Tantalize

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  Vaggio lay mauled, bleeding, his skin waxy and gaunt. Savaged. Shirt partly torn away. An oozing claw mark raked across his chest. Blood pooling from the carnage where his throat had been.

  I’d seen death before, Mama and Daddy in mortician’s makeup and their Sunday best. It was different without the staging, different when the person had been ripped apart. What was left wasn’t Vaggio anymore. My stomach rolled.

  Kieren caught me again as I began to scream. He swept me out of the building to the empty lot next door. Close enough to the street that we were in view of the entertainment district. Far enough away to offer some privacy.

  We sank to the warm ground, and he held me, sobbing, folded against his bloodstained T-shirt, his thundering heart. He buried his nose in my hair, rubbing my back, whispering my name.

  Once I could stand again, Kieren walked me down the street to a nearby motel and used the lobby phone to call 911. I could hear only his end of the conversation.

  “Police.

  “Kieren Morales.

  “K-I-E-R-E-N Morales, with an s.”

  I sank into the lime-upholstered chair next to the window.

  “Someone’s been killed, the chef at my best friend’s family’s restaurant.

  “Yeah, she’s here.”

  A woman with a spiky blue Mohawk looked from me to Kieren like she was worried he was mistreating me somehow. But then the desk clerk greeted her.

  “Upset but okay,” Kieren said into the phone.

  “We’re at the Capitol Motel. We’re safe.

  “No.”

  A young guy with a shiny black cowboy shirt and black jeans joined the woman. She whispered something to him, and he glanced our way.

  “My friend was in the break room at the restaurant. I walked into the kitchen through the back door and discovered the body.

  “Quincie Morris.” He spelled “Q-U-I-N-C-I-E.”

  “Vaggio Bianchi.” He spelled both names. So calm. Like when my folks died. Like when his mama went into labor with Meghan. Almost inhuman.

  I closed my eyes against the memory of claw marks.

  “Yes,” Kieren said, “the chef.”

  He went on to describe the kitchen and say that an ambulance wouldn’t help.

  Within five minutes they’d sent an ambulance anyway along with two police cars. I didn’t get a chance to talk to EMS, but back in Sanguini’s parking lot, Officer Walker and Officer Rodriguez of the Austin Police Department introduced themselves.

  Officer Walker ushered us to a squad car, away from curious passersby. We huddled in the back seat, and the cop took a moment to study us before shutting the door. Kieren had already explained he was bloody from trying to help, that I was bloody from touching him. He put his arm around my shoulders, and I cradled his free hand with both of mine, studying the dark stains against his skin.

  “I was just in the next room,” I whispered.

  “I know.”

  I tightened my grip. “Do you think the killer is still in there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The front passenger door opened, and I saw yellow police tape unfurling.

  Officer Walker joined us in the car, asked some basic questions.

  “I’d like to take her home,” Kieren said after a lull. “Is that all?”

  “No, we’ll need you both downtown.”

  Outside, APD cameras flashed.

  I didn’t know what time it was when we got to the station, but when I called, Uncle D still wasn’t home. Officer Walker used the moment to separate me from Kieren. Then he introduced Detective Bartok and said she had more questions.

  “Where’s Kieren?” I asked, taking a seat in a private room.

  “He’s fine,” Detective Bartok replied, pressing a button on a tape recorder. “You’re good friends?”

  Jesus. “Yeah.”

  “How good?”

  I stared at her, blank.

  “We’ll come back to that. How ’bout you tell me what happened tonight?”

  It was her job to help catch the killer, I reminded myself. “I’d been helping out Vag, Vaggio tonight in the kitchen. He’s, he was trying to put together a new menu for the restaurant. It’s reopening soon, and . . . Anyway, Kieren was supposed to meet me there, and I went into the break room to watch TV and wait for him while Vaggio finished up. I never would’ve left him if . . . It doesn’t matter. While I was watching television —”

  “What were you watching?”

  The wolf documentary. I blinked back the memory, what had looked like an animal attack. What was Kieren being asked? “I, um, I don’t remember.”

  “Take a moment. Think about it.”

