You Cannoli Die Once (20 page)

There is certainly nothing I like better than advertising another establishment.

Paulette, Vera, Jonathan, Choo Choo, and Alma all said good-bye and left.

The regulars packed it in earlier than usual, as did Giancarlo.

After Li Wei slipped out the back door, I told Landon—who knew something was up with me but was too tired to ask—to go. I’d finish up alone.

So what was I feeling, in a week when I’d been bagged and burgled; a week when I’d discovered a dead body right here in my kitchen, and my grandmother was carted off to jail and I decided to hide some evidence; a week when my life seemed to consist only of nights alone and days cooking?

We wait for our real lives to find us and begin—that’s what I was feeling. Like those lives were offstage somewhere, waiting for us, while all the time we were here, waiting for them. And sometimes the lives we think we’ve left behind are really all around us. Like the stars and geraniums, and cousins you can count on.

I rummaged in an old canvas bag on the bottom of the office closet and pulled out a beautiful, beat-up pair of tap heels, slipped them on, and fastened the straps. Then I plugged the
Anything Goes
CD into the sound system, clicked through to the final number in Act I, the title song, and cranked it all the way up. And pushing the prep table to the far side of the kitchen, I danced. Flap heels, chugs, double-and triple-time steps, wings, paddle turns, and riffs—I danced, slamming my taps off the metal sides of the worktables and counters whenever I could. What I didn’t remember of the choreography I made up, throwing in Maxi Fords and Cincinnatis wherever the music let me.

I tapped through all the men taken by others. I tapped through the sight of the murder. I tapped through the never-ending years of saltimbocca, no matter how good, that stretched out ahead of me; I tapped past the end of the music. And when I finally stopped, breathing hard, everything around me, the stove, the walk-in fridge, the prep table, and the pots and pans, all seemed to watch me in awe.

Because there I was. Not just a head chef who used to dance.

Still a dancer.

Sunday

Over a cup of espresso on my padded window seat (a couch wouldn’t fit in my 130 square feet of living space), I looked outside. Some people leave boots out on their porch, some leave flip-flops, some leave garden clogs. Me, I left my tap shoes there when I got home at 1 a.m. Cradling my cup in my hands, I cataloged every aching muscle from last night’s dance spree. To be fair, I think the shoulder was still the fault of my attacker.

Was I really considering leaving Nonna in a chefless lurch? I felt an unwelcome twinge of conscience. And did I think it would be a slam-dunk to get work in New York after three years?
Eve who?
When I started to sound too much like Scarlett O’Hara in my own head—
Where will I go? What will I do?—
I set my empty cup in the sink and headed out to the Volvo.

There were certainly ways in which I didn’t trust Maria Pia. For instance, I was convinced she had left out some key ingredients when she passed on a few of her own recipes, and let’s not even touch the whole plot to get me out of town in order to redecorate Miracolo while I was gone. But I was certain that she had not killed Arlen/Max.

Maybe I was just stuck in that far kingdom of my own blindness, where I believed Mark Metcalf kind of liked me, where Dana would never dare to shove off from Miracolo’s lazy, hazy shore, where no bad would come to me for hanging on to the silver bracelet Nonna dropped at the crime scene. But, bottom line, I knew Nonna was innocent, and I was going nowhere until Operation Free Maria Pia could spring her.

When I pulled up outside Miracolo, there they were, waiting: Alma, Paulette, Vera, Choo Choo, Landon, Jonathan. Dana was missing, treating us to our first awareness of her cutting off the old allegiances. She was probably off somewhere rehearsing a Piaf playlist. I felt strangely lonesome.

So I parked and then used my almighty new key to let the gang in to practice the tarantella for tomorrow’s Festa della Repubblica dinner crowd. While they rehearsed, I’d inventory my supplies for the upcoming week.

As soon as the gang got inside, they started jabbering about sashes and dance partners and vests. From a canvas tote, Paulette produced six tambourines with streamers and passed them out. Everyone immediately started shaking and whapping them. Then, with a flourish and a whole lot of commentary, Landon drew out colorful sashes and black felt vests for the men. Everyone “oohed” at the sashes, which were the red, white, and green of the Italian flag, and Landon demonstrated on Jonathan how to tie the sash.

