One Foot In The Gravy

by Delia Rosen

  That didn’t work out. “What about before that?” I asked.

  “He was gone in the spring,” she said. “Let’s see—that was April 11 through the 23rd.”

  Those dates coincided with the crash in Smolensk ; or rather, they followed it closely. My guess was that he heard about it and got out of sight tout de suite, so he could tell Lolo he was going to meet the Polish First Lady.

  “Do you happen to know where he went that first time?” I asked.

  Pinky emerged from the back. “No, but I remember thinking that it wasn’t, like, a beach or anything.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he came back as pale as when he left.”

  That wasn’t much help. He could have gone to Memphis.

  “Do you know if he arranged the trip through a travel agent?” I asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” the girls said in unison.

  “Okay, what am I missing here?”

  “Paul McCartney,” Pinky said. “McCartney Travel Agency.”

  “He’s always playing Beatles songs on his car boom box.”

  Obviously, I needed to go to a few Lions Club meetings, or whatever kind of business networking went on down here. I would have remembered a name like that. “Let me guess,” I said. “He drives a Jetta.”

  The girls looked at me like I was Kreskin. “How did you know?”

  “A bug,” I said. When they didn’t get it, I added, “A beetle?”

  “Ohhhhh,” they said as one, nodding with wonderment as though I’d worked out a proof for trisecting an angle.

  I was surprised they knew the Beatles. I asked if they knew Mr. McCartney.

  “Do not,” Pinky said.

  “He’s kinda creepy,” Jennifer added. “Looks at us like we’re peppermint patties.”

  They gave me the location of his storefront, which was just two blocks away, and I thanked them for their time and trust.

  “You want a chocolate chip before you go?” Pinky asked, pointing to the tray they’d just filled.

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass,” I said. “I’m more of a yogurt raisin kinda gal.”

  “Health food, huh?” Jennifer said.

  “I don’t know about that,” I told her. “I guess I just don’t like comfort foods that crunch.”

  “Diggin’ that,” Pinky said. “Your heart’s breaking, you, like, don’t want to be reminded of that with every bite.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  I left trailing that hollow tinkle again, thinking Mountain Jim’s ice cream . . . cheesecake . . . yogurt raisins. Soft and smooshy. Maybe the girl had hit on something.

  A valuable reminder, I thought, not to equate youth with a lack of savvy.

  Or the reverse, I thought with visions of Rhonda and Lolo and her Cozy Foxes in my head.

  Chapter 15

  I felt the small of my back tingle with a kind of disbelieving embarrassment as I reached the office of the McCartney Travel Agency. His motto, printed boldly on the window, was honestly and for real ���Wings Over the World.”

  As it turned out, no one was likely to mistake this Paul McCartney for the other. The travel agent was an African-American man in his early thirties. He was sitting behind a glass tabletop and was on the phone when I arrived, so I had a chance to look at the photos on the desk. They showed him with a white man and a black woman—clearly Mom and Dad in front of a variety of landmarks. He kissed the mouthpiece and hung up with an “I love you too.” I didn’t notice a wedding band. I was guessing—

  “My mother,” he said with a deep Southern accent and an air of apology as he quickly yet unhurriedly finished the conversation. “She’ll only call me on a landline. Hates drop-outs.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I laughed.

  “Exactly,” he said, and offered his hand. “Paul McCartney.”

  “Gwen Katz.”

  “Of the Nashville Katzes?”

  “Niece of the last owner, daughter of the cofounder,” I said.

  “I knew your Uncle Murray,” he said. He was still holding my hand, and now clapped the other upon it warmly. “He was a card!”

  “Which one?” I asked, wondering why I suddenly found myself so Borscht Belt. It must have been the silliness of the whole McCartney vibe.

  “I’d say the Joker,” he replied after a moment of mock thought. “He was one funny dude.”

