Fry Me a Liver Page 12

“Just like criminals,” I said. “You may not have caused the big bang, but you were up to something no good. So which is it, Grace? Do you talk to me or do you talk to the police?”

  “You can’t threaten us like that,” she sputtered. “You won’t be able to prove any darn thing!”

  “Au contraire. Unless you slept in your car, and didn’t charge a meal—which I think you did, because I remember you signing left-handed, now that I think of it—I can show you were in Nashville. Hell, I can go ask Elsie when you checked in—”

  “All right!” Benjamin snapped. He forked a section of sausage into his mouth and set his tray aside. “All right. We’ll talk.”

  “Honey,” Grace said, “let me. Gwen, we read about the deli online and were thinking of buying the place. That is why we were ‘casing’ it, as you put it. And . . . we were going to promote one of your employees if we did.”

  “Promote them to what?” I asked impulsively.

  “Manager,” she replied.

  That left out Thom, since she was already manager. And she never would have hurt me, no how, anyway. I looked at Benjamin. “So you were checking out the basement of the deli. For what?”

  “Space,” Grace said. “And vermin. It was due diligence so we would know how much to offer you.”

  “What made you think the deli would be for sale?” I asked.

  “Isn’t everything, for the right price?” Grace asked. “I mean, you were in finance. You know money. Isn’t that true?”

  She was perilously close to stereotyping me but I let it pass. There was a lot more about her story that ticked me off.

  “So you took it upon yourselves to bribe an employee to get a look at the place?” I said, not quite believing it.

  Grace nodded. I tore a slice of toast in half and started chewing as I glared at her.

  “The basement,” I said again.

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me. Do I own that building? Surely you checked before looking into this.”

  They were both silent. Then Grace said, “We did not check that. It did not matter. We were interested in the business, in the goodwill you have built up over time, not in the structure itself.”

  “Why the farkakt wig?” I asked.

  “Because you are very sociable,” Grace said solicitously. “You talk to repeat customers.”

  “We’ve been to other restaurants around the country and proprietors don’t have your people skills,” Benjamin said. “We’re going to scope out a few more here: Suit and Thai, The Curried Lamb—I’ll bet we don’t find anyone as interesting as you.”

  “Uh-huh. And you won’t find anyone who asks probing questions like these.”

  Grace nodded. “That’s a boon and a speed bump.”

  “Great name for your memoir, which you can write in prison.”

  Benjamin’s mouth twisted. “You’d ruin one of your worker’s lives over a little harmless snooping?”

  “Me ruin it? You put them up to it, they made the choice! How the hell did I become the bad guy?”

  “By virtue of acting like you’re the SEC and this is an IPO,” he said. “You’re not, it’s not. Let’s just call it a poorly conceived way of doing business. We can roll it back. I can help you get back on your feet.”

  “God, that’s the last helping hand I’d want!”

  “Because you’re thinking emotionally, not rationally,” Benjamin said.

  “Again, my fault. You have a real talent for ungepatchked thinking.”

  I hoped my sneering tone made the definition “messed up” clear to them. I finished the toast, picked up my coffee cup, and took a slug as I sat back and looked from one to the other. Grace and Benjamin, Benjamin and Grace. They were not stupid. So why would they do this thing like a pair of moisheh kapoyers—backward?

  No, I didn’t believe their little chronicle, but I had nothing to take its place. I was about to say that when my phone beeped. It was Dani. My kishkes burned when I saw the caller ID, like someone had turned up the gas on a range.

  “Hi, Dani—”

  “I didn’t know who else to call,” she sobbed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Luke,” she said. “He left here real angry.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know! He was up most of the night, not saying anything, just staring at the ceiling. He got up his usual time to go to work, got dressed, and when I asked where he was going he said he had something to do.”

  “Did he say what?”

  Dani wept a moment, then told me.

  I left the bed and breakfast without saying good-bye.

  Chapter 11

  It was a heartbreaking scene that greeted me when I reached the deli.

  I parked in the street, leaving just enough space for traffic to pass, and ran to the door. There was no police officer outside and I knew why.

