Book Read Free

Cleanup on Aisle Six

Page 12

by Daniel Stallings


  She flopped on the flower-print armchair and sucked down her scotch. “What do you want to know about Oscar?”

  The two men sat on the sofa slipcovered in robin’s egg blue. “You’ve heard about his death, I take it?” Detective Hughes asked.

  She nodded, keeping her expression wary and shuttered.

  “He was murdered.”

  “So I gathered from the paper. How did you find out about me?”

  Detective Hughes casually mentioned the bills and the invoices.

  Miranda unfurled a sly smile. “Men can be astonishingly stupid, can’t they?” She pushed out a sigh, more from resignation than exasperation. The fear fled her face, leaving it remote, almost bored with the proceedings. “Yes, I had an affair with Oscar. Yes, I knew he was married. No, I didn’t care. No, I didn’t love him. No, I didn’t want to marry him. No, I didn’t kill him.”

  Beneath the pretty, cozy presentation, there was a blunt edge of ruthlessness.

  “You don’t seem to care much that he died.”

  Miranda’s slim shoulders lifted in an apathetic shrug. “It was an affair, not a marriage. I’m more emotionally attached to my area rugs than I was to Oscar Lindstrom.”

  “Your son—Trevor, I believe his name was—made references to various ‘daddies’ you brought home.”

  A coy smile teased the tips of her rose-lacquered lips. “Don’t sound so disapproving, Detective. You make it sound like I was comparison shopping. I’m not in the market for a new father for Trevor. Think of it like … window shopping. Just because I’m a single mother doesn’t mean I have to behave like a nun.”

  Detective Hughes cleared his throat. “Could you tell me more about your relationship with Oscar Lindstrom? Where, for instance, did you meet?”

  “At the grocery store, if you can believe it. He had some pretty critical things to say about my groceries. But he was always like that. About everything. A critic to his soul.”

  That was the second time Detective Hughes heard that phrase. Once from Liam, the second from Oscar’s mistress. Being a critic appeared to be one of the pillars of his personality.

  Was it also a driving force behind his death?

  Miranda continued. “Despite the critiques, I could tell he was interested. And I thought, ‘What the hell?’ It would be an experience. Life is short anyway.” The mischievous light in her eyes faded into that remote stare again. “He was boring and typical and old-fashioned. Antiquated, even. Like his views on women. He expected me to act like his docile wife and be a nursemaid to him. Fat chance! One child in my life is plenty, please and thank you. I think Kathryn spoiled him rotten.” She waved a dismissive hand. “The flowers, the jewelry, the champagne … Those weren’t acts of affection. Oscar felt he had to do it, like it was tradition or expected of him. I’d have been happier with Lakers tickets. He was very conventional. And he acted like these gifts were reminders that I owed him or something. That his ‘affection’ was conditional. Quid pro quo. A business transaction. And I bet you already know that Oscar paid my mortgage last month. Let me tell you something: I didn’t ask him to do it nor did I need him. He did it on his own. Another ‘little reminder.’ He wanted to control me. Wasn’t going to happen. Our affair was a long battle for power.” A flicker of pleasure. “Of course, that could be fun too. It’s certainly been fun with the lawyer I’m currently seeing. He knows who’s really on top in this game …”

  Detective Hughes slid a finger along his jawline, a thinking gesture. He kept his tone conversational. “What did you two like to talk about?”

  Miranda smothered her laugh into a snort. “Talking was not one of our preferred pastimes, Detective. Mostly he talked. About Kathryn and how perfect she was and how he could never find anything wrong with her. About Jason, which turned into a tirade of hate and disgust and disappointment. I think, really, he loathed his son. Don’t ask me why. He’d preen about all the restaurants he closed. Stuff like that. He spent most of our time criticizing people.”

  Criticizing. A critic to his soul. “Any person or business he particularly bragged about?”

  The phantom of a smile. “He did gloat about Bauer a few times.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Her ponytail swung wildly as she snapped her head to him, eyes suspicious. “Don’t tell me you missed it. It was everywhere. A huge scandal. You must have heard all about it.”

  “Humor me.”

