by Leslie Karst
“The killer could have easily put it back there,” I protested. Perhaps I was being irrational or naïve, but everything inside me rebelled at the thought of Javier committing such a crime. How could he have, when Letta had practically picked him up off the street to give him a job and then mentored him, as she did all these years?
“Yeah, maybe. They’re going to see if they can get any prints off the key, which could answer the question.” Eric consulted his watch. “Shit. Look, Sal, I’m really sorry, but I gotta go. I’ve got a court appearance at one thirty. You gonna be all right?”
“I’m okay. It’s just so . . . weird.” I followed Eric down to the street, and he pointed his remote at his black Lexus and unlocked it. “Maybe I’m in some kind of shock, but it all seems so surreal. Like I’m watching this whole thing from afar. I dunno . . .”
Eric squeezed my shoulder and walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. “I’ll call you later. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
As he shut the door, I called out, “Wait—Eric!”
“What?” He rolled down the passenger-side window and leaned over.
“My dad’ll want to know: what will happen with her body? So we can make funeral arrangements. You know, Italian family and all.”
“Well, they’ll have to do the autopsy before they’ll release the body to the family. It’s routine in homicide cases. And that’ll take a few days.”
“Oh, right.”
“You can call the coroner to find out exactly how long it’ll be,” Eric added. “Or I can if you’d prefer.”
“That’s okay. I can do it. See you.” I waved good-bye as he pulled out and, with one last look at the cop on guard at the front door of the restaurant, headed for my own car. No point putting it off. I had to go and break the news to Dad.
Chapter Two
Solari’s is out at the very end of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. Though the name “wharf” is misleading, since the wooden structure isn’t built along the edge of the shore but rather sticks out into the sea—more like what I would call a “pier.” Perhaps my ancestors, the newly arrived Italian fishermen who constructed the thing, didn’t speak English well enough to know the difference between the two words when they named it.
Pulling into a spot across from the restaurant, I climbed out of the car and then just stood there, steeling myself for the task ahead. It had been only two years since Dad had lost his wife—and me my mom—to cancer. Another death in the family so soon was going to be hard.
For a couple minutes, I stared out across the water at the Boardwalk and the green hills and dark clouds rising up behind. Then, with a deep sigh, I pushed off from the car and crossed the road toward the front door.
Solari’s looks like any number of establishments out on the wharf: a blocky, one-story, white, wooden building with its name painted in red script over the door. Neon Budweiser and Amstel Light signs hang in the window, through which I could see the lunch crowd still working on their bowls of cioppino and plates of crab sandwiches. Had it really only been forty-five minutes since I’d mediated Giulia and Sean’s spat?
I pushed open the door and blinked, letting my eyes readjust from the bright sunlight outdoors. “Hey, Sally!” called out a waitress coming through the swinging red door into the kitchen. She was bearing a tray loaded down with cups of minestrone soup and baskets of bread sticks.
“Hey, Elena. You know if my dad’s back yet?”
“Yeah, he’s in the dish room.” As she passed close by, she leaned over and added in a low voice, “They’re having problems with the drain. It’s been backing up. He’s not in a good mood.”
Great. I took a deep breath and walked through the kitchen to the back of the restaurant.
My father was standing next to the pot-wash sink in the corner of the dish room, cell phone at his ear. Next to him, a young man was busy filling peg racks with plates and loading them into the stainless-steel dishwasher.
Dad looked up from his call when I came into the room and nodded. After listening for a moment, he responded to the person on the other end of the line. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if you have to send your mother to clear it out! Somebody better get their butt down here now. I’m in the middle of a lunch rush!” He listened again; said, “Fine”; and snapped the phone shut.
“Goddamn grease trap is backed up . . . again,” he explained, shoving the phone impatiently into the pocket of his checkered chef pants, “and they supposedly cleaned it out last Friday.” He shook his head and pushed the sleeves of his blue sweatshirt up over his beefy forearms. “Emilio said you were looking for me earlier. What’s up, hon?”
