Double Decker Dead

by E M Kaplan

  Susan whispered back, “That’s Sal’s wife, Bonnie. Be careful. She’s an amateur MMA fighter. She could have us in a headlock before you can say ‘thunder thighs.’”

  “Yikes,” Josie said, thinking the fighter woman definitely had enough muscle to bash Dante over the head. In fact, any one of the people in the restaurant could have done it. But who had wanted to?

  The back door banged open again and a thin, white-blonde woman in skinny jeans and high heels skittered in across the slippery floor. Her umbrella dropped in the muddy entryway. More screaming ensued. Sal jumped up and embraced the new woman. He brought her into the restaurant with her face buried in his shirt, shielding her eyes from the scene in the stairwell.

  “Is that Lisa?” Josie asked Susan, who confirmed it was indeed the unfortunate newlywed.

  Another windbreaker-wearing detective guided Dante’s wailing widow into the kitchen to question her in private, thereby flushing out the kitchen staff who’d been hiding there. One of them was Keri, the tattoo-covered dishwasher, a super cute young woman with dark brown hair and a wide mouth that probably smiled a lot. However, she looked anything but happy. Her eyes were red and puffy. She’d either been crying or else she’d splashed soap in them when she’d hit herself with the dish sprayer.

  “Did Dante have any enemies?” the red-headed detective asked Sal.

  “Did Sal have any enemies?” Josie asked. “I mean, look at them. They could’ve been twins.” Everyone stared at her, and she grimaced. Apparently, she’d forgotten to whisper again.

  Sal murmured a few things about creditors and loans, but insisted their money influx was all legit and bank-owned. Josie was skeptical, but numbers weren’t her forté. She pitied whoever was going to have to look through Dante’s books. Then again, some nutjobs liked that kind of thing.

  “Who makes the sandwiches?” Josie asked, focusing on the important details. At least, important to her. She’d whispered this time, but Jack, the busboy, was close enough to hear her.

  “We all do, especially on a day like this when we don’t have many customers,” he said. “Dante slices the meat. He was going to train me how to do it. Before he got killed.” He looked crestfallen. His black deli t-shirt was tucked into the same style of jeans as Dante’s. Jack’s athletic shoes matched the deceased man’s as well. His fashion sense went beyond uniform and ventured into hero worship.

  “Ah,” Josie said. She nearly added that it would’ve been harder for Dante to have trained him after he’d gotten killed, but she refrained. Everything had a time and place, even though she often tromped back and forth like an elephant in ballet slippers over the boundaries of what was socially acceptable.

  She sidled over to Bonnie, the MMA fighter, and sat down in a chair behind her. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said as a generic opener because she wasn’t sure of the other woman’s state of mind. Josie could be delicate and considerate when she tried. Sometimes.

  “That tramp faked a pregnancy and got him to marry her,” Bonnie said, her husky voice dripping with venom.

  One chair over, Keri the dishwasher squeaked in fear, her pierced septum ring quivering, and edged away.

  “Whoa.” Josie nodded, more in recognition of a fellow blurter than of the woman’s harsh assertion. “I assume you’re talking about Lisa?”

  “Yeah, who else? She said she was going to have a baby, so Dante did the right thing and put a ring on her finger. Then the whole thing turned out to be a lie. She’s not pregnant. I mean, look at those skinny jeans. This was two months ago, so she should be showing.”

  “Maybe she lost the baby?”

  Bonnie shrugged her ripped shoulders. “Well, she ain’t pregnant now and she’s gonna be a rich widow. Just saying.”

  “Dante didn’t love her?” Josie knew she was treading into feelings territory, which wasn’t her specialty either, much like math.

  “Listen,” Bonnie said with a grimace, “Dante loved everyone, if you know what I mean.” At Josie’s blank expression, the woman clarified. “He had a lot of girlfriends. He was a major player. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more than one little Dante Junior running around.”

