A Killer in the Rye

by Delia Rosen

  “She needs help.”

  “I know. I heard.”

  “No, no, not the kind Lydia was asking for.” His voice sounded a little contemptuous. “You lost me. Lydia didn’t ask for anything specific.”

  “Oh.”

  “What did you think she was going to ask for?”

  “Money,” the man with my phone said.

  “I figured that. Why?”

  “Not to help her out, I’ll tell you that. Not for bills or debts or anything she could really use.”

  “Has she got a lot of those?”

  “Plenty,” the man said. “Her kind of work doesn’t really pay.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I replied.

  “Lydia wants the money to get Stacie out of town.”

  My sixth sense was tingling, only I got the feeling I was seeing dead people before they were dead. This time it was my father’s other daughter. “Why? Did Stacie do something wrong?”

  “I can’t say,” the man told me.

  “Can’t? Won’t? Clarify.”

  “Both,” he said.

  “Does this have anything to do with the dead bread man?”

  “Listen, I’m just trying to get you to help someone who was important to your father. And not with money, but with support. She needs that now desperately. She needs a friend.”

  “We all do. Why should I care? Just because my father had a hand—or whatever—in her manufacture?”

  The man was silent for a second. “That’s a little cold. You don’t even know her.”

  “And I don’t want to,” I replied. “Nor have you and your light fingers given me a reason to want to.”

  “Let’s just say there’s more to this than just Stacie being caught between a rock and her mother.”

  “What’s the rock?”

  “Not what,” the man said. “Who.”

  “Are you the who?”

  “I’ve told you enough,” he said. “I’ll make sure you get your phone back.”

  “Thanks, but you haven’t told me anything,” I pointed out. “You want me to help a woman who means nothing to me and whom I don’t want to meet. That’s not good enough.”

  The man was silent again, this time for longer than before. I gave him the time to think. He obviously needed it.

  “I’ll be over later to explain,” he said.

  “Why the change of heart? You didn’t want to tell me your name a minute ago.”

  “Scott Ferguson,” he said.

  “Thanks. What about the ‘change of heart’ part, Scott?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “What time? I may have something important I have to do.”

  “When do you close today?”

  “Six tonight, but I wasn’t planning to be here.”

  “Can you make an exception?” he asked.

  His voice was imploring. Also higher, gentler, and more Southern. He’d obviously given up on the bad voice disguise.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “There’s something I have to do after the important thing I have to do. I’ll see you here at eight. That work for you?”

  “It does. Thank you,” he said.

  “Sure. And don’t forget my phone.”

  “I won’t,” he promised and hung up.

  If I’d succeeded in dying my hair blond, I’d think I was having Alice in Wonderland delusions. Things just kept getting curiouser and curiouser.

  I hung up the receiver and stared at my fingers spread out on my giant desk calendar. I experienced an uncharacteristic rush of calm as I inspected my tattered nails. All the oils and sauces from slicing the meats and cheeses, from the salads and side dishes, had left my poor fingers looking like freshly dipped taper candles.

  I was relieved that my cell phone wasn’t actually missing, and right now even a small victory like that seemed huge. I felt like celebrating and decided that my little candlestick fingers could do with a little nail indulgence at Nail Indulgence on Sixth. I hit speed dial nine. Mei answered the phone.

  “Hello, Nail Indulgence,” said the treble-pitched, middle-aged woman on the other end of the line. “This is Mei. How may I help you today?”

  “Hi, Mei. This is Gwen from Murray’s.”

  “Hello, Miss Gwen. Boy, you been busy!”

  “You saw the news?”

  “Saw, read, heard, listened to everyone in my shop talking about it. You a celebrity!”

  “Lucky me.”

  “I would like to be famous. Good for business.”

  “Hey, it’s simple. Just find a dead body in your shop.”

  “I did once. It was a skeleton. It was in a closet, behind a wall.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. About forty years old. It was a workman who fell from the floor above. No one ever thought to look for him below.”

  “Wow. I wonder if Grant was on that one.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “What can I do for you today?”

  “I was just hoping you had an opening for this afternoon. I just need a basic mani-pedi.”

  “How is four forty-five?”

  I looked at my watch. If I had guessed, I would have said it was already way past that. It was 2:20. “That’s good,” I told her. “See you then.”

  “Okay. Thank you. Bye.”

  I hung up. I put my hair back in a ponytail and tied my scarf back into position and decided I was officially done with phone calls for the day. Done with working for the day. Done with life for the day, at least that part over which I had any control.

  With renewed vigor and a sense that maybe things were on the upswing, I stood and went back into the deli. I relieved Thom at the cash register, ignored the stares of sensation seekers, and was so pleasant, the staff obviously thought I’d galloped off the ranch.

  No. I had solved the phone mystery, and I’d broken the caller. I had established that I didn’t give a spit about Lydia, and that “Queen Solomon” was reserving judgment on Stacie. It had been a good uptick. I was determined to stretch it to an hour of goodness.

