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Authors: Delia Rosen

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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“Such a silly thing,” she said. “There was a game last night. The Cavaliers? His alma mater? I think that was it.”
“He came upstairs to watch TV?”
“To check the score, I think. He was always a big . . . big . . .”
“Athletic supporter,” I said, though my brain said,
“Jerk.”
Lolo nodded tearfully.
“You told that to the police?”
She nodded again.
That would explain why Deputy Chief Whitman was willing to call it an accident. The scenario made sense. “What are you reading?” I asked affably.
“
Murder of a Scoundrel,
a roman à clef about the mysterious death of Serge Rubinstein, the infamous swindler and blackmailer. Do you know it?”
“I know of him,” I said. I had read about his exploits when I was at NYU, a womanizer and con man who was found strangled in 1955 in his magnificent Manhattan pad. They never found who did it, though as one investigator put it,
“We’ve narrowed the list of suspects to about a thousand.”
I hoped the choice of reading material was purely coincidental. If not, this wasn’t the time to ask.
Since I was there, Lolo insisted on paying me the full amount for our services the night before. She went to the master suite further down the hall and returned with a check. I tried to decline—okay, not
too
forcefully—not wishing her to think that was why I had come.
“I know that isn’t why you’re here,” Lolo said. “You were concerned about me and I appreciate that so very much. You’re so like your uncle that way. He was a very compassionate man.”
There were a number of misconceptions in that statement—for one, Uncle Murray wasn’t a compassionate man, he was a just a bad composer who thought the next sob story would inspire his first gold record, so he listened to them all—but I let it stand. Lolo said she and the Cozy Foxes would be back later in the week, as usual, as soon as she found out when the funeral for Hoppy Hopewell was.
“I don’t even know who’s arranging it,” she said.
“I’m sure someone will come forward,” I said. “After all, I understand there’s a small fortune involved.”
Lolo smiled crookedly—like when you say, “She’s such a nice woman” to someone who thinks that woman is a bitch—but I left that alone as well. The information was like a Passover seder, a lot of food that needed time to digest. It wasn’t time to go hunting for the afikomen.
I hugged Lolo, who had returned to her book even before I was out the library door. I hurried down the staircase, mercifully missing Lizzie, who I noticed moving about in the far wing with armfuls of laundry.
Five minutes later I was driving back past the brass horses on my way to the deli. Part of me was satisfied and part of me was disappointed. I was sort of glad the story made sense, however comical it was that Hoppy had fallen through a bear rug while looking for the remote to turn on the TV. But a corner of my brain wasn’t buying it, not yet. People could check scores on a cell phone. Why would a social gadfly, especially a hungry one, leave a party chockablock with wealthy divorcées and widows—just before dinner was about to be served?
That was something my dad might have done, but he was long-married and loved the New York Yankees and had no sense of social finesse. But Hapford Hopewell Jr.?
This was one of those situations where while the numbers seemed to add up, my gut told me there was a second set of books.
Chapter 4
I reached the deli at 9:40, just in time to miss the bulk of the morning rush. For us, that meant coffee and bagels with shmear. Though they didn’t call it shmear in Nashville. They called it cream cheese. It was one of the traits that made the celebrated town so quaint.
Thom gave me a look as I arrived. I gave her one back. I was usually there, apron on, helping whoever needed it. It’s not like I was sleeping in or goofing off.
I got pleasant hellos from the customers who knew me. I wasn’t used to “pleasant.” In New York, a person was either ignored or greeted like a wealthy relative, looked down on or sucked up to. Nashville was the sane center of New York extremes. I’d only been here seven months and the culture shock of the people, the sounds, even little things like the lack of street smells, was still strong. I wondered if Dad and Uncle Murray had ever acclimated. I knew one person who hadn’t.
My father lived in Nashville for twenty-five years. He had only been here once, on a mustering-out layover at Berry Field Air National Guard Base on his return from Germany, but he liked the weather and the slower pace of things. Being an impulsive man, he decided to open a deli here with my mother and his brother Murray. Dad worked for his father-in-law’s company, Royal Woven, which made the labels that went in the back of shirts. He oversaw the shipments that came from South Carolina looms and he hated it. Uncle Murray was a borderline-unsuccessful jingle writer who thought he’d have better luck selling real songs where songs were being bought. They were being bought in New York too, but he had competition there from guys with names like Bacharach and Diamond. He didn’t do any better in Nashville, but the deli enjoyed a novelty success at first, and then just became a local fixture.
Why did Dad choose a deli instead of, say, a clothing store, which was something he at least knew a little about? I couldn’t say for sure, but I think it was rooted in the old Jewish idea that if you were a baker or a butcher your family would never go hungry. Or maybe he was running from the past he loathed. Probably a little of both.
