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Authors: Delia Rosen

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BOOK: A Killer in the Rye
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“He was a highly visible member of the Belmondo Church on Music Square East,” she said. “He ran an equipping class.”
“A what?”
“A gathering at the church that helps people cope with life using Bible lessons and prayer. I went from time to time as the stress of life wore me to a nub. I saw one of your customers there.”
“Who?”
“A woman who was on TV with you,” she said. “A plus-size woman with hair not quite the color your own was when I first saw you.”
“Big Red?”
“She was with two other women.”
“Big Red,” I said.
“And that reporter,” Lydia went on. “She knew him, too.”
“Which one? Candy?”
“That's right. Candy Sommerton,” Lydia replied. “She did a report about the group . . . oh, about two weeks ago. I saw that on the television.”
I was taking all this in, though I still had the biggest problem wrapping my tired brain around the idea of a house of worship on Music Square East. In New York we had churches on Trinity Place and John Street. Though I guess St. Patrick's on fashionista Fifth Avenue would seem strange to some people. But I digress.
“Getting back to your father . . .”
Must we?
I thought.
“I wish things had gone differently,” Lydia said. “I sincerely do. But I'm no mother. And your father, God rest his soul, is lucky he got you to turn out so good.”
“That was my mother's doing,” I said, standing up for someone who had no say in this tawdry matter.
“I'm sure it was partly that,” Lydia said.
“No, it was
all
that,” I replied. “I loved my dad, but like you say, he was no father. He was pretty MIA for most of my life, and he never once came to see me in college.”
“Maybe so, but he was proud of you always,” Lydia said.
“That's great to hear,” I said. “Just great. Listen, Lydia. I've enjoyed this
so
much, but I really need to get some work done and sort things out in my brain.”
“Of course,” she said, rising. “I have to get home, too. I'm still at the shoe store, as manager.”
“Good for you.” It sounded cranky, not complimentary. As intended.
“I have to walk the dog and get to work.”
Now my shoulders went up. “You have a dog?”
“A wirehair fox terrier.” She smiled. “It's really Stacie's. I keep it for her. Lively thing, even though he's ten. He gives
me
a brisk twice-daily walk.”
“How nice for you both.”
“It is,” she said, missing
that
sarcasm.
“They jump pretty high, don't they?”
“Oh, yes.”
I smiled a big fake smile. A lot of people in Nashville had dogs, a lot of people apparently knew Joe, and a whole bunch of folks probably had both of those on their personal résumé. Still, looking at her little white teeth through her little red smile, I
so
wished that this vamp was also a vampire.
She took a pen and a piece of scrap paper from her purse. “My cell phone number,” she said, writing it down. “In case you wish to talk.”
I didn't thank her. I had no intention of ever using it.
She laid a tender hand on the desk as she stood. Her fingers lingered there a little longer than they should have. I counted to three. And failed to stop myself. I looked sharp little knives into those dull gray eyes.
“Aren't you ashamed by all this?” I demanded.
“Pardon?”
“Isn't there some part of you that regrets all this subterfuge and web spinning and bullshit?”
My words did not draw blood. “Love makes us do the unexpected,” she said.
“Like getting pregnant.”
“A moment of passion,” she replied.
“Oh, please,” I moaned. “There was a morning after. Did you not think of the consequences? The responsibility?”
The woman's face grew cloudy. “Do not lecture me, girl.”
“My office, my rules,” I shot back. I wasn't in the mood for mouth. Not now and certainly not from her.
“
Your
office,” she said with the hint of a smirk. She recovered herself, once again becoming the wannabe Southern lady. “My only thought, dear—and perhaps you will experience that one day yourself. . . . I surely hope so—was to retain a piece of your father in case he ever went away. That I have done. Stacie is a living embodiment of us both, something our love created.”
“And your lifestyles abandoned,” I said.
“We were not perfect, girl.”
“Stop calling me that. I'm a woman.”
“Then behave like one,” she said. “You're acting spoiled, like a child.”
Wow.
Another lecture from someone else who knew what was best for me. That was okay by me. I was ready for a fight.
