Basil Instinct (13 page)

“Hello, Joe,” I said, sounding all world-weary in a Lauren Bacall kind of way.

Joe smiled, like he’d forgotten all about my beating a hasty retreat at lunch the other day, and looked around, his blue eyes taking in the activity. I folded my arms and winced a smile back at him, because I for one had not forgotten his upcoming date supreme with my maddening cousin. He was wearing a lightweight blue-and-brown plaid shirt over his cargo pants, and his close-cropped blond hair caught the summer sunlight that irritated me no end by coming in the windows at just that angle. And truth be told, he smelled like citrus soap and all my very best dreams.

Behind me, Corabeth was chuffing and wheezing and I couldn’t tell whether she was asthmatic or turned on. “Don’t you have salads to serve?” I fluttered my eyelashes at her because, well, I couldn’t flutter them at Joe and still respect myself in the morning.

Then she joined the fray, which Joe watched for about twenty seconds—just enough time to take in Choo Choo, Landon, Paulette, Vera, Jonathan, Li Wei, Corabeth, and L’Shondra—and then turned to me. “Controlled chaos?”

I placed a hand on my chest. A cheap tactic, agreed. “In Miracolo?” Aghast.

“No chaos in your restaurant.”

“No,” I had to own up, “no control.”

He eyed me. “You’re looking fine tonight.”

I crossed my arms. “I bet you say that to all the clients.”

“Only the ones who pay me top dollar.”

I laughed a little and then we stood there in silence. I scuffed at nothing on the pristine floor. “Well . . .”
Shame about this man,
I thought.

Joe Beck jerked his head to the kitchen doors, which L’Shondra was shouldering open like she was doing a house-to-house check in Kandahar. In floated a new entertainment from Mrs. Crawford, whom nobody out there seemed to be paying attention to, and I recognized a combination of the “Toreador Song” from
Carmen
and “I’m a Little Teapot.”

“Is that the Belfiere group out there?” he asked.

I nodded.

Then he gave me a little nudge. “See,” he said, “they seem to be behaving themselves.”

“They’re eating.”

“Well, they’re not flinging the dishes.”

“No, I think we can leave that to L’Shondra.”

“So maybe you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

If you don’t include the odd corpse.

I made a noncommittal noise.

Joe went on: “Well, I’m here to pick up a couple of bottles of an Argentine Malbec that Jonathan special-ordered for Landon.”

I gave him a cool, appraising look. I could have given him a hot, appraising look but I didn’t want to confuse the issue. “Pricey stuff.”

He grinned and tipped his head. “Strictly special occasion.”

Here I muttered something, and I’m pretty sure I bit the tip of my tongue senseless so I couldn’t utter the word
Kayla
, and I told him Jonathan had put the whole order in the back of Landon’s BMW, out behind the courtyard. At which point I saw Landon’s keys—he’s used the same metal rainbow key ring for years now—on the counter by the back door. These I grabbed and handed to Joe Beck. Our fingers touched briefly.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of Corabeth Potts starting to rubber-band her short hair into spiky little ponytails that reminded me for some reason of Shrek. Maybe the stress of the Miracolo dining room was getting to her. “No,
no!” I called out. As I headed over to her—her shirttails were also flopping on the outside of her black pants—Joe told me he’d bring the keys right back.

When someone says “right back,” you figure you’ll see him again in . . . what? Fifteen minutes? Twenty, tops? As I was just starting to warm to my lecture to Corabeth about blah blah appropriate attire and blah blah personal grooming, Joe Beck slammed open the back door, where he teetered, backlit by the sunlight. Landon and Choo Choo were suddenly arguing about whether the strawberries in the Sestri Salad get sliced lengthwise or diagonally (Vera suggested crosswise and was met with murderous looks), so the reappearance of Joe Beck didn’t grab them.

It did, however, grab me.

In fact, he grabbed me, by the shoulder, by the upper arm, by whatever his shaking hands landed on, which, I must say, I found sadly devoid of imagination. “Something?” I said. “What?” Somewhat impatiently. After a day that featured dangerous graffiti artists and dead sous chefs that make their own travel plans—not to mention the cabal of culinary cutthroats presently enjoying our signature Grappa and Fig Vinaigrette topped with a mangle of strawberries, I was really not in the mood for the latest from the Beck Dramatic Society.

“What, Joe?” I sighed. “See a little possum out back? You can outrun
him
—”

He gurgled at me. Finally, he managed, “Eve!”

