Death Al Dente (21 page)

I sat back on my heels, picturing my father pecking away on his ancient Smith-Corona, with the cartridge ribbon. I had no idea what I'd thought he was doing, but not this.

The anxiety I'd been shoving under a mental rug since finding the box eased, but questions remained. “So why was the box in a crate in the basement of the Merc? With the Christmas decorations?”

“I've developed new recipes since then, and revised these—they're all in three-ring binders now—so I didn't need to keep the cards out. But I couldn't bear to toss them.” Her voice cracked, and another tear fell. “The box was in the kitchen at the Merc. I must have put it down there one January, and it got mixed in with the holiday things.”

Made sense. And once in the basement, there it stayed, until I started digging.

“Are they dated in some way?” I said. She gave me a quizzical look. “If we can prove that they're yours, that they predate Claudette, then we can show them to Kim and put the rumors to rest. Later, when we're ready to make our case.”

She flipped to a divider near the back of the box and pulled out more cards. “See? These are my handwritten versions. Your dad kept them, in case he mistyped something and I needed to check a measurement or ingredient.” She pulled out another card, yellowed, the very formal handwriting faded to a spidery blue. “This is my noni's recipe—my grandmother's—for gnocchi.”

I took the card carefully. I'd never known my great-grandmother—always referred to as “Mynoni,” as if that were her name—but I felt her presence now, as I did in every plate of potato dumplings.

Fresca sped through the typed recipes. “Here. Here's the proof. Nobody uses my secret ingredient.” She handed me a card for Fettuccine with Minted Tomato Sauce. I scanned the list of ingredients. Found it: toasted walnuts, sprinkled on top of the chopped tomato mixture, with fresh Parmesan. I knew this wasn't Claudette's recipe. I'd eaten it since childhood—not every Sunday, but often.

And so had Kim Caldwell.

I
stared at the ceiling like Sandburg staring at a spider, tracking every move. For me, it was not spiders millimetering across the planks, into the crevices, and back out the other side, but images from the past and present, impossibly intertwined. My mother at the stove, my father at the typewriter, in the orchard, in the grave. The recipe box, Claudette in the alley. Red boots and silver bracelets. Chefs' knives, table knives, jack knives, folding knives. Flashing lights, blinking, warning, off on off on off.

My future—and my family's—demanded I untangle the web of signs and symbols, so I stared. The cat snored softly on the pillow next to me, while I stared and stared.

* * *

“O
n Top of Spaghetti” still ran through my brain as I drove into the village. I needed an antidote song, but nothing came to mind.

“Make it a triple shot,” I told Max a few minutes later, wishing Le Panier made triple
pain au chocolat
. I ignored the question in his raised eyebrow. My late night was none of his business. Across the street, my sister unlocked Snowberry's front door. “And my sister's usual.”

“We can't let her sell,” I told Chiara a few minutes later. “There has to be another way.” We sat in the gallery's back room, on rolling stools flanking a low worktable. Mat corners in dozens of colors hung on a wooden rack, while frame samples clung to a Velcro-covered stand. Flattened gift boxes lay atop colored tissue, and a pile of sturdy packing cartons teetered by the back door.

She listened to the abridged version of my conversation with Fresca, occasionally rattling her double iced vanilla latte. She squinted at my spreadsheet, then scrounged in a giant straw basket for a sketch pad and colored pencils. In moments, she created a diagram with circles and arrows connecting the names on my list to each other and the three categories: motive, means, and opportunity.

“Like that?”

To me, her drawing resembled a Spirograph on a sugar high. A fresh point of view can shed new light—or look like squiggles.

“So Ted wants to expand the bar, and his dad doesn't,” she said. “Thanks for the coffee, by the way.”

“Right, and you're welcome. What exactly he has in mind, he never said.”

Chiara clicked her tongue. “Beats me. Ted's never seemed that interested. But I don't think we should interfere in Mom's decision.”

“But it affects the whole family. Selling out the Murphy heritage in what amounts to blackmail—that's wrong. Besides, it's not her building.” My hands spun like propellers.
Slow down, Erin.
“I mean, it is, because Grandpa gave the Merc to Dad, and Dad died. But he meant it for us.”

“I don't want to be tied down by a leaky old building, and Nick sure doesn't. Do you, honestly?”

Honestly, I did. I love the place. I love the stone walls in the basement and the courtyard, the brick front, the sticky brass door handle. I cherish the wide plank floors and tin ceilings. The creaky plumbing gives me fits, the heating bill gives me hives, the roof is a pain in the backside. The whole darned enchilada is a truckload of trouble, and I adore every inch of it.

“Yes,” I said.

“But I'm still confused. You're saying Ted is spreading rumors to damage her reputation and force her to sell?”