  Again the I-could-care-less shrug, the aloof stare. Did this blunt ruthlessness disguise a more sharply felt passion? Detective Hughes could not say for sure. Even the decor in her home felt calculated, designed, as it had, to make a good first impression.

  Miranda was nobody’s fool, would change for no one, and played her own game. Was this ruthlessness the thing that attracted Oscar in the first place?

  “Oscar took his wife to dinner at Bauer when he went to review the place,” she said. “Bauer and its chef/owner, Felix Bauer, were already becoming enormously popular in town. Diners flocked to his restaurant, went on pilgrimages just to nab a seat at one of his tables. The press started dubbing Chef Felix ‘the Joël Robuchon of Germanic cuisine.’ The chefs working there were on the fast track to sterling careers. So what Oscar did was nothing less than mass murder.”

  “You remember quite a bit.”

  A glimmer of amusement. “I pay attention to things.” Without turning her head and still with that ghost of an amused smile hovering on her face, she raised her voice. “Trevor! Put those cookies back on the plate! Those are for after dinner.”

  A rumble of little footsteps. A hearty protest.

  Miranda was unyielding.

  With Trevor, master cookie thief, once again in his room, she returned to the interrogation. “His bedroom door squeaks, and he’s been eyeing those cookies since I mixed the batter. If he happens to think I’m a super-mom with X-ray vision, supersonic hearing, and a built-in lie detector, so much the better. Now getting back to Bauer …”

  It was clear who was the boss of this questioning.

  “I don’t think Oscar went into the restaurant with any favorable intentions. He was already bitter about the Robuchon comparison, because he wasn’t the one to make it. So he went to Bauer to find the fatal flaw. And he brought witnesses.”

  “And what happened, Miss Raglietti?”

  “His wife got sick from the food.”

  The death knell for any restaurant. The detective could hear it echo across time and in the hearts of the chefs who worked so passionately on building Bauer into a great restaurant.

  Through one man, their dreams imploded.

  Miranda drummed her fingers on the floral arm of her chair, all her fingers moving as one unit, the piston for the finely tuned machine of her brain. Her eyes stayed as glassy and hard as full bottles of brandy. “Oscar crucified them. If you thought his column was harsh, the blog post made the column look like a testimonial. It was a masterpiece of hate speech. He held nothing back. It was like dumping an ocean of acid on the restaurant and anyone who came within breathing distance of it. But that wasn’t the end of it. You see, Oscar brought race into his review, and the propaganda sparked riots at home with the worst ethnic cleansings in history.”

  Detective Hughes remembered. Too well. They had been horrible nights. Chefs and their families cowering in their homes. Fire. Blood. A massive flood of hate. It had been all hands at the department. There were fears that these incidents would ignite citywide explosions.

  He glanced at Adam, saw the kid’s eyes cloud over and his forehead crease, and knew that he recalled those nights as well.

  Miranda’s fingers paused, then curled into a fist, her close-clipped nails scratching and clawing the flowers printed on the upholstery. “The riots were the nail in the coffin for Bauer. No one wanted to be associated with it. They were frightened. What if these lunatics attacked them? People were afraid for their families, afraid for their lives. Bauer became a bad omen, a disaster zone. The pilgrimages for a seat stopp
ed cold. Diners dried up. Chef Felix went bankrupt and left town. And those young, eager, passionate chefs were ruined. No restaurant would hire them with the name Bauer on their résumés. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found these talented boys and girls working at Happy Burger and dreaming about tearing Oscar limb from limb. Their careers were destroyed.”

  The sad history of one of Shorewood’s premier restaurants definitely opened new vistas for Detective Hughes. Hot-blooded, furious, wounded chefs who dreamed of success, who wore their fingers down to bone for the opportunity, who had that dream pulverized by one bad review. People angry enough to kill the man responsible for their destruction.

  When he returned to the police station, he would try to locate a list of the people who once worked at the ill-fated Bauer.

  “I hope you see where this leads you, Detective.”

  “You’ve certainly given us plenty to think about, Miss Raglietti.”

  “There are certainly better suspects for Oscar’s murder than me.”

