This all sounds carefully thought out and enormously logical, I know. Believe me, it was. What I haven’t bothered to mention, though, is that while I knew what I had to do, the how of it eluded me. I know, I know…Eve and I had solved a murder just a few months earlier. But that was then, and this was now, and as much as I would have liked to believe we’d acted professionally and competently in the matter of Drago’s murder, I knew what we’d really been was just plain lucky. This time, I didn’t have any idea what to say or where to start. And as always when I was pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, I was scared to death.
I guess that’s what I was thinking about that morning as I took one last look around the restaurant to make sure everything was ready when the crowd returned from the cemetery. There weren’t enough tables in Bellywasher’s to accommodate the kind of crowd we expected, so with Charlene’s approval, we’d decided on a buffet luncheon. I double-checked the table set along the far wall where we would put the food, made sure the vases with their single white roses were on every table, and opened bottles of wine, both white and red. I was so lost in thought, I jumped when Jim came up behind me.
“Look what I found!”
At the sound of his voice, I spun around, one hand—and the corkscrew in it—pressed to my heart.
“Sorry.” I knew he meant it, but he didn’t exactly look regretful. I think my first clue was his ear-to-ear grin.
I waved away his apology and looked at what he was carrying. Since he was still smiling, my guess is that he didn’t notice that my top lip curled.
It was an old color-tinted photograph, a framed picture of a tiny cottage surrounded by hills blanketed with heather. At least I think that’s what it was. It was kind of hard to tell, since the glass that covered the picture was so dusty. The frame was downright nasty, too, pitted and dirty and blanketed with spiderwebs. I was about to tell Jim to toss the picture back in the Dumpster it came out of when he said, “It was my granny’s.”
He held the picture against the wall behind the bar and nodded his approval. “I remember it from when I was a kid. It was in the dining room of her home in Glasgow. Uncle Angus must have brought it with him when he came to this country. It was in the basement.”
“Which is exactly where it belongs.”
The fact that I did not appreciate what he obviously saw as fine art bewildered Jim. The picture still against the wall, he looked over his shoulder at me. “Are you saying—”
“I’m saying one word: ambiance. No, wait!” I held up a hand to stop him when it looked as if he might argue with me. “I’m saying two words: Michael O’Keefe. OK, more than two words: Michael O’Keefe’s review bringing in customers who spend lots and lots of money and demand a little class in return.”
“And you don’t think this is—”
“It’s charming.” Without its coating of dirt, this may have been true, so I didn’t feel bad saying it. “But remember, we worked hard to create an atmosphere here. A feeling. All summer, you talked about what you wanted. As I recall, you used words like understated and classy. You talked about chic. I hardly think a dingy old photograph—”
“A dingy old photograph that once belonged to my sainted granny.”
“Who I’m sure was a delightful woman.” I tried to find words that were firm without being harsh. “But that doesn’t mean her taste is suitable to an upscale restaurant.”
“No. Of course, you’re right.” Jim’s smile faded, and he lowered the picture from the wall. Thank goodness.
That didn’t mean he was done trying. He looked toward the wall next to the front door, bare and elegant in all its white-paint glory. “And you don’t think—”
“Sure, if you want it to look like the Bellywasher’s of old.” I knew that deep down inside, Jim would react to this as if I’d asked him to cut off a finger. Or forget how to cook. I was right. He cringed.
He tucked the photo behind the bar, just in the nick of time. The next minute, the front door opened. The funeral service was over. Our guests had arrived.
Though I had tried plenty hard, I had found it impossible to hire the extra help we needed for the day, so I was taking over some of the front-of-the-house duties myself. For the next half hour, I didn’t have time to worry about Granny’s old photo; I was too busy taking coats, making folks comfortable, and getting them coffee or a glass of wine. The crowd was bigger than I expected, but then, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Sarah was young, employed in a hothouse of power and prestige, and from what I’d heard, active in her community, a book discussion group, and her church. She was bound to have plenty of friends.
They crowded into Bellywasher’s, a mostly young, upscale crowd of Capitol Hill up-and-comers who milled around in silence and spoke in hushed tones. Of course, the whole point of an after-funeral luncheon is to coax folks into relaxing. It took awhile, but it finally worked. Little by little, people got more talkative, and the noise level rose. Once or twice, I heard someone say something nice about the appetizers and about coming back for dinner. Before long, the welcome sounds of laughter rang through the room.
With everything under control, I took the opportunity to look around. Did one of these people know what really happened to Sarah? Had one of them killed her? It was a shocking thought, but I couldn’t ignore it, not if I was going to get to the bottom of things. While I collected used napkins and dirty glasses, I tried to eavesdrop without looking too obvious.
