Basil Instinct

by Shelley Costa

  My mouth hung open. “Of course that’s what I—”

  “I can’t help myself, all right?” His words tumbled over each other. “Somehow I’ve got to make risotto and granita in three hours, okay? I didn’t even shave this morning.” He clawed his cheeks. “And I’m not sure I fed Vaughn.”

  So my cousin was definitely off his game.

  “Listen,” I said, my brain in overdrive, like I was telling my unit just how we were going to take out the enemy machine-gun nest. “I’ll get Choo Choo out of the way, and then we get Georgia’s arms over our shoulders so she looks like she’s drunk—”

  “In case we run into anybody.”

  The reality of that possibility made my heart pound. How on earth were we ever going to pull this off? “Then we make a dash with poor Georgia out the back door—”

  “To my car.”

  “Exactly. On three. One, two—”

  “Three, already, three!” Landon couldn’t take the suspense.

  I stuck my head out of the storeroom and peered around until I caught a glimpse of Choo Choo. “Hey, Chooch,” I called, “you better make sure the Closed for Private Party sign is up on the front door, okay?” When we heard an answering grunt, followed by some shift in the force we took for our monumental cousin’s leaving the kitchen, Landon and I turned to each other and said, “Go!”

  We bounded to the back of the Miracolo storeroom, where we had shielded Georgia from view with a half wall of stacked boxes and cartons. Frantically pushing up our sleeves like any sensible person would do in order to drag a dead body, we stepped around the boxes to the stacked bags of semolina flour, where we had set poor defunct Georgia.

  Only, Georgia was gone.

  * * *

  It was definitely mysterious, I don’t mind telling you.

  And strangely terrifying.

  Wordlessly, Landon and I scoured the storeroom looking for our fugitive corpse. We dug to the back of stocked shelves, wondering if she had somehow found a cozier crypt. Nothing. Nobody. Finally, tugging his hair into a state of emergency, Landon whirled on me. “Are you sure she was dead?”

  It was actually a good question.

  Was I?

  Did I feel for a pulse?

  Did I set a little mirror below her nostrils?

  We stared at each other, paralyzed. “No, I’m not sure,” I whispered. Aside from the corpse three weeks ago and Ronnie Rosa, my high school boyfriend, who made me realize there’s actually quite a fine line between signs of life and a well-placed call to an undertaker, I’ve had no field experience with dead bodies. “Maybe Georgia was in a deeply meditative state.” I widened my eyes at him, full of meaning. If I could make Landon buy it, I had a prayer of hanging on to my sanity.

  “In the foyer of Miracolo?”

  “A fair question.” Was he going to be no help whatsoever?

  “And where is she now? Why isn’t she out there in the kitchen with the rest of us, pounding veal and battering scallops?”

  “Again,” I said primly, “a fair question. Maybe Georgia was . . . cataleptic.”

  “What’s that?” Landon huddled toward me, all ears. Still open to possibilities of life.

  “It looks like death. That’s all I know.”

  “Well, how long does it last?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He chewed his lip, and I could tell he was thinking back to the Georgia Payne we had most recently experienced. “Does it include fixed and dilated pupils—”

  “I don’t know!” I whined. Picky, picky.

  “— and a body temp heading toward the—shall we say—suspiciously Arctic?” We both blew out air and stared fatalistically at the ceiling. “No,” said Landon darkly, “dead is as dead does.”

  At that moment we heard Choo Choo calling our names and Landon and I clutched each other the way we used to back when we were eight and nine years old and our grandfather Benigno used to regale us with stories about l’uomo nero—Italian for bogeyman—which usually ended in tears and wet pants. Still, we enjoyed the clutching. Even then, Landon Angelotta was the best girlfriend I’ve ever had. But right then in the storeroom it seemed like l’uomo nero was back and he looked a lot like Choo Choo Bacigalupo. Which surprised me. I always sort of thought it was really Maria Pia.

  We babbled. “Quick, hide.”

  “Don’t let him come in.”

  “Don’t let him find—”

  What, exactly?

  And then the beauty of our situation struck us both. Georgia was gone. Beamed up, vaporized (we checked quickly for a little pile of ashes—nope), reanimated and gurgling around the courtyard, or had dropped down to Starbucks for a triple Venti espresso to counteract the whole sleepy thing—who knew?