“Papà.” I looked into my father’s eyes, deep blue and set off by leathery skin and rows of wrinkles—the result of age, but also a lifetime of long hours in fishing boats out in the sun. “Oh, Papà,” I said again and then started to cry.
I hadn’t meant to; I’d convinced myself I could do this, that I could hold it together and be strong for my dad. But now, standing there in front of him, it hit me: I was about to tell him that his sister had been viciously murdered.
“What is it, bambina?” He took me by the shoulders and looked back at me, concern in his weathered features. Though I lack several inches on his six-foot-three frame, my dark hair, big bones, and full face mirror those of my father.
Taking him by the hand, I led him to a small table in the alcove between the dish room and kitchen. We sat down, me still holding onto his hand.
“It’s about Aunt Letta,” I began after getting control of my tears.
“What’s she done now?” my father asked, with more than a hint of exasperation in his voice.
“She’s dead, Babbo. Someone killed her—stabbed her to death.”
His grip tightened on my hand. “No.”
After filling him in on what little information I had, I let him digest the news. Although his relationship with Letta had been strained, I knew that deep down he cared for his baby sister.
“Do they know . . . who . . . ?” he finally asked.
“They don’t know anything yet. But they found Javier’s knife lying by her, and it looks like that’s what whoever did it . . . used—”
He stood up, knocking over his chair. “Javier!”
“But he couldn’t have done it, Papà. You know how much he adored Letta.”
He sat back down and put his face in his hands. “When did it happen?”
“I guess sometime last night. I don’t know for sure. They found her this morning, at Gauguin.”
“I gotta tell Nonna. Before she hears it from someone else.” He groaned and ran his fingers through his closely cropped, salt-and-pepper hair.
“I’ll go with you.” I got up and held out my hand again.
***
When the Italian fishermen and their families first arrived in Santa Cruz in the late nineteenth century, they settled on the Westside of town in the area next to the sea. This Little Italy neighborhood—which came to be known as “la barranca,” after the cliffs above which it perched—was where my great-grandfather Ciro chose to build a small, single-story redwood house. It was still in the family, and Giovanna, the eighty-six-year-old widow of Ciro’s son Salvatore, now lived there.
It was just a few minutes’ drive from the wharf up Bay Street and left onto Columbia to my grandmother’s house. Nonna was standing out front when my dad pulled up to the curb in his Chevy pickup truck. She was dressed in a yellow housecoat, hosing down the red volcanic rocks that covered the yard.
“Ma, you’re wasting water. The rocks don’t need to be washed,” Dad scolded her affectionately as he walked up and kissed her on both cheeks. He had to lean down to reach her face. The two of us had inherited our height from Salvatore’s side of the family, not hers.
“They’s dirty,” she retorted in her thick Tuscan accent. “Those kids next door—they let their nasty dogs go pee-pee all over my yard. Gotta clean it off.” Nonetheless, she dropped the
hose and shuffled over to the spigot to turn it off. “I got some pappardelle wit’ ragù in the frigo. You want some? You should eat more, Mario. You looking so skinny.”
“No thanks, Ma. Listen, we have something to tell you. Let’s go inside, okay?”
We got Nonna settled on the faded, red velveteen sofa by the window, sat down on either side of her, and broke the news about her daughter as gently as we could. She didn’t fully understand at first and thought we were talking about my mother, Susan. When she finally did get that it was Letta who had been killed, Nonna didn’t say anything. She just turned and stared out the window.
“Better call Father Camillo,” she murmured after a bit. Her hand went to the gold cross around her neck. “Another funeral . . .”
“I’ll call him, Mamma.” My dad took his mother’s hand. “Don’t worry, she’ll have a proper Catholic mass.”
We sat in the dimly lit living room discussing arrangements for the wake and the burial, my father and I both doing our best to downplay the grisly aspect of Letta’s death. I agreed to make sure the body was transferred to the funeral home as soon as possible and to help with contacting extended family and friends. After about an hour, Dad phoned Nonna’s good friend Adella, who agreed to come over and sit with Nonna for the afternoon. When she arrived, Dad and I left, both promising to stop by again later on.