Choo Choo was calling for me to referee the strawberry wars.

Joe Beck discovered some reserves of what I can only call manic determination. Looking back at the others several times, he planted firm hands on my back and arm and steered me right out the back door. “Hang on!” I yelled to Landon and Choo Choo. Then, thinking maybe my lawyer was impulsively taking me somewhere interesting and far away, “Diagonal!” I shouted my professional decision. Choo Choo blustered his strong disapproval, calling it a major culinary misstep and a crime against fresh fruit.

How Joe Beck managed to keep me so close to him while pushing me forward seemed quite a trick—reminding me of a memorable cast-party tango with my dance captain, Tony Treadwell, but that’s another story—and I have to say I think he was pushing the lawyer-client privilege thing a little far. You’ll note I made no objections.

He weaved us through the patio tables, skirted the compost bin by the back fence, and danced the two of us out the gate. The sun was low in the sky over the back alley and this was the best company I had had all day. “Joe?” Still Lauren Bacall but a
little less world-weary. Fitting nicely up against a new guy is always cause for celebration.

Landon’s black BMW was parked close to the fence just up the way. As alleys go, it’s not traveled much except by the garbage truck once a week. The asphalt could use some repair, and weeds pushed up through the cracks. Joe angled me alongside the car, and when we got to the trunk, we stopped. He motioned to the trunk in a sweeping gesture—twice, wordlessly— that has no correspondence in Italian.

I set my hands on my hips and shot him a rueful look. “For a lawyer, you’re not so much with the words.”

He gritted his teeth, turned a key in the lock, his chest heaving. Then he shoved open the trunk like a ringmaster introducing the next act. So I was guessing there was a problem with the special-ordered Malbec and he was holding me responsible.

I looked over the side. “Georgia!” I cried.

*   *   *

While Joe staggered backward, away from the trunk, pulling me with him, certain things became clear. The choice of a car trunk I could definitely put down to Choo Choo Bacigalupo, who had a taste for wise-guy movies and moves. Choo Choo, who was afraid of spiders and allergic to most laun
dry detergents. Maybe he had moved poor dead Georgia Payne first to the freezer, as a kind of temporary spot, until he could sling her over his massive shoulders and tiptoe out the door. Or maybe somebody else was responsible for the interim move to the freezer, where Choo Choo discovered her.

“Eve!” Joe said urgently, his hand rubbing his chest like Li Wei had just landed a spin kick. “ ‘Georgia’?” He was quoting me. I nodded matter-of-factly.
“ ‘Georgia’?”
he said again.

Heaving a sigh that didn’t even cover my opinion of Friday, June 20th, I explained how I had discovered poor Georgia dead in the foyer of the restaurant that very morning.

He grabbed my arms and pulled me close. Right in my face, he asked, “Who is she?” Barely daring to glance back at the trunk.

“That I can answer. Well, limitedly.”

He waited, his eyes locked with mine, his fingers pointlessly tapping the air between us. “Go on,” he said in a strangled sort of way.

I explained how Georgia Payne was our temporary sous chef, just to help us through these few days before Nonna’s big Belfiere event. Oh, and she was one of my students in the Quaker Hills Career Center cooking class. “Had I known she had a serious heart condition,” I added reasonably,
“I would have had to go in a different direction, but . . .”

Joe started grappling with Georgia’s body, and he was coming across as a little more ham-fisted than I had hoped, should he ever be grappling with mine. Although, to be fair, she was a deadweight. With a grunt, he managed to get out, “Why didn’t you call 911?” Then he toggled his head. “Although I’m sure you have a perfectly good Eve Angelotta reason—”

I reached into the trunk to give him a hand. I must say, I wasn’t warming to his attitude. “In fact,” I got out through clenched teeth, trying to get a grip on Georgia, “I do. Georgia may be a goner, but Maria Pia’s biggest day of her entire cooking life is not. Landon and I decided just to, well, postpone doing something about—”

“Eve!” Joe Beck said, letting go of his half of Georgia and standing up straight. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve got to put her back.”

“Put her back?” I cried, thrusting my hands in the general direction of Miracolo, which sent Georgia tumbling back into the trunk. The bottles of Argentine Malbec rattled. “Joe, they haven’t even got to the Saffron Risotto alla Milanese!”

