Was opera at the bottom of everything happening in Quaker Hills this week?
Murder, saucy photos, disguises, general intrigue, and over-the-top behavior . . . it sure sounded like opera.
I watched Patrick stride up the street to his office, where, any minute now, his glamorous wife would show up in her nondescript skulking outfit. And he’d still think Dana was the dreamiest gal around.
I was due to meet Mrs. Crawford in half an hour, just enough time to pick up the bamboo I had ordered from Flowers by Beck. Where, as it turns out, the long-haired pretty brunette I had spotted a couple of days ago was on duty. In spite of her name tag (OLIVIA How Can I Help You?), I found her to be strangely unhelpful when I tried to draw out the details of her personal life.
All I ended up with was bamboo.
It went marginally better with Mrs. Crawford, whose hot-pink cocktail dress was so loaded with a pattern of peonies, I expected to see ants. In the forty-five minutes we talked alone at Miracolo’s bar—she had a gimlet, I had a glass of Chianti—her wide-brimmed, white picture hat didn’t come off.
She talked about life as a piano performance student at Berklee.
I talked about life as a dance major at Sarah Lawrence, where Landon’s daddy footed the bill.
Then I tried to get all “girlfriendy” and made some opening salvos about dating. Before I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Crawford wasn’t going to yield any goodies, I had confessed to a flirtation with an art history professor, an anonymous poem-writing infatuation with a couple of famous actors, and a crush on Maria Pia’s Mexican landscaper’s son. All Mrs. Crawford gave me was her empty gimlet glass, which I refilled.
When she excused herself to go back to the employee bathroom, I slipped off my shoes and lightly ran after her. Through the dining room, through the kitchen, into the short back hallway leading to the office. The door to the john was closed, and since the door was a bit too short, there was a generous gap at the bottom.
My plan to solve the gender mystery of Mrs. Crawford was simple, as every brilliant plan should be. Ply her with beverages. Follow her to the bathroom. Perform surveillance of the crack. When I saw where her pumps were located, I’d have my answer.
If I saw toes, she’s a female.
If I saw heels, she’s a male.
I silently stretched out along the floor, and just as I turned my neck into viewing position, I heard a voice right behind me. “What are you doing?”
With all my might, I pushed myself up and opened outward into a side plank, sending my arm skyward. Considering I had never pulled off that yoga pose with anything like grace, I was doing a pretty fair job at it. “Speaks for itself, doesn’t it?” I cast a sideways glance at the voice, which turned out to belong to Joe Beck.
At that moment the bathroom door opened and Mrs. Crawford nearly fell over me. “Oh, my, you surprised me,” she laughed in a breathy baritone way, holding up her hands. “What are you doing there?”
“Side plank.” How much longer could I hold this pose?
Joe gave me a flat look. “I guess that clears up one mystery.”
“But not all the mysteries,” I managed to get out.
The difference in the way we all see things is what makes the world work: we mainly stymie each other just long enough to keep off murder. It’s only when we understand each other completely that we get into trouble—like when we know we both want the same X square miles of land, or the same pitcher who throws 103 mph fastballs, or the same sweet-smelling, day-trading Marlboro Man.
As a tool for peace, human misunderstanding is seriously underrated.
Mrs. Crawford thought Joe was hitting on me. Joe thought I was spying on Mrs. Crawford. (The fact that he was right is irrelevant.) And I thought Mrs. Crawford had made it her perverse mission to confound me.
After our piano player left I headed for the front door, figuring Joe would probably follow. He did.
“Two things,” he announced.
“Oh?”
“Olivia tells me you left your Visa at the flower shop.”
“Olivia?” I feigned disinterest.
“My brother’s wife.”
Once we were on the sidewalk, I locked Miracolo. “What’s the second thing?” I asked.
He rubbed the back of his very lovely neck. “There’s been another robbery in the commercial district.”
“Frantiques,” he said with a wince.
