A Brisket, a Casket Page 7

“Where you been?” She kept her disapproving eyes on the cart. “It’s late.”

  “Call me unreliable,” I said. And shrugged. “Go on and throw in undependable too.”

  Thom ignored that and nodded down at the top shelf. “What’s wrong with this picture?” she grumbled.

  I immediately identified the problem. You might’ve heard about the pickle principle that’s invoked with every corporate pep talk nowadays…the customer wants a little something extra, you gladly provide it and win them over. Well, surprise, surprise, it’s an idea that originated at Jewish delis. If you wanted satisfied diners, you doled out all the pickles they could eat and then some at no extra charge. At Murray’s, our policy was to overwhelm people with generous servings of kosher dills—adding a spear or two to every main course that left the kitchen, filling every pickle bowl on the tables with at least a dozen whole sours and half sours in brine.

  The confounding thing now was that there were only three or four pickles in each bowl.

  “Where’re all the dills?” I asked.

  “There you have it,” Thom said, still without looking in my direction. She raised her voice so it would carry to where the gang was eating lunch. “Appears somebody here skimped on ’em this morning.”

  Newt glanced at her over a spoonful of cholent. “Sure hope you don’t mean me.”

  “You hear someone mention your name?”

  “I’m only sayin’ not to fling around accusations.” He slowly ate his food. “Wouldn’t want you makin’ a fool of yourself, bless your heart.”

  She finally turned her attention from the cart, scowling at him across the room. Her snug pullover blouse had a bagel print at the breast line above the words BAGEL LOVIN’ MAMA—which I noted even while refusing to consider any psychosexual inferences.

  “You’re nobody to toss around blessings, Newt. Or talk about anyone else’s foolishness,” she said. “I’ll worry about who’s to blame later. All I care to know now is why there ain’t enough pickles in these bowls.”

  He grunted, plunged his spoon into his stew. “We can’t put out what we don’t have.”

  It was my turn to look at him. “Are you kidding? I ordered twenty gallons the other day.”

  “Right,” Newt said. “And the shipment came this ay-em. A whole skid load ’a frozen, battered pickles.” He paused, chewing again. “Pickle spears, to be perfectly accurate.”

  I blinked in surprise. He might as well have said we’d gotten strawberries in ketchup. Or bat-wing jelly.

  “Battered pickle spears?”

  “For deep fryin’.” Newt pulled the spoon from his mouth and twirled its handle between his fingertips, staring at it contemplatively. “The supplier you called was Billy’s Dillies on Sixteenth Avenue, right? Down there past the roundabout?”

  I nodded. It had been another instance of my choosing a name at random out of the local business-to-business phonebook, just like when I’d ordered the pastrami that turned out to be a pig. And I’d done it for the same reason—namely that I couldn’t find Murray’s distributor list.

  “I ordered sours and half sours,” I said. “How could anybody get confused?”

  “Wasn’t no confusion,” Newt said. “Accordin’ to his truck driver, Billy was all outta stock. So he went ’n sent us the battered pickles at half price to make up for it.” He shrugged. “Nothing wrong with ’em if you want a down-home treat.”

  “Newt,” I said. “Tell me something, okay? Has a Jewish deli ever, ever, ever in a million years been considered down home?”

  “Nope,” he said. “That’s why we went light with the kosher pickles we got left.”

  I expelled a sigh of frustration that went down to my ankles. Batter-fried pickles. What an incredible screwup. My mind hadn’t stopped recoiling from the concept.

  “I need to straighten this out,” I said.

  “I’d say so,” Thomasina said.

  “But first we need to talk,” I said, shooting her a look.

  She pursed her lips tightly. “I’m listenin’.”

  “No,” I said. “Not here.”

  “Then where?”

  Good question, I thought. My office was a cluttered, nerve-wracking sty. That made avoiding it imperative when I confronted her—the idea of which was sufficiently nerve-wracking in itself.

  I scanned the room until my eyes settled on the kitchen doors. Feeling a burst of inspiration, I took hold of Thom’s sleeve and hauled her toward them, dragging her through onto the staircase’s lower landing before she could overcome her shock and wrestle free.