  “What about Sal, is he like that?” Josie was being nosy, but she couldn’t help poking the bear—or poking the MMA fighter. Across the room, Susan gestured to her with an unmistakable What are you doing? look, bugging out her pretty eyes at her gall, but Josie couldn’t stop herself from butting in. Her native curiosity was her cross to bear and had gotten her bonked on the head once, too.

  “Sal better not be stepping out on me,” Bonnie said, casting a dark look at her husband. “If he cheated on me, he’d be dead meat.”

  #

  Another hour passed before the detectives finished questioning the last patrons in the restaurant and allowed them to leave. Dante’s remains were removed from the stairwell and transported to the Medical Examiner’s office. Detectives were still searching for a murder weapon, something like a hammer or pipe—but sharper—the woman ME said, but they hadn’t found anything yet.

  “This place is full of potential murder weapons. You could use just about anything,” Josie told Susan, looking around. “Meat slicer, tenderizer hammer, wheel of cheese, bottle of chianti, hard salami. Death by cholesterol—much slower but so delicious.” Josie’s neglected stomach howled.

  “I think something’s broken inside your head,” Susan said.

  Josie couldn’t disagree, but there was something to be said for using humor as a balm, even completely inappropriately, when her anxiety was kicking up. Dead bodies made her antsy. Some people wailed and questioned the unfairness of the universe—Josie turned to snark. Having a smart mouth wasn’t for everyone, but it was marginally better than blurting out inappropriate trivia, her other verbal coping mechanism. Usually neither was a problem, but in such a small, enclosed space with family members of the deceased, she needed to try unusually hard to keep her mouth shut.

  Another half hour passed, and Lisa, the unfortunate new widow, emerged from the kitchen, looking shell-shocked. Jack served ice tea and ham on marbled rye to anyone who had the stomach for it.

  “Bring out the spicy mustard,” Sal told him.

  “Freaking carbs,” Bonnie said, shoving the corner of a sandwich in her mouth. “I’m stress eating now. I’m going to be pissed off if I don’t make my fighting weight next week.”

  “How long are they going to be here?” Lisa asked, looking toward the stairwell where detectives were still processing the crime scene.

  “Why do you want to know? Are you ready to redecorate?” Bonnie asked under her breath so only Josie caught it. Her hostility was thick enough to cut with a knife.

  “I heard some crime scenes can take up to six hours to be processed,” Josie said after swallowing. “I don’t know about this one. They don’t want to miss any of the blood spatter.” Several people put down their sandwiches, and Josie cringed. “Oh man. Sorry.” Mortified by her social ineptitude, she fled to the kitchen muttering apologies and something about looking for potato chips.

  “I’ll show you where they are,” Keri said, retreating with her. The girl’s face was bright red in what Josie took for sympathy pain at her social ineptitude.

  In the sanctity of the kitchen, Josie relaxed. She was more in her element behind the scenes, especially when she was surrounded by food. She took a couple of deep breaths and vowed to keep quiet and let the professionals do their jobs. They did not need a nosy, unqualified food critic poking around where she had absolutely no business butting in.

  “Who do you think did it?” she asked Keri. Oops.

  The girl’s hair was still damp from the dish sprayer’s earlier soaking. Her thin arms were covered in colorful and chaotic ink. She was well on her way to having full sleeves. Josie suspected the girl’s tattoos also masked acres of goosebumps, both from fear and anemic undernourishment.

  Keri didn’t make eye contact as she moved bins off the work counter and pulled out a box of
pre-bagged chips. “These aren’t homemade, but at least they’re kettle cooked. Do you want plain or barbecue?”

  “Got any salt and vinegar?” Josie wasn’t a fan of them—they stung her tongue and made her entire face pucker—but Susan liked them.

  Keri handed her a bag and put the bin away. She took such a long time before answering, Josie thought she was ignoring her question. “Maybe Bonnie. Or Lisa.”

  “Because they were both sleeping with Dante?”

  Keri grimaced. “I don’t think Bonnie was seeing him. She’s not like that.”

  “What about you?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Keri said, shocked. Her nose ring quivered with affront.

  “But were you sleeping with him, too?” Josie asked. She’d been watching the girl’s face out there, hearing her yelps of dismay.

