A Brisket, a Casket Read online

  Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I’d seen Buster’s face turn eggplant-purple before he went down.

  I stayed rooted in place for an endless moment. Buster wasn’t moving, another bad sign. Dimly now, I heard a siren howl somewhere in the background.

  A.J. looked at me in growing dismay. “You figure an ambulance could’ve come this quick?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Actually,” I said, “I think it’s the pastrami.”

  Chapter Two

  “How can you tell me nobody goes in or out, Red?” Luke asked the aptly carrot-topped cop blocking the kitchen entrance. “You realize I got perishable meat over here?”

  “If I didn’t, you’d still be stuck in traffic,” the cop said. Arms folded across his chest, he nodded sideways toward the karaoke stage, where several other uniformed policemen had gathered around the sprawled body of Buster Sergeant. “Problem’s the perishable meat over there. And he ain’t packed in dry ice same’s your corned beef—”

  “It’s a pastrami,” Luke said.

  “Whatever.”

  “There’s a difference.”

  “Like I said, whatever.” Red frowned. “I swear, you ain’t never changed.”

  “Huh?”

  I watched the cop uncross his arms.

  “Been spoiled rotten since you were this high,” he said, holding his palm about three feet above the floor. “You can gripe till the cows come home or boo-hoo-hoo about it in one’a your cryin’ songs, but you ain’t gonna get your way just ’cause—”

  “Hold on there. Was that a knock on my song-writin’?”

  The cop shrugged again. “I’m just sayin’ you’ll have to wait for us to get done.”

  “And when’s that gonna be?”

  “Whenever it is, cousin.”

  It was Luke’s turn to frown. He hefted the carton he’d schlepped in from outside the restaurant. “Talk about cows…the hunk I got in my hands weighs more’n thirty pounds before the ice. And costs over five hundred dollars. That about right, Nash?”

  He looked over at me. Red the cop’s eyes followed. While I wasn’t thrilled to find myself in their trajectory, I knew Luke needed some backup. The carton was heavy, sure. But he was arguing at least partly on my behalf.

  “We spent exactly five hundred fifty-four dollars on the pastrami,” I said. “Plus another thousand and change on shipping.”

  Red stared at me. “Mercy,” he said.

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “I definitely didn’t get any when it came to the price.”

  Red shook his head sympathetically, but didn’t budge from in front of the kitchen’s double doors. I could see Newt and his staff behind the doors, crowding to peer through their rectangular glass panes. They were stuck there on the other side, having been instructed to stay put by the cops.

  “I truly apologize for this inconvenience, ma’am.” Red expelled a breath, tipped his head toward the karaoke stage again. “But there’s a lot goin’ on, as y’all can see.”

  That I could. Crouched over Buster Sergeant’s body were two paramedics who’d dashed in from an EMT wagon moments after the squad cars showed up. A cop stood by the stage watching them work, with more uniformed policemen crowding the front of the restaurant—among them a tall, handsome officer with a pad and pencil talking to A.J. and Thomasina over by the register. Another pair of cops had hustled the members of the Yakima-Sergeant’s Cars and Trucks party toward a corner booth for interviews. The Japanese corporate types were still wearing cowboy hats that were mostly too large on them. I noticed they’d spun halfway around their heads and in some cases dipped low over their eyes. Or both.

  From the look of things, not to mention the sheer number of policemen, you would’ve thought somebody had gotten murdered—and that confused me. Buster was singing up a storm when he collapsed. Everyone’s eyes, including mine, were on him. I didn’t know if he’d had a sudden heart failure, a stroke, or what, but felt he’d clearly died of natural causes. I realized that Buster was a big wheel in Nashville, no pun intended. I figured that was why a whole swarm of NMPD cruisers had come screaming up to the deli after Luke’s cousin and pastrami escort, Red the cop, arrived to find him motionless onstage. But the place resembled a major crime scene, the police cars outside clogging Broadway’s main drag, their roof bars flashing into the already garish neon glow of the honky-tonks to draw gawks from curious nightclubbers.

