Diners, Drive-Ins, and Death: A Comfort Food Mystery

by Christine Wenger

  Nick was predeceased by his parents, Mary Columbo Brownelli and Domenick Salvatore Brownelli, formerly of Quechee, Vermont.

  Nick was a master chef. He co-owned Chef Nick’s, a five-star restaurant in Boston, Massachusetts, until he left to join his brother, Sal, as a chef at Brown’s Four Corners.

  Nick enjoyed riding his Harley with the Roving Rubbers, a New England motorcycle club. He raised thousands of dollars riding in numerous charity events. Antoinette Chloe could be found riding along with him in his Harley’s sidecar.

  Calling hours will be at Manning’s Happy Repose Funeral Home on Friday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Burial will be at the Restful Souls Cemetery on Route 491 on Saturday at 9:00 a.m.

  Nick will be missed by all whose lives he touched.

  “I like it,” Antoinette Chloe declared. “Thank you, Joan, Trixie.”

  I nudged ACB. “Tell me about Nick’s restaurant in Boston.”

  “Oh yes. It was quite fabulous, from what I knew of it. Very classy, very posh, and it was a gold mine.”

  “Why did he leave it, then?”

  “He had a falling-out with his partner. I don’t know what it was about, but from what I heard, he walked out one day and threatened to burn it down. Then he smoked his Harley through the dining room and out the back door, never to return again.”

  Joan leaned forward. “Sounds like one hell of an exit.”

  “I know—I wish I had been there to watch it! But I know only what Nick told me.” ACB’s face glowed with excitement.

  “Did he ever see his partner again?” I asked.

  “Only once that I know of. I was with Nick when he ran into him . . . Chad, that is. Chad Dodson. I wasn’t divorced from Sal then, but he was still in jail, awaiting his trail, and Nick thought I should get away from everything, so I hopped into his sidecar. We rode in one of the fund-raisers, and we were at a postevent barbecue when Chad rolled in. He was in a vintage ’fifty-six Thunderbird convertible. It was candy-apple red with a bright white interior. What a ride!”

  “And then what?” Joan asked.

  “Well, Nick didn’t know that Chad was the organizer of this particular event, or he probably wouldn’t have entered. During Chad’s speech, Nick’s blood began to boil. He said to me, ‘How dare he talk about bikes when he’s never even sat on one? Dodson is just too damn pompous to believe.’ And then, after they’d both had way too much to drink—Chad celebrating a successful event and Nick drowning his anger—they crossed paths. They were having some words, and then Chad pulled this switchblade-looking knife out of nowhere and slashed Nick on his arm. They rolled around on the ground, punching and kicking each other, and Nick broke Chad’s nose in the scuffle. In the end, Chad bled all over his fancy shirt and khakis, and Nick was livid that Chad ruined his Roving Rubbers tattoo by causing him to need stitches.”

  “A switchblade-looking knife, huh?” I said to myself.

  Joan punched keys on her computer. “Aren’t switchblades illegal in New York?”

  “I don’t think Chad Dodson gave a hoot.”

  “Chad Dodson? Of the Boston Dodsons? As in the banking family?” Joan’s hands flew across the keyboard.

  “I guess so. He seemed pretty rich and WASPish.” ACB stood. Finally we were leaving.

  “Sounds like Nick had an enemy,” I said.

  “I thought it was just a guy thing. You know, macho posturing, but now that I think back, Chad did threaten to ruin Nick like Nick had ruined Chad. Then Chad said that he’d kill Nick.”

  “Antoinette Chloe!” I hoped that she noticed the urgency in my voice. “This could be important!”

  “Do you think so? It was about six months or so ago. I think that it was just something said in the heat of the moment. You know, after a few beers and all that. If Chad Dodson wanted to kill Nick, why didn’t he do it before now?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know the answer to that yet, but a knife was involved. A thin knife. Like a switchblade. Antoinette Chloe, I think we have Suspect Number One. Now, where can we find Chad Dodson?”

