A Killer in the Rye

by Delia Rosen

  Which would also include Lydia, of course.

  My brain went to people who had been off to the side of the radar. Jason, for instance. Covering up evidence, maybe looking to clear the way for his sister to be with a guy who could perform. He could’ve gone to chat with Joe before his own shift, got into an argument with the man, and . . .

  Stabbed him with a jeweler’s screwdriver?

  That didn’t seem like Jason McCoy’s style. And then there was the dog. He wouldn’t have been going to work with Hitch or Macguffin. Or come to the heart of Nashville to walk them.

  I was distracted the rest of the workday. There were moments of relief, like when Stacie called to say that despite a concussion, a broken nose, a trio of cracked ribs, and a black-and-blue face, Scott was going to be okay. Another small victory for true love. She asked if we could have dinner. I told her sure, I’d love to, and I’d meet her at the hospital around seven.

  I did things by rote. My body was in the game, but my head was on Brenda and Joe, on Dave and Brenda, on Joe and Dave, on Lydia and Joe, on Brenda and Jason. There was a combination there that I believed was not a healthy one.

  It was conceivable, I thought, that having gone through cancer once, Brenda might want to spare her husband the agony of a new round of treatments. She knew his route. Maybe she and one of the dogs went with him.

  And then she euthanized him . . . with the screwdriver and dog? And took his gloves as a keepsake?

  Would Dave have done that? Then there was still the little old phone thief Scott, though he would have had to borrow a dog. All roads led to one place, but I couldn’t make it stick. Especially if . . .

  “But what if she did?”

  It didn’t tell me why, but it was the only reasonable who.

  I wasn’t going to go over now. I would wait until closing. This was not something you did with people around. Like dressing down a worker, you took them to the woodshed. Otherwise, both of you were just putting on a show.

  I worked on cleanup, sent the staff home when we were nearly done, then went to my office to check the address.

  Lydia saved me the trouble. There was a knock at the door, and I let her in.

  “Qu’elle coincidence,” I said, still puzzled by my pseudo-French. I must be longing for the more innocent days of eighth grade. “I was just about to come and see you.”

  “I thought you might.” She invited herself into the office. My office.

  I followed her in. She stood by my chair and faced me. I stood in the doorway in case I had to bolt.

  “Why did you think I would come to see you?” I asked.

  “Because you have questions,” Lydia said. “You do have questions, don’t you? You must. I saw you talking to Brenda this morning.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course. I attended the service. It would have been graceless not to. Why would you, of all people, be talking to her then, there, if you didn’t have important questions?”

  She said the word with a hint of anger. I looked across my desk. There were pencils, pens, and untwisted paper clips on the desk. Any one of them could be a lethal weapon in skilled or maniacal hands.

  “So why were you coming to see me?” Lydia asked.

  “To tell you that I didn’t think anyone took your phone.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because you remembered the number when you wrote it down. I can’t remember my own number, and I actually give it out to people. That phone wasn’t in your bag just for emergencies.”

  She hesitated for the briefest instant, then said, “That is true.”

  “Why did you lie?” I asked her.

  “Because I didn’t know how to explain my conversation with Joe. But then I was thinking, ‘Here is a woman who told my daughter to speak the truth. She would appreciate the truth.’”

  “Which is?”

  “Joe was very ill, with cancer,” she said.

  “How did you know?”

  “He told me,” Lydia said. “That night.”

  “Why you? You weren’t having an affair?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “Joe was a rock. A soft one, pyrite, but a rock nonetheless.”

  That was cold. “Isn’t pyrite a metal?”

  “No, dear. A mineral. You’re thinking of gold.”

  I smirked. “You seem to know something about jewelry.”

  I thought I saw her eyes narrow just a bit. It was difficult to say since they were already pretty slitty.

  “So why did you talk to Joe that night?”

  “Because he wanted to make a clean breast of things.”

  “With you? Why, if that was years ago—”

  “Not with me,” she said through her teeth. “With my daughter. With our daughter.”

  Whatever you may hear during the course of your life that makes you feel as though you want to throw up a week’s worth of meals, it couldn’t hit half as hard as that statement hit me. It wasn’t just that she had lied to me, to Stacie; it was the implications to both of us going forward. Still, some part of my brain was still on the job.

  “The adoption,” I said. “That was Joe?”

  “That was Joe.”

  “Did Brenda know he was trying to adopt his own baby?”

  “I believe she did,” Lydia said. “That’s why she forbade it. How was she to know she would never be able to have a child of her own? At least, not by her husband.”

  “The other night,” I said. “The night of the call.”

  “He told me he wanted to tell her. I implored him to let me speak with him face-to-face. He told me he would pick me up in the truck. He had to get here by a certain time. He was devoted to his customers. I went to meet him. I brought the dog he had given Stacie for one of her birthdays. We argued. I tried to explain how I had been working up the courage to come and see you. It wasn’t easy, you know. You were the daughter of the only man I ever loved, the man by whom I truly wanted a child.”

  “You lied and told my father the baby was his.”

