You Cannoli Die Once Part 10

Halfway into the melee of that night, Giancarlo recruited his twentysomething biker grandson to help behind the bar. n.o.body even noticed the chains and Grateful Dead T-shirt.

Our Lady of Reduced Circ.u.mstances, Alma, managed to break two water gla.s.ses and one antipasto plate. Had the woman always been this clumsy? I didn't think so; she was just unnerved by the murder.

Even so, she found many opportunities to model the shoes on her feet, fabric painted to depict the nursery rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe. All the children's heads were beads. Landon whispered to me that for a woman who had the fine motor skills to apply tiny c.r.a.p to shoes, she sure broke a lot of stuff.

Paulette was everywhere all at once, truly the evening's field marshal.

Dana, when she waltzed in wearing a midnight-blue sheath, fretted about Maria Pia's arrest because now who was going to harmonize with her on "Those Were the Days"? She also argued with Paulette, who wanted her to bring out the bread and fill water gla.s.ses; Dana claimed it might confuse the customers, seeing the chanteuse perform a menial task.

Paulette pointed out that there's nothing the little people like more than seeing a celebrity act like a real person, but no dice.

Mrs. Crawford kept customers without reservations happy with a patter I suspected was a little bawdier than Maria Pia would have condoned. Sadly, I couldn't get close enough to tell.

Li Wei's, hair stuck up farther as the evening wore on and the tower of dirty dishes mounted.

Kayla amazingly stuck around, washing, slicing, chopping, and peeling vegetables. She managed to stay normal for a full eight hours.

The first time I looked up from the three different sauces simmering on my beloved Vulcan, I saw Joe Beck toothpicking rolled prosciutto onto sliced melon. The second time I looked up, Landon was giving him a crash course in the Art of the Garnish.

Eye Candy Jonathan seemed to sharpen up under the general stress. He slipped in his wine knowledge wherever appropriate, and acted like he'd been waiting tables since his toddler days.

Landon worked at triple his usual speed, and still found time to talk about how cute Jonathan was.

From my place in the kitchen, I could barely hear the piano over the clinking gla.s.ses and boisterous chatter. Nonna would have loved it. A few customers pretended to get lost on the way to the bathroom, detouring into the murder kitchen until Paulette headed them off. Many others just pumped the staff for the exquisite details, which were further embellished with every telling.

When the crowd thinned out around 10 p.m., the regulars started tuning up. Mrs. Crawford eyed them kind of speculatively while she adjusted her black fishnet snood.

We kitchen troglodytes finally spilled out into the dining room and slipped into seats at the table in the farthest corner. Landon draped himself on me, while Joe held on to a Corona and Kayla made out a bill for services rendered.

I was too tired even to care, but it was gratifying to see Joe shoot her a disbelieving look. I caught his eye.

Meanwhile, Dana worked the room that now consisted of just our homegrown amateur musicians and bartender Giancarlo Crespi, uttering some witty repartee into her microphone. For a friend who seemed generally as complex as instant chocolate pudding-and I really like chocolate pudding-apparently she was managing Olympic-level deceit in her off-hours. It was still amazing to me. What explained it?

As the talk at our table turned to the murder, n.o.body had much of an answer when soft-spoken Alma asked who we thought could have done it. "Some maniac," muttered Kayla, and I only hoped it was some maniac we didn't know. Over the course of the evening, Alma's nursery-rhyme Toscano's Tootsies had shed some children's heads, and even the fake feathers looked wilted. She sat with her tired legs splayed, one hand shaking as it rested on the table.

It had been a very long night, and at the point when our chins were sinking closer to the table, Paulette took one look at us, disappeared into the kitchen, and brought out the leftover tiramisu.

As she cut slices, Dana started warbling "The Shadow of Your Smile," leaning provocatively over Roy, the regular who played the bongos. Suddenly Mrs. Crawford was weighing in with some experimental chords in accompaniment. The mandolin, the guitars, the homemade ba.s.s, the bongos, and the clarinet pulled back in awe as Dana got in touch with her inner diva and swanned around the dining room, beaming at me for finally providing her with a proper accompanist.

