Little Black Book of Murder

Home > Mystery > Little Black Book of Murder > Page 33
Little Black Book of Murder Page 33

by Nancy Martin


  The booths didn’t have any local produce except for one table that featured bundles of fresh asparagus. The supply was dwindling fast, so I bought some for dinner, thinking if we were lucky, Michael and I might be alone together this evening. I hoped we’d have celebrating to do.

  Other tables featured a kaleidoscope of local offerings. Honey in decorative jars, baked goods sold by shy Amish girls, canned vegetables of every description—­salsas and hot pepper jams along with beautifully jarred tomatoes, green peppers, even potatoes. Platoons of colorful jellies and pie fillings lined a checkered tablecloth beside a booth that sold varieties of homemade bread. One farmer had brought along a live goat for the children to pet while he encouraged parents to try his goat’s milk cheeses and fudge. Max was intrigued by the goat.

  I bought two jars of jam—­strawberry and blackberry. Libby bought raisin bread and a shoofly pie.

  At the end of the alley between the booths, a crew was setting up an outdoor kitchen. We saw a couple of chefs in white coats readying their ingredients for a demonstration.

  “Is that Tommy Rattigan?” Emma asked.

  I glanced around and thought I spotted Tommy, too, but the crowd shifted and I lost sight of him.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I was hoping he’d be here to promote the Farm-­to-­Table gala. His restaurant will be one of the featured locations tomorrow night.”

  Emma stopped short at the last booth. “Jesus,” she said, looking at the hand-­lettered sign on the display table. “Breast milk cheese? Is this what I think it is?”

  The smiling gentleman behind the table leaned forward. He had a bald head with white fringe, and the pink complexion of a well-­fed baby. With a twinkle in his eyes, he offered Emma his tray of cheese samples. “What do you think it is?”

  I made sure Libby had a hand on the stroller before I went across the walkway to a tent that was advertising fresh, home-­raised meat. The proprietor had set up a small electric grill, and he was cooking a steak. He had a scruffy beard and wore a baseball cap with the logo of his company emblazoned on it—­a crowing rooster. A young, ponytailed woman from the vegan group that had been selling dried blueberries just a few booths away was engaging him in an argument.

  “It’s disgusting,” she said. “You’re polluting the whole market with that stink.”

  “Lady, take a hike.” He used his long fork to gesture her away. “I’ve got a right to be here, same as you.”

  “If I cut up your mother and cooked her, you wouldn’t say that.”

  “Go away,” he said.

  I leaned in. “Do you butcher your own meat?”

  He seemed relieved to have a potential customer on the hook. “Yeah. Hi. We got a shop over near Doylestown, fresh meat daily. Beef, lamb, anything you want.”

  “Pork,” I said. “To tell you the truth, I’ve lost my pig.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Is everybody nuts around here today?”

  “I’m serious. Somebody stole a pig off my property, and I’m afraid he’s going to be killed before the police find him.”

  “I buy everything I sell from local farms, okay? Guys I’ve known for years. I don’t know anything about your pig.”

  “Does anybody try to sell you animals from other sources?”

  “What are you talking about? Stolen pigs? Of course I don’t buy stolen pigs! Now go away. I got a living to make.”

  I turned around to see Emma spitting out a mouthful of cheese. She was saying, “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

  “It’s an acquired taste,” the cheese salesman admitted. “A specialty market. But lots of people love it. Guys especially.”

  Libby was frowning. “Where do you get your main ingredient?”

  His twinkly smile got brighter. “Funny you should ask. I see you ladies have a couple of youngsters. I can’t help wondering if you might be interested in a simple business transaction. I mean, I might have to watch to make sure you’re giving me the real thing. Not pulling some kind of switcheroo on me. I’m always looking to expand my supply chain.”

  My cell phone rang, and I gratefully walked away to check the screen. I didn’t want to hear my sisters becoming part of a breast milk supply chain.

  My caller was Gus.

