by Delia Rosen
“Sure does seem to be,” Thomasina said. “Could a fella take any more time reachin’ for his weenie-wrap?”
I frowned. Being the perennial church bakeoff queen of Nashville—I kid you not—Thom knew everybody’s wife and mother and was consequently as plugged into the city’s social scene as anybody. “Quit playing dumb. You know as well as I do it’s Happy who owns the chocolate shop over on Fourth Avenue.”
“Uh huh. And so what?”
“I just wouldn’t have expected Lolo to invite him,” I said, lowering my voice to a hush. “I’m not saying she’s a snob. But most of her other guests are kind of upper crusty.”
“And what makes you figure he ain’t?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it, at a loss for words. In stark contrast to his deceptively, uh, happy name, Happy was a crude, unfriendly squeaker. He wouldn’t part with an extra shopping bag if a customer begged and pleaded for one; it didn’t matter that you were walking around his store with chocolates spilling from your arms and a sack of cabbages on your head. But I shouldn’t have needed a reminder that the world was full of rich, cheap jerks. As a forensic accountant on Wall Street, I’d specialized in following the money trail of financial hotshots who were cooking their books.
I looked at Thom. “Okay,” I said. “What’s Happy’s story?”
“Hapford’s, you mean,” she said. “His full name’s Hapford Huttonson, Jr. ’Case that don’t ring a bell, his dad was—”
“The ice cream king?”
“More’n that,” she said. “He invented Huttonson’s chocolate patties.”
The ice cream sensation that looked like frozen cow patties, I thought. For a while they’d even caught on big up north, especially among teens…or anybody with a juvenile sense of humor. “Wow, no sh—”
“Mind your cussin’ tongue.” Thom speared me with a reproachful glance, forget that I’d been speaking in a whisper. “Downtown rents and overheads bein’ what they are, ain’t no way Happy could make ends meet sellin’ candy bars.”
“Are you telling me he’s living off the family fortune?”
“Man’s a trust-fund baby.” Thom nodded, squaring her jaw. “The business doesn’t turn a profit, he’s always got his silent income to float it. That’s how come he thinks he can treat customers the way he does. It’s the same to him if he gets one or a hundred walking through the door every day.”
I frowned and let that stand. Meanwhile, I wasn’t too sure that I could go on standing much longer. My toes had cramped up something awful.
Thom noticed me shifting uncomfortably. “What’s the matter?” she said. “You got quiet all of a sudden.”
“So?”
“So quiet ain’t your regular M.O.”
I shrugged. Couldn’t argue. “It’s my feet. They’re killing me.”
She stared down at them. “Wah wah. I could’ve told you wearin’ stripper shoes was a bad idea.”
“Strip—Thom, these are dress pumps, not…”
She chopped her hand through the air to cut me off again, wiggling her foot to showcase her square-toed orthopedic flats. “Stop with the whiny excuses. Whatever happened to people takin’ responsibility for themselves?”
I raised my eyes from the black bricks she was passing off as shoes and looked her in the eye. “I don’t know. In fact, I’m waiting for you to tell me. And while you’re at it, don’t hesitate to explain what happened to you making sense.”
“Should’ve expected that’d be your attitude,” she snorted. “I worked hard my entire life. After thirty years in the restaurant business even my bunions got bunions. But you won’t hear me cry.”
I kept looking at her, caught by surprise. She seemed really aggravated and upset as opposed to being just her usual intentional pain in the neck. “Thom, what’s wrong?”
“Forget it,” she said. “I just don’t appreciate people gettin’ all judgmental about my choices or my footwear.”
“Hang on…that’s unfair,” I said. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“You want to stick a label on me so you can feel superior, go right ahead and knock yourself out.”
“I wasn’t—”
Since there probably isn’t much chance our squabble would have devolved into an out-and-out catfight, I won’t exaggerate and claim we were saved by the bell. But we were interrupted by a glassy little tinkle from the parlor.
I turned toward the sound and saw Lolo Baker holding a brass dinner bell on the other side of the entryway. A slender, silver-haired woman in charcoal trousers and a paler-than-pale pink silk blouse, the mystery bash’s hostess sported a pearl necklace with an appropriately detective-ish magnifying glass pendant and stood ringing the bell amid a lively crowd of guests.
“Excuse me, friends!” She beamed a smile. “Dinner will be served in ten minutes…and then our criminal mischief truly begins!”
Delighted murmurs around Lolo as Thom returned her attention to the goulash. She gave it a stir with her spoon, closed the lid, checked the burning Sterno underneath it, then sidled over to the tray of spinach-and-carrot stuffed flank steak.
A moment later she cocked her head at an angle, scrunched up her face like a puzzled bulldog, and began looking around the buffet table for something.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“The gravy terrine,” she said. “I don’t see it anyplace.”
I didn’t either. But I did remember Luke carrying the gravy from our borrowed CreepLeeches van in its insulated container and promising he’d fill the terrine with it. “Hang on, I’ll be back in a jiff,” I said, and turned toward a hall giving off the dining room.
“Where you going?”
“The kitchen.” We’d pulled our vehicles up around one side of the house to its entrance and lugged everything inside. Bet you the gravy’s still there.”