  I watched as dishes were filled and emptied, customers stood and sat, came and went, chewed and swallowed. Thom was wiping off the menus with antibacterial solution. And a full five minutes went by before my absentminded serenity was interrupted by a courteous-faced Luke.

  “Hey, Nash?”

  “Hey, Luke. Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “You can have your open mic night. How’s Monday sound?”

  “I can’t.”

  That soured my mood a little. I’d just given the kid what he wanted. “Why can’t you?” I asked.

  “I, uh . . . I have a date. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Your dating life? I thought you had your groupies under control.” That amounted to two gals, who I suspected were underage and just hung around for the free beer.

  “Yeah, well . . . see, I’ve kind of been seeing Dani.”

  “Our Dani?”

  “Who else’s?”

  “Right. But she’s only been here for . . .” And then it hit me. “You told her to come here. In fact, you encouraged me to hire her.”

  “We wanted to be close and sync up our scheds.”

  “That’s how she knew my nickname was Nashville Katz.”

  He looked way guilty.

  I wasn’t annoyed. In fact, the two of them had more smarts than I’d given them credit for. “Nicely done. I’d never have guessed.”

  “No one did. Not even Thom.” He grinned. “We put one over big-time, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The thing is, she’s upset now.”

  “Why?”

  “She thinks you hate her because she keeps messing up.”

  “I don’t hate her for that,” I said.

  “You wanted to fire her.”

  “Yes. Because, like you say, she keeps messing up. But she’s got another chance now, right?”

&n
bsp; “She does. I just . . . Would you tell her it’s okay?”

  “What is?”

  “Her and you. Your relationship.”

  “Luke, we don’t have a relationship. I’m her boss.”

  “Yeah, but we have a relationship, you and me. We’re friends, right?”

  There was a certain skewed logic to that. “Sure. Right.”

  “So can you try and be friends with her?”

  “Fine. I’ll try.”

  “Like, now?”

  “This second?”

  “She’s afraid and worried and scared.”

  “Those are all kind of the same thing.”

  “I think you should smoke a peace pipe. Please. For me.”

  My perfect hour was doomed not to reach maturity. “For you, Luke. Send her over.”

  He practically leaped back to the kitchen, where Dani had been hiding on her break. She came out like Chris Evert when she lost that big one to Billie Jean King in 1971, the match that broke her forty-six-game winning streak. I wasn’t alive then, but I had watched it on VHS when I was a kid. That was during the five minutes I thought of becoming a professional tennis player, except that I had no backhand, forehand, or serve.

  Long way of saying I knew “beaten” when I saw it.

  “Hi,” I said when she had managed to schlep over.

  “Hi.”

  “Straighten up,” I said, sounding like my mother. I added, as she never would have, “You’re not letting anyone see your pretty eyes.”

  That perked her up a little. She wriggled her shoulders back, like a belly dancer with clothes on.

  “Much better. So. I hear you’ve been dating Luke.”

  “I love him.”

  I let that pass. I was in the minority today when it came to women loving men at first sight. I couldn’t even get one of them to take me home for a recreational hoedown.

  “Well,” I went on, “Luke’s a little worried that our tiny dustups are going to impact your relationship.”

  “He’s so sweet!”

  “Yeah, he is. And I want you to know that that’s not the case. He also tells me he’s worried that you’re worried that I’m going to fire you. I want to assure you that that’s also not the case.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that!” she said. “You were pretty upset before.”

  “I’ve been pretty upset since I stepped in that pool of human blood. I think you can understand that.”

  “I’ve never done that myself.”

  “And I hope you never have to. You’ve been doing a good job here. I watched you bus before. You’ve got natural talent.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And no one’s complained, at least not that I’ve heard.”

  “No one has,” she said eagerly. “Except those three ladies that first day.”

  “That doesn’t count. They’re pills. We don’t care what they say.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Right. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we start fresh? I’ll try harder, you try harder, and we won’t have to yell or be hurt or threaten anymore. Deal?” I offered a big smile across the countertop, then turned to process a credit card A.J. had brought over. A.J. was looking a little sour. Tragically, my new détente wasn’t going to spread throughout the civilized world. I wasn’t gonna teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

  “It’s a deal,” Dani said, happier than I could remember ever having seen a young woman. I felt like the Pope blessing an acolyte. It felt good. Maybe the full-hour uptick was still achievable.

  Customers came and went, more than usual for a late weekend afternoon. Unfamiliar faces. Looking at me, looking at the kitchen, pointing. Asking if they could go to the back, being told there was no access except through the store or a narrow alley with a gate that they wouldn’t be able to open, because I’d put a cinder block behind it and it was going to stay there except for garbage pickup and deliveries.

  People got the message. They weren’t going back there to look at the murder site. Not even for the twenty that one guy tried to slip me to impress his date.

  I noted the hour mark with a private spin of a mental Purim grogger and told everyone I’d be back at about half past five. I was sure they were beginning to wonder if I’d ever work a full day again.