Then Vera dug into a backpack and pulled out three women’s hair combs with long, colorful streamers attached, giving two to Alma and Paulette. Before long, Choo Choo, Landon, and Jonathan were fully outfitted in their black felt vests and colorful sashes, and Vera, Alma, and Paulette were wearing long white aprons and fussing at their hair decorations.

My job was to cue up the “Tarantella” CD.

Landon clapped his hands, and everybody paired off. Landon was teamed with Alma, Choo Choo with Paulette, and Jonathan with Vera. At Landon’s cue, I turned up the volume. “Five, six, seven, eight!” called Landon and the three pairs started the tarantella step, a combination of light kicks and steps, followed by the tarantella do-sido. Sashes swished, streamers bounced, tambourines went rogue. For a while I watched, sitting in a booth—the one where I’d been sitting on the day of the attack—while making out the next week’s shopping list.

When the music ended, Landon cried, “People!” and launched into a lesson on tambourine skills.

I headed back to the storeroom to check on the supply of semolina flour and votive candles. The door softly shut behind me as I flicked on the light, and I had an uneasy moment when I remembered struggling to free myself from the double bags. This was my first time in the storeroom since it had happened. Except for the nervous tic that started over my right eye, I pronounced myself PTSD-free.
Flour, flour, flour.
On the shelves at the back I found pastry flour and bread flour, but we were going to need to get our hands on some prime semolina to get through next week’s homemade pasta needs. How had I let the supply get so low?

Then I pushed aside the glass vases that we hadn’t used in a while—and my hand started shaking.
Okay, okay, eye tic, trembling hand. So you’re a little more upset than you’re letting on. It’s no big deal. All’s well that ends well
, I chuffed at myself, offering up the cut-rate wisdom you hear only from those who have never experienced anything, oh, untoward. Like, say, the blond beauty with Joe, a woman who’s probably never been scolded, never failed—certainly never been bagged and dumped. Talk to me, blond beauty, when you fall off the stage at the New Amsterdam Theatre, or when your dad takes off when you’re a teen, leaving behind a note that doesn’t even mention you. Talk to me when you discover a corpse in your kitchen. Talk to me then.

By then my throat was tightening up as I stood, free and safe, in the well-lighted storeroom. Never mind the trembling hands or tics over the right eye and now below the left. I was fine and dandy. Anybody messes with me, I had cans of olives I could hurl. Biting my lip, I sank against the shelves holding the canned goods, the feeling of being strapped into the linens delivery bags rushing at me. The realization that I’d been hauled and dumped here like a sack of potatoes. The sound of the door slamming, a chair jammed up against it, trapping me inside. Then kicking and struggling against the bags and the sensation of being smothered, until I managed to rip my way free.

I swallowed hard.

Settle down. Settle down. It’s over.
Aside from the theft and a bruised shoulder, nothing terrible had happened.
Just leave. Get out of the storeroom.
But, aside from sliding down to the floor, I couldn’t move. And I was pretty sure I was hyperventilating. I grabbed a small brown bag and started gasping into it. With my luck Joe would turn up right about now, finding me sweating and hacking into a paper bag.

At least when Mark the Groping Bum had freed me, I was standing on my own two feet. A woman of action. Dashing around, thrusting the bags at him, assessing the loss, calling the cops. He was nothing but a blur to me at that time.

Come to think of it—I stared at a spot on the floor while the little brown bag kept inflating in and out, in and out—what happened to the delivery bags? Tomorrow Arne the Austrian would be back to trade the old bags and tablecloths for new. What the heck had Mark done with them?

As if I weren’t irritated enough with the man. As if I’d ever take him back, even in my fantasies, after watching him feel up the likes of Eloise.

I dropped the paper bag and scrambled to my feet, looking around. Where had he taken them off to? In all the confusion after I discovered the theft, the routine stuff flew out of my head. If I couldn’t find the linens bags, would Arne charge us for the loss?

I checked behind the stacked canned goods and boxes of fluorescent lightbulbs. I checked in the big pile of dish towels. I checked behind the boxes of replacement glassware. Every corner of the storeroom I searched. I didn’t find the bags, but my hands were steady now and I could at least breathe normally.