  I did. “I was channel surfing, I guess.”

  “And?”

  “I heard a couple of noises, like pans being banged around, and I yelled to ask Vaggio if he was okay.” Had the murderer heard me? He must’ve. “I didn’t think . . . I never imagined that anything like that could happen. Then Kieren got there and he was calling my name and I went into the kitchen and then I saw. . . . That was it. Kieren led me out, and we went to call —”

  “What is your relationship to Mr. Morales?”

  I’d wondered myself. “We’re friends.”

  “Do your parents know you’re out this late?”

  “They’re dead,” I said, wiping away a tear.

  “I’m sorry.” She looked at her notepad. “Oh, yes. Your uncle, Davidson Morris, is your legal guardian. Does he know where you are?”

  “I wasn’t able to get ahold of him.”

  “That’s no problem. You’re seventeen. We consider that an adult.”

  It dawned on me that I might be a suspect, not just a witness. “I loved Vaggio,” I said, glancing at the red light on the recorder. “He was like family.”

  Detective Bartok offered a brief, respectful silence. Then she said, “Speaking of family, I’m curious about your genetic history. What hospital were you born in?”

  Cursing myself for having been caught off guard, I almost asked if I should be calling a lawyer. Or if Kieren should be.

  It was common knowledge that werepeople — be they Wolves, Deer, Buffalo, Raccoons, whatever — were never treated in hospitals. Wolf packs had their own doctors, probably even their own clinics. Lone Wolves, like Kieren’s mama, used midwives or volunteer home-visit docs, all of them shifters, too. She herself had apprenticed as a healer before leaving her pack, which was why I still had use of my scarred hand.

  I clenched it, telling myself that whoever the murderer had been, it wasn’t Kieren. I knew him. I’d known him all my life. “Seton Medical Center,” I said. “On Thirty-eighth Street.”

  The detective made a note.

  I didn’t know Vaggio had had five ongoing love affairs until all the women showed up for his memorial service.

  Uncle Davidson had kept it simple, spiritual, and settled for an outdoor thing at the top of Mount Bonnell because the real funeral would be up north anyway. Vaggio’s family had flown down Nancy, a first cousin, to sort through his belongings and drive the Lincoln back to Chicago. She was the one accepting sympathies.

  My uncle and his girlfriend, Ruby, were off to the side making inappropriate lusty goo-goo eyes at each other. Kieren was patting the hand of a sweet, sixtysomething lady named Daniela who’d exploded into tears. Kieren’s parents would’ve come, but Roberto was keynoting at some engineering faculty conference in Ann Arbor and Meara couldn’t find a sitter for Meghan. It was still a good turnout though. Vaggio’s neighbors, his poker buddies, several former Fat Lorenzo’s employees, and Detective Bartok with another cop whose name I’d already spaced off.

  I soaked in the sun, shuffling my feet on the limestone, trying to appreciate the sweeping views of downtown and the lake. The cacti, the sage.

  Vaggio had brought me here once, three years ago, the day he’d said that my uncle might be the one with legal custody, but he too would always be there for me. We’d hiked up the uneven stairs to the top of
the park, where stone had been crafted to look like the ruins of an ancient temple. He’d led me to this bench and said, “Close your eyes, and feel that God is with us.” I had felt God then, so I closed my eyes and tried again.

  Where was God today?

  At the sound of laughter, I glared at my uncle in one of his typical Hawaiian shirts and his girlfriend in a plunging black dress. Then Ruby laughed again, louder, and everybody looked her way.

  She hadn’t known Vaggio well, and she was a disturbing personality.

  Ruby (not her real name, I suspected) Kitahara was a living vampire. Not someone infected with vampirism but a human, a wannabe who’d taken tartare too far. Uncle D loved her. Or at least she was the first woman he’d slept with for more than two consecutive weeks. “Woman” being a stretch. I was seventeen, and she was three, four years older than me. As for my baby-faced uncle, lately he might’ve been far from Mr. Maturity, but he was still pushing thirty.

  Uncle D adjusted his shades and strolled over. “You ready to go?”

  I shook my head. “I can catch a ride.”