  “Cranky, ain’t you?” She frowned as the doors swung shut behind us. “You plan on hangin’ onto my arm till I lose circulation?”

  I let go, and she stood there rubbing it.

  “Tell me what you know about an attorney named Cyrus Liarson,” I said.

  She abruptly stopped rubbing and fell into blockish silence, staring straight over my head.

  “And while you’re at it, give me the skinny on his boss Royce Ramsey,” I went on.

  I could have taken my time counting to ten before Thom deigned to lower her eyes to mine.

  “They’re the ones got you so upset?” she asked finally.

  I shook my head. “No, Thom. Real-estate sharks, I can handle. What upsets me is finding out that you’ve spoken to Liarson. More than once. And you never bothered saying a word to me—a single word—about your conversations with him. Or giving me his messages.”

  Thomasina shrugged her shoulders.

  “Guess I must’ve just forgot,” she said. “I do apologize. Now can I get back to work?”

  “Forgot?” I said with open disbelief. “Look, tell me the truth. How come you didn’t want me to know about those phone calls?”

  She clammed up again. I wasn’t sure what to make of it…although I’d been harboring an ugly suspicion.

  “Thom,” I said, “were you trying to cut some kind of separate deal with those two predators?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I repeat, you tell me,” I said. “Because if you think anything will convince me to sell this restaurant…”

  She snorted. “You got some kinda nerve makin’ that vile suggestion.”

  “I do? Who’s the one with the secrets here?”

  Thom put her hands on her hips and thrust out her chin. “You’re just loaded with questions, aren’t you?”

  “No. I only asked a few. And I still haven’t gotten a single answer.”

  She held her rigid pose, but I was in no mood for her offended-diva shtick, and just stood there regarding her stonily. If Thom intended to be the immovable object, I’d be the irresistible force.

  At last, she made a clucking sound with her tongue and shook her head. “I talked to Liarson, okay?” she said. “But not before talkin’ to Royce Ramsey.”

  “Ramsey? He called you too?”

  “No,” she said. “He came here himself.”

  “Came to the restaurant?”

  “Walked right through the front door like the devil in the flesh.”

  My eyes had widened. “When was this?”

  “Must’ve been end of January, beginnin’ of February.”

  “That’s months ago,” I said. “Around when Uncle Murray died.”

  “Maybe two, three days after the funeral,” Thom said with a nod. “You’d come and gone back north in a blink. Right then, nobody knew he’d left you the deli or had the least notion what would happen to it. Wasn’t till weeks later that we even heard he’d prepared a will.”

  I nodded. That whole awful period wasn’t something I could’ve forgotten if I’d tried. The news of my uncle’s fatal heart attack had struck me like lightning, coming when I was tied up with two different legal proceedings—one a final settlement hearing with my soon-to-be-ex Phil, another involving what turned out to be my final assignment with Thacker Consulting, an audit that required my appearance as a professional witness in a complicated bank fraud prosecution.
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  Knowing Murray would be buried within two days of his death in observance of Jewish tradition, I’d rushed to take care of my pressing affairs in New York before I left for the funeral—huddling with federal attorneys for a long, overnight trial rehearsal in the fraud case, getting a postponement of my divorce court appearance, and booking last-minute airline reservations amidst it all. I’d flown down to Nashville in a stunned, exhausted daze, staggered through the memorial service, and cabbed directly back to the airport from the cemetery so I could be back in New York in enough time to give my expert testimony. My only conscious goal during the flight home had been to keep from sinking into an inescapable depression…and even now, when I could almost believe I’d recovered from simultaneously saying good-bye to my uncle and my marriage, my memories of the trip inevitably came in dreary shades of gray.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “How could Ramsey meet you at the restaurant? It closed down when Murray passed away. The very same day, in fact. And didn’t reopen till after I moved down from New York last spring.”

