A Killer Kebab

by Susannah Hardy

  What was it Brenda had said about Jim? The day of the murder, she’d seen him walking down Theresa Street. Quite probably, he had taken the very same route I was taking now. She said he was wearing an overcoat and carrying a briefcase.

  But when I found the body, there’d been no coat. No briefcase.

  Which meant the killer must have taken those fairly bulky items when he left.

  The Bonaparte House kitchen was warm and dry when I entered. The rest of the house, being two hundred years old, was drafty, but the kitchen was an addition and had some insulation. It was my favorite room anyway. I hung up my coat on a peg by the back door, then pressed a number into my cell.

  “Brenda?” I said when she picked up. I wasn’t sure why I made it a question. Who else would answer her phone?

  “Yo.”

  “The day Jim MacNamara died, you saw him headed here, right?”

  “Yup.” She was monosyllabic today, but her words got the job done.

  “And he was wearing a topcoat and carrying a briefcase, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Where were you when you saw him?”

  “Checking the trash can in front of the Chamber of Commerce. He went around back of your restaurant.”

  “The police must have asked you this, but did you see anyone come out, either from the back parking lot, or maybe the side or front door?” I hadn’t thought to ask her that when we were talking just after the murder.

  “Yup, the cops asked me that. I’d moved farther away, down by the jewelry shop. But I did see someone coming from that direction, maybe twenty minutes after I first saw the lawyer.”

  The suspense was killing me. “Was it Russ?” I hated to ask, because at one time Brenda had had a bit of a crush on my former dishwasher.

  “The cops asked me that too. Naw. It wasn’t him.” She paused dramatically. “It was the lawyer again, Jim MacNamara.”

  NINETEEN

  Huh? That made no sense. “You mean you saw him go in, and go out again? How could that be? He was dead.”

  “That’s what the cops said. They didn’t believe me. That’s what comes of drinking for so many years. You lose credibility. But I know what I saw.”

  My thoughts raced. “I believe you,” I said. I didn’t know what it meant, but I thought she was telling the truth. Or the truth as she knew it. Which might not be the same thing.

  “Of course, he was pretty far away at that point and I couldn’t see his face. He had a hat on pulled down low. But there aren’t many men that wear topcoats and carry briefcases in Bonaparte Bay.”

  She was right about that. The bank manager, the funeral director, and the two lawyers in town were about it.

  Which meant, unless Jim had arrived at the Bonaparte House, left, and returned, only to get himself killed, someone had worn his topcoat and carried his briefcase from the murder scene. If it wasn’t Russ, who had it been?

  “Thanks Brenda. I was just curious.”

  “Yeah, I’m curious a lot too. Gotta go.”

  I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the counter in front of Gladys’s recipes. My phone sat on the counter and I stared at it.

  I’d taken pictures of the restrooms, both before and after the demolition. It was possible they’d show something and I kicked myself for not thinking of it before. I opened up my photo gallery and began to scroll through.

  There were a number of “before” pictures, showing the pink and black tile and the chipped porcelain sinks and scarred stall walls, both in the men’s and ladies’ rooms. Nothing stood out, other than general ugliness. Nor did I expect it to.

  I scrutinized the “after” picture of the men’s room. The sinks and toilets had been removed and were stacked up awaiting disposal. The entire room was covered in a white powder. Nothing stuck out at me other than a few footprints.

  I moved on to the ladies’ room. It had the same dismantled fixtures and stalls as the men’s, the same white dust obscuring the surfaces. A lump rose in my throat. I’d stopped taking pictures when I saw Jim’s body, thank God. I didn’t need a photograph because that picture was seared into my brain. I examined the last photo again. More footprints in the dust.

  A lot of footprints.

