, so I forced myself to ask a question to which I didn’t really want an answer. “So, how are things going with Lacey?”

“They’re movin’ along, thanks.” He crushed the thyme between his fingers and added it to the blend.

Frankly, I didn’t want to think about how far things might have moved since the day Lacey had shown up in the dining room, so a second change of subject was called for. “Has my grandmother been in yet?”

“Been and gone. Just long enough to lecture me on the perfect spice proportions for the rub, how deep a sear I should put on the ribs, and how long I should let the sauce reduce.”

“Sorry I missed it,” I said, putting on an apron. “Is Lori out front?”

“Yeah. I think she’s working on tables, so you might want to get the coffee set up.”

I sighed, wondering if filling the coffee basket was as close as I’d get to preparing a dish at the Casa Lido. “Hey, girl,” I called.

“Hi, Vic,” Lori said. She moved swiftly from table to table with place settings wrapped in linen. “You wanna do coffee?”

“I’m already on it.” But I was still holding an unopened coffee packet when my attention was drawn to a white square of paper on the floor. Nonna would go crazy if she saw trash in the dining room. But on closer inspection, the paper wasn’t trash.

It was a card rimmed in gold; on the front was an image of St. Francis with a line from his writings:
Grant that I may not seek to be consoled as to console.
This was a memorial card, the kind one might find at wakes; my grandmother collected these things like trading cards. Before I even turned it over, I knew whose name would be on the back. I tucked it into the pocket of my pants and hurriedly untied my apron.

“Cover for me, L. J., would you?” I called to Lori. “I have to run out for a minute.”

“Sure, Vic. Everything okay?”

“I hope so,” I muttered as I headed out the doors. I
grabbed my bike from the back and got moving. My parents’ home on Seventh Street, the house where I’d grown up, was only a few blocks away. It was a classic seaside Victorian, but like so many of that era had been broken up into two large apartments. Nonna occupied the third floor, and my mom and dad lived in the first and second. I dropped my bike next to the front steps, not even stopping to admire the wraparound porch, where I’d spent many an afternoon curled up with Carolyn Keene and Agatha Christie. Instead I walked up the driveway and headed to the back stairway that led to my grandmother’s apartment. Not for the first time, I wondered how much longer she could handle these stairs.

When she saw me at her door, she frowned, but that’s how she normally greeted me. She was wearing summer slacks and a lightweight cardigan, both black. Her hair was styled and sprayed, and her lipstick was fresh. She was not dressed for a morning at home.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “You’re supposed to be at the restaurant.”

“I came to ask you something.” I followed her into the kitchen and took a seat. She tied on an apron, and without asking (“You only ask sick people”) she dropped a plate of biscotti in front of me and ran water into the base of her espresso pot. Since resistance was futile, I took one of my favorites, a chocolate cookie with hazelnuts.

“So ask me.” She kept her back to me, pressing ground espresso into the metal pot.

“Would you sit down, please?”

She set the pot over a low flame and sat down across from me, suspicion etched into every line of her face. “I’m sitting,” she said.

I took the card from my pocket and held it out to her. “Nonna, what is this?”

She snatched it back from me and slipped it into her apron pocket. “It’s mine.”

“I know it’s yours. It’s from Elizabeth Merriman’s wake.” I gestured to her clothes. “And you’re in your funeral clothes. What were you doing there?”

“What was I doing there?” She threw her hands up at the foolishness of such a question. “Paying my respects. That’s what you do when someone dies.”

“Right,” I said. “When you know the deceased. And I heard you call her Elisabetta, so I think you must have known her. Did you, Nonna?”

Saved from answering by the boiling espresso pot, she rose quickly, took a potholder, and removed the pot from the stove. She poured us each a cup, went to the refrigerator, took out a quart of milk, and set the sugar bowl on the table, all with maddening slowness. When she finally sat, she shifted her eyes from me and she fumbled in her apron pocket, no doubt holding on to that card for dear life. “Please answer me,” I said softly.

“Here’s your answer: You should pay attention in the kitchen the way you pay attention to things that are not your business.” She stirred sugar into her cup, took a sip, and nodded. Her coffee was always perfect.

I finished my cookie and drank my coffee slowly, hoping the silence would pressure her to talk. But of course, I was the one who caved. “If you know something important about Elizabeth Merriman, Nonna, I wish you’d tell me about it.”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

I took a gamble. “Well, you can tell me or you can tell Prosecutor Sutton.”

Though her look was skeptical, my nonna is not one to take chances. “All right,” she said with resignation. “I guess it’s time.” She took the card from her pocket and set it down in front of her, pointing to Merriman’s name. “Her real name was Elisabetta Caprio. We grew up in the old neighborhood together.”