  Insensitive as it might sound, I was worried about the harm that sort of attention might do to business. A customer dropping dead on my first Kosher Karaoke night—a famous customer, no less—was about the worst sort of publicity imaginable. I knew the local media would be all over the story and could almost hear the nightly news promo. “Coming up at eleven: Main Course, Heart Attack! King of the Road Dead Ends at Murray’s Deli.”

  I frowned. A man had passed away in my restaurant and here I was consumed with self-interest. I felt desperately ashamed.

  Okay. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. But I sincerely wished Buster was alive, well, and enjoying his dinner. And I did have a desperate yearning for some comfort chocolate. My automatic grab would be a Nestlé’s Crunch mini-bar from the bag up in my office, although I also had some Goo Goo clusters that my next-door neighbor Cazzie had given me to check out. Too bad the office stairs were off limits in the kitchen—an architectural quirk that had something to do with the location of a support wall and the interior redesign that had turned a decrepit century-old tavern into Murray’s.

  Chocolate and a smoke, I thought longingly. They went together like…well, chocolate and a smoke.

  “Nash, you look a fright.”

  Oh joy, I thought. Thomasina had arrived to further undermine my confidence. Was there such a thing as an anti-cavalry?

  I looked around, my eyes climbing to her face. At five-foot-eight, she stood a full six inches taller than I did, making me glad she favored slip-ons with a medium-wedge heel to reduce her intimidating height advantage. Now she’d pushed over through a group of cops, leaving the officer with the notepad still talking to A.J at the front counter. Or more likely trying to score a date, since the pad was back in his breast pocket, his eyes were locked on hers, and they were swapping big, bright, cutesy smiles.

  “Thanks,” I said to the countenance looming overhead. “Utter catastrophes have that effect on my appearance.”

  A don’t-get-uppity look smashed down on me. Thom had a thing for color-coordinated outfits, and tonight was wearing tan slacks with beige wedges and a sea green Indian blouse the same color as her eyes (she claimed they were her best feature). There were little iridescent white beads across the breast of the gauzy top, emphasizing what she boasted was her second best attribute.

  After a long moment of gazing upon Mount Thomasina with dread and awe, I turned toward the booth where the cops had gathered the Yakima-Sergeant party. The brim of his outsized Stetson dunked way down over his nose, one of the Japanese execs stood there taking questions from a burly officer I doubted he could even see.

  “Was Mr. Sergeant actin’ funny or anything before he collapsed?” I heard the cop ask him.

  “Yes, funny!” The exec gave a wistful smile, his mouth the only part of his face left uncovered by the hat. “He a funny, funny man.”

  The cop blinked, puzzled. “Think maybe you misunderstood,” he said. “What I want to know is…did he do anything, like, out of the ordinary?”

  “Yes, yes. Comedy and beautiful karaoke singing! Mr. Sergeant was total entertainment!”

  I looked back at Thomasina. “This can’t be real. I’m in bed with a high temperature, right? Having nightmarish hallucinations.”

  “That’s so. I think the same fever’s messing with my brain.” She glanced past me toward Luke and his cousin. “You got any idea what they’re tanglin’ over?”

  “Nobody’s allowed in or out of the kitchen,” I replied with a nod at Red. “He said something about preserving the integrity of the investigation.”<
br />
  “Investigation? What’s to investigate?”

  “Well, under the circumstances, I assume he meant Buster Sergeant’s death…”

  “It isn’t like someone on the kitchen staff went crazy on him. The man kicked all on his own!”

  “Look, you asked what’s going on. And I told you. Doesn’t mean I agree with it.”

  Thom’s scowl deepened. “Red got his nerve,” she said, raising her voice loud enough so he could hear. “We been takin’ good care of the boys from the station for years.”

  Nice, I thought. Perfect. Antagonizing the cops was always helpful.

  I felt my molars grind together as Red peered over at us from the kitchen doors.

  “Thomasina, I resent that comment,” he said. “None of us ever come in here expectin’ special treatment.”

