Fina Parisi’s house was what I could only call alight. Awash in light. Alight, awash, afoul, afoot. Sheer terror had flung me straight back to the nineteenth century, apparently. It was a two-story brick house with what looked like multiple chimneys and porticoes—for all those horse-drawn carriages, or hearses, that come to call at the Parisi homestead. I would call it sprawling but that would come off as a little too disorganized for this, well, edifice. For the temporary home of a two-hundred-year-old secret cooking society, it was brilliantly lit. Disturbing, considering I had been hoping for whole zones of shadows where I could retreat, unobserved.
The double doors stood wide open and in we all sailed, I with my silver mask high, murmuring something positive to the frumpy sorority sister next to me, who chose that moment to complain about her girdle. This was news to me—I didn’t know such things still existed, let alone that they didn’t fit any better than I heard they ever did—but I quickly dismissed it as irrelevant to the case of Anna Tremayne. In Fina Parisi’s “foyer” you could park half a dozen of my little Tumbleweeds—you might cramp the sweeping central staircase that looked like it had been snitched from Tara, but you could do it.
Now that I was inside enemy HQ, my plan, aside from keeping an eye on Nonna, was to slink off into the shadows to snoop around Fina’s digs. Had I but known that Fina’s digs were the size of Uzbekistan, I would have brought a sleeping bag. And some pesto. As the others headed into the parlor the size of a hotel lobby, joining their sisters, I slipped to the side of the arched doorway and made a quick scan.
Hanging from the high rafters was, much to my relief, not a member who had violated omertà, but an eight-foot banner bearing the Belfiere “coat of arms.” There in the upper-right quadrant of the funnel-shaped shield were the three silver knives with ebony handles, and the carmine-colored slash ran diagonally to the black mortar and pestle in the lower-left quadrant. And on the scroll below the shield was the Latin for Never Too Many Knives. Just seeing this creep-show banner reminded me that this was a group I couldn’t let down my guard for, even if they do incorporate the Hokey-Pokey into their club pledge and then swoon over Scallop Fritters with Roasted Chioggia Beet Carpaccio. After all, even Lucrezia Borgia had to eat . . .
In front of the cavernous stone fireplace, a long table had been covered in a gold cloth and decked out in chafing dishes, demitasse cups, beakers, and what looked like an apparatus from a high school chemistry class. Was something being distilled? A handful of members wearing gold cowls seemed to be organizing the induction ceremony. Their masks were gold, smaller than the handheld silver “general membership” masks, and clapped to their mugs with elastic, leaving them hands-free for dishing out whatever was kept warm in the chafing dishes.
I was so busy sizing up the situation that I realized with a pang that I had lost sight of Nonna, who had disappeared into the crowd. I thought I picked her out, sitting to the left of the long table, on one of Fina Parisi’s several love seats that had been pushed aside to make room for folding chairs. Finally, breaking into the subdued conversations came the voice of “La Maga” herself, Fina Parisi, who took her place behind the table and clapped her hands to settle the crowd.
Not surprisingly, she had a gold mask and cowl, not to mention a stage presence that stilled the room quickly. When I noticed that members were handling what looked like a two-page program of the evening’s agenda, I found myself wishing I had managed to grab one. Then I caught sight of a basket on a table just inside the doorway—programs! But it was a dilemma. If I entered the parlor to get one, I could get stuck there and lose my opportunity to snoop. But if I didn’t get one, I had no idea when the most worrisome parts of the ceremony were scheduled.
Well, it was a night of no guarantees. Either way.
And I needed to snoop.
While Fina chanted in Latin, her voice lifting above the silent crowd, I had two thoughts. One, now was the time to slip away into the other parts of her house. Two, she’d make a great replacement for Dana Cahill should we actually ever hammer together enough of a backbone to let Dana go. A few voices joined in with the chant in a strange counterpoint that sounded kind of plaintive. Maybe they were complaining about the maddening popularity of spaghetti and meatballs.