  “Intentionally?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “He did a terrible B.B. King whenever I saw him, which wasn’t often—I’m more of a Cajun man myself—and I always wondered if he was being serious or jivin’ me. Anyhow, welcome to Nashville. How you likin’ our town?”

  “Nice.”

  “You’re from New York, right?”

  “Born and raised.”

  He whistled. The guy was all practiced style, but it had a certain charm. “Culture shock much?” he asked.

  “I’ve got to watch my mouth a little and be nice to people. Oh, and I had to remember how to drive a car. Other than that, it’s been fine.”

  He laughed warmly, also practiced. “You look like the kind of gal that nothing fazes. I’m sure you picked it all up just fine.”

  He was good.

  “Mr. McCartney, I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened to our mutual friend Mr. Hopewell—”

  “Poor Hoppy,” he said, giving my hand a final squeeze before setting it free. “A genuine tragedy. A terrible loss for our community.”

  “All of that,” I agreed. “Did you know him well?”

  “Very,” he said. “We often played pool at Swifty Felson’s down the street.”

  “Was he any good?”

  “Terrible!” McCartney laughed. “I took him for a C-note every time.”

  “He was a gambler?” I asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

  A tiny, tiny shield went up. I could see it in the momentarily frozen smile, the slight, almost imperceptible droop of the eyelids. “Not really,” McCartney replied. “How did you know him?”

  “We’re merchants in the same town,” I said.

  McCartney looked at me. “I’m a merchant in this town and I never met you.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “But you don’t sell food.”

  “I see,” he said. “Of course.” There might have been a lingering trace of caution in his voice; I couldn’t be sure. It was time to get away from the chit-chat minefield and head for the heart of the matter.

  “Anyway, a couple of months ago he was talking about some trips he had taken,” I said. “I’ve been putting in long hours at the deli and I thought it might be time to take one of them myself.”

  “A trip is never a bad idea for any reason,” he said, raising a finger as he slipped into what was obviously one of his many handy mantras. “Where did you want to go?”

  “Honestly, I just don’t know.”

  “Well, which of the places sounded especially interesting?” The hands opened, welcoming, inviting, encouraging.

  “All of them,” I said. “Maybe if you run down his itinerary it will refresh my memory.”

  The hands did not move to the computer keyboard, but alighted flat on the desk. “Ms. Katz,” he said, “I have spent enough time at Swifty’s to know when I’m being hustled. I don’t like it. It gets the Irish up in me.”

  That sounded absolutely surreal.

  “Did you really come here to book a trip?” he asked.

  “I did not,” I confessed, seeing as I had no other option.

  “Then what exactly do you want to know and why? First, tell me—are you really Gwen Katz or are you a PI?”

  “I am not a private investigator. I’m definitely Gwen Katz. Gwen Katz is not someone that someone would claim to be unless they were her,” I said convolutedly. “My life’s not that super-cool.”

  “Then what interest does Gwen Katz, deli owner, have with the travels of Hoppy Hopewell, whom you’ve probably only known, at best, about what—six months?”

  “Not even,” I admitte
d. “Our contacts were . . . limited.”

  “The cops think you killed him or something?”

  Now that was a taste of home, the first streetwise question I’d heard in half a year. “No, no, nothing like that,” I assured him.

  “Then—?”

  I hunched forward as though I was about to share a confidence. Paul McCartney sat where he was as if he was Judge Roy Bean. “Mr. McCartney—Paul, if I may—I have a confession.”

  I waited for him to soften. All I got was, “I’m listening.”

  “I did something stupid. I gave him money.”

  The face cracked a smile. “Another one of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “Gullible women,” he said. “Hoppy was always putting the touch on the ladies. Invest in this, stake me to seed money in that.”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Uncle Norman always called me Gwen the Gullible.” He didn’t, but this was the first bite I’d had from Paul McCartney. “How did you know about that?”

  “Hoppy always got a little loose-lipped after a few beers. What did you buy into?”