I nodded and sipped my latte. I'd briefly wondered about Angelo, but when Mom and I talked about Ted's attempt to force her to sell, it had become clear that he was the rumor monger.

“Okay.” She drew an arrow connecting my name and Fresca's, then another linking us to a Monopoly building she labeled
MERC
. “So your mission, should you choose to accept it”—and her tone implied no doubt—“is to convince her to see things your way. Let you control the building, not just run the business.”

I wanted that opportunity, yes, but so soon? And how to persuade her? What would Hank the Cowdog do? Solve the crime, and save the ranch. Easy-peasy.

She stabbed the air with a red pencil. “But rumors never bothered her before. Angelo's attempted sabotage only ticked her off. If one of us got a bad grade or didn't make the starting lineup, she always said, ‘Don't get mad, get better.' I get that she's tired of trouble. But it's not like her to give in. Why now?”

“She said she was tired of making all the decisions.” A spasm of pain shot through my jaw. After the urge to hyperventilate passed, I forced myself to speak calmly. “Do you suppose she's ill?”

Chiara's dark eyes widened. “She hasn't said a thing. Not a clue. Not a hint.”

“All week, she's been off schedule—disappearing, not showing up when she said she would. I blamed the murder.” And the vandalism and the rumors. “But what if she's been going to Pondera to see a doctor?” No calls to the shop from doctors' offices, and none that I had seen on her phone. But if she wanted to hide it . . .

“She said she didn't need to consult a lawyer to defend herself. Because she's ill? Because she's been seeing doctors instead?”

Consulting. The word triggered a mental chain reaction. “I won't tell you how I got here,” I said. “Too convoluted. But what's up between her and Bill Schmidt?”

“Bill?” Chiara's head tilted, her expression puzzled. “Nothing that I know of.”

“Is she consulting him for herbal remedies and Chinese medicine?” She'd suggested the herb walk, and I'd expanded it from medicinals to wild foods. Maybe the idea had come up in their consultations.

“She trusts him. Everybody trusts him.”

The mental lightbulb flashed. “Which is why he won't talk to Kim. He's not protecting a killer he gave advice to. He's protecting Fresca, because she's ill.”

It can be disconcerting to see your own face on someone else. My sister's expression no doubt mirrored my own: shock turning to horror, then fear. And because we are Murphy girls, determination.

“Your mission,” I said, “is to talk with her.”

Chiara bit her lip. “She'll talk with us when she's ready. You run the shop, so you have a stake in the building. But her health is personal. We have to trust her, not interfere.” She didn't look as convinced as she sounded.

“No,” I said. “We have to help her.”

She glanced at the clock. “Time to open. We'll talk more later.” She folded our white bakery bags and laid them on top of the already-full recycling box.

“I'll take that out for you. Tracy's opening the Merc.”

“Thanks. What a week. I just want everything resolved, so we can be a family again.”

That reminded me. “Oh, geez. I'm supposed to go for a hike tomorrow, but now I really don't want to miss family dinner. I'll tell him we'll go another time.”

“Him? Who?” Her face brightened as mine heated. “That cute guy Adam? Are you seeing him?”

I shook my head. “It's just a hike. He works a lot, especially in summer. Every guy I meet works too much.” Like the airplane engineer I dated for nearly a year who got a promotion and a transfer and lost my number in the move. Or the software engineer who got a promotion and no transfer but lost my number anyway. Or the guy at SavClub who chased me for months and we finally went out and had a perfectly nice time until he told me he'd accepted a job with a competitor out of state. I didn't bother giving him my number.

She cackled. “The pot calls the kettle black.”

I stuck out my tongue. “Tell me the minute you find out what's going on with Mom.”

Chiara opened the gallery's back door and I carried the loaded box toward the garbage and recycling bins that served this side of Front, two doors down, behind Kitchenalia and Puddle Jumpers. She might be right about me working too much. How else did you get what you wanted?

The raised lid kept me from seeing who was using the bins until I rounded the corner and found myself box-to-box with the chef formerly known as Jay Walker. Criminy. Did the man wear the same pants every day? Weren't professional chefs maniacs for cleanliness? Or was he aiming for a signature look?

“Hey, Jay—James.” Subconscious slip of the tongue, or what? How can you keep a secret like that? But I had to. I raised my box and let the paper slide in. Angelo set his empty box on the ground and bent to pick up a container of glass, mostly red wine and beer bottles, by the smell of it.

Glass. Glass jars. Bingo, by jingo, as Old Ned would say. “It was you. You poisoned the jar of artichoke pesto, didn't you?”

He sneered. “You're crazy. Your whole family's crazy.”

