A Brisket, a Casket

by Delia Rosen

  “Oh, right.” I ate some cereal. “Except it wasn’t me who found out. It was my waitress, A.J. I think you’ve met her.”

  Cazzie nodded. “That pretty blonde who gets all the looks.”

  “Looks aren’t the half of it, but let’s not go there right now,” I said meaningfully. “Anyway, one of the cops spilled the beans to A.J. when he took her statement. He mentioned a case in Lexington, Kentucky. This was just last month…a restaurant customer died from the food. The poor guy ordered the Harvest Chicken, which I guess is a chicken, herb and vegetable platter. But somebody messed up and he got the Caribbean Reef Chicken by mistake.”

  “The dish tasted so bad it killed him?”

  “Very funny, Caz. The fact is there was crabmeat in that Caribbean Reef dish. He was allergic to seafood and had a severe reaction.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “I’ll say. It gave him fatal convulsions on the spot.”

  “But it sounds to me like a freak accident,” Cazzie said, shaking her head. “What’s it got to do with you?”

  “Nothing whatsoever,” I said. “Lexington’s a long way from here. And Sergeant didn’t convulse at all. I hate to sound cold about it, but he just dropped dead. Turned purple and, boom, hit the floor. Well, the floor of the stage.”

  Cazzie looked thoughtful. She topped off her coffee, motioned toward my empty cup with her carafe. I shook my head, having already reached my two-cup limit for the morning. But I was admittedly ogling the cereal boxes again.

  “You said this incident in Kentucky took place a month ago?” she asked.

  “Right.”

  “Then it’s possible the police here are only being extra cautious,” she said. “Did you ask if they noticed any parallels between the two deaths? Other than both taking place in restaurants?”

  “How could I? I didn’t know a thing about the man in Lexington till A.J. gave me the scoop…and that was after the cops left.” I sighed. “Think about it a second. This is something a police officer confided to my employee while I was practically hanging out on the sidelines. I’d might as well not have been there. I was useless, not to mention helpless. A—”

  “—gefilte fish out of water.”

  “You’ve got it,” I said, dotting the sentence in the air with my fingertip.

  We sat quietly in the warm June sunshine. With the Great Toothpaste Spitting War suspended by maternal decree, we could hear the boys hurrying around their room as they prepared to be picked up.

  “From a legal perspective, you face a couple of potential issues,” Cazzie said, shifting into lawyer mode. “One is your restaurant’s potential responsibility…”

  “Huh?” My eyes widened. “Wait a minute, Caz. Wasn’t it you who called Buster Sergeant’s death a freak accident!”

  “That’s why I used the word potential,” she said. “I’m almost sure you won’t have any problems. But it wouldn’t hurt for me to speak with a colleague of mine who’s a liability attorney.”

  “And spread the word that Murray’s Deli does toxic catering?”

  Cazzie offered a thin smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure everything’s discussed under privilege—”

  “Okay, let’s change the subject before I hyper-ventilate,” I said, glancing out the window. “It’s a beautiful morning. I wonder how it’ll be the rest of the day? I love beautiful days. Have you heard the weather forecast, Caz?”

  Caz sat there as her green apple clock ticked away into the silence. “Gwen, trust me, you just need to settle in a little,” she said. “I’m a South Side girl. Never thought I’d be happy living outside Chicago. Then I meet Chris in an O’Hare waiting lounge…and zap! We’re engaged before I know what’s hit me. Cut ahead a year, I’m in Nashville, married to him, listening to his favorite hometown country music stations on the radio. And these days…well, you know how much I like singing along when I drive the kids to baseball and soccer practice.”

  “So you’re saying precisely what? That I should get preggers and become a soccer mom who’s memorized Tammy Wynette lyrics?”

  Cazzie shooed me with a wave of her hand.

  “Moving here was a big change for me,” she said. “It took a while to make the adjustment. I don’t know about feeling like a gefilte fish. But I was definitely an Aurelio’s pizza in a Domino’s box.”