“All ri-i-ighteeo!” The drawling male voice, as well as the lip-smacking that went along with it, had come from right behind me. “I do so love to have nice, thick, piping hot gravy with my steak.”
Happy, I thought, facing him unhappily. It hadn’t been more than two minutes since Lolo’s ten-minute dinner alert. “We’re just finishing our preparations,” I said, and struck my best professional pose. “Give us a few minutes and we’ll have everything ready for you…and the rest of the guests.”
I’d hoped Happy might take those last words as an unsubtle hint to scram. Instead he leaned forward to study the flank steak, then straightened with a cringe-worthy wink. “No tasters? For a good neighbor in the downtown business community?”
I stared at him. Putting aside that he’d never offered a penny’s discount at his shop, it was the first time Happy had let on that he knew me from a hole in the wall. “How about I give you the same kind you give me?” I said.
Happy’s mouth tightened. “Well, now, I can’t quite recall—”
“Exactly,” I said, swinging into the hallway.
The gourmet kitchen was at the end of the hall past a door to a storage or linen closet. I heard guitar playing from inside as I rushed closer and then saw Luke, dressed in a black Western shirt and matching skintight slacks, strumming away on his Gibson acoustic beyond the entrance.
“You mind if I ask what you’re doing?” I said, stepping through.
He looked at me from where he stood beside a countertop. “I’m workin’ out tonight’s theme song, Nash.”
“Theme?” I hesitated. “Newsflash, okay? This is a catered party. It is not one of your nightclub gigs.”
I wasn’t nearly old enough to be Luke’s mom. But his baby blue eyes always brought out my maternal instincts. He smiled, all innocence. “I just figured that if we’re gonna do these parties as a regular thing from now on, I could provide some special musical touches. Here, let me show you.”
“Wait a sec, Luke. I need to find the—”
Too late. He was already plucking out a chord. And singing along to it. “It’s a deadly deli mystery, killer could be yo
u, victim could be me. Time will tell, we’ll have to see, what happens when the clock strikes three…”
I held up a hand like a traffic cop. “Luke, please. Will you do me a favor and hit your pause button?”
He blinked a little woundedly and aborted the tune. “Sorry. I figured you’d love it.”
“I, uh, do think it’s very good.” Talk about feeling guilt-tripped. “But it’s way past three o’clock…”
“Right. That’s how come I was smoothin’ the kinks in here. I need a different word to rhyme with ‘see’.”
I cleared my throat. “Maybe we ought to discuss this later,” I said. “At the moment I’m looking for the flank steak gravy. Have you seen it?”
Luke nodded and swung the guitar strap off his shoulders. Then he stood the instrument up against the counter and went over to a large stainless steel sauce pot on the range.
“I was warming it up while I composed,” he said. “Ought to be about ready.”
Ready or not, it was going out to the dining room. I spotted our terrine on the central kitchen island, hurried over to get it, ladled it full, and carried it toward the entryway, declining Luke’s offer to take it himself. I was in too much of a hurry to start a fuss around.
That was when my foot seriously cramped up again. It was like a sadistic gorilla had my toes in its fist.
“Ouccchhhh!” I blurted.
“Nash, you all right…?”
“Yeah, don’t worry. Just put away your guitar and come help us in the dining room pronto.”
I limped through the entry without waiting for a response. At least six or seven minutes must’ve passed since Lolo had waved her dinner bell in the air, leaving me with no time to waste.
I’d barely gotten into the hallway when I heard a loud crash over my head. And I mean loud enough to halt me dead in my tracks.
I looked up, the terrine in my hands. There was more crashing and pounding in what seemed to be the room directly above me…and whatever was causing it had made the ceiling visibly shake.
“What’s that about?” Luke said. He’d raced to my side from the kitchen. “Sounds like some wild ol’ chimp’s jumping around upstairs.”
I glanced over at him. It was a banner day for primate similes, I guessed. I was tempted to ask aloud if might be the same one that had mashed my foot.
I never had a chance to ask that or anything else. Before I could get out a word, or even react, we heard the loudest, most violent crash yet. And then the ceiling came down in front of us, breaking up into a dusty shower of plaster and lath and whatever else might’ve gone into two-hundred-year-old ceilings. I recoiled in shock and surprise, the terrine tumbling from my fingers, gravy spilling from it, splashing everywhere on the parquet floor….
I suppose only an instant passed between the collapse event, as a police officer would call it later on, and the grisly arrival of Happy Huttonson through the hole above us. At the time I barely realized what was happening. I saw a big, wide body falling through the ragged hole, wondered in stunned confusion whether it actually might be an ape, and then recognized Happy as he reached the end of his downward plunge with a hard meaty thump, his arms and legs bent at impossible angles, one foot in a spreading brown puddle of gravy.
“Jeez,” Luke said in a horrified voice. “Who’s he?”
I stood looking down at the dead, broken body, dimly aware that the hallway had gotten crammed with partygoers. Most of those who hadn’t fainted were screaming at the top of their lungs.
After a while I managed to pry my attention away from Happy and meet Luke’s horrified gaze with my own.
“Guess it’s pretty safe to say he’s the victim,” I replied at last.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2010 by Jerome and Suzanne Preisler
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-6280-6