Dying for a Taste

by Leslie Karst

  Nichole and I left the farm in a bit of a daze. Although Kate apologized for her outburst, she also clammed up afterward, making it clear she just wanted us to get the hell out of there. So we did, after a few perfunctory thanks-for-your-helps and let-me-know-if-you-find-out-anythings.

  “Well, that was certainly not how I envisioned our conversation would end,” Nichole remarked as we made our way back down the coast to San Francisco. “Why the hell did you drop that bombshell about Letta’s engagement, anyway? At least you could have done it a with a little more tact.”

  “But that would have defeated the purpose. I couldn’t stop thinking, the whole time Kate was talking, about what Martine had said about her having ‘quite the temper.’ And I just figured if I surprised her with the news, we might see, you know, the ‘real’ Kate. It just came to me as an idea.”

  “An idea that could have landed me in the emergency room with glass splinters in my eyeballs.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. But I wanted to see how she’d react, especially given how belligerent she’d been about the whole free-range meat thing. It got me wondering whether she’s just one of those vocal types or if she has an actual violent streak as well.”

  “I think you got the answer to your question.” Nichole turned to look out the window. The ocean had a golden tint to it in the afternoon light, but the sun was about to disappear behind a thick layer of clouds sitting just above the water. “You think she might have done it?”

  I just shrugged. “Hell if I know.” But I had been wondering the same thing.

  ***

  My dad does a spaghetti Bolognese at Solari’s that’s a pretty hot seller, but it’s nothing compared to Nonna’s Sunday gravy. When I say “gravy,” I don’t mean the kind you’d serve over fried chicken and mashed potatoes. This is Italian gravy, and Nonna’s is the very best there is.

  For as long as I can remember, the family has gathered at her house for dinner every Sunday at two o’clock, and the menu has never varied: an antipasto course of prosciutto and salami, marinated vegetables, and provolone and mozzarella cheese; a first course of spaghetti with Nonna’s gravy and chewy Italian bread to wipe the plate clean; then the meat that had been braised to make the gravy, served along with sautéed broccoli and a green salad; and for dessert, an enormous bowl of tiramisu doused with coffee and Marsala wine and dusted with powdered cocoa.

  A proper gravy takes hours to make, and Nonna gets going as soon as she wakes up on Sunday. She starts by heating olive oil in the hefty enameled Dutch oven that belonged to her mother and then browns the meat—a combination of beef chuck roast, pork chops, and sweet Italian sausages—to ensure a good color and rich flavor. Next she adds garlic and onion to the pot and cooks this with some tomato paste until aromatic and then dumps in several cans of Italian plum tomatoes, a half bottle of Chianti, some chopped herbs, and a large spoonful of sugar. She lets this all simmer for several hours while she attends Sunday mass. When the meat is so tender it’s falling apart at the touch of a fork, the gravy is done.

  Although she allows me to watch her prepare it, Nonna won’t let me lift a finger to help with the Sunday gravy. But now that she’s in her eighties, she does grudgingly suffer my assistance with such menial tasks as boiling the pasta and frying the broccoli.

  At a quarter past one on the day following my trip up to Bolinas, I therefore found myself at Nonna’s house, shredding iceberg lettuce for the Sunday dinner salad.

  I was replaying in my mind the meeting with Kate—and the startling end to the conversation—when the kitchen door opened and Eric breezed in and planted a pair of baci on Nonna’s cheeks. Nonna adores Eric, and she just can’t understand why we haven’t yet gotten married.

  “He’s a lawyer and so handsome, too!” she’s told me countless times. “Why you two no settle down and give your nonna some bambini?” Since we still hang out together (and she can’t fathom a couple breaking up and remaining friends), she doesn’t get that this is simply not going to happen.

  “My God, it’s hot in here,” Eric exclaimed, fanning himself melodramatically. “Why don’t you open a window?” He stuck two fingers under his collar, pulling it away from his neck. I’d assumed it was hot flashes making me feel so warm, but as he said this, I noticed the steam from the simmering gravy coursing down the windows. The rain had returned last night, and the contrast between the brisk, blustery outdoors and the hot, humid kitchen when he came in must have been intense.