Mrs. Crawford moved into a jazz riff, leaving Dana to play catch-up. As Alma waved us all good night and dragged herself out the front door, Giancarlo brought over the bar receipts. Suddenly Vera erupted into a gorgeous scat on "The Shadow of Your Smile" that fit beautifully with Mrs. Crawford's playful improv.

Paulette gave an appreciative whistle, the kind that summons New York cabs in a downpour, and disappeared into the kitchen with a stack of plates. Landon actually pulled me out of my chair, moving to the beat in a bossa nova step. Since I'd been on my feet for the last eight hours, I could hardly feel my legs, but I joined him, laughing.

Still in our chef jackets, we clasped hands and oozed through the box step, the two-step, and the cha.s.se. When the song ended, Jonathan clapped wildly, and Joe lifted his bottle at me with a grin.

Dana's smile was strained, but then she slid off into her signature song: "For you, Maria Pia, wherever you are!"-had no one told her?-"Three Coins in the Fountain." Whereupon Mrs. Crawford reached for her elbow-length gloves and the others got up to clear our table. Kayla and I were left sitting there and she put her feet up on an empty chair, her gauzy layers falling in every direction.

I noticed her beige ballet flats, decorated with glitter in the shape of a slug's trail. "Alma's shoes?" I asked her, gesturing toward her feet.

"Yeah," said Kayla, pushing her bill across the table to me. I just folded it in half. "Oh, wait," she added, pulling a little Peruvian-print shoulder bag over her head and digging around in it. She came up with a stack of business cards held together with a tiny red plastic banana clip. "I know Alma is c.r.a.p as far as waitressing goes, but she's a brilliant designer."

The cheap clip broke apart, and cards cascaded off the table. Kayla swore, topping even Dana, who had gotten to "Make it mine! Make it mine! Make it mine!" I leaned over to help pick them up, while Kayla, for some harebrained reason, decided to give me the romantic details of her couch time with Joe Beck. Before she got very far, I screamed, "Encore!" at Dana, who needed no further encouragement.

As I raked up fallen business cards, I saw that my kiss-and-tell cousin went to a chiropractor, a tanning place, an acupuncturist, a Rolfer, and something called a polarity therapist. How she afforded these services growing onions and kale was a mystery. She had cards for the Penn State Agricultural Extension Agency, The Warped Sisters' Weavers' Cooperative, Greyhound Adoption, Yurts of America . . . and Arlen Mather.

Burgundy lettering on buff card stock read Arlen Mather, ASID, with a couple of contact numbers. Already more information on the murdered man than I had. And until I figured where to take the Calladine's Cla.s.sics line of inquiry, I might have a new direction. I pushed the other cards back to Kayla, then waved Arlen's at her. "What's this?" I asked.

She leaned toward me, squinting. Then she very helpfully said, "That's Arlen's business card."

"I can see that. Why do you have it?"

Kayla got all shruggy on me, which was her "tell." "You know how you just pick things up," she said evasively. I stared at her, waiting. "Here and there."

I studied the card, then looked over at her. "Did you hire him?"

She stared at me, wide-eyed. "Hire him?" Then she brayed like it was just too funny. To break the tension, I turned to look at the musicians. Dana launched into her version of "You're So Vain," which always seemed to miss the point of the lyrics and sounded more like a wow-my-boyfriend's-so-cool kind of song.

"Yeah," I turned back to Kayla, "did you hire him?" Having absolutely no idea what ASID stood for, I fudged it. "I mean, he was a member of ASID, so-"

She circled an arm at me diagonally in that gesture that translates as perhaps pureeing your brain with some garlic and basil would improve it. "Why would I need an interior designer, Eve? I live on a frickin' farm."

"You have a house."

She shot me a look like I had been released prematurely from a psych ward. "I have a yurt."

