Murder and Marinara (19 page)

“Have you set up the coffee station?” she asked without looking up from her pad. I peeked over her shoulder to see a list forming for Nando and Massimo.

“Yes, Nonna,” I said dutifully, and she cast me a suspicious glance.

“And what progress have you made about the other thing?”

The other thing.
Oh, you mean that thing where a man dropped dead outside the restaurant, Nonna?
“Some,” I admitted.

She turned from her list and narrowed her eyes at me. “‘Some' is not enough. Tomorrow is Friday!”

“I know what day it is, Nonna. What would you have me do? Torture a confession out of somebody?” I held up my hand. “Never mind. Don't answer that.”

My grandmother slammed down her pencil and hit me with her best shot. “Don't you care about your family?”

I groaned. “Of course I do. And I care about the Casa Lido. But I'm not a cop. I'm not a real detective. I've been doing research and talking to people.”

But my brother's question echoed in my head: to what end? Did I really believe the murderer would come forward because I was digging around? Would I round up all the suspects in the dining room and have a showdown á la Poirot? Bullied by my grandmother and egged on by Sofia, I may have already tipped off a murderer. And it certainly could be argued that I was hindering a police investigation. All because I was treating this as an intellectual exercise instead of the crime that it was. Maybe it was time to pack it in.

“I've done all I can, Nonna. We have to leave this to the police now.” I steeled myself, expecting an Italian blast. But there was only silence. Instead of anger on my grandmother's face, all I saw was her age.

Then she shrugged and shook her head. “All right, Victoria. Now please go out to the garden and pick some mint for the
tea freddo
.”

I stopped at the back door. “Nonna, you'll let Tim come back, won't you? You know he didn't do this.”

She straightened up and lifted her chin, her face once again hard. “I know no such thing,” she said, turning back to her work.

As I headed toward the garden, I had to remind myself only plants were out here now.
No dead bodies, Vic. It's okay
. Skirting around the shed, I found the patch of herbs and sniffed out the spearmint plants. I rubbed a leaf between my fingers, and the rich scent brought back summertime and childhood—a childhood that was inextricably bound up with the Casa Lido. What would happen to it now?

I sighed, picked a handful of leaves, and looked over the garden. The herbs had taken nicely, and the tomato plants were all in, thanks to a couple of Nando's cousins. I bent to look at the plants Nonna had ready to go. Her usual flats of impatiens and begonias threw bright color against the green grass. Larger pots of perennials flanked both sides of the bed. Few had flowered, so I stooped to read their tags. There were balloon flowers and daisies and sunflowers that would grow as tall as the fence. At the back of the row was a pretty purple flower on a long stalk. When I bent closer to read the white plastic tag that poked up from the soil, I felt exactly as I had when I looked down at Parisi's corpse. My knees buckled; I dropped the tag as though it were toxic, because it was. The Latin name swam before my eyes. The plant I couldn't remember wasn't “purple digit,” but
Digitalis purpurea
,
commonly known as foxglove.

And that's when Iris's words finally came back to me:
Enough of that will stop your heart
.

D
ropping the handfuls of mint at my feet, I slapped at my front pocket.
Phone, yes.
I dug it from my jeans pocket and held it in my shaking left hand, tapping wildly at the screen to pull up Google. My fingers felt thick and clumsy as I spelled out “f-o-x-g-l-o-v-e” in the search bar. Sweeping my finger across the screen, I scrolled down to read about the plant's toxicity, and there it was: The substances in the foxglove plant were known to cause “deadly disturbances of the heart.” I would have to do more research later, but for now I had seen enough. I backed away from the plant and shoved my phone into my pocket. I scooped up the mint leaves with trembling hands, and for the second time in ten days, ran from that garden as though the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels.

I went straight to the sink, keeping my back to my grandmother. Because if she looked at my face, I was certain these words would be scrolling across my forehead:
There is a poisonous plant in the garden . . . a poisonous plant in the garden . . . a poisonous plant . . . a poisonous plant . . . Holy Mother of God, what am I going to do?

“Victoria?” My grandmother's sharp tones took the tiniest edge off my rising hysteria.

“What?” I said, only a few decibels shy of a shriek.

“What are you doing at the sink? That water is running too long.”