  I sent that picture to my laptop, waited impatiently for it to load, then brought it up on the larger screen. The resolution wasn’t all that good, but I could make out several distinct shapes. Several large ones had rounded toes and heels—workboots? That would make sense on a construction site. Another set had pointed toes and a horseshoe-shaped heel and led toward the body, which was just out of the view of the camera. An identical set led away. And there was a smaller pointed toe. No heel mark was visible. These all suggested dress shoes, which would make sense. Jim would have been wearing these. Russ would not.

  But the footprints did back up Brenda’s story that Jim had left again, after he’d arrived.

  I e-mailed the photos to my scary friend Lieutenant Hawthorne. I didn’t know what they meant. But maybe he would.

  By now my coffee was cold. I put the mug into the microwave. While I waited for it to ding, I thought about what I knew about this murder. So far, it was just a whole lot of disjointed facts that didn’t form any kind of pattern, didn’t make any kind of sense. The only thing for sure was that Jim MacNamara was dead, and someone had seen fit to take his life in my home and business.

  I set my again-steaming mug down on the counter and began to play with Gladys’s recipes, shuffling the piles around, looking at the papers but not actually reading them. I was just about to pull one randomly and start cooking—anything to take my mind off it all, even if it was a cream soup casserole—when my cell phone buzzed. It was a good thing I’d bought a plan with unlimited minutes, because this thing was getting a workout.

  “Georgie?” a woman said when I answered. “It’s Marielle Riccardi. I wanted to thank you for taking care of things at the Casa.”

  “Hi, Marielle.” Even over the phone, the woman made me feel guilty about my less than healthy eating habits and lack of exercise. “How’s your dad?”

  “Better. Maybe. I think. The concussion has messed with his head, you know? He keeps saying something about a waiter. ‘The waiter has the slip.’ Before this happened, I know he was thinking about firing that new woman he hired.”

  I thought back to Piper’s uninspiring performance as a server. “She . . . had some things to learn.” I’d feel bad if someone lost a job because of something I’d said, even if she clearly wasn’t cut out for restaurant work.

  “That’s putting it kindly. She waited on me once and couldn’t even remember to bring me a glass of water when I asked for it. I had to go to the kitchen myself.”

  “Sounds like your dad is confused. Maybe he means he wants to give the waitress her pink slip? Fire her?”

  “I thought the same thing. Anyway, if you happen to see her around town, would you give her my number so I can update her on when the restaurant’s going to reopen? I can’t find it anywhere, and she probably wouldn’t know to contact me at the exercise studio. I’m not going to fire her right away, not till I know that’s what Dad wants.”

  “Will do. She came into the Casa while I was there and I let her know it would be at least two weeks.”

  “Oh, then the urgency’s off. That’s good. Still, if you see her, have her call me.” She rang off.

  I looked at the pile of recipes. My laptop was right in front of me. I looked at the clock on the wall behind the grill. I had hours in front of me before bed. This was as good a time as any to start typing.

  I opened up a fresh document and got to work.

  Gladys had said that some of these recipes dated back to her mother, and I believed her. More than a few called for lard—a thing I wasn’t even sure it was possible to get anymore, and I was in the restaurant business. I decided to type in the
ones I wanted, as written. Later, if I decided they warranted a test, I’d probably substitute vegetable shortening or even butter. I’d already tried the Maple Walnut Sandies, and they’d been a winner, so I started with that one.

  I wasn’t the world’s best typist, not like my daughter, whose fingers flew. I had learned the old method of touch typing—the one that had actually been developed a hundred years ago to slow down typists so they wouldn’t make so many mistakes that were harder to fix back then. Today’s kids seemed to have each developed their own system.

  But I needed to concentrate to get the words and measurements on the screen. The effort it took was a welcome respite from the craziness of the last few days. So much had happened, so many people in my life were sick or hurt, one was even dead, and no answers were forthcoming about any of it. It was a relief to think about something other than that damn trust.

  I was just entering the baking instructions for a yummy-looking lemon shortbread cookie when a thought popped into my head. One of those thoughts I’d been trying to keep out.