“I wonder if Tony knows,” my father said as we drove back down to Solari’s. This was the guy Letta had been seeing for several years.
“Yeah. Good point. Someone should tell him, I guess.” I tapped my index finger on the armrest and looked over at my dad, who remained silent. “Okay, I’ll do it,” I said with a sigh. I knew that he and Tony didn’t get along all that well. They were too alike, I figured—both softies at heart but both trying to prove to the world how macho they were.
“What’s going to happen to Gauguin?” I asked, changing the subject.
Dad stopped at West Cliff Drive and signaled for a left turn. “Well, I sure as hell can’t take it over. I have my own restaurant to run.” After a beat, he added, “But at least I’ve got you now.” He reached over and squeezed my leg. “I do appreciate all you’ve done in the past few years. Really.”
I smiled back and then looked away, afraid he might detect some kind of truth in my face. For though I had indeed come back into the fold, it wasn’t at all like I figured he believed it to be. I hadn’t been visited by some sort of revelation: Oh my god, my life has been empty without Solairi’s; how could I have possibly even considered any other vocation?
No, it definitely wasn’t like that. But I had been supremely unhappy as a lawyer—a lowly associate spending my days, as well as many nights and weekends, on mind-numbing tasks such as answering interrogatories and summarizing medical records, trying desperately to make my yearly billables. So unhappy that I had started looking for other work, maybe even with a nonprofit like my friend Nichole up in San Francisco.
But then my mom had died. And now here I was, doing her old job at Solari’s. I turned back to my dad, who was negotiating the traffic at the entrance to the wharf. “I guess Javier will have to run Gauguin,” I said. “At least until we can figure out what else to do.”
“Javier?” Dad stamped on the brake and honked at a boy on a cruiser bike with a surfboard under one arm who had darted across the street in front of the truck. “But he’s gotta be the number one suspect, right?”
“So what if he is? You can’t really believe he did it, can you? C’mon, this is Javier we’re talking about; we’ve known him for years. He’s like family to Letta. He’d do anything for her. You know that.”
My father set his jaw and shrugged, and I wished I could take back my comment about Javier’s being “family” to Letta. It couldn’t have been easy for Dad, how she’d pretty much cut him out of her life.
“But what if he gets arrested?” he asked after a moment. “And even if he didn’t do it . . . I mean, it just wouldn’t look right for Javier to be taking over the restaurant.”
“I don’t know who else we can turn to, Papà.”
We drove slowly out to the end of the wharf, the old truck rattling as it passed over the ancient wooden boards set atop barnacle-encrusted pilings. Dad stopped in front of the restaurant. “I gotta go home for a few hours before the dinner shift,” he said. “And just . . . I dunno, think about it all.”
I leaned over to plant a kiss on his rough cheek. “I’ve got a few more things to do here, and then I’m off tonight. But I’ll be home if you need to talk. I promise I’ll call as soon as I hear anything else.” I jumped down from the truck and watched as he turned around and headed back the way we’d just come.
Once inside in the restaurant, I discovered that all the staff had already heard the news about Letta. Word travels fast in a small town. After listening to everyone’s condolences and offers of assistance, I closed my office door behind me and collapsed into the chair.
There was my ham and Swiss, one bite missing. At the sight of it, my mouth began to water. Could I really be hungry after all that had happened today? A loud rumble emanated from my belly. Apparently I could.
Greedily picking it up, I took another large mouthful, allowing myself to momentarily forget the day’s trauma. Now that was a good sandwich: soft, chewy bread; salty ham and cheese; crunchy lettuce; sweet pickles . . .
The sound of my cell phone interrupted my reverie—Eric again. Wiping the mayo off my fingers on a handy pad of blank scheduling sheets, I pulled it from my bag.
“Hey.”
“Hey back atcha. How you doing?”