  Detective Hughes chose not to deign that summation with a response. “Did Oscar mention any plans he had for the future? Did he discuss anything with you?”

  Miranda frowned in concentration. That look of unconcerned boredom was gone again. She was giving this question serious thought.

  “I did get the impression Oscar had something up his sleeve. He was excited, elated at times, but he fought to keep it hidden. It was in his eyes. They were practically shining. He didn’t tell me any details. He did mention that changes were on the way.” The frown cleared, and she thumped her fist on the arm of the chair. “It might have been his new book he was working on. Sometimes, he talked about it with me. It was in very early stages. The return of Oscar Lindstrom, food expert of the world. He even had a title for it, even though he hadn’t written a single word yet.”

  “And what was this title?”

  Miranda unveiled the only true smile of the entire interview. Her white teeth gleamed like a necklace of polished pearls.

  “Clean Plate.”

  Adam’s cell phone jangled. With the speed of an Olympic sprinter, he got up, answered it, and excused himself to the foyer.

  Detective Hughes sensed a disturbance. He could chalk it up to police instinct, but he knew Adam wouldn’t accept a personal call during an interview. News from the station?

  The detective thanked his hostess for her time and mentioned that they may return with more questions. Miranda studied him, furnace fire burning in her eyes as she tried to divine the truth of this interruption from the veteran cop’s immovable expression. Their goodbyes were formal. Detective Hughes stepped into the foyer.

  Adam hung up his phone, his face alert and wary, a wolf on the scent of something big and dangerous. Detective Hughes caught the scent of something serious as well. The two policemen moved outside onto the porch.

  “What is it, Adam?”

  “There’s been a report of a burglary and assault in an apartment on Allen Avenue, sir.”

  “And this pertains to our investigation?”

  “It’s the home of one of the suspects, Tony. Liam Johnson. That boy who found Oscar’s body.”

  It seemed all roads—the highways, byways, and dirt alleys—led back to this mysterious Liam Johnson. The boy who knew too much. The boy who knew more than he shared.

  “Li? Li! Can you hear me?”

  That voice, strident and agitated, seemed to pulse behind the fiery, furious supernova of pain raging in front of him. Li wanted to sink into the cool darkness surrounding his body. He didn’t want to return to the searing light where pain and fear waited for him. Oblivion. That was the ticket. Dark, cool oblivion.

  “Li, wake up! Please!”

  A moan gurgled in his throat. Reluctantly, Li wrenched open an eye.

  Noah’s face hovered over him. His skin was gruel gray, his Amazon-green eyes bulging in terror, and his mouth puckered in a worried frown. Even his golden hair lost its shine. A huge sigh escaped him.

  “Oh thank God … I thought you were dead.”

  “Noah?”

  “I already called the cops, and they’ll be here soon. Here you go.” Noah pressed a bag of frozen peas onto Li’s head, making the boy hiss and groan. When Noah pulled the peas back, a flower of blood stained the bag.

  The room spun gently, and Li had to fight his sudden urge to get sick. “W-what happened?”

  “You tell me. I came by to visit, found your door open, and saw you lying on the floor with a head wound and a bloody baseball bat.”

  “I … I don’t really know … I wasn’t paying much attention. I had a lot on my mind.” He scrunched up his eyes and grimaced, trying to think through the adamant throb of his skull. “I … I came home early because the store was closed. I walked in my apartment. This is where it gets fuzzy.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “The … The closet. I-I went to the closet to hang up my work apron. Something jumped out at me.” He relaxed. “That’s all I know.”

  Noah pressed the bag of peas back on Li’s wound. Li gasped at the cold. “It sounds like someone hid in the closet and attacked you. But that also sounds crazy.”

  “I know. I don’t know anyone who would do that to me. I’m no threat.” He recalled the shadowy sedan that missed him by a hair on a rain-soaked night. “Why would someone hunt me like this?”

  A voice from the doorway. “That’s a question I ask myself.”

