Fry Me a Liver (16 page)

There are all kinds of beautiful. And this morning, when my psyche was all achy, was the perfect time to be reminded of that.

When I lived in the city, a beautiful sight was the sun setting behind the Statue of Liberty or snow blowing down a gray, deserted Fifth Avenue or dark, angry skies behind the United Nations Building, which always seemed apt.

Here, the beauty is pretty much of a piece: virgin hills and timeless waterways. I didn't know how much of that was due to the fact that it didn't pay to develop the area or the owners were from old families for whom the land meant more than money. That was an odd reality for me down here. Things like that mattered. It wasn't just the financial woman who responded to that unfamiliar reality. Jews, who had historically been on the run from oppressors, rarely owned much more than could fit in an ox cart or valise. Land? I couldn't recall the last Katz who owned any until Uncle Murray moved down here and bought the house and deli.

And we know how that turned out.

The other thing that happens down here, relative to this beauty thing, is that as you go from area to area the scents change. It's not like in New York, where hot tar gives way to a peanut vendor, which gives way to truck fumes, which succumb to Hefty bags of trash. Here, if you drive with your window open, the odors go from a kind of neutral smell in the unpolluted city to what was for me one unidentifiable tree or plant smell to another. Occasionally, you got a whiff of dead wildlife or skunk, but they passed quickly.

Post dwelt on a bluff overlooking the slate blue river. Only the flat slate roof of the main house was visible from the road, though I could see at least two other cabins scattered around a couple of acres of farmland. The only crop I could identify was corn. Everything else looked like wheat to me, whether it was or wasn't. Beyond the farmland were groves of various fruit trees running down the gentle slope of the cliff. I assumed they helped prevent erosion; I remembered that much from high school. The stables and compost area were just behind the short, sloping gravel driveway.

The entire compound looked to me as if the original woodland had been pushed back, everything else dropped in however many scores of years before, and then the surrounding trees allowed to spring back. It was a careful, respectfully constructed homestead.

A pair of barking German shepherds announced me from the bottom of the driveway. Three cars were parked there; not everyone who came to work for or with Moss would necessarily ride a horse. I waited on the gravel drive until someone came out to take charge of the dogs.Foreign smells assaulted me. No, not exactly foreign; it was like my cats' litter box writ large. But I didn't have too much time to consider the multiple sources. Moss himself came to quiet the pooches.

A Lincolnesque figure in coveralls emerged from the house and ordered the dogs away. They quieted and ran off. I got out, heard horses whinnying, stalks blowing, smelled the compost, felt like I was in Amish country. The bearded man smiled through spiky gray whiskers, raised his hand in greeting, and walked forward.

“Hark the heralds,” he said.

“Shouldn't that be ‘bark'?” I asked.

He laughed. “Lord, you are right!”

I offered a hand and he enveloped it in his two huge canvas-skinned paws. He fixed a pair of clear brown eyes on me, framed by deep-crevassed skin. It was protected from the sun by a big, floppy leather hat that sat on gray hair pulled into a long ponytail. It was held in place with what looked like a beaded Native American clasp.

“I know what you're thinkin',” he said.

“What's that?”

“How can a guy so photogenic fail to capture city hall?”

“Photogenic is relative,” I pointed out.

“You mean, like President Taft weighing three hundred and forty pounds in just his moustache.”

“No, I was thinking of various cultures around the nation, around the world, where tattoos and piercings that were once considered extreme are becoming normal,” I said. “And I hope that what someone looks like isn't the only thing people vote for.”

“True, true,” he said. “There've been some movie star–lookin' folks who've gone down the chute when they opened their mouths.”

“Exactly.”

I was starting to
shvitz
standing out there and Moss took my arm and walked me toward the small patio surrounded by hanging plants and hardworking bees.

“They won't sting,” he assured me as he offered me a lounge in the shade. “Like everyone and everything else around here, they come to work.”

“By choice,” I said, “which makes it even nicer.”

“That's true,” he said. “Our team of farmers and election workers and even our livestock are committed.”