  Luke was inside trying to go to work. He was standing by the cash register, his back to the door. The tall, skinny officer from out front was behind him and a burly engineer from the Department of Codes and Building Safety was in front of him. At the moment, the engineer was blocking him with his body. Luke was standing there arguing, gesturing. I couldn’t hear what my busboy was saying but I could just imagine. This was clearly not the time to question if he was involved with Benjamin and Grace.

  “Hey!” I said jovially as I walked in.

  Everyone turned.

  “Gwen, thank God!” Luke said. “These two shmucks are trying to tell me I can’t come to work today!”

  “The thing is, Luke, we’re not working here today,” I told him.

  He looked at me as though I’d told him his box turtle had escaped. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look behind you. We’re . . . renovating.”

  He turned. He just stood there, still and staring.

  Growing up, I had always thought of post-traumatic stress as something that was the purview of the military. It wasn’t. After the World Trade Center attacks, people from all social strata, young and old of all nationalities, went to pieces. Not just that day but in the weeks and months that followed. A lot of New Yorkers still look up at low-flying aircraft and their hearts speed up with a fight-or-flight response. I didn’t suffer the same way. Though I worked down the street and the attacks shocked and sickened me, they didn’t surprise me. My extended family was all about Israel and its survival and I was raised on news reports and firsthand accounts of terror attacks and war. Besides, since before the Spanish Inquisition, Jews have been more than a little paranoid. I haven’t exactly made a secret of my guardedness.

  Hope for the best, expect the worst.

  I was unhappy but I was in survival mode. I had the tools to function, to plan, to poke around for information. Luke and the others did not. This was how the disaster affected him: denial.

  Luke snapped his head back in my direction. “Thomasina . . . A.J.”

  “They were injured,” I said. “They’re in the hospital.”

  “Dani wasn’t here . . . she’s all right.”

  “Yes. You left her to come here.”

  He nodded. “Right . . . right. Crap. It happened. I didn’t imagine it.”

  “You did not,” I told him.

  I looked at the engineer and cocked my head toward the kitchen, letting him know it was okay to go back to work. He seemed dubious. The Semper Fi and MIA stickers on his hard hat suggested he might have had more experience with this sort of thing than I did. But I knew my employee and felt I could deal with this. He left.

  I stepped around the cop to stand beside Luke. The officer left my busboy with me. I took Luke by the arm and walked him to one of the dusty tables. Luke looked around the dark diner, looked at me, then looked down.

  “Someone—me—has not been doing a good job on these tables,” I said. “She ought to be fired.”

  “What am I doing?” Luke asked.

  His hands were in his lap. I scooted my chair around so I was besid
e him, laid a hand on his. “You’re trying to deal,” I said. “We all are.”

  “Am I? I thought—I mean, I was lying in bed thinking about the basement . . . then I thought, like, You dreamed that, and I had to get to work.” He looked around again. “Dani asked me where I was going and when I told her, I couldn’t understand why she was crying. Now I do.”

  I squeezed his hand. “I can’t quite believe it myself, Luke. But we’re going to be okay. We’re going to fix this.”

  “How? The kitchen is wrecked. We’re wrecked.”

  “One step at a time, that’s how,” I told him. “We get our team well again. Insurance works on rebuilding. We figure out some way that I can give everyone some money so you don’t have to go to work somewhere else.”

  “You would do that?”

  “I would and I will. I have to do it because we’re family.”

  Either Luke was genuinely moved by what I said or else it was just the little push he needed to go over the edge. Whatever the reason, he began to cry. He put his head to my shoulder and released heaving sobs. I felt the little boy in him emerge, scared and helpless, confused and grateful. Fortunately, I was only scared, and not as much as he was, so I was able to offer comfort and some strength. It wasn’t fair. I could walk away from my life down here; the others could not. If I didn’t put this place back together somehow, then that day, that hour, the way the sunlight looked outside the door, this particular street and location—they would always be vivid and pain-filled triggers. Worse, whenever Luke looked at Dani, it was possible he would see the lady who worked here and not the lover and friend who was in front of him. And that would cause everything to cascade back.