“…not how anyone thought she’d end up, that’s for sure,” a lady with red hair who was standing near the door said, and because I knew she was talking about Sarah, I moved nearer in an effort to hear more. “You’d think with the way she’s been acting, it was more likely she would have been—”
“Ambition.” The single word boomed out of a middle-aged man over on my left. The crowd was thick, and I’m short, so I couldn’t tell who he was talking to, but I saw him nod in response to whatever his companion said. “She had plenty of it, that’s for sure. You’d think a girl with those kinds of smarts would know better than to do stupid things. But then, I’ve never been a big believer in—”
“Suicide. Who would have believed it. It’s so very sad.” The emotion that edged this voice was real, and heartbreaking because of it. I looked to my right where a woman dressed head to toe in black touched a hankie to her eyes. “I can’t stop crying. I can’t help but think that maybe if we just listened to her a little more, if we paid attention to the things she was telling us, we might have been able to—”
“We’re here.”
I’d been so busy watching everything going on around me, I didn’t see Eve approach. She arrived with Charlene. I hugged them both, before giving Charlene my condolences and assuring her that everything was under control and the food would be out in a couple minutes. I was about to go into the kitchen to make sure that was true when Eve tugged on my sleeve.
“Oh my gosh! Can you believe it?” Her stinging whisper brought me spinning around. She pointed across the room. “That’s Dylan. Dylan Monroe.”
“The TV newsman?” I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, but like I said, I was short, and the room was crowded. The only thing I could see of the man Eve pointed to was his left ear.
“I thought he was in Afghanistan or somewhere,” Eve said. “I saw something on the news about it last night. He’s preparing some sort of special hour-long show on the everyday life of a soldier. Can you believe he’s got the nerve to show up here after he dumped Sarah? The creep.” Eve shot daggers across the room. I don’t know if Dylan got the message, since I couldn’t see if he knew we were looking at him. She crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back. “Hey, you don’t suppose he’s the one who bumped her off, do you?”
With a look, I reminded Eve to keep her voice down. “If he’s been out of the country, that seems pretty unlikely. Besides, we don’t know anything about the man.”
“We know he’s a lowlife scum weasel who took Sarah’s heart and ground it to smithe
reens under the heel of his expensive loafers.”
I was not so sure we did know that, and I reminded Eve. “We’ll talk to him. We’ll talk to them all,” I said. “For now…” I checked out the outfit she’d chosen to wear and realized that our minds were running in the same direction. Like Eve, I was wearing black pants, a black jacket, a white blouse. I looked like a nun. Eve looked like a million bucks.
“You’d better get an apron on and help with the salads,” I told her. “That’s the first thing Jim wants us to bring out; then we’ll get the hot stuff on the buffet.”
I was going to help, too, and I had just turned to head into the kitchen when the front door opened again. A hush fell over the crowd, and the people standing nearest the door parted like the Red Sea in front of Moses.
Senator Douglas Mercy had arrived.
Standing where I was, I had the perfect opportunity to check out the man, and I will say this: the pictures I’d seen of the senator did not do him justice. He was taller than I expected. Tanner, too. Though he must have been at least sixty, his skin was taut and wrinkle-free, except for around his eyes. There, a spider-work of creases attested to hours spent in the sun, and I knew from tabloid pictures and news reports that it was just as likely he’d whiled away that time skeet shooting or fishing as glad-handing constituents in his Southern home state.
The senator had neatly cropped, silver hair and eyes the color of the November sky outside the window. Iron gray and steel hard, they were the eyes of a man who held great power and relished every moment of it. His nose was well-shaped. His chin was square. In an instant, his gaze took in everything and everyone around him, and as if it was second nature, he didn’t miss a beat—he started shaking hands.
“Thank you.” The senator pumped the hand of the redheaded lady I’d noticed earlier. “Thank you so much for coming. You know this would have meant a great deal to Sarah. Thank you.” He moved on to the next person, and the next one after that. “She always liked working with you, Renee,” he told the woman in black who’d been talking about Sarah’s suicide and crying softly. “She told me you were more than just the best administrative assistant we have on staff. She told me you were her friend.”
Renee pulled out her hankie again, and when the senator moved on to the next guest, she sniffed and blew her nose.
Thinking I was one of the mourners, the senator shook my hand briefly and moved on to Eve. He held her hand a little longer. Tall, gorgeous blonde…Short, round brunette…
I guess it mattered, even in the political arena.
It wasn’t until after the senator had passed that I saw that a man and a woman had walked into the restaurant behind him.
Unlike a lot of folks in the D.C. area, I am not a political junkie. But I didn’t need to be on the Beltway grapevine to know that this man was related to the senator. He had the same square chin, the same gray eyes. He wasn’t as tall or as thin, and he was years younger, but his taste in suits was every bit as expensive as the senator’s, and he had the same talent for shaking hands, too. No way this wasn’t Douglas Mercy’s son.
“Dougy.” Eve must have been reading my mind; she whispered in my ear. “Douglas Mercy IV officially, but Dougy was his nickname as a kid, and it stuck. He’s not very happy about it, and who can blame him? It sounds like something straight out of Mayberry. He’s the senator’s chief of staff, and word has it that the senator’s grooming him to take his seat in Congress once he becomes vice president.”
I watched Dougy Mercy greet the people in the crowd as his father had done. When he stopped to chat with a man on my right, I let my gaze drift to the woman who walked at his side. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and petite, a wiry, athletic looking woman who in spite of the soft, appropriate-for-a-funeral smile pasted to her face, looked incredibly bored.