  I let it ring four times, hoping he’d give up, but when I finally answered, he said, “Why aren’t you here in the office?”

  “Because,” I said, “I deserve a day off.”

  “Shouldn’t you ask your boss when you want to take a day off?”

  “My boss would probably refuse my request, so I didn’t ask.”

  Gus said, “Your boss is not as unreasonable as you think. I hear you’re missing a pig.”

  I walked farther away from the booths of the market and found a grassy spot where I could speak privately. “How do you know about that?”

  “We have reporters who listen to police scanners. How do you think we follow the news? Normally, our blokes don’t pay attention to lost and found or a kitten up a tree, but when they heard the name Abruzzo, they started listening more closely. They hoped for more exciting updates than missing livestock. Actually, they were quite amused.”

  Michael made headlines no matter what he did. I expected the pig story had just moved from the petty-­crime report to the front page. I hoped the hardened criminals in his family wouldn’t think less of him for keeping a pig for a pet. He had enough troubles with them already.

  Gus said, “I may have news for you concerning your animal.”

  I forgot about Michael’s tough-­guy reputation. “What news?”

  “Tommy Rattigan is hosting the artisanal butchery demonstration at tomorrow night’s gala. It’s not my idea of a good evening out, you understand, but apparently a lot of people are interested in seeing their dinner cut from a carcass before they eat it. Really, do you Americans ever sit down for a normal meal? I just received a tutorial from the food reporter about deep-­fried fair food. Did you know it’s possible to fry a Snickers bar? How revolting is that?”

  “This from a man who probably eats Vegemite?”

  “Don’t knock it, luv,” Gus said. “It’s the ambrosia of my youth. I think Rattigan has your pig.”

  “What? Where?” I clutched the phone closer to my ear. “Oh my God, they’re not going to eat Ralphie, are they?”

  “Ralphie? I had a dog named Laver once, after Rod Laver, the tennis player.”

  “Dammit, Gus, you’re trying to distract me, and right now I just can’t stand—” My brain might have been sidetracked last night, but now I could think quite clearly. “How do you know about this? You didn’t get all that information from the police scanner.”

  Gus hummed into the phone, hesitating.

  “Did you go back to see Marybeth last night? After you dropped me off, you played slap and tickle with her again? Did she tell you?”

  “There was no slapping. Rather a nice amount of tickling, though.”

  “Spare me,” I snapped.

  “What? You and the gangster didn’t make hot love after I delivered you home last night? I underestimated your libido?”

  I couldn’t come up with a retort fast enough, and Gus laughed. He said, “Rattigan doesn’t quite know what to do with your porker. He says—­well, that doesn’t matter, I suppose, but I think you could—”

  “Hang on,” I said. “You’re listening to Tommy, aren’t you? You’re listening to that damned bug!”

  “You don’t need to know where I get my intelligence. I simply—”

  “Intelligence? That’s what you call it? Eavesdropping on people?”

  “Will you lower your voice?” he asked. “I don’t want anyone overhearing this conversation. Not even your thug.”

  My turn to laugh. “I don’t believe you. How many laws are you breaking by planting a listening device
on a chef?”

  “I heard him talking about your pig, didn’t I?”

  I hung up on Gus. Not because I was necessarily finished chewing him out, but because I caught another glimpse of Tommy Rattigan himself. He was standing behind a demonstration table, sharpening a long, thin knife with broad, dramatic strokes. Around him, two sous-­chefs bustled with bowls and cutting boards. One of them fired up a flame under an iron skillet. A group of spectators had begun to fill the folding chairs set up in front of the white tent. Two elderly ladies were settling into the back row with an overweight Labrador retriever wearing a red neckerchief.

  I stuffed my phone into my pocket and headed for Tommy.

  Behind me, Em called, “Nora?”