  “With Kieren?” He’d started treating Kieren like a potential niece defiler about the time we hit adolescence.

  “Yeah.”

  Uncle D gave me a hug and told me he loved me for the tenth time that day.

  Once he and Ruby had left, Kieren joined me on the bench and introduced Daniela and Vaggio’s other lady friends, Celeste, Emilia, Gladys, and LaShauna.

  After the initial shock, they’d taken the news of each others’ existence better than most women would, had decided to go out together for margaritas that evening. They all had something to say to me, too. “He loved you.” “Talked about you all the time.” “Light of his life.” “Pride and joy.” “Granddaughter he never had.”

  I mustered up a smile as they joined arms to belt out “Strangers in the Night,” Vaggio’s signature song. His last gift to me, those women, and just when I needed them. It was funny, though, the things you didn’t learn about people until after they died.

  Kieren and I stayed after Vaggio’s cousin Nancy had gone, kissing each of us on the cheek and promising that Vaggio’s sausage lasagna would be served after his formal funeral. We camped out on the bench I’d chosen earlier, watching the sun glint against the lake.

  I felt guilty about the flashes of suspicion I’d had the night Vaggio died. After all, Kieren was half human, too, and I probably wouldn’t have suspected him at all if it had looked from the crime scene like the murderer was Homo sapiens.

  “Is it any less bad?” Kieren asked.

  The grief, he meant. It was. Not better. But less bad.

  “Quince, I hate to bring this up now, but there’s a chance the murderer might —”

  “Don’t talk about that. Not here.”

  “Where then?”

  “It’s . . . I get that the police can only do so much.” I straightened. “When I go back to the restaurant, I’m taking Grampa Crimi’s .45 with me.”

  I didn’t know how to hold a gun, let alone aim and shoot. But maybe I could use it to scare someone.

  “No way in hell,” Kieren said, and that caught my attention. He wasn’t the one of us inclined to cuss. “Somebody could use it against you. And even if you were a trained sharpshooter, I don’t think a gun would help.”

  God. “Could we talk about this later?”

  “Quince, you’re just —”

  “I’m scared, okay?” I broke his gaze. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Okay. “I love you, you know,” I said, by way of apology. A day like this, I could tell him, and it was less risky. More about us as friends.

  His answer was to wrap his arms around me, bring my head to his shoulder, my side to his chest. Touching. He was touching me again. I could feel his breath, hear in it something that might’ve been a whisper, a “Yes.”

  I set the hammer beside my planner book on the hostess stand and hung Vaggio’s framed photo next to those of my parents and grandparents and the first dollar ever earned at Fat Lorenzo’s. There, I thought. The pictures didn’t fit the décor, but so what. No matter what we called the place or how we changed the interior design, this was still a family establishment. My family’s establishment.

  Besides, it was a great shot. Vaggio grinning like a fool on his sixty-fifth birthday. It had been last fall, the week before Thanksgiving. I could remember him saying retirement was for wimps. I straightened the frame.

  Sinatra himself had never looked better.

  Vaggio’s murder had been almost a week earlier, his memorial service two days ago, and I could barely remember what life had been like before. It reminded me of losing Mama and Daddy. Everything’s good, or at least normal, and then, in an instant, nothing would ever be the same.

  “Honey, don’t take this wrong,” Uncle D said, joining me in the foyer to study my handiwork, “but Vaggio — and you know how much I’ll miss him — wasn’t family. Not really. This is a nice gesture, but —”

  “He was family to Mama and me,” I said. “And Daddy adored him.”

  It was my big gun, invoking Daddy. I didn’t do it often.

  “But Vaggio wasn’t blood,” Uncle D surprised me by insisting. “Not that it may matter anyway. After all that’s happened, we may be better off renting out the building to some other restaurant.”

  “You can’t be serious!” I exclaimed, packing up the hammer and the rest of the nails in the toolbox. Granted, Uncle D had been under a lot of pressure before Vaggio’s death. It made sense that he felt overwhelmed now. But we’d already lost so much. No way would I give up the restaurant, too.