Ah, pots and kettles. Talk fast, girlie. “One tainted jar, two targets. After you and Claudette argued Friday, you left her the poisoned jar. You wanted her to get sick but put the blame on Fresca. Neat trick.”

Half-bent over the box of glass, he straightened, eyes wide. “Who says we were arguing?”

“You of all people know you can't hide anything in a small town.”

His face darkened and I was acutely aware that I was standing in an out-of-the-way spot with an angry man, maybe armed, who had already done vicious things to protect a secret. An empty box was no protection.

“Or a second possibility. Kindly next-door neighbor takes a jar of poisoned pesto to a dead woman's grieving family. Puts it in the fridge, where anyone can dig in. Are you that heartless?”
Shut up, Erin, before you make him mad.
But I finally had a chance to find out what really happened.

“You don't know anything about it.”

Jackpot. “Either way, you cast blame on Fresca. After that, no one would ever buy her food again. Am I right, James? Or should I say, Jay? Jay Walker?”

He blanched. Channeling the Cowdog, I plowed on. “What an irony. You tried to eliminate the competition for your food by serving up poison. To make your name—your false name—by ruining someone else's. You are pathetic.” I slipped the phone out of my pocket, my other hand holding the box like a shield.

“That Bergstrom kid recognized me, didn't he?”

His tone worried me. Could my mouth get me out of the trouble it had just created? “I'm sorry, Jay. I know what your dad was, and that of eight kids, only you and your sister avoided prison. You bucked the odds. Good for you.”

His right hand twitched. The flap of his cook's jacket covered his hip. Knife or no knife?

“I got nothing to do with those losers. I've had to make my own way. People like you and Golden Boy, born with everything handed to you—you don't know what hard work is.”

I scraped the gravel with my foot and snapped my head to the left, pretending to see something. He followed my lead and I glanced down, frantically pushing buttons behind the box.

The brief distraction increased his agitation. When he turned back to me, he was practically vibrating.

“We all have to make our own way, Jay, regardless of what we're born with. I admire your determination, but you went about it all wrong. You get ahead by hard work, yes, but also by helping other people. We're all in this life together.”

“Like your mother helped Claudette Randall? By stealing her recipes, then stealing her job and giving it to you?”

“None of that's true, Jay. It's all talk.”

He shrugged. “Like you said, in a small town, everyone knows everything. The queen of pasta is a phony.”

“Says a guy living under a fake name with a fraudulent résumé. You never ran a restaurant in Missoula. You were a prep cook, chopping and slicing all afternoon. And you didn't get a Culinary Arts certificate. You dropped out of a night course. You aren't even Italian. Nothing wrong with working your way up, Jay. Just do it honestly.”

“Right.” He snorted. “You waltz home and take over the family business, then act like we should all follow your rules. You conjure up this stupid Festa dinner, then you and your mother won't even let me participate.”

Ignore the barbs. Keep him talking. “That had nothing to do with you, Jay. We planned the dinner to showcase the village restaurants. Saturday night was for the caterers.” Except that dear Linda excluded my mother. “Help me understand. You thought Claudette disliked Fresca as much as you did and resented me. So why kill her?”

“I didn't kill her.” His features twisted like a face in a funhouse mirror and he took a half step toward me. Why hadn't I bought one of those knives at SavClub?

“She said she'd help,” he said. “The point was to disrupt the dinner. Her part was to sneak stuff into the gift baskets. She said she'd do it—after I swore no one would get hurt—but Friday, she changed her mind.”

“That's when you argued, over whether you would be the cook for her new restaurant.”

“Yes. No—I don't know anything about her and a restaurant. I met her downtown before the dinner Friday night. I tried to give her the stuff, but she thought it was stupid.”

“You meant to sneak the poisoned pesto into one of the prize baskets.” The posters showed a basket brimming with local goodies, and proclaimed “a lucky winner at every table.” “But what other stuff?”

He spotted my confusion. “Ha. You're not so smart after all.” He looked ridiculously pleased with himself. “Fake toys, like a dead mouse in vomit, something the cat threw up. My dad and brothers stuck one in my goulash when I was a kid and I couldn't eat for a week. Garbage like that.”

The guests were all adults. They'd roll their eyes, wonder how the toys got there, and laugh it off. But he'd been serious. And if he wasn't part of her restaurant plans—

“The white bag. You gave her the toys in the white drugstore bag.”

“She mocked me. She threw them down the riverbank.”

And crumpled up the white bag and tossed it in the bushes above the riverbank, where she and I had both parked.

Their agreement, and Claudette's change of heart, explained why she tried to call me Friday. When she missed me, she called Fresca. Because she knew what James aka Jay didn't know: You can't burn a bridge with my mother. Even on high heat.