Red Delicious Death (18 page)

Meg didn’t know whether Edna’s speed was good or bad, but she promised herself to keep an open mind. After all, she liked diner food, but she wasn’t sure if that was what Nicky was aiming for.

In the kitchen, Edna had arrayed plates around the table, each with a colorful salad, carefully arranged. They took their seats, and Nicky said, “Tell us what you’re serving us, Edna.”

Edna stood at the head of the table, her arms crossed. “Fresh tomatoes, goat cheese—is that from Kibbee’s?—and fresh basil, with a mustard vinaigrette.”

Meg looked down at her plate, reluctant to spoil the pretty ensemble. It certainly matched anything she’d had back in Boston restaurants. She picked up her fork and took a bite. Lovely balance of flavors: the tomatoes were at the peak of ripeness, the basil was bright and green, the goat cheese was tangy and crumbled into pieces that neither overwhelmed nor disappeared into the other ingredients. She took a second bite, and a third, then looked up to see Nicky’s reaction. After all, it was Nicky’s opinion that counted.

Nicky was beaming. “Edna, this is terrific. This is exactly what I want. How did you know?”

Edna shrugged, but permitted herself a small smile. “Get good local products, and don’t mess ’em up. That’s what I do. Glad you like it.”

Meg noted that everyone’s plate was clean in moments.

Nicky said firmly, “Edna, we can’t pay a whole lot, but if we can agree on a salary, I want you to work for me, for us. Are you interested?”

“We can work it out.”

“How soon can you start? Because I’d love to have your input on our menus, and where we can get more stuff like this. And you’re right—it is Kibbee’s cheese. Sam found it, and I think he’d be happy you used it.”

“I oughta give notice where I am now, but maybe a week or two? When you thinking on opening?”

“September, we hope.”

“Whoa. You don’t mess around. But that’ll give us a couple of weeks to work things out between us. And I can give you a list of the people I used to buy from. Some of them, they’re out of the business now, but most are still around, maybe only to please themselves these days.”

“Wonderful. Could we do that now? And then you can meet Brian when he gets back.”

Edna agreed, and Seth stood up. “Edna, this was great. I’ve missed your cooking since the diner closed. Nicky, I’ve got to run—I’m picking up some lumber in Chicopee. But I’m glad it looks like things will work out with you two.”

“Thank you so much, Seth! I’ll see you tomorrow night at seven, right? At Town Hall? Oh, Meg, we haven’t even had a minute to go over the numbers. Can you stay a bit longer? “

“Sure,” Meg said. “Just let me see Seth out and I’ll be back.”

Meg followed Seth out to the parking lot. “That looks like a match made in heaven, Seth. What a great thought, putting them together.”

“I’ve known Edna for years—she’s been wasted on the places she’s working now.”

“Even I can see that. What really happened to the diner? Wasn’t there enough business to make it viable?”

“No, there was. It was a local hangout, and not just for high school kids. But the Millers let it go too far, and Edna couldn’t scrape together enough money to buy it and fix it up. I’ll have to admit the town wasn’t much help—they figured the gas station and the convenience store would bring in more money than the diner, which is probably true. But people still miss the diner.”

“Too bad ‘quality of life’ doesn’t come with a dollar value attached.”

“Exactly.”

“So I’ll see you at the meeting?”

“Of course. Now I’d better get back in there and help Nicky polish up their pitch.”

When Meg arrived at Town Hall for the meeting of the Granford selectmen, she was surprised to see that most of the adjacent parking lot was filled. She wondered if it was because Nicky and Brian were unveiling their plans for the restaurant, and if so, how the word had gotten out. There was no local press, although Granford meetings were listed in the Springfield paper. E-mail blast? Phone tree? Or good old-fashioned word of mouth?

Once inside, Meg followed the buzz of voices to the meeting room on the first floor. The selectmen sat at a table at the head of the room, their name plates in front of them. About thirty folding chairs had been arrayed in rows facing them, taking up most of the available space. Two-thirds of the chairs were already filled, ten minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin. Meg scanned the group for familiar faces and was happy to see Gail Selden from the Historical Society, who waved and pointed to an empty seat next to her.

Meg slid along the row and sat. “Quite a turnout, isn’t it?” she said.

Gail grinned. “Obviously we don’t get a lot of excitement around here. And people are certainly curious about what’s going on. You’ve been inside the building after they started renovations, right? What’s it like?”

“Nice. They’ve kept it simple. I for one think it’s going to be a real asset. You have any idea what the rest of the town thinks?”

“I haven’t heard anything negative. Too bad about the murder, though.”

“So people are saying it’s murder now?” Meg asked, troubled.
When had it become public knowledge?

“What else could it be?” Gail replied. “Young guy just keels over of natural causes in a pigsty? Nobody’s buying that. What did the cops say? Do they have any idea who did it?”

Meg shook her head. “Not that I know of, although they’re not likely to tell me.” Would Marcus be more willing to share now that he’d gotten so friendly with Lauren? “I’m happy it hasn’t discouraged Nicky and Brian.”

“They’re really a cute couple, but do they know what they’re doing?” Gail asked in a low voice.

“As far as food goes, I’d say yes. On the business side, I don’t know, although I understand that Brian has at least taken business courses. And I don’t know how deep their pockets are. The kitchen’s finished anyway, and they’re working on the front of the house. And they’ve hired Edna Blakely to help with the cooking.”

“Oh, good. She deserves a break.”

“You know her, too?”

“Meg, I’ve lived here forever. I know everybody, living and dead. Speaking of dead, how’s the cataloging coming?”