  Libby said, “Where’s she going? Nora, be careful! In your condition—”

  I pushed past the elderly ladies—­one gave a cry of outrage—­and I managed to put a foot wrong and step on the Labrador’s paw. He yelped, and the crowd in the folding chairs looked around at the commotion. I plowed ahead, climbing over a box of candles left in the aisle by a couple of young hippies.

  Tommy looked up from his knife to see me headed straight down the aisle in his direction. My expression must have tipped him off, because a flicker of fright crossed his face. Then he turned, knocked over his pudgy assistant and bolted out the back of the tent.

  Like a bullet, I went after him.

  I jumped over the fallen sous-­chef and shoved through the back of the tent. I nearly fell over a waiting crate of vegetables, but I caught my balance on the open tailgate of a pickup truck. I saw Tommy disappear around some parked cars. I took off running after him.

  I must have shouted. He threw a terrified look over his shoulder at me and kept going through the makeshift parking lot, his green clogs flapping. I ran around the parked cars and thought I’d caught up with him, but I stopped, panting. He’d disappeared.

  Emma charged up next to me, barely out of breath. “What’s going on?”

  “Tommy Rattigan—­he stole Ralphie! Go that way! I’ll run around this way and—”

  “And we’ll nab him,” Emma said. “Gotcha.”

  We bolted in opposite directions.

  I dodged between a minivan and a Prius and ran down the row, hurdling a basset hound on a leash and barely missing a man with an armload of bread loaves. I saw Tommy zigzag between two cars that were simultaneously pulling out of opposite parking spaces. I leaped over a rope and almost cut him off, but he plunged down a ditch and emerged on the other side, running hard. Emma appeared out of nowhere and nearly blindsided him, but he saw her coming and made an about-­face.

  “Tommy!” I shouted.

  He stumbled into traffic, and for a horrible moment I thought an oncoming car was going to flatten him.

  But the car braked, a horn blew and Tommy caught his balance on the hood of the vehicle. He blundered around it, grabbed the passenger door and hopped inside. The driver hit the gas.

  Emma yanked me out of the path of the car, and it blew past me with only inches to spare.

  It was a silver Mercedes, a grim-­faced Marybeth Starr behind the wheel. Her brother ducked his head and fastened his seat belt as the car accelerated away from us.

  “What a douchetard,” Emma said. “Does he think we don’t know who he is?”

  “Why was his first instinct to run?” I panted. “He has a guilty conscience. For stealing Ralphie? Or killing Swain Starr?”

  Libby arrived, pushing the stroller and laden with children and shopping bags. She said, “Why on earth are you two making such spectacles of yourselves? Everybody back at the farmers’ market thinks you’re chasing down a nonorganic carnivore.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Emma said.

  “Ready to go home?” I asked, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. “I could use a nap.”

  Emma checked me for other signs of injury and decided I was A-­okay. But she said, “Maybe we’d better stop at another drugstore? Get you another test?”

  “Oh yes!” Libby cried. “Let’s go home and watch Nora pee on a stick!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We made a detour to a Walgreens, and I dashed inside to grab a pregnancy test off the shelves. With the money from my stop at the pawnshop, I got a two-­pack just in case the first results were iffy. I purchased some diapers for Noah, as well as some formula and other supplies.

  On the way home, my cell phone rang while Libby was regaling us with stories about auditions for television commercials—­mostly how people misunderstood the mothers of auditioning kids.

  When I answered my phone, Michael said with suspicious cheer, “Hi. How you doing?”

  “Fine. We think we figured out who rustled Ralphie.”

  “Oh yeah? Tell me, and I’ll send a hit squad.”

  Sometimes it was downright delightful to be cohabitating with a kingpin of organized crime. Smiling, I said, “Tommy Rattigan. He owns a restaurant in the city.”

  “The one you told me about before?”

  “Yes. He’s—­Michael, Tommy is putting on some kind of butchering demonstration tomorrow night. I’m so afraid—”

  “I’m on it. Anything else?”

  “A little something else. But we can talk about it when I get home. Are you at the farm now?”

  “Uh,” he said. “No. And it looks like I may not be there for a while.”