I smiled and sat. He lowered himself into a wooden chair. It was funny. I'd been around so many older Jewish men all my life, I'd expected him to say “Oy” as he sat. He pulled the chair closer. I think he did that as a little show of intimacy, not security. There was no one outside of this household for miles around.

“Would you like anything?” he asked. “Fresh milk?”

“Had my cuppa joe en route, thanks,” I said.

“Ah, coffee. I gave it up years ago for tea. I once thought of growing my own beans here but coffee can be a stubborn crop, I'm told.”

“Must be all that caffeine.”

He grinned. “What about a tour? You might find it a little different from what you're accustomed to. You don't look like you get out to farms much.”

“I look like I don't? Why?”

He pointed toward my feet. “City soles. Out here you need something that'll go an inch or two into muck.”

“I do not own such a pair,” I admitted. “If it's okay with you, all I'd like is to know why you sent me that note.”

“I asked one of my campaign workers to drop it at your place because I felt you should know.”

“Yes, but why not the police?”

“Because anything I say or do is going to be declared ‘political,'” he said. “I don't work that way. I wanted you to know I am a man of integrity. It's important.”

“I see.” I did respect his intentions, which I took to be sincere. Rare, a little odd, but earnest.

“I am also not implying anything, only presenting the facts,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “So—the person in question?”

“I sold eight bags to Josephine Young,” he told me.

“Owner of the Salad Barre,” I said, not terribly surprised. “That Josephine Young?”

“That's right.”

“New client?”

“Uh huh. She said she believed that several of her organic providers were not providing true organics and intended to start farming her own. I recall there was a competition in which you beat her for some prize—”

“Best Mid-range Restaurant,” I said.

“That's it. I know that she is a competitive lady, that she came from a highly competitive art, and—honestly, I have no reason to doubt her but I also don't know how far she would go to win this year.”

It's funny. Not ha-ha funny but sick funny. I didn't believe someone would kill to become mayor of Nashville. But I wouldn't put it past someone who put their heart into a business to go to extremes to make that business a success.

“Was there anything strange or furtive about the way she bought the fertilizer?” I asked.

“She's a kind of strange duck to begin with, but nothing beyond that.”

“Did she come alone?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “She had a helper. A guy who did the lugging.”

“Did you recognize him?”

Moss shook his head. “It could've been someone she knew or who worked for her or someone she hired to help her for an hour.”

“Right. What did he look like?” Moss obviously didn't talk to a lot of people, either. Getting information from him was like getting eggs from gefilte fish.

“Hunky guy, bald, late thirties, I'd say. Rough hands, rough shaven, probably blue collar.”

“Barrel chested, on the stumpy side?”

“Yeah, yeah—”

“Sounds like Gar McQueen,” I said. “He's a lawn-care guy, does a lot of work for downtown businesses.”

“It's very possible he's the man. He had the look.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Grunted a lot, but I don't blame him. Those bags were heavier than dry cement.” Moss laughed. He pronounced the word “see-ment.” There was something quaint about that. “I give people their money's worth of manure.”

He had that in common with other politicians
, I thought.

“I'm going to have to think about what to do with this information,” I said. “But in any case, I won't tell anyone where I heard it.”

“I appreciate that.”

There didn't seem to be anything else and, declining a horseback ride which would not have ended well for me or My Friend Flicka, I stood and thanked him.

“If you don't get into town much, what are you going to do if you win the election?” I asked.

“Get in more,” he replied with a wink. “I believe in what I stand for, Ms. Katz—limiting cell phone towers and cables and expanded roads and everything that's destroying our local beauty and heritage. That's worth gettin' off my duff for.”

Once again, I found him more admirable than impressive, and seriously unlikely to win the election. He seemed to think so too, because apart from a poster stuck to a stake at the front of the driveway, I saw nothing that indicated a campaign was in full swing.

I decided to swing by Josephine's home on the way back. Not to talk to her but to eyeball the place and see if all that fertilizer was actually being used. I got her home address from the Nashville Restaurant Authority website—a members-only organization for the airing of grievances and little else. Like most associations, they certainly didn't solve any problems, mutual or otherwise.