“She was Italian?” I remembered Merriman’s words when we were introduced:
So you’re a Rienzi
. She was connecting me to my family—and to Nonna.

My grandmother nodded, and when she spoke, her words were as bitter as the greens in her garden. “But she hid it. Like something she was ashamed of. She wanted to make herself into somebody else.”

“I think she succeeded,” I said. “I thought she was old money, maybe English or Dutch background. I mean, she used her married name, and her coloring is fair.” I remembered her cloudy blue eyes.

Nonna nodded. “She was blond when she was young. But she was embarrassed of her parents. Their dark skin. Their accents.”

“So she turned herself into the country-club lady,” I said.

“She didn’t start out that way,” she said. “When I knew her, she was the only child in a strict Catholic family. Her father kept her under lock and key. But she was stubborn, headstrong.”

“Not surprised,” I said.

But my grandmother didn’t appear to be listening to me. Her face was thoughtful, looking back to a past I knew little about. “And she wanted what she wanted,” Nonna said.

“What
did
she want, Nonna?”

My grandmother’s face cracked in what might have been a smile. “His name was Tommy Romano. He was in my year in school; Elisabetta was younger.”

I couldn’t resist the next question. “Did you have a crush on him, too?”

She frowned and waved me away like a bothersome sand fly. “No. I was already going with your grandfather.”

Which would not necessarily preclude a crush on another boy.
But I wisely kept that thought to myself. “Tell me about Tommy.”

She took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and this time smiled for real. Just for a second, I had a glimpse of the younger Giulietta. “All the girls were crazy about him,” she said. “He was tall, with curly black hair and blue eyes.” She shook her head. “Those eyes were the most beautiful blue. My mama, your great-grandma Ida, used to say they were
come il cielo veneziano—
like the Venetian sky.”

I rested my chin in my hands, watching Nonna’s
face as she talked about Tommy, who sounded a bit like Tim in looks, though Tim’s eyes were gray. “So, he was the neighborhood heartthrob?” I asked.

Nonna nodded. “Yes, but he only had eyes for Elisabetta. And she for him. She was sixteen; he was three years older, already out of high school. She would sneak out of her house to see him.” She shook her head. “It was . . . sad.”

“Sad? It sounds romantic.” I put my hand on her arm. “What happened with the two of them?”

“Well, he left for the war in Korea, December of 1951.” She paused in the story and looked briefly out the window.

“You remember what month he left?” I was having a hard time believing that Nonna’s feelings for the dashing Tommy were purely platonic.

“I remember because the boardwalk was decorated for Christmas. We had holly and greens all over the restaurant.” As she spoke, I was imagining the Casa Lido in the 1950s, with its dark wood paneling and exposed brick, thinking it probably looked much the same as it did today. “So, we said good-bye to Tommy. Then a month later I said good-bye to your grandpa.” She stopped again, shook her head slowly. “Men and their wars,” she said quietly.

“What happened after that, Nonna?” I was hanging onto each word, imagining it all, and wishing I had some paper to take notes for my own story about Isabella.

She turned the memorial card and looked at the image of St. Francis. “She came to see my mama. Your
great-grandma was a kind of nurse, and even a midwife sometimes for people in the neighborhood who couldn’t afford the doctor. Anyway, Elisabetta knew she was pregnant and came to her for help. I think she came to her hoping that my mama would give her something.” She stopped speaking and looked down at the table.

“You mean to end the pregnancy,” I prompted.

She nodded. “There were women in those days that would do that, before it was legal. But not my mama. Instead she counseled her to tell her parents. She offered to go with her, even. But Elisabetta refused, said that if my mother wouldn’t help her, she would find someone who would.” Nonna stood suddenly. “Would you like some water? Even with the coffee, I’m dry from talking.”

And it was no wonder. In my entire life, I’d never had such a long—or personal—conversation with my prickly grandmother. “Yes, thanks,” I said.

She brought us our water and sat down, still with that faraway look on her face. She took an absent sip and then turned the glass in her hand. “Two months later, we heard Tommy was killed. His mother and father and little sister were devastated. The whole town mourned him. And not long after that, the Romanos moved away.”

“What about Elisabetta?” Funny how the iron-willed Elizabeth Merriman, even in death, commanded less sympathy than the frightened, pregnant girl who had so loved Tommy Romano. They were two different women and I couldn’t reconcile them.

She lifted one thin shoulder. “People said she took it hard. For a long time I didn’t see her. Until—”

“Until when, Nonna?”

She put her glasses back on and looked at me. “Until the night she tried to kill herself.”