Fran Beller was the owner of an antiques shop two blocks south of Market Square. Nice gal, good customer. “When?”
“Sometime last night,” he told me. “The alarm was disabled and the back door was jimmied open. Ted and Sally are still over there.”
“What was taken?” I asked.
“Couple of folk art pieces, couple of Madame Alexander dolls, a Baccarat vase, Victorian necklaces, some candlesticks. I forget what else.”
I shook my head. “I feel bad for Fran.”
“Just keep Miracolo locked up tight,” he said, then tweaked my chin. I was beginning to think he was hitting on me, and I flushed.
He went on, “Actually, three.”
“Three what?”
“Can’t you keep up?” he teased. “Plank get to you, Angelotta? Three things.”
What an annoying man. “What’s the third?”
Maddeningly, Joe started to walk up the street.
“What’s the third?” I yelled after him.
He looked back at me with a grin, but kept walking. “The answer is”—he entered the flower shop—“female.”
* * *
Which was precisely when my ringtone warbled at me, preventing the enormously clever and witty retort I’m sure I would have thought of.
It was Tony Treadwell, and after our hellos, he got down to business. “I’ve heard back from our field operative, Veronica Gale,” he reported.
“Lay it on me,” I told him, excited.
“She called someone she knows at ASID headquarters and spun some tale about a possible design job for member Arlen Mather.”
“Good one,” I breathed with respect.
“That’s Veronica.”
I prompted him, “And?”
“Well, on this score, at least, your Mr. Mather was not a stand-up kind of guy. According to her source, no one named Arlen Mather has ever belonged to ASID.”
It’s funny how dead ends baffle you when it comes to the information you think you wanted . . . but then they round out a completely different picture. The man called Arlen Mather was setting himself up in what looked like a new life, credentials or no. Who was he, really? And what, besides the obvious, did he want with Nonna?
I thanked him and hung up as the Tri-State Linen Supply truck pulled up, and the driver started unloading our order. Arne was inhumanly punctual. And because he was so Austrian and sincere, I didn’t want to disabuse him of his belief in my reverence for the almighty clock. This was never an easy thing, because we Angelottas run a bit on Northern Italian Time, which is somewhat closer to Greenwich Mean Time than Southern Italian Time, thanks to years of interbreeding with our marauding neighbors from the Tyrol, whose raids, you can bet, went like clockwork.
Arne shouldered the big white cotton bags and traipsed after me into the restaurant, where I stepped aside and let him flop the load onto the booth at the back. Arne was strong and grim and thin-haired, and I often found myself hoping he secretly collected Beatrix Potter miniatures or something. He gave me his deep nod, which signaled that that was it until next time, and held out the clipboard. Neither of us had a pen, so we went into the kitchen.
Arne and Eve. The perfect relationship: ten minutes twice a week. No wine, chat, or love tokens. Arne always made me mist up with gratitude.
Rummaging around in the junk drawer, I found a pen and scribbled my signature on Arne’s neatly clipped paperwork. After I dropped the pen back into the drawer, Arne grunted and headed toward the front door as I looked out the kitchen window.
And saw Dana.
Upstairs at the photographer’s again.
What in the ding-dong doo-wop shim-sham was the woman doing?
At least she appeared to be fully clothed.
While I kept half an eye on her, I pulled the washed, starched, pressed, and folded white table linens out of the oversize cotton bags. Suddenly I saw Dana walk out of sight, so I hightailed it into the dining room, where I piled the tablecloths on the booth and left the empty bags on top.
As she emerged onto the street, I charged through the front door at Miracolo, quickly locked up, and caught up with her just outside Sprouts. She was dressed in a ruffled white T-shirt, black capris, a red leather bag with enough gold chains to give Houdini a run for his money, and gold lamé slides. Just as it was registering with her that I had her by the elbow, I said in a cheery voice, “Okay, Dana, let’s talk.”