“What do you think?”
“You want me to come over tonight? I could bring my accordion.” Eric had been forced by his mother at a tender age to learn this much-maligned instrument, and only certain of his closest friends knew of his secret. “A few Beatles tunes on the ol’ squeezebox, not to mention my artful rendition of ‘O sole mio,’ might be just what the doctor ordered. I’ll even let you sing harmony on ‘Please Please Me.’” A bass voice in our local community chorus, he usually insists that I take the lead when we sing together.
“That’s very sweet,” I said with a laugh, “but I think I’ll be okay.” We hadn’t worked out as a couple—four years of living together had ultimately ended in daily power struggles and petty bickering—but I still loved hanging out with Eric. And if I’d wanted any company that night, it would have been him. But what I really wanted was to be alone, to be able to just sit with my own thoughts and have the chance to process this whole thing. “Anyway, I’ve got a lot of phone calls to make.”
“Doesn’t sound fun. So how’d Mario take it?”
“Not great. But all right, I guess, given . . .”
“Yeah.” Eric paused and then said, “So look, Sal, I’m actually calling because I just got a call from one of the cops over at your aunt’s house. Seems there’s a dog there.”
“Ohmygod! Buster!” I’d forgotten all about Letta’s dog. “How is he?”
“I gather he was rather frantic when they arrived, but he’s okay now. They let him out to relieve himself and gave him something to eat. But someone needs to go over there and get him.”
“And that someone would be me.”
“Looks like it. So let me know if you change your mind about me coming over.”
“Will do.”
I switched off my phone as soon as we hung up. Anyone else who wanted to contact me would have to damn well wait until I finished my sandwich.
Chapter Three
Buster was staring at me intently. Or maybe that was just his normal expression. I don’t know. He had that classic Mexican street-dog look: dusty-brown in color and a bit scrawny, with enormous prick ears and a corkscrew tail. And right now, he had an expression of longing in his eyes that would make a beggar surrender his last piece of bread. Must be something he learned as a stray before Letta rescued him from that shelter down in Ensenada.
After finishing up some paperwork at Solari
’s that couldn’t wait, I’d dashed into the grocery store for a pint of half-and-half and some bananas for breakfast the next morning, stopped to check in on Nonna, and then driven over to Letta’s bungalow, which isn’t too far from my dad’s house. The investigators had put Buster out in the garage, where he was being petted and pampered by Santa Cruz’s finest. Everyone always loves Buster.
He seemed happy enough to go off with me in a strange car and curled up contentedly on the couch once I got him home. The first thing I did was change out of my work clothes, which smelled of garlic sauce and grease, and into some jeans and a sloppy, yellow crew-neck sweater. I then spent the rest of the afternoon talking on the phone: to the coroner’s office, the funeral home, various family members and friends of Letta’s, and a reporter from the local paper. Though this last conversation had lasted only long enough for me to say “no comment” and hang up.
I’d tried to get in touch with Letta’s boyfriend, Tony, as well as the sous-chef, Javier, but was unsuccessful on both counts. Finally giving up, I left vague messages on their phones asking them to call and then set about making myself some dinner.
A search through the fridge unearthed half a dozen eggs, some green onions and brown mushrooms that had seen better days, and a hunk of Irish cheddar cheese: an omelet, it was. I chopped the veggies, got them sautéing in butter, and then pulled out a grater and turned to the cheese. This was what now had Buster’s attention.
“No such luck,” I told him, wagging my finger. “You’ve got a full bowl of delicious kibble. Mmmm!”
But he was not convinced and kept shooting me those bedroom eyes.
As I whisked two eggs with a drizzle of water, I thought about the time Letta had taught me the French technique for preparing an omelet. “The biggest mistake most people make,” she’d instructed, “is overcooking the dish. It only takes a few seconds.” I’d watched as she poured the eggs into a pool of sizzling butter and then gave the pan a series of quick shakes. A perfectly formed omelet appeared before my eyes, and I clapped my hands in amazement.