A Saucy Murder: A Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mystery

by A. J. Carton

  An eight. She found it immediately. She grabbed it, then stood in line for almost half an hour waiting for a vacant dressing room. By the time she found one, it was 10:40. But she assured herself that if the dress fit, she’d be back in Blissburg on time.

  In the make shift dressing room, however, Emma immediately wished she’d thought to bring the right underwear. The comfort ultra support bra just didn’t work with the strapless gown. Given the minimal privacy afforded by the makeshift dressing room, taking everything off seemed risqué. She took it all off anyway. And wriggled into the elegant dress in record time. What’s more, it fit! She twirled. No major tears or stains. A miracle! Who knew shopping could be so easy?

  A saleswoman peeked her head round the curtain.

  She started to say, “Need any help?” Then changed it to, “Wow! You look great.”

  “I’ll take it,” Emma cried and quickly dressed, meeting the young lady at the register minutes later. Still marveling at her good luck.

  “Do you want this treasure in a travel bag?” the young woman asked.

  Emma nodded, surprised at the outlet’s great service, and handed the salesgirl her card. She checked her watch. She’d be home by half past eleven.

  The girl rang up the purchase. “Sign please,” she said and handed Emma the slip of paper.

  Emma had just poised her pen above the signature line at the bottom of the receipt when some numbers caught her eye. 3232. She was sure the price tag on the dress had said $300. Was 3232 the date, she wondered? No. Couldn’t be. It wasn’t March. Nor was it 2032.

  She put down the pen and rooted through her purse for her reading glasses to study the receipt more closely.

  “What’s this?” she asked the salesgirl.

  “The price?” the girl answered, raising her voice in another question. As if to say, and what planet do you come from? “It’s three thousand two hundred and thirty-two dollars,” she said. Then a sympathetic smile crossed her lips. “Are you from out of state? The two hundred and thirty-two is the tax. It’s high in California.”

  “No,” Emma answered. “I just…I must have misread the tag.” She laughed but the sound she made was more like a sob. “I thought it said,” she was about to say ‘$300 not $3000’. Instead, she said, “Never mind. This isn’t gonna work. Reverse the charges.”

  After that, it was back to the drawing boards. All of them were bad. The Carolina Herrera was too expensive and full of feathers. She’d look like a jungle book cartoon. The Versace had too many zippers. Why, she wondered, would someone her age want to shed her clothes that fast? And Nanette Lepore was way too short and sexy. The Prada was covered in pale blue sequins. She had never looked good in fish scales. When she finally slipped through the sliding glass doors to the parking lot empty handed, it was just past 11:00.

  She had given up all hope of finding a suitable opera gown when she noticed the Ralph Lauren outlet located across the street. She hadn’t been in a Ralph Lauren store in years. But the clothes used to fit. Emma checked her watch. At most she had fifteen minutes.

  Unfortunately, when she entered Ralph Lauren she immediately realized that season’s wannabe chic was Imperial Russian winter and fur. All of the evening gowns glittered in fake jewels embroidered on yard upon yard of heavy thick velvet. Fine for Julie Christie in a Russian horse drawn troika out for a snow ride with Omar Sharif, but definitely not Emma’s style. Her heart awash in despair, she had turned to leave when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a sign at the far side of the room.

  “Clearance,” it said.

  She hurried over to take a quick look.

  The clothes were clearly last season’s. Mostly sundresses and bright summer slacks. She looked at her watch again. Better run.

  Then a swath of cloth at the very end of the rack caught her eye. She pushed back six hangers, and there it was. The most beautiful skirt she had ever seen. Mid calf with of layer upon layer of paisley silk chiffon. Her heart fluttered. She was in love.

  The size was a ten. With luck, it ran small. She whisked the skirt into the dressing room along with the sleeveless gold cashmere blend tank top hanging beside it.

  Only then, alone in the dressing room, did she dare look at the price tags. The sweater was $200 reduced from $800. The skirt, from $1500 down to $600. It was all way over her budget. But what the heck, Emma thought to herself. She had gold sandals and an ancient gold shawl.

  She ripped off her clothes and kicked off her Nikes to try on the sweater and skirt. They fit like a glove. Then her eyes caught sight of her toes. She would need a pedicure. No doubt about that.

