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Authors: Delia Rosen

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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Ready or not, it was going out to the dining room. I spotted our terrine on the central kitchen island, hurried over to get it, ladled it full, and carried it toward the entryway, declining Luke’s offer to take it himself. I was in too much of a hurry to fuss around.
That was when my foot seriously cramped up again. It was like a sadistic gorilla had my toes in its fist.
“Ouccchhhh!” I blurted out unbecomingly.
“Nash, you all right . . . ?”
“Yeah, don’t worry. Just put away your guitar and come help us in the dining room
pronto.
”
I limped through the entry without waiting for his arm. At least six or seven minutes must’ve passed since Lolo had waved her dinner bell high in the air, leaving me with no time to waste.
I’d barely gotten into the hallway when I heard a loud crash over my head. And I mean loud enough to halt me dead in my tracks.
I looked up, the terrine in my hands. There was more crashing and pounding in what seemed to be the room directly above me. And whatever was causing it had made the ceiling visibly shake.
“What’s
that
about?” Luke said. He’d raced to my side from the kitchen. “Sounds like some wild ol’ orangutan’s jumping around upstairs.”
I glanced over at him. It was a banner day for primate similes, I guessed. I was tempted to ask if it might be the same one that had mashed my foot.
I never got the chance to ask that or anything else. Before I could get out a word, or even react, we heard the loudest, most violent crash yet. And then the ceiling came down in front of us, breaking up into a dusty shower of plaster and lath and whatever else might’ve gone into two-hundred-year-old ceilings.
“Sand?” he blurted out.
Luke was right. That was the last thing pouring out. I later learned it was stuffed up there to put out fires, in case the flames burned through.
I recoiled in shock and surprise, the terrine tumbling from my fingers, gravy spilling from it, splashing everywhere on the parquet floor.
I suppose only an instant passed between the collapse event, as Deputy Chief Whitman would call it later on, and the grisly arrival of Hoppy Hopewell through the hole above us. At the time, I barely realized what was happening. I saw a big, wide, ridiculously limp body falling through the ragged hole, wondered in stunned confusion whether it actually might
be
an ape, and then recognized Hoppy as he reached the end of his downward plunge with a hard meaty thump, his arms and legs bent at impossible angles, a coating of white dust on his person, one foot in a spreading brown puddle of gravy.
“Jeez,” Luke said in a horrified voice. “Who’s
he
?”
I stood looking down at the dead, broken body, dimly aware that the hallway had suddenly gotten crammed with partygoers. Most of those who hadn’t fainted or withdrawn for fear of additional falling objects were screaming like—well, chimps.
After a while, I managed to pry my attention from Hoppy and meet Luke’s horrified gaze with my own.
“Guess it’s pretty safe to say he’s the victim,” I replied at last.
Chapter 2
According to the Constitution—and I haven’t read it since sixth-grade civics, so I may be off a word or two here—everyone’s supposed to get equal treatment under the law. But the truth is, rich people have good friends where it counts, so they get better treatment.
No one left the party. I guess no one wanted to look guilty, or else they didn’t want to miss a second of whatever was going to happen. The police were called, a patrol car arrived in less than ten minutes, and Deputy Chief W. W. Whitman Jr. was there less than five minutes after that.
But all that was still a few minutes away. From the moment “Hindenburg” Hoppy crashed to his demise—and one of the guests, Dr. Curt Festus, a podiatrist, did press two fingers to his neck to make sure he was deceased—everyone milled around like wind-up toys, moving in another direction with no purpose other than to avoid looking at the body. Most of them hovered near Lolo, who sat in a thick-cushioned antebellum side chair in the parlor.
“I still think we should cover that boy up,” Thom said, wrinkling her nose.
She had just returned to the kitchen where Luke and I had gone to—well, sit, since my feet were a flaming agony and Luke felt the need to cradle his guitar. My manager had continued serving, since dinner was obviously not going to be served, and came back with an empty tray. She checked the spinach puffs that were reheating in the oven.
“You’re not s’posed to touch a crime scene,” Luke said.
“Oh, and how do you
know
it’s a crime scene?” Thom asked. She didn’t bother with tongs, but pulled the little pastries out with her fingers. “Old house, fat guy—all kinds o’ possibilities there.”
“Do we have to talk about this?” I asked.
“No,” Thom said. “We can talk about how we’re not going to get paid for this.”
“We got the deposit,” I reminded her. “That’ll cover most of our costs.”
“‘Most,’” Thom huffed.
“So stop serving stuff,” Luke said, playing split chords that made the night seem like this was a Greek tragedy.
“Hey, I’m tryin’ to salvage some good will from all this,” Thom said. “Otherwise, we’re gonna be known as the providers who were providin’ when Hoppy Hopewell swan-dived through the roof. You want that juju?”