  “Commercial real estate has soared on South Congress,” he argued. “Given the breakeven or worse prospects on Sanguini’s, it might be more profitable to collect the rent.” He moved toward the photo of my parents, touched the glass over Daddy’s face. “Besides, there’s so much to be done between now and the opening. Without Vaggio, I don’t know how I’ll be able to pull it all off.”

  “I can help,” I told him. I’d always helped. Answered phones, took reservations, seated guests, bused tables, restocked, mopped, dumped trash, whatever. “Really help,” I clarified. “Like with management stuff. What do you need me to do most?”

  I already had Frank, my day planner, open and ready to record to-dos.

  Uncle D turned from my parents’ photo to study me for a long moment. “You’re sure this is what you want, to be entombed in this old place?”

  “It’s home,” I said.

  “Home,” Uncle D repeated. He thought for a moment and then snapped his fingers. “Well, for starters, I’m putting you in charge of the new chef.”

  That was weird, I thought, especially since we didn’t even have a new chef yet. The whole idea sounded suspiciously like busywork, something to keep me out of the way. “Wouldn’t a chef already know what to do?”

  “Hopefully,” Uncle D agreed. “But you’ll help him out, keep me posted on any problems. The chef is key to the whole operation. In the end, our future rests in his hands.”

  Fine. I’d hover on Uncle D’s behalf, if only so he could concentrate on everything else. “But what about the relaunch, the whole Sanguini’s experience? I want something about the place to have my personal touch.”

  Something to make Mama proud, I thought. She’d been a perfectionist, critical sometimes, but that was because she cared so much. She understood how her parents had sacrificed, coming from Italy, building their business from smarts and sweat. That’s why she spent so much time at Fat Lorenzo’s instead of at the house. She wanted to leave something for me.

  “We’ll see what develops,” Uncle D said. “In the meantime, you’ll have to really buckle down. Stop running off with your friends so much.”

  Kieren, he meant.

  “Sanguini’s: A Very Rare Restaurant,” I mumbled into the phone, annoyed that another call had slipped through before I could figure out how to reprogram the automatic answering message. “He
llo?” I glanced at the digital clock radio on top of the office desk. It was already a quarter till 7 P.M. “Hell —”

  “Good evening,” greeted an affected voice that sounded more like Count Chocula than Count Dracula. “I just flew in from Transylvania —”

  “And your wings are so tired.”

  Hanging up, I relaxed into the chair across from my uncle’s desk. The restaurant would debut at sundown Friday, September 13. That in mind, I winced first at the calendar — Thursday, August 15 — and then at the résumés spitting out of the fax machine.

  “Anything promising?” I asked.

  Uncle Davidson’s smile was a weary one. While I’d been fielding media, crank, and reservations calls, he’d been sorting the chef applications into piles: die-hard goths, fast-food rejects, one-year-plus unemployed, and some woman who claimed Vaggio’s ghost had appeared to her in a dream. Since we’d had no promising local applicants, Uncle D had posted the chef-wanted ad on a few free job-seeker websites, but he’d provided the restaurant fax number instead of requesting e-submissions. Big mistake.

  “This one doesn’t look bad,” he said, holding up a piece of paper. “I’ll call his references and set up an interview.”

  Ruby sauntered into the office, sporting, per usual, a sheer, long-sleeve black dress — feather neck and feather-trimmed sleeve cuffs — over a low-cut, laced leather bustier, black leather pants, and clunky, knee-high boots, each fastened with five oversize silver buckles. Her Morticia-streaked shiny black hair swung low to a microscopic waistline, and she’d gone heavy on the eyeliner. A deep violet, it clashed with her dilated green eyes.

  The first twenty-four hours after Vaggio’s death, Uncle Davidson had put her in front of the TV cameras. Ruby had managed to pull off confident, in command, sensitive, and low-key creepy in a heartbeat. Hers had been the face on page one of the Statesman, the Chronicle, the Cap City News, USA Today, the recurring clip on CNN. When coiffed heads from Concerned Mothers for America’s Children victim-blamed us for Vaggio’s murder on round-the-clock cable news, Ruby was their prime example of “the demented freaks swarming our cities.”