“Acht, the ice cream lady!” she greeted me. “I’m afraid I have forgotten your name.”
“Kate McKay,” I told her.
“And I am Gretchen Gruen,” she replied.
I simply nodded, acting as if I didn’t already know that. Me and just about everyone else in the world who had access to a computer, a newsstand, or a TV.
“I see that you’ve decided to stay on here at Omar’s,” I observed, hoping to engage her in conversation.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what else to do with myself,” she said. “I am so very sad. It is fortunate that I have the next few days off. I need some time to process what has happened. To understand it, to try to find a way for it to make sense.”
She shook her head slowly. “Omar—he was everything to me. He was like a father, a brother, a friend . . . Not only did he help me so much in my career, but also in every other part of my life.”
“I’m sure that you’re devastated,” I said.
“Did you know that he discovered me?” she said. “I was nothing. A nobody, working in a spaetzle factory in a small town near Munich—”
“Spaetzle?” I interrupted without thinking. I was pretty sure that I’d read it was a pretzel factory.
“Ja,” Gretchen replied. “It is what you call egg noodles.”
Spaetzle, pretzel . . . I could see how that piece of history had become altered over the years.
“So I was working in that factory,” Gretchen went on, “and then, one day, there was Omar DeVane. In an instant, my entire life changed. I owe him everything. Everything!”
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” I said sympathetically. “I—”
I’d suddenly gotten that creepy feeling that comes over you when you realize that someone is watching you. It’s as if you can feel their eyes burning into your skin.
I turned quickly, just in time to see a familiar face in the doorway. A face that vanished less than a second after I laid eyes on it.
Federico.
He’d been spying on us.
Or, more likely, he’d been spying on me.
My mind raced as I debated what to do. Pretend I hadn’t noticed . . . or call him on it.
“Federico!” I called, even before I’d actually decided. “How nice to see you again!”
Not, I thought. Then I reminded myself that I wasn’t here to socialize, that in fact I’d come back to Omar’s mansion to do a little spying of my own.
But since I’d spoken to him, he had no choice but to come out of his hiding place.
He looked completely different from the way he’d looked the night of the party. His hair was disheveled, and his chin was covered with dark blond stubble. His eyes were not only free of makeup, they were rimmed in red. The irises were also considerably less green than they’d been the last time I’d seen him. As for his trendy togs of Saturday night, they had been replaced by a pair of nondescript khaki pants and a plain white T-shirt that revealed just how thin he was.
Yet despite the dramatic change in his appearance, his manner was exactly the same.
“Ms. McKay,” he said formally, peering at me with great disdain. “What brings you back here?”
I braced myself for the usual cliché comparing me to one of those bad pennies that keeps turning up. Fortunately, I was spared it, perhaps because Federico was from Italy and therefore wasn’t familiar with the saying.
“With all the chaos of Saturday night,” I explained in an even voice, “I left behind some of my supplies. A few pans, some trays, a bunch of paper goods . . .” For some reason, I couldn’t help making my imaginary list even longer than it had been before. “I’m usually pretty organized, but, well, Saturday night was anything but usual.”
“I see,” he said, his tone softening. “That’s not surprising. A lot of us weren’t ourselves on Saturday night.”
I noticed then that Federico’s expression had transformed. Instead of haughty, he looked sincerely distraught. His eyes became shiny, too, as they welled up with tears.
I immediately felt terrible for all the awful things I’d ever thought about him.
“How are you holding up?” I asked him quietly.
“Not well,” he replied, choking out the words. “I’m still trying to comprehend that this horrible thing has really happened. I keep telling myself that Omar isn’t gone, he was simply called into the city unexpectedly or he’s in Paris getting ready for a show or . . . or . . .” His face crumpled. “None of it seems to work, though.”
I instinctively reached over and put my hand on his arm. “Federico, I can’t imagine how tough this must be on you. I know you were one of the people who was closest to Omar.”
“This is tough on all of us,” a male voice boomed from behind me. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a job to do.”
Mitchell Shriver had come striding into the room. As I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that, unlike Federico and Marissa, he looked exactly the same as he’d looked Saturday night. He was dressed in a drab business suit, possibly the same one he’d been wearing then. His necktie was certainly similar. His hair was neatly combed, and he was freshly shaven. As for his eyes, the look in them was stone-cold.
“We had all day yesterday to moon around,” Mitchell went on. “We need to move on.”
“My heavens, you’re heartless,” Federico said, spitting out his words. “We all loved and respected Omar. The fact that you can just jump back into a business-as-usual mode . . .”
“That’s because Omar was his business,” Mitchell shot back. “He would have wanted the people who were close to him to take the same care with the empire he was so proud of that he would.”
As if to illustrate his point, he held up the stack of manila folders he was holding. “Federico, you really need to pull yourself together so we can go over some of these files. There are things that need to be done right away. Legal decisions, business decisions . . . for goodness’ sake, have you seen what’s going on with the price of ODV’s stock today?”
The look that Federico flashed at Mitchell was icy enough to freeze ten gallons of ice cream. On a hot summer’s day. At high noon.