Josephine lived in a small brick house set toward the front of a three-acre lot on Peach Blossom Square. Most of the property was out back, which was where she was doing her gardening. Or rather, that's where Gar was doing it. She was already at her restaurant. The lawn-care professional was in the back planting in the areas of lawn that had been newly torn up and fertilized.

She's certainly doing what she said she'd be doing with the bags
, I thought. I tried to count how many were out there but I was at a bad angle. I didn't want to go back there and tip my hand, especially if Josephine had been behind the blast. There was certainly enough fertilizer there to level the block I live on.

I drove on, having learned very little from the morning's adventure—though there was one thing I wondered as I drove away.

What if Josephine wasn't the one who used some of this fertilizer?

I stopped the car, made a U-turn, and went back to Josephine's house.

I parked curbside and walked around the Josephine Young homestead. There was a forehead-high hedge to my left and a two-yard-wide swath of rich green grass that bumped up against a rose garden beside the house. It smelled very aromatic here, the floral scent trapped in the narrow passage. I understood something about the South, just then. People moved slowly not just because of the heat but because it allowed you to literally stop and smell the roses. Move through it quickly and it would dissipate like mist. You would think something like that would have been obvious. But in a world where everything was rush-rush, the obvious was often buried and overlooked. I didn't bother to count how many layers of my life had to be removed to get me here, to that realization.

I rounded the back of the house where the scent mixed with the decidedly different odor of fertilizer. It wasn't unpleasant; it was just different, like the Moss farm but without the big valley wind to blow the smells away.

Gar was shirtless. He had a bulk that suggested strength but without strong, youthful definition. It wasn't an athletic look, not like the hospital superhero whose name must not be mentioned; it was more like a dockworker.

He looked up as I sauntered around the corner. “Mr. McQueen? I saw your truck out front, saw you working here.”

Now, at this point, someone thus addressed would talk back. Say howdy, smile, grunt. I expected him to do one of those, since I potentially represented work, a new client. He didn't. He stopped hoeing long enough to look at me and wait for whatever was coming next. I had nothing, so I fumbled through.

“My name is Gwen Katz and I—”

“I know who you are,” he answered. He said it like he'd seen my
punim
on a wanted poster and was giving me sixty seconds to turn my horse's
tuchas
toward him and head out of town.

“Oh,” I replied. “Is knowing me a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It's a no-thing,” he said.

“Do you mean n-o or k-n-o-w?”

He didn't answer. The way he had spoken reminded me of a prizefighter who was really good at one thing—beating the
kishkes
out of people, or in this case, planting stuff—and then went still and dumb when he wasn't doing that. For example, trying to speak.

“Anyway, I was wondering if you might have time to do some work at my home,” I went on. “I live on Bonerwood Drive, the least crappy looking place on the block, but I think it can be made to look even less crappy still—”

“Not today,” he answered dismissively. “I'm working.”

“No, it wouldn't have to be today,” I replied.

“I mean, I can't even think about it today,” he said. “I'm doing
this
.”

“Right,” I said. “Of course.”

“Call the number on the truck and leave a message,” he said. “I'll call back when I have my calendar.”

“All right,” I said. “Is this a real busy time of year for you?”

He looked annoyed. “I'm always busy. Lawns and gardens are important.”

“I know. I just thought there'd be a lot of competition, that people would be eager to have work—”

“That's not an issue for me!” he crowed, and suddenly got very articulate. “Ms. Katz, some people go to school for this. A whole bunch of those people are accountants or teachers who can't get those jobs, or people who became real estate agents until the bottom fell outta that and thought this would be a good alternative. They're too educated or too uneducated. I apprenticed,” he said proudly, actually slapping his hairless chest and sending beads of sweat flying. “I know the earth. I get results.”

“I understand,” I told him truthfully. “And I admire that. Josephine obviously does as well.”

“She is an artist. I am an artist.”

