Death Al Dente

by Leslie Budewitz

“I got nothing to do with those losers. I’ve had to make my own way. People like you and Golden Boy, born with everything handed to you—you don’t know what hard work is.”

  I scraped the gravel with my foot and snapped my head to the left, pretending to see something. He followed my lead and I glanced down, frantically pushing buttons behind the box.

  The brief distraction increased his agitation. When he turned back to me, he was practically vibrating.

  “We all have to make our own way, Jay, regardless of what we’re born with. I admire your determination, but you went about it all wrong. You get ahead by hard work, yes, but also by helping other people. We’re all in this life together.”

  “Like your mother helped Claudette Randall? By stealing her recipes, then stealing her job and giving it to you?”

  “None of that’s true, Jay. It’s all talk.”

  He shrugged. “Like you said, in a small town, everyone knows everything. The queen of pasta is a phony.”

  “Says a guy living under a fake name with a fraudulent résumé. You never ran a restaurant in Missoula. You were a prep cook, chopping and slicing all afternoon. And you didn’t get a Culinary Arts certificate. You dropped out of a night course. You aren’t even Italian. Nothing wrong with working your way up, Jay. Just do it honestly.”

  “Right.” He snorted. “You waltz home and take over the family business, then act like we should all follow your rules. You conjure up this stupid Festa dinner, then you and your mother won’t even let me participate.”

  Ignore the barbs. Keep him talking. “That had nothing to do with you, Jay. We planned the dinner to showcase the village restaurants. Saturday night was for the caterers.” Except that dear Linda excluded my mother. “Help me understand. You thought Claudette disliked Fresca as much as you did and resented me. So why kill her?”

  “I didn’t kill her.” His features twisted like a face in a funhouse mirror and he took a half step toward me. Why hadn’t I bought one of those knives at SavClub?

  “She said she’d help,” he said. “The point was to disrupt the dinner. Her part was to sneak stuff into the gift baskets. She said she’d do it—after I swore no one would get hurt—but Friday, she changed her mind.”

  “That’s when you argued, over whether you would be the cook for her new restaurant.”

  “Yes. No—I don’t know anything about her and a restaurant. I met her downtown before the dinner Friday night. I tried to give her the stuff, but she thought it was stupid.”

  “You meant to sneak the poisoned pesto into one of the prize baskets.” The posters showed a basket brimming with local goodies, and proclaimed “a lucky winner at every table.” “But what other stuff?”

  He spotted my confusion. “Ha. You’re not so smart after all.” He looked ridiculously pleased with himself. “Fake toys, like a dead mouse in vomit, something the cat threw up. My dad and brothers stuck one in my goulash when I was a kid and I couldn’t eat for a week. Garbage like that.”

  The guests were all adults. They’d roll their eyes, wonder how the toys got there, and laugh it off. But he’d been serious. And if he wasn’t part of her restaurant plans—

  “The white bag. You gave her the toys in the white drugstore bag.”

  “She mocked me. She threw them down the riverbank.”

  And crumpled up the white bag and tossed it in the bushes above the riverbank, where she and I had both parked.

  Their agreement, and Claudette’s change of heart, explained why she tried to call me Friday. When she missed me, she called Fresca. Because she knew what James aka Jay didn’t know: You can’t burn a bridge with my mother. Even on high heat.

  But Claudette’s reaction to his juvenile prank escalated his desire for revenge—and gave him a second target. Still, from plastic toys to poison was a big leap. If Fresca Murphy’s Law was, “Don’t get mad, work harder,” then Walker’s Law must be, “Get mad, and get mean.”

  “So when you saw my mother take a basket to Jeff and Ian, you saw another opportunity. You snuck in and left the poisoned jar in the fridge.” I was right about the poison, but he’d had to change his plans.

  He nodded. “People think my dad was drunk when he hit that other car and killed those people. Yeah, he had alcohol in his system, but he always did. Didn’t mean he was drunk. He had a heart attack—that’s what caused the crash. Never would have happened if they’d been able to afford the digitalis.”