  Eric ripped a hunk of bread from the loaf sitting on the kitchen table and dunked it in the gravy pot, prompting Nonna to swat at him affectionately with a dish towel. “You gon’ spoil your appetite.”

  “I brought some wine for dinner,” he said by way of an answer, holding out a bottle of Dolcetto d’Alba.

  “No, no, no.” Nonna wagged a forefinger at him. “This a special occasion—the first Sunday dinner since Letta’s gone. We’ll drink Salvatore’s wine. You go down and bring us up a bottle, okay?”

  Eric looked at me and mouthed a silent groan. “Maybe we can pour my wine into an old bottle of his, and she won’t notice?” he suggested as we descended the stairs into the dank cellar. Although my namesake grandfather had been fiercely proud of his winemaking ability, the products of his labors were, at best, what Eric would describe as “plonk.”

  “C’mon, his Zin isn’t all that bad.”

  Eric just made a face. “Why’s she waxing so sentimental about Sunday dinner without Letta, anyway? I don’t remember her ever even being at one.”

  “True, she didn’t come that often. But now that she’s no longer here, well, let’s just say memories often get readjusted to suit the needs of the ones still living.”

  I fumbled for the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and we looked around the room. As a kid, I’d had a love-hate relationship with my grandparents’ cellar. I was fascinated by all the jars of colorful fruit and vegetables stored in the cupboards, by the bunches of rosemary and basil, and by the strands of garlic and onions strung from the rafters. But I was simultaneously frightened of the place—the dark, cobweb-filled corners; the strange, musty smells; the menacing-looking scythes and other ancient gardening tools hanging from rusty nails on the walls.

  Now that Nonno was gone and Nonna was too old to do a lot of canning, the cellar wasn’t used much anymore, and the stockpile of foodstuffs was rapidly diminishing. But the redwood shelves were still lined with jars of beans and tomatoes, preserved lemons, Olallieberry jam, pickled sweet peppers, and, of course, Nonno’s wine.

  “What’s that doohickey?” Eric asked, pointing toward an odd-shaped tool hanging next to a pair of shears. It had a long handle like a shovel, but its business end consisted of five curved prongs of varying lengths with small spade-like tips. From the number of dust-encrusted cobwebs blanketing it, the tool had clearly not been moved in years.

  “I dunno. Some thingamajig for crushing grapes?” I answered.

  “No way. It’s more like a rake gone all satanic. I know, it’s a . . . you know, a . . . a whatchamacallit.”

  “A thingamabob?” I jumped into the game with glee, relishing the reprieve from obsessing about Letta’s murder.

  “Yeah, a gizmo.”

  “No, more like a doodad.”

  “A whassis.”

  “A gadget.”

  “Sal, I’ve got it. It’s a dumaflochie for—”

  “Dumaflochie?” I interrupted. “No fair! You can’t just make them up.”

  “I didn’t. My cousin says that all the time.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I was not convinced. “Okay, here’s my final answer. It is most definitely . . . a widget!”

  “Ha!” Eric slapped his knee. This had been another favorite legalism—after “open and notorious,” that is—we’d learned as first-year students. I remember being surprised by the number of companies our professor discussed in contracts class that manufactured “widgets” and wondering what exactly this popular item could be, only to be abashed
when Nichole finally clued me in as to the meaning of the word.

  Eric admitted defeat. “Okay, you win.”

  We turned our attention to the rack of wine bottles. Eric pulled one out at random and brushed off the dust and cobwebs in an attempt to decipher the faded, handwritten label.

  “Zin ’92. Gotta be vinegar by now.” He replaced the bottle and tried another that looked a little cleaner. “Nineteen ninety-nine—also a Zin.”

  “He didn’t make much wine after then,” I said. “That’s probably about as recent as we’re going to get.”

  “Okay, we’ll go with this one.”

  I turned to head back up the stairs, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  “Sal, wait. I wanted to ask how it went yesterday, but I didn’t think I should in front of your nonna.”

  “Oh, man,” I said and sighed. It had been a short-lived reprieve.