I strode back into the kitchen, glancing around. No bags. So I went back into the dining room, where the troops were still polishing their tambourine skills, and sat back in the booth where I had recovered from the attack, my arm resting on the pile of clean tablecloths that day. I called out, “Say, has anybody seen the linens bags Arne delivered the other day?”

Paulette was clearly scouring her memory banks.

Jonathan and Alma shook their heads.

Landon asked, “Have you checked the—”

“Storeroom?” I cut in. “Yes.”

Choo Choo gave a mighty shrug. The black vest didn’t move.

But Vera said, “You had them, Eve.”

Blow me down. “I did?” Then: “When?”

“When I came in for work. Remember?”

“No,” I said slowly. What was she talking about? “What day?”

“The day it happened.” She gestured to the walls. “The theft.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said, confused. What was tickling at my brain?

Vera came toward me, pointing to the booth. “Sure you did. Right where you’re sitting now.” My head jerked to the right. The booth was empty, but a strange feeling started to sink through me. Whatever had been bugging me, whatever had been jiggling at my memory those past couple of days, was trying to surface.

“The tablecloths were next to you, right?” Vera asked.

I nodded slowly, trying to get the complete picture. My hand settled on the imaginary pile of table linens that Arne had delivered.

“Remember?” she asked. “I took them and started—”

“Covering the tables,” I finished.

Vera nodded. “Well, the delivery bags were right on top.”

“On top of the pile,” I repeated, trying to envision it.

“Right.”

How on earth did they get there?

Think. Get the picture.

I remembered dashing out of the storeroom, pushing past Mark, thrusting the bags at him. Right there, in the doorway to the storeroom. But they weren’t in there now, so he didn’t set them down there. I was pretty sure I hadn’t touched them after that. And none of the wait staff had touched them. But they ended up on the pile of clean tablecloths. So while I was dashing around, checking out the wreckage of empty shadow boxes, Mark must have folded them and placed them on top of the pile.

But why?

Why there?

He must have done it automatically.

But
why
automatically?

Because … that’s where he had found them.

As the truth rushed at me, I felt sandbagged all over again. That’s where Mark had found the bags, when he had slipped into Miracolo before he was due to meet me. When he found the perfect things to get me out of the way without really hurting me … while he stole all our opera memorabilia.

16

There’s something doubly unsettling about discovering (a) you had something of real value when all along you thought it was cool but worthless stuff, and (b) someone has gone and stolen it. I was utterly baffled why Mark would go to such elaborate lengths to make off with my little personal treasures. I had never fooled myself that they had any real monetary value outside our walls. So why would Mark run such a risk?

While Landon took the tarantella dancers through their paces again, I slipped into the kitchen and poured myself a drink of water. Then I paced the kitchen floor, trying to think it all through. Had he set me up right from the start? What would that even mean?

I found myself standing right over the spot where Mather’s body had been lying just five days ago. Dying over a Caruso 78.

Were Mark and Arlen Mather in cahoots?

What if the 78s were the key, somehow?

But the key to
what
?

And why would they be in cahoots? Did they plot to rob us but then had a falling-out? I rolled my eyes.
Oh, right, Eve: cahoots, plots, falling out.
There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Arlen was found sprawled and dead over my record. Such as … ?

Such as … he wanted to try it in a different display. Such as … he wanted to sing along with Enrico. Or he wanted to take a picture of it to use in a lovey-dovey card he was making for Maria Pia. Or he wanted to pass it on to Mark Metcalf …

Or not.

Maybe he wanted to steal it before Mark could get wind of it.

Was the recording really so valuable?

Maybe the real question was whether it was worth killing for?

Okay, Eve, so apparently now you’re saying Mark killed Arlen Mather. Isn’t that a bit of a leap?
No reason to assume he’s more than a criminal-impulse shopper. And if Arlen had screwed him over somehow, and Mark had indeed beaned him to death, wouldn’t he have made off with the Caruso 78? Unless somehow he thought taking the one thing from a shadow box that had any value would lead the cops to him. So maybe then he’d leave it with the body and just bide his time, hoping he’d nab it in the end.