  Thom frowned. “It wasn’t like your uncle warned us he was goin’ anywhere,” she said. “Far as we knew, the deli was at the end of the line without him. We had reservations to cancel. And there was a kitchen full of food nobody was ever gonna eat. We had to clean the floors an’ tables, empty pantries, do all manner of other jobs. Everyone who worked for Murray came and did their share…and I might add that not a single member of the crew expected a minute’s pay.”

  “Is that when Ramsey showed up?” I looked at her. “When you were here taking care of loose ends?”

  “Bright an’ early one morning, before the rest arrived,” Thom said with a nod. “He puts his face to the door, sees me, and raps on the glass. The man struts around like a kingfish, gussied in a white suit and fancy straw hat with a feather in the band. I got no idea who he is or what he wants. But I reckon he could be one of those Music Row executive types Murray chummed around with…that maybe he hasn’t heard Murray’s passed on and wants to say hello. Or make a lunch booking, who knows?”

  “So you let him in,” I said.

  “I did. Figured I’d give him the bad news.”

  “And then…?”

  “I find out he knows all about what happened. Calls me by name like we’re old friends and expresses his condolences. Got this big, wide smile on his face, never mind anyone with two eyes in his head can see I’m torn to shreds inside.”

  I was silent for a moment. Thom and Uncle Murray’s on-again, off-again romance may have been the worst-kept secret in Nashville since Clay Aiken’s gayness—and I had a hunch someone like Ramsey would’ve done his due diligence. I also had a feeling I knew the reason for his visit.

  “Everybody knew you were the deli’s manager,” I said. “He thought Murray left it to you…asked if you wanted to sell. Is that it?”

  Thom’s jaw tightened. “Far as he was concerned, it was a sure thing. ‘Hear you might be looking to ease yourself of this property,’ he says. Then dishes some hokum about how he’d take care of me and the staff, give us new jobs.”

  “And you blew him off.”

  “Like the crumb he is,” Thom said. “It was easy, since I couldn’t have sold what wasn’t mine in the first place. Not that I’d have done it even if I had inherited the restaurant. Show me a man that smiles when he’s giving his sympathies, I’ll show you a honey-tongued serpent in a fruit tree.”

  Which mirrored my impression of his sidekick Liarson, though I might have expressed the feeling a bit differently. And which led me right back around to my original question to Thom.

  I thought in silence again. Outside the kitchen doors, I could hear the rattle of silverware, bus carts rolling, chairs being pushed into place…the sounds of my crew preparing to open for lunch after finishing their meal together. I needed to wrap things up.

  “I still don’t understand why you didn’t mention Ramsey’s offer before. Or Liarson’s follow-up calls.”

  She shrugged, her chin angling back upward with indignation. “I ain’t the only one,” she said. “Might as well ask how come nobody else did either.”

  Something inside me dropped with a hard crash. It was very possibly my heart.

  “What do you mean nobody else?” I asked.

  “Far as I’m aware, Liarson’s talked to Newt, Vernon, and maybe Jimmy,” Thom said. “He contacted them after you got here. Made sure they know there would be jobs for them if you decide to sell out.”

  I looked at her, speechless. At last I understood. And I was almost wishing I’d been able to keep my stubborn curiosity in check.

  “You don’t trust me,” I said. “None of you.”

  Thom’s forehead creased in another frown as she fixed her green eyes on mine. “Missy,” she said. “I hope you won’t take offense…but the honest truth is we hardly know you.”

  With that, she stepped down off the landing and pushed through the kitchen doors into the dining room. I’d meant to ask her a second set of questions about something completely unrelated to Dracula and Renfield…err, Ramsey and Liarson…but was too dejected to say another word, let alone try and stop her. Instead, I stood there alone at the bottom of the stairs, staring at the doors for a long while after they had swung shut on me.

  At last, I listlessly turned and climbed the stairs to my office, put the shopping bag I’d cadged from Happy down atop a pile of cartons, and flopped into the chair behind my desk. I didn’t have the gumption to unpack the bag. And as trounced as I felt, it was doubtful even chocolate comforts could cheer me up. Besides, my appetite was nonexistent.

  I sighed heavily. The night before I’d been incapable of giving Goo Goo bars a fair shake. Now I was shunning my dietary staples altogether, proof positive things had gone from bad to worse.

