Death At A Diner: A Culinary Cozy Mystery (A Murder In Milburn Book 1)

by Nancy McGovern

  “I’ve got to meet someone first,” Raquel said, “then I’m heading over to the diner and rechecking the speaker systems. Plus, I think I’m going to start hanging up some of the art work we’ve bought. It’s about time, what with the opening being three days away.”

  “I was going to do that with you,” Nora said, feeling a bit guilty. “I guess I got busy experimenting with recipes.”

  “Don’t worry.” Raquel gave her a hug. “You’ve done a lot, Nora. Now stop thinking about Madness and the sheriff and go have an amazing time on your first date. But watch out for Harvey, okay? He’s a real heartbreaker.”

  “Is he?” Nora said. “I don’t normally like dating players.”

  “He isn’t a player, exactly,” Raquel said. “The town opinion is he just hasn’t found the right girl yet. He’s a good man, though, at least when I’ve dealt with him at the firm. He’s always been courteous, efficient and professional.”

  “Ah, the three qualities every woman dreams about in a date,” Nora quipped. “Efficiency, professionalism and courtesy.”

  “I’ve gone on enough dates with no courtesy to appreciate it,” Raquel said. “Some of the cowboys down by Jackson wouldn’t know courteous if it walked up and bit them on-”

  The doorbell rang.

  Grabbing her purse, primping her hair, and with a final look at her outfit, Nora kissed Raquel on the cheek and ran to get the door. Raquel gave her a thumbs up and a broad smile. “Go have fun!” she said.

  “I’ll try and swing by the diner if I’m done early,” Nora replied. “See you soon!”

  The door swung close on Raquel’s broad smile, as she was bending over to pick up some of Nora’s discarded clothes. Nora would remember that split second for a long, long time.

  It was the last time Nora would see her alive.

  *****

  Chapter 6

  Unaware of the turmoil that was heading her way that night, Nora stood behind her door and took a deep breath before opening it. A smiling Harvey stood on the step, a huge bunch of red roses in his hand.

  “Oh!” Nora said, blushing. “These are amazing, Harvey! This is too much!”

  She’d had disastrous experiences with boys in high school. In Boston and NY, her dates had always been of the eat-a-hot-dog and walk around the street variety. Life as a sous chef doubled with her night classes in college had been too demanding for her to really focus on dating. So this was the first time a man had ever presented her with flowers, and she felt as giddy as a teenage girl.

  It helped that Harvey looked gorgeous. She had to restrain herself from dropping her jaw. Wearing a dark navy sweater, olive chinos, and a grey linen shirt, he looked effortlessly stylish. Somehow, he’d matched it with a red and white varsity letterman jacket, and come out looking like he belonged in Milan or Paris instead of humble Milburn. When she’d last seen him, he’d been clean shaven. He had a few days growth of stubble on his cheeks now that accentuated his sharp jaw line. His light brown hair was swept back from his face, with a few strands dangling in front of his dark eyebrows, almost obscuring the blue brilliance of his eyes. All in all, he looked like the scion of a powerful political family or a model on Times Square, not the kind of man who’d be interested in dating Nora.

  But here he was, on her doorstep, ready to take her out.

  “I’ll put these in water,” she said, wondering if she’d sounded too rude. Maybe she should have invited him in? He made her anxious, that’s what it was. Her brain stopped functioning properly.

  She came out again, grabbing her shawl, and found him leaning against a spiky red beast of a car. Her jaw dropped this time.

  He smirked. “It’s a Ferrari Testarossa,” he said. “An iconic car, I always thought.” He held the door open for her. “When I was 15, I told myself I’d get one someday.” He slid into the smooth beige and black leather of the driver’s seat.

  “Does it drive well on country roads?” she asked.

  “Oh, my normal ride is a Ford,” he said. “I just whip this one out to impress people.”

  “It works,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  He raised his fist and pumped it in the air. “Score!”

  They both laughed, and Nora felt a little more at ease. “So where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “Jackson Hole,” he said. “It’s an hour’s drive, but we should do it in half that. I hope you don’t mind if I break the speed limit a little.”

