Sally squinted down at me on the floor. “Your grandmother’s boyfriend, and you don’t know him?” she said in a testy kind of way.
I said the only thing that would explain it. “She’s from Genoa.” Choo Choo and Joe grabbed me by my arms and pulled me to my feet. Since Sally didn’t seem to get the point, I went on, “They don’t talk.” Then I added: “They cook and they paint and they go to sea.”
Dana looked at me quizzically. “I thought Maria Pia was born outside Philly?”
Merriam Webster, un•help•ful, adj.: see Dana. “She was, but her family’s from Genoa. It’s the same thing.”
Sally fixed me with a skeptical look. “That still doesn’t explain why you don’t know—”
I sighed. “Maria Pia is very private about . . . the things she’s very private about.” Hearing myself, I winced. If only this detective knew my grandmother, she wouldn’t even bother with the question. I ask you, what good’s a reputation if it doesn’t give you a pass in the crazy department? Has this Sally person never been to Miracolo? Doesn’t she eat?
I exchanged a look with Landon, who was crouched in the carnage of African violets, picking up shards of pottery.
“I completely get it,” put in Dana, bumping up against me in her beige silk pants.
As I gave Detective Sally my grandmother’s name and contact information, I thought about poor, konked Arlen Mather, who would never again be able to sample Maria Pia’s, er, delights.
Joe clapped a hand on my quivering shoulder and told me I could clean myself up in the workroom in the back. Then he started to sweep the mess into a pile. I pulled the broom from his hand, telling him, “My mess, my sweep.” Then I sniffed and added, “And my bill.”
“No problem.”
The blond detective jiggled her pencil, which looked as nibbled as her nails. And mine. “Who has a key to your restaurant?”
Holding their collective breath, Dana, Landon, and Choo Choo turned to me, as wide-eyed as a colony of meerkats. They must have felt the awful truth coming before I even thought it through. “I have two. The one on my key ring, and the spare I keep at Jolly’s for emergencies.”
The meerkats were nodding their approval.
“Then Mar-Jo Properties has one—that’s our landlord.” I held up three fingers. Then my mind slowed down, with no more obvious key holders to report. No pianist yet, no needy, possessive boyfriends, no—
Wait.
“Kayla!” I blurted.
But then Landon held up a finger. “No, no,” he announced, “just yesterday I saw Kayla hand over a key to—”
And we all watched while his poor face lost all expression.
“Yes?” intoned Sally.
“To our nonna.” We could hardly hear him. “Kayla was returning Maria Pia’s key.”
“But that’s for the Quaker Hills Cookbook Club,” I warbled. “A book club for food geeks. They meet the first Tuesday morning of the month, and they critique the recipes in all the newest cookbooks.” Was I in full babble mode yet? “Then they all eat egg-white omelets with asiago cheese that Nonna prepares. She’s the club treasurer.”
Or, for that matter, breathing?
Sally snapped her notebook shut, turned on her stylish boot heels, and left, throwing something back to me about more questioning later.
Landon handed Joe Beck the broken pieces he had picked up.
Dana stroked my hair behind my ear again.
Choo Choo, in a hoodie as big and green as all the Poconos, whispered, “It doesn’t mean she did it, you know.” Which is the first time that thought got voiced. That Nonna might have done it.
“We’ll clear her name,” announced Dana in the evangelical voice she had used three years ago as the lead in Anything Goes at the local Windmill Theater. “And we’ll do it starting now.” Because Maria Pia has one of those combustible personalities that wouldn’t come across well once the cops started to dig.
My cousins got noisily on board, but Choo Choo, scowling through his carefully trimmed scruff, looked grim and fatalistic. I thought it would probably take more than us to clear our beloved nonna’s name, but we were the place to start. Landon announced a potluck at his condo that evening at seven, with only happy food allowed—whatever that was.
Then I told them all, “Now go help Kayla take all her produce to the farmer’s market. And don’t forget to invite her to the potluck.” That call to arms mobilized the three of them, and they left the Beck flower shop.
Once they were out of sight, my shoulders dropped and I turned to Joe. “I can’t afford four hundred dollars an hour,” I said quietly.
Joe Beck pursed his lips. “You may not need to. Let’s see where the investigation goes.” He plucked a mashed pink violet from my sleeve. “If you do end up needing legal help, I offer a good-neighbor discount.”
