Murder and Marinara: An Italian Kitchen Mystery (Italian Kitchen Mysteries)

by Genova, Rosie

  My grandmother snorted, either in disgust or assent. Maybe both. “I have given Tim the day off,” she announced.

  “Oh?” I said. “Is he coming in for dinner?”

  She shook her head. “Massimo and Nando will be handling things today and tonight. Perhaps tomorrow, too.”

  My mother turned to face her mother-in-law. “Is that necessary, Mama?” she asked quietly.

  Nonna gave a classic Italian shrug, lifting one shoulder slowly, followed by a lift of her palm. “The boy needs a break.”

  Sure, Nonna, and now maybe you’d like to sell me the Driscoll Bridge. “I know why you told Tim not to come in,” I said. “You think he’s bad for business.”

  “Victoria!” My mother and father gasped in unison. Whether they were shocked at my intimation or my challenge to my grandmother was not clear.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” I said.

  My grandmother blinked once behind her glasses, the only sign I’d ruffled her. “Why do you defend him, after what he did to you?”

  My face burned. What happened with Tim was a topic my grandmother had studiously avoided. But it was gratifying (and kinda shocking) to know that she cared. “Nonna, that’s old history.”

  “Whether it is or isn’t,” she said, “it’s better he’s not here.” She turned to go into the kitchen, the doors swinging behind her “Mom—Daddy, c’mon. Are you gonna let her do that?” I was surprised by how upset I sounded.

  My mom put her arm around me and rested her head against mine. “People are talking, honey. It’s just how it is in small towns.”

  I pulled away from her quickly. “You know Tim didn’t kill him. You both know that!” My words echoed across the empty dining room, and in the silence that followed, a thought struck me: Did my parents know that Anjelica was actually Angie Martini? If they did, they’d have even more reason to suspect Tim. But if my mom had made that connection, she would have mentioned it to me—that was for darn sure. In the meantime, I had to hope they wouldn’t find out just yet. I turned to my dad. “He’s not a murderer, Daddy.”

  “Baby, nobody suggested such a thing,” my dad said. “But we’re struggling to stay alive here. Tim’s been working hard anyway. He could use a day or two off, right?” He reached over and grabbed my chin. “Now let me see my girl smile.”

  “Okay, okay.” I grimaced just long enough for him to let go of my face. “But really, since when does the Rienzi family care what people think?”

  “Since their business has fallen off,” my mom responded with a sigh. “It’s just temporary, honey. This will all blow over and Tim will be back, and the customers will be back—you’ll see.”

  But it sounded as if my mother was trying to convince herself of her own words. “I hope so, Mom.” I looked around the dining room. “Where’s Cal this morning, by the way?”

  “He’s been and gone already,” my mother said shortly, turning to me with her hands on her hips. “And why are you interested in where Mr. Lockhart is?”

  “‘Mr. Lockhart,’ is it? My, aren’t we formal. I was just wondering.”

  She waved a manicured hand in my direction. “Well, you can just stop wondering. He’s not for you.”

  “Who said anything about him as a romantic prospect, Mother?” I tied on a black apron in the hopes of conveying the impression that I wanted to get to work.

  “I know you were up at the boardwalk together the other evening.”

  I’d started to get the coffee urns ready and paused with the filter basket still in my hand. “Do you have spies out following me?”

  “Of course not, Victoria. Mrs. Foglia, who works at the fudge shop, was told by Jenny at the Surf Shack, who heard it from Louie Ianuzzi, who saw you at his stand. How was the calamari, by the way?”

  “The calamari was delicious. Thank you.” I dumped coffee into the basket without measuring, telling myself that it was surely too soon to give up and go back to the city. “What else did you learn?”

  “Well, you must like him, darling, or how else could he have gotten you up on that Ferris wheel? I mean, the last time you went on a ride with Tim, well—”

  “Yes, Mom. I remember. Thank you. Aren’t you going to ask whether he kissed me or not?” If I hurry, I can be packed and heading north on the Parkway this afternoon.

  My mother tossed a few hair extensions over her shoulder. “I am well aware that he did not.”

  “Why? Because it was our first date?”