  She dressed. Grabbed her loot. Charged it on her credit card. And was back in Blissburg by 12:05.

  Once inside her door, Emma hid the skirt and top way in the back of her closet. Then she laughed at herself and wondered exactly whom she was hiding it from. She rushed back downstairs. No stopping for lunch. It was time to confront Sergio.

  Chapter 17: Thursday Noon - What’s on the Menu?

  As she walked to Sergio’s restaurant, located on one of Blissburg’s main streets bordering the plaza, Emma rehearsed the approach she would take questioning the hunky young celebrity chef.

  First of all, Emma agreed with Julie that Sergio had nothing obvious to gain by killing Natasha, his former lover, except revenge. According to Jack, even stealing a $100,000 ring wouldn’t settle Sergio’s debts. He was too far under, financially, for that. And of course there was nothing to show that Sergio ever stole the ring. Or anything else, for that matter. Quite the opposite. The ring turned up in Carmen’s trailer.

  Which left her with Sergio’s theory that the Mafia killed Natasha to scare him into paying his debts. But that theory didn’t make sense, either. As far as she knew, Sergio was plain out of dough. She smiled at her pun. Killing Natasha didn’t change that. And if the Mafia was ticked off, why hadn’t they killed Sergio by now? No, if Sergio was involved, it had to be a crime of passion. The question was, how to expose it.

  Emma had already decided that trying to guilt trip Sergio about the Roma scapegoats probably wouldn’t work. Most of the Italian men she knew just weren’t susceptible to guilt trips – except by their mothers. So she decided to play the small-town-gossip card first.

  She approached the sleek modern redwood and chrome restaurant front whose sign proclaimed, in bold raspberry red script, Ristorante Sergio, and tried the front door. It was locked.

  She peeked inside, then knocked. From an alcove behind the empty reception desk where the hostess usually greeted customers, two very dark brown eyes peeked through a grey velvet curtain. Seconds later, Sergio emerged. He recognized Emma, then shrugged, lifting his elegant tanned hands, palms up, as if to say, please, Signora, don’t make me have to come out.

  Emma rapped harder on the door. “My books, I’ve come to collect my cookbooks.” She’d planned that opening line in advance. It offered a credible excuse for her visit.

  Sergio rolled his eyes. Then all muscular, trim six feet of him emerged from behind the curtain and he tiptoed – yes, Emma laughed, he actually tiptoed like some clown from a Commedia dell’arte pantomime show – to the front door. He opened it just wide enough to poke his head of black curls out far enough to survey the street - right and left. Then he motioned for Emma to enter quickly through the narrow opening of the door.

  “Entra Signora.” Like most well bred Italian young men, Sergio used the word Signora when addressing someone his mother’s age. “What is it you want? The cookbooks?”

  Sergio actually said, “What ees eet you want.” He spoke with the clipped accent of an Italian who’d learned English in England. Which Emma knew was true. Sergio’s apprenticeship at the famed Uccellino in Bologna, was followed by a stint in London – too cold, she’d heard him complain – before he found Blissburg, California and opened his own restaurant.

  Emma nodded. “I’m collecting the ones I gave to friends around the plaza. What with all that bad publicity.”

&n
bsp; “The bad publicity,” he nodded. “Yes. It’s a shame. The book is good. Very good. The salsa di pomodoro, magnifica. But under the circumstances, I understand,” he agreed. “Wait here.”

  He cast another exaggerated glance over his shoulder out to the street, and then went to look for the cookbooks which, Emma noted, had disappeared from their featured place at the bar.

  “I’m on foot, Sergio,” Emma called after him, seating herself at a table just inside the dining room. “I hope you don’t mind if I sit down.” She intended, in this way, to avoid a curt dismissal once he gave her the books. Without waiting for a reply, she added, “Would you mind bringing me a glass of water?”

  Sergio glanced over his shoulder again. The expression on his face signaled he clearly minded. But he didn’t object and soon disappeared through the door to the kitchen. He returned minutes later with a stack of her cookbooks in a shopping bag and a full glass of water.

  Emma took the glass of water from him and set it down, uncertain whether to drink it. After all, if Sergio were Natasha’s killer, who knows what he might do? Then she dismissed the thought as silly, sniffed the water, and took a tiny sip, trying not to swallow.

