by Delia Rosen
No, I was convinced I wasn’t about to do anything rash or stupid.
Maybe—no, probably—I should have known a whole lot better. But I felt protected.
I glanced down at Uncle Murray’s printouts and bank statements, now spread on the desk in front of me. For about the zillionth time, I found myself appreciating the scrupulous job he’d done. I guessed I wasn’t the only member of my family with a knack for accounting. Amazing, though, that it had taken me so long to discover it.
I bit into my chocolate bar and thought about Murray’s guitar case hitting the floor without boinging. It was hard for me to explain it away as a coincidence. I still didn’t buy the idea of ghosts. I refused to believe there was some invisible Uncle Murray floating around between the kitchen fridge, his office, and possibly even Trudy’s C&W club one door down. But I was ready to accept that he’d invested so much of himself in the restaurant that some essence of his spirit remained after his death. I could feel it around me; I honestly could. It gave me a kind of confidence. Made me all the more determined to set the record straight about him.
I’d been supposed to think Murray’s airheadedness and supposed disorganization were the reasons for its declining profitability. It had seemed to me I could have taken my pick of explanations, fished any one I wanted from the pickle barrel, as long as it pointed to the deli’s losses being Murray’s fault.
It was five to nine when the bell rang downstairs. We didn’t have one in front, but there was a buzzer at the side door. I guessed the man I was expecting could have let himself in—he was one of the people who had a key. And maybe someone who could have been responsible for locking me inside the refrigerator. But I couldn’t bring myself to blame him for deliberately trying to hurt me or anybody else. For other things, yes. Just not those things.
I pushed the rest of the chocolate bar into my mouth, picked my cell phone up off the desk, thumbed to its voice recorder function without activating it, and put it back down. Then I took my compact from my bag and looked in the mirror to make sure my reapplied makeup was perfect and my eyes weren’t still bloodshot from crying. I’d used Visine to get the redness out of them.
As a finishing touch, I pursed my lips to ensure my lipstick was nice and even. Everything about me looked hunky-dory. I was one low-down, ready-for-a-showdown five-foot-four Northern shrimp.
I hurried downstairs to answer the buzzer, pausing in the dimness of the kitchen as I remembered my run-in with the walk-in. I could feel a rapid heartbeat in my chest, but wasn’t really frightened or anxious. It was mostly anticipation—I wanted things over and done.
Swinging around to the left of the stairs, I went to the side loading door, pulled it open…and blinked in surprise.
The man standing out in the alley wasn’t the one I’d expected. “Liarson,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come for my briefcase,” he said. “Weren’t you told I accidentally left it behind this morning?”
I sighed. Right, I thought. The truth was that I’d been so preoccupied, it had momentarily slipped my mind.
I knew that Cazzie and Thom would have warned me against letting him through the door. But if he’d already sneaked in once on Saturday night, he could have easily done it again tonight—and he hadn’t. And suppose he had planned on doing me harm…why would he call to announce he was returning for his portfolio? All that would do if anything happened to me was make Liarson a prime suspect.
No, I didn’t think I had anything to fear from him. Detestable as he was.
“The case is in my office,” I said with a nod over my shoulder. “Follow me.”
We went upstairs, Liarson close behind me. I’d dropped the briefcase on a carton by my desk, and he waited a step or two inside the door as I got it for him.
“You know, Ms. Silver, our differences should not have to take a personal slant.”
“Thanks for informing me,” I said.
“I’m quite serious,” Liarson said. “Sooner or later, Ramsey Holdings will gain control of this property. That much is inevitable. And then…perhaps things will change between us.”
I turned, handed Liarson the briefcase. “Change how?” I said. “Not that it’s going to happen.”
“Change for the better,” he said, and smiled like a rat eyeing a wedge of cheese. “Change in ways we both might find enjoyable.”
I looked at him, thinking I might be nauseous. Maybe it had been a mistake letting him through the door. “Wasn’t it just this morning that my cashier told you to put your married eyes back in your married head? Because you were checking her out?”