She was blinking and smiling. Bad poker player. “What’s this—”
I propelled us both through the traffic on North Market Square and headed into the park. Out of earshot of the Mom Brigade near the playground, I let her go and got pretty much in her face. “What’s going on?”
I expected Whaddya mean?, forgetting how formal Dana gets whenever she’s cornered. What I got was, “Whatever are you talking about?” Suddenly the Southern belle who never lived any farther south than Asbury Park, New Jersey.
“I saw you at Pixie Pix.”
“I was—visiting a friend,” she answered airily.
“Topless?” I raised my eyebrows. “Must be a very good friend.”
She blurted, “How did you—”
“You were standing in the window, Dana.”
“I was changing,” she told me with dignity. “In a changing room, Miss Nibby Nose.” Miss Nibby Nose? “I’m having some portraits taken.” I could see the wheels turn quickly. “For Patrick,” she flung at me, practically euphoric at the lie.
I let it sit for a minute; then I hit her with, “Why were you sneaking into Jolly’s?”
She gasped, and turned it into a fake cough. Then the Southern belle was back. “You don’t know all my friends, Eve. Sometimes I visit Roland—”
I gave her a flat look. “Reginald. So you sneak in the back?”
“Patrick is jealous,” she confided, like she was telling me he wore pink garters.
Okay, that was lower than a crawdad on a river bottom, laying it on poor Patrick. “Oh, Dana, cut it out. Reginald Jolly didn’t even know your name when I asked him about the key.”
She wouldn’t budge. “That’s no—”
“Just tell me the truth,” I said, making my point with a little push on her shoulder. “I had a dead body in my kitchen and now my nonna’s in jail, and I’m unlocking the doors of Hell by putting cannoli on the specials board, so don’t mess around with me, girlfriend.” She had the good sense to back up. “I’m a desperado, you got that?”
She whispered, “I can’t help you.”
“From what I can tell”—I started ticking off her sins on my fingers—“you have no alibi for the morning of the murder, you’re posing topless for skank shots, and you’re up to something at Jolly’s Pub. Unless you want me to run this information by Patrick, you’re going to come clean with me.” I looked at my watch. “And right now. Because I have to get to the jail.”
“You’re mean,” she hissed.
“If I were mean, I’d tell you how to sing ‘You’re So Vain.’ ” I immediately felt bad, and wished I could take it back.
She exploded: “Well, Eloise Timmler at Le Chien Rouge loved it! Loved it, Eve, when I sang it for her.”
Now completely perplexed, I asked, “Why are you singing for Eloise Timmler?”
“Why do you think?” Dana looked me straight in the eye. “I auditioned for her.”
“Auditioned? For what?”
“For a singing gig!” she practically yelled.
I was mystified. “You’ve got a singing gig.”
“Eve,” she said in a dose-of-reality tone of voice, “I’m not going to stay at Miracolo forever. I owe it to my talent to look for bigger and better venues.”
“Full of Crêpe?” It was half the size of Miracolo and totally cheesy. “So that’s where you were the morning of the murder?”
She heaved a frustrated sigh. “I didn’t want to tell you before I knew I got the gig. Then I’d give you two weeks’ notice.”
There was now one less suspect in Arlen Mather’s murder, but I felt lighter than air. I was Gene Kelly swinging around that streetlight with a hundred-watt smile, imagining late night at Miracolo, without the “soulful stylings” of my pal. We might actually draw some new customers.
Suddenly I realized—“Jolly’s! You auditioned for Reginald, too, didn’t you?”
“Well, all he wanted was a head shot and CV.”
Reginald was smooth and canny enough to figure a way out of hiring her.
“So you went to Pixie Pix.”
She nodded. “Jolly’s, of course, is the primo place in town.”
This was news to me, because Zagat and I agreed that Miracolo was. But Dana always believes that the thing she’s going to is so much better than the thing she’s leaving—which, of course, was so much better than the thing she left before that.
“But right now he’s not hiring,” she said sadly.
“And Eloise Timmler?”