  “That’s none of your business.” Which usually meant yes in Josie’s book. She glanced toward the front of the deli. Hunches wouldn’t help Detective Carrots out there to make an arrest.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Josie said, lying. Of course she’d tell someone the first chance she got. Even she knew snitching was the keystone of successful cases.

  “Dante was like an uncle to me.”

  Josie cringed. Gross. “Who sleeps with their uncle?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Keri said, pretty much confirming her status as his girlfriend. “He took care of me when I didn’t have a place to live. I was living out of my car until my student loan money came through. He saw me playing some songs at Cleveland Circle. We got to talking. He bought me a cup of coffee and offered me a job in the kitchen. He was really kind.”

  By letting her wash the dishes? Josie wasn’t sure about that as an expression of devotion. “How long have you been involved with him?”

  “I’ve worked here since high school. But I wasn’t sleeping with him back then. He waited until I was legal.”

  Again with the cringe factor. “Did anyone know about you two?”

  “No! No one knew.” Keri was adamant.

  In Josie’s book, that meant their fooling around was totally obvious to a lot of people, which meant Keri definitely had a motive for killing him. However, the tiny girl didn’t look formidable enough to murder a roach—other than one she could smoke in a clip—never mind a huge guy more than a foot taller than she.

  Josie tried another tack. “How come you’re back here in the kitchen instead of out front taking orders?” Maybe she had a non-visible reason like severe dyslexia or social anxiety.

  “It’s these.” Keri held up her arms like she was doctor scrubbed down for surgery. Her left one had a full-color, five-inch Hawaii pin-up girl in a bustier, riding an anthropomorphic banana. Her right arm bore a ridiculous cartoon cobra with oversized anime eyes. Her knuckles spelled out LOVE and LIFE, and a rosary wound its way around her neck on inked beads. “Dante didn’t like them. He thought it would make people lose their appetite. He said I could wear long sleeves and a turtleneck if I wanted to work up front, but tight collars make me feel like I’m choking. I don’t mind. I like it back here. I prep the sandwich fixings and make the salads, too.”

  Personally, the ink didn’t bother Josie. She didn’t dig the eyebrow piercing, but she wasn’t about to allow something as trivial as that affect her enjoyment of a meal. She wasn’t a cold-hearted person, just a highly food-motivated one.

  “Did you ever overhear anything odd, anything that made you suspicious while you were working here?” Maybe there was a money issue behind Dante’s murder. She hated to stereotype since it was an Italian deli, but perhaps it had connections to organized crime.

  “Not really,” Keri said. “Once a bunch of Girls Scouts wanted to sell cookies in front of the store, but Dante wouldn’t let them. He didn’t really have any objections to them, but he was trying to lose weight.”

  Angry cookie mom? Josie wondered. “What ended up happening with that?”

  “He caved and let them do it. He also bought all the peanut butter ones and gained five pounds that week.”

  Josie gave up. Dante sounded like an all-around nice guy—although one who couldn’t keep his pants zipped up. She was barking up the wrong tree. She took her chips and gestured for Keri to precede her back into the restaurant.

  #

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” Bonnie said, pushing a crust of bread into her mouth. As she chewed, her chiseled jaw flexed and hollowed. She looked like she could grind gravel with equal efficiency and success. Josie edged her plate away and took a bite before Bonnie started eyeing her sandwich, too. “Such a shock,” Bonnie added. “You get up in the morning like it’s any other day, go about your business the way you always do—wheelin’ and dealin’—and the next minute, it’s all over.”

  Lisa burst into tears and fled back to the bathroom, her high heels clacking.

  Sal turned to his wife. “Could you not?”

  Bonnie looked as if she were going to roll her eyes, but then she shrugged and apologized to the room. She said to Josie, “I did two tours in Afghanistan. Sometimes I forget how sensitive people can be. Even now, every day, I train to be tougher, harder, and stronger both emotionally and physically. It just amazes me that other people can be so soft.”