  “European coins,” I said. It was all I could think of that Europe had for sure, besides postage stamps; at least I know something about money.

  “You mean, currency or—”

  “No, vintage specie. Prussian pfennigs, Swiss francs from Liechtenstein, prewar Polish zlotys. He was buying—he said—mint condition collections for resale to collectors in the United States. He was going to cut me in for half of the three-hundredpercent markup.” I added, “No pun intended.”

  “Mark,” he said. “I got it.”

  “I figured you would,” indicating the travel posters on the wall.

  The hands steepled. “What were you planning to do?” he asked. “Visit every country where he supposedly bought a collection? If I were going to scam someone, Ms. Katz, I would say I was going to Brussels and then head for Antigua. It would cost less and be much, much sunnier.”

  “I thought about that,” I told him. “But when he went away in October, he didn’t come back with a tan.”

  McCartney nodded. “Good get.”

  I felt bad appropriating Pinky’s observation, but I didn’t think she’d mind.

  “Ms. Katz, if any of these investments ever ends up in court, I do not want to have been responsible for sharing information that the law might consider confidential.”

  “I appreciate that, but it’s not like you’re a psychiatrist—”

  “Please!” A halting hand went up. “Allow me to finish.”

  I shut up.

  “I am not, however, an unsympathetic man,” he said. “I have a mother I love dearly and it would pain me deeply ever to see her feminine trust taken advantage of. So I will tell you this. If you are looking to collect any of those monies you mentioned, you would not be likely to encounter any European who has met Mr. Hopewell.”

  I stared at him, stupefied. Not only did he stereotype my gender, he told me that out of 27 member nations of the European Union Hoppy could have visited, one of them wasn’t Liechtenstein.

  I sat there looking at the Berlin Wall of travel agents, wanting to hit him with a mallet. Not that I could blame him. I’d been deposed in many, many litigations involving clients; even being peripherally involved was stressful and distracting. It was an area where you wanted to stay as clean as possible.

  I rose. “Maybe I should’ve played pool with him instead,” I said. “Thanks for your time.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Let me know when you do want to book a trip. I have excellent relations with the Von Harbou Hotel Chain in Germany.”

  I looked at him and he looked at me. There was nothing in his expression to indicate that he was helping me, if in fact he was. Maybe my Hail Mary “pool” line had touched a soft spot.

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “Very much.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, a little of the smile returning.

  Chapter 16

  Germany.

  What could Hoppy have done in Germany, apart from that bizarre claim that he had studied chocolate cake making there.

  Maybe nothing, I thought. Maybe Hoppy just went there for a vacation, like normal people do. For all I knew, maybe he was there on business, either for the chocolate shop or actually trying to make one of the investments work. Not one of the obviously ridiculous ones, but a business deal I hadn’t yet found out about. The information Paul McCartney had so kindly imparted was something, but where or whether it fit was still a mystery.

  I went back to the deli to work the lunch shift and do my mindless-work-while-thinking drill. That got slightly sidetracked when Grant Daniels came to lunch with Deputy Chief Whitman. I fantasized that while they had a wide selection of places they could have gone, Grant chose the deli so he could lay eyes on me.

  If that were the case, he was really subtle about it. So subtle, in fact, that it never came up. Then again, it was a working lunch and when I showed them to a table—I was playing hostess for Thom who was taking phone orders—I was happy to be invited to join them if I had a minute.

  I made a minute. Several of them, in fact. After taking their order, I slid into the booth beside the Belle Meade detective. I didn’t want to go thighto-thigh with Grant.

  “You two have met,” Grant said by way of breaking the ice.

  “Hi again.” I shook Whitman’s hand as he grumped out a hello.

  “I want to say up front that Deputy Chief Whitman isn’t entirely onboard with this, but he’s agreed to let me talk to you about the investigation so far.”

  “Okay,” I said. What else was there to say?