After a few weeks, Mom decided not to stay. She missed her family, she didn’t want me growing up in the South, and—call her a prima donna—she didn’t like smelling of pastrami and grease day after day. She never divorced my father, but they never lived together again. I think they knew that would happen and just let events take their course. Dad wasn’t happy working for her father in the garment district, and she wasn’t happy with a husband who was willing to give up a sure thing for something so risky.
P.S. Her dad went bust when the shmatta business migrated to Taiwan and India in the 1970s, and we ended up moving in with him and
bubbe
in Queens to help pay the bills. My mother worked as a department manager for Gimbels, also not a smart move. They went bust in 1987. After that, it was all pickup jobs at store after store. It was like a Western where someone kept shooting horses out from under her. My father helped when he could; sending us money was one reason he never had the cash to expand or diversify. The big urban tornado of 1998 was another reason. The storm tore up the Nashville business district, including the deli. Insurance covered some of it, but Dad and Uncle Murray decided it was time to upgrade the electrical and the appliances. That was all out-ofpocket.
My mom died in 1999, shortly after her parents. Dad died later the same year, stressed all to hell by rebuilding in the aftermath of the tornado. I was in school by then, working hard not to be them. My folks had been so cocked up by finance in one form or another that I decided to make it my career. I wanted to understand what they never could: how people and companies went broke. I swore that would never happen to me. If anything, I was going to be the one who sent other people to the poorhouse. The revenge of the Katz family was at hand. The financial rapture. Gweninator: Judgment Day.
Cut to inheriting the deli when my Uncle Murray passed. By that time I was thirtysomething, unhappily married, and a little bored with theory. I had spent years studying what other people did wrong, and right, and the shortcuts they took to make things work. I wanted to try that myself. And, like Dad, I wanted to be away from my significant other. In this case, though, Phil Silver, my husband, was equally happy to be rid of me. I took my cats, I took my original name, I resigned from the accounting firm of Schneider & Stempel, and I moved into the forty-year-old colonial my father and his brother shared on the unfortunately named Bonerwood Drive. I had just enough money to gut the two bedroom place and make it habitable for a non-man-slob.
I didn’t see my father a lot over the years—he was big on letter-writing, a holdover from the Air Force, and I saved them all—and when I did visit I didn’t get to see much of Nashville. Still, I noticed that the city had changed a lot between then and now. It was no longer a few blocks long and all about twangy country music, the Hank Williamses and Roger Millers and even the Glen Campbells. It was sprawling and taller and it was about all music and entertainment. People from New York and Los Angeles and Chicago and Philadelphia had relocated here. They had changed the dynamic, making it more cosmopolitan. That influx was also what kept my father going. He gave them a taste of home. They gave him a living he enjoyed. It was what my
bubbe
used to call
chochem
—being a genius due to luck.
I don’t have quite his passion for this business, but I do love
business
. As long as I have Thomasina to handle the deli—and I do, since one of the stipulations of my inheritance was that I retain her until she wanted to leave—I’m pretty content.
Especially when I have something like the Hoppy death to add some kosher salt to the week.
I walked in as Newt, on the grill, was saying to Thom, on the register, “What kind of a name is Lolo anyway?” He saw me walk in and repeated the question.
“You askin’ a girl nicknamed ‘Nashville’ to explain a name?” Thom laughed.
“It’s short for her maiden name, Lollobrigida,” I told him. “She’s a distant relative of the Italian movie star.”
“Never heard of her,” Newt said. “Was she hot?”
“She defined the term,” old Mr. Crowley said from his seat at the counter. “She had what we called ‘bosoms.’”
“We call them that too,” Thom pointed out.
“We do?” Newt said, his face ruddy from the heat lamps.
“In this restaurant we do,” Thom said with an edge of menace. “How is the grand dame?”
Thom said it like it’s spelled, possibly being ironic, possibly because she didn’t know any better.
“She’s fine,” I said and slapped the check on the cash register as I walked toward the back room.
“Hoooo-eee!” Thom shouted.
“Any tips?” Newt asked hopefully as I passed.
“Buy low, sell high,” I said. Ordinarily I don’t swing at the easy ones but, as I suspected, the country boy had never heard that. And didn’t get it when he did.
I closed the door to my small office and sat on the worn vinyl cushion on the precarious old swivel chair. One day I’d have to get over the sentimental value and replace it. It had belonged to my father and was one of two chairs crammed in the room. The other one, on the back end of the desk—where the Good Luck Troll and framed photos of various Jackson kin resided—belonged to Thom, who had run the place while Murray tried to write and sell music. It was in much better shape since Uncle Murray was rarely in it.
