Murder Al Dente: A Southern Pasta Shop Mystery (Southern Pasta Shop Mysteries Book 1) (17 page)

"
You're not looking so hot, Andy girl." Pops tilted his head to study me more closely. "Are you limping?"

"
It's nothing, Pops. Don't worry about it." I made an effort to regulate my stride as I made my way to the coffee pot.

"
How was your date yesterday?"

I took my time adding coffee creamer and sugar to Pop
's industrial grade java, both so it wouldn't corrode my stomach lining and to come up with a neutral answer. The problem was I wasn't anywhere in the realm of neutral when it came to Malcolm Jones.

That rat bastard.

Jones hadn't been winning me over because he liked me, because he was attracted to me and wanted to do the horizontal mambo. Oh no, he'd been digging up dirt on me for Flavor TV's legal, presumably anything that could shift the liability for the mass food poising from the station squarely onto my shoulders.

I was so mad I could spit, preferably on Jones, who
'd duped me like a big old needy moron.

"
Fine," I said to Pops. "I don't think it'll amount to anything though, so don't go getting your hopes up."

My grandfather, who took his coffee black as a new moon midnight, frowned.
"I'm surprised to hear you say that. Cecily said you two were made for each other."

"
Even Aunt Cecily can be wrong from time to time."

"
I'd pay cash money to hear you say that to her," Pops drawled and poured himself another cup. "You want some breakfast?"

"
Nah, I should be getting to the pasta shop." I hesitated, rinsing my cup and setting it in the sink. He wasn't going to like what I had to say next. "Pops, I think we need to talk about you driving."

He sighed and sat at the table.
"Not right now, all right? Let's get the Bowtie Angel squared away, and then we'll figure something out."

"
Any prospective buyers?" My stomach lurched as I thought about some stranger taking over the pasta shop. We'd probably have to find a new place for Aunt Cecily to live, too. I doubted the new owner would want to keep a bat in his belfry, and the thought of telling Cecily that she'd have to now pay rent for the apartment she'd lived in for more than thirty years made my blood run cold. But what was the alternative?

Why don
't you take over there? Jones had asked me not even twenty four hours earlier. His eyes had been filled with promise, encouragement, and all sorts of things I was starved to see. To feel.

Damn him.

I dismissed the memory and hobbled off to retrieve my purse. I had no doubt that word of the accident would spread. Gossip was an established pastime, but if everyone saw me out and taking care of business, hopefully they'd chalk it up to over-exaggerated rumor. The last thing I needed now was to be poor Andy Buckland. Again.

Thank the stars for Donna
's snooping. I could only imagine what it would have looked like to the town when the truth about Jones came out if I'd continued to see him, ignoring his relationship with Lizzy and the strange coincidence of Zoltan Farnsworth's death the day after we both showed up.

Speaking of Farnsworth, I wondered if Donna had done the research I
'd asked on the not- so-good pastry chef. The fact that Flavor was having me investigated wasn't a good sign. No one had tried to sue me (yet), but other than Mustang Sally and a pitifully small bank account my net worth hovered somewhere between impoverished college student and starving artist. The network had much deeper pockets, but I didn't want to be responsible for their demise any more than I wanted to take the blame in the chef's death.

I was convinced Farnsworth had something to do with the debacle of my television debut, though I couldn
't prove it. The police had already questioned my working relationship with Zoltan Farnsworth, hinting that his condescending attitude toward me on live television had angered me enough to want to kill him. No one had attributed a motive to me outright, but if Farnsworth had deliberately sabotaged me, I was sure I'd be right back into the hot seat.

I had two immediate goals. Find out if Chef Farnsworth had tampered with my recipe and who else would want him dead. I needed more information on the dead man, something more than speculation, something that would tell me who would want him dead. For that I needed Donna
's husband's resources.

What I really needed was to find Mimi again and get some questions answered. But I had no idea where to start looking.
Hopefully she'd find me like she'd promised.

I wondered if I should go to the police
and tell them everything I knew. If I was still in Atlanta, I would have been, hands down, protected by the relative anonymity of big city life. No one on the outside would pay attention to where I went and whom I talked to when I was there. But life in Beaverton was infinitely more complicated. If I went to see Kyle, or even Detective Brown, the news of my visit would be all over town by sundown. And if I even hinted about Jones tampering with evidence, well, they just might chase him out of town with torches and pitchforks.

Isn
't that what you want?
A condescending inner voice prodded.
He played you. You owe him nothing, not even loyalty.

Undecided
, I drove into town and parked behind the pasta shop. Mrs. Bradford, who owned the florist shop next door, waved cheerily at me. "Andy! Come over here a minute, will you?"

Though my leg protested the extra exercise, I slowly made my way across the alley to where the elderly woman stood. Mrs. Bradford was a jolly soul with a plump round face and crooked teeth that she flashed
to anyone she knew. She'd been the librarian at the high school while I was growing up and had bought the flower shop a few years back.

"
Hi, Mrs. B. How are you?" I asked.

"
Just fine dear, just fine. Listen I'm glad I caught you. I'm on the Spring Fling committee, and I was wondering if you could convince your great aunt to participate in the festivities."

Inward groan. Aunt Cecily was a creature of habit and didn
't move outside her comfort zone very often. Of course, if it was a choice between the pasta shop going bankrupt and putting up a few springtime decorations and sponsoring a booth during the festivities, she might see reason. If she squinted really, really, really hard. "I'll see what I can do."