“I'm, uh, rinsing the mint leaves.” Scrubbing them raw was more accurate. I turned off the water and grabbed a paper towel, patting the leaves dry while a new phrase took hold in my tortured brain:
deadly disturbances of the heart
.
Ha
, I thought.
Sounds like one of Mom's books
. But this story was real and playing itself out right in front of me.

“Here.” My grandmother dumped a large bag of greens on the counter. “Now you can wash the escarole.”

I peeked inside the bag. The leafy green heads certainly
looked
like escarole. I pulled off a leaf and stared at its curly edges and the creamy whiteness of the stem. When I snapped it, I recognized the fibrous strings and figured it was safe.

“What, you never seen 'scarole before?” Nonna spoke right into my ear and I jumped, slapping my hand on my chest.

“Don't do that, Nonna! You scared me to death.” And then I realized what a poor choice of words that was.

“Victoria, what is wrong with you? You say you want to help in the kitchen, but all you do is daydream.” She pointed to the bag of greens. “Get moving. I am going out to the dining room.”

“Daydream”
was not the word I would have chosen; “surreal nightmare”
was a much better description for the state I found myself in. I forced myself to take a breath and used the job at hand to focus. While I automatically rinsed and tore the greens, I collected my thoughts in a rational manner.

Okay, there was no proof that a foxglove plant was used to kill Parisi. Those leaves didn't look like salad greens, for one thing. But I would have a better idea about that as soon as I could get to a computer and do more research. And just because there was a foxglove plant behind the Casa Lido kitchen did not mean that someone here used it to kill him.
But
,
cara
,
said the voice of my detective, Bernardo Vitali,
what have I taught you about coincidence?

“Shut up, Bernardo,” I muttered, furiously tearing escarole leaves. At least I was calmer now, but I needed a plan. Once I was done with prep, I would sneak back to the garden and do what I had been too panicked to think of earlier: use my phone to take a couple of pictures of the plant. The minute I could get away from the restaurant today, I'd learn everything I could about
Digitalis purpurea.

•   •   •

But after the escarole came the carrots for Chef Massimo's famous puree, and after the carrots came a bin full of flatware to be wiped clean, and after the flatware came water pitchers to be filled. When Lori showed up at ten thirty, my grandmother still had not released me from my bondage.

“Hey, you wanted to come back,” Lori said as she tied on her apron. “You know the drill.”

“That I do, girlfriend.” I sighed as I folded linens around the forks and knives.

She took a seat next to me. “I'll help with the setups. You'd better get sharper points on those napkins. Your nonna will check 'em all.”

I groaned. “Of course she will.”

“Where is everybody, by the way?”

“Nonna's back in the kitchen, Mom's in the office, and last I saw my dad, he was prepping the bar.”

“Ha,” Lori said. “You mean avoiding the womenfolk. Is Dreamboat working this morning?”

“No. Massimo and Nando are in the kitchen.” I made a face. “They kicked me out.”

“Massi doesn't like anybody in there. He barely tolerates Nando.” She slipped a knife and fork into a napkin and folded it with expert ease. “I guess they gave Tim the day off, huh?” she said carefully.

“Yup.” I studied the napkin in front of me, not wanting to pick up this particular conversational thread.

Lori patted my arm. “We know Tim would never do such a thing. I don't care if he was involved with that Angie again.”

At her words, I had the sudden sensation of the Ferris wheel, with the ground under my feet falling away. My stomach churning, I smoothed out another napkin and flattened it with my fingers. It seemed minutes before I could find my voice. “What do you mean ‘involved' with her?”

“Maybe ‘involved' isn't the right word. But she was in here a couple of times before her husband died. I just never connected her with Parisi until after he—”

“Dropped dead in the restaurant?” I said harshly.

“Hey, you might want to lower your voice on that one.”

“Right.” But in that moment, I didn't care if the whole town heard me, because all
I
could hear were Lori's words:
She was in here a couple of times.
A couple of times. Not once, as Tim had implied that night in the pantry. I flashed on Angie's look of false pity as she taunted me:
Is that what he told you?
And if he lied about that . . . “No,” I said aloud.

Lori frowned at me. “You okay? Listen, I'll finish these up. You go take a break.”

“Thanks, LJ, but it's almost time for lunch to start, and we have to get these out on the tables. And listen, do me a favor, would you? Don't mention to my parents that Anjelica is actually Angie, okay?”

She winked at me. “You got it.”

