by Leslie Karst
“Uh, I guess I should let you eat,” I said. “I need to return to the kitchen, anyway.”
Back at the grill station, once I had my new batch of tickets taken care of, the steaks and chicken quarters sizzling on the char broiler, I peered out the pass again to watch the duo eat their dinner. They were now on to a bottle of wine—a light red, it looked like—and were laughing and leaning toward each other like a couple out on a romantic night on the town.
Could it be a date? There was no reason it wouldn’t be. Eric and I had split up several years earlier, and although he’d recently expressed interest in getting back together, I’d pretty much rebuffed him on that front. Or at least I’d made it clear that if any rekindling of our previous relationship were to happen, it likely wouldn’t be anytime soon.
So I certainly couldn’t expect the guy to sit around indefinitely and wait for me to decide. And I had no reason to feel anything but happiness for him if he’d found someone he liked, someone willing to return his affections right now in the present.
But the pang in my gut told me otherwise.
* * *
Evelyn was still awake when I got home after work. The TV was on, and Buster and Coco were curled up on either side of her on the sofa. Both dogs commenced barking as soon as I opened the front door, Buster set off by Coco. Only Buster, however, took the trouble to actually get off the comfy couch, and he took his sweet time—stretching first his front, then his back legs—before coming to greet me.
“Lazy bum,” I said when he jumped back onto the couch and lay his head down, tail thumping on the aloha-print cushions. “Hey, Evelyn. I didn’t expect you to still be up. How are you doing?”
“Okay. I’m watching an old movie with Cary Grant and some woman whose voice I don’t recognize. It’s got great, fast-paced dialogue.”
I dropped my bag on the floor and squeezed into the tiny space the sprawling Buster had left between him and the end of the couch. On the screen, a bunch of guys in fedoras were jabbering into old-fashioned candlestick telephones. “Oh, His Girl Friday,” I said as a roll-top desk was opened to reveal a pale, scrawny man with a wispy mustache hidden inside. “With Rosalind Russell. I love that movie.” After kicking off my grease-spattered shoes, I set my tired feet on the coffee table. “I’m impressed you even know who Cary Grant is. Are you a classic film buff?”
“They’re not my favorite or anything. I’m more into action movies—you know, stuff like The Avengers and Black Panther. But when I channel-surfed past this one I had to stop, ’cause it reminded me of my mom.” She paused and swallowed. “Mom loved old films,” she went on, her voice now low. “That was one of the things we used to do together, make popcorn and watch DVDs of all the old black-and-white movies.”
“Ah, right.”
Letting out a sigh, Evelyn slumped further down on the couch, and we watched the last ten minutes of the screwball comedy without speaking. As the credits started to roll, accompanied by a snappy big-band tune, she reached for the remote and shut off the television.
I stood up. “Well, I’m going to make myself a nightcap before bed. Can I get you anything, or are you going to hit the hay? It is kind of late for those not in the food-service biz.”
“No, I’m actually going to stay up a little longer. I tend to be a bit of a night owl. But I think I’ll pass on the nightcap. I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Oh, right. You’re not even twenty-one yet. Here we are on our first night together and I’m already being a bad influence.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I turn twenty-one week after next, so maybe I’ll have a drink with you then. Something really sweet and disgusting like a Harvey Wallbanger or a Fuzzy Navel.”
“Ha! I can’t believe you even know about those. They were already passé when I was a teenager.”
“Yeah, well, my mom and her friends used to have parties sometimes when they’d make bizarre old drinks. Or, I know, a Pink Squirrel!”
At the sound of this last word, Buster’s head popped up, his eyes and ears at immediate attention. “Now you’ve done it,” I said with a laugh. “You can’t say the S-Q word in front of Buster without him going nuts. I think we’ll have to ban that particular drink from the house, or at least give it a new name.”
Once I was settled back on the couch with my bourbon-rocks, I asked Evelyn about what sorts of things she might need while at the house. “Because you should totally make yourself at home while you’re here. Mi casa es tu casa and all that. Oh, and since you’re a fellow coffee aficionado, I’ll have to show you where the beans and filters are and how to work the coffee maker before we go to bed.”
“That would be great,” she said. “With my weird sleep habits, I could easily be up way before you. But as for anything special I’ll need, I can’t think of anything.”
“Well, what about shopping? Would you like me to take you to the grocery store tomorrow to stock up on stuff you like to eat?”
“Yeah, that would be awesome, actually. I can shop on my own, but it’s way easier—and faster—if I go with someone else. Oh, and I guess it would be good to get a tour at some point of where you keep stuff in the kitchen. You know, your pots, pans, measuring cups, knives.”
“So you’re also a cook?” It hadn’t occurred to me that she would actually be making meals from scratch. I’d assumed that the extent of her food preparation would be to open boxes of cereal and heat premade entrées from Trader Joe’s in the microwave. “That’s totally cool! I guess it must run in our family.”