  I wasn’t sure that’s what had really happened, but it didn’t matter. “You picked the foxglove in Claudette’s own garden.” And I’d given him the idea, last Monday afternoon, when I told him Fresca had harvested Claudette’s herbs and flowers for years.

  “Idiot pharmacist wouldn’t fill my prescription. So I talked to that herbalist. Told him I’d inherited a heart condition and wanted to treat it naturally. He believed me at first, but then he got suspicious. He’s pals with your mom—did you know that? She turned him against me.” His hand slipped in and out of his pocket. “Time for her to pay.”

  He flicked open the blade and stepped so close I could practically smell his stale garlicky breath. My chest and stomach got all hot inside. The big bins had me boxed in.

  They were so quiet I saw them before I heard them. Kim and a deputy, drawn guns held low, crept around one end of the block, while two more deputies approached from the other end, behind Jay’s back.

  He grabbed for me with his left hand, and the blade glinted in his right as I jammed the recycling box over his head and darted away.

  It took him only moments to stagger free and see the deputies in a half circle between him and freedom.

  “Hands in the air, Angelo,” Kim said.

  Behind her, a door opened. Sally screamed. That split second was all Jay needed. He took off through Puddle Jumpers’ open door, shoving Sally aside. The closest deputy barged in after him while Kim barked directions and the other two deputies sped back to Front Street to head him off.

  Kim glanced at me. “I’m okay,” I yelled. “Go.” With a sweeping gaze, she sized up the situation, shouted “Stay” at Sally, and ran into the children’s shop.

  Sally sat on the graveled alley, feet splayed, mouth hanging open. She reminded me of my nephew Landon when he fell and waited for an adult’s reaction before deciding whether to get up and go on playing—or scream bloody murder.

  “What happened?” she sputtered.

  “Jay—James Angelo—confessed to poisoning Ian Randall.”

  “It wasn’t your mother?” She sounded genuinely disappointed.

  “Are you hurt?” She shook her head and let me help her up. She started for her door, but I pulled her back. “It might not be safe.”

  “My shop!” Her shriek hit my eardrum like a mallet hitting a cymbal.

  We reached Front Street in time to see a deputy muscle the hand-cuffed Jay-James into an idling patrol car. He’d be trading those chili pepper pants for jailhouse orange. I made a mental fist pump. Yes!

  “Sorry, ma’am,” another deputy said as Sally stared in her shop window. Jay-James had not gone down easily, taking with him a rack of girls’ summer dresses, a shelf or two of picture books, and an entire display of hats and T-shirts emblazoned JEWEL BAY, MONTANA. Stick horses with calico heads and bright yarn manes lay scattered on the floor like Pick Up Sticks.

  Sally’s sobs turned to howls at a decibel level I’d last heard at a Smashing Pumpkins concert.

  I leaned against the brick wall, doubled over, hooting silently. Kim managed a straight face while she told the small crowd that a suspected felon had been captured, there was no danger, and nothing to see, folks, just keep moving.

  “Oh, I need a hanky,” I said, tears of laughter on my cheeks. “Of all the shops in town for him to crash—it’s too perfect.” Sally would milk this mess and bemoan her bad luck the rest of the summer. I sympathized, from firs
thand experience. But if Jay had to wreck a shop, better hers than Kitchenalia with all its glassware and china, or Snowberry’s pottery and handblown glass.

  “We don’t get many crime-in-progress reports by text,” Kim said matter-of-factly. “It came out kinda goofy, but we got the point.”

  “I figured if I called 911, dispatch might not realize he was confessing to a crime. So I texted you instead.” I handed her my phone, glimpsing the stars on my wrist. Lucky after all. “It’s all recorded.”

  She whistled softly. “Thanks. Oh, by the way, your young friend Ian Randall called this morning.”

  In the craziness at the recycling bins, I’d forgotten Ian’s promise. Two crimes down, but the biggie loomed.

  “We need to go to the riverbank,” I said. “Angelo—Walker, whoever he is—oh, geez, you don’t know.” I summed up her prisoner’s tangled past while we walked.