How long had it been since I'd driven out to Kale & Kayla Organics?

Singing, Dana gushed, " 'You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.' " Then she did her interpretation of the gavotte, which bore a strong resemblance to Michael Jackson's moon-walk. Maybe I could get her to work up "Billie Jean."

"Okay," I said, "so if you didn't use his design services, why do you have his business card?" I tried to make it sound like I hadn't just asked that same question.

"None of your sweet business, cuz," she said with an unpleasant smile.

"None of my business?" I slammed a hand on the table. "This," I said in my best Law & Order voice, "is a murder investigation. Arlen Mather was bludgeoned to death in our kitchen, which is why we all just worked our a.s.ses off tonight, and why I just received a bill from you." I slapped the offending bill with the back of my hand. "Because I guess you don't see this as a family matter." Maria Pia couldn't have done it better. She didn't do guilt trips; she did guilt safaris.

Kayla sulked. "Oh, all right, forget the bill."

I took a deep breath and circled back, saying slowly, like I was translating for her, "Why do you have Arlen Mather's-"

"He gave it to me, if you must know!" she shouted.

"No kidding." Did she think that was some kind of answer? "When?"

"None of your-"

I overrode her. "When!"

"The first time we slept together," she flung at me.

First. Time. Slept. Together.

I think I had a stroke. I couldn't make those words work together in any meaningful way. Not when I arranged them anywhere near Arlen and Mather. I shuffled them around. Together, Mather, time, Arlen, slept, first. The fact that it actually helped worried me all the more that I'd had a stroke.

While I stammered, Kayla rolled her eyes, saying something like hopeless prude. I think it was the image that was doing me in. I was still having a hard time not picturing her with Joe. But picturing her with Arlen Mather was like learning that pasta has feelings or crop circles are the work of leprechauns.

So Kayla was the woman Mather had broken up with for my nearly octogenarian grandmother. I guess he was an equal opportunity sc.u.m bucket. Although there may have been an element of self-preservation there. Maria Pia just needed to be dealt with. Kayla needed to be strategized, the way a mongoose dances around a cobra.

All I could manage, finally, was: "Does Nonna know?"

She made a noise that sounded like "Chuh."

"No, really, Kayla," I said with some heat. "Does she?"

Sighing extravagantly, she pulled her hair up into one of the blue rubber bands she uses to band together heads of broccoli. "Who knows what that woman knows, Eve. You know what I'm talking about?" Our eyes locked in understanding. "I sure didn't tell her."

Did I detect some intrigue? Did my cousin fear blowback from my nonna, who might take a dim view of sharing her deceased beloved with a rival forty years younger? It was just the sort of goofy position Maria Pia might take.

I was struck by a thought. "Did you and Arlen go to an opera fund-raiser together about eight months ago?"

"Yeah, why?"

So she must have been the "daughter" in pearls and a feathered boa described by Mrs. Crawford. Back then, Kayla's hair was platinum blond and ironed straight.

At that point, Dana was belting out Well, I hear you went up to Saratoga, and your horse naturally won, holding the poor microphone with one hand while the other was whipping her own flank. It looked vaguely suggestive and the music-making regulars were whooping. One of these days we'd have to have a heart-to-heart. . . .

There were other ways of looking at Kayla's keeping her Arlen affair a secret. For one, maybe she was lying. One week she'll tell me airily that she hadn't planted any escarole, and then the next week she'd show up with bushels of the stuff. Kayla always worked from a deep and abiding belief in her own convenience.

So maybe she didn't tell Maria Pia directly about Arlen Mather, but made sure it got back to her. A well-placed hint here or there to a couple of gabby Miracolo customers would do the trick.

Or maybe Kayla wanted to spare Maria Pia any pain or embarra.s.sment.

No, that probably wouldn't even make it into the top ten of possible motives.

"So you didn't tell her you were the former girlfriend?"

