A Killer in the Rye

by Delia Rosen

  Was that it? Was that my goal in life?

  I didn’t know. Dammit, I didn’t know!

  The only thing that had satisfied me in the past couple of months was figuring out who killed a local slimeball and nearly getting myself offed in the process. Was it the thrill or a secret death wish that had made it so exciting?

  I didn’t know that, either. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  Saturdays at Murray’s were always more interesting because most interesting people work during the weekdays, and it was usually lively and interesting when they came out of hiding on weekends. They truly appreciated the time off. I took some bites of bagel and sat back in my chair for one last moment of external peace before returning to the need to make a living.

  After fixing my scarf around my fried-egg head, I opened my office door.

  The dining room was moderately busy, and Dani and A.J. were picking up orders from under the heat lamp. I sensed animosity between the two servers.

  “How we doing?” I asked.

  “Stupidly,” said Dani.

  I wasn’t sure what she meant, exactly, but I went with it. “What do you mean?”

  “I was talking to my coworker about kosher,” Dani said, taking pains to pronounce the word correctly. “I was sayin’ how I agreed with y’all because I hated seein’ animals killed for eatin’. She told me I was crazy.”

  “Kosher animals are bled out,” A.J. said. “Slowly.”

  “That’s sort of a misconception,” I said. “They use a very sharp knife and the killing part happens quickly.”

  Dani looked a little ill. I didn’t feel so great myself; what I had just said made me think of the bread guy in his truck.

  “Well, fast killin’ or slow, I told her it’s the food chain,” A.J. continued. “This snot nose never heard of that.”

  “We don’t need name-calling,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” Dani told me. “I called her something worse first.”

  A.J. made a parting face, grabbed her order, and left. Dani took more time gathering her plates and balancing them. She seemed to have a knack for that, at least.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she worked, “but I just hate it when creatures suffer. I don’t mean, like, snakes and flies and lobsters, but cute ones. It really does break my heart.”

  The sadness in her voice, in her eyes, made me feel like I was watching a young girl say a permanent good-bye to her imaginary friends.

  “You know,” I said, “maybe you should rethink the fact that you’re working in a deli. We do slice and serve a lot of meat here.”

  “I want to work here,” Dani said. “I’m here for a purpose.”

  “You mean . . . what, exactly? Like God’s purpose? Is it part of a plan?” I wondered if I should make sure all our meat cleavers were secure.

  “I really have to serve these meals,” she said. “But I think maybe one reason I’m here is to make sure there’s more tofu on the menu so we don’t have to corn so much beef.”

  “I see.” I did, too. “Tell you what. Do some brainstorming. Come up with a few vegan dishes for the deli.”

  Dani’s eyes lost their sadness as she turned to go. “For real?”

  “As real as wheat gluten duck,” I replied.

  “Thanks, Nash. You won’t be sorry!”

  “And don’t forget open mic night!” Luke shouted from the kitchen. “We need that, too!”

  I was heading toward the deli entrance to help Thom bus the tables when I noticed an out-of-place older woman across the street. You couldn’t miss her. She was wearing a large black hat with a brim that covered half her face, sunglasses that covered most of the other half, and a tight, formfitting black dress, black tights, and black heels. At first I thought she was squinting to read our deli hours painted on the front door, but her phantom gaze seemed to fall directly on me as I moved throughout the deli. Trancelike, transfixed, as if she were a black widow spider, I opened the front door to see who it was. But when I stepped outside, a brief flare of sunlight on the glass speared my eyes; when it cleared, the woman had vanished.

  “Somethin’ wrong?”

  It was Thom, at my ear.

  “No,” I said. “I thought . . . I saw someone.”

  “You thought you saw someone?”

  “I thought I saw someone who was looking at me,” I said, making a hash of my attempt to clarify the situation. “Never mind.”

  “Boss lady, I really think you need to take some time off. And I don’t mean just a stroll down the block. I mean some time.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I agreed. “After the Best in Nashville thing.”

  “You don’t need to be there,” Thom said. “Brownnosing the committee isn’t going to help. Everyone will be doing it.”

  “I know. But I have to keep busy. Otherwise, my brain goes bang, back to the bread truck.”

  Thom shook her head. “You gotta learn to think happy thoughts.”

  “I’m a New York Jewish woman,” I said.

  “So?”

  “If you knew more of us, you’d understand what a challenge you just presented.”

  Thom shook her head again.

  “Tell you what, though,” I said. “I’m gonna take a drive. I’m not sure if I’ll be back before closing. You got things?”

  “A drive where?” she demanded.

  “Just out,” I lied.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I know,” I said.

  The head shaking evolved into a shoulder-shrugging sigh. “Don’t worry about anything here. I’ll keep Goofus and Gallant from killing each other.”

  I kissed Thom on the ear, embarrassing us both. I got my purse, made sure I had my keys, and headed for the door.

  “Nash, wait!”

  Dani came almost skipping from behind the counter. “I forgot to tell you something.”

  “What?” My bowels tightened.

  “I made a Facebook page for Murray’s Deli last night!”