“I see. You don't mean her restaurant, you mean she was a dance artist—”

“
Is
,” he said. “
Is
a dancer. I have seen DVDs.”

The gardener glared at me for a moment and then went back to work.

I turned back toward the street. I had learned absolutely nothing about the fertilizer and its possible role in blowing up my deli. But I had learned a little about the man, a loyal man who might be easily manipulated by a strong woman—and by that I mean, sadly, a strong woman other than me. Perhaps he would conceive of doing something to impress her—such as taking out the competitor who had won the restaurant competition.

There was something smelly here, I felt, and it had nothing to do with manure. Some people were antisocial . . . but a businessperson who was unenthusiastic about business? That didn't sit right with this former Wall Streeter. While he was hidden behind the house, I was tempted to have a look inside his truck, see what there was to see. From where I stood, it looked a little messy. Maybe he used the back seat as a place to toss garbage. I did. The address on the side was a post office box which suggested he carried the business around with him . . . possibly on the laptop sitting in the bucket of the passenger's seat. But with enough traffic and daylight on the street, having a look at it here and now, even if he were logged on, didn't seem like the greatest idea.

He looked up as I drove away, our eyes locking for the briefest moment as I passed the other side of the house. I went home and, with a Coke and a smile and my laptop on my lap, I did some Web checking on Gar McQueen. Now you may ask,
Gwen, by your own meshuga reasoning shouldn't every gardener in Nashville be a suspect?

Theoretically.

But my little ballet dancer restaurant rival had a potential motive, Gar was working with her, and it was at least worth checking to see if the burly landscaper had anything that could conceivably tie him to questionable acts, including hate crimes.

His Facebook page did not have many privacy settings, so I was able to see the usual sports Likes and family stuff. No siblings but a lot of young cousins. Just being there, scrolling through photos of silly people pouting their lips and making rock star gestures, bored me out of my skull. I left the social media, dug into newspaper archives, and found articles going back two years about what he was landscaping and where, and a couple of awards he had won. I even found a photo of him as third runner-up in a bodybuilding competition four years earlier.

Okay, so he wasn't a prizefighter, but he might've dropped some dumbbells on himself. The weight lifting would explain my first impression of his bare-chested body. He looked pretty good in the photo, greased up in his little trunks. He must have given up competition after that since he didn't look quite as buff these days. That used to be a debate around the dinner table in the Katz home. Not about bodybuilding but about giving up. My mother used to think it was negligent and irresponsible to give up on anything until the job was done or the goal achieved. My father, predictably—given his history in the area of
farlozn
, quitting—thought it was the wise man or woman who knew when to retreat and try something else. Me, being like a dog with a bone in all things, naturally sided with my mother.

I considered the photo a moment longer. Gar had lost just like Josephine had lost. Maybe he identified with her, imagined her disappointment, looked to settle the score on behalf of a woman he admired.

Putting the puzzle aside for the moment, I checked on my hospital-bound staff. Thom was awake but groggy from her medication, A.J. was still critical but somewhat responsive, and the nurses I spoke with seemed guardedly optimistic with the “you-didn't-hear-this-from-me-Ms.-Katz” caveats. I decided not to visit. It might sound strange but I felt a little toxic. It wasn't as if I'd done anything wrong or could have prevented this thing from happening. But with the live-or-die threat gone, I worried that A.J. Two or someone else might see me and suddenly think, “Hey—we want our pound of flesh.” If that were going to happen, I didn't want to see it dawn in their eyes.

I called my attorney and insurance agent in turn. As yet, my attorney hadn't received any notifications about complaints from the staff, but that was still my biggest fear. It wasn't just the idea that my employees, my friends, my de facto family could become adversaries, it was also the prolonged aggravation and expense of such an action. My attorney reminded me that while a few days had passed, that didn't mean we were out of the woods, not at all. Luke, A.J. Two, Dani, and others, including Benjamin and Grace, might still be weighing the pros and cons of such an action.

Which made finding out who did it even more imperative. Let someone else's insurance agency knock themselves out worrying about this.