  Franco’s words echoed around. The waiter has the slip.

  The waiter. Right now, Franco had only one server on staff right now. Piper Preston. He didn’t have a waiter.

  Or did he?

  More than twenty years ago, when I was just out of high school, I’d lived for a summer in an apartment over the Casa di Pizza. Four girls crammed into two bedrooms, with a tiny kitchenette that we rarely used, a living room, and one outdated bathroom that made getting ready for work a crowded proposition.

  Outside our apartment, in the hallway, was a rectangular door about two feet by three feet, set in the center of the wall if I recalled correctly. Inside that panel was a shaft containing a platform that could be raised and lowered between floors.

  A dumbwaiter.

  We didn’t know if whoever had assaulted Franco and searched the restaurant had found the original Thousand Island dressing recipe he thought Franco had. Or whether that’s what the attacker was looking for at all. Franco had been hit in the head, and was disoriented after the blow. Was still disoriented, according to his daughter. If the attacker, or attackers, did find the recipe, they weren’t broadcasting it.

  Franco might have been telling Marielle where he’d hidden the document.

  Maybe this was all a bit of a stretch, but somehow I didn’t think so.

  Franco’s keys were still in my coat pocket. And I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight unless I used them to check out the Casa.

  If I left right now, this whole mission would take no more than twenty minutes. In the door, examine the dumbwaiter, out the door. It pained me to have to inconvenience a friend—again—to come with me, but if the events of the last few months had taught me anything, it was not to take stupid chances. Or at least to take as few as humanly possible.

  So I dialed Brenda Jones. Her voice mail picked up. I left her a message telling her where I was going and to meet me there in the next few minutes if she could. I tried Kim Galbraith, and left a similar message. Before I lost my nerve, I put on my jacket, slipped into my boots, and headed back out into the cold toward the Casa.

  The sun was starting to dip on the horizon, but there was still enough daylight for me to get this done more or less safely. Or so I told myself.

  The streets of Bonaparte Bay were empty, which was to be expected this time of year and this time of day. Up ahead, there was one open shop, and its light shone like a beacon in a sea of dark windows. The Express-o Bean. I’d get this done and out of my head, then treat myself to a hot specialty coffee, which would be way better than the one I’d left, cooling again, on the counter. Maybe I’d get a muffin too, if they had any left.

  Buoyed by the thought, I walked around the corner and let myself in the kitchen door of the Casa di Pizza.

  I debated. Should I lock it behind me, or leave it open for Brenda or Kim if they got my message in time and decided to come over? Locking seemed the better choice. After all, it wasn’t like the thief/attacker knew that I was on my way here and had somehow gotten himself inside the building to wait for me. If that was true, I had way bigger problems than I was anticipating now. Still, it paid to be cautious. I locked the back door, checked the front door to make sure it was also locked, and grabbed a kitchen knife from the magnetic rack on the cabinet over the prep counter.

  Whether I could ever bring myself to use it was a question I hoped I’d never have to answer.

  I didn’t actually know where the dumbwaiter came out on this floor. But I did know where it was above. So I took the back stairs, which hadn’t changed much that I could tell in the last twenty years, and came out on the second floor.

  This space had also not changed much, if at all, since I’d been here last, what seemed like a lifetime ago. The walls were the same institutional pale green, though some of the plaster underneath was now spiderwebbed, or even missing in spots. The hallway was lit with the same unshaded single lightbulb, although Franco had switched to the more energy-efficient fluorescent style.

  The knife, the same type of chef’s knife I’d held pretty much every day of my life for a couple of decades, felt heavy in my hand as I approached the panel in the wall, which was right where I remembered it. My roommates and I had never actually used it, though we’d speculated it would be useful for transporting laundry and beer between floors. The ropes hadn’t looked all that sturdy back then.

  They looked less sturdy now when I opened the panel and peered up at them.