  Josie kept her head down and tried to focus on her food. Susan had gone silent as well. The afternoon was drawing to an end, sinking into the darkness of evening as they marked the passing of day into a night in which Dante would no longer exist. Life would go on without him. They owed it to him to find out who had committed this crime.

  When Lisa returned from the restroom, she’d pulled the shirt tails of her button-down out of her tight jeans. With her hand over her stomach in a free-flowing shirt, she looked pregnant to Josie, but it wasn’t the kind of thing she could just go up and ask. That line of questioning only led to more social blunders.

  Josie got up from the table with her empty plate and took it to the counter. She found a gray plastic bin of other dirty dishes that had been bussed from the tables and put her dish in with the others. She liked the look of things behind the counter. Everything was neat and orderly, just the way a restaurant inspector liked, and just how a critic did as well. No grubby handprints on the cash register. No straw wrappers or crumbled napkins on the floor. No cobwebs or dirt in the corners of the room. This deli had been made with love and maintained with an equal amount of care. She glanced over at Sal.

  “Do you need something back there?” he asked. He stood up and hustled over as if he couldn’t stand to be sitting still anymore, doing nothing but waiting for the questioning to end. Josie feared it was probably more of an existential crisis than a need to provide stellar customer service.

  “I’m good,” she said. “Just admiring the counter back here. It’s a beautiful setup.”

  He looked at her with confusion. “You said you’re a food critic?”

  “I’m a fan of food in general.”

  He tried to smile, but he could only muster a half-hearted one. She felt unbelievably sorry for him. From everything she’d heard the two brothers were as close—and as contentious—as two people could ever be.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, laying a hand on his thick arm. She gave him a small, awkward pat. Her dry, withered heart threatened to crack just a little. Yet…he had the most to gain of anyone here. She’d do well to remind herself he was still a suspect before she got too emotional.

  Physically, he was a big guy. While he seemed like a cuddly marshmallow now, he had the stature of someone who could kill a person with one blow. She stepped back just slightly. Next to him, she felt like a doll. Despite all of her snarky attitude, she was about the same petite height and weight as Keri the dishwasher, although with one hundred percent fewer tattoos. Imagining them together—factoring how young Keri was—gave Josie a case of the willies. Especially if Sal was capable of killing his beloved brother in a fit of rage. She edged back another half step.

  He ran a hand through his h
air. “When we were growing up, we used to get into a lot of trouble. Drinking and smoking. Getting into fights. So much stupid stuff. There were so many reasons we weren’t supposed to make it to old age. But we both got cleaned up—who am I kidding? He decided to we were getting too old for that kind of stuff. He got responsible, learned about running a business, and dragged me here with him. We were only eighteen months apart, but he was definitely the older brother, and he saved my ass. I probably would’ve been dead by now. Instead, it’s him who’s dead.”

  Josie nodded. She needed a gentle touch with her next line of questioning so he wouldn’t shut down completely, either in defense or because of overwhelming grief. She went with, “What do you think happened?”

  He sighed. “You can take the kid out of the neighborhood, but you can’t take the neighborhood out of the kid.”

  “What do you mean?” She wasn’t sure if he meant drugs, crime, or something else.

  Sal wouldn’t go into specifics. He shook his head, and a rueful expression crossed his face. “Just that old habits die hard, and those are the ones that come back to bite you eventually.”

  She pressed him a little more. “Was he into something illegal?” Maybe he’d been borrowing money from the wrong people for their second deli location. The restaurant business could be merciless in its demands on a person’s time and money. Perhaps things weren’t going to plan and he’d had to delve into shady practices. And maybe she watched too much TV and her imagination was running wild and cavorting with stereotypes.

  Sal, however, wouldn’t say anything more.

  She left him with the final admonishment, “If you know something, you should tell the detectives.” But would she have spoken up if it had been her deceased brother who’d gotten into trouble that had led to his murder? Until recently, she hadn’t been a fan of the authorities. She’d been a juvenile delinquent herself—different location, but not unlike Sal and Dante. In his place, she probably wouldn’t have said much to the police either if she had one foot on the shady side of the street—she gave Sal a side-eye glance—especially if she were the guilty one.