Death on a Platter (3 page)

“A word we never use in this house,” Josie said.

“I just said that,” Jane said, her voice tinged with acid. She looked like a hen with ruffled feathers. “I was trying to explain history, the way things used to be. Of course we wouldn’t talk that way now, any more than civilized people would use the N-word. But Amelia is too young to know that some nationalities used to live in certain neighborhoods. The old-time Germans lived in South St. Louis. Italians lived on the Hill. Tillie’s was in River Bluff, way north, near the airport. That was a bold move before interstate highways. St. Louis has so many Italian restaurants it was hard to tell them apart. Zack called theirs Tillie’s Off the Hill. It helped people remember their place.”

“ ‘Get toasted at Tillie’s!’ ” Amelia said. “I saw the billboards.”

“And the TV ads,” Josie said. “And the magazines and the newspapers. Tillie’s ads are everywhere.”

“You know someone famous, Grandma,” Amelia said.

“Tillie is famous for her ravioli, but she deserves to be,” Jane said. “That woman has worked all her life. She started waiting tables at the restaurant when she was a bride of nineteen. Now she’s a widow and still working. Tillie’s daughter—Lorena, I think her name is—is a waitress at the restaurant. Tillie cooks and tends bar, even though she’s my age, seventy-six. Restaurant work is hard at her age, but Tillie keeps on going. She’s proud of her place.”

“Sounds like you’ve kept in touch with your friend,” Josie said.

“Of course,” Jane said, as if there was no other possible answer. “This is St. Louis. We’re loyal. Most of the girls from my grade school still come to our class reunions. We keep in touch by phone, but I haven’t been to her restaurant in ages. I’d like to see Tillie again. When are we going there?”

We? Josie had her doubts about taking Jane on this eating expedition.

“I could go there tomorrow for lunch,” Josie said. She checked the sheet of instructions. “Between noon and three o’clock.” She finished the last bite of her frittata, savoring the melted cheese, then said, “Uh, Mom, do you think you can be an unbiased eater?”

Once those words left her mouth, Josie knew she was in for trouble.

“Of course I can!” Jane stuck out her chin. “This is St. Louis. It would be hard to find a locally owned restaurant where we didn’t know the owner. I know good toasted ravioli, Josie. This city’s reputation is at stake. I wouldn’t let my city down, not even for a friend of seventy years.”

Jane threw down her napkin and plunked her plate in the sink.

Tillie’s Off the Hill looked like every old-fashioned Italian restaurant and bar. Josie and Jane entered the bar side, a dark cave lined with wooden booths and lit by beer signs. Through an arched doorway Josie could see the dining room with its red checked tablecloths, candles in fat warty glass holders, and travel posters of Rome.

Jane’s school friend was wiping the bar top. Tillie was a short woman in a no-nonsense white apron. She was designed for work: Her spiked gray hair required no styling. Her eyes were brown and shrewd.

“Tillie!” Jane cried.

Tillie lifted up a hinged section of the bar top and came out to greet them. “I haven’t seen you in too long, Jane,” Tillie said, and smiled. “Phone calls and Christmas cards aren’t the same as real visits. What brings you way north?”

“I wanted Josie to try your toasted ravioli,” Jane said. “I told my daughter it’s the best in the city.”

“It is,” Tillie said. “I make it myself. The sauce, too. Nice to meet you, Josie. I haven’t seen you since you were a little bit of a thing.” She shook Josie’s hand with a quick, firm grip. “That’s my daughter, Lorena, coming out of the kitchen.”

Lorena pushed through the swinging doors with porthole windows. She balanced an oval tray piled with pasta on thick white crockery, a feat of strength Josie admired. Lorena set it on a stand by a table of four and served the steaming dishes.

“Come over here, honey, and meet my friends,” Tillie said.

“As soon as I get more bread, Mom.” Lorena hustled through the kitchen doors, delivered a bread basket to the table, then came over to Josie and Jane.

Tillie’s daughter was nearly a foot taller than her mother and looked to be in her early fifties. Lorena had a harried prettiness. She wore a uniform of black pants, a white shirt, and sensible shoes. Her shoulder-length hair was a gentle brown.

“We’re here to try your toasted ravioli, Tillie,” Jane said.

“You want a seat in the bar or the restaurant?”

“The bar’s fine,” Jane said.