“Were you talking to me?” I asked.
It took a second for Thom to get it. She laughed and shook her head and disappeared with the full tray. Luke was still trying to figure out what was so funny when the squad car arrived, followed by Deputy Chief Whitman.
Lolo lived in the upscale Belle Meade neighborhood, which had its own small police force. That was why Whitman was here. Personally, I was glad Detective Grant Daniels of the Nashville PD was not involved. This isn’t how I wanted my loverboy to see me, all aching feet and imploded catering dreams. I felt the disappointment was all over me like a big, popped Bazooka bubble.
Whitman was a wee one, about five-six, bald with a brushy mustache and gray eyes. He was in his early forties, I guessed, and built like a little cannonball. He squatted carefully beside the body, looked this way and that, up and around, examined the edge of a fallen chunk of plaster, then got out of the way so the photographer could take his pictures.
A cop came in and asked us to leave the kitchen. That was where the forensics team was going to spread out. I shut the oven as I left and told him to help himself to whatever hors d’oeuvres were left. At this point, good will was all the nosh was going to get me.
Another cop helped us negotiate the “collapse event” and gravy. We were shown to the parlor where everyone was being gathered. Lolo was tucked in a corner, just to the side of a full-length portrait of her husband.
“You were right there, weren’t you?” someone said beside me. I looked over. It was Mrs. Letty Kurtz, wife of Nashville parks commissioner Sperling Kurtz. The wispy, white-haired lady was a former member of the Cozy Foxes, Lolo’s luncheon group that gathered regularly at the deli to talk about the latest mysteries they’d read, watched, or listened to—as in old-time radio recordings. She lost interest in mysteries, she said, when they became too predictable.
“One step slower and I would’ve been wearing him,” I said with inappropriate levity.
Mrs. Kurtz didn’t seem to think so. “You might have been killed too,” she said with a true mystery lover’s awareness of the fun to be found in death. “Flattened flat.”
I smiled and edged away politely. Pausing just long enough to take off my shoes, I weaved through the crowd to where Lolo was sitting. Her blue eyes were open and staring, her expression numb. The magnifying glass around her neck was catching the light of the small chandelier; if this were one of her beloved old mystery movies, I’d tap her on the shoulder and discover she’d hypnotized herself with it.
It wasn’t and she hadn’t. People were standing a respectful distance from their hostess, and mine was the only hand near to her. She clutched it without breaking her stare.
“Did you know him?” she asked.
“Not well,” I told her. I could tell she was stressed. Lolo was originally from Georgia and whenever she was stressed or excited, her thick accent returned.
“I noticed you talking to him as though you knew him,” she said.
“I didn’t, no. Not really. He wanted to sample the steak.”
Her eyes turned to me slowly, like little machines. “He did like to eat, but not chocolate—isn’t that
just
so strange?”
“I’d say it was more ironic,” I replied, not sure it mattered what I said. Her eyes went back to staring. Lolo looked like she was in a daze.
There was a bit of a commotion in the hallway as Deputy Chief Whitman started pulling the guests, one at a time, into the great room. That was where the dinner table had been set up. I stood on my crushed toes so I could look over the crowd. I saw two officers seated at opposite ends of the table. They had digital recorders before them and would be starting to take statements. I lowered myself gingerly back onto my heels.
“What a terrible thing,” Lolo said. Her expression was starting to crack. It looked like she might cry. I couldn’t blame her.
“You’re going to get through this,” I assured her.
“My husband died in this house too,” she said. “Not the same way, of course. He had an aneurysm.”
“Lolo, why don’t you try to think about something else,” I suggested. Sometimes death
wasn’t
funny, even to mystery readers.
“I’ll have to have the hole repaired.”
“Don’t think about that,” I suggested. “Think about the Cozy Foxes, something you want to read. Tell me about a movie I should see. Anything you recommend?”
“Become a recluse like my Uncle Jonah,” she said. “I believe it is a far easier way to live.”
 
 
I was one of the last people asked to provide a statement.
By the time it was my turn in the not-so-hot seat, the little big lug himself had moved over to Lolo’s neighborhood. He had pulled over his own ball and claw chair and there the two of them sat, cozily facing each other like a pair of centaur-lions. The expression on the Deputy Chief’s melon face was still flat and unfathomable, like a latke. Lolo had not given in to tears, but had rallied like the society trouper she is, presenting a formal, admirably dignified customer for Whitman.
I was asked over by a beanpole in his late twenties, his voice lacking emotion or more than a hint of a local accent. Since moving here, I’d noticed a lot of the young didn’t sound like they were from the South; one of the few benefits of growing up watching unbroken hours of TV.