“That was nothing but errant libido,” he said. “My attraction to you is profoundly different. We are alphas, you and I. A lion and lioness. You excite me like no other woman I’ve ever met.”
“I’m sure your wife would be thrilled.”
Liarson smiled, tilted his head sideways. I thought maybe it was supposed to be a rakish angle. “What my wife doesn’t know can’t hurt her,” he said.
Ugh. I wondered how often my ex had used that line on his pole dancers. “Listen, I think you ought to leave this second. In fact, I wish you could retroactively leave so I wouldn’t have to remember you hitting on me.”
“I will do as you wish,” he said. Although I didn’t notice him budge from where he stood with his back to my open door. “But please be aware of something, Ms. Silver. I’m an attorney by profession, but a man of many passions. Art, cinema, curling…there is much in which we can delight together.”
I looked at him. Curling? Things had gone from peculiar to downright bizarre.
“Okay, you twerp, that’s about all I can stand,” I said, pointing at the door behind him. “I’m telling you right now, you’ve got about three seconds to—lookout!”
But my warning was too late. it had barely escaped my lips when I saw an upraised gun appear in the doorway behind Liarson, then come swinging down hard to crack him hard in the back of his head. As his body crumpled to the floor in a pile, his eyes rolling up in their sockets, I took a giant step back from the doorway…and the man who’d suddenly appeared on the other side of it.
“Artie,” I said, seeing him framed in the entry for the first time. “What are you doing?”
He stepped over Liarson and into the office, the pistol held out in front of him. Black and smooth, I thought it was a Glock of the sort policemen carried around. “There’s no reason to be surprised,” he said. “You asked me to come here after all.”
I kept backing away, moving toward my desk, my hands out behind me.
“Stop right there,” he said. Pushing the gun in the air. “Don’t take another step.”
I didn’t have to. In fact, I couldn’t. I’d come right up against my desk so I could feel its edge pressing against my spine. I stood there between Artie and the phone I’d left on the desktop, blocking it from his sight, and moved my hands behind my back, groping with my outstretched fingers.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “I—”
“I want to see your hands,” he said. “Don’t screw around with me, Gwen. I’m no clown like that lawyer.”
I pushed what I hoped was the record button on my keypad, dropped my arms straight down at my sides.
“Artie,” I said. “It shouldn’t have to come to this. Not after all these years.”
“What else is left, Gwen?” he said. “You found the bank statements. The printouts of the catering orders. Isn’t that what you told me?”
I had. And when I’d compared the total amounts due for the events to the money actually deposited in the restaurant’s bank account—no, strike that, when my uncle had compared them—none of the deposits were more than half of what should have been taken in. In fact, it became clear they only covered the balances Murray received on the day of the events. In the two years since Artie’s online system had gone operational, the down payments for each and every catered function at the deli had simp
ly disappeared. It had added up to over seventy thousand dollars in gross receipts.
Seventy thousand dollars, diverted…where?
The answer had become pretty obvious to me. As it must have to my uncle.
“It’s so insidious, Artie,” I said. “You talk Murray into a computerized system for his catering events. Set it up for him. And then what? Funnel the down payments into your personal account? That’s fifty percent of the gross carved right off the top. Fifty percent at a very minimum…”
“That’s enough,” he said. “You must have been a great forensic accountant in New York. Because you’ve got it down pat. I took the damned money, and so what?”
I looked at him. Not just hoping I’d hit the right button on my phone, but praying now. “Why, Artie?” I said. “Why’d you do it? Help me understand.”
Artie’s lips tightened as he came closer with the outthrust gun. “I’m a human being. I have expenses. And beyond that, I have desires,” he said. “Look at it from my vantage, Gwen. I see your uncle passing out cash to every stumblebum guitar-picker who hits him up for a loan. Every one of them. And he doesn’t even care if he gets it back.” He chuckled. “Why even bother calling them loans? Handouts, that’s what they were. Meanwhile, I’ve got to live on a salary. Work day and night to make sense of the notes Murray left here, there, and everywhere. Sit in front of spreadsheets.” He shook his head. “I used to be a drummer, Gwen.”