  Grant leaned back and Whitman leaned forward. It reminded me of those tag team wrestling matches my grandfather used to watch. Maybe it was a politer version of good cop, bad cop—reluctant cop and outside-the-box cop.

  “I’ll be frank, Ms. Katz,” Whitman said. “We aren’t exactly drawing aces here. People seem reluctant to talk about Mr. Hopewell and we can’t compel them.”

  “Why reluctant?” I asked.

  “People seem conflicted,” he said. “Most of them seem to want to remember the deceased as they knew him in life. Jovial, a welcome guest, always bringing chocolates—”

  “Santa Claus,” I said. “For widows and spinsters.”

  “That’s a good way to put it,” Whitman conceded. “They would welcome finding out who killed him, but they don’t seem to want to know why.”

  “It’s a strange world you inhabit,” I told him.

  “The Old South and its adherents do have a different way of looking at things. Not a bad way, in many respects. There’s privilege but there’s also honor.”

  “Do you think the women are closing ranks to protect one of their own?”

  “I don’t have an answer for you,” Whitman said.

  “The other part of this is Solomon Granger,” Grant said.

  “I’m not a fan,” I said.

  “You may actually know him better than we do,” Whitman said. “I understand you had dealings—?”

  I explained how he tried to help Royce steal my restaurant to build their entertainment complex. I said that while he never did anything illegal, as far as I knew, he was not above withholding information.

  “He’s the kind of guy who won’t turn on the light so he can tell you that white is black,” I concluded.

  Whitman actually broke a little smile at that. “Nicely put.”

  “And just in case, if you’re suggesting that I use my exhaustive feminine charms to woo information from that human tombstone—”

  “God, no,” Grant said. He said it very quickly. Possessively? I probably read that into it, but he definitely didn’t like the idea.

  “We would never suggest that,” Whitman said, which was only halfway there; he didn’t say I shouldn’t think of it on my own. “We mention him because he’s stonewalling the investigation.”

  “How?”

  “We went to Judge Footwise.”
/>
  I interrupted. “What is he, a Hobbit?”

  “She’s a Cherokee,” Whitman said. “Askini Footwise.”

  “Oh. Oops.”

  “Tennessee does not presently have any tribes in residence,” Grant said.

  “Her family has been here since before Davy Crockett, but that’s beside the point. Before she was appointed to the bench, Mr. Granger did pro bono work for a Choctaw family that was living on public lands in the western part of the state. He managed to get old squatter laws declared unconstitutional, had the area redefined according to a map from 1819, and the family was allowed to stay.”

  “So he’s not all bad?”

  Grant’s mouth twisted. “The family sold the land to a developer and Granger got his thirty-percent contingency fee from that five-million-dollar deal.”

  “Nothing illegal,” Whitman said. “Just—well, like you described it. He didn’t reveal the end game.”

  “So how does the judge fit in, besides feeling like Granger got some of her kin a good deal from a once-corrupt system?”

  “That’s it entirely,” Whitman said. “She won’t break the law for Granger, of course. But she does let all the breaks fall pretty much on his side.”

  That concept was not only foreign to me, it was orbiting somewhere beyond Pluto. The great oral tradition of my family has it that all fifty-odd souls in my great-grandparents’ shtetl in Russia went out of their way to wheel-and-deal fellow citizens out of land, money, goods, betrothed, natural resources, and even secure hiding places when the Cossacks were near.

  “We went before Judge Footwise to get a search warrant that was limited to Mr. Hopewell’s home and telephone records,” Whitman said. “Mr. Granger petitioned the court to disallow the warrant on the grounds that Mr. Hopewell committed no crime and therefore his privacy was inviolable.”

  “What?”

  Grant shook his head. “I know. The problem is, under a narrow view of state civil liberties law, he’s right.”

  “You’re saying that unless Hoppy was somehow complicit in his own murder, his estate can’t be investigated ?”

  “Only through interview and public scrutiny,” Whitman said.

  “That’s ridiculous.”