“This woman died under suspicious circumstances. Can’t you—”

“Suspicious circumstances?” I stuck my hands
on my hips. Both of us became aware of a police cruiser heading slowly down the alley, of all the timing. “She locked up, she keeled over, end of story.” Together we prudently lowered the trunk door and raised our hands in greeting as the cruiser rolled by, taking the ruts with complaining squeaks from the shocks.

Joe Beck brought his face close to mine, which enabled me to appreciate a handsome scruff that was just beginning. “How do you know?” he asked softly.

Easy one. I ticked off on my fingers: “No blood, no obvious wounds, gunshot or otherwise, no—”

He gave me a squinty look as he reached back inside. “Oh, excuse me, you’re such an authority on violent death. Come on, we’re getting her out of here.”

I crossed my arms. Every drop of sheer Angelotta stubbornness—not to mention Camarata bloody-mindedness—marinated me but good. “We are not putting her back until after the Granita di Caffè con Panna.”

He asserted himself, which was not necessarily unattractive. “We’re doing it now.”

I gave him the Italian hand gesture—very close to what you may know as the touchdown signal—that translates as
Your head is the size of a Coleman cooler and is filled with three-day-old polenta
. “What
am I supposed to do with fifty dangerous cooking ladies who haven’t had their entrées yet?”

He was ignoring me, all busy with Georgia. With the zest he was showing, you’d think it was Kayla. “Send them out the back.”

“Through the kitchen?” I planted my feet. “Are you out of your mind? Have you no sense of decorum?”

“Decorum? You stash a human being in a car trunk. What are you, Tony Soprano?”

I sucked in one shocked and lengthy breath, hard. Then I got indignant. “How dare you!”

“Oh, please.” Georgia was putting up quite a fight.

“It’s not like she couldn’t breathe,” I yelled. Perhaps a little too loudly.

“Let’s hope not,” he yelled back, “because she sure isn’t now.”

“For your information,” I said, tugging at my cuffs, “Landon and I carried Georgia to the storeroom.”

“Because that’s better.”

Sarcasm at that level was not a pretty sight. “It is!”

“Then how did she get here? Answer me that.”

“I think Choo Choo.”

“Oh, great. So it’s a whole big Angelotta—”

“And Bacigalupo.”

“—family activity. Like bocce.” Then: “We’re putting her back.”

I got very quiet. “Not until after the Biscotti all’Anaci
.
”

He whirled on me. “I thought you said the Granita something something.”

“I changed my mind. Oh, wait,” I said, getting in his face, “I changed it again. Not until after the last of the Crazy Club is out the door. And in case you’re wondering,” I added in an airy way, “the front door. This is all nonnegotiable, Beck.”

He got airy, too. “Oh, really.”

“Yes, really.”

“Oh,
really.
”

“Yes”—I gave him a little push—“really.” Why had I never insisted on
m
alocchio
lessons?

He seemed to chew up the inside of his mouth, then jerked his irritating head toward the rest of the BMW. “Get in the backseat.” His lips were practically clamped shut, he was so angry.

I stepped back. “What?”

“You, me, Georgia.” He strafed a hand through his hair.

What was he suggesting? “Oh, so you’re all Captain America when it’s bodies in a trunk, but when it comes to making out in the backseat of someone else’s car, there’s nothing wrong with an audience”—I got right in his face—“who can’t tell you you’re doing it wrong.”

Considering the look he gave me, for a moment
I had a flicker of doubt that that had been his plan for the backseat, but then I couldn’t take it back.

“For your information, Angelotta,” said Joe Beck with quiet dignity, “in that scenario, the only corpse in the backseat would be you.”

“Fine talk that is. Fine talk!” I was growing more Italian by the minute.

“Give me a hand.”

Pressing my lips together hard, I got my hands under poor Georgia’s hips, while Dudley Do-Right managed her shoulders and head, and we tugged her up and out of the trunk. In the middle of the operation, Joe gave her a quick once-over, then looked a little puzzled. He was having to entertain the idea that I might possibly be correct in the matter of Georgia Payne.

I got the rear door open and climbed in first, backward, tugging the hips of the dead, chef-coated Georgia after me. Joe crawled in slowly, balancing the rest of her. And there we were. And just in time. A gaggle of spandexed cyclists came wheeling down the alley toward us, yammering away about stopwatches and water bottles. Joe quickly pulled the rear door shut behind him, which left us a cramped little threesome in the back of Landon’s Beemer.