Speaking of insurance, my brief chat with agent Zebeck was surprisingly succinct. He was wading through the miasma of electronic filing and bureaucracy and had only one question for me.

“Do you want to rebuild or abandon?” he asked.

“Just like that?” I asked, a little surprised.

“It's a big, basic question that needs to be answered.”

“
To be or not to be . . . ,
” I thought. I'd gone from Shylock to Hamlet without leaving my sofa. “Good God, Alan, I don't know. We don't even know how long it would take to reboot the place.”

“That's right, and I can't ask for an evaluation and cost estimate until you've weighed in,” he said.

“When do I have to let you know?”

“I wouldn't take more than another day or so,” he said. “Whatever you decide would send things in a different direction in terms of what we file and with whom. There are not only insurance considerations but city deadlines as well.”

“Understood. I'll let you know sometime tomorrow.”

I surprised myself by my indecision. I thought I would have told him to put Humpty Dumpty back together, bigger and better than ever. Was I that afraid to face my people or was I really and truly beaten by a place where I probably didn't belong, by people with whom I didn't have a whole lot in common, by men who were less venal but more disturbingly clueless than the putzes I'd left behind in Manhattan? Whatever the case, I had just given myself twenty-four hours to figure it all out.

Those chores done—and they were all onerous, something I hadn't realized until I was done and felt a whole lot lighter—I phoned Detective Bean. The good inspector said they were still reviewing forensics and security cameras, still conducting interviews, and she had nothing to report.

“Nothing to report or nothing to report to me?” I pressed.

“The latter,” she admitted. “Have you looked at the newspapers or their websites?”

I admitted I had not.

“The papers are reporting that it was not a gas explosion, which is accurate,” she said. “Sources tell the press that the bomb was planted, which is accurate.”

“Homemade?”

“Apparently, since dynamite or plastic explosives would have left a crater where the deli is standing and identifiable chemical traces,” the detective said. “Candy Sommerton is reporting that the Metro Police are considering several persons of interest, which is true if a bit strong. We're doing a thorough by-the-book investigation.”

Ah, Candy. Saying the same thing with a different slant creates news where there isn't any.

“Candy also reported that this was not a politically motivated act, which may be accurate. None of the candidates seem to have that level of animus for one another.”

“Their aides?”

“Checking that,” the detective admitted. “Eager beavers are always a possibility and a problem.”

“And me?” I asked. “Does anyone you've talked to have that level of animus toward me?”

“You have not been offered police protection,” she pointed out.

That was an answer, at least by inference. It suggested that the police didn't think I was the target. That was something of a relief, given my paranoia and my track record.

“What about the butcher?” I asked. “Could the bomb have been in his container and meant to go off earlier or meant for his daughter while she was making deliveries?”

“We've talked to all the protestors who were at his shop, run checks, found nothing other than unpaid parking tickets and domestic disturbance arrests. As for Alex and Sandy Potts, he seems to adore his daughter and she does not appear to be suicidal.”

That would have been my reading as well. The idea that Alex would attempt to kill her or that she would attempt to kill herself and take others with her was a chilling thought. That didn't make it impossible, but it went onto the backmost of my back burners.

“Can I ask one more thing?” I said.

“Go ahead. And Ms. Katz—you do know I'm not trying to be evasive here.”

“I know that, Detective. I appreciate everything you're doing for me. I'm not used to compassion in authority figures.”

She actually chuckled at that. “Believe it or not, this helps me too.”

“How so?”

“Reminds me that there are people, like me, at the other end of these situations. What was that last question you had?”

Her openness had gotten me off track. I hopped back on. “Right. Has Homeland Security gotten involved?”

“TOHS is automatically informed about incidents of this type,” Bean said, referring to the Tennessee Office of Homeland Security. “All relevant data is being sent there. So far, they have not sent anything back with a red flag.”

“So this is really a big bag of bupkes.”

“If I understand the word correctly—”

“It means bird poop,” I said. “Just a bit. Not a real bad curse.”