  “No, darling, because Daniel happened to be driving by in his squad car as Mr. Lockhart was taking his leave of you.”

  “‘Taking his leave of me’?” I couldn’t help smiling. “How many Regency romances are loaded on that Kindle of yours, anyway?”

  “Don’t be smart, missy. And don’t try to change the subject. I think you should stay away from Calvin Lockhart.”

  “No worries on that score, Mom, okay? And now I need to face the dragon in the kitchen.”

  “Don’t be disrespectful, Victoria!” she called after me, and I groaned. Being back here made me feel like I was sixteen again, and not in a good way. And if I was hoping my grandmother would let me do some cooking this morning, I sure had another thing coming.

  “Have you set up the coffee station?” she asked without looking up from her pad. I peeked over her shoulder to see a list forming for Nando and Massimo.

  “Yes, Nonna,” I said dutifully, and she cast me a suspicious glance.

  “And what progress have you made about the other thing?”

  The other thing. Oh, you mean that thing where a man dropped dead outside the restaurant, Nonna? “Some,” I admitted.

  She turned from her list and narrowed her eyes at me. “‘Some’ is not enough. Tomorrow is Friday!”

  “I know what day it is, Nonna. What would you have me do? Torture a confession out of somebody?” I held up my hand. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”

  My grandmother slammed down her pencil and hit me with her best shot. “Don’t you care about your family?”

  I groaned. “Of course I do. And I care about the Casa Lido. But I’m not a cop. I’m not a real detective. I’ve been doing research and talking to people.”

  But my brother’s question echoed in my head: to what end? Did I really believe the murderer would come forward because I was digging around? Would I round up all the suspects in the dining room and have a showdown á la Poirot? Bullied by my grandmother and egged on by Sofia, I may have already tipped off a murderer. And it certainly could be argued that I was hindering a police investigation. All because I was treating this as an intellectual exercise instead of the crime that it was. Maybe it was time to pack it in.

  “I’ve done all I can, Nonna. We have to leave this to the police now.” I steeled myself, expecting an Italian blast. But there was only silence. Instead of anger on my grandmother’s face, all I saw was her age.

  Then she shrugged and shook her head. “All right, Victoria. Now please go out to the garden and pick some mint for the tea freddo.”

  I stopped at the back door. “Nonna, you’ll let Tim come back, won’t you? You know he didn’t do this.”

  She straightened up and lifted her chin, her face once again hard. “I know no such thing,” she said, turning back to her work.

  As I headed toward the garden, I had to remind myself only plants were out here now. No dead bodies, Vic. It’s okay. Skirting around the shed, I found the patch of herbs and sniffed out the spearmint plants. I rubbed a leaf between my fingers, and the rich scent brought back summertime and childhood—a childhood that was inextricably bound up with the Casa Lido. What would happen to it now?

  I sighed, picked a handful of leaves, and looked over the garden. The herbs had taken nicely, and the tomato plants were all in, thanks to a couple of Nando’s cousins. I bent to look at the plants Nonna had ready to go. Her usual flats of impatiens and begonias threw bright color against the green grass. Larger pots of perennials flanked both sides of the bed. Few had flowered,
so I stooped to read their tags. There were balloon flowers and daisies and sunflowers that would grow as tall as the fence. At the back of the row was a pretty purple flower on a long stalk. When I bent closer to read the white plastic tag that poked up from the soil, I felt exactly as I had when I looked down at Parisi’s corpse. My knees buckled; I dropped the tag as though it were toxic, because it was. The Latin name swam before my eyes. The plant I couldn’t remember wasn’t “purple digit,” but Digitalis purpurea, commonly known as foxglove.

  And that’s when Iris’s words finally came back to me: Enough of that will stop your heart.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Dropping the handfuls of mint at my feet, I slapped at my front pocket. Phone, yes. I dug it from my jeans pocket and held it in my shaking left hand, tapping wildly at the screen to pull up Google. My fingers felt thick and clumsy as I spelled out “f-o-x-g-l-o-v-e” in the search bar. Sweeping my finger across the screen, I scrolled down to read about the plant’s toxicity, and there it was: The substances in the foxglove plant were known to cause “deadly disturbances of the heart.” I would have to do more research later, but for now I had seen enough. I backed away from the plant and shoved my phone into my pocket. I scooped up the mint leaves with trembling hands, and for the second time in ten days, ran from that garden as though the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels.