  Swamped in relief, Landon smoothed his hair and I tugged at my jacket, smoothing it down around my hips. We were good. For the time being. I shoved a sack of arborio rice at Landon and grabbed a bottle of vinaigrette. Smiling serenely, we stepped out of the storeroom and held them up to Choo Choo, who was giving us the look he gets when a customer asks if we deliver.

  Maria Pia returned to the kitchen—which still didn’t look quite like something FEMA would take an interest in, but give her an hour—cooing about her beautiful new gown. And when somebody—Paulette, probably, who thinks he’s “still sexy,” as she puts it, “albeit dead”—slipped a Frank Sinatra CD into the sound system, Landon gave me a baleful look. Cooking to Italian-American crooners relaxes our nonna. But to her, “relaxed” means owning the Zone, which in turn means the derecho has struck but good.

  The problem of the disappearing Georgia Payne was forgotten for the next couple of hours. I peeked into the dining room as Vera was lighting the votives and Li Wei—slicked back and decked out—was moonwalking to Frankie Avalon’s “Bobby Sox to Stockings”—a particular favorite of Maria Pia Angelotta—while Corabeth nibbled her nails in excitement. Paulette had L’Shondra Washington, who was thrilled to get the call, in a corner, where the two of them—with plenty of furtive glances—looked like they were planning the overthrow of the government. I gave Paulette the benefit of the doubt and figured she was bringing my student up to speed on what she likes to refer to as dining room “choreography.”

  Still, from the oddly murderous look on L’Shondra’s face, I wasn’t convinced she understood we were all on the same team. Jonathan was locked in an argument with Giancarlo about whether Umbria or Piemonte produces the better grape. Tonight the gleaming bar was shrine free, even though Grief Week still had three days to go, and Dana Cahill and the regulars knew we were closed to the public. (I still half expected to see Dana breeze in, since she never thinks the words “private” or “members only” exclude her.)

  Mrs. Crawford, who I was pretty sure knew we weren’t expecting Maria Pia’s nonexistent mah-jongg club, was dressed in black. Black without yards of gold embroidery or silver chiffon or Swarovski crystal beads. Just . . . plain . . . black. Below the knee, nothing shiny, a neckline that started north of her cleavage. With her wiry hair pinned back, she was the picture of a church organist. What gives? Why the change? I had a bad moment, then, wondering whether Mrs. Crawford had stumbled onto the contents of the storeroom, and this was what she wears to a send-off for the formerly vertical.

  Then I remembered Maria Pia had requested that the piano repertoire for the evening be all opera. But opera as elevator music. Just a bland background—“of notes,” as my nonna had put it. At which Mrs. Crawford looked calculating, which worried me a bit.

  When finally Nonna was satisfied that the meal was “respectable,” which means the dazzling aromas of onions, Parmesan, and marsala were filling the kitchen, she disappeared into the office, slamming the door behind her, to get ready for her big night. Landon happened to go into the walk-in freezer to check on the granita di caffè, when I heard a squeak. “Eve! Eve could I get some help
in here, please, with this—this—side of beef?” What was he doing moving sides of beef—here I glanced at my watch—just thirty minutes from the witching hour—otherwise known as half an hour before the Belfiere Bat Association showed up? Wait a minute. We don’t even have sides of beef . . .

  I walked stiff-legged to the freezer as Choo Choo sidestepped gracefully from the saltimbocca to the salad to the risotto, stirring, tweaking, humming. At the precise moment I stepped inside the Miracolo version of the Yukon in December, I found Landon grappling with Georgia Payne, who had about as much color in her cheeks as Morticia Addams, and Nonna chose that moment to clang out our names. “Eve! Bella! Cara! Landon! Bellissimo!” On Maria Pia’s good-looks scorecard for her grandchildren, Landon was always at the top.

  Our nonna was definitely on the prowl for us.

  I joined Landon in grappling with Georgia. “How did she get in here?” I hissed at him.

  “Well . . .” He gritted his teeth, trying to reposition his hands, which were groping her in places that was bringing pleasure to neither of them. “I’d say we can lay to rest the hypothesis that Georgia may not be”—he winced and bit his lip—“dead.”