  I saw a shadow on the floor and turned. Dani had arrived. She leaned her bike against the frame and came in. The police officer turned to address her but he caught the imploring look I shot him and held up his index finger, the universal sign of “You’ve got one minute, lady.” I was grateful for that. It wasn’t the digit I typically got, and no, I mean the thumbs-up or -down sign from my staff when they needed help.

  The sun made Dani’s facial piercings shine in the dim light of the diner. With her pixie haircut and pale skin and the way she glided across the floor, she looked like a fairy from a Disney cartoon.

  I nodded and smiled a little smile to let her know everything was okay. I whispered in Luke’s ear that Dani was there.

  He nodded into my neck, lifted his head as though it weighed as much as a bowling ball, and blinked at her.

  “Sorry if I worried you,” he said.

  She smiled sweetly as she neared. “You did a little, banana bean, but as long as you’re okay—”

  “Yeah, I am. Thanks to the boss.”

  “You give good nurture,” she told me with uncommon earnestness, ignoring our usual boss-employee formality and hugging my neck.

  “Thanks. But I think you’re the one he really wants and needs.”

  I said that loud enough for Luke to hear. The couple reached in front of me and locked both hands and moved away so that Luke could stand and they could hug. If I were a Talmudist and into symbolism, I would describe this as a moment of regeneration. But I’m not. There was still a long, long way to go. Still, it was a welcome change from all the destruction, alienation, and suspicion.

  I gave them a moment, then reminded them that the place was presently unfit for habitation.

  “We have to go,” Dani said.

  “This is where we met,” Luke replied.

  “I know. It will always be, like, special.”

  With that, the youngsters broke their embrace and walked hand in hand to the front door. I heard them agree to meet at home for a delayed breakfast. She promised she would make chocolate Pop-Tarts and Eggos. Luke mmmmed. I remembered when I was a young teen and ate like that too, at the Royal Canadian Pancake House in New York. No syrup was too potent, no bacon too crispy, no portion too overwhelming. Then, my metabolism could handle anything and bupkes frightened my arteries.

  I was alone in the dining room of my deli. The police officer ignored me. I thought about calling Kane, took out my cell phone, and saw that he had left me a message. My mind was held in a kind of reflexive, electromagnetic stasis between “that’s sweet” and “don’t smother me.” I felt I should listen to the message first. For all I knew, he was calling to say he never wanted to see me again.

  “Hi, Gwen,” he said cheerfully in the message. “Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the time we spent together. Hope to see you again soon. Take care—’bye. Oh, this is Kane. In case you didn’t know. Captain Health,” he added in his stentorian voice, followed by a laugh, followed by a good-bye in his normal voice.

  He wouldn’t get points for originality but it was a menschy thing to do. I probably would see him again, though with my penchant for attempting long-term planning, however often I failed at it, I couldn’t imagine the relationship “going anywhere,” whatever that even meant. The traditional relationship goals were crumbling as heterosexual couples just lived together while gay couples married and women were able to have petri dish kids at ages that postdated menopause. What was the point of even thinking about planning?

  I got myself in motion toward the door. I saw the debris from the basement piled behind the counter: the utensils and cans and electronics that had been blown down to the basement. I decided that this was not the time to see what was salvageable. That was when I chanced to look back toward the office. The door was shut, which it rarely was during office hours; I only locked it at night because there was cash in the safe. I noticed something unusual. There was a tab of some kind sticking out from the edge, near the knob. I went over to investigate.

  There was a thin, ragged remnant of silvery duct tape stuck to the jamb. I didn’t touch it. Instead, I went to my desk drawer and got a pair of tweezers I kept for eyebrow emergencies. I plucked the tape off carefully, dropped it in a business envelope, and knew where my next stop was going to be: a place I hadn’t visited since I broke up with Grant. The Central Precinct of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department at 501 Broadway.