“I’ll join you as soon as I finish up here,” Tillie said. “Want anything besides toasted ravioli?”

“Two Chiantis,” Jane said.

They took a booth by a window overlooking a vacant lot. Wedged between the booths along the back wall was an old-fashioned bowling machine with grapefruit-sized balls and a claw machine with garish plush animals and plastic toys. A thick-shouldered man in his midthirties was trying to capture a Pepto-Bismol–pink teddy bear. The man softly cussed the machine, took a swig of beer, and fed the machine another dollar.

Lorena delivered the drinks and ice water, then went back into the kitchen. Tillie came to their table with a platter. “Scootch over,” she said. “I’ve got your ravioli. I’ll join you for my lunch.”

She set a blue platter with two dozen breaded, fried ravioli in the center of the table. The plump golden brown squares were heaped around a glass dipping bowl of red sauce.

Josie dredged a ravioli through the sauce and took a bite. “Delicious.”

“Horseradish gives my sauce a little kick,” Tillie said. “And cayenne pepper. I grow my own. If the sauce is too hot, I can make it milder.”

“It’s perfect,” Josie said.

“Mm,”
Jane agreed, her mouth full.

“I love the name toasted ravioli,” Josie said, reaching for another one. “It sounds so healthy. I can almost forget that I’m eating fried food.”

“Toasted ravioli was invented when people enjoyed eating,” Tillie said. “They didn’t count calories and carry on about cholesterol. They were grateful they had something good to eat.

“Take my daughter, now. Lorena’s a good girl and a hard worker, but she bores me to tears talking about her weight. She lives on rabbit food: salads with low-cal dressing, grilled chicken, and fish. Talks about the calories in everything. Won’t touch my toasted ravioli. Calls them fat bombs.” She bit into her ravioli as if she were angry at it.

“I wonder if my granddaughter, Amelia, is ready to make toasted ravioli,” Jane said.

“It’s a complicated recipe, even for an experienced cook,” Tillie said. “You have to make the dough, grind the meat, and stuff the ravioli. You still live in Maplewood, right? You’re close to the Hill. Buy some from Mama Toscano’s and teach your granddaughter to make a good sauce. Most toasted ravioli in the local restaurants comes from that store.”

Jane and Tillie discussed cooking. This allowed Josie to get more than her share of ravioli while they talked.

“This platter’s empty. I’ll fix us another,” Tillie said.

“Sit down and relax,” Jane said. “We’re fine.”

“Nobody leaves here hungry,” Tillie said. “I have another batch going. I’ll be right back.” She bustled off to the kitchen with the empty platter.

“Those ravioli were good, even if she is my friend,” Jane whispered.

“
Sh!
We can’t discuss business here,” Josie said. “Wonder why the city doesn’t cut those weeds next door.” The lot alongside the restaurant was choked with scarlet poison ivy and castor bean plants with broad green-black leaves.

“Makes me itch just looking at that poison ivy,” Jane said.

“It’s pretty poison,” Josie said. “I hope no children live around here.”

“Not anymore,” Tillie said, setting another platter on the table. “The families all moved away. That’s why you see so many vacant buildings, like that one.” She nodded toward a crumbling two-story brick bordering the lot. “The owners took their fat buy-out check and moved to a fancy suburb.”

Josie studied the building’s leaning chimneys and boarded windows. “They got good money for that building?” She couldn’t hide her surprise.

“For that land,” Tillie said. “Lorena wants me to sell out and retire. Says we could get a nice condo in Florida. I keep telling her no. I’d be lost without my work.”

“She does have a hard job,” Josie said.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Tillie said. “I worked as a waitress for thirty-some years before I started cooking and tending bar. I get tired being on my feet all day, but not tired enough to quit. My husband started this restaurant. Together we built it into a St. Louis landmark. I don’t want to leave it.

“All that money is making Lorena restless,” Tillie said. “So is her age. She’s divorced and turning fifty-five. Lorena says she wants to find another husband while she’s still pretty. She says all she’ll meet here are barflies.”

“Damn!” the man at the claw machine shouted. He had thick brown hair, regular features, and a muscular body beginning to turn to fat. He whacked the glass, then shoved in another dollar with one hand while he hung on to his beer with the other.

Lorena might have a point, Josie thought. Jane frowned at her daughter, as if she could read Josie’s thoughts, and speared another ravioli.