“How would you know what a spoiled child is like?” I asked. “Doesn't sound like you spent a lot of time with your daughter.”
To paraphrase what Marv Albert used to say while covering the Knicks or the Rangers when Phil had them on, “She shoots. She scores!” All formality bled from the woman. Along with blood. Her face was even paler than before.
“You are correct,” she said. “I did not spend as much time with Stacie as I wished to. As perhaps I should have. But we wanted her. We loved her. Adoption? Abortion?” She practically spat the word. “It was never a thought.”
“So you're a hero to the pro-lifers,” I said, unmoved and relentless. “Good for you. That's something else we don't have in common, though I do have to ask . . . Why tell me all this? Did you think we could all have a great big Thanksgiving dinner or maybe have a big Hanukkah-Christmas celebration, all the Katz spawn under one roof? Jeez, I meant the Katz spawn I know about. Maybe there are more. Maybe I have a black sister or brother, and we can add Kwanzaa to the mix—”
“Gwen, stop. Please.”
“Why? That would make news. The seasonal trifecta! We can invite Robert Reid and Candy Sommerton!”
“I said
stop!
” Lydia cried. “For God's sake, enough.”
I stopped, but not for her. I did it for me. I was spewing now, like one of those pinwheel fireworks I used to get at Coney Island—which I missed very much just then. I wished I was back home, back in time, just starting out before I married, not making all the mistakes I did, which included Phil and working on Wall Street, but being too afraid to jump into some of the investments I recommended for others, and continued right up to last night, when I thought that Robert Reid was actually interested in me and wasn't just a muckraking piece of journalistic garbage. . . .
“All right, Lydia,” I said. “I'll stop.” Without taking my eyes from the woman, I reached behind me and turned the doorknob. “But we're done here. For good.”
Lydia looked away, then down. “You asked me a question a moment ago.”
“Forget it. I don't care to hear the answer.”
“You must,” she said. Then she looked at me. “I mean, I wish you would.”
My upper and lower teeth met in a bite that could have gone through my mother's holiday dishes.
“I came here for one reason,” Lydia said. “I came here for Stacie. She desperately needs your help.”
Oh, that was rich, I thought. Here I was, ready to crack up, but someone needed my help. Yet I have to admit, the woman's admission did tweak my curiosity.
How totally, utterly, tragically sad
that
gal must be.
Chapter 11
Lydia added her daughter's name and number to the piece of paper, then left. I looked at it, wanting to crumble it and toss it in the trash. I just pushed it aside.
Stacie Leah. I wondered if the girl's mother had given her my father's name. My guess was not. From the sound of things, down here twenty years ago, Katz wouldn't exactly have opened a world of opportunity. Even if folks weren't neo-Nazis or racists, there was no reason to give the few and the twisted a homing beacon.
Lydia was gone, but I stayed where I was. I didn't want to talk to Thom, not then—and apparently, she was just as happy to avoid me. It occurred to me that I'd worked so closely with Thom day after day after day and yet these two big, fat parts of her life with the Katz family had remained hidden. It made me wonder what else I didn't know—not just about her but about everyone. For all I knew, Grant could be a cross-dresser like J. Edgar Hoover. Robert could be gay. Dani could spell
Beethoven.
I sat and thought. Surprisingly, not about Lydia or Stacie or my father. That whole thing made me sick to my very soul. No, I did what any soul-weary deli owner would do in my place: I Googled Joe Silvio.
A couple of articles later I discovered that this guy was everything Lydia had said and more. She had actually left out the best part, which she probably didn't know and which would have been nice for Grant to share with me: The guy had a police record. Petty larceny. Stole a couple of computers from an overnight delivery service where he was a driver. That was how he met his future wife. Brenda's father hired him on some sort of work-release program. I guess they felt the worst they had to lose was a couple of loaves of bread.
A guy steals one computer because he needs it,
I thought.
If he steals a couple, it's in order to fence them.
I wondered if Joe still had some of his old larcenous contacts. Maybe he had robbed places he delivered to or had cased them. Maybe he'd been trying to get out of the business and someone hadn't wanted him to.