  Chapter 5

  Joan Paris volunteered to search for Chad Dodson on her newspaper’s computer system. She said that it wouldn’t be too hard, since it seemed like he was the Paris Hilton of his family.

  Antoinette Chloe and I drove back to the Big House—my Victorian, not the correctional facility.

  I paused as I pulled into my usual parking spot.

  “What’s going on in my house?”

  “The rest of the girls arrived today,” ACB said.

  “Today? I thought I had two more days!”

  Geez. I must be really out of it.

  “No. Today. It was always today,” ACB said.

  “I don’t have anything ready.”

  “Don’t worry. Connie DiMarco and Irene Mitchell made up the rooms, greeted the girls, and are going to feed them.”

  I let out my breath, not realizing that I’d been holding it. Thank goodness ACB had things under control.

  All the contestants had indeed arrived and were being fed by Connie and Irene, two of our Miss Salmon Committee volunteers.

  Everyone introduced themselves as they sat around the table.

  “I’m Aileen with an A. Shubert, like the famous theater in New York City.”

  She had blond hair with white streaks that fell to her shoulders in a shiny mass of loose curls, which she kept tossing.

  I’ve always wanted to toss my hair, but it’s too thin and too short. Oh, well.

  A redhead with spiked hair said that she was Wanda Pullman, “like the train car.”

  Betsy Dyson, “like the vacuum,” was tiny with a pixie haircut. And then there was Lisa Something, whose name wasn’t like anything, so I promptly forgot it, along with the names of the rest of the contestants.

  The total count of those residing at the Big House was twelve contestants, Antoinette Chloe, Blondie, and me.

  That was a lot of females!

  Oh, and there were four cockatiels on the side porch. Apparently, one of the contestants didn’t get the word that there wasn’t a talent portion of the pageant, just salmon dancing and spawning.

  I couldn’t imagine what her talent was, but right now, the birds were making a mess—at least according to Connie, who declared emphatically that she wasn’t going to clean it up.

  Blondie had come alive and was running around the ladies, vying for attention.

  “Fabulous goulash, Miz Matkowski. Just like my mom used to make.”

  Huh? That’s when I noticed all the white foam boxes in the trash. They all had takeout from the Silver Bullet. I thought the committee was going to feed them. . . .

  “I had the Spanish rice. It was divine.”

  “I had corned beef and cabbage, and brought half of it back for a snack later.”

  “And the desserts . . . I’m never going to fit into my gown!”

  That reminded me. I needed to find a gown to wear. All of the committee members agreed that we’d go formal and fancy. Well, ACB insisted on it—and we agreed, if only to stop her from talking.

  That reminded me again. I hoped ACB would get some sleep in the room next to mine. She’d had a tough day.

  I’d had a tough day, too. That was why it didn’t help that I couldn’t get a minute of sleep before I went to cook at the diner.

  The contestants were as loud as they could be. Blondie was about to jump out of her fur from excitement. She ran from room to room, seeing where she could get the most attention.

  I just wanted quiet—just four hours of peace so I could take a nap.

  Hearing flip-flopping in the room next door, I hoped that ACB would do a little chaperoning and quiet the sorority girls.

  Instead, it seemed that the party had moved to ACB’s room and she was holding court.

  I knocked on th
e door and stuck my head in. “Hey, ladies, I have to go to work in a while, and I haven’t slept for a long time. Can you all go to your rooms and read quietly or something? Or go to sleep early? I hear that Margie Grace is going to be ruthless tomorrow.”

  There were groans, but they filed out of ACB’s room.

  “Sorry, Trixie. I wasn’t thinking,” ACB said. “I was just enjoying them so much.”

  “I know, pal. It’s just that I’m exhausted. I’ll never make it through my shift if I don’t catch some sleep.”

  She nodded. “There won’t be another sound.”

  But there was. The party moved outside onto the porch that faced the lake, and said porch was right underneath my window.

  “I think that our dance routine is really lame,” I heard one of the girls say.