“Omar wasn’t just his business,” Federico insisted. “He was also a warm, caring, ridiculously creative genius of a man.” His face became distorted with grief once again as he added, “And I miss him. I will always miss him.”
“I will, too,” Mitchell said, sounding as if he wasn’t going to miss him at all. “But this is no time to be sentimental. There are certain things we need to deal with immediately. And, unfortunately, I need your help with them.”
“Fine,” Federico said loftily, angrily tossing his head. “Maybe doing things your way will help give me something else to focus on besides how badly my heart has been broken.”
The two men left, Federico looking as if he were on the verge of tears and Mitchell looking the same way he seemed to look all the time.
I turned back to Marissa. “Goodness,” I said, “I don’t mean to be a gossip, but how did those two ever manage to work side by side with Omar? They act like children fighting over a toy!”
She shrugged. “They’re always like this,” she said. “Omar had a theory about their difficult relationship. He thought it was because they were basically so different. Mitchell was all numbers and business, while Federico was all about creativity.”
She sighed. “But I think there was more to their rivalry.” With a little smile, she noted, “They’ve always been so competitive because each wanted Omar to like him best.”
That certainly made sense. In fact, from what I could see, everyone in Omar’s circle had wanted him to like them best.
And they, in turn, all seemed to be totally devoted to him.
Yet something about his entourage gnawed away at me. Not only because of their personalities, but also because of the way they interacted with each other. I could feel a strong undercurrent just by being in that household.
And it was an undercurrent that I sensed had been powerful enough to set off an electrical fire.
Chapter 7
In Ancient Rome special wells were used to store ice and snow which slaves brought down from the mountains to luxurious villas. Among the ruins of Pompeii there are traces which lead us to believe that some shops specialized in selling crushed ice (from Vesuvius) sweetened with honey.
—http://www.expo2015.org/magazine/en/economy/a-short-history-of-ice-cream-from-ancient-roman-snow-to-love-with-a-heart-of-cream.html
As I drove back to Wolfert’s Roost, I found myself growing increasingly discouraged. The task I’d set out for myself was going to be even more challenging than I’d thought. And it wasn’t only because of my limited access to Omar DeVane’shouse—and his life.
Even more, I could see that it wasn’t going to be easy getting past the façades that the people around him were clearly used to hiding behind.
It was late morning by the time I pulled into town. I decided that rather than heading straight to Lickety Splits, I’d take advantage of Emma’s ability to run the store on her own and stop off at home. Taking time out for a quick lunch would undoubtedly be good for my morale as well as my blood sugar level.
As I walked into the front hallway of 59 Sugar Maple Way, I automatically called “Hello!” I just assumed that Grams would be around. Her car wasn’t in the driveway, but I figured it was in the garage. I expected to find her puttering in the kitchen or working on one of her craft projects in the living room. But no one was home except for Digger and Chloe.
“Hey, Digger!” I cried, crouching down so I could give the feisty terrier mix a suitable greeting. As usual, that included neck scratching, ear scratching, tummy scratching, and an embarrassing amount of baby talk.
“Whooza cutest doggie? Whooza best doggie?”
In response to this ridiculous lovefest, Chloe trotted over. For a few moments, she seemed to forget she was a cat. She also wanted to say hello, which she did by rubbing against me while meowing loudly, as if to say, Where’s my neck scratching? Where’s my ear scratching? I was only too happy to oblige.
“Okay, you two,” I demanded. “Where’s Grams?”
As if on cue, I heard the front door open behind me. Standing in the doorway was the woman I’d been looking for.
“Katydid!” she cried. “What are you doing home in the middle of the day?”
Her tone sounded almost—well, critical. I would have thought I was reading something into it if she wasn’t also wearing a strange expression. She was acting as if she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing.
There was something else that got my attention: she was considerably more dressed up than I would have expected for someone going to the post office or the supermarket. Like me, Grams likes to wear super-comfy clothes. Sweat pants, loose shirts, sneakers.
Yet she was wearing a pastel-colored paisley blouse and her “good” dark blue pants, a pair she generally reserved for dinner at one of our area’s nicer restaurants. She even had a string of pearls around her neck. Her gray hair, which as usual was in a gentle pageboy, was neatly combed. And unless the late-afternoon light was playing tricks with me, she was wearing makeup: a swipe of blush, a hint of eye shadow, and lipstick.
“I just stopped off to grab a quick lunch,” I replied. Looking her up and down, I added, “And what have you been up to? An early date?”
I meant my comment as a joke. Instead, she immediately turned beet red. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she countered. “I was simply out doing some . . . errands.”
Errands? In your best pants, your best jewelry, and more makeup than I’ve seen you wear since the neighborhood New Year’s Eve party the Hillermans threw in 1999?
My detective skills led me to think of another strong possibility: that she had gone to a doctor’s appointment she didn’t want me to know about.
But Grams clearly didn’t want to tell me any more than she already had, so I didn’t push it.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t worried.
Even so, all I said was, “Any chance I can interest you in a grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich?”
* * *
I headed back to Lickety Splits as soon as I’d fortified myself with one of those sandwiches, a tall glass of iced tea, and a few minutes of Grams’s company. But I shouldn’t have bothered.