  “You pieced all that together yourself?” Kim said as we crossed the parking lot. Midmorning and the summer heat was rising.

  “Don’t sound so surprised. Running a successful business nurtures all kinds of skills.” We reached the riverbank, a sixty-foot drop-off heavy with brush, rocks, and very brave trees.

  “What exactly are we searching for?” I described the stuff. She made a face and radioed for a deputy to join her. He jogged over in minutes. “You stay put,” she told me sternly, and they started down the slope.

  I perched on a boulder at the edge of the cliff and closed my eyes. Growing up in an orchard, I’d learned to recognize sweet floral scents early, and caught a whiff of mock orange above the pine scent and the musky odor of river mud. I heard Kim and the deputy moving through the brush, an occasional “ow” or a stronger word when a thorny branch snagged one of them.

  An osprey screeched overhead. Too close to her fish, or her chicks?

  Far below, the waters of the Wild Mile raced by. Only a few hundred yards farther, they flew under the bridge, then out in to the bay and lake. A rushing river meets an irresistible force, and the vast expanse of seemingly still water wins every time. Aren’t we all a bit like that? We rush and rush, running from something, then hit open water and nothing is ever the same.

  “Detective.” The deputy’s voice broke my reverie. He stood in a small hollow at the base of a fallen spruce. “This isn’t what you had in mind, but I think it’s what we’re really searching for.” He held up a folding knife, the open blade darkened with reddish-brown spots.

  Bingo by jingo. I bent over and threw up.

  • Thirty •

  “Well,” Kim said when they’d climbed back up the slope to the parking area. “That’s a lot more interesting than a rubber snake.”

  The mistress of understatement shuddered. Bloody knives she could handle, but snakes gave her the willies.

  I didn’t recognize it. With so many knives around, how could I? “Any way to tell how long it’s been there?”

  “Not long,” the deputy said. “Like it got tossed down, hit that tree, and landed in the tree well, waiting for me to find it.”

  Searching for one thing, you find something you didn’t know you were looking for. As my business mentors liked to say, luck favors the prepared.

  “So you type the blood to see if it’s hers, print the handle, and voilà, there’s your killer, right?” I said.

  The deputy rolled his eyes. “It’s tough to get usable prints off a weapon,” Kim said, “except on TV.” But they did handle it with care, bagging and tagging it. “That recording of yours should give us everything we need to corroborate Angelo’s confession. I don’t think we need the toys, but I’ll send the reserves out later to do a more thorough search.”

  Maybe my surveillance theory mattered after all. I pointed out the cameras on the back of the art gallery next to Red’s and the liquor store up the block. “I’m sure you’ve checked the footage, and if it showed the killer, you’d have made an arrest. But I’m thinking that what it doesn’t show might be important, too.” I explained about the angles of coverage, using the toe of my sandal to draw a picture in the dirt and gravel. Not as nifty as Chiara’s diagram, but you work with what you’ve got.

  “She might be onto something there, boss,” the deputy said. “There’s a gap, right behind the bar. We didn’t see nobody come from the north, behind the liquor store, or from the south.”

  “Which means it wasn’t Angelo,” I said, “because Polly Paulson places him coming up from the bridge. So either the killer came from the parking lot, right here where we are, or . . .” I stopped, suddenly chilled. “Or the killer came out Red’s back gate.” Right before our eyes.

  * * *

  The Merc’s back door slammed shut behind me. With my face flushed and my skin drenched, I might have been the one scrambling up and down a brushy hillside hunting for evidence that might not be there and getting bitten by deer flies, mosquitos, and other nasty things. A frosty lemon Pellegrino, please, to set things right.

  In the kitchen, I popped open the refrigerator door. Foamy brown liquid dripped off the bottom shelf, leaving a sticky brown slug trail. The goo slithered down the ledge.

  “Tracy!” In a flash, she stood beside me. The cloying sweetness dissipated as the crud advanced.

  “Geez, Erin. Is that all? I thought somebody’d died.” Her hand flew to her mouth as she realized what she’d said.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “It’s only Diet Coke.” She dampened a rag, working hard to keep from laughing.