  “Do you always break the rules?” she asked.

  “Only when I’m trying to impress a pretty lady.” He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Is it working now?”

  She blushed again, then felt her stomach dip as his car roared onto the highway. He flicked a button and the car’s retractable headlights opened and lit up the road.

  “Was it always that way?” she asked. “With you and breaking rules?”

  He didn’t answer but diverted her with small talk about the weather and the news. It escaped her notice until later, when they were seated in a fancy restaurant, surrounded by glistening silver cutlery and sparkling white linens, finished with the first course of lemon orzo soup.

  “This is good,” Nora said, “I’ve never tasted lemon orzo soup with truffle oil before, but it makes a big difference to the palate.”

  “It’s good enough,” Harvey said, pushing the bowl aside, “but wait till you try the main course. It’s caramelized mushrooms and sous-vide filet mignon with golden jacket potatoes. Now if that doesn’t make you drool, you’re made of steel.”

  “You sound like an expert,” Nora smiled. “Is that to impress people too?

  “Honestly? Yes.” He laughed. “If you asked me what meal I could eat every day for the rest of my life, it’d be what my mom used to make me every day growing up. Mac and cheese with a whole bunch of veggies thrown in, and a big glass of apple juice on the side.”

  “Sounds delicious. But you’re not from Wyoming, are you?” she asked. “Your accent just doesn’t fit.”

  “Me? I’m a California boy,” he said.

  “So how did you land up so far north?”

  He deflected her easily. “I came where my destiny led me.”

  He was too smooth, too easy. Witty yes, and charming always – the flow of flattery was constant through the evening. Yet Nora couldn’t let herself be drawn into him. She sensed a darker abyss beneath his bright smile and his practiced charisma. It was in the way he deflected every question about his past, and instead focused on asking her questions about her. She supposed she could understand. There were things from her past that she didn’t want to bring up either, after all. But while she answered him readily enough about her plans for the diner, how hard she’d worked to save up for it, how glad she was that Raquel was her partner, not once during their entire date did she feel he gave her a meaningful or real answer about his own business, or how he’d started it, or about his life before he started it or what had bought him to Wyoming.

  He talked to her a lot about his childhood, though, and here, she felt like she was glimpsing a different side of the man. He spoke with genuine love, tinged with grief, about the early death of his mother, a strong woman.

  “She was a waitress, and worked sometimes three shifts a day to keep a roof over our head,” he said. “She worked her way up to manager the hard way and kept warning me that education was my way out. She forced me to study, would have huge fights with me if she ever found out I skipped school. She hoped so badly that I would become a doctor or a lawyer.” He shook his head. “I wish she could have seen me succeed, but when she died, I was only 19, and all she saw was a little lost boy.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Nora said, reaching over and holding his hand. He glanced down at her hand, seeming tiny on his, and gave a crooked little smile. “It’s all right. I had a great childhood, though. We moved around a lot, both of us were nomads at heart. She took me to every state park in a 200-mile radius, and boy, were there a lot. I watched whales play in the ocean, I saw sa
nd dunes shift in the deserts, I saw a red sun rise over yellow cliffs.” He stopped. “I thought I’d seen the world, and none of it would ever be enough. And then, a year after she died, I saw Wyoming.”

  “It must have been tough on you, losing her so young,” Nora said. “Did you have relatives in Wyoming you came to meet?”

  He laughed. “My father,” he said. “Not that he was too pleased with his unwanted son barging into his second, real family. He was a big rancher, and I was a broke kid who’d just failed out of college. He shoved some money at me and told me to get lost.”

  Nora gasped. “What a horrible thing to do.”

  He slid back into his easy charm. “Not really. I don’t suppose I was the kind of son he’d be pleased with. Maybe if I’d been a good studious boy or a sweet little girl he’d have been kinder. As it was, I was a rebellious, fighting boy with no intention of making good in the world. I’d have thrown me out too.”