Not that I should have been worrying about that, Joe, his death, or anything other than the blessings that were already on my table. After a half hour I turned my attention back to what I really should be dealing with—first and foremost, an employee with whom I clearly needed to spend just a little more face time today.
Déjà vu.
Once again I inclined my head into the small hallway leading from the main deli area to my office.
“Hey, Thom?”
“Just a sec.” She was just making change for A.J.
“No, now, Thom,” I said pleasantly.
“I said—”
“I heard you,” I said in a singsong voice. “But I really need to hear about the half sister you never told me I had.”
There were gasps. I heard them, like little sobs at a funeral. Thomasina stubbornly finished what she was doing. I could see she was not going to be cowed, unlike A.J. and Dani and Newt, all of whom had obviously just pieced together the scenario and seemed about a head shorter than they were the last time I saw them. Maybe because they were ducking down a little in case I threw something.
Thomasina called Raylene over to work the cash register until she came back. She walked over briskly, looking down, not from fear or embarrassment but more like a bull about to gore a torero.
She came in, and I shut the door behind her. She stood where Lydia had stood, with the same proud defiance.
“So?” I said.
“So,” she replied. “We're moving on from hate crimes?”
“Don't mix meat and milk,” I said. “You raised my half sister. And never told me.”
“Did you want to know?”
“Ef, no.”
“Okay. Then we're done here.”
“I don't think we are,” I said.
“No? What do you want to say?”
“How about, ‘You could've told me!'?”
“Why? You're mad at your father. I knew you would be. You feel bad for your mom. I knew you would be that, too. You would've hated your . . . whatever the heck Lydia is. I don't even think there's an official name for that.”
“Slut. Whore. Jezebel.”
“Well, I figured that out, as well. You wouldn't have liked the girl, your half sister, even if she whizzed gold.”
Thom was obviously worked up herself. For her, referring to any lower-body function was the equivalent of using a four-letter word.
“You might have given me the benefit of the doubt,” I said.
“Honey, it just wasn't my place.”
“Well, the catfight's out of the bag now,” I said. “Spill.”
Thomasina stood there, defiant.
“What?” I asked.
“You don't talk to me like that,” she said. “I don't deserve it.”
Until she said that, I hadn't realized how tense my shoulders still were. She was right, though. It was everyone else, not her.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “Tell me about it. Please.”
Her face softened. “Gwen, what I did I did for your uncle Murray. He was in agony over this. Lydia? She ain't nothin' but a hound dog sniffin' for leftovers. She was always miffed that your daddy wouldn't marry her. I think some of that contributed to her giving Stacie to me. I think she did it to hurt your daddy.”
“How did that hurt him?”
“It moved her to his brother's circle. It was kinda like a chess move, I always thought. I move the queen here, and you have to move me to you to get her back.”
“But she was living with him, she said.”
“Except when you came to visit. Or he just didn't feel like having her around.”
“So he didn't love her?”
“Oh, he did in his way. But he loved your mother more, too. And he loved himself more than that. I know that sounds harsh, but he really wanted to be by himself, doing his thing. I once heard him say to Murray, ‘I didn't leave a good woman to take a bad one.'”
“Did Lydia have a reputation?”
“She was a bit of a wild mare then, she was. At least, that's what folks who knew her said when they saw her here.”
“Lydia made it sound like they were so in love. And they were having fun.”
“They were! Too much fun to be bothered with a child, however much Lydia went back and forth on that. Some days she wanted a family. Some days she wanted to party. Your uncle and I—we thought it best to just take care of Stacie ourselves. And your father agreed. He had wanted Lydia to put the baby up for adoption, but she wouldn't hear of it. The girl became a kind of lifeline when your father wasn't available. Partly a little dress-up toy, as if Lydia was five years old, and partly a piece of your dad.”
“Sounds like a real healthy setup.”
“You understand it perfectly.”
No longer angry, I looked at Thomasina for support. As usual. At least that balance had been restored to the universe.
“When was the last time you saw Stacie?” I asked.
“Oh, lawsy . . . When your dad passed, she moved back with her mother, and I only saw her occasionally.”