  Naturally, every time I passed this way and saw that street sign I got homesick for the lights and craziness and hordes of gawking tourists of the Great White Way, told myself I was crazy to be here, and briefly resolved to go back to New York ASAP. But the sharp longing always passed, replaced by a dull one, just as it did this time. And lest you think I’m whatever the modern equivalent of a broken record would be about this—a “buffering” prompt?—I’m compelled to repeat, unapologetically, what we all learned from Judy Garland, that there’s no place like . . .

  I knew the desk sergeant, Nicholas Alexander, from my Grant Daniels days. He greeted me warmly, rising like a true southern gentleman, and offering his condolences for the “situation” I was facing.

  “It isn’t like our town to be this unfriendly,” he said.

  “I know that, Sergeant.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help out.”

  “I will,” I assured him. Sgt. Alexander was like one of the cops I saw several times a week at the New York Stock Exchange, only Alexander’s accent was southern instead of Irish. They both had that kind of earnestness that made you feel you could trust them with your life. Which was the point, I supposed.

  Detective Bean was in. She came out and got me, brought me through a short corridor to the gunmetal desk that, along with several other desks, was the entirety of the precinct detective bureau. I sat in a thinly cushioned metal chair beside the desk and told her what I’d found. I presented the envelope.

  “What’s the significance?” she asked after peeking inside.

  I explained where I found it. She nodded thoughtfully.

  “You think it has to do with the explosion?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Turns out Benjamin Weszt was in my basement before the blast.”

  “Oh? Do we know why?”

  I explained that too. She asked if I thought
it was an inside job. I told her I didn’t think so. But what my inside voice was really saying was, God, I hope not.

  Bean looked more closely at the scrap in the envelope.

  “It’s possibly part of a larger piece used to keep the latch from engaging,” she said. “You can see some shredding here,” she pointed along the side, “which looks to me like someone hurriedly tried to rip it away.”

  “Because . . . I was coming?”

  “It’s possible.”

  I hadn’t thought of that but she was right. It was a quick, stringy break. I had arrived early. Benjamin’s accomplice had worked it so my door wouldn’t lock the night before. Whoever it was knew how I closed the thing, with a tug as I headed out, never checking to make sure it locked because it always did. He and his accomplice hadn’t been expecting me, so one of them tried to remove the tape before Benjamin ducked into the basement.

  What the hell could Benjamin have wanted in my office? Was he looking for files about the building? My lease agreement? Insurance costs?

  “It’ll take a few hours to get this through the system, since it’s part of a probable crime scene,” Bean said. “I’ll call you when I have results even if we can’t ID it.”

  I nodded listlessly.

  “You understand that if we find anything, it may be necessary for us to talk to whoever it is . . . possibly more.”

  “In conjunction with the explosion, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not about the office, per se.”

  “No,” she said. “Any action in that regard would be up to you.”

  I was glad about that. As I left, I found myself doing something I rarely did: I prayed to God that the office incursion and the explosion were unrelated. Given their proximity in time and space, that did not seem like a reasonable hope.

  Chapter 12

  I stopped at the Salad Barre for lunch. It was run—no surprise here—by Josephine Young, a retired ballerina who got tired of explaining to people how she stayed so trim. The quote under the name said it all: “Don’t eat pig, or like one.”

  The place had mirrored walls. There was a ballet barre on each with a plank on top that served as a table. That was standing room, announced by a sign written in Russian and given to her, according to a smaller plaque underneath, by the manager of the Kirov. The interior was filled with small round tables that were topped with old ballet photos and programs, all of them about the owner and her career in various companies around the world. There was no counter and no alcoholic beverages were served. As the menu itself declared, “There is no bar at the barre.” Josephine and her female waitstaff all dressed in a leotard, tutu, and ballet slippers—pronounced ballet, emphasis on the first syllable as proper folks do. Meals were served on point. I wondered if half the customers came to see if a tray full of food ever dropped. Not that it mattered. She had a busy and growing operation. She was also one of the restaurateurs I beat for Best Mid-range Restaurant of the Year.