Just as we finished setting the last table, our first customer came through the doors. She was a large woman, broad-shouldered and curvy. Her bright orange suit set off the deep caramel color of her skin; she wore her hair in a cropped afro, the ends tipped in blond highlights.

“May I help you?” I smiled, and though her face was serious, I was mesmerized by her brownish gold eyes.
Tiger eyes,
I thought, and some instinct told me it was an apt description for her.

“Table for one, please.” After I seated her and left her with a menu, I stepped back to the coffee station to pick up a water pitcher. But I couldn't take my eyes off our customer. As she shifted in her chair, her jacket opened, and I clutched Lori's arm.

“Oh my God.” I gasped. “Is that a gun in her pocket?”

“Or is she just glad to see us?” Lori said with a grin.

“It's not funny,” I hissed. “She's got a
gun
!”

“She's allowed to have a gun, Vic.” Lori's patient, explanatory tone was similar to one I heard her use on her son. “She's the county prosecutor, Regina Sutton.”

I
wanted to panic. In fact, I wanted to run out the door as fast as my little waitress clogs could carry me. Instead, I just said,
“
Oh,” and had the following thoughts:

1) There's a county prosecutor in the dining room.

2) There's a poisonous plant in the garden.

Considering the lady tiger that was burning bright over there at Table Four, the fearful symmetry of those two truths circled me like a chain. And there was no escape.

Regina Sutton looked up at me and beckoned in a manner worthy of her name. Lori nudged me in the side. “She's ready for you to take her order.”

“Ohhhh-kay, then.” I groped for a pad and pen inside my apron pocket; unluckily, they were both there, so I couldn't stall any longer. I stepped stiffly toward the table, feeling as though I were walking through a bowl of my grandmother's
zabaglione
. Standing at Sutton's elbow, I flinched when she trained those scary golden eyes on my face.

“I'd like a half order of the pasta special. And the house salad, please.” Her voice was low, melodious, and commanding, but I was barely able to hear it over the one screaming in my head.
She ordered the salad!

I gripped my pen, scribbled something on the pad, and nodded. She tilted her head and looked at me. “Would you mind telling me what's in it?”

“Wh-what's in what?” I stammered.

“The salad,” she said, pronouncing each syllable separately.

“Uh, it's got spring greens, arugula, olives, tomatoes—”
And no foxglove or pokeweed. I promise.
Calm down, Vic
,
I told myself.
You're getting hysterical.

“Thank you,” she interrupted. “That will be fine. Dressing on the side, please.”

My head snapped up and my mouth went slack. Was she re-creating the crime? I blinked, and Sutton frowned. “Are you quite all right?” she asked.

“Fine, yes. Sorry. I'll just go put in that order.” I spun around, quick to escape, but froze at the sound of the rich contralto behind me.

“And, Ms. Rienzi, when you come back with my lunch, do sit and join me for a moment.” It wasn't a request.

How did she know my name? Worse yet, what did she want with me? My mind offered several terrible possibilities: She was arresting me for murder; she was arresting me for withholding evidence; she was arresting me for obstructing a police investigation. Or perhaps all three.

I lurked behind the kitchen door while Nando prepared her order, watching with equal parts admiration and dismay as he swiftly arranged her salad on a platter. And because Tim's
pasta fresca
cooked up quickly, her whole lunch was ready in less than ten minutes. I loaded a tray with the two plates and a container of dressing, took a deep breath, and stepped into the dining room to meet my fate.

Sutton put an e-reader aside and watched in silence as I set her plates down in front of her. I looked down at her and attempted to smile brightly. “I'll just go get you more water.”

I looked down to find a restraining hand on my arm, a hand with five gorgeously decorated fingernails, and I wondered how she fired a gun with that manicure.

“No need for that,” she said. “The other waitress already filled my glass, as you can see.” She tilted her head and bared two rows of very white teeth. “Please sit down, Ms. Rienzi.”

I dropped into the chair across from hers. “You know who I am.”

“Yes, I do.” She waited a beat and smiled again.
“Ms. Reed.”
She patted the cover of her device. “I was just reading your latest. It's nicely written. Good solid prose.”

“Oh. Thank you.” My smile, no longer forced, now spread across my face. Like all writers, I crave praise. I waited happily for her to go on.