“And Murray was a guitarist. A songwriter…”
“But he always had his cooking. If music was his wife, the cooking was his mistress. And he loved both of them,” Artie said. “This restaurant was his dream, not mine.”
“So I’m guessing you weren’t too disappointed when Royce Ramsey made his buyout offer.”
Artie’s mouth turned down in a sneer. “You have your nerve, judging me.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Don’t lie, Gwen. I can see what you think of me in your eyes,” Artie said. “Yeah, sure, Ramsey’s offer was the clincher. I’ve got my little share of the deli. Thomasina too. It could have put us on easy street for the rest of our lives. And Murray turned him down.”
“Thom didn’t seem to mind.”
“What do you expect?” Artie snapped. “Your uncle was sleeping with her.”
I felt sorrow cut into my heart like a knife. “Murray practically considered you his brother. The two of you go back so far…I bet it tore him apart to find out you were stealing from him.”
“Tore him apart?” Artie made an odd snuffling noise and stepped closer with the gun. It took me a moment to see the tears on his face. “The stupid fool, it gave him a heart attack. Killed him. He got so mad…told me I should have just asked for the money. That I should’ve come begging to him like those moochers. As if he shouldn’t have taken care of me first. As if I wasn’t his partner of thirty years. His best friend. His brother, like you said.”
I should have been terrified. I know I should have. But all I felt was that deep, piercing sadness in my heart. “Artie,” I said. “Artie…you should have just talked to him.”
Tears flowing freely down his cheeks, he came closer and closer with the gun till it was just inches away, aimed directly at me, his finger curled around its trigger. “Big New Yorker, you got all the answers. If you’d just eaten your brisket instead of Sergeant, it would’ve solved everything.”
My eyes grew enormous. “You poisoned the beef?”
“That’s right. That brisket’s your usual dinner, Gwen. Everybody knows it. But your portion must’ve gotten mixed up with Sergeant’s,” Artie sobbed. I could hear his hitching breaths and see the tears continue to spill from his eyes, splashing over his lips and chin. “I got that stuff they use on predators from some cattleman out in the sticks. Furadan. I was at his ranch doing his taxes for extra cash, saw him use it when the wildlife rangers turned their backs, and took some home with me.”
I stared at him as if the pistol wasn’t between us. The whole scattered puzzle—its pieces were suddenly coming together in my mind. “You used your key to get in the restaurant’s side door. Acted as if you were rushing upstairs for some paperwork, then injected some poison into the beef right under everybody’s noses. No one there paid attention or even noticed you passing through the kitchen. Because you do it all the time.”
“Right, Gwen. All the time.” Artie was nodding his head. “Thing is, I wouldn’t be doing this right now if you’d decided to sell your share of the restaurant and stay in New York. I’m the executor of Murray’s will. You die, I’ll take care of Thomasina next. And then I’ll control what happens to this place. And I can unload it on Ramsey the way your uncle should have.”
I stood with my back against the desk. I’d gotten my statement recorded. Hurray for me. But there was nowhere left to go now. Nowhere.
“What good will it do you to kill me now?” I said. “I can’t see how shooting me gains you anything—”
“I’m not going to shoot you.” He nodded his head back at Liarson’s prostrate form. “He will.”
I shook my head uncomprehendingly.
“Don’t look so confused,” Artie said. “It’s all neat and tidy. Couldn’t have worked out better. He comes up here to take you out of the picture, the two of you fight over his gun, and you’re shot point-blank in the chest. But you manage to wrestle it away from Liarson, stay alive long enough to put a bullet in him…and both of you wind up dead.”
I looked at him, my mouth dry. Artie was sweating profusely, despair and anger playing over his face, pulling it into a grimacing, distorted mask as he lowered the Glock so it was level with my heart.