  I went straight to the sink, keeping my back to my grandmother. Because if she looked at my face, I was certain these words would be scrolling across my forehead: There is a poisonous plant in the garden . . . a poisonous plant in the garden . . . a poisonous plant . . . a poisonous plant . . . Holy Mother of God, what am I going to do?

  “Victoria?” My grandmother’s sharp tones took the tiniest edge off my rising hysteria.

  “What?” I said, only a few decibels shy of a shriek.

  “What are you doing at the sink? That water is running too long.”

  “I’m, uh, rinsing the mint leaves.” Scrubbing them raw was more accurate. I turned off the water and grabbed a paper towel, patting the leaves dry while a new phrase took hold in my tortured brain: deadly disturbances of the heart. Ha, I thought. Sounds like one of Mom’s books. But this story was real and playing itself out right in front of me.

  “Here.” My grandmother dumped a large bag of greens on the counter. “Now you can wash the escarole.”

  I peeked inside the bag. The leafy green heads certainly looked like escarole. I pulled off a leaf and stared at its curly edges and the creamy whiteness of the stem. When I snapped it, I recognized the fibrous strings and figured it was safe.

  “What, you never seen ’scarole before?” Nonna spoke right into my ear and I jumped, slapping my hand on my chest.

  “Don’t do that, Nonna! You scared me to death.” And then I realized what a poor choice of words that was.

  “Victoria, what is wrong with you? You say you want to help in the kitchen, but all you do is daydream.” She pointed to the bag of greens. “Get moving. I am going out to the dining room.”

  “Daydream” was not the word I would have chosen; “surreal nightmare” was a much better description for the state I found myself in. I forced myself to take a breath and used the job at hand to focus. While I automatically rinsed and tore the greens, I collected my thoughts in a rational manner.

  Okay, there was no proof that a foxglove plant was used to kill Parisi. Those leaves didn’t look like salad greens, for one thing. But I would have a better idea about that as soon as I could get to a computer and do more research. And just because there was a foxglove plant behind the Casa Lido kitchen did not mean that someone here used it to kill him. But, cara, said the voice of my detective, Bernardo Vitali, what have I taught you about coincidence?

  “Shut up, Bernardo,” I muttered, furiously tearing escarole leaves. At least I was calmer now, but I needed a plan. Once I was done with prep, I would sneak back to the garden and do what I had been too panicked to think of earlier: use my phone to take a couple of pictures of the plant. The minute I could get away from the restaurant today, I’d learn everything I could about Digitalis purpurea.

  • • •

  But after the escarole came the carrots for Chef Massimo’s famous puree, and after the carrots came a bin full of flatware to be wiped clean, and after the flatware came water pitchers to be filled. When Lori showed up at ten thirty, my grandmother still had not released me from my bondage.

  “Hey, you wanted to come back,” Lori said as she tied on her apron. “You know the drill.”

  “That I do, girlfriend.” I sighed as I folded linens around the forks and knives.

  She took a seat next to me. “I’ll help with the setups. You’d better get sharper points on those napkins. Your nonna will check ’em all.”

  I groaned. “Of course she will.”

  “Where is everybody, by the way?”

  “Nonna’s back in the kitchen, Mom’s in the office, and last I saw my dad, he was prepping the bar.”

  “Ha,” Lori said. “You mean avoiding the womenfolk. Is Dreamboat working this morning?”

  “No. Massimo and Nando are in the kitchen.” I made a face. “They kicked me out.”

  “Massi doesn’t like anybody in there. He barely tolerates Nando.” She slipped a knife and fork into a napkin and folded it with expert ease. “I guess they gave Tim the day off, huh?” she said carefully.

  “Yup.” I studied the napkin in front of me, not wanting to pick up this particular conversational thread.

  Lori patted my arm. “We know Tim would never do such a thing. I don’t care if he was involved with that Angie again.”