I backed away from where I had been lurking to the side of the doorway, out of sight of the others, and fled on tiptoe across the marble foyer. A quick peek into the room across the way from the induction ceremony showed me an empty formal dining room with the kind of heavy wooden table that looked like it had seen plenty of mead and roast pig in its day. Two beautiful crystal-and-silver candelabras lent an air of normalcy to the table that looked like it had been “distressed” by more than its share of maces and mauls.
But the room didn’t look at all like a center of operations, so I pressed on down a stone-arched corridor, wondering how Fina Parisi kept up with this place. Looked like she hadn’t even taken on temp staff for the evening—although, given the secrecy of the Crackpot Cooking Society, maybe that was no surprise.
Just as well I didn’t have the time to ogle her kitchen, which was larger than what we had at Miracolo, and I passed an atrium that seemed to double as a breakfast room, and a powder room that actually held an Oriental rug. Me, I put down a shaggy oval with a rubberized back I picked up for $19.99 at Target.
And then I found it. Fina Parisi’s study. Behind an ornately carved heavy wooden door.
The monster’s lair.
I made myself shiver.
Shaking it off, I slipped inside, then fumbled under the folds of my fake Belfiere gown to slide a flashlight out of my pants pocket, since I didn’t want to chance turning on the lights. I swung the beam across walls of books, two filing cabinets, a trophy case, shelves of objets d’art, and—La Maga’s desk. Definitely sister furniture to the dining room table. A narrow tapestry runner stretched along the back of the desk, and a green-shaded library desk lamp seemed to keep everything in place. Including an eighteen-inch gilt reproduction of Michelangelo’s David, sporting only a fig leaf, which kind of spoiled the effect.
I dashed to the front of the desk and spread my hands at it inquiringly. Now that I was there, I hadn’t a clue how to set about getting a . . . clue. I glared at a MacBook Air that was closed up and offering me nothing in the way of information without a password. So I’d just have to move on to other possibilities. Then I dimly heard a chorus of member voices swelling in a song from the Great Belfiere Songbook, apparently, although it bore a strong resemblance to “A Bicycle Built for Two.” Easing open the center drawer, I cast the beam from the flash over the papers inside. Anna Tremayne, Anna Tremayne, please let there be something incriminating about Anna Tremayne . . .
The papers appeared, annoyingly, to be recent correspondence from Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in East Orange, NJ, thanking her for her donation, Sarah Lawrence College Alumnae Association, thanking her for her donation—we went to the same school?—State Farm Insurance, upping her premiums, and a few far-flung Belfiere members—from Hong Kong, São Paulo, and Alexandria—sorrowing over the fact that they couldn’t make it to the induction ceremony of Maria Pia Angelotta. Tearing off a Post-it note from Fina’s pad in another drawer, I scribbled the names and contact info of these members.
My fingers sifted through the stuff in the desk organizer. Keys, paper clips, coins, ChapStick, rolls of postage stamps, and . . . flash drives. Two. Well, well. I had just scooped them up, stuffed them into my pants pocket, and shut the desk drawer and started toward the filing cabinets, when all of a sudden I heard a sound out in the hallway and, with a trembling hand, I flipped my silver mask back into place against my face.
My only wee thought had something to do with hiding behind the door, should it open. It wouldn’t win any awards for originality, but it might keep my fanny out of the pasta fazool. On my way there I snagged the gilt statue of David from the desk corner, and drew my arm behind my back.
The overhead lights went on and I felt like I had been caught gazing directly at an eclipse. My breath caught in my throat.
“Who are you?” came the voice.
“Just looking for the bathroom,” I tried, with a Southern accent that came out of nowhere, blinking at the figure in the doorway.
“No, you’re not. So I’ll ask you again,” she said, her voice steady, “who are you?”
My eyes adjusted. It was Fina herself, her mask pushed up to her hairline. Maybe I could lull her with a chorus of the school song from our alma mater, Sarah Lawrence. Mind you, I had never troubled myself to learn it, but given the musical tastes of this Belfiere crowd, I figured I could wing it. And if it turned out that college had not been a happy period in her life, and she rushed at me screeching in Italian, well, I always had David. I didn’t think I could stall her any longer. My fingers tightened around the fig leaf as I considered how to handle Fina Parisi, the woman whose desk I had just been rifling.