  Sergio must have observed this. He got right to the point. “Signora,” he said, “if you think that I had anything to do with Natasha’s murder, then,” he thrust his chin forward and threw up his hands, “Boh! You are pazza, crazy.”

  Emma hadn’t expected to get to the point so fast. She decided to stick to her script.

  “Sergio, look,” she began, “I’ll admit. I didn’t come here just to collect the cookbooks. Though I am getting out of the food business.”

  Sergio nodded.

  “The truth is, I came to inform you - and I mean this as a friend.” Emma cringed when she told the lie. “Blissburg’s a small town, a very small town, and I’ve heard some rumors. That’s all they are, rumors. But I thought you should know about them.”

  Sergio sucked in his breath. He waved his hand in a tight circle. “Go on, Signora,” he said.

  “First of all,” Emma began, having rehearsed this part over and over on her walk to the plaza, “there’s talk that you ordered a book on poison from Annemarie’s just a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Did Annamaria tell you that? Awwww,” Sergio pounded the table top hard enough to make the silverware jingle. “She promised me she wouldn’t say anything. Something like that is very bad for business. I’d have ordered it on line, but Amazon closed down my account when the credit card company refused to honor...” He stopped speaking abruptly, seeming to think better of finishing that sentence. “What I mean is, how was I to know two weeks ago that buying a book on rodent poison would turn me into a murder suspect? What was I supposed to do? I saw a rat in the kitchen one night when I was closing up. It probably surfaced because of all the renovations at the new olive oil tasting room going in next door. Personally, I’d have rathered the dress shop stayed, but…”

  Emma interrupted him. “Let me get this straight, Sergio. You had rats in your kitchen and you blamed me for dropping a spoon and then using it to stir my pasta sauce? Which, by the way, didn’t even happen. I was just knocking on wood for good luck. But you had to make a big deal out of it, claiming your kitchen was cleanissimo. You can imagine how I felt when the soprano died and everyone thought it was my cooking. Why,” she got even angrier now, “I always wondered who fueled all those nasty jokes about my sauce. I bet it was you.”

  Sergio looked embarrassed. He bit his lower lip and shrugged. As if to say, could you blame me?

  “Signora,” he replied. “I had to deflect any suspicion from me. I already had the rat problem. If the health department got wind of it I’d be sunk. The city was on my back.” He abruptly stopped talking again and switched course. “I mean, my restaurant, my livelihood was at stake. Not my hobby. Like you, Signora.”

  “Emma,” Emma shot back. “Call me Emma. And it wasn’t my hobby. It was my future. What little is left of it,” she added.

  Sergio appeared to be taken aback by what she’d said. “Scusa, Signora. I mean, Em-ma.” He distinctly pronounced each “m” Italian style. Then he looked at his watch. Emma knew he wanted her to leave.

  She continued quickly. “There’s more, Sergio.”

  He leaned back in his chair and pouted like a sullen teenager.

  “There are rumors,” she said, “that your restaurant is in deep financial trouble. That you’ve taken some unwise risks, up at the casino, and that certain unsavory individuals are after you to collect a big debt. There is even a rumor that you’re worried the Mafia killed Natasha Vasiliev to get back at you. Though personally,” she added, “I think that’s far-fetched.”

  Sergio leaned forward as she spoke.

  “Who told you that,” he shouted. “Was it Piers?” He nodded. “Sure. It was Piers, wasn’t it? And I thought he was such a nice guy. But of course, he’s a lawyer. He hears that kind of thing.” Sergio pounded the table again in frustration. “Still, I didn’t see that coming.”

  Suddenly, Emma felt she had to clear Piers’ name. Jack had told her the rumor. Piers wasn’t to blame. But if Sergio suspected him, who knew what Sergio might do? She shook her head. “It wasn’t Piers. I promise you, Sergio. He’s not the one to blame.”

  “Then who is?” Sergio shot back.

  Emma didn’t like the direction their chat had taken. Her heart started pounding. “I…I can’t tell you,” she stammered.

  Sergio leaned way back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. A cagey smile replaced his frown. Then he waved a forefinger at Emma, mimicking her in a sing song voice.

  “Em-ma,” he began. “I think I should inform you – as a friend, of course. Blissburg is a small town, smallissimo. And there are rumors I thought you should know.”