Business was that bad.
“We might as well call it a day,” I told Emma at the end of a long, quiet afternoon. A total of three customers had wandered in. “If I wipe down this counter one more time, I’m going to wear out the glass.”
She looked as bored as I felt. But she replied, “It’s barely six o’clock!”
“I know,” I said. “But even if some of the local folks suddenly develop an overwhelming craving for ice cream, it’s not likely that there’d be enough customers over the next few hours to cover even the cost of the electric bill.” I began clamping lids on the tops of the giant tubs of ice cream lined up in the display case.
“Whatever you say,” Emma said. She jumped right in and started helping.
“I suppose you’ll go hang out with Ethan for the rest of the evening,” I commented.
She stiffened. “A quiet evening at home sounds pretty good right now,” she said without making eye contact.
My radar told me something was going on. But my common sense told me to leave it alone.
First Grams, now Emma . . . all of a sudden, it seemed as if there were just too many mysteries swirling around me.
“I totally agree,” I said cheerfully. “Hanging out with you and Grams tonight sounds great, even if we just watch TV or play cards.”
It turned out that Emma, Grams, and I had a wonderful time making dinner together, something we hadn’t done in a while. Coordinating the schedules of three very busy, very independent women meant that sitting down together for a meal had become unusual. Actually preparing that meal together, doing more laughing than chopping, grating, and stirring, was even more of a rarity.
Afterward, instead of Emma disappearing into her room—or as had become more and more usual, going off with Ethan—she joined her great-grandmother and me in the living room. I was glad to see that she’d brought a sketch pad and a fistful of drawing pencils with her. Much better than that computer she was usually lugging around, at least as far as I was concerned.
As usual, Grams was working on a craft project. She was laboring over the quilt she was making for Emma, carefully hand-sewing around each patch. The bold shades of purple and red, neatly forming the repeating pattern of the Ohio Star, cascaded around her like a magnificent wizard’s cape.
Emma flopped into one of the upholstered chairs and immediately became absorbed in her drawing. Meanwhile, Grams sewed away happily.
Digger was lying in front of the fireplace, chewing apart one of those shapeless rawhide things that really, really hurts if you have the bad luck to step on one barefoot. Chloe was curled up in a chair, just watching us. Sometimes I felt that cats were actually creatures from another planet, sent here to spy on us earthlings.
Still, the entire scene was wonderfully cozy. In fact, I decided to join our extraterrestrial pussycat by indulging in something I’d been doing very little of lately: like her, I just sat. And enjoyed the moment, which was about as blissful and serene as life gets.
When the floorboards on the front porch creaked and the doorbell rang, the three of us exchanged surprised looks.
“Could that be Ethan?” I asked Emma.
“I doubt it,” she replied curtly.
O-kay, I thought. So my theory about a lovers’ quarrel was correct.
“Are you expecting anyone, Grams?” I asked.
“No, but sooner or later, one of us has to go answer the door,” she replied. She started setting aside her project, but I jumped up.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
By that point, I had a hunch that it might be Jake. Sure enough, when I opened the door, there
he was.
“Hey, Kate,” he greeted me, his face lighting up. “I thought I might find you here. I drove by Lickety Splits, but it was closed.”
I made a face. “No use staying open when there aren’t any customers.”
“Still feeling the fallout from Omar DeVane’smurder, huh?” he asked. “That’s tough.”
“Come on in,” I told him, moving aside. “You’re in luck. You’ve got all three of us here tonight.”
“I am in luck,” he said, grinning as he strode into the living room.
“Jake!” Grams cried. “It’s so nice to see you!”
“Hi, Mrs. Whitman,” he greeted her. “Hey, Emma.”
Grams was instantly all aflutter. “It’s so nice that you dropped by,” she cooed, sounding like Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, entertaining a gentleman caller. “Can I get you a cold drink?”
I glared at her, wishing she’d rein in her embarrassingly obvious desire to pair me off with a man simply because he’d already played that role a million years ago.
“Or how about some ice cream?” Emma suggested. “It’s always a good time for ice cream.”
It was clear that Emma was also doing her best to play matchmaker.
The living room was starting to feel just a little too crowded.
“Ice cream sounds like a great idea,” I said. Sounding as sweet as a scoop of chocolate marshmallow ice cream dotted with meringue, I suggested, “Why don’t you go get us some, Emma? Grams, why don’t you help her?”
Grams and Emma both took the hint. They popped up out of their seats—well, Grams didn’t exactly pop—and headed into the kitchen.
It looked as if Jake and I would have at least a couple of minutes to ourselves.
“So how have you been?” Jake asked. “Have you heard anything more from Detective Stoltz?”
“Nope,” I replied. “I have a feeling I’m not very high on his list of suspects this time around. Actually, I don’t think I’m on it at all.”
“That’s a relief,” Jake said. “I sure hope they get to the bottom of this soon. All the bad press Wolfert’s Roost is getting is hurting everybody. Even the dairy had an unusually quiet day today—”
Hot Fudge Murder Page 9