  At 4:45 I was sitting comfortably in the soft white pedicure chair, thumbing through the latest celebrity gossip magazine. I was daydreaming about who would play me in a movie—I settled on Natalie Portman, even though she was hit and miss and made her best movie, The Professional, when she was about thirteen—when someone passed by the shop window, stopped, and stared.

  “You know lady?” Mei asked.

  “What lady?”

  “One outside.” Mei pointed with an emery board.

  I caught only a glimpse of her as she quickly turned and hurried out of view. She was dressed in well-worn jeans and a button-down blue shirt. She had long brown hair, stood about five-seven—a little taller than me—and was skinnier than anyone who had ever ordered a pastrami sandwich.

  But the thing that really grabbed me was her expression. Not her face so much, which didn’t shine with anything familiar, but the hungry, restless look of a woman who was searching for something.

  I did not get up. I did not intend to give chase. I didn’t know what I intended to do or what I felt or thought, other than to finish my session here.

  Though it was with a combination of rage and curiosity that I said to myself before burying myself back in the National Enquirer:

  “So that was Stacie.”

  Chapter 13

  What I had to do after I left the nail salon was drive over to Robert Reid’s house.

  Cars were beginning to fill the sweeping driveway, and I followed the trail of Murray’s employees to the back door.

  I found Thomasina running the operation like George S. Patton.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “The working of your mind baffles me,” she said.

  “I baffle myself,” I answered.

  I wandered in, pretending to have something to do, checking plates that didn’t need checking. I made my way into the kitchen, where I had a good memory to relive. I relived it. I heard Robert’s voice coming from the dining room.

  “As I helped the governor up, I said, ‘Sir, you were supposed to take a stand, not the entire podium!’”

  A small group of people laughed. Maybe a little more forcefully than the joke deserved. I couldn’t tell; the punch line was amusing enough. I didn’t laugh. My face was locked in place. I felt isolated, not just from him but from a world that included governors and people who laughed at jokes. I wanted to show myself in the adjoining doorway, just back against the swinging door and pretend to be doing something else. Let him see me to see how he would react.

  I decided against it. What would he do? Either say a platonic hi or ignore me, because he was in social anchor mode. I didn’t want either of those. I didn’t know what I wanted. I found myself missing Grant just then, which not only wasn’t fair to him but also made no sense. I didn’t want to be with Grant.

  I don’t know what I want, except that I just don’t want to be so damn alone.

  I didn’t even feel like I had the memory of my father anymore, sketchy as that relationship was. Whatever I thought we had down here, he’d been holding himself back for another woman.

  “Didn’t Reagan say something about a podium?” some woman asked.

  “That was the nineteen eighty New Hampshire primary,” Robert said. “And it was a microphone. The candidate was trying to explain something when the editor of the Nashua Telegraph told the soundman to turn off Reagan’s microphone. Reagan was angry and said, ‘I am paying for this microphone!’”

  “Yes, that was it,” the woman said.

  “But how do you remember that?” someone else said. “You were only what? Three?”
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br />   “It’s called an education,” Robert quipped.

  There was more laughter. I wondered if the speaker even realized he’d been insulted.

  Talking about politicians sounds interesting, though, I thought. For that matter, talking about anything but the deli and inventory and employees and dead bodies would be fun.

  In the non sequitur that was driving my train of thought, thinking about bread man Joe made me needle-drop on Brenda Silvio, alone and about as lost as a human being could be. Even my mother, when my father left, pulled up her socks and refused to be depressed—at least on the outside. I wondered what, if anything, was going through this woman’s brain. I wondered if I’d judged her too harshly. And, curiously, I wondered the same thing about Lydia. I mean, did it make any sense that I was ready to feel bad for a woman whose husband was murdered but not for a woman who had the misfortune to fall in love with a charming, intelligent, good-looking man who was nonetheless halfway to deadbeat—my dad?

  Why does everything have to be so complicated?

  Why did my brain have to be so baffling? Was it every woman’s brain? No, Thom is stable. She has her church, she has a stable home life, and she was still able to raise a kid that wasn’t even her own!

  Was I more like Dani than I wanted to acknowledge? Is that why I beat up on her? I don’t mean the naive, sheltered airhead part, but the lonely girl who wanted a man at the center of her life, even if the fit was obviously flawed and probably wrong. I didn’t know much about her, but I knew that her parents were divorced. I’d overheard Luke mention that.

  I wasn’t going to answer that now. But A.J. Two had been right about one thing. I needed to take a harder look at the things that were troubling me.

  I decided to leave before Robert or anyone else saw me. I reminded myself about the reason for the committee meeting. I was thinking clearly enough to know that being here would be perceived as trying to curry favor instead of curry sauce. I had planned on staying in my office when the luncheon was going to be held at the deli.

  I thanked Thom and Dani and Luke and A.J.s One and Two for doing a good job and took off. When I thanked Luke, I noticed him wink back at Dani.

  Good for them, I thought. Whether it lasted a week or a month or a lifetime, what they had at this moment was working. It was special. It was theirs.