"
Fantastic dear—that's wonderful. Also, would you consider being our celebrity speaker?"

I blinked, sure I
'd heard wrong. "Me?"

"
I'm sorry it's so last minute, but the celebrity we had fell through. Of course if we'd known you'd be in town, we would have asked you first," she tagged on quickly as if not to offend me for being B team.

"
You saw the show, right? Saw what happened?" I had to be sure.

Mrs. Bradford waved that off as if mass food poisoning wasn
't worth the mention. "Pish. You've been cooking in that pasta shop's kitchen since you were knee high to a grasshopper. Everybody around these parts knows you're a terrific cook. This town believes in you."

I didn
't know what to say, so I stood there, eyes misting up.

"
There, there. It'll be all right." Mrs. B handed me a tissue. "Just think about it."

* * *

"No," Aunt Cecily said.

It had been a busy morning, first with inventory
, and then the produce man had arrived with our latest order. Aunt Cecily was fussing with a batch of minestrone and seemed to be in a good mood. Well, "good" for her anyway. Figuring the timing was as perfect as it would get, I finished slicing the bell peppers for roasting and casually suggested the Bowtie Angel sponsor a booth at the Spring Fling.

"
Now come, we must make the pasta."

She turned to walk away
, but I grabbed hold of her bony arm, gently, but firmly. "Aunt Cecily, listen to me. We don't need any more pasta, we need customers. The business is failing. We need all the publicity we can get."

"
Publicity," she spat. "What you need is good food."

"
And people to eat it. Please just consider it. This might be our only chance to—"

The bell above the front door jingled
, and Cecily scowled at me. "People, here for the pasta. We don't need publicity."

"
We're not done with this discussion," I told her as I pushed through the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the small dining area. "May I help—?"

The last word died in my throat when I saw him, battered and bruised and looking just as worn out as I felt.

"Andrea." Jones smiled at me, the lines around his eyes crinkling in a relieved grin. The lump where he'd hit his head on the steering wheel was a rainbow of green, blue, and purple ugliness, but he looked at me with a burning intensity that made me weak in the knees.

How did he lie with his eyes so well? If I didn
't know better I would have thought he was relieved to see me, happy even. But I did know better, knew he'd feigned interest in me only to ferret out my secrets. When I thought of everything I'd confessed to him, the parts of myself I hadn't shared with any man since Kyle, I wanted to vomit. Instead, I folded my arms over my chest and lifted my chin. "What are you doing here?"

"
You didn't return my calls so I thought…" He blinked, as though my response surprised him. His smile guttered like an extinguished candle. "I wanted to see you."

The words sounded, genuine, heartfelt even. Damn he was good.
"You should go. It's almost lunch, and I need to focus."

"
Andrea?" The smile disappeared entirely, replaced by concern. "Is something wrong?"

Everything. Everything was wrong. I wanted to shout at him
, but this wasn't the time or the place to have it out. No more big public scenes for Andy Buckland. Instead, I reached for the bottle of glass cleaner and the roll of paper towels and turned my back on him to spritz down the empty display case. "Just leave me alone, Malcom."

"
Signor
Jones," Aunt Cecily bustled out of the kitchen, offering him a wide grin. "My niece told me of your accident. I make something special for you. Come, sit, eat." She commanded him like a dog and set down a steaming bowl of minestrone.

So that was why she
'd made the soup. I rolled my eyes at her. "Aunt Cecily…"

But she ignored me and hovered over Jones like a tiny Italian phantom, waiting for him to sample her soup.

Jones looked from the soup, to Cecily, to me. I turned around and spritzed the glass casing. As I wiped it down, I watched him smile gratefully up at my aunt and bring the spoon to his lips.

"
Eccellentissimo
," he said with a credible Italian accent.

Cecily nodded crisply, her thin lips pursed in approval.
"Good, good. I name it for you. Picture Perfect Minestrone for the pictures you take, yes?"

It was a good thing I was facing the other direction so they couldn
't see my jaw drop open. She was naming a menu item for him? That was a serious step in Aunt Cecily's world, like going steady or even an engagement ring. She only named menu items for family. Damn it, maybe I should have told her about what he was and why he'd been interested in me. But the thought of admitting that I'd been so gullible, even to my maiden aunt, stung my already battered pride.

But this, seeing her treating
Jones like he was already a member of the family, I couldn't let this go on. "Aunt Cecily, there's something you need to know about him."

She cast me a black look.
"Don't be rude, girl." Then, turning back to Jones she patted his hand. "Pay her no mind. She is young and hot blooded. She sometimes loses her head."

I folded my arms under my breasts.
"He's not who you think he is."

She looked at him.
"See, hot-tempered Italian women. They are an acquired taste."

"
I'll keep that in mind," Jones looked at me. "Could we have some privacy to hash things out, Cecily?"

Oh that was it. Nobody had the gall to ask Aunt Cecily to leave the room in her own pasta shop. She was going to put The Eye on him. I wondered what the results would be. Anything from halitosis to gonorrhea was possible when The Eye was involved.

"Sweep the floor when you're done," she told me and shuffled off.

I stared at the swinging door to the kitchen, utterly stunned. Had that really just happened? Jones had basically told my scary great aunt to take a hike
, and she'd done it, no questions asked.

Strong hands landed on my arms and spun me to face him.

"Now will you tell me what's the matter with you today?"

I flinched at the feel of his warm hands on me.
"Don't touch me,"