“So you don't know anything about her?”
“A little. Mostly that she did not pick up where her mother left off,” Thom said.
“I don't follow.”
“I heard she joined one of the Belmondo Church missions in Okinawa, Japan, when she turned eighteen. That was about five years ago. I lost track of her for a while, but now she is back in town.”
“That figures.”
“What does?”
“Another string from a pushpin to Joe Silvio.”
Thom made a confused face. I told her to never mind. I looked past Thom at the number on my desk. It was local.
“Well, Stacie may have traveled the world for Jesus, but now she's back,” I said. “The question is, what do I do?”
“What do you want to do?” Thom asked.
“I honestly don't know,” I said.
“In your heart.”
I was breathing heavily, looking inside, not liking what I was seeing. “I need to think about that,” I said.
“That's fair, child. This has been a whole lot of hot soup, and poured with a ladle.”
Into a bowl that was already full,
I thought. I screamed inside at the thought of seeing a face that looked like a mash up of my father and that awful woman. Awful to me, anyway. And apparently to Thomasina. And maybe, I wondered, to Stacie, as well. Could be we had that much in common.
“I've got to get back to work,” Thom said. “We've got the Reid thing tonight, and there's still a crowd of thrill seekers. At least they're ordering.”
“Always a silver lining, right?”
“If you look for it.”
I smirked. “Where's the good in this mess?” I asked.
“I don't know.” She shrugged her big shoulders. “Maybe you'll need to talk to Stacie to find that.”
A good woman, and wise. I impulsively threw my arms around her. “Thank you, Thom.”
“You're very welcome.”
“Oh, and one thing more. It's important.”
“Yes, hon?”
I stepped back and asked, “Did you happen to see my cell phone?”
Thom seemed relieved to have to deal with something mundane. She said she did not.
I turned toward the kitchen. “Has
anyone
seen my phone?” I yelled, but I was talked out and my voice carried only as far as the counter. The staff heard, though; so did a customer who worked for a moving company.
“Yeah,” he said. “I got it right here in my pants.”
“Great!” I shouted. “It's set on vibrate! Enjoy!”
He made a disgusting jerking motion on the stool with his hips. Okay, sometimes Southern neighborliness crossed the line. That's why the term
redneck
was invented.
A.J. walked over. “I ain't seen your phone, but there was that police guy came looking for you while you were in with Thom.”
“What police guy?”
“The one Grant told to back off.”
I didn't ask how she knew what Grant had said behind my closed office door.
“What did he want?”
“To talk to you.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“Nope.”
“Fine.” I didn't give a crap about Officer McCoy. If he wanted to talk to me, he could get a subpoena.
“But then someone else came in.”
“Who?”
“I don't know. Never saw him.”
“Name?”
“He didn't give it.”
“What did he want?”
“Didn't say.” She reached into her apron and pulled out a business-size envelope. “But he left this.”
“Where? On a table?”
“No. He handed it to Dani.”
“Did he have anything to say to
her?
” I took the envelope, ran my fingers along it. No powder inside. Wasn't trying to anthrax me. It occurred to me that I had double the chances of being killed down here than most people: whoever killed the bread man and whoever liked the bread man and thought
I
killed him.
“I asked her that very question. He said, ‘Please give this to Ms. Katz.'”
“So he knew my name.”
“Apparently. He used it.”
“Did Dani say anything else?”
“She said she had seen him before.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“When?” This was getting exhausting. I wished A.J. would just anticipate my questions and answer them all at once.
“She saw him the day the bread guy was killed. And the next day, too.”
“Was he one of the onlookers?”
“He didn't seem to be, Dani said. See? I did ask relevant questions.”
“I appreciate it.”
“But you know how Dani is—not the most observant chick in the henhouse. She said the man came in to eat. She remembered him because she had to show him where the bathroom was.”
Squinting with the confusion of trivia overload, I slit the envelope. Didn't get a paper cut, which would have been fitting. There was a scrap of paper inside. It had been torn from a yellow legal pad. There was handwriting. Four words in blocky, childish script. They made me want to throw up.
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