  Emma felt her body tense up. She sucked in her breath.

  “People here…I won’t name names,” he added. “Some people say you are sleeping with…” His voice got loud and angry. “That fat, arrogant Sicilian cafone Jack Russo! I know that’s whom you heard that cazzo of a rumor from.”

  Emma jumped. Cafone meant boor. Her grandmother had used the word a lot. But Emma didn’t exactly know what cazzo meant. They hadn’t covered it in the Spoken Italian class she took before her trip to Italy to research her book. The word was used a lot in that epic Italian movie, Best of Youth, that she saw with her class. All she knew was that, whatever cazzo meant, it was bad.

  Then suddenly something occurred to her. Emma’s shoulders relaxed. She exhaled, one long cleansing breath. And thought to herself - I’m sixty-five years old. What do I care if everyone thinks I’m sleeping with that arrogant, multi-millionaire, cafone VC?

  “Maybe I should sleep with him,” she muttered out loud. Except that he’s obviously still in love with his dead wife, she thought but did not say. “Maybe, it would be fun!” she added out loud.

  Suddenly, Emma started to laugh. She sat back in her chair and laughed so hard tears sprang to her eyes.

  At first, Sergio just stared at her as though she were crazy. Then the volatile Italian’s expression swiftly changed to a smile. Followed by a few silent guffaws. Finally he erupted in explosions of laughter that left him gasping holding on to his sides. When he caught his breath, he stood up, reached across the table and hugged Emma.

  “Signora,” he cried. “You’re so cute. You make me laugh. You remind me of my grandmother. How can I be upset with you?”

  Emma made a conscious decision to take that as a compliment.

  Sergio sat back down, kissed his fingertips and saluted. Either his grandmother or herself, Emma couldn’t tell which.

  Then, just as quickly as his expression had turned from anger to mirth, his face got serious again. He stared across the table at her and said, “Look, Signora. Why are we arguing like this and making all these veiled threats? We’ve both got problems, right? We’ve both got bills to pay, reputations to rebuild. But as soon as the police convict those tw
o zingari, the fortune tellers, we can relax, right? I’ll figure out some way to repay my debts. I’m looking for more backers right now to refinance me. You can get back in the food business.”

  Emma marveled at how quickly the sun chased away the storms in the man’s brain. She shook her head. “It’s not quite that simple, Sergio,” she said.

  “Why not?” he replied.

  That’s when Emma told him. Way more than she expected to. About all the holes in the police case against the Roma.

  “Holes?” he asked. “You mean problems? Like that case in Perugia against the American girl?” He shrugged. “So this could go on forever.”

  Emma nodded. “Based on what I know, I don’t think the Roma killed her.”

  Emma went on to relate all she’d heard about Lexie. And why Emma believed Lexie was the one person with all the qualifications to be the murderer: motive, opportunity, lots of malice, and the means to kill.

  Sergio considered everything she said for a few moments.

  He nodded slowly. “You know, Em-ma, in the back of my mind, I always thought it might be Lexie. Natasha had told me things about Lexie that, at first, made me suspect her. Natasha went out with Barry, before I,” he stopped. “Well, you know. Anyway, Lexie hated Natasha. Natasha told me things.”

  “Like what?” Emma asked.

  “That Lexie bad mouthed Natasha all over the Honorage Spa. Called her a whore. Natasha was scared of Lexie. Some bouncer in the City even followed Natasha home one night from rehearsal when Natasha was an Ormon Fellow. The guy told her he’d mess up her pretty face if Natasha didn’t leave Barry Buchanon alone. Natasha was sure Lexie put him up to it.”

  “Could Natasha prove it?” Emma asked.

  Sergio shrugged. “She didn’t need to prove it. She was sure of it. But not sure enough to prove it to Barry. Who ended up marrying Lexie. Of course, once Natasha fell in love with,” he paused, “you know, we fell in love. Well, what did she care who Barry Buchanon married? Until a few months ago when he started acting like he wasn’t married. Not that she could have stopped Barry from hitting on her when she returned to San Francisco for Trovatore. I warned her, Em-ma. I warned Natasha, when she returned, not to take all those gifts from Barry. They could only lead to trouble.”