  She glowered. “That correct?”

  “I’d say it is absolutely, one-hundred-percent correct.”

  “Well, then, I’d suggest you peek at the menu,” she said. “Surprise, surprise, you’ll find out egg creams ain’t on the house.”

  Before things could escalate, I edged between Thomasina and the cop. “He’s got his orders, Thom,” I said, my back to him. “I don’t see how we can get around them.”

  Looking disgusted, she shifted her attention from Red to Luke. “Say what you want about me bein’ a prude, it’s my opinion the kid’s tight jeans ain’t proper restaurant attire,” she told me in a lowered voice. “Luke can show his package all he wants while he’s shakin’ his hips next door at Trudy’s. But nobody comes here to get porn served with the pastrami. You really think a waiter ought to share that much personal information with folks?”

  I gave him a hopefully inconspicuous sidelong glance, wondering if Thomasina the Pure considered her huggy Indian top any less info-packed.

  “Can’t see how it hurts,” I said, clearing my throat. “But I don’t get what that has to do with anything right now. Or am I somehow missing your point?”

  Thom fixed me in a hard stare. “My point, so it’s clear, is that in spite of Red’s thick skull, I can’t blame him for not takin’ Luke seriously,” she grunted after about ten seconds, stepping away.

  “Hold it,” I said. “Where are you going?”

  “To give our blue-denim loverboy some help,” she said. “I see no good reason for keeping those kitchen doors shut—”

  “One minute, Thomasina,” somebody said behind us. “That isn’t for you to decide.”

  She paused in midstep at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. Or more accurately, unfamiliar to me.

  We spun toward the main aisle, where I noticed a couple of things at the same time. One was the emergency techs wheeling Buster Sergeant toward the door on a gurney, a sheet pulled over his head—not a positive clinical sign. The other was the tall, lean guy approaching us in a charcoal sport jacket and tan slacks, his dark brown eyes very intent.

  “Kind of you to visit, Beau McClintock,” Thom said. And, yes, that was very definitely sarcasm dripping from her words. “Beau’s a detective with the Metro police. And an old friend. Don’t see him much these days, but he always shows up for happy occasions.”

  Deee-ripping.

  He looked at her pointedly before shifting his attention to me. “How do you do, Ms….”

  “Katz,” I said. “Gwen Katz.”

  McClintock nodded. No handshake offered.

  “You’re the deli’s new owner?” he said. “Murray’s niece?”

  I had a moment to look surprised as I eyed the shield on his lapel pocket.

  “Right to both,” I said. “Detective, we’ve got a horrible situation…”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s why I’m here.”

  I stood feeling boneheaded. Sure, why else?

  “Beau, listen up,” Thom said. “How about you just tell your officers we can open the kitchen doors?”

  “Sorry, I can’t,” McClintock said. “A man’s died in the restaurant—”

  “Not officially,” one of the techs pushing the gurney shouted from behind McClintock. “Officially, he’s showing no vital signs.”

  “But you’ve stopped trying to resuscitate him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And covered up his face.”

  “Right, right.”

  “Meaning I can assume Mr. Sergeant isn’t among the living.”

  “He’s a stone-cold goner, you want my unofficial judgment.” The tech and his partner were maneuvering the gurney past the front counter. “I’m just sayin’, we’re being technical, the coroner’s got to pronounce him DOA at the hospital—”

  “I hear you,” McClintock said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” the tech shouted over his shoulder.

  McClintock released a long breath, then watched as the gurney was wheeled out onto the street and loaded aboard the waiting emergency vehicle. Finally, he looked back at Thom.

  “Sorry for the eruption,” he said.

  “That’s twice you apologized since you walked in.”

  “I suppose.”

  “So when you gonna quit addin’ to your sorrys and do right by lettin’ us open the kitchen?”

  He looked straight at her again. “My men still have work to do. Bottom line, nothing changes until they’re finished.”