  “Wonderful.”

  “It is!” she said, wigwagging her cell phone. “We’ve got two hundred forty friends already! I just checked! That’s two hundred twenty-one more than the I-Heart-Kosher page I started the day before.”

  I smiled. That was just wonderful.

  I was still smiling stupidly as I left.

  Chapter 7

  I was headed to Hendersonville, which was more exquisite than a fresh box of chocolates on a lonely Valentine’s Day.

  Only about twenty minutes from downtown, each sprawling house was more stunning than the last. I snaked through the curves of the exclusive neighborhood, craning and dipping my head to take in the view of each rural palace as I rolled by. I was overwhelmed by the mansions, the giant trees, and the smaller ornamental flowering cherries, trident maples, and redbuds. There were also fountains, dogs running loose in unfenced yards, driveways as long as runways, ponds, lakes, and four-car garages. No wonder country music stars chose to live in this lofty yet reclusive enclave.

  As did the Nashville National’s Robert Reid.

  When I rolled up to the Dale Avenue estate—I’d gotten the address from the work order for Sunday’s bash—I started to wish I’d called ahead. There were a number of cars in the driveway. His or guests’?

  What the hell, I thought. If I didn’t get any alone time to apologize for snapping at him the day before, I could always say I was here to check the venue before the event.

  Robert’s house was a three-story, Tudor-looking mansion, the kind where you could see the timbering-wood beams from the outside and every part of the residence had a giant thatched triangle roof feel to it. Overhanging floors, pillared porches, and a spiraling brick chimney sticking out of every wing. Lush foliage clung to the exterior, and flower gardens lined the stone path leading up to the brick-embossed, stained-glass entrance, which was big enough to comfortably accommodate a giant.

  I didn’t dare pull in the driveway. That would leave me no quick exit, as if the driveway were the tongue of
this massive beast that would never let me escape should I lose my nerve. I parked my car along the street and started the long walk to his front door. The sun filtered through the surrounding trees, bright, dark, bright, dark, like an old nickelodeon slowly turning. The whole thing was like a dream. The killing, my being here, my being divorced, my dad and uncle gone, me being alone.

  Stop that! I yelled inside.

  A few stone steps away from where I was, the real house steps began, winding up like the grand staircase of Tara. It was all light now, no shade, no darkness.

  “Gwen!”

  I froze.

  “Gwen?”

  I looked around—left, right, behind. Of course, the speaker was standing in front of me, at the open door of the mansion. It was Robert Reid.

  “Hi!” I said.

  “Hi. Security camera saw you. Did I forget that you were coming?”

  “Nope,” I replied. “I, uh . . . I just thought I’d check the place out before tomorrow. Get the lay of the land.”

  “Aha.” Robert was still a little bewildered but congenial. He was wearing a baby blue, lightweight V-neck sweater, his sleeves partially pushed up, and khakis, with no shoes or socks on. His moderately tan skin accented his short, slick golden brown hair.

  “Actually, that isn’t entirely true,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “No.” I was still standing at the foot of the steps, talking loud enough for the gardener across the street to hear. I started forward. “No. I really felt I should apologize face-to-face for slamming the door on you. So here I am!”

  He stepped onto his front landing, crossed his arms, and leaned his back on the door frame as I struggled to make my way to the top. His golden smile allowed a sweet, forgiving chuckle. He was kind of handsome and pretty well built, now that I took time to notice.

  “Here you are,” he said. “Can I tell you something?”

  “It’s your house.” I wasn’t even sure what that meant. I wanted him to say something fast to wash it from my ears.

  “I thought it was kind of funny,” he said.

  “What was?”

  “The look on your face when you tried to close the door on the cinder block.”

  I felt myself flush.

  “I was half betting myself that you would actually succeed in pulling the door through it.”

  “Hulk smash,” I said. “I wasn’t myself.”

  “Are you now?”

  “Much more so,” I lied. This was not the time and place to tell him that I was having an identity crisis. I reached the landing. “I’ve never really been to this side of town. You’ve got quite a home.”

  “Thanks. I inherited it from my grandmother.”

  “Gay,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “She was the one who founded the newspaper chain,” I said.

  “Right again. After my grandfather died. The family owned a lot of property down here. She started selling it during the boom, bought a bunch of small papers and built them up.”

  “Quite a woman,” I said.

  “Most women are,” he said.

  “How do you mean?” I hoped he wasn’t being patronizing. I could use some “sincere” right now.

  “Men just have to deal with their own egos. You gals have to deal with men and your own identities and ambitions. That’s a lot of work.”

  “Sometimes,” I admitted.

  He was looking at me funny. I couldn’t decide whether it was kindness or pity or whether he was mentally replaying my attack on a concrete mass.

  “Well, I’m glad you were home. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

  “No,” he said. “I was just on the phone with the office.”

  “So . . . what’s your job there?”

  “Apart from being on the board and running things day to day as publisher of the National?”

  “Yeah, apart from that.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right. I guess those things would keep you kind of busy.”

  “They do,” he said. “Which is why it was also a little amusing that you thought I was interviewing your employee. I haven’t done that for years, since my dad brought me on to learn the ropes.”