"Are you kidding me?" Kayla actually squeaked. "Auntie Maria Pia's such a wild card"-an example of the pot calling the kettle cookware-"I didn't want to take a chance on her freezing me out of the local restaurant trade."

I was unconvinced. Grow a good eggplant, and Maria Pia Angelotta was yours for life. She'd never let personal feelings interfere with her culinary destiny. Surely Kayla knew that.

There was something my dear cousin Kayla wasn't telling me. But what? I wasn't thinking diabolically enough. Think like Kayla.

And then it hit me.

Kayla hadn't told Maria Pia that she was Arlen Mather's former girlfriend because . . . she wasn't former. Maybe his business card wasn't the only thing Arlen Mather was giving Kayla on the side. She'd like the intrigue. She'd like the joke.

Then, what if Maria Pia found out and . . . took a blunt object to her two-timing beau?

The room suddenly got colder.

There was no way I would telegraph that suspicion to the cobra sitting across from me. Nonna was already facing prison food. I wouldn't be responsible for prolonging that experience.

Kayla was giving me what Landon and I call her "lock-down look." Eyes wide open so she looks all gee-whiz frank, but the battle-scarred among us know there's a force field she slides over her corneas to keep you from penetrating her secrets. Oh, she'll give them up (and yours) on a mere whim, but she'll do anything she can to keep you from guessing them on your own.

And then an even more chilling thought struck me.

As bad as the possibility of Kayla's carrying on with Nonna's boyfriend behind her back was, there was yet another explanation for Arlen Mather's murder. What if my self-indulgent cousin hadn't liked being dumped by her elderly boyfriend? Did being kicked to the curb make her mad? Mad enough for murder?

If so, I was tempted to get her the worst lawyer money could buy.

Finally, I was able to smile.

10.

"Night," said Joe, one of the last to leave. When all the cleanup was done, he had rolled down his sleeves and argued with Paulette about a bottle of Barbaresco she had tried to press on him by way of saying thanks for the help. Paulette won. When he gave her a kiss on the cheek, she fluttered a work-roughened hand at him and called him a silly man.

He held up the bottle and looked at me. "I'll save it for a special occasion," he said with a smile.

"When Nonna comes home?" I piped up.

"That would qualify," he said very seriously.

But I had the sudden feeling that wasn't what he'd meant.

Jonathan, Vera, Mrs. Crawford-I'd invited her for a drink the next day, part of my plot to lay the gender issue to rest-Giancarlo, Dana, Li Wei, and the regulars had all slipped out nearly an hour ago, letting in the rasp of spring peepers from the woods beyond Callowhill Street. The stars seemed unusually close when I closed the door behind Vera, who was wrapping herself in a blue-spangled shawl, and I had the crazy thought of leaving my car parked on Market Square and just walking home.

"Come back anytime," Paulette told him with a pat on the back. "Right, Eve?"

I looked at Joe, standing in the doorway to the courtyard, backlit by the tiki lights and the moon. And I smiled at him, the good-looking guy who made tea for destabilized neighbors, the guy who could now garnish plates with the best of them.

"Anytime at all. Just watch out for the compost, Beck," I teased. We exchanged smiles that seemed to say we were already better friends than I knew, and something flashed between us that felt very nice indeed.

Raising the bottle in a salute, he was off.

Landon closed up the front and when the dining room went dark, Paulette and I waited for him by the back door. When he came into view in the semidarkness, we all smiled wanly and went out into the night. With as much satisfaction as I could muster at 12:47 a.m., I locked our brandnew Schlage and followed them down the brick walk to the street.

On Market Square, the streetlights showed a deserted street. Though Jolly's Pub was still open, no one was spilling out the front door, either on their own or a.s.sisted by the frightening Adrian. Paulette called a final "good night!" and set off toward the parking garage two blocks away. I could feel Landon relax when we were finally alone, and we set off arm in arm toward our cars.

As we neared mine, I saw a towering figure lounging against the hood. Choo Choo.