One Foot In The Gravy (9 page)

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Authors: Delia Rosen

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “He was the candy king!”
“He was full of fudge,” I said. “You’re still being a sap, Rhonda. The guy was a con man. He had no regard for anyone, for the truth, or even for chocolate.”
“But he studied the art of German chocolate cake in Weimar!”
“If he was in Weimar, that’s not the batter he was whipping up,” I said. “Rhonda, Hoppy stank like week-old lox. The question is whether one of his investors was off-the-wall angry enough to kill him or whether there’s some other reason.”
“Hoppy,” she said wistfully. The woman was suddenly Greta Garbo. Her head went back and she said to the football stadium, “I want to be by myself, please.”
“Believe me, so do I. Just tell me where—”
“I will tell you nothing more,” Rhonda said. “If you wish to see me again, contact my attorney.”
She was becoming defensive. Her mourning period had definitely ended; it was time to cover her ass.
“Is that where you were going?” That was what I’d wanted to ask before she cut me off. She gave me another way in.
“Where?”
“To see Solly?”
“Who?”
“Solomon Granger, Esquire.”
The nose wrinkled again as if she’d smelled that spoiled lox. “The New England attorney? Lord, no. Of all the ideas. I have no interest in
him
!”
I was being uncharacteristically slow here. I forgot that in her world, every business associate was a potential lover.
“My attorney is Jefferson Davis Forrest,” she said. “As for myself, I’m going to have my hair done. For the memorial,” she added, as though that justified vanity at a time of mourning.
“Oh. Do you know when it is?”
“I do not,” she admitted. “I wish to be prepared.”
Rhonda got in the car with
“pre-pay-uhh-ddd”
trailing behind her. She drove off without another word.
I stood there in the waning sunlight wondering at what point I’d fallen down the rabbit hole. Because everyone I’d talked to about this was definitely “out there.” I got in the car and continued to my original destination. Maybe, I thought, outside this ridiculous world of the Southern aristocracy, Gary Gold would prove to be surprisingly, refreshingly normal.
I don’t have to tell you how wrong I was.
Chapter 9
I checked in with Thom as my GPS squired me along Shelby Avenue.
“How’s everything?” I asked.
“Slowish,” she said.
“Coincidence?” I asked.
“I don’t think people’re avoiding us,” she said. “I don’t imagine most of ’em know.”
“It was pretty dead at Hoppy’s place.”
“That’s different,” Thom said. “That’s the house of the dead.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh, yeah. They take that stuff seriously down here.”
“Wow. Up North, a mob guy gets bumped off at a steak house, it’s booked solid till the next hit somewhere else.”
Thom tsked me. “You got some funny ways up there. No respect for the dead.”
“Not for those who deserve it.”
“Or privacy.”
She had me there. “We’ve got ten million people living and working in side-by-side stacks. We hear strangers’ cell phone conversations, read their iPad newspapers, walk through their cigarette smoke. What the hell is privacy?”
Thom sighed. “No wonder you have the mouth you have, always gettin’ elbowed and havin’ your foot stepped on.” I didn’t tell her that my “mouth” was mild by comparison to most. The shock might kill her sweet, Baptist soul. “I’m guessin’ our afternoon customers were just hangin’ by their TVs or computers, waitin’ for the next shoe to drop on the Belle Meade crowd. Stuff like that is blood sport down here.”
“Literally.”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you somethin’ else. No ordinary person would do Hoppy in like he was done.”
“By ‘ordinary’ you mean—”
“That was a rich person’s freak-out,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
“They can’t kill people as themselves. That would be a mark on their status. They have to become someone else, like a blue-collar worker—”
“An electrician?”
“Exactly. They’d have to playact to do something that gruesome.”
“You truly believe that.”
“I do,” she said.
After my encounter with Rhonda, I wasn’t about to dismiss momentary schizophrenia as a component of this crime.
“You find anything out while you been nosing around in something that I still don’t see is any of your business?”
“Just what you knew from the start,” I told Thom. “That Hoppy was no damn—I mean, no darn good.”
“Hah. You see? There’s no grapevine like the service industry for reliable information. You bettin’ on any horses yet?”
“Too early,” I told her. “I’m off to Confederate Hill to see the writer now. Your grapevine tell you anything about him?”
She chuckled. “He came in here once about a year ago as a guest of the Cozy Foxes. At least, I think it was him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I gotta go,” she said.
“What do you
mean
?” I pressed.
She replied, “He was the right man for this job.”