Which was when I noticed the gun.
14
“Gum paste?” I asked.
She waved the gun. “Nougat.” With that, she raised the little brown Derringer to her mouth and bit off the tip of the barrel. “Guns only interest me as a novelty treat,” she said through narrowed lips as she chewed prettily. “Knives are more my line.”
Too late I remembered the Belfiere motto, Never Too Many Knives, as Fina Parisi drew her other hand out from the folds of her midnight-blue satin gown. An ebony-handled knife gleamed, bearing a strong resemblance to the ones on the Belfiere shield. Unless I’m trimming the chicken breasts for the evening’s special at Miracolo, I hate it when knives gleam. “How did you find me?” My voice came out about an octave too high to be taken seriously.
She jutted her shapely chin at me. “Zipper.”
“Zipper?” I said belligerently, like it was the stupidest word in all creation.
“True Belfiere gowns are fastened with buttons.”
I drew in a sharp breath. Busted. Oh, Paulette, Paulette, how could you have known? She must have finished off Maria Pia’s gown with regulation buttons, and forgot when it came to mine. Right then I tried calculating the odds of her knife reaching me before my statuesque blunt object reached her, but when the business in my head started to sound like a word problem from an old algebra class, I gave it up. “You,” I said with some indignation, “are going to come off really terrible in Sarah Lawrence Magazine.” And then I swung David out from behind my back.
And flung Paulette’s sweet little mask to the floor. Go for the drama every time.
It was strangely satisfying to me when Fina Parisi blurted, “You!”
“I hope your specials show more originality.” I sounded queenly.
She twirled the knife in her hand. Which gave me a chance to see her wrist: no B for Belfiere tattoo. So, not her dominant hand. So, maybe she’d miss me by a mile. I felt a brief surge of hope. Or . . . maybe she’d hurt me a whole lot worse than she intended. In what seemed a single motion, Fina Parisi tossed what was left of the nougat Derringer onto a bookshelf next to her and slipped the knife into her now candy-free right hand.
I didn’t feel exactly sunk. More like semiscrewed.
“What year?” barked La Maga.
Our eyes locked.
I twirled David. “2004.” Then, but not because I was interested: “You?”
“1989.”
“I was a dance major.”
“I didn’t ask. Although it might interest you to know,” she went on, “I was a darts champion.”
I sneered at her. “Twenty-five years ago.”
“Would you like a demonstration?” Her violet eyes turned cold. “You’re trespassing.”
I had no answer for that. I thought I was sleuthing. And protecting my nonna.
Fina Parisi added, “And I have forty-nine allies out there.”
I was definitely getting in touch with my inner bitch. “You’ll be out cold before you can summon them, Shorty.” For good measure, I brandished David, then slapped him into my other palm like he was a tire iron.
Her eyes slid off my face for half a second while she seemed to ponder this declaration. I thought it was information, pure and simple, but it pleased me that the elegant and violet-eyed Fina Parisi seemed to consider it a threat. “What are you doing here?” She lowered her knife hand.
After a quick calculation—one that did not involve any sort of algebra—I straightened up. “Protecting my nonna from Belfiere.” When you’re in the monster’s lair, it seemed that the best plan was either to lie outright or tell only partial truths. I decided to go for a mix of innocent but misguided Nonna-fear, the culinary equivalent of a fritto misto, fried mixed stuff.
“Protecting Maria Pia from Belfiere?” She seemed bewildered. “Why would you do that?”