  We sat down at the bottom of the stairway, and I filled Eric in on what had happened with Kate: about the farm, her lecture to Nichole and me about meat, the mystery man who came to harass her, her history with Letta, and most important, her reaction when I’d told her about Letta being engaged to Tony.

  “Did she know who the guy was in that photo Letta took?” he asked when I’d finished. “Or who wrote the letters?”

  “She said no, but I’m not sure she was being completely honest.”

  His eyebrows raised. “So ze plot thickens.”

  “Playing Hercule Poirot to my Miss Marple, are we?” I reached out and broke a sprig of rosemary off the faded bunch tied to the beam next to the stairs, rolled it between my fingers, and raised it to my nose—virtually no scent. “She did ask to keep the letters, though, and said she’d ask around.”

  “Nevertheless, I think we need to add her to the list of possibilities. Who all is there at this point, anyway?”

  I tossed the crushed rosemary on the floor and started ticking people off with my fingers. “Well, number one has got to be Javier, I guess. Though I still can’t believe he could have done it. And what would have been his motive, anyway? You know: means, opportunity, and motive?”

  Eric shook his head. “You’ve been watching too many cop shows, Sal. Don’t you remember Roberts’s crim law class? The three elements of murder are, one, a killing; two, with malice aforethought; and three, without legal justification.”

  “Yeah, but evidence of means, opportunity, and motive is admissible to prove those elements, right?”

  “True,” Eric conceded. “And Javier clearly had the means and opportunity: access to the knife cabinet and knife, and he was the last one seen at the restaurant that night. But juries are often most swayed by the existence of a motive. So okay, what would have been his motive?”

  “Well, we know he was in love with Letta. How ’bout jealousy? Of Tony . . . and of Kate too?”

  “Maybe. It’s a common enough motive, God knows.”

  “Though I can see his killing Tony for jealousy way before Letta,” I added. The image of Javier raising his chef’s knife against the woman he loved, his mentor and savior, simply did not compute in my brain.

  Eric drummed his fingers on his knee and mused. “Any chance he thought he might get the restaurant if she died? Money is the number-two motive after love, I’d say.”

  I remembered back to when I’d talked to Javier about the fate of Gauguin after Letta’s death—the interest in his eyes when I’d raised the subject and how his shoulders had slumped when he’d learned she’d given it to me.

  “He did seem a little, shall we say, deflated when I told him I’d inherited it,” I admitted. “But I can’t believe he’d murder her based on a mere possibility that she’d give it to him.”

  “Maybe she said something to him at some time that suggested she’d put him in her will.”

  “Perhaps.” The subject was starting to annoy me. “Let’s move on. Tony seems like the next most obvious suspect. They always say that murders of passion are most often committed by boyfriends and husbands.”

  “Or girlfriends . . .”

  “Yeah, but we’ll get to her in a minute. The only motive I can think of for Tony would be jealousy—”

  “You don’t think he might have hoped to inherit Gauguin?” Eric broke in.

  This hadn’t occurred to me, but they had been engaged, after all. Could that be why he had asked her to marry him? To get her to change her will? I thought back to his reaction when my dad had told him I was getting the restaurant. “I suppose that’s possible.”

  “And as to jealousy,” Eric went on, “didn’t you say he’s the one who told you Javier was in love with Letta?”

  “Uh-huh. But he seemed to just think it was funny.”

  Eric raised his eyebrows again. “She did spend most of her waking hours with Javier. And they shared a passion for cooking and the restaurant and all. I could see a guy becoming jealous in that situation. I wonder . . .” He went back to his finger drumming. “Any chance he knew about Kate? You say he didn’t fit the description of the guy who came up to her farm?”

  “It didn’t seem like it. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a muscle car. And from what Kate said, Letta didn’t seem to think it was Tony. But I guess I should probably check if he has a Giants tattoo on his arm. I know he’s a big baseball fan, and he did have a Giants World Series pennant on the wall. And I suppose he could have borrowed the car, or maybe he has one hidden away in his garage.”

  “Okay.” Eric tapped a finger on his front tooth. “Now for the farm woman, Kate. She sounds like a loose cannon to me.”