  “I did,” she said, as unrepentant as an Occupy Wall Streeter. “I had wanted to meet you ever since you came down here. I was so nervous. You saw that first day I couldn’t even cross the street.”

  “That had nothing to do with what went on behind the deli?”

  The narrow eyes opened a little. Tears formed on the sides, rolled along her cheek. I was unmoved. I was ready to spit fire.

  “Joe didn’t want to continue with the lie,” I said.

  “Give me a moment,” Lydia said. “This isn’t easy.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. You’re about to confess to murder. You sat in the passenger’s seat, the dog on your lap, and when he told you his decision was final, you grabbed the nearest sharp object you could find and plunged it in his neck. The dog joined in then, his hands went up to protect himself from that, and between the barking and the rage and the years of hurt and concern for Stacie, you just kept punching holes in his throat. You probably don’t even remember doing it.”

  “I don’t!” she wailed. “I truly don’t!”

  “Until you saw the dog lapping his blood. Then you came around. You took his gloves, the murder weapon, maybe even made sure there was no dog hair on the seat, then left. You went so fast, the dog didn’t even have time to pee on the damn truck!”

  She cried into her left hand. She reached for me with her right. I took a step back. I didn’t want her to touch me.

  Lydia looked up from her palm. “I’m so, so sorry! I did it for Stacie! So she could have the family she never had, a better life. Scott will never be able to support her, just as your father was never able to support me. I wanted something better for her. I knew you could show her, help her.”

  “Especially if I thought she was my goddamned sister.”

  “Yes. I believed that.”

  “So you lied and killed, and now . . . now you’re going to take her on a trip through Robert Reid’s tabloid journalism when you stand trial for murder.”r />
  “That’s why I came to you,” she said. “I want to go away. She never needs to know the truth. Let her think she’s your blood. Joe felt he was going to die. I didn’t do anything terribly wrong.”

  “You are seriously cracked.”

  “I did this for Stacie, not for myself!” she screamed. “I want nothing, other than to go away. The crime doesn’t need to be solved! She need never know any of this!”

  I heard a sound to my right and looked over. The nausea I had felt before returned. Stacie was standing a few feet away, her face like something from the sketchbook of Edvard Munch. She approached slowly.

  “Scott was asleep, so I left the hospital early,” she said.

  “Stacie?” Lydia cried.

  “How is he?” I asked softly.

  “Talking when he isn’t sipping juice through a straw,” she said. Her mouth was working, but her expression was one of shock.

  “Why don’t you sit down in the dining room?” I said. “I’ll come over—”

  She shook her head firmly and stood beside me. She looked into the office. “Mother, what have you done?”

  “No! Go away!”

  “You killed . . . my father?”

  However fallen Stacie’s face looked, it was nothing like the vision of utter, contorted horror that overcame the face of her mother. She screamed a sound I hoped I never heard again as she fell in the seat, her head flopping back, still wailing. I put an arm across the doorway to keep Stacie back, and I stepped in—just as Lydia bent forward, reached for a pair of scissors I had in a pencil holder, and tried to push it into her chest.

  Yes, I got between her and the blades and took them in the right arm.

  Stacie jumped in after me, pulled her mother’s hand away, and pinned it to the wall behind her. I reached up, grabbed the scissors, threw them to the floor, and put my hands around Lydia’s other arm, which was clawing at her daughter’s back. My right arm ached like I had a muscle cramp, but we managed to immobilize her. Stacie put her knee against her mother’s waist, pushed the chair against the wall, and took the arm I was holding.

  “I’ve got her,” Stacie said. “Call nine-one-one.”

  I backed away. I couldn’t get to the desk phone, and I didn’t feel like dragging myself to the cash register, so I fished out the phone nearest me.

  The one I saw in Lydia’s purse.

  Chapter 26

  I needed a trip to the emergency ward.

  The blades had cut the skin but had only glanced off the muscle, so five stitches would fix me right up. Grant arrived moments after the first responders. But before they took me away, he supervised the custody taking of Lydia Knight, made sure Stacie was all right—she was sitting at the counter, sobbing into her folded arms, but he let her be—then came over while the EMTs were bandaging me.

  “We can get her statement later,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Yours too. When did you plan to bring me in on this?”

  “Soon,” I said.

  “Your independence is a challenge,” he said.

  Wrong thing to say, Detective Daniels. Seriously wrong.

  “I didn’t even know you went to the memorial today,” he said. “And I was there.”

  “You must’ve come late. Lydia saw me.”

  “I arrived after you slipped through an exit in the side chapel.”

  That’s what the little room is called? How disappointing.

  “You seem to have made a friend, though,” Grant went on. “Jason McCoy was furious at what you did, but Brenda shut him up. She said you were kind and very respectful.”

  I was, I thought.

  Grant looked around. He went to the office and gave it a once-over. There was really nothing left for us to say—about this and probably about anything else. I don’t even know if he sensed that. He came back, gave me a kind of formal good-bye, then left to see to Lydia Knight’s booking.

  I guess maybe he did know.