  “So what happened?” Nora asked. “How did you go from a broke, failed out of college kid to…” Her hand waved around the restaurant, chandeliers, candlelight and tuxedo-clad waiters. “…to this?”

  “Luck,” he said, as if suddenly conscious that he’d revealed a lot more of himself than he wanted. “Sheer luck and a bit of courage. But enough about me. Here, bite into this chocolate cake, and tell me if it isn’t the most delicious thing you’ve ever had.”

  He put a spoonful of cake mixed with cherries, rhubarb jam, and whipped cream into her mouth, and Nora had to agree. Even ambrosia couldn’t possibly taste as good.

  *****

  Chapter 7

  The drive back home was a little quieter, both of them having had their fill. Even the hot espresso afterward hadn’t been enough to lull them out of the food-coma they both were in. Nora’s stomach felt pleasantly warm, seeming to give off a golden glow to the rest of her.

  Harvey played her his favorite jazz album, Monk’s Dream by Thelonious Monk, and chose to drive through country roads instead of taking the highway. It was a weird sensation, speeding through the dark, the world around them in shades of black, while inside the car, they sat lit up by the neon dashboard. Only the twin beams of his Testarossa broke through the darkness, sometimes illuminating a curved road with a black lake at its side, sometimes catching the blur of a deer darting into cover as they approached. He was an excellent driver, and the car felt smooth and sure in his hands.

  “Nora,” he said when the music had lulled.

  She turned toward him. “Yes?”

  “I’ve had a great time with you tonight. I just wanted to say-”

  What he wanted to say was wiped away by a large bang. The entire car shuddered, and then screeched as the steering wheel span out of control. With a shout, Harvey struggled to wrestle it back into his command. Nora, thrown about violently, put her hand out and braced against the dash.

  It only took three seconds, though Nora remembered each moment as intensely as she would an hour long symphony. First, the skidding of the car; next, a large bump as it hit a ditch on the side of the road; then, a brief, almost magical moment when the car lifted off the ground and spun.

  Three seconds.

  Nora screamed again, sure that this was it. It seemed to flash before her –one minute, the two of them at a fancy candlelit restaurant, then, spinning in mid air as the Ferrari flung itself across the fields.

  If there had been bystanders, they would have seen the red sports car veer suddenly into the ditch on the banks of the road, lift into the air, then flip over and over till it settled with a crash in the middle of a field. From inside the car, all that Nora could feel was the world blurring itself into a mass of dark sky and dark field, punctuated by loud screams – either from her or from the metal as it ripped.

  There was a crash that shook the world. Trees erupted as birds flew out crying in horror and fear. A small flame grew beneath the Ferrari’s gas tank. For a few seconds, Nora blacked out. When she opened her eyes again, she blinked. The world was upside down. Her hair was dangling in front of her face, and shards of glass glinted in the moonlight beyond.

  Pretty was the first thought through her mind, strangely enough. Now that she had only a few moments to appreciate it, the world seemed hauntingly beautiful. She could see a black lake in the distance, and tall grass stretching all along them. Glints of moonlight caught in shattered glass that was strewn across the field. Trees hung upside down, branches still shuddering with the wing speed of the birds that had run from them.

  In the distance, Nora also saw Raquel.

  Raquel? That’s when Nora knew she was imagining it. Raquel couldn’t be here. She was back at the diner.

  She later told herself it was a hallucination, no doubt brought about by the shock of the crash. But at that moment, hanging upside down by a seatbelt in a totaled Ferrari, she only knew that Raquel was there, and screaming at Nora to get out. Get out!

  She blinked.

  Five seconds had passed since the car crashed.

  She tried to turn her neck and saw Harvey, hanging upside down, unconscious, beside her. She screamed his name and saw him blink awake. Nora was trying to undo her seatbelt, and he put out his hand to stop her. He shook his head, and she stilled.

  He jerked at his door and kicked it futilely. Then, making a decision, he kicked the windshield in front of him until it cracked, and fell out. Carefully, he slid out of his own seatbelt, twisting this way and that until he was free, but being careful to support himself against the ground throughout. When he was done, he crawled out of the now open windshield and ran to Nora’s side to help her.