  I looked at her. “I’m not sure the comparison works.”

  “Want an alternate?”

  “Maybe next time.”

  Cazzie smiled gently. I smiled back.

  “I’m not claiming my experiences were identical to yours…but I can relate to enough of them,” she said after a bit. “Give Nashville a chance. I think you’ll fall in love with it, same as I did…and I do love this place. The weather, the people, everything about it. That includes those Goo Goo bars I gave you, and am wondering if you’ve sampled yet.”

  I didn’t answer, afraid to hurt Caz’s feelings. How could I own up to passing on the Goo Goos so soon after she’d gone gaga over Nashville?

  Fortunately I was saved by her sister-in-law. Well, the sound of her car pulling up to the sidewalk out front.

  As Caz craned her head to look out the window, the boys stampeded into the kitchen with their beach totes, playfully flopped up my already mutinous mop of hair (I’m a lifer in the Unruly Hair Club for Jews), and took turns hurrying to get their sports bottles out of the fridge.

  It gave me the perfect opening to exit gracefully before Cazzie could ask about the Goo Goo bars again.

  “You leaving?” she said as I pushed up off my chair. “Grace is popping in for a minute—”

  “I’ll catch her on my way out,” I said. “It’s getting late, and I have lots to do at the deli.”

  She looked at the clock. “It’s seven in the morning. You don’t usually head over there for another hour.”

  I halted with my fingers around the doorknob, glanced over at her.

  “One thing’s for sure, Caz…this isn’t my usual day,” I said, telling the absolute truth.

  Chapter Four

  Around eight o’clock that morning, I was at the deli heading downstairs from my office, the Passover photo of Uncle Murray and me tucked under my arm, a hammer and box of nails in my hand. I’d found the hammer in the top drawer of my desk and the nails in its paper clip organizer.

  I was sure Murray could have found a better place to keep them, but you didn’t see many bare-chested Jewish Mr. Fixits with low-slung tool belts around their hips. Of course, Jewish country-and-western performers were even less common sights, and my uncle had shown plenty of chutzpah and determination bucking that particular stereotype.

  Meanwhile, I guess that I still had Lucky Charms on my brain, because I’d removed the picture from the wall thinking I needed some kind charm to reverse my karma. I had a new location in mind that seemed just right. It would be far more potent—and appropriate—there than a green marshmallow shamrock.

  Though I’d entered the building through the side entrance, and hadn’t yet stepped into the dining room, I had known Newt and his kitchen staffers were hard at work…and would have been long before my arrival, since they always came in early to prepare for lunch. Not even the tin ceiling under my floorboards could keep the aromas of knishes baking in the oven, chicken matzo ball soup on the range, and especially our traditional Saturday cholent from wafting up to my office.

  For a while, I had sat there just sniffing and savoring the delicious smells. A house specialty, the cholent was a Jewish version of poor boy stew developed in fifteenth-century Eastern Europe using readily available ingredients—beans, barley, potatoes, onions and beef, simmered with garlic, paprika, and other seasonings. As Murray had told me once upon a time, observant Jews were prohibited from lighting cooking fires on the Sabbath under religious law, so they’d gotten imaginative and developed a warm winter meal they could start before sundown on Sabbath Eve and let stand overnight on a low flame.

  The secret of Murray’s cholent was
a secret combination of added herbs and a unique cooking method that went back hundreds of years to the dish’s peasant beginnings. Far as I knew, he’d shared the full recipe and process with only two people—Newt and me. That meant not even Thomasina was privy to it.