“For the most part, you do your homework,” she announced. She settled her napkin on her lap. “But while you're careful with the crime scene details, you cut corners in other places. You skim over some things that might get in the way of your plot. Now and then your detective behaves in ways that would never fly in real life. But I imagine that's all in service of the story, correct?”

Always up for a discussion of my work, I sat up expectantly in my chair. “Yes. I guess you'd say it's author license.”

“Exactly: author license. In your books, you have built a world. And in that world, you have license.” She folded her hands and rested her chin on them, capturing my cowardly eyes with her own. “But in this world—in
my
world—you do not. Is that understood?”

Brazen it out, Vic
. I also folded my own hands in front of me—okay, it was to keep them from shaking—and forced myself to meet her eyes. “I'm not sure what you mean, Ms. Sutton.”

One thin brow arched. “Given that you know who I am, I'm fairly certain that you do know what I mean.” She motioned to me with her fork. “But I will be happy to elucidate. Interviews with the cast of
The Jersey Side
. That little trip to Ocean Grove. And meetings with at least two other people whose actions have bearing on this case.” She tapped the tabletop with her fingernail for emphasis. “These actions could all be construed as obstruction.”

“Or . . . research.” I gulped and eyed her glass of ice water. “Um, for a book,” I continued.

“Perhaps.” But a small quirk of her lips conveyed skepticism. She speared some pasta, put it in her mouth, and her eyes widened. She chewed it slowly and then nodded. “This is delicious. It would certainly be a shame if this restaurant had to close.”

In that moment, I felt as though my grandmother had suddenly taken possession of my body, and my fear dissipated. “That sounds like a threat,” I said quietly.

“Not a threat, Ms. Rienzi. Just a possibility. You realize, don't you, that this place could have been closed down days ago? And that it was only through the good auspices of local law enforcement—of which your brother is a part—that it has remained open this long.”

What was Sutton suggesting? That Danny had used influence to keep the restaurant from closing? “As I'm sure you are aware,” I said, “my brother has no part in this investigation. It would be a clear conflict of interest.”

“It would be indeed, Ms. Rienzi. Just as it would be a conflict of interest—and highly unethical—for your brother to share any information about this case with you. And such actions could cost him his position on the force.” She forked a few more pieces of fresh pasta into her mouth and briefly shut her eyes. “Truly wonderful food,” she murmured. “What kind of sauce is this?”

I couldn't keep up with this woman. One minute she's threatening Danny's job, and the next she's waxing poetic over the sauce. “That's our marinara sauce, made with fresh basil and tomatoes we harvest each August.” I leaned toward her, flattened my palms on the table, and uttered a statement that was mostly true. “Look, my brother hasn't done anything wrong.”

She smiled again, but her eyes were questioning. “Exactly what I would expect a loyal sister to say. And you Rienzis are a loyal bunch. I wonder if that loyalty extends to your employees as well.” Without waiting for an answer, she took a bite of greens and nodded again. “The salad is lovely.”

Was it coincidence that she mentioned the salad, with unnecessary emphasis on the word, in the same breath as she referred to our “employees”? She had to be talking about Tim. In the space of three minutes, she had implied that my brother was corrupt and that my family was harboring a murderer. I had the distinct impression that Tiger Lady was batting me back and forth between her predatory paws. I stood up from my chair and met that golden gaze with my own. “Ms. Sutton, I'm not sure why you wanted to speak to me, but I don't appreciate games and—”

“Games?” she asked, her voice low and harsh. “I don't play games, Ms. Rienzi. And certainly not where a man's death is concerned.” She sipped her water, her eyes never leaving my face.

Predictably, I blinked first. “Please,” I said. “I know you can't talk about it, but if you're planning to make an arrest, wouldn't it be the kind thing to let us know?”

And then Regina Sutton did a strange thing. She chuckled. And then the chuckle grew into a deep laugh that shook her shoulders. “Oh, Ms. Rienzi,” she said, still smiling. “Perhaps you should turn to humor writing.” She blotted her mouth with her napkin and shook her head. “In case you have missed my point here today, this is
not
one of your books.”

Oh, how tired I was of that particular phrase. “I understand that.” I glanced around me and lowered my voice. “Look, my parents and grandmother are on the premises. They're naturally upset by what happened here and its effect on our business. Our season is about to start.”

“So you're hoping we can wrap things up nicely for you in time for Memorial Day. Is that it? So long as we arrest someone with no ties to the Casa Lido?”