  “It makes me laugh. I don’t know why I entered Miss Salmon anyway. It doesn’t exactly shine on a resume.”

  “The five-hundred-dollar prize is laughable. So is the ride in the funeral guy’s Cadillac in the Salmon Parade. Now, that is definitely lame.”

  “But we’re getting fed for a minimal amount, and this house is fabulous. And there are a lot of cute fishermen roaming around.”

  “Only if you like your men in rubber waders.”

  That brought peals of laughter. I supposed it was funny, but I wished they’d quit bashing the pageant.

  “And what about Antoinette Chloe? What’s with those muumuus?” I heard Aileen Shubert pipe up. “And that makeup! With all those silly hats and flip-flops and jewelry!”

  More laughter. Okay, they could bash the pageant all they wanted, but bashing Antoinette Chloe went too far. I didn’t want her to hear them and have hurt feelings.

  So I threw on a bathrobe and shot down the stairs through the living room and kitchen, and flung open the screen door.

  “Do not talk about Antoinette Chloe like that,” I said through gritted teeth, looking pointedly at Aileen. “She’s my friend, and she’s done a boatload of things to make you all feel very comfortable. And she’s doing everything she can to make the pageant a success. And the salmon dance might be lame, but it’s . . . uh . . . artistic and . . . um . . . interpretive. Yes! It’s an interpretive artistic dance, the latest thing on Broadway.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that!” said Aileen Shubert. “That puts a new slant on our dance.”

  Aileen was leaning against the bannister, and her legs were so long that they started at her boobs.

  “And I’m sorry for talking badly about your friend. She’s just a little . . . overwhelming,” said a girl with empty orange-juice cans in her hair for rollers.

  I tried the cans for a while when I was her age, but after one night trying to sleep on those things, I tossed them into the trash, where they belonged.

  “Trixie, we are really sorry,” said . . . um . . . her name had something to do with a train. Something Pullman. Oh, Wanda! “We should have been more considerate, especially since her boyfriend was murdered. She told us about it tonight. She said that calling hours are tomorrow. I’d really like to go.”

  There was a chorus of Me toos.

  “Do you know if the police have any clues as to what happened to her boyfriend?” Aileen asked.

  “I think they have a couple of leads,” I said.

  She fluffed her hair, and magically it fell into place and looked even better.

  Why couldn’t mine fluff like that?

  “We want to support Antoinette Chloe,” said . . . her name was right on the tip of my tongue.

  Donna? Melanie? Bonnie? Oh, I give up. My brain is fried.

  “That’s nice of you, but please go to bed,” I said. “It’s almost midnight, and you have a full day of swimming upstream tomorrow, and I need some quiet for a while.”

  They all got up and walked past me in single file. I was just about to close and lock the kitchen door when Ty scared the snot out of me.

  “What on earth do you want?” I snapped.

  “Are you cranky, or what?”

  “Yeah, I’m cranky. I haven’t slept a wink and I’m exhausted. I wish I had someone to call to replace me tonight.”

  “Still nothing from Bob?” he asked.

  Oh, sure. The missing Bob. He was supposed to be cooking the night shift with me, but it didn’t matter because I hadn’t laid eyes on Bob since I took over the Silver Bullet almost a year ago.

  “Juanita said she got a postcard from him from Biloxi, Mississippi.”

  “Aren’t there a lot of casinos there?” Ty grinned.

  “I believe so.”

  “I’ll bet Bob is having a great time.”

  “Ty, what’s up?” I asked. “You didn’t walk over here to chitchat at this hour.”

  “Actually, I’m keeping an eye on your house. There are a lot of fishermen here and out-of-towners, and there are quite a few good-looking ladies here.”

  Good-looking? Without looking down, I ticked off what I was wearing: a pair of oversized navy sweats, my purple T-shirt that said CHEFS DO IT IN THE KITCHEN, and a yellow bathrobe that was really a terry-cloth beach cover-up.

  Ty never seemed to catch me at my best, but that was going to change when I got all sequined up for the pageant.