  Realizing that opening the seatbelt would mean crashing onto the floor on her head, Nora did the same thing Harvey had done, twisting this way and that until she had freed herself, and crawling out of the windshield.

  Harvey pulled her up, and pulled her away from the wreck, his face grim. “You’re all right,” he said, running his hands over her face. “You’re all right.” It was almost a mantra to reassure him. His face seemed stripped of all the charm and ease that he’d been putting on all night, and was only a raw wound of emotion now. His eyes blazed with fear, and his hands shook as he pressed them against hers.

  Amazingly, she was all right. So was he. He only had a trail of blood running down his face and a slight limp.

  “It’s a miracle,” Harvey said. “We’ve got an angel watching over us.”

  Nora flashed to her hallucination of Raquel but said nothing. “We need to call the cops.”

  “Second time today,” Harvey groaned. “This has not been a good day.”

  “Your car’s done,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “Just as long as you’re all right.” He was holding her hand now, and she focused on the thin trail of blood running down the side of his face. It was steady as a brook in winter, slow moving but dangerous. He gave her hand a squeeze. “I would never have forgiven myself if something had happened to you.” His voice was hoarse. “If you’d been hurt…”

  “I’m fine,” she said, feeling a glow inside her again. She had a sudden urge to hug him, to scream thanks to the world for allowing her to be so gloriously alive. Shaking a little, she asked, “How did it happen, Harvey? We were fine one minute and then…”

  His face pulled into a tighter mask. “I don’t know,” he said. His voice was mild now, and devoid of emotion, but she saw the desperate fear – and anger – in his voice.

  They waited under a tree, huddled together, Harvey’s hands protectively around her shoulder. In twenty minutes, a chain of lights washed up the road, and sirens blared as the EMTs and the Sheriff arrived.

  Nora and Harvey saw him stride toward them, and Nora drew back in surprise. She’d seen the sheriff plenty of times before, relaxed and happy in Mrs. Mullally’s house. Now, in his cowboy hat and boots, his badge hanging proud from his chest, he looked every inch like a man with a mission, a man ready to use reason or force to get his job done.

&
nbsp; Ignoring the lightly flaming wreckage of the Ferrari, he headed straight for them. Harvey’s hand tightened around Nora’s shoulders.

  “You could have died,” he said, his words clipped and brusque. “You foolish, speeding coward. You could have died and killed her with you.”

  Harvey flinched as if his words were a whip. But he said nothing, only hanging his head.

  “He wasn’t speeding,” Nora said. It was a lie. Technically, he’d been 10 or maybe 15 miles above the speed limit. But there was no way it was his driving that had caused them to crash. Something had happened. She scrunched her eyes shut, trying to replay those last moments. A bang, a loud bang.

  “Something ripped your tire open,” she said to Harvey. “A mechanical fault of some kind? Maybe an antler or nail lying on the road? It made us skid off, then we hit the ditch and flipped through the air.”

  “It’s a miracle you’re both unhurt,” Sean said. It was all he could do to keep his hands from wrenching Nora away from Harvey, and then taking a swing at him. Instead, his hands curled into fists. “Still no memory of Santino, Harvey?”

  Harvey grabbed Sean by the lapels of his shirt. “This has nothing to do with Santino. It was an accident.”

  “Two accidents in a day,” Sean said. “You’ve got three seconds to let go of me before I arrest you. I’ve got a mind to do it right now.”

  *****

  Chapter 8

  Nora stepped in between them and pushed them both with a hand. “Both of you. Stop.”

  To Sean, she snapped, “You should be ashamed of yourself! Attacking Harvey like that when he’s just been in an accident.”

  “You’ve been in an accident,” Sean said. “This man could have killed you. Don’t you care about that?”

  “It wasn’t Harvey’s fault, Sean. Can’t you believe that?”

  Sean stepped back, immediately cooling down. He put his hands in the air. “All right. Easy. Harvey, we’ll talk about Santino later.”