  With that, her poor head lolled and her chin rapped me in the collarbone. And I could swear I pulled something in my back as I tried to lift her by the hips. Visions of a worker’s comp claim danced like a skull and crossbones in my head. Although, for the life of me (sorry, Georgia), I couldn’t figure out how to describe the nature of the work-related injury.

  Muscle strain from grappling with coworker’s corpse?

  Effects of head-butt by deceased sous chef?

  I was just deciding to pay another dollar for a face-to-face with Joe Beck on this matter, when someone jiggled the handle to the freezer door. The look Landon shot me was the one I remembered from our childhood when—thanks to our grandfather, who apparently couldn’t tell squeals of delight from those of abject terror—l’uomo nero was just about to burst into the room. Landon danced the frosty Georgia over to a corner obscured by shelves of grass-fed, cage-free, antibiotic-free (but still dead) chicken breasts, where he propped her upright with his body. I heard a little whimper, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Georgia.

  Grabbing a small pack of something frozen hard as a rock, I swiped the sweat from my forehead and let myself out of the freezer, where I ran into Maria Pia, decked out in her midnight-blue satin Belfiere “chef jacket” gown. “Oh, there you are, cara!” she warbled, her arms outstretched, as she turned to give me the full effect. Gone was the cooking outfit from the Mao era. She looked like she was born to be a member of the Crazy Club, what with her dramatic good looks, her thick hair you’ve either got from birth, never mind the gray, or you don’t, and her poise. I’d accept a plate of unrecognizable poison from her any day . . .

  With my free hand I grabbed her wrist. “Gorgeous, Nonna,” I said sincerely.

  While she bent my ear about whether she should wear her hair up or down—which was my cue to tell her it’s equally dazzling either way—and, if up, whether the diamond clips look better than the gold, I kept a smile plastered on my mug while I started to collapse a little inside just wondering how long Landon would last, pressed up against the uncomplaining Georgia in the Sub-Zero freezer before freezer burn held them together permanently. I gave Nonna a playful little shove. “Go try the diamond clips, Nonna, and I’d go with the charcoal-gray eyeliner, if I were you.”

  “But,” she sputtered, “that’s at home!”

  “Precisely. But well worth the trip.”

  “But”—here she lowered her voice, her eyes darting sideways over the suddenly untrustworthy Choo Choo and Vera, who was dashing by us with rolls of toilet paper to restock the customer restrooms—“my, ah”—this she yelled because to Maria Pia screaming always carries a certain quality of conviction—“mah-jongg club will be here in twenty minutes.”

  I wanted to fling her back into the office. “Then just use what you’ve got and tart yourself up right nice, missy, there you go!” Blinking at me, and about to launch into something fake-anxious about the evening’s menu, she nevertheless turned on her von Furstenberg heels and tripped back to the office. At which I flung open the freezer door and Landon fell into my arms, practically sobbing. He waved behind him in a way that was meant to convey that Georgia was just about as fine as she was going to get, and we twirled ourselves out of the frozen air and shut the door hard.

  “How in the ding-dong doo-wop did she get in there?” I whispered.

  He widened his eyes at me. “Well, I’m just guessing here, but I’m thinking someone else is on to us.”

  We loped back to the kitchen, where Choo Choo was stirring something—I no longer knew exactly what—placidly. My money was on Choo Choo. I narrowed my eyes at him. Did he really think he could go moving our corpse without our figuring it out? Between this macabre little game he was playing and his responsibility for the CRIBS mess I was in, well, the flicked match most definitely stops here.

  It was Landon, however, who came up with an alternative explanation. “I’m thinking,” he said, scratching his chin, “that someone”—he lifted one eyebrow at me meaningfully—“happened to come across the poor unfortunate Georgia stretched out on the semolina in the storeroom and concluded—in much the same way we did, darling—that she just dropped dead on the sacks . . .”

  I saw where he was going. “And then that someone moved her to the freezer—”

  “Perhaps a spot less likely to be entered.”

  “—until he could get her out the door, right?”

  We turned our heads slowly to our majestic Bacigalupo cousin, who was humming in a highly suspicious manner. “Someone who is also protecting Maria Pia.”