I moved aside an empty plate; I’d been gloomy about my love life the night before and had eaten a sliver of cheesecake. I didn’t do either often—brood or indulge—but sometimes I felt a little lonely down here. That feeling came back as I flipped open my cell phone and looked at it for a moment. Did I really want to call Grant Daniels? The detective and I had enjoyed a torrid little fling that threatened to become more. Both of us had just ended relationships, and neither of us particularly wanted another. But when you start calling each other pet names, it’s time to get serious or cool it.
We chilled. But I really wanted to know what the autopsy—
My phone buzzed. It was Grant. Well, howdie-do.
“Danny Boy,” I said.
“Kazakhstan,” he replied.
Yeah, those were the names. I admit mine wasn’t very inspired, while his had kind of hot, geopolitical appeal.
“How’ve you been?” I asked.
“Busy,” he said, which was an explanation and a false-front apology all in one neat word. “You?”
“Busy,” I replied in kind. “Lolo?” I asked.
“Lolo,” he replied.
“What’s your involvement?” I asked.
“Local swells are involved, so the mayor asked me to stay in the loop.”
“‘Involved’ as in suspects?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t say they’re not.”
“You were there,” Grant said. “Any impressions?”
“You read my report?”
“Oh yeah. ‘Hoppy tried to shnorr, ’” Grant quoted. “‘I think he was a shnorrer.’ Christ, Kaz. What does that even mean?”
“Officer Jed Clampett didn’t seem to have a problem with my report.”
“He didn’t realize this was his first murder.”
That sat me upright and caused the chair to squeak. “You got the autopsy report?”
“Right here on my laptop,” Grant said. “Want to tell me about last night?”
Well played,
thought I. “No, but I’ll tell you about this morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
I told him about my return trip to Belle Meade and my observations about the hole in the floor, Hoppy’s visit to the media room, and the parts that didn’t sit right.
“His leaving just then doesn’t make sense,” Grant agreed.
Something in his voice made me ask, “Why do you say ‘just then’?”
“Rhonda Shays had just arrived,” he said.
Once again my back straightened and the chair made like Mickey Mouse. “Rhonda Shays? Royce’s ex?”
“They were reportedly an item,” Grant told me.
That was a kick in the
kishkes
. I must have missed her in the crowd, and then when I was in the kitchen. Or maybe my block-wealthy-snobs program was running. Royce Sinclair is a wealthy real estate developer who had visions of turning our block into an entertainment complex. His only impediment : the deli. He tried to buy it, wooed me, won me, lost me, tried to steal it—it was a mess. Especially for Mrs. Sinclair, who accused me of being all kinds of slut even though she was rumored to be having multiple affairs herself. Not that she’d ever said that to my face. We moved in different social circles; all my intel was secondhand. Of course, she had breeding and I had none. Rhonda’s world was like a Thoroughbred stud farm where that kind of behavior was tragic in its absence. She was entitled to roam. Her husband was supposed to be jealous and fight for her, not wander off himself. She divorced him and pulled a “me,” taking back her distinguished maiden name.
“How did you find that out?” I asked.
“Lolo.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Rhonda isn’t a member of her literary group, the Cozy Foxes.”
“I don’t follow. Why does that make sense?”
“If you’re not there, everyone guns for you.”
“I see.”
“But Rhonda’s a little younger than his usual consort.”
“How do you know
that
?” Grant asked.
“Thom.”
“How does
she
know that?”
“Restaurant workers are invisible,” I told him. “People talk. Then Thom talks, sometimes to herself, but I overhear.”
“Well, I hear Hoppy was creative with melted chocolate—”
“Shays fondue? I’m shocked.”
“—or so his saleswoman Victoria Bundy told us. Seems he used to practice on little white chocolate women in the kitchen.”
I told him I got the picture. I did, though it occurred to me that white chocolate women would melt under heated chocolate. Maybe that was all a metaphor for how he saw himself. Men approaching fifty have weird issues.
“So he was killed and he was seeing Rhonda,” I said. “
How
was he killed?”
“Someone drilled him.”
“Really? Wouldn’t we have heard a shot?”
“No, Gwen. Someone drilled him. With a drill. Up the nose, into his brain. Then they let him fall through the hole in the floor.”
I tasted bagel high in my throat. “Jesus.”
“Now, everyone claims that everyone else was pretty much there all the time and no one saw Hoppy leave. So whatever happened was quick.”
“He could have gone out the back,” I said.
“How?”
I explained the layout. I was still thinking about a drill bit being rammed up his nose. Someone would have to be awfully close and intimate to pull that off.
“So he may have slipped out the back and gone upstairs for a private rendezvous—”
“Under the pretense of checking a ball game,” I added. “But why bother explaining? Why not just disappear?”

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