“Slowly, but I really enjoy it. It’s a nice change from working in the orchard and on the house. The problem is, I keep getting sidetracked by interesting documents, so I’m probably not getting as much done as quickly as I could. And I have to take advantage of the good weather when I can, for both the stuff that needs doing in the orchard, and the outside of the house. I can’t afford to paint the whole thing yet, so I’m kind of slapping paint on the worst parts, like the window frames.”

“I hear you, and I’m not in any hurry on the cataloging. Consider whatever gems you find one of the perks. Anything interesting lately?”

“A nice old map of the town. Don’t you love it when they draw in not only the houses but the trees? And it’s so kind of those old mapmakers to label who lived where.”

“Yeah, they took that seriously in the old days. Of course, there were fewer people then, and they pretty much stayed put for generations. Nowadays the map would be out of date by the time it was printed.” Gail looked toward the front of the room. “Well, looks like things are about to start.”

Tom Moody had stood up in the front of the room, and glared at the group in front of him until they quieted. He nodded toward the high school kid at the back of the room, who flipped a switch on the video recording system. “The meeting of the Select Board of Granford is now in session. All three board members are present, as is the chair of our finance committee, Eli Nash.”

He and the others dealt with some ordinary business items and fielded a few questions from the floor. Seth’s comments were generally short and upbeat; Caroline Goldthwaite was well informed but seemed to radiate an air of constant disapproval. After about half an hour, Seth said, “We have an unusual item on tonight’s agenda. Let me introduce Nicky and Brian Czarnecki, who have bought the Stebbins place across the street, and who are planning to open a restaurant there in a couple of months. Brian, Nicky, why don’t you come up and tell us about it?”

Brian and Nicky had been seated in the front row; now they moved to a pair of chairs at the end of the selectmen’s table. Meg wondered how they were going to handle their presentation, and crossed her fingers. Nicky looked nervous—she was clearly more at home in front of a stove than in front of a group. Meg sneaked a quick look at her neighbors in the audience, who all appeared interested. At least they weren’t hostile. She settled back in her chair to listen to Brian, who had begun to speak.

“Thank you for inviting us to speak at your meeting. We haven’t had the opportunity to meet most of you—we’ve been busy working on the building—but we’re looking forward to getting to know our neighbors soon. I’m Brian Czarnecki, and this is my wife, Nicky.” Nicky waved and smiled nervously. “We’re from Boston most recently, but we wanted to get away from the competition among restaurants there, so we looked around for an area where we’d like to live and work, and found this town. There’s not a lot of competition here.”

Some members of the audience laughed.

Brian went on, “Nicky’s the cook in the family, and I’ll be handling the business side and the front of the restaurant. This is our first venture on our own, although between us we’ve worked in something like seven different restaurants. Right, Nicky?” She nodded. “So we’re kind of learning as we go. I know we need approvals from the town, permits and that kind of thing, so we wanted to give you a chance to get to know us and to ask any questions you might have.”

“What kind of food you going to cook?” a voice behind Meg asked.

“Nicky, you want to take that?” Brian said.

Nicky stood up, somewhat reluctantly. “First and foremost, food that people here will want to eat, and can afford.” Another laugh rippled through the crowd. “What we want to do is to use the freshest local produce, and make simple healthy food at reasonable prices. Nothing too fancy—we’ll leave that to Amherst and Northampton. But we hope we can attract people from all over.” She swallowed, then resumed. “What’s more, we’re hoping that you all can help us with supplies. I know there are farmers’ cooperatives around here, but I’d love to know what grows right here in Granford. And that includes what moos and swims and anything else. Ideally we’d like to see you harvest it in the morning and deliver it to our door the same day. Or we’ll even pick it up.”

“You gonna have a liquor license?” said a female voice Meg didn’t recognize.

Brian answered that. “We’ve applied for one. But don’t worry that we’re going to have a roadhouse with a lot of drunken patrons staggering out onto the town green in the middle of the night. Our place is going to be about the food, not about drinking.”

“What about the dead guy?” a male voice from the rear asked.

There was a moment of awkward silence until Brian swallowed, then spoke. “Sam Anderson was a good friend of ours, and we’d hoped he would be part of this restaurant. We were deeply saddened by his death, but we believe he would have wanted us to go forward.”

“I heard he was he a fag,” the same voice said.

Seth stood up quickly. “Jim, that statement is both insulting and inappropriate in this meeting.”

Meg looked over her shoulder to see who was talking—a short and clearly angry man at the back of the room, already on his feet, his arms crossed. “Why? You think I want to eat in a place with people like that doing the cooking?”

Nicky and Brian exchanged glances. Seth stared at the speaker, his expression carefully neutral. “Jim, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You have a right to your opinion, but it has no place here.”

Meg turned back toward the front and stared at her hands. Who was Jim, and why did he have an axe to grind? Why was anyone’s sexual preference relevant to their cooking? And did Jim represent a real—and bigoted—faction of Granford’s population?

Jim glared at Seth, then turned and stormed out, all but knocking over his flimsy chair. Seth waited until he heard the front door slam before he addressed the small crowd. “I’m sorry about that. If Jim has issues about any one individual, he can stay away from the restaurant. But I hope the rest of you don’t share his opinion.”

Nicky, her cheeks flushed, spoke unexpectedly. “Sam was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. He was warm and funny, and he was a good friend. So if any of you have a problem with us working with a person who isn’t just like you, you’d better let us know now.”

Meg was surprised when Gail spoke up, “Nicky, as far as I’m concerned, the only important thing here is the quality of your food. We really need a restaurant in this town, and what you’re planning sounds great.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name?” Nicky responded.

“I’m Gail Selden. I’m head of the Historical Society, among other things. If you want to know anything about the history of your building or the town, just ask.”