 
 
I wasn’t able to extrapolate anything from Thom’s parting comment, so I filed it away as I drove to his home. It was on the also unhappily named Fatherland Street. Just seeing the street sign gave me shuddering racial memories. The address was a small, newish little bungalow—I’d put it about 1960, which was about a century younger than some of the other places in the neighborhood. I got out when the GPS told me I’d arrived and walked up the short, narrow concrete path. There was a simulated gold bar hanging from the black lamppost in place of a number sign. The mailbox beside the front door was painted gold. I guessed this was indeed the place, and rang the bell.
An intercom crackled. I hadn’t seen it, cobwebcovered under the mailbox. “Leave it by the screen door.”
“I’m not a delivery person, Mr. Gold.”
“Who are you?”
“Gwen Katz. We haven’t actually met—”
“What do you want, Gwendolyn?”
“Actually, it’s Gwenette.”
“Is that French or something?”
“I think it’s Welsh. My mother was fond of Dylan Thomas.”
“Then she should have named you Myfanwy or Christmas, should she not have?”
“I can’t say and sadly I can’t ask her, since she is deceased. Mr. Gold, I’d like to—”
“Katz is Hebraic, though,” he said.
“It is.”
“Gold is not,” he mentioned. “It’s short for Goldholdt. That’s German.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “Mr. Gold, these pleasantries aside, I was wondering if I could talk to you.”
“We’re talking. What are we talking
about
?”
“The Baker party,” I said patiently. “I believe you wrote the murder scenario—”
“You believe? It’s true! But are you true? How do I know you’re not a process server?”
“I told you, I’m Gwen Katz, owner of the Nashville Katz deli. You’ve eaten there.”
“Not good enough.”
“Are you
expecting
a summons for any reason?”
“One never knows, does one?” he asked.
It would take another minute of this before I kicked in the door and beat him with the gold bar from the walk. So, once again, I lied.
“Mr. Gold, I’m thinking of hosting a murder party and I would like to read what you wrote for Mrs. Baker. She recommended you highly.”
“I am emailing her as we speak to make sure that she did, in fact, send you to me.”
“Great, fine. In the meantime, do you have a copy of the scenario? Something I could read?”
“Hard copy or PDF?”
“A printout, if you have one,” I told him. I didn’t want to leave without it. I didn’t ever want to talk to the man again.
“I am making one as I type to Lolo Baker
and
as we speak.”
I could hear the printer chugging. When it stopped I heard a door open and close.
“It is around back, on the patio, in the milk box,” he informed me.
I went back there and saw a single sheet of paper sticking from under the metal lid. I took it, made sure it was what I wanted, and left. I left jogging toward the car. I guess some people are writers for a reason—creative drive and an antisocial nature were the two I would have guessed before coming here. Add to that lunacy. When I had Googled Gary Gold back at the house, it had listed him as the author of several children’s books published by a small local press in the 1990s, Policy Press with only a P.O. Box. They were ghost stories like
Wagner and the Spook
and
Carl Is Afraid of the Closet
. Lolo had hosted publishing parties for both at the estate. One newspaper archive had a photo of the author, from the back, signing copies for guests. I was morbidly curious to find those now. Just as I was to read the mystery scenario he’d written. But not as much as I was to get back across the River, to which I sped like Ichabod Crane racing for the covered bridge.
Chapter 10
My two cats are night creatures. They emerge from their big, plastic cat homes when the sun goes down. They can’t see it from in there; they sense it. They had done the same thing in New York; I wasn’t sure they had ever actually seen the sun.
Their names are Southpaw and Mr. Wiggles, and they’re both about five years old. They were left behind by a neighbor when she moved, and I couldn’t turn them over to be euthanized. They were spayed, declawed, and generally pretty lethargic. But they were something to care for, and care about. When you live alone, don’t have a lot of close girl friends because most of your college roommates are married, and are usually more sick of male friends than not, cats are acceptable companions.
They emerged like furry little vampires, their big cat-guts swaying to and fro, their eyes bright with hunger. I spooned out their canned cat food, then took a pair of Hebrew National hot dogs from the fridge, slit them lengthwise, and slapped them in a frying pan for me. While I held them flat with a big metal spatula, I spread Mr. Gold’s paper on the counter and read:
The Baker Murder Mystery
by Gary Gold
Created for Lolo Baker by Gary Gold.
(c) 2011 by Gary Gold
Marley was dead. For just a couple of moments.
At first it looks like he’s just sleeping in the patio swing but he’s not. He’s dead! Harley Marley, the infamous night time biker (played by Gary Gold) had been intending to crash the party . . . but someone crashed his. This will be announced, during dessert, by the loud breaking of a beer bottle over his head. (I will, myself, strike a bottle against the metal studs of the leather wristband I will be wearing. All of the guests will come to investigate.)