I didn’t have to say a word. I looked at the woman. I looked at Eve. She knew what I was thinking.
“That’s Lorraine, Dougy’s wife,” Eve whispered. “She’s a mover and a shaker; has roots that go back to the Revolution and makes sure no one ever forgets it. Not that anybody holds it against her; she does too much good for that. In addition to throwing the best parties in town, she’s a doctor. She runs some sleep clinic in Orange County, and when she’s not doing all that or jetting off to Europe to ski, she organizes huge fund-raisers for all sorts of good causes. Of course, when it comes to asking for money, it helps to have a Christmas card list that reads like the Who’s Who of Washington social life.”
I didn’t ask how Eve knew all this. I didn’t need to. She’d spent the morning with these people and, funeral or not, she had a way of instantly turning folks from strangers into friends. Besides, I knew that if there was gossip to be had, Eve was the woman for the job. When it came to investigating, I was glad to have her on my side.
While the senator and his entourage made their way around the room, Eve and I made sure everyone knew they could move toward the salad buffet. After a while, everyone started eating. A hush fell over the restaurant. It was broken by the sound of a spoon clinking against a glass.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” Senator Mercy was seated at one of the tables near the front windows. He rose and stepped into the middle of the room, wineglass in hand.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” the senator said, raising his glass. “To a young woman whose wit and intellect will be sorely missed.”
While all eyes were on the senator, I took the opportunity to check out the crowd again.
Renee, the administrative assistant, wasn’t high up enough on the office food chain to get a table or a seat. She was standing at the bar, her plate of food untouched in front of her. A single tear slipped down her cheek.
The senator went on. His voice was deep, his accent as thick as hominy. “Sarah Whittaker was more than just a coworker to many of us. She was an ally, a colleague. She had a razor-sharp mind and she knew…as you all do…that real transformation begins with the people of this country who have the courage to stand up for what they believe. People like you—people like Sarah—don’t just talk about what has to change. People like you—people like Sarah—roll up their sleeves and get the job done.”
“Bullshit!”
Since I was the only one who flinched, my guess was that no one else heard the comment. Even though it was no more than a whisper, it was the last sentiment I expected to hear at a moment like that. Especially when it was spoken with so much venom.
Naturally, I turned around to see who was standing close by.
Renee was just a few feet away, but I knew it wasn’t her. She was crying too hard to have said anything. Call it a stereotype and my naive belief that little old ladies didn’t curse, but I didn’t think it was the white-haired, grandmotherly woman beside her, either. The only other people close enough for me to have overheard were a too-handsome-to-be-real man I recognized as Dylan Monroe and the redheaded woman I’d seen earlier.
Without looking too obvious, I couldn’t take the chance of paying too much attention to either one of them. When the senator started talking again, I had no choice but to turn around.
“Here’s to her beauty, to her talent, and to her life.” The senator raised his glass a little higher. “Here’s to Sarah Whittaker.”
Everyone repeated, “To Sarah!” and drained their glasses.
Except for Dylan. Staring into the bloodred liquid, he rolled his wineglass between his palms—right before he banged the glass on the bar, pushed through the crowd, and slammed out the front door.
“He’s feeling guilty.” Eve saw what I saw. She looked toward the front windows. Out on the sidewalk, Dylan paced back and forth in front of the restaurant. “He’s our guy, Annie.”
Now that the toasting was over, the crowd waited for Charlene, Senator Mercy, Dougy, and Lorraine to start the line at the main dish table. Behind the buffet, Heidi served, and as I talked to Eve, I kept an eye out to see if anyone needed anything.
“Maybe,” I said to her.
&n
bsp; “Maybe?” She shook her head. “Does anybody other than Dylan have a motive?”
I didn’t know. Wasn’t that the whole point of investigating? Rather than stick around to debate the issue, I headed across the room. No, I wasn’t after Dylan. When it came time to talk to him, he wouldn’t be hard to find. It was the redheaded lady I was more concerned about. Was she a friend of Sarah’s? A coworker? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know her name. I couldn’t take the chance of letting her get away.
Lucky for me, the woman was finishing the last bite of her spinach salad, and I had the perfect excuse to approach her.
“May I take that for you?” I asked, pointing to her empty plate.
She answered with a dismissive sort of gesture that made me think she was used to being waited on, but even so, I took my time removing the plate.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” I said. “A funeral for a young person. It’s always so sad. Did you know her well?”
The woman fished in her purse, brought out a tube of lipstick, and took her time applying it. “Worked with her,” she said, checking her lips in a silver compact.
I nodded like this was news to me. “From what the senator said, she was quite a powerhouse. You’ll probably miss having her around the office.”
“Think so?” One of the woman’s perfectly arched brows rose. She put the lipstick back in her purse and leaned closer to me. “If you ask me, the senator should have fired that little bitch months ago.”
“Really?” I didn’t have to pretend interest. I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was listening to our conservation and bent my head closer to the woman’s. “You mean she wasn’t as great as the senator said?”
Murder on the Menu Page 9