My throat started to close up. “Since when?”
“That’s not the right question.”
My voice slid up toward the crybaby range. “Then what’s the right question?”
“ ‘Joe, will you show me where I can get cleaned up?’ ”
“That’s good,” I managed, shielding my eyes with my hand, but not before he noticed my tears and got all awkward.
He patiently stared at the embossed tin ceiling while I held up a finger, then my whole hand, followed by two fingers pressed to my lips, then my whole fist like you do when you try not to burp. He read the hand signals just right. “Take your time,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
I wasn’t sure time was going to make any difference. Because whether it was now or days from now, all I could think of was that my grandmother had a key to Miracolo—and a murdered boyfriend inside.
* * *
These were the choices: Drive across town to hold my grandmother’s hand and tell her about Arlen Mather before the cops came calling. Or . . . go through with the interview and audition of the only applicant for the pianist job at our cop-overrun restaurant.
I made the only possible decision.
After leaving the pianist, Mrs. Bryce Crawford, a voice mail about the change of venue, I downed one of the falafels Joe Beck bought from Sprouts after he set up the keyboard in the ikebana classroom, then turned the door sign to Closed and left to meet a client.
I figured we needed a pianist more than Nonna needed me to hold her hand. She was a curiously unsentimental woman. So I let myself off the tell-Nonna-her-beau’s-got-a-little-less-on-his-mind-lately hook for the time being. And though it’s a terrible thing to say, I didn’t put it past her to be secretly thrilled to have such a dramatic story to tell over customers’ tiramisus.
She’d be okay.
Then I growled the growl I usually save for Nonna when she’s being her most maddening, pulled out my phone, and left her the weirdest voice mail ever. “Just a heads-up, Nonna. Your boyfriend has turned up beaned”—wait, don’t hold out false hope that she could be schlepping stuffed artichokes to an ICU somewhere—“and killed in the restaurant. I’m really sorry to tell you all this in a voice mail, Nonna, but I wanted to let you know to expect the cops on your doorstep anytime now.” How on earth do you end a message like that? “Sorry,” I muttered lamely, then hung up.
I was determined that Mrs. Crawford, whoever she turned out to be, would not pad away from here in her tan orthopedic shoes and Church Lady coif without having signed my employment contract. Even if her piano skills went no further than “Bringing in the Sheaves” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” she was mine. At this point I could live with anything.
And then, she arrived.
“Is this the place for the piano audition?” said a deep, nasal voice.
I stopped playing my two-handed “Chopsticks” and eyed her. She was a tall woman dressed in a lime-green cocktail dress and matching heels. Plunging neckline, wide-brimmed hat, white fishnet gloves, black-and-lime square shoulder bag.
“Temporarily.” I stood and thrust my hand at her. “A spot of trouble up the street at the restaurant.” Although “spot of trouble” sounded less like homicide and more like a deep-fryer malfunction. “I’m Eve Angelotta, the head chef.”
“Mrs. Bryce Crawford.” Now that we were in handshake range, I saw she had the shoulders of a linebacker, wiry hair of strangely indeterminate color, and what could only be pancake makeup over her face and neck. Nicely blended. Red lip liner, coral lipstick. The fake eyelashes were like awnings over her pale green eyes.
“And may I call you . . . Bryce?”
She didn’t even blink. “You may call me Mrs. Crawford.”
“Of course.” Maybe I should head over to give Nonna the bad news, after all . . .
She peeled off her gloves, slapping one lightly on the keyboard. “Is this the instrument I’ll be using?”
“Only for the audition. There’s a Yamaha U1 in the restaurant.”
“Mm,” Mrs. Bryce Crawford observed noncommittally.
I handed her a ballpoint pen and an application for employment, which she filled out on the counter by the cash register. Then we sat almost knee to knee in folding chairs used for the ikebana classes, while I tried to look employerlike as I glanced at her application.
She crossed her legs, which had been recently waxed. The heels were four inches, easy. Mrs. Crawford gave a Northeast Philly address, three clubs where she’d played most recently—not a church on the list—and a degree in piano performance from Berklee College of Music. No year. But then, I hadn’t asked. What I was mostly aware of, as I looked between the lime-green Amazon looking at me inscrutably and the application form, was a very serious omission.
Gender.
* * *
Not a deal breaker.