  Right now, its scent had imparted a sense of inner calm that I hadn’t felt since my plunge into Kosher Karaoke night hell…or possibly since the coming of its wicked messenger, Crispy the Pig. It had also stirred my appetite despite the expanded clumps of Cocoa Puffs in my tireless tummy. As the originator and sole devotee of the Gwen Silver Smoker’s Diet, I knew the cigarette I’d had while driving in would have accelerated my metabolism—and thus my caloric burn rate—enough to allow for a forkful or two of the cholent, and perhaps a wee sampling of chicken soup. It would be a personal act of defiance, refuting the whispers of possible food contamination A.J. had heard from Lover Cop. And hey, if I could make stuffing my face a matter of principle, why not? Was there ever a better cause for rationalization?

  But first things first. I had wanted that picture from my office hung in its perfect new spot.

  I was about to push through the double doors into the restaurant when I heard someone singing along to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar. After a split second, I recognized Luke’s voice.

  This I hadn’t expected. My lunch servers wouldn’t arrive for at least another hour, and Luke had been scheduled for the dinner shift. Also, we didn’t offer entertainment with our food, karaoke night being the lone, currently lamentable, exception. Luke’s singing and guitar strumming, if not his stone-washed denim butt-huggers, were reserved for club gigs and auditions. All of which were gyrated—ah, I mean, performed—on his own time.

  I opened the door partway and stood listening to him.

  A self-made man wearin’ bootheels of leather,

  Come up from nowhere on roads windin’ an’ weathered.

  Died too young, but stayed true to his song,

  Till he dropped down dead ’fore anyone knew what was wrong.

  Now I’m standin’ outside his big truck ’n auto lot,

  A wonderin’ how many more tomorrows it got.

  There’s a lonesome Dodge pickup with a dusty tag in the window,

  A slick Toyota hybrid sittin’ in limbo.

  Buyers and sellers, I watch ’em all grieve,

  Then after a while, see them turn round an’ leave.

  It’s hit ’em where it hurts, hit ’em hard one by one:

  Without good ol’ Sarge givin’ orders, ain’t no sales gettin’ done.

  Lord, my heart’s a V8 engine, and its cylinders are achin’,

  There’s an emptiness inside like a parkin’ spot vacant.

  All them rubber tires gone still, them quiet chassis of steel,

  How’re they gonna get sold without Buster’s fair an’ honest deals?

  “Enough!” I pushed open the doors from the kitchen and saw Luke sitting on a chair near one of the tables, the guitar across his lap. “What’s that song you’re playing?”

  As he glanced up from his fret board, I realized the kid was in the same clothes he’d worn the night before. And that he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair.

  “’Morning, Nash,” he said. “I’m almost done with a new ballad. Figure I might call it ‘Salute to the Sarge.’ Or somethin’ simple like “Good-bye Buster.’ You care to hear the rest?”

  “No.”

  Luke just stared at me. He seemed totally blind to my look of prune-faced annoyance. Maybe it was the eyelid lifter and super concealer. “I sure could use your opinion. They’re holdin’ open calls for Nashville’s Hottest, that new singer-songwriter contest they got on television. I figured the tune would show my sensitive side so people can see I ain’t just a shakin’ hunk of beefcake. And bein’ topical, it could give me an edge over the competition—”

  “Don’t you dare even consider it, Luke.”

  “You thinkin’ the song’s no good?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “What’re you doing here at this hour anyway?”

  “Stuck around until the police finished their work and I could lock up,” Luke said. “By then it was past two in the morning. I felt too pooped to drive home and decided I’d crash here.”

  I abruptly regretted my snippiness. It had occurred to me that Luke probably hadn’t spoken to A.J. since last night, and had no idea why the cops had taken their food samples. He wasn’t dumb. Immature, yep. Prone to recurrent bouts of self-absorption and madly in love with his mirror, check. But I didn’t know anybody who was quicker to do me a favor…and his staying behind to close the place had been a huge one.

  “I don’t think cylinders really ache,” I said contritely. “And the line about your heart being an engine with an empty parking spot’s a mixed metaphor.”

  “A what?”

  “I’ll explain later. Meanwhile, follow me…I need a little assist.”