  I was about to jump on the hummer’s back and beat him about the head and shoulders with what turned out to be a pack of frozen beef short ribs, when Paulette marched through the double doors, planted her feet, and gazed around the kitchen appraisingly. I could tell she was about to make an announcement on the order of either a new pope having been chosen or the Beatles having broken up. Our wooden spoons stopped mid-stir. “Maria Pia’s”—her eyes glittered, the wily Paulette—“mah-jongg club is arriving.” She added, “Battle stations,” then headed in a stately manner down the short hall to the office to let the guest of honor know.

  * * *

  The Belfiere ladies wafted into Miracolo in groups, kind of like jellyfish. Where they all parked and how they all rustled in their cheesy get-ups down the south side of Market Square without drawing just the kind of attention we were hoping to avoid was beyond me. I overheard our sweet Vera, who was standing by the kitchen doors at the time, tell Jonathan that she never knew mah-jongg clubs could be so elegant.

  I didn’t recognize a single solitary one of the Belfiere members, except, of course, Fina Parisi. We were feeding an assortment, that was for sure, what with blue-satin-clad ladies running the gamut from spindly to squat. When Paulette and Jonathan seated them, they raised identical silver masks with handles that looked like tongue depressors to cover their faces, which was certainly an improvement. Meanwhile, Mrs. Crawford was inscrutable at the piano, and maybe it was me, but I could swear the middle of a famous aria from that tearjerker La Bohème morphed into “In Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home.”

  Nobody else seemed to notice.

  As I stood at the window to the kitchen door, she caught my eye and winked.

  Once Chef Maria Pia Angelotta, who had gone for the diamond bling in her hair, swept into the dining room, decked out in her Belfiere outfit, I stepped back, relaxing, but not before I saw Fina glide toward her with outstretched arms. What followed was a ceremony before Paulette, Vera, L’Shondra, and the irrepressible Corabeth served the first course. It consisted of the kind of choral hum you get in high schools where students have to choose between choir and woodshop.

  From behind their raised m
asks they chanted something about keeping the flame alight, Maga, Maga, a sip before death, a taste before life, Maga, Maga, and then it seemed to veer off into promises of faithfulness to the alchemy of alimentary bliss. Which, for me, means avoiding hot peppers. How the wide-eyed Vera reconciled this stuff with mah-jongg, I’ll never know. But in the background Mrs. Crawford’s fingers were just moving across the piano keys from the spot when them cotton balls get rotten you can’t pick very much cotton to Rodolfo’s singing to Mimi that her hands are cold.

  Each dinner guest then raised her free hand and the midnight-blue satin sleeves slipped down to reveal the Belfiere tattoo on fifty wrists. At which point, seated, they all thrust out their tattooed wrists toward the center of the table and waved them about—prompting Mrs. Crawford to slide into a few bold bars of “The Hokey Pokey”— and then their voices dropped as they took what sounded like a pledge to chop till they drop.

  But I reminded myself that it would be foolish to underestimate this group that looked like its idea of activity was a rousing game of chair volleyball. After all, there was still the little matter of the mysterious death of one of their own that went unreported. Of course, what with the contents of our own walk-in freezer, I wasn’t one to talk.

  Finally, tattoos disappeared under flowing sleeves once more, and then Fina Parisi—from behind her silver mask—welcomed all to the culinary home of Chef Maria Pia Angelotta. Here my nonna—the only one without a silver mask, I guess because she was still uninitiated—bowed and scraped and waved her arms in the manner she usually reserves for the more passionate moments in her nightly signature song, “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

  Then Fina nodded to the servers, Maria Pia joined Fina at her table, and the staff barreled into the kitchen while we started furiously plating the appetizer. Corabeth wanted to know if she should call Georgia, to which I could only reply airily, “That ship has sailed” and Landon added, “A dead issue.” Despite the assembly line of bodies either plating or power-walking with armfuls of Scallop Fritters with Roasted Chioggia Beet Carpaccio, Li Wei chose this moment to do a spin kick that accidentally grazed the chin of the simmering L’Shondra, who told him in no uncertain terms to get his skinny little crackerhonkey ass out of her face. Only she said it like she was squaring off before a congregation of unbelievers. If it was a little too loud, we didn’t have time to care.