  “Yeah. She certainly exhibited violent tendencies yesterday. And as for motive, there’s the fact that Letta’s cheated on her—twice, now—and both times with a guy, which seemed to really piss her off.”

  “And hurt her too, no doubt, which may be the stronger of the two emotions. At least in my experience as a prosecutor, I’ve noticed that often to be the case.”

  “I’ve also got to wonder about the whole animal rights thing, too,” I said. “I mean, you could tell she’s pretty fanatical about it all. I can’t help wondering if maybe she’s the one who wrote those letters.”

  “That would be a pretty weird thing to do, don’t you think? Sending threatening letters to your lover?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” I said. “Just look at what Alfredo did to Letta’s namesake in La Traviata.” We’d seen this opera together several years earlier—a local, somewhat amateurish performance.

  “Sure, in Opera Land people will do all sorts of crazy things. And anyway, he was wildly jealous of Violetta. Wait!” Eric sat up straight. “Did the letters come before or after Kate found out about Tony?”

  “The first came months before; the second, I’m not sure—around the same time, I think.”

  “Oh. Dang.”

  “Yeah.” I chewed my lip and thought for a minute. “Okay, assuming Kate didn’t write the letters, then whoever did is suspect number . . .”

  “That would make four. And if the man in the photo Letta took at Gauguin is a different person, then we have five. And there’s also that guy who visited Kate. Could he be the man in Letta’s photo, I wonder?”

  “No. Not unless Kate is lying, that is. She said she didn’t recognize him. So the guy in the muscle car would be number six. Though I’m not sure exactly how his visiting Kate makes him a suspect for Letta’s murder. It was Kate he was harassing. Plus, you gotta ask, what was that all about, anyway? I mean, why would some mystery man suddenly show up at her farm? It makes me wonder if maybe she simply made the whole thing up. Though again, I’m not sure why she would.”

  I stared across the basement at the tools hanging on the wall and then started to giggle.

  “What?” Eric asked.

  I nodded toward the thingamabob/whassis/widget. “I think we’d better add Nonna to the list.”

  Eric followed my gaze. “Oh man, you are so right,” he said with a laugh. “Just check out the blades on that thing. Hmmm
. . . Now what would be her motive?”

  “She did always like Dad best. And then there’s the fact that Letta hardly ever came to Sunday dinner—”

  I stopped speaking when the door at the top of the stairway opened, throwing a bright shaft of light down upon us.

  “Ohhh . . . jus’ look at these two!” We turned around to see Nonna’s short frame silhouetted by the light with my dad standing behind her. “So sad to stop your lovey-dovey,” Nonna said with a broad smile, “but your papà is now here, and is time for mangiare.”

  “Just don’t let her handle any knives,” Eric whispered to me. “You can cut the bread, okay?” Grinning, he grabbed the bottle of Salvatore’s wine, and we stood and climbed back up the stairs into the bright, aroma-filled kitchen.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I’m an excellent waitress. I can remember every order for a table of eight without having to write anything down, juggle five plates of chicken cacciatore without spilling a single drop, and muster a winning and charming smile with even the most truculent customers. After all, I’ve been waiting tables since I was a teenager.

  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  For Monday’s lunch shift, however, that’s what I was doing at Solari’s. As manager of the front of the house, I was usually able to schedule staff in such a way that I wasn’t one of the servers, but Elena had covered for me over the last weekend, and now it was payback time.

  Setting down two orders of pasta primavera at table twelve, I asked if they needed anything else and then headed back to the steam tables to ladle out a bowl of minestrone for the woman at table five.

  But my mind was not on the job. As Sean and I cleared away the mess of bread crumbs and spattered Bolognese sauce that a table with three small children had created, I couldn’t help thinking about the list of suspects Eric and I had come up with the previous afternoon. The three mystery people, in particular, were driving me bonkers. Who the hell had visited Kate at the farm? And who had sent those horrible letters? And what about that guy who came to Gauguin? Letta had obviously been concerned about him, enough to take his picture and show it to Ruth. And then she had gone out and bought a can of pepper spray. Could any of these three be connected with the murder?