  Not that I wanted to impress him. No way.

  “Have a seat, Ty.” I pointed to a forest green Adirondack chair. I took the one next to it. “I have a bit of time before I have to get dressed and cook.”

  We sat in silence, looking at the brilliant stars in the sky. They were so close, I could reach out and touch them.

  “Anything on your mind?” I asked.

  “Just the Brownelli investigation,” he said.

  “Will you tell me why you had to see Sal first? Why you didn’t let ACB tell him about Nick?”

  “I wanted to see his reaction.”

  “I figured that. What else did you find out from your talk with him?”

  “Nothing all that exciting. I was just feeling him out.”

  “Like if he arranged for his brother to be killed from prison?” I asked.

  Ty looked like his mouth was going to drop wide-open.

  “Fess up. I know that you suspect Sal of ordering a hit on Nick. And I think I know why.”

  “Why?”

  I had his undivided attention now. “Judging by how he’s still in love with ACB, I think you believe he might have been extremely mad at Nick for dating Antoinette Chloe. Am I right?”

  “You might be.”

  He wasn’t going to give anything up. Sheesh. I know that there are cop rules about not telling civilians anything, but I wanted to help ACB.

  “But what I don’t know is who would have told him about ACB and Nick being an item.”

  “You can get visitors in jail, you know. And mail,” Ty said.

  “Nick would’ve had to be the one who visited Sal. ACB had never visited Auburn before this morning, with us. Maybe Nick felt guilty about dating Sal’s ex-wife, so he confessed all to Sal.”

  “I wanted to check out Nick’s visitors while we were visiting, but their computers were down.”

  I hoped that Nick didn’t tell Sal about the leather thong tooled with her name, or the dirty pictures that ACB had to get out of the house today.

  “I’ll bet you found out his visitors the second Auburn’s computers came online. Was Nick a visitor?” I asked.

  More silence from Wyatt Earp.

  “C’mon, Ty. Did Nick visit Sal?”

  “I’m not being coy, Trixie. You know I can’t share any information about an ongoing investigation, but let me just say that you have a couple of interesting theories.”

  I understood that he couldn’t spill certain things from an intellectual perspective, but he definitely could tell me. We’d been friends for almost a year and even exchanged a polka or two. And, a
bove all, I wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  Even though Ty couldn’t tell me officially, I’d bet the Silver Bullet that Nick had visited Sal. They were brothers and they were close at one time.

  “Cowboy, you think I have interesting theories? Wait until you talk to ACB and find out what she has to tell you about an incident that occurred a couple of months ago.”

  He leaned over in his chair.

  “It’s going to knock you right out of those crocodile boots.”

  “Tell me,” Ty said.

  “Antoinette Chloe should probably tell you.”

  “Oh, she will. Where is she?”

  “She was up for a while, then she went to bed. She’s had a horrible day: Auburn, a strip search and a half, going makeupless, and making arrangements for Nick and composing his obit. By the way, calling hours are tomorrow night.”

  He nodded. “I can’t have her holding back information. I want her to meet me at my office the first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll tell her, but you’d better define first thing. From what I’ve seen, Antoinette Chloe is not an early riser.”

  “Eight in the morning.”

  “Yikes. Up early two days in a row?”

  “Okay.” He rolled his eyes. “Eight-fifteen and not a second later. I’ll make it nine o’clock if you want to give me a sneak preview.”

  “I’m sure that ACB can fill in the details, but long story short, Nick got into a pretty nasty fight with his former restaurant partner after a motorcycle fund-raising event. They’d split up their partnership earlier after some kind of disagreement. But at the event, Nick gave the guy a broken nose, and in return the guy slashed Nick’s beloved Roving Rubbers tattoo with a—are you sitting?—switchblade.”

  “How long ago was the fight?”

  “About six months ago.”

  “No contact between the two since then?”

  “Not that ACB knows of.” I stood up. “Excuse me, Ty. I have to get ready for work.”