Lolo (poking the corpse): “Who could have done this to Harley Marley with his own beer?”
Lolo will look around quickly (so Gary doesn’t have to hold his breath for very long). She will find an unsigned note on the ground (which Gary will leave there). She will read it.
Lolo: “I don’t love you. I don’t want to see you again. Do not follow me.”
Everyone will go back inside. Lolo will detect a faint stain on the note. Under examination from her magnifying glass she will discover tomato sauce.
Lolo: “Whoever did this wrote it while she was eating pasta!”
The guests will smell each others’ breath. Only one will smell of garlic, but she will explain it is the result of having eaten a canapé before dinner. Then she will die: she is the actual murder victim! Harley Marley is gone. (The dead woman should be Lolo, so that the other guests will have to figure things out on their own.)
Lolo: (near death): “I knew this would happen! Search me!”
The dead woman is searched.
There are hate letters written in the same hand as hers!
That means Harley Marley faked his own death . . . and he’s not really dead. He poisoned the snack in the truck because he knew his lover loved eggplant!
Now Harley Marley is among them, but in disguise and hiding. Is he the butler? Is he one of the caterers? Is he the electrician who has been working quietly upstairs? Is he the florist who has arrived with a wreath from Harley Marley?
That is for Gary Gold to know and the guests to discover.
I was cold with horror. It was the stupidest “mystery” I had ever read, with more holes than the Bunny Ranch. The only good thing was that now I saw where the eggplant canapés fit. I slid my franks onto a plate, grabbed ajar of Gulden’s, and considered that mess as I ate. The only real information it provided is that Gary Gold was there.
I finished eating, made decaf, and called Grant Daniels. He was in the middle of his happy hour, I’m-off-duty-now vodka martini. Probably with a date, because I could hear the background clatter and he didn’t say my name when he answered.
“Hey, you,” he said.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I just read the scenario for the murder mystery Lolo’s guests were supposed to solve at the party. Did any of Deputy Chief Whitman’s people interview Gary Gold, the author?”
“Not that I know of,” he said. “You sure he was there?”
“Gold was supposed to be a victim and then not—it’s complicated, but yeah, he was there.”
“We’ll check it out. I’m assuming you talked to him?”
“Kind of. Through a door. Strange duck.”
“Thanks for the tip. I was actually going to call you later.”
“Oh?”
“The memorial is tomorrow at 10 a.m. I thought you might like to go.”
How unbearably romantic. Okay, we hadn’t exchanged vows, just . . . well . . . but still.
“I’ll see you there,” I said.
“Great. Thanks for the tip about Gold.”
“Sure.”
I hung up and immediately slammed my forehead with the heel of my hand. Not lightly, but enough to cause the cats to jump from their bowls.
Dumb, dumb, dumb!
Not that I was the poster child for fidelity. I came to Nashville a free woman for the first time in a decade, no longer tied to an inattentive, self-absorbed
putz
. I had some catching up to do and I did—with a pair of sweettalking Southern gentlemen to boot. If a third and fourth hunk had walked in the deli door and stayed, they’d have gotten the special of the day as well. I had no right to be anything stronger than disappointed.
But I was.
I forced myself not to think about it anymore. Neither the inside nor the outside of my head could take it. I got myself a pint of Mountain Jim’s hand-packed strawberry-with-strawberry chunks from the freezer, put on the CW—if someone was going to
Gossip Girl
me, I figured I should at least know what it’s about—and chuckled when I thought about Gary Gold’s scenario. At some point during the ten o’clock news, I dozed off.
 
 
There was a ringing sound.
It was still dark, I fumbled with the phone, knocked over the melted ice cream, and mumbled out a hello. The ringing recurred. It wasn’t the phone. It was the door. The cats had already gone to hide—maybe they were still expecting the grim cat reaper—so I was on my own. I got up, stumbled to the door, switched on the outside light. I looked through the frosted glass. A man was waving.
“Hey, Gwen. It’s Grant.”
I was now very awake. I leaned back to look at the stove clock. Nearly eleven. I stole a quick look in the small teakwood mirror hanging beside the jamb—my own addition, Uncle Murray didn’t care how he looked—and after fluffing my hair, threw back the bolt and opened the door.
The man looked tired. His fawn-colored blazer looked tired. The five o’clock shadow was now six hours older than that. I waved him in; after the briefest hesitation, he crossed the threshold, propelled by an upward jerk of his head, like a man who was convincing himself he’d made the right decision.
“I didn’t like how that call went,” he said with that endearing smirk.
“Whatcha mean?” My tone was so carefree I made myself sick.
He shrugged carelessly. “It just seemed kind of cold and abrupt.”