“Yeah, I make something most nights. I really enjoy it. Though I’m pretty slow and I can sometimes make kind of a mess,” she added with a giggle. “And you’re right, it definitely does run in the family. My mom was a chef like you and your dad, so she thought it was important that I learn my way around the kitchen from a young age. She taught me to cook when I was like ten years old …”
Evelyn trailed off. She’d been sitting cross-legged on the sofa, facing me as she spoke, but now closed her eyes and turned away. Shoving Buster off the sofa, I scooted over and touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Here. I think maybe you need a hug right about now.”
She turned back and took me in her arms, her body shaking in silent sobs. After about a minute they subsided and she sat up, swinging her legs back down onto the floor. “Thanks,” she said. “I guess I haven’t really had a chance to let it all out.” Evelyn wiped her cheeks, then reached out to stroke Coco, who had started panting in agitation during our emotional embrace.
I took a sip of my drink, letting her have a moment. If she wanted to talk about it, I was more than willing to lend a sympathetic ear. But if not, I wasn’t going to push her.
Evelyn let off petting the dog and unzipped her red fleece sweater. “My mom had actually been pretty on edge the past few months,” she said in a voice so soft I could barely hear her.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat, then exhaled slowly. “She had a lot of stuff going on in her life. I don’t know how much you know about her—”
“Pretty much nothing,” I said. “My father says she had almost no contact with our family after your dad died.”
“I know, and that’s a shame. I guess I could have contacted you myself, but I never felt, I dunno …”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Family stuff can be hard.”
She refastened the zipper of her sweater, then ran it up and down several times. “Well, anyway, my mom used to be a cook at this restaurant called Tamarind, but the kitchen there was totally macho. You know, all these guys constantly swearing and being super competitive and stuff.”
I hadn’t met any of the kitchen staff at Tamarind, a trendy Southeast Asian place over on the East Side, but this sort of male-dominated, back-of-the-house culture is familiar to any woman who’s ever wielded a restaurant sauté pan. It’s only because Gauguin was started by my Aunt Letta, and then later owned by me, that our kitchen has always been a relatively civil place to
work. “Ugh,” was all I had to say to Evelyn’s description.
“So she quit and started her own place. A pop-up downtown called The Curry Leaf.”
“Oh, wow, that was hers? They have great food. I love their samosas with peanut sauce.”
“Yeah, though I don’t imagine it will stay open, now that …” Evelyn bit her lip and slumped down on the couch. “The thing is,” she went on after a moment, “I could tell Mom was stressed the past couple months. Partly from the new restaurant, but also because she left her old place, Tamarind, on really bad terms with the owner, and she hated stuff like that.”
Evelyn blinked a few times, then coughed and cleared her throat again.
“Would you like a drink of water?” I asked.
“Yes, please. Thanks.”
I brought her one, and she drank it down immediately. Reaching out for the coffee table, she located it with her left hand, then set the glass down with the other. A single tear was making its way down her right cheek.
After a moment, she went on. “Mom had told me all about what was going on with Tamarind, and I knew how hard she was working at the pop-up. But I was so busy at school that I just … I don’t know, pretended everything was fine. But now we know it wasn’t. Fine.”
She wiped the tear away, but it was immediately replaced by several more. “I can’t help thinking that if only I’d been there that night, I could have prevented it somehow.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t go there. No one can ever know what might have happened if they’d taken some different action at any given time. Second-guessing will only make you crazy.”
Evelyn nodded, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced.
“And besides,” I went on, “you couldn’t be expected to be your mom’s sole emotional caretaker, in any case. She must have had other people to confide in. A best friend, family?”
“She did have people she hung out with, but I don’t think you could call any of them a ‘best friend.’ And as for family …” She shrugged. “Not much. None of her family lives around here, and as you know, she pretty much cut off contact with your side of the family after Dad died. She and my Nonna Sophie kept in contact, but they were never that close. So she really didn’t have anyone to talk to but me.”
Evelyn sat motionless on the sofa, head in her hands.
“Do you think she might have done it on purpose?” I asked in a soft voice. “That it wasn’t an accident?”
“No!” Her head popped back up, eyes glassy with tears. “Mom always promised she’d be there for me. No way would she leave me all alone like this on purpose.”
As more tears streaked down her cheeks, I took Evelyn once more in my arms. “You’re not alone,” I said. “I’m your family.”
Chapter 4
I woke to the glorious smell of coffee.
Normally, I laze about for a few minutes after coming fully to consciousness in the morning, but the aroma was so enticing that I popped immediately out of bed, startling the still-snoozing Buster, and headed for the kitchen.
The last time I’d awakened to an already-brewed pot of coffee in my own home had been back when Eric and I still lived together. He was a good guy that way, making the morning joe, bringing in the newspaper, even preparing us both sandwiches for work on occasion. And, I have to admit, I missed it—and not just the coffee.
Evelyn was at the red Formica kitchen table, a steaming mug before her, with Coco lying at her feet. She had her phone in her hands and was swiping it in rapid strokes.
“Good morning,” I said. Evelyn didn’t respond or make any sign she realized I’d entered the room, though the dog raised its head. Then I noticed the tiny earbuds. “Good morning!” I repeated, louder this time.
“Oh.” Startled, she turned to face me. “Hold on a sec.” She swiped at the phone again and removed the earbuds. “I was just reading all the emails and texts I’ve gotten since last night.”