  At her words, I had the sudden sensation of the Ferris wheel, with the ground under my feet falling away. My stomach churning, I smoothed out another napkin and flattened it with my fingers. It seemed minutes before I could find my voice. “What do you mean ‘involved’ with her?”

  “Maybe ‘involved’ isn’t the right word. But she was in here a couple of times before her husband died. I just never connected her with Parisi until after he—”

  “Dropped dead in the restaurant?” I said harshly.

  “Hey, you might want to lower your voice on that one.”

  “Right.” But in that moment, I didn’t care if the whole town heard me, because all I could hear were Lori’s words: She was in here a couple of times. A couple of times. Not once, as Tim had implied that night in the pantry. I flashed on Angie’s look of false pity as she taunted me: Is that what he told you? And if he lied about that . . . “No,” I said aloud.

  Lori frowned at me. “You okay? Listen, I’ll finish these up. You go take a break.”

  “Thanks, LJ, but it’s almost time for lunch to start, and we have to get these out on the tables. And listen, do me a favor, would you? Don’t mention to my parents that Anjelica is actually Angie, okay?”

  She winked at me. “You got it.”

  Just as we finished setting the last table, our first customer came through the doors. She was a large woman, broad-shouldered and curvy. Her bright orange suit set off the deep caramel color of her skin; she wore her hair in a cropped afro, the ends tipped in blond highlights.

  “May I help you?” I smiled, and though her face was serious, I was mesmerized by her brownish gold eyes. Tiger eyes, I thought, and some instinct told me it was an apt description for her.

  “Table for one, please.” After I seated her and left her with a menu, I stepped back to the coffee station to pick up a water pitcher. But I couldn’t take my eyes off our customer. As she shifted in her chair, her jacket opened, and I clutched Lori’s arm.

  “Oh my God.” I gasped. “Is that a gun in her pocket?”

  “Or is she just glad to see us?” Lori said with a grin.

  “It’s not funny,” I hissed. “She’s got a gun!”

  “She’s allowed to have a gun, Vic.” Lori’s patient, explanatory tone was similar to one I heard her use on her son. “She’s the county prosecutor, Regina Sutton.�
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  Chapter Twenty-two

  I wanted to panic. In fact, I wanted to run out the door as fast as my little waitress clogs could carry me. Instead, I just said, “Oh,” and had the following thoughts:

  1) There’s a county prosecutor in the dining room.

  2) There’s a poisonous plant in the garden.

  Considering the lady tiger that was burning bright over there at Table Four, the fearful symmetry of those two truths circled me like a chain. And there was no escape.

  Regina Sutton looked up at me and beckoned in a manner worthy of her name. Lori nudged me in the side. “She’s ready for you to take her order.”

  “Ohhhh-kay, then.” I groped for a pad and pen inside my apron pocket; unluckily, they were both there, so I couldn’t stall any longer. I stepped stiffly toward the table, feeling as though I were walking through a bowl of my grandmother’s zabaglione. Standing at Sutton’s elbow, I flinched when she trained those scary golden eyes on my face.

  “I’d like a half order of the pasta special. And the house salad, please.” Her voice was low, melodious, and commanding, but I was barely able to hear it over the one screaming in my head. She ordered the salad!

  I gripped my pen, scribbled something on the pad, and nodded. She tilted her head and looked at me. “Would you mind telling me what’s in it?”

  “Wh-what’s in what?” I stammered.

  “The salad,” she said, pronouncing each syllable separately.

  “Uh, it’s got spring greens, arugula, olives, tomatoes—” And no foxglove or pokeweed. I promise. Calm down, Vic, I told myself. You’re getting hysterical.

  “Thank you,” she interrupted. “That will be fine. Dressing on the side, please.”

  My head snapped up and my mouth went slack. Was she re-creating the crime? I blinked, and Sutton frowned. “Are you quite all right?” she asked.

  “Fine, yes. Sorry. I’ll just go put in that order.” I spun around, quick to escape, but froze at the sound of the rich contralto behind me.

  “And, Ms. Rienzi, when you come back with my lunch, do sit and join me for a moment.” It wasn’t a request.