I shrugged carelessly. “You were busy.”
“Not really,” he confided. “I guess I thought I was. Old colleague from Kingston, here to collect a prisoner.”
“Now
that’s
hot.”
“It is?”
“If you’re into handcuffs,” I said.
Stop joking, idiot,
I warned myself.
He’s being serious.
“Listen, you don’t have to explain—in fact, you don’t have to do anything.”
“I had to tell you that,” he said.
The door was still awkwardly open. I’d forgotten to shut it. If I did now it would seem like he had to stay. If I didn’t, it would seem like I wanted him to go.
I reached my hand outside and fussed with the empty mailbox. A good detective would notice what I was doing. A good man would pretend not to.
“Not very popular,” I said, and shut the door.
I noticed the melted ice cream and picked up the container. I snatched some tissues from the end table and mopped up what little had been left to spill out.
“You want to sit down? I’ve got some decaf brewed—”
“Actually, I only came by to tell you that face-toface.”
So much for my mailbox improv. “Oh. You could’ve called.”
It was his move. He hesitated to make it, whatever it was. The smirk returned then blossomed. “Think I will have that decaf if it’s no trouble.”
“It is not,” I said.
I walked briskly into the kitchen so he couldn’t see me grinning. There are few things in life so satisfying as being miserable about something that turns out to have been imaginary, like a bad grade or a misread pregnancy test. This was one of those things.
I tossed the ice cream container, heard Grant follow me into the kitchen. I set sugar and cream on the butcher block table and got him a mug—my vintage
Phantom of the Opera
mug, one where the mask became visible on the side as you filled it with hot beverage. I handed it to him and refilled my own
I Love NY
mug.
“This is cute,” he said, admiring the mug.
“It was the last show I saw with my mom,” I told him. “She loved it.”
“Isn’t it a musical about a monster?”
I nodded. “All the best ones are.” They weren’t. But it made me sound smart and just came out of my mouth. Now that I’d said it I tried to think—
Beauty and the Beast, Sweeny Todd, Assassins
. . . that was it.
“Beauty and the Beast, Sweeny Todd, Assassins. . . .”
“What did she love about it then?”
“He was a monster with a good soul.”
“Like a hooker with a heart of gold?” Grant said.
“I guess so. He helped a singer realize her potential and died for that. Actually, he died for killing people, but he did it for her.”
“
Grease
is my speed.”
“I like that one too,” I said, putting down my mug and doing a bit of the Hand Jive.
Grant smiled. I think he was a little embarrassed by my hyperactivity. I know I was. I suggested we go back to the living room. We sat on the sofa.
“So, this murder,” I said, looking for anything else to discuss.
“It’s a strange one,” he said. “I gave your writer’s name to Whitman—I have to do this through channels—and he said he knew about him. They haven’t talked to him yet.”
“Reason?”
“He didn’t show up on the initial tag run.”
“Tag run?”
“One of the officers got the tag numbers of all the cars in the driveway. Cell phone photos. We’ve got an app that IDs them instantly. His didn’t come up.”
“Hmmm. It was too far to walk. Maybe he thumbed a ride?”
“They’re checking on it.”
“I assume someone asked Lolo about it,” I said.
He nodded as he sipped. “She said he dropped off the scenario the day before, then told her she wouldn’t see him again until she found him—and these are her words, not mine—‘pretending to be pretending to be dead.’”
“It makes sense,” I assured him. I went and got the scenario from the kitchen.
Grant took a moment to read it; while he did, I read him.
He was more relaxed now that he was in the police work groove. Truth be told, so was I. More truth be told, I wish we weren’t there. I wanted to—well, I wanted to not be doing police work.
“Wow,” he said.
“I know.”
“I wonder what she paid for this,” Grant said.
“Whatever it was, it was too much. Any idea how they met?”
“Local author, wrote some thrillers—”
“The Cozies, right,” Grant said. “Like gas on a match.”
“What was?”
“Their attention, his vanity.”
“Probably,” I said. “Though it was pretty strange he wouldn’t see me.”
“What, a writer? Strange?” Grant said.
I chuckled.
“Maybe he’s got a mother fixation, only talks to women over forty or fifty,” Grant went on. He turned and looked at me with those soft but spicy eyes. “You’re too young and hot. You scared him.”
Talk about gas on a match. I put my mug on the little coffee table where Uncle Murray’s keyboard still sat, a reminder of the nuttier yet dream-driven side of the clan. I took Grant’s mug and set it next to that.
I kissed him, everything on one role of the dice.
He grew a tongue and arms, and I had no further thoughts that night of Gary Gold, Lolo Baker, or Hoppy Hopewell.

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