“No worries. And thanks for making the coffee, by the way. Looks like you were able to find everything I showed you last night.”
“Uh-huh. Though I may have missed cleaning up some of the grounds. Sorry about that.”
“Looks about the same as when I do it, actually.” I grabbed a sponge to wipe up the few black grounds scattered across the counter, then helped myself from the pot, added a healthy slug of half-and-half, and took a seat across the table from her. “I don’t want to keep you from checking your messages, if you want.”
She tapped a finger rhythmically on her phone several times, then shoved it away. “No, that’s okay,” she said. “There’s a ton, mostly about my mom. I can only take them in small doses.”
“Yeah, that must be hard.”
“Oh, and Mario left a message about my mom’s memorial service. He offered to make all the arrangements so I wouldn’t have to. It’s going to be tomorrow.”
“Really?” I said. “That seems awfully soon.”
“I guess it was the only Saturday afternoon the place had available for the next month. Mom didn’t belong to any church, so we’re using this rent-a-chapel Mario found. And he just sent a text saying he was able to get a notice in the newspaper starting this morning, so people will know about it.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Evelyn reached for her phone and clicked it to life. “I got a voicemail from the police. They’d like to interview me again about my mom. We talked the day I found her, but I guess there’s more they want to ask. I was pretty freaked out at the time, so I bet I wasn’t all that coherent.”
She swiped, then tapped the screen, and a familiar voice started speaking: “Hello, Ms. Olivieri. This is Detective Vargas from the Santa Cruz Police Department. I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to me again sometime, you know, about your mother? You could either stop by the station or, if it’s easier, I could come by your place … or, uh … wherever you’re staying right now. I should be in the office all day today, if that would work for you. Okay, well, thanks. I appreciate it. Talk to you soon.”
Evelyn set the phone back on the table and reached for her coffee.
“Detective Vargas,” I said. “I know him. He’s a good guy.”
“Really? Would you be willing to be there when I talked to him?”
“Sure, no problem. But it’s not like we’re great friends or anything. He was the lead detective on my aunt’s murder case, and then I got to know him a little better when …”
“When you helped them solve those other cases,” she finished for me. “I read about them in the paper. And I gotta say, even though I never contacted you like I should have, I was super proud to have such an amazing sleuth as a—what are we, cousins, right?”
“Yeah, second cousins once removed,” I said. “I’m pretty sure, anyway.”
Evelyn got up to help herself to more coffee. “So you think I should have the detective come here to the house, or should we go down to the station?” she asked.
“Uh, maybe I should drive you down there. We could do it on our way home from the store.”
Vargas and I had gotten off to a rocky start after he’d taken a dim view of what he saw as my “interference” with their investigation into my Aunt Letta’s stabbing. Since then, however, our relationship had significantly improved, and he’d even recently joked that one day I might make a good detective if I ever decided to change careers.
But that didn’t mean I wanted the guy at my own home.
* * *
Three hours later, I pulled my ’57 Thunderbird into the police station parking lot, its tiny trunk jammed with bags of groceries. Since I’d inherited the classic convertible from my Aunt Letta the previous spring, Evelyn had been the only passenger not to slaver over its creamy-yellow color and Jetsons-style tail fins. But she did razz me about the smelly dog cushion on the passenger side—which she shoved onto the floor at her feet, there being no back seat in the car—as well as the T-Bird’s clunky engine noise and obvious need for a tune-up.
Shopping with Evelyn had
proved to be an enlightening event. Not only did it make me appreciate how easy I had it with regard to the day-to-day tasks of life, but it also opened my eyes to the astounding adaptive technology out there these days for the blind. Evelyn showed me an app on her phone, for instance, that is a bar code reader and tells her in a robotic voice whether the can she’s holding contains sliced beets or petit pois peas. Pretty awesome.
We extricated ourselves from the T-Bird’s bucket seats, then made our way across the parking lot and up the stairs into the police station. She was using her cane, tapping it back and forth in front of her as we walked, but she’d also taken my arm to help her navigate the unfamiliar route.
After announcing ourselves to the receptionist, we took a seat on one of the wooden benches in the lobby. Evelyn folded up her cane and snapped the elastic loop about its metal tubes. Her right knee was bouncing up and down in a severe case of the jimmy leg.
“Nervous?” I asked.
She stilled her leg. “What makes you think that?” she said with a short laugh, then sighed. “I guess a little. But mostly I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold it together, that I’ll completely lose it in front of the detective.”
“Yeah, totally understandable. But even if you do break down in front of Detective Vargas, it’ll be okay. I’ve been known to do it and he was totally cool. Oh, speak of the—”
“Ms. Solari.” A beefy man in brown slacks and a light-pink Oxford cloth shirt strode across the lobby. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, shaking my hand. Evelyn had stood at the sound of his approach, and the detective turned to take her outstretched hand as well. “Good to see you again, Ms. Olivieri. I’m so glad you were able to stop by. Would you like to come upstairs where we can talk in private?”
“Sure, but can my cousin Sally come along, too?”