And then I saw a shadow fill the doorway behind him. A huge, square, beehived shadow.
She didn’t listen to me! I thought, my heart jumping in my rib cage. Of course, she didn’t! She never listens!
I looked past Artie, and for the second time since coming upstairs shouted a warning because of someone at the door. “Careful! He’s got a gun!”
Artie snorted. “You think I’ll fall for that old chestnut? Little girl, you’ve seen way too many cowboy movies—”
“Well, I don’t think so!” Thomasina shouted out, storming through the door just as he turned toward the sound of her voice, planting herself squarely on both feet to hit him solidly across the jaw with a wide, looping roundhouse haymaker.
Artie’s eyes had no sooner showed his astonishment than they rolled up in his head from the blow. He groaned in pain and slumped on his buckled knees, struggling to remain upright…and then Thomasina stepped into him and reared back again, her second punch walloping his nose with an audible crunch.
The pistol dropping from his grip, he spun around in a half circle, staggering drunkenly, tripping backward over one of the open cartons, to finally land on top of Liarson, his arms and legs flopping in different directions.
“That one was for Murray, you schemin’ toad,” Thom said, rubbing her knuckles as she looked down at him. Then she raised her eyes to my face. “You okay, Princess?”
I nodded that I was and gave her a thin smile. “I thought I told you to go on home.”
“Good thing I never pay attention to you, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Good thing.”
Thom looked at me. “Truth be told, I was halfway there on the interstate when I decided to turn back,” she said. “Next time Thomasina wants to stick around, you listen to what she says. ’Cause these trips back and forth to check up on you waste way too much money and gas!”
For once, I had no witty comebacks. Underneath Artie’s tangled arms and legs, Liarson briefly lifted his head off the floor and gave me a foggy, semi-conscious look. “Currrrrling, sexy,” he slurred, then conked out again.
Thom looked at me. “What was that came out of his mouth?”
I sighed, wiped the tears from my eyes with my bandaged wrist. “Trust me, it isn’t worth repeating,” I said.
Chapter Twenty
When Detective McClintock strode
into the deli Monday morning, I was in the middle of booking a reservation for a party of four. The phone behind the register was ringing off the hook, the row of buttons under the touch pad flashing nonstop. It had been the same since I’d arrived for work.
I held up a finger to McClintock, noted the booking down on our calendar, and passed the receiver to Luke so he could take the next caller. Then I slid along the counter to where McClintock was waiting for me.
“Whoa,” I said. “Deep-breath time. I thought I’d never get away from that phone.”
McClintock grinned. “Why the big rush on deli food?”
“Today’s paper,” I said. And got a blank look in return. “You mean you didn’t see the newspaper?”
He shook his head no. “We’ve had a frenzy going at headquarters too.”
I reached under the counter for my early edition of the Nashville Times.
“Here,” I said, and held it up on display. “Take a look.”
McClintock made a whistling noise as he scanned the front page. There were split photos of Artie Duff, Royce Ramsey and Cyrus Liarson near the top. Below them, surrounded by article copy, was a shot of the deli taken from directly out front on Broadway—with an insert picture of me in the window. The banner headline read:
A RARE BREED OF KATZ
Heroine Deli Owner Gwen Katz
Solves Sergeant Murder,
Saved by Hostess in Sunday Dustup
“Loud but accurate,” McClintock said. “Seems they got your last name wrong, though.”
I shrugged, put the paper down. “I was planning to drop the ‘Silver’ anyway,” I said. “It’s about time I shook it once and for all.”
McClintock looked at me, smiled. “Gwen Katz,” he said. “I kind of like it.”
“Guess the rest of Nashville does too,” I said, and gestured at the crowd of people waiting for tables. “Though I think it’s really the ‘heroine’ tag that’s got business jumping. A couple of days ago, the restaurant was a house of horror. Now it’s a local attraction. Everybody wants to meet the crime-solving owner and her rock-’em-sock-’em hostess partner.”