  I led the way up front and around the counter. On the wall behind the cash register—mounted slightly to one side—was a collection of rave newspaper and magazine reviews of the deli, a clear acrylic block showcasing the first bill that Uncle Murray took in, our liquor license, and the obligatory health department notices on the Heimlich maneuver and drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy. I looked at the diagram and momentarily imagined Buster Sergeant’s face superimposed on the figure of the choking victim in the Heimlich diagram. Then I frowned and shifted my attention to a collage of photos showing Murray with the dozens of legendary country and rockabilly performers who’d been his pals and regular diners: Conway Twitty, Ronnie Milsap, The Blue Moon Boys, Buck Owens, Wanda Jackson (he’d had a crush on her all his life, and was really beaming in that shot), Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton…it seemed he’d known and fed every superstar who’d ever walked along Music Row.

  I stood facing the register, my eyes on a bare section of wall directly above it. Whether by fate, coincidence, or some combination of the two, that space had been there the very first time I entered the deli.

  It was perfect, all right. Perfection defined.

  “The picture goes here.” I stretched to hold the frame up where I wanted it. “Right here.”

  Luke studied the photo. “That’s you with Murray, ain’t it?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s great. I seen it in the office. He must’ve had it up there forever.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want me to put it on the wall? I’m taller’n you.”

  No kidding. So was Ms. Pac-Man. I kept the thought to myself and shook my head no. “You go back in the aisle and make sure I hang it straight—”

  The telephone next to the cash register rang. Early for customers, I thought. Still holding up the photo with both hands, I glanced over my shoulder as Luke answered.

  “Murray’s Deli,” he said. “Yeah, right. Hang on. I’ll see if she’s in.” He covered the mouthpiece, gave me a guarded look. “It’s a lawyer, Nash.”

  Uh-oh. I’d flashed back on Cazzie’s advice about liability protection.

  “He or she give you a name?” I whispered.

  “He,” Luke said with a nod. “It’s Liar-somethin’.”

  We exchanged glances, and he nodded to indicate he hadn’t made that up. I carefully set the picture frame down on the counter and took the receiver from him.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Good morning, Ms. Silver,” a voice said in my ear. “You are Gwendolyn Silver, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wonderful. I’m Cyrus Liarson. My law firm represents—”

  “What was your second name again?”

  “Liarson…an unfortunate familial legacy for someone in my profession.” He gave a rote-sounding chuckle. “I once considered shortening it, but that simply would have left me a ‘Liar.’”

  I caught the pun but didn’t say anything.

  “All humor aside, Ms. Silver, I represent—”

  Buster Sergeant, I thought
with a catch in my breath.

  “Ramsey Holdings,” he said.

  “Ramsey who?”

  “Not who, what,” Liarson said. “It is the most prominent real-estate firm in central Tennessee…surely you are familiar with the name.”

  Actually, I wasn’t. Nor was I impressed by Liarson’s mention of it, as his tone suggested I ought to be. I did, however, feel like sighing with relief. Whatever he wanted, it presumably wasn’t connected to Buster Sergeant’s death.

  “I’m pleased to have you on the phone at long last,” he went on. “Having tried to reach you for weeks—”

  “Reach me how?”

  “Well, I left several messages—”

  “Mr. Liarson, I don’t mean to keep interrupting. But I haven’t gotten any messages from you.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “Hmm. That’s odd.” He paused. “I must have called three or four times.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Do you remember with whom you spoke?”

  “Yes. In fact, I made definite note of it…give me one second while I check my calendar notes.” I heard him tap away at a computer keyboard. “Here we are…it was your manager. Thomasina Jackson, is that correct?”

  “Yes…”

  “Then there’s been no confusion on my part,” Liarson said. “I’d assumed you were tied up with your reopening and unable to return my calls.”

  I noticed a questioning look on Luke’s face as I reached into my purse for a cigarette. He seemed curious about what had gotten me so aggravated. Not more curious than I was about Thomasina, though. She hadn’t uttered a peep about those calls.