Her bewilderment seemed, well, disingenuous to me. Which I discovered pushed a couple of Eve Angelotta hot buttons I never knew I had. I threw my own plan about Truth alla fritto misto out the window faster than I could possibly clobber Fina Parisi with a gilt statuette. I stepped closer to the woman, overlooking the fact that I was bringing the dartboard closer to the dart. “Because,” I said, my voice dripping, “two years ago this, this cooking society”—I jabbed David in the direction of the dim chorus out in the parlor—“poisoned one of its own members—just a little criminal activity that went unreported—and, oh, did I mention the victim was never heard from again?” But I couldn’t stop there. “And”—I stepped even closer—“the body was never found?”
Fina Parisi’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you hear that?” she said softly.
Was she testing me? Seeing how good my source was? Seeing how good my proof was?
She was about to hear it all. In spades. Whatever that means.
“From Anna Tremayne.”
She actually gasped.
I widened my eyes at the head of Belfiere. “Drama major?” I asked.
She ignored me. But not entirely. “How do you know Anna Tremayne?”
“Anna Tremayne,” I said slowly, figuring it out as I went, “was my employee.” Shouldn’t Fina Parisi know that? After all, what did she think Georgia/Anna was doing in an empty Miracolo at midnight on the night she killed her for violating the Belfiere code of silence? “As you well know,” I said pointedly.
At which La Maga shrugged.
At which there came a knock at the study door. I pictured all forty-nine cutthroat chefs out in the hall. For one bemused moment I wondered if Maria Pia Angelotta would take their side when they overpowered me. If, when it came right down to it, blood was thicker than, well, blood of another sort. Either way, bad times for Angelottas (which included Bacigalupos) lay ahead . . .
“Yes, what is it?”
A melodious voice piped up. “Maga? Are you okay? We’ve got about another five minutes of singing, and then there’s the pledge, but then—”
“I’m fine, Elodie. Just five more minutes.” She glanced at me, turned with a rustle to the bookcase, and with her ebony-handled Belfiere knife, cut the candy Derringer in half. “Listen,” she opened the door a crack, “bring me two glasses from the flagon, will you, please?”
“Two?”
“Right.”
“All right.” And the voice started to move away.
Fina Parisi’s head fell back as something occurred to her. “Wait. Wait.” Then she opened the door wider, motioning for the unseen Elodie to come into the study. All I thought was: Two against one. Might as well be all fifty.
Another gowned Belfierean rustled through the door. Once Fina was sure the door wouldn’t close on the gown, she shut it quietly, then crossed her arms. The other woman, whose silver mask dangled from long fingers, was medium height with thick, dark hair, a trim figure under the yards of
blue satin, and just a light application of makeup on her olive-skinned face. Fina Parisi introduced her as Elodie Tichinoff, and as soon as I heard the name, I remembered her as someone whose restaurant—or was it her son’s?—was trashed in a review by Anna Tremayne.
Who had more motive for Anna T.’s death—Fina or Elodie?
Fina made a large sweeping gesture, saying, “Elodie, tell Eve here whether you’ve ever had anything unusual happen to you during a Belfiere meeting.” Then she folded her arms Mandarin-style, her hands disappearing into the cavernous sleeves. At first, Elodie Tichinoff looked at us both blankly, then she remembered something, and an eyebrow lifted wryly. She went on to describe the night around two years ago at that induction when she passed out at the long table when she was sampling the “poisons.”
“Who was the inductee that night, Elodie?”
“Well, it was that blond chef, that diva.” Elodie twiddled her fingers like she was playing a scale. “Tremayne.”
Fina Parisi looked at me. “Go on,” she prompted. “Tell Eve about the poisons.”
Elodie laughed and shrugged, then explained that ten members, on a rotating basis, provide tinctures of herbs and spices for the meeting—not every meeting, mind you, maybe every third time the society meets—and by a lottery system two Belfiereans sample each tincture and try to tease out the ingredients. The “poison” is an addition that does not fit the other flavors, a kind of culinary “what’s wrong with this picture?” That addition really complicates the game, which is already pretty competitive, because at the end of the ten trials, whoever identifies fewer samples is placed on probation.
I think the proper word is glowered. I glowered at Elodie Tichinoff, trying to get to the bottom of this strange little Belfiere competition. “So what does probation mean?”
Basil Instinct Page 18