  Bummer.

  Scary, scary bummer.

  Chapter Seven

  Fifteen minutes later, I decided I’d maxed out on slouching around in a state of woeful depression. Sitting up reasonably straight behind the desk, I fished my cell phone from my purse and called Artemis Duff. I had asked him to update and computerize Uncle Murray’s bookkeeping records—such as they were—and decided I’d might as well see how he was coming along with that almost impossible task.

  “Gwennie!” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”

  I suddenly felt my mood lift. Gwennie. It was no fluke that the only other Nashvillian who’d called me that was my uncle. Murray had introduced me to him back in New York a long, long time ago.

  “Must be our telepathic link,” I said. “How’re things? I haven’t seen you at the deli in a while.”

  “I’ve been in and out. Took some books from Murray’s office—sorry, your office. You mean Newt and Thom didn’t mention it? I must’ve passed them four, five times the other day.”

  “I haven’t heard a peep about an Artie sighting from them,” I said. “But I did notice that some of the ledgers were moved around and figured we must have missed each other. That’s why I decided to give you a ring.”

  “Oh.” He sounded a little surprised. “I thought it was because of my e-mail. I fired one off to you this morning.”

  “Haven’t checked my messages, to be honest. I assume you know what’s been going on around here.”

  “It’s impossible not to know.”

  I smiled grimly. “Guess you’d have to be somewhere out of touch with civilization, huh?”

  “Way out, I’m afraid,” he said. “That’s why I decided to send the e-mail rather than call…I figured you didn’t need me adding to your immediate problems.”

  I crinkled my forehead. “What’s the matter, Art?”

  He hesitated. “This is rotten timing…I should have waited.”

  My crinkles crinkled. I was certain the bags under my eyes had finally cracked my super-duper-concealing cream. It would have taken a massive Botox transfusion to do anything for them.

  “Come on, Artie,” I said. “Let’s have it.”


  He paused again. “We should meet. I can be at your office in half an hour. If that works for you.”

  Now I was officially nervous.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “We probably ought to talk down in the restaurant, though. Or go out somewhere for coffee. I don’t have to tell you the office is a shambles right now—”

  “Let’s use it anyway,” Artie said. “Thanks to Murray, when I think about that office, I think shambles. I can pile a few cartons on top of each other and plunk down on them. It’ll be like old times.”

  I chuckled. Artie and Murray went way back. Though Artie had been born in Tennessee, his dad had been a U.S. Army officer who moved the Duffs to Fort Dix, New Jersey when Artie was a young boy. Then around 1980 or so, he’d answered Murray’s classified ad for musicians in the Village Voice and the pair became the Lennon-McCartney of the local country music scene. Or could have if there’d been a local country music scene. Which there admittedly wasn’t within at least a hundred miles of the city…but why be nitpicky?

  “See you in a little,” I said, and hit the disconnect button.

  Artie arrived ten minutes early with a knock on my door, not having bothered to ask anyone on my crew to show him upstairs. I let him in, and he put down his briefcase so we could exchange warm hugs. Then he went about hauling boxes over to my desk for his makeshift chair.

  Concerned as I’d been that he was bringing me more bad news, Artie’s presence was still welcome…maybe because my first memories of him were so deeply bound to my uncle. When we met I’d been in my early teens, and Artie, who was probably fifteen years older, had been playing with the band. I remembered him as a lean, bookish guy with short, dark brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses who always wore a blazer, slacks, and loafers—not your typical image of a drummer, but exactly what you’d expect from an accountant.

  Nowadays Artie’s hair was a salt-and-peppery gray, his face was a little plumper, and his waist-line had broadened with middle age. But he still wore his customary laid-back outfit and, all things considered, didn’t really look that different.

  It would’ve been very easy—and wrong—to think his conservative appearance meant he’d been less of a talented and dedicated musician than Murray. But I did feel it hinted at his far greater pragmatism…a very important attribute as it turned out, since it was fair to say my uncle would eventually owe a club-sandwich-sized portion of his success to him.