  Thomasina’s eyes blazed with anger. I imagined their heat rays searing the tips of McClintock’s ears so they crisped like those of the hog that had started off the night’s assorted problems. Problems that now included one of Nashville’s most prominent citizens dropping dead while performing extraordinary and beautiful karaoke at the restaurant.

  But McClintock’s ears didn’t crisp, curl, or even slightly singe. Nor did any other visible part of his body. He just faced her in unruffled silence.

  “What sort of work?” I broke in before Mount Thom could rumble again. “It isn’t as if a crime was committed—”

  “No one’s suggesting that,” McClintock interrupted.

  “But if Buster died of natural causes…”

  “No one’s saying that either.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  He shot me a pointed look. “I’m not aware of any rule that says I have to explain my job to you.”

  “I didn’t mean to be difficult…”

  “Once again, Ms. Katz, I’m here on police work. It’s unfortunate if that puts you out. But a man has died. And there’s a chance we’ll need samples to determine why it happened.”

  “Samp—you mean food samples?”

  McClintock nodded so faintly it seemed an inconvenience. “It’s important that no cooked or uncooked food leave the kitchen. The same goes for leftovers. I don’t want your people disposing of anything from inside the restaurant…not a single table scrap.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it. And then just stared at him in baffled silence.

  “How about this pastrami? Since technically it ain’t from the restaurant? Being it wasn’t here when Sergeant kicked the bucket.”

  That was from Luke, who’d apparently been preparing to jump headlong into the breach.

  I looked at him. Thomasina and McClintock did too. He’d slouched forward a little from holding the heavy cooler over by the kitchen doors, where his cousin Red was still playing the role of human roadblock.

  “I’ll have one of my men take it to the lab for trace analysis,” McClintock said.

  Trace analysis? Luke’s face was shocked—and uncharacteristically timid. I didn’t blame him. He needed help explaining. The pastrami had set me back over fifteen hundred dollars.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “What he means is that it came from—”

  McClintock snapped around to face me. “I got him the first time.”

  “Detective, listen, I’m not sure you did,” I persisted. “See, that pastrami was really, really expensive. I flew it in all the way from Hollywood on a private jet—”

  McClintock brought up his palm in a silencing gesture.
r />   “We’ll be sure to give it full red-carpet treatment,” he said, and walked off without another word.

  I watched him a moment, at a total loss. Then turned to Thomasina. “What the hell is his problem?”

  She frowned.

  “There goes that foul mouth again,” she said.

  I was in my tiny shipwreck of an office above the delicatessen looking at a framed 8x10 photo of Uncle Murray and me. Murray had hung it to the left of my desk back when it was his desk, right above a battered hardshell acoustic guitar case leaning upright against the wall. The case—a Gibson—had been there the day I arrived from New York and did nothing but take up space. But I hadn’t had the heart to move it elsewhere. It reminded me too much of my uncle…as did the cover of an old Loretta Lynn LP beside my photo, though in a different way.

  Titled “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath,” it showed Loretta wearing a teensy Indian mini-dress with beaded tassels hanging over her thighs. The personalized autograph written across those same shapely bare thighs read, “What you thinkin’ about, Murray? LL.”

  As if she’d needed to ask.

  It was now five minutes past midnight. At around eleven-thirty, the last of the police officers and evidence techs had left the restaurant below, parading off with Ziploc bags full of table scraps and armloads of perishables from our freezers and refrigerators. My customers and serving staff had been allowed to go home long before that, and although the kitchen was no longer under cordon, Newt and Jimmy had stuck around to help Thomasina put it—and the dining room—back together again.

  All the deli’s horses and all the deli’s men, I thought moodily.

  With the cops gone, I’d stepped out onto the street for a smoke. But before I could end my latest cigarette abstinence streak at four days and counting, I’d turned back inside without lighting it and pushed through the kitchen doors, thankful the office was finally accessible again. Then I’d walked upstairs, gotten a Goo Goo cluster and Nestlé bar out of my top drawer, and set them in front of me as I sat studying their wrappers and deciding which one to greedily ingest.