He watched me come over, watched me sit down, then just watched me. It was a curious kind of by-the-book questioning. Since nearly everyone had been in plain sight of someone else, no one missing for more than a bathroom run—except for Lolo, when she briefly went upstairs to get her little dinner bell, which she kept to gently and occasionally summon her housekeeper to her mystery-reading second-floor library—there was not a lot to ask. I’d eavesdropped the last two interviewees, and the basic narrative was pretty much the same from person to person. We heard a crack, there was a boom, and Hoppy went smash.
“Did you know the deceased?” asked the cop—Officer Clampett, whose parents, I hoped, had gotten some sleep before settling on a first name.
I told him.
“Did you have any exchanges with the deceased tonight?”
I told him.
“Did you hear anyone say anything disparaging about the deceased?”
I told him no. Thom was still in the parlor. Enough people had gone home so that she could hear everything being said. And the narrowed eyes told me she was listening.
“I heard nothing,” I replied.
Officer Clampett looked at me in a way that suggested he was seeing me for the first time. It wasn’t lustful or anything; I get those glances now and then, I’m pleased to say, though unless I noticed the guy first, they’re probably not worth acknowledging. It was more like he was formulating his first fresh question.
“Do you always work in your stocking feet?” he asked.
“No,” I told him. I explained about the shoes. I had set them beside Lolo’s chair and pointed them out.
“Were you barefoot when Mr. Hopewell approached you?”
“I was not.” Though I
was
curious about where this was going.
“Might he have been attracted to you, looking the way you did?” Officer Clampett inquired.
“I’m sorry. ‘The way’?”
“Well, those
are
stripper shoes.”
I could feel Thom laughing at my back. I told Clampett that where I come from they are considered somewhat chic, and that, in any case, Hoppy seemed genuinely more interested in food, especially free food.
“Why?” I asked suddenly. A kid like Clampett didn’t just come up with a question like that. “Did Hoppy have a reputation?”
The officer seemed uncomfortable being on the receiving end, and didn’t answer. I was told I could go home but waited for Thom and Luke to finish so we could get our stuff from the kitchen.
“
Strip-puh
shoes,” Thom said with a triumphant little dance.
“I guess so,” I said. “If we finish up quick, I’ll do my pole dance on the lamppost.”
I couldn’t tell from Thom’s expression whether that intrigued or shocked her.
It seemed strange to not seem strange that we were working where a man had died a little more than an hour before. But then, it no longer looked like a crime scene. The coroner’s team had arrived early in the questioning. Save for the occasional burst of a camera flash, you wouldn’t have known they were there. At about the same time I sat down for my interview, they escorted Hoppy Hopewell out the side door, leaving behind the puddle of gravy with its dusty white coat and now-congealed heel-print.
“That’s almost as disgustin’ as blood,” Thom remarked as we scanned the kitchen to see if we’d missed anything.
“It doesn’t look like they show in the cartoons,” Luke said.
I admitted to him I had no idea what he was talking about.
“The hole,” Luke said, jerking a thumb toward the ceiling. “It’s not his outline. It’s just—a hole.”
Thom snorted. “That’s
exactly
the man’s outline. Like I said before, he was an a-hole.”
“Well, he got what he deserved,” Luke said. “A bonbon voyage.”
I scowled and hushed them both. There were still cops in the house, downstairs, upstairs, and on the grounds.
“That was a joke,” Luke protested.
“I don’t think the police would see it that way,” I said. “Mr. Whitman will be under a lot of pressure to find a person of interest right-quick. We don’t want it to be you.”
Luke made a motion of zipping his mouth as he grabbed his guitar from a corner and did a vintage Prince-move pirouette out the door.
I decided not to brave the inconstant blue line to say good night to Lolo. She probably wouldn’t remember whether I did or didn’t. She still looked proper and all, only now it had the added appearance of being in a stupor. Which brings me back to what I said before about the rich getting better treatment. The Deputy Chief had poured her tea and sent Officer Clampett—whose name, as it turned out, unfortunately
was
Jed—to get her a shawl from the hall closet. Even if Lolo herself had beaten Hoppy to death with a hammer, in front of thirtysix witnesses, she still would have gotten the whiteglove treatment. In Nashville, while individual Bakers might turn out to be embarrassments, the Baker name was inviolable. Smearing that was like peeing on the holy red brick of Ryman Auditorium, the former house of worship that once housed the Grand Old Opry. It just wasn’t done.
“There is one saving grace in all this,” Thom said as our little band of cater-waiter warriors clopped along the stone steps to the driveway.
Luke and I both waited for the pearl to come, the observation that would chase away the gummy aftertaste of death, lying cartoons, and Jed Clampett.

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