Dana grabbed my arms and gave me such a look of excitement that I almost laughed. “She’s letting me know today.” Dana pressed a hand to her chest. “I’d get to sing Piaf!” Then her voice dropped. “You know how I so identify with the Little French Wren.”
Sparrow, but what the hell.
The minute she took a gig at Full of Crêpe was the minute I’d have to let her go, friends or no. The only thing worse than Dana exposed was Dana overexposed. In a town the size of Quaker Hills, it would never do. But how could I tell her and still save the friendship?
* * *
Landon got into the Volvo in a muffled, muzzled mood. I scrutinized him. He was actually wearing his dad’s old powder-blue warm-up suit from 1985. He has always been of the opinion that powder blue washes him out, and he was right. The last time one of those moods hit he bought a Barcalounger. In brown.
I stared at him, but he looked unblinkingly ahead. “Jonathan should only see you,” I said.
I obeyed. “Are you in one of your ‘We’re All Going to Die’ moods? Or one of your ‘There’s Got to Be More to Life Than Italian Cooking’ moods?”
He inhaled. “Both,” he said finally.
Truly serious, then. “Explain.” I rounded a corner, leading us out of the commercial district.
He tucked his nice chin into his chest. “We’re all going to die, but I don’t want Nonna to be first.”
“You don’t?” I was flabbergasted. “I do. Much as I love her, she damn well should be first, Landon.”
“Not this way,” he said, shooting me a look. “Not in prison.”
My teeth worked the inside of my cheek. “What else?”
“Yes, there’s more to life than Italian cooking,” he burst out, “but with Nonna gone, what does it—”
“Okay, wait just a minute. You’ve already got her tried and convicted, Landon. So she dropped Arlen Mather off at the restaurant that morning. So she lied about picking up the dress at Saks. So she doesn’t have an alibi worth a damn. It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
When he said, “I’m going to Hell,” his eyes all glazed and puffy, I swiftly pulled over and shifted into Park.
“Landon, you don’t even believe in Hell.”
“I don’t believe in gay bars, either, but I go there.” He huddled against the car door, looking smaller than I could stand.
“Hardly the same, Landon.” I rubbed the back of his neck. “Hardly the same.” Then: “Caro mio, tell me what’s wrong.” He just kept sighing. Finally, I released my seat belt and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “Landon.”
We sat together in silence for a few minutes.
“I don’t want to make it your problem, too,” he mumbled.
I peered into his stricken face. “Hey, I’m making cannoli tonight, so I’m already going to Hell if Nonna ever finds out.”
He laughed softly.
“You can only make it my problem if you don’t tell me, capisce?”
He nodded slightly and seemed to come to some conclusion. “You remember the morning of the murder?” he said, pulling away just enough to face me. I nodded. “Remember when I came into the kitchen?” Of course. “Well, before I got to the kitchen, I found something in the dining room, Eve.”
“Go on.”
The words tumbled out. “I was going to show you, but then the murder kind of took over. And then later, I found it in my pocket, where I must have shoved it. Not thinking, you know?” His eyes pleaded for understanding. “And I just kept staring at it, because suddenly I knew what it meant, and I just couldn’t bring myself to take it to the cops.”
Now I was worried. “Landon, honey, what is it?”
Very slowly, from the baggy pocket of his powder-blue warm-up suit, my cousin Landon pulled something shiny. A silver bracelet. He opened his hand all the way, so I could look at it. The clasp was broken.
“I found it on the dining room floor, right near the kitchen doors.”
We both stared at the bracelet, and then at each other.
It was the twenty-fifth anniversary present from our grandfather to his wife, Maria Pia. “It could have fallen off anytime,” I said reasonably.
Landon slowly shook his head, looking at me with something like pity. “I checked, Eve. The cleaning crew had been there during the night. They would have seen it. She dropped it that morning. She didn’t just drop Arlen Mather off. She went inside, Eve.”
The question was, why?