  Detective Hughes and his shadow, Adam, sauntered in, followed by paramedics. The procedure turned formal as the meds carefully examined and bandaged Li’s wound. Adam handled most of the questioning. Detective Hughes let his eyes wander over the whole of Li’s tiny apartment, absorbing all the details. Li tried to focus on the questions, but his eyes kept darting toward Detective Hughes, wondering what details he spotted, what conclusions he reached. He wasn’t sure if his matchbox of a studio could hold this many people.

  Detective Hughes cut in with a question. “You’re certain you never saw this man’s face? You didn’t recognize him?”

  “I can’t be sure it was a ‘him.’ It happened so fast. I didn’t see the face.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have a reason to attack you?”

  Li’s memory raced back to the night Oscar died. Frank. Connie. The argument in a neighboring aisle.

  Detective Hughes aimed his unsentimental frown right on Li’s face. “You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”

  Li gulped. Was he really that transparent?

  “Liam?” First warning.

  Li told the story of the psycho car in the storm and added: “Maybe Frank or Connie heard that I spilled the beans, more or less, and is after me to shut me up.”

  It wasn’t a comforting thought, but at least it was some sort of theory.

  Detective Hughes crouched down to Li’s eye level, his glare skewering the boy’s heart. “Are you absolutely certain you’ve told us everything?”

  I haven’t. The words bubbled in Li’s stomach, rising higher and higher like a lake of magma in the mouth of an active volcano. He was getting better at hiding his nervous tics, but his self-discipline was eroding. The truth boiled in his throat, burned his tongue. Those two words were practically rubbing against his clamped teeth. I haven’t. I haven’t. I haven’t.

  Reuben. His hatred. His desire to bash Oscar’s head in. The suspicions of murder.

  The insubstantial evidence. The hasty conclusion. The likelihood that Li talking could ruin a wonderful relationship between Reuben and Noah.

  Li said nothing. Perhaps for the last time.

  Detective Hughes straightened, his expression immovable and intangible. “The truth will out, Liam. A hackneyed expression, but always relevant. Truth hates to be contained under pressure. One day, it will get out.”

  A few more routine questions, then the authorities left his apartment.

  Li’s whole body sagged, his stress lines cutting huge canyons in his face. Energy drained through his fingertips. It had taken all his reserv
es not to crumble before the detective.

  “I couldn’t do it.” His voice was low, dead. “I couldn’t hurt you and Reuben like that. Not after everything you have done for me.”

  Noah rested a hesitant hand on Li’s shoulder. “Li? You okay?”

  “Why did you come here anyway, Noah? Is everything all right?”

  Noah gestured to a pile of bagged groceries congregating on Li’s counter. “I bought groceries for you. Reuben suspected you must be nearly out of food, and we don’t want you to starve. So I brought a few provisions to tide you over until your paychecks start coming in.”

  “See, this is why I can’t tell Detective Hughes anything! You two are the nicest people I’ve ever met!” His voice started to crack. “How could you two be mixed up in a mess like this? I can’t picture either of you hurting anyone! And yet, I can! I keep picturing it! My brain won’t shut up! It’s driving me insane!” He clawed at his temples. “Why did Reuben have to loathe Oscar?”

  Noah’s eyes widened. “So that’s it. You think Reuben might have killed Oscar Lindstrom.”

  Li’s wrinkles gouged deeper into his skin and a frown dragged down his face. “I don’t want to. I can’t help it. He makes an excellent suspect. He hated Oscar. He even said he wanted ‘to bash Oscar’s head in.’”

  Noah blew out a sigh and hauled Li to his feet. “I wish Reuben would think before he spoke. It gets him in trouble sometimes.”

  “You … You’re not angry?”

  “No, of course not. You’re right. He makes an excellent suspect. He hated Oscar with the intensity of a million nuclear reactors. He could have killed him.”

  Li gaped at his new friend. “How … How can you say that with a straight face? He’s your boyfriend. I barely know you guys, and it’s been robbing me of sleep.”

  “Because it’s the truth, Li. Look, I love Reuben. I know him better than anyone else, including his own family. I know he wouldn’t hurt a soul, but that doesn’t cancel out the bare facts that he did hate Oscar and he was there the night Oscar died. So yes, he’s a suspect. That doesn’t equal killer.”

 

‹ Prev