  “Like I said, my brain was in lockdown.”

  “Understandable,” he said. “For the record, the National decided not to play the story big again until the police have a better idea of what actually happened.”

  “That’s . . . journalistic of you.”

  “It’s a little more self-serving than a case of integrity,” he said. “We don’t feel sensationalism is good for our city. We are about quality of life and the arts. Murders aren’t a good fit.”

  Well, he was honest, I had to admit.

  “So, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I really should get going—”

  “I thought you wanted to check the room where the gathering will be held?”

  “Right,” I said. But I hesitated.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re afraid that will be an imposition? Am I hot or cold?”

  “You’re hot,” I said. “Definitely hot.”

  “Well, it’s not a bit,” he replied. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

  Ushered in by his extended arm, I took a walk through the place with him. It was like touring a museum, a small one, devoted to the Reid family. I don’t say that in a bad way. There was nothing narcissistic about it. He came from a proud family, and they were rightfully on display here. He wasn’t arrogant about it, either. He seemed truly, refreshingly humble to be a part of it.

  I shuffled beside him on my sore calves as we crossed the cavernous foyer. It was decorated with massive works of art and ancient-looking tapestries and weapons. I looked up.

  “Nice chandelier.”

  “Thanks. My grandfather had it imported from Paris after his honeymoon stay with my grandmother at the Hotel Regina. He arranged for it to be removed from their wedding night suite. He wanted every night to be their wedding night.”

  “I guess anything’s possible when you’re in love.”

  “For the right price.” He grinned. “Come this way.”

  Robert guided me from the foyer through a small series of hallways that led to the kitchen. My nose tickled, probably from the good dusting this place must get every day. I ignored it as I took in the afternoon sun, which filled the room with calming white warmth that reflected off the gray granite countertops.

  “It’s a lovely space. I can imagine throwing quite a party in here.”

  “Yes. I prefer the natural lighting in this room. I rarely turn the lights on during the day.”

  Keep those electric bills low, I thought. That was a little bitchy, I admit. I used to feel that way when I was handling Godzilla-size accounts on Wall Street, that it would be nice not to have to watch every dollar you spent.

  “You live alone?” I asked. The girl-brain part of me was anxious about his reply.

  “It’s just me and Nancy,” he said.

  “And that would be Mrs. Reid?”

  He smiled. “My Nancy is a rottweiler.”

  I assumed he meant that as a noun and not an adjective.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Out back. Naturally, she’s high energy, so I fenced in the backyard for her to run around in. If I let her run free, she’d do nothing but birth puppies.”

  “That’d be a strange life,” I said.

  “Very.”

  “Oh,” I replied. That would explain the tickling. I had a flash—a horrible gut burn of a moment—that took me back to the delivery truck, back to Robert being out there the next morning, back to my office and hearing Grant tell me about a canine, then back here. It was like a trip through the Stargate. I told myself the dog situation was unrelated.

  Robert moved to the stovetop, where a fresh batch of pastries was cooling.

  “Chocolate chip meringues,” he said.

  “You have an on-premise dessert chef?”

  He
replied with a half smile that said, “I made them myself.”

  I was impressed—after feeling stupid, yet again, for assuming that he was just a helpless, spoiled rich kid.

  “Yum,” I said dumbly.

  Robert used the spatula to dislodge the off-white egg-white cookies from the pan and placed them on a nearby serving dish before presenting them to me.

  “These look great!” I gushed. “And they smell wonderful. I should hire you to supply the shop on a regular basis. Business would boom.”

  “Try them first.”

  And he was modest. He was too good to be true. That was also girl brain. Beware of men. They lie to get in your jeans. Don’t imagine that he’s any different.

  I bit into the lightweight dessert and a warm chocolate chip melted onto the cradle of my lip as the thin cookie exterior crunched, then softened as it touched my tongue.

  “Robert.”

  “Yes?”

  I just looked at him as I chewed, my closed mouth forming an involuntary smile, my pinkie lightly swiping the chocolate from my lip as I laughed self-consciously. My other arm and my lower back rested against the glistening counter, my right foot and calf flexed backward like during a first kiss.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “A lot of nothing adds up to something,” he replied.

  That made a kind of crooked sense. There was that wrong geometry again. That was how everything had been these past few days—everything real but off.

  Robert set the serving dish down and closed the distance between us, staring into my eyes as if looking into my confused brain, searching for something without artifice or deflection. He found it—I could tell from his eyes—in the slightly open set of my lips. He gripped me around my waist, tilted his head forward, and pressed his mouth against my left cheek. I held on to the counter for fear that I would float away, even though he had me pinned there. I felt the meringue begin to soften and melt in my hand. My thumb went through it with a crumbling sound. I let the cookie pieces fall rather than interrupt the kiss.

  He finally pulled away.

  My brain said, Wow. So did his eyes. And that was just a cheek kiss.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but is it okay if I put the cookie on the counter?”

  He laughed. Which made me laugh.

  “You can do whatever you want with it,” he said.