  My stomach took a cold plunge. “What’s wrong?”

  “So, the thing this morning? Kuzik wanted me to play basketball with some guys he knows. Nice guys. Good game.”

  I sensed he wasn’t calling me to report a basketball score. “But?”

  “Kuzik’s not exactly a great player himself. He’s a little slow, and his grasp of strategy is—­anyway, the bottom line is I kinda knocked him on his ass. Not his ass so much as his head.”

  “Oh, Michael!”

  “It was an accident. He knows it. Everybody knows it. He was bumbling around, and somebody was going to hit him eventually, but it was my fault that it was me. I was driving the ball around him, but he stepped wrong and—­anyway, I brought him over here to the emergency room. He’s getting some kind of head scan at the moment.”

  “He has a concussion?”

  “Maybe it’s just a bump. But his nose is looking a little funny.”

  I could hear the regret in Michael’s voice. I said, “I’m sorry he’s hurt.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Thing is, the police are here for other business, and they got interested.”

  “Oh no.” I suddenly knew where this conversation was going.

  “Right. I think they’re gonna arrest me for assaulting Kuzik. At the very least, they’re going to take me in for a bunch of questions. And until Kuzik can explain his side of things, it doesn’t look great for you and me having lunch together. Or dinner, either.”

  “Please don’t say you’re going back to jail.”

  “Hell, no, not for this. But until Kuzik can talk to the cops, I’m in limbo.”

  “Have you called Armand?”

  “Who?”

  “Cannoli!”

  “Oh, right. Yeah, I called him. He’s on his way. Between your family and mine, we’re going to pay college tuition for a lot of little Cannolis.” He was trying to make light of the situation, but I knew he was annoyed. He said, “Listen, when you get back to the farm, you’ll see I fired the old crew. I told the new guys to keep a close watch while I’m gone, especially for Zephyr and the Starr kid who’s looking for her. I shoulda made sure we were better covered before. I didn’t know about the road in the back. I’m gonna think about that, and we’ll fix it when I get home. Meanwhile, there will be a couple of extra guys around today.”

  “Are we in danger?”

  “Don’t worry. Mostly, I don’t want my brother coming back to surprise you. Don’t let him in if he s
hows his face, okay? I told him to keep his distance, and I meant it.” Michael’s tone changed, turning brisk. “I gotta go now. I’ll call you when I know more.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  But he was already gone.

  “Trouble?” Emma asked from the backseat.

  “Nothing unusual,” I said on a sigh.

  “You need a diversion,” Libby said, having overheard most of our conversation and no doubt sensing my plummeting spirits. “Why don’t we go out for lunch? While we wait for our food, Nora, you can take the test. We’ll have champagne! It’ll be fun! And when That Man of Yours finally gets home, you can have a celebration all ready—­something romantic with candles and lingerie. And maybe cake. Who doesn’t like cake?”

  She was already making a U-­turn and pulling into the parking lot of the Rusty Sabre.

  Emma took a cell phone call while Libby and I managed to get the children into the restaurant and seated at a window table overlooking a picturesque stretch of the canal that ran through New Hope. Our waiter seemed willing to cope with a table that included two little ones, which was a relief. Sometimes the mere presence of Max discouraged good service. Libby opened a plastic container of Cheerios and scattered a supply on the tray of Max’s high chair. He immediately started throwing cereal at Noah, who looked mystified about being the object of Max’s jealousy.

  Libby had rummaged through my shopping bags while in the minivan, and she handed over the pregnancy test.

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Why wait?”

  “Maybe I should do it in the privacy of my own home.”

  “Nonsense.” Libby saw my fear, and she said, “If the news is negative, wouldn’t you rather be with your sisters instead of home alone to wallow in disappointment? Go take the test now, Nora. We’ll cope with the results, no matter what they are.”

  With mixed feelings, I headed into the ladies’ room of the Rusty Sabre.

 

‹ Prev