  When the paramedics were finished, I took a moment to go where Stacie was sitting. I took the stool beside her, easing my wounded arm onto the counter.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She looked up and struggled to find a little smile. “You know something? That was the first thing you said to me.”

  “That’s why I said it. Because we’re going to start over from right here. You may not be my sister by blood—or half blood—but we can still be good friends. Close friends. Who our fathers are doesn’t matter.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I know so. What we’ve just been through? What still lies ahead of us? We are bonded for life.”

  Stacie slipped toward me, snaked her tear-dampened arms around my shoulders, and wept. I put my arms around her and did the same.

  She might have gone about it as wrong as a human being could possibly do anything, but Lydia Knight had achieved her goal.

  Chapter 27

  I woke up famished.

  After getting stitches in the emergency room, I had gone home without eating, had passed out, and woke only when Thomasina called to tell me to get my butt to the deli. I asked her to please, please have two toasted bagels with lox and cream cheese waiting for me.

  I got there to find my order on the table nearest the door, right beside a newspaper that lay open.

  Most people reading the paper this morning would be poring over the headlines about the arrest of Lydia Knight. Here only one story mattered. It was on page two, and it was the Nashville National’s 2012 Best & Worst list.

  Halfway down, in Arial black type, it said:

  Best Mid-Range Restaurant: Murray’s Deli

  “Oh my God!” I blurted.

  Robert Reid walked over, applauding. He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a plaque boasting VOTED BEST OF 2012 BY THE NASHVILLE NATIONAL.

  “Oh my God!” I repeated.

  That was when I heard the staff and our breakfast customers applauding as they watched and smiled. I returned the salute, applauding—with one hand against my thigh, since the other arm was a little incapacitated—as I locked eyes with each and every employee.

  “Thank you so much,” I said to Robert. “Uncle Murray would be so proud.”

  “He would indeed,” he said. “Of the restaurant, of the award, and of you.”

  I frowned. “Brownnosing won’t get you an interview.”

  “Will it get me a dinner?”

  “Without an interview?”

  “How about . . . Can we at least talk about one?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “With three conditions.”

  “Name them.”

  “First, you have to swear to me that this award had nothing to do with giving you an interview.”

  “It did not,” he assured me. “We voted before I heard the news of the murder being solved. By you. One of our city’s best and brightest and bravest—”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Done,” he said. “What’s the second condition?”

  “We take my . . . my dear new employee Stacie. For whom you will buy a dress and some bling for the event.”

  “I’ll make that happen,” he said. “You are talking about—”

  “The Stacie who is working for me,” I said. “You do not, will not, won’t even think about talking to her. That is my third condition.”

  “Met,” he said. “When do you want to do this?”

  “I’ll check with her and let you know,” I said. I smiled, held up the plaque. “Thanks for this.”

  He smiled back. “You earned it, honey.”

  I went to my office, accompanied by cheers and Thomasina’s big smile. I paused to give my manager a hug.

  New York was wonderful for so many reasons. I was formed there. I experienced so much there, both good and bad. I gathered the information that, going forward, would help to make me a happier, more fulfilled human being, a good employer, and a better friend to the people near and dear to me.

  However, there is one thing
they don’t have there and never will.

  Murray’s.

  Best Mid-Range Restaurant of the Year.

  Note: When Murray the Pastrami Swami passed away, hundreds of delectable recipes passed away with him. However, his uncle Moonish from Romania opened his own delicatessen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1919—where he hung a sign that said MY HERRINGS ARE SO FRESH, YOU’LL HAVE TO SLAP THEM. Uncle Moonish taught Murray everything he knew. Uncle Moonish also wrote down his recipes for posterity. He had so much trouble learning the new language of his adopted country that one waiter in Moonish’s delicatessen put up a sign that said ENGLISH BROKEN HERE.

  These recipes were passed down to his son Murray, who promptly misplaced them. Then, a few years ago, I found them among Murray’s possessions—including a stringless ukulele and a signed photo of Alice Faye—that were stored in my aunt Shelia’s attic on Long Island.

  So now you, lucky readers, can re-create one of these delectable recipes as a treat for the whole family. I’ve updated the recipe where necessary, but here it is, in Uncle Moonish’s own words.

  SAUERKRAUT

  (Make your own. Why pay someone to make it?)

  Ingredients:

  • 2 nice heads of cabbage. Each cabbage should be the size of Melnick the Fish Peddler’s head. They need to be cored and nicely shredded. (The cabbages, not Melnick’s head.)

  • 2 tablespoons kosher salt

  What you’ll need to make it:

  • Large mixing bowl. Because the best place to mix something is in a bowl meant for mixing.

  • Sauerkraut crock.

  • Wooden spoon, like the big one my aunt Meema hit me with when her false teeth fell out of her mouth and landed in the goulash.

  • Clear the kitchen. This stuff doesn’t always smell like roses.

  How you should make it, so give a listen:

  1. You smoosh the cabbage and salt together in your mixing bowl. Make sure your hands are clean, because you don’t know where they’ve been! Squeeze the cabbage and salt together with your hands, but do it nice because cabbages have feelings, too.