Not when she played “Tiger Rag” like it was the last piece either of us would hear in this lifetime, so it had better be great. When she finished, I clapped like I used to when I was hysterical that Tinkerbell would die, pushed the contract at her, explained I couldn’t pay her anywhere near what she was worth, and signed her up.
As she slipped on her white fishnet gloves and adjusted the wide-brimmed hat, I trotted to the refrigerator out front and pulled out a single lavender rose, which I presented to her. Mrs. Crawford lifted an eyebrow, inclined her head, and turned on her dyed-to-match heels.
I watched her head north on Market Square, past Akahana the Japanese bag lady, making her wandering way along the wide sidewalk, past Mr. von Veltheim the baker, adjusting his blue awning, past the Bucks County Community College student twosomes.
I cleaned up the rest of the wreckage of violets, cramming plants into new pots I found stashed in the back room, and swept. The four-tiered display stand was now a three-tiered display stand, but other than that, it didn’t look too bad. Maybe my good-neighbor discount would apply to the violets . . .
While I swept, I wondered about the keys to Miracolo.
One was on my key chain. But what about the one I stashed at Jolly’s? I suddenly felt queasy about it, but there was nothing I could do until I got through my to-do list. As I swept the last of the spilled potting soil out the front door, I gazed longingly at Sprouts, where the tunes of Joni Mitchell escaped from the doorway.
If I sniffed really hard, I swear I could smell the lentil salad.
And then my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of the bar apron I had found on a hook in the back room and flipped it open.
“ ‘O blind lust! O foolish wrath! Who so dost goad us on—’ ” my grandmother began oratorically.
Oh, God, not Dante. He was her fallback guy, the go-to poet she turned to in life’s toughest moments. (Me, I read bumper stickers.) She liked him so much she even forgave him for being born in Florence, which fell south of my Genovese grandmother’s weird equivalent of a Mason-Dixon line.
“Nonna?” I took a breath. “I’m glad you called.” So, two new things in one day. Dealing with dead bodies, happy to hear from difficult grandmother. I glanced down the street, where one of the black-and-white cop cars had left, replaced by the coroner’s van.
But she wasn’t done. I could picture her eyes closed as she went on poetizing about ramparts and centaurs, and although I couldn’t quite find the connection—unless Arlen had features I was unaware of—I could tell it was her way of memorializing her boyfriend. I just had to wait her out.
“Oh, Eve,” she said as she abandoned the recital, “my poor Arlen.”
Her voice sounded so small that my heart started pounding. Maria Pia is nothing if not larger than life. “I’m sorry, Nonna,” I said, feeling helpless. This kind of comfort might be beyond me. “Since I never met Arlen, I didn’t recognize him.” Dented like a can of cannellini on my kitchen floor. “I mean, you weren’t seeing him all that long, right?”
“In some ways I’ve known Arlen forever, Eve. He was a soul older than old. A soul that dragged itself out of the primordial . . . ” Here her vocabulary failed her and she finished with, “whatnot.”
Some of that primordial whatnot was on my kitchen floor.
“I get the idea, Nonna.” Couldn’t I have a grandmother who made brownies and sold crap on eBay?
All of a sudden her voice dropped and she sounded urgent. “Eve, cara mia, I have to see you. I have to talk to you.”
“Sure. I’ve got some time after four.” Must call the wait staff, the uniform vendors, the carpet cleaners, the wholesalers—
“It’s important.” She sounded like I was arguing with her. “I don’t know how much longer I can—”
“I promise I’ll come by as soon as I can, but right now I’ve got to go, Nonna.”
“I can’t possibly see you today, Eve,” she huffed. “What are you thinking? I need time to grieve.”
I rolled my eyes. “I understand.”
“Come tomorrow. Early. Say, eight. I’ve got a nine o’clock massage.”
So she’d wedge grief in between espresso shots and hot stones.
“Darling, ever since I heard the news”—what, an hour ago?—“my back has felt as—as—clumped as that strega Belladonna Russo’s panna cotta.” The witch in question, Belladonna Russo, was her cooking archrival in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Maria Pia expelled a breath that sounded like the first wind of all time. “And I’m not in the mood for lunch.”
I pressed my lips together. “Murder’s a terrible thing.”
“So’s prison,” she said with a trace of the Philly accent and attitude she had worked hard to get past. And then she hung up.