  A flashlight would have been a lot more useful than the knife. Franco probably had one in the kitchen somewhere, but I didn’t want to spend any more time than I had to hunting for one. I pushed the panel open as far as it would go to let in the maximum amount of fluorescent light.

  Two ropes held the platform in place. Presumably, they were connected by some type of pulley system. I was no engineer, but I more or less understood this simple machine. The ropes were frayed and brittle looking. They wouldn’t be lifting or lowering anything, ever again, probably.

  I felt along the ropes as far up as I could go, then around the inside perimeter of the opening. My cell phone beeped. On my way, Brenda texted.

  That wasn’t much of a relief. Even if she got here, she couldn’t get in. But I’d be out of here momentarily, probably even before she arrived. So far my palpations of the cavity had only yielded a splinter in my right index finger. Fortunately, it pulled out cleanly, but it had been deep enough to hurt.

  Next I examined the platform itself. It was made of four planks of darkly varnished wood, joined together. I ran my hand over the surface, my injured finger throbbing as I did so. I tried lifting up each plank in the hopes that there might be a hidden cavity, but none budged. Reaching in as far as my arm would stretch, I felt along each edge of the platform. The dank air assaulted my nose and I sneezed.

  My last hope was to look at the underside. I wasn’t going to the third floor to look at the ropes or panel up there, so this was it. If the recipe wasn’t here, we’d either have to wait for Franco’s brain to heal so he could retrieve it himself, of we’d have to mourn its loss and hope he could remember the ingredients and proportions.

  Needing two hands to work the ropes, I set the knife near my feet and began to pull.

  Whether because some part of the system was broken, or because the old ropes didn’t roll through the pulley wheels correctly, or just because all that thick wood was darned heavy, it took all my upper body strength to move the platform a couple of inches. That still wasn’t enough to get my arm underneath, so I heaved the ropes again. The apparatus gave a teeth-jarring screech, but barely moved.

  I paused a moment to catch my breath, then gave another yank. Whatever had been holding up the progress broke free, because the platform suddenly rose up a good foot, throwing me slightly off balance. Once I regained my footing, I reached way underneath the boards, then gently fel
t the surface in a grid pattern. If something was hidden under there, it wouldn’t do to send it dropping into the abyss below.

  After a minute or two, my hands landed on something sticky. Not wet and nasty sticky. Dry sticky, and crinkly. I felt around until I located the edge of whatever it was and pulled it free. When I brought it out into the light, I could see it was a good-sized piece of clear packing tape. It wasn’t yellowed, or brittle, or peeling up at the edges. In fact, it wasn’t even dusty. This tape was fresh and a small corner of torn plastic bag adhered to it.

  I stuck my hand back under the platform again in the approximate location I’d found the tape, gingerly patting to see if the rest of the bag was still attached.

  Nothing.

  Damn. It looked like Franco had moved it, or it had never been here in the first place. Or, what I thought was more likely, Franco’s assailant had gotten here first. Which was good news and bad news. The good news was that if whoever wanted the recipe had secured it, had what he wanted, there wouldn’t seem to be any further danger to Franco. Or to me, for that matter. The bad news was, a theft had occurred, and Franco wouldn’t be able to go through with his plans to make the recipe available, free, to everyone.

  I reached up and pulled the ropes again in the opposite direction, this time to return the dumbwaiter to its original position.

  A blow struck me from behind, and I felt myself being lifted and pushed. Hard.

  TWENTY

  My face struck the back wall of the dumbwaiter shaft and everything went dark for a moment, then my vision burst into stars that weren’t really there. I heard a snap, and suddenly I was weightless, falling, falling—

  Until I hit bottom. The impact went through my entire body, but was immediately replaced by pain. My lungs could not take in air, and I felt a surge of panic. Easy, Georgie. You’ve had the wind knocked out of you. Finally, after several agonizing moments, I was able to draw a ragged breath of the air, which was thick with dust and rotting hundred-year-old wood.