“For years, this neighborhood was the middle of nowhere,” Tillie said. “Businesses were dying right and left. Now that the casinos moved next door into Maryland Heights, we’re hot property. A new gambling casino wants my land. A developer is offering me a million dollars for this broken-down building. Can you believe it?”

Josie looked at the tired tile floors, sagging plaster ceiling, yellowing paint, and decided silence was the most tactful response.

“Which developer?” Jane asked.

“A big one. With Vegas connections. Won’t come out and make an honest deal. That’s their man sitting in the corner there,” Tillie said, lowering her voice. “Says his name is Desmond. I’m not sure I believe that. His British accent sounds phony.”

Josie turned and pretended to straighten her coat. She saw a slender, dark-haired man in an expensive dark suit nursing a club soda. Desmond’s eyebrows were dark wings. His nose was long and elegant. On his right hand was a ring with a diamond the size of an ice cube. The other customers wore jeans or work uniforms.

“He’s no barfly,” Josie said. “Is he wearing a diamond pinkie ring?”

“I don’t think it’s a cubic zirconia,” Tillie said. “At least that seems genuine. Desmond says he admires our architecture, but we don’t have any. This is a beat-up two-story brick that needs tuck-pointing.

“Kathleen, the secretary at the local real estate office, comes here for lunch. She told me Desmond is acting as a straw party buyer for that big casino. He won’t say so, but nearly every bit of land on these six blocks has been bought up. I’m one of the last holdouts. He doesn’t know I know what he is.

“My daughter, Lorena, flirts with him. He’s dating her, but I think he’s only interested in her real estate, and I’m not talking about her rosy rear end.”

Jane frowned at her friend’s language and reached for another toasted ravioli. “Lorena is an attractive young woman,” she said.

“Not that young,” her mother said. “Not young enough for the likes of Desmond. Lorena thinks if she quits hustling plates he’d marry her, but she’s dreaming. Sometimes he comes up to the bar and stares at me. Creeps me out. I shoo him off when I can. He’s here nearly every day, watching, waiting. Maybe he’s expecting me to drop dead. Well, I got news for him. My mother lived to be ninety-three and my grandmother passed at ninety-seven. This old girl isn’t checking out anytime soon.”

Their talk was interrupted by the man at the claw machine yelling, “Son of a bitch. Thirty dollars and I can’t win a thing.” The light from the machine was bright enough to show the broken veins on his nose.

A wide-bottomed brunette wrapped her arms around him. “Now, Clay, honey,” she said in a baby-doll voice, “don’t get upset. We can go to the casinos and have fun and win real prizes—money and cars, not stupid stuffed animals.”

Clay shook her away. “I like stuffed animals, Gemma Lynn. I take them home to my wife.”

“You don’t have to mention her now.” Gemma Lynn stuck out her lower lip.

Clay kicked the machine, then slammed it again.

Tillie stood up. “Excuse me, ladies,” she said. “I’d better deal with Clay.”

She marched over to the claw machine and confronted its attacker. “Clay! You behave yourself.” Tillie barely came up to his biceps.

“God d—,” Clay said.

“Watch your language,” Tillie interrupted, “or I’ll call your wife, Henrietta.”

She hit the word “wife” hard and glared at Gemma Lynn. Gemma backed away from Clay.

“Go ahead,” Clay said defiantly. “She’s probably with her boyfriend.” He kicked the machine with his work boot again.

“That’s it,” Tillie said. She punched a number into the phone and said, “It’s me. You want to come get that man you married? Yes, I know you’re at work, Henrietta, but you’ve got to do something about Clay.”

There was a pause; then Tillie said, “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

She slammed down the phone and said, “Clay, for your information, your wife is at work, selling insurance while you drink up her paycheck. And I’m calling the cops.”

Clay kicked the claw machine again, hard enough to dent the side. He kept kicking it while he drank the rest of his beer. Tillie dialed 911, then reached under the counter by the cash register for a tape-wrapped metal pipe. Gemma Lynn slipped out the door.

“I said stop it.” Tillie held the pipe, ready to swing it.

Clay laughed at her, grabbed the pipe out of her hands, and threw it on the bar as two River Bluff police cars pulled up. A pair of officers cuffed the surly Clay and hauled him off for drunk and disorderly conduct.