I smiled weakly. “In a perfect world, yes.”

“Or in a perfect story, perhaps?” She ate her last bite of salad, dabbed at her mouth, and reached into her jacket pocket.

I gripped the side of the table, ready for her to train her gun on me. Instead, she handed me her business card. “In the event you come across any information that should be shared with my office.” As I stared at the raised gold letters and law enforcement seal, the reality hit me like a cold ocean wave: What I'd gotten myself into was no longer merely an intellectual exercise.

“And in the interest of open communication,” she continued, “I will say this: The persons of interest in the case all seem to be tied to this restaurant, and we will be questioning them.” She pointed to me with her fork again. “Including you, Ms. Rienzi.” Her mouth curved in satisfaction. “After all, you were the one who discovered the body, were you not?”

•   •   •

After she left, I hightailed it back to the kitchen with the excuse that I wanted to watch Nando start the dinner prep. To my great relief, my parents and grandmother had missed the customer at Table Four. Luckily, Regina Sutton had paid in cash, so there would be no telltale receipt in the bottom of the register. (Strangely, however, she'd left me a generous tip.) And may my luck hold, I wished silently, glancing out the open back door toward the garden.

Because Massimo had left for the afternoon, I could remain in the kitchen with impunity. I even talked Nando into showing me how to butterfly chicken breasts. As I pounded them flat between sheets of butcher paper, I obsessed about getting outside to look at that plant again. I jerked my head up as a hopeful thought occurred to me. Had the foxglove even
been
there the day I found Parisi? I remembered seeing a bunch of potted plants, but was that purple flower among them?

“Hey, Nando,” I said, my head bent over the chicken, “when did your cousins come and plant the tomatoes?”

“Monday, I think. I know, because we were closed.”

“I must have left already, because I didn't see them. Boy, was I glad to get out of that job.”

Nando grinned. “Your
abuela
will come up with a new one.”

“Probably. In fact, there're still some plants out there in pots.” I looked up from the meat I was pounding into submission. “Do you know why your cousins didn't plant those, too?”

“Oh, s
í
, I do. Luis say one of the plants can make you sick.”

A chill crept over me. “Is that so?”

He nodded vigorously, his braid bouncing. “He say he and Miguel no mess with that flower.” He handed me a plate of neatly sliced cutlets. “And anyway, Miss Guilietta tell them only to do the tomatoes, and she will do the flowers.”

They were innocuous words, but the creeping chill grew colder, and I looked down to see goose bumps forming on my arms.

“Luis say they should go in the ground, though,” Nando continued. “They been sitting in the pots too long.”

I tried to keep my tone casual, a little difficult with my heart pounding harder than my meat mallet. “Really? How long, Nando?”

He paused, his chef's knife poised over the cutting board. “Oh, I dunno, maybe coupla weeks.”

A couple of weeks?
Had the murder weapon been sitting out in that garden all along? Who would have known it was there? My grandmother, who wasn't on the scene when Parisi was killed. And thank you, Lord, for that small mercy. That left two people—the same two people whose names were in bold on my handy chart: Tim and Mr. Biaggio. Tim, because he knew the Casa Lido as though it were his own home, and Mr. B, because he knew plants. I consoled myself with the thought that of the two, Mr. B was more likely to have known the flower was poisonous. But either way, both men had clear opportunity. But wasn't there a third person? Would Cal have known about the plant? And if he knew, would he have used it to kill Parisi? For what possible reason? I stopped my work, holding the mallet like a judge's gavel, feeling as though I were about to pass sentence upon the Casa Lido and my family's whole future. If
Digitalis purpurea
was indeed the natural substance that killed Parisi, there was a lovely specimen of it not thirty yards from the kitchen door.

Crash!
Down came the mallet, loud enough and hard enough to bring Nando to my side. He peeled back the top sheet of paper to look over at my work and shook his head. “Miss Victor, you pound them too thin.” He pointed to a spot where the meat was in shreds. “See what happened there.”

I saw what happened, all right. Only too clearly—and the thought was making me sick. I dropped the mallet with a clatter. “You're right, Nando. I'm sorry.” I had to get out there and get a closer look at that plant. “Listen, I have to make a quick phone call. Do you mind if I take a little break?”

“Go 'head. I'll finish these.”