  Okay, so Kim freaks out at snakes. I lose it over exploding Diet Coke. I sat on the floor and we both started howling.

  When the laughter died down, we hugged and she helped me to my feet.

  “I’ll get bottles next shopping trip, promise.” She handed me a can. “I know you sneak one now and then.”

  We lost it again. When we finally stopped laughing, she headed back to the shop and I took refuge in the office. Feet up, I leaned back in the Aeron chair, and rolled the cool bottle across my forehead. Touched it to the back of my neck.

  I popped on the computer and scrolled through the sales and inventory figures. A well-done spreadsheet is a thing of beauty, its columns and figures comforting—if the numbers add up and trend right. Ours shone.

  Fresca had worked late Thursday and much of Friday, restocking our best-selling products. I hadn’t seen her yet this morning. After our conversation last night, she deserved a morning off. I had not shared with anyone my fear about what the recipe box hidden in the basement might mean, so there was no one to share my relief now that I knew the real story. Or the sweet sadness that story evoked.

  At least my sister shared my ongoing concern about her. I crossed my fingers and rubbed my stars, praying that we were wrong and she was fine.

  Then I pulled up the Spreadsheet of Suspicion and scanned what I knew—and didn’t know. Angelo’s arrest for the poisoning closed out that column. I shaded it gray. That left the murder. His story combined with the camera coverage probably ruled him out.

  The rumors were still circulating. I could disprove the recipe theft. Claudette’s note disproved the theory that Fresca had kicked her out.

  But even with all that, Kim might not drop her suspicions of Fresca unless we produced solid evidence incriminating someone else.

  Fresca feared Kim would focus on me. I didn’t believe that for one minute. But an outsider, looking at the facts and implications of my spreadsheet, might disagree. Kim wasn’t an outsider, but the last week had demonstrated that I no longer had any idea how her mind worked.

  Which made hard evidence even more important.

  The killer had to be Dean. Sam had seen him come in the back gate. That area wasn’t shown in the security footage. But the footage from the liquor store didn’t show him coming from the north, and his absence on the gallery film meant he hadn’t approached from the other direction. If I c
onfirmed that he’d parked in the back lot, entering the alley and courtyard from the east, we’d almost have him nailed.

  Almost.

  Who else might have seen him? Easy to spot in that white jumpsuit.

  Kim had the resources to quiz everyone who’d been at the dinner—guests and staff—but I didn’t. Still, if I got lucky, we wouldn’t need to. I reached for my phone, then remembered I’d given it to Kim. So I scribbled out a list, grabbed my bag, and headed downstairs.

  “Darling.” Fresca gripped my shoulders, gave me a long gaze, then kissed my cheek. “Thank God you’re safe. I don’t know whether to be thrilled that you caught Angelo or furious that you put yourself in danger.”

  I may not have given chase, but I had caught him, hadn’t I? The TV shows don’t make clear that detecting is more about taking advantage of the situations you find yourself in than boldly putting yourself in harm’s way. “Now maybe everyone will agree that the recycling centers are a good idea.”

  “Except Sally,” Tracy said with a giggle.

  “When she cools down, I’ll buy Landon a stick horse as an apology,” I said.

  Fresca smiled. The fine lines around her mouth seemed a little deeper, her eyes less peppy. Drained from our late night, the weight of suspicion, or illness? I felt a stab of guilt for adding to her burdens, and for not having seen the effect.

  I could handle the Merc just fine without my mother. Point was, I didn’t want to. My old boss predicted pitfalls—and they’re out there—but I like the family part of running a family business.

  Tracy went to greet a customer, leaving Fresca and me alone.

  “About last night, Mom. Please don’t make any decisions yet. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “You took the words out of my mouth, darling. Now look at you. You’re filthy. Go home and clean up. Tracy and I will handle things here.”

  Ah, yes. The real Francesca Murphy was back.

  Village life was in full swing. I held the front door open for a spry, silver-haired couple in their eighties. He pointed at the carving on the threshold. “Murphy’s Mercantile. I came here as a boy on summer vacation.”