by Cat Chandler
“First time? Don’t you mean the only time?” Nicki pushed away from the table and stood. “Alex is having coffee over at Starbucks. I need to pick her up before going home, so I’ll meet you at the townhouse.”
“I wish I believed it would be the last time you’d get mixed up in a murder,” Matt muttered, then hastily made a lot of noise as he got to his feet when Nicki looked his way.
“Did you say something?” Nicki’s polite expression didn’t give a hint that she’d heard every word. Honestly. How many dead bodies did Matt think would be showing up in Arson in the future? Nicki had thought her first one would also be her last, but she was positive this one would be. It was Arson, for goodness sake. Not New York.
“Did you and Matt work things out?” Alex asked once they were on their way to Nicki’s townhouse.
“More or less.” Nicki shook her head. “Actually, I have no idea if we worked anything out, but we did come to an understanding.”
“Which was?”
“He’s going to help out with the investigation on the days in between having to make an appearance at the L.A. Food and Wine festival. Which turns out to be only one day. And his admin is going to stay in Kansas City.” Nicki shrugged. “With you and Jenna so busy with your own schedules, it will be nice to have someone to help distract Maxie.” Nicki sighed. “My landlady feels responsible for solving Catherine’s murder since she was a member of her Ladies in Writing Society. And I suspect I won’t get a moment’s peace from Suzanne until Catherine’s killer is locked up.”
Alex laughed. “So Matt thinks he’s going to be playing the macho bodyguard, when you’re secretly going to have him run interference with Maxie and Suzanne?”
Nicki grinned. “He can be pretty cute. Women seem to fall all over him whenever we’ve been at festivals together.”
“Since men fall all over you, there must have been bodies everywhere at those festivals,” Alex teased.
Nicki had always acknowledged the beautiful face she’d inherited from her mother, along with a perfect figure on a petite frame, but she had never been impressed with her own looks. So she rarely noticed if anyone was falling all over her, and if her face and figure were the only reasons, she ignored those men anyway. Just like she ignored Alex’s observation about her appeal to the opposite sex and focused on her ‘bodyguard’ comment.
“Matt called himself a sidekick, not a bodyguard. I think that’s a better description of his role.”
“Did he happen to mention which day he’d need to be in Los Angeles?” Alex asked.
“No. But the festival starts this coming Wednesday and goes through Sunday, so I’m assuming he’d need to be there Friday or Saturday.” Nicki gave Alex a suspicious look. “Why?”
“I’m betting it’s Saturday because I got a call from Ty while I was having coffee. It seems my hunky fireman has next weekend off, all of a sudden, and since I do too, he thought we should come here and spend the night with my best friends. He wanted me to check with you to be sure it was okay.”
Nicki could not believe it. Matt had arranged for another big strong male to be around for the one day he was going to the festival?
Alex dug her phone out of the side pocket of her purse and started tapping keys.
“Who are you texting?” Nicki asked, fervently wishing she hadn’t left her phone sitting on the kitchen counter.
“Tyler Johnson. I’m asking if he’s talked to Matt recently, as in the last two days.”
“Good.” Nicki stepped on the gas. “I guess Mr. Dillon and I have something else we need to discuss.”
It took them another ten minutes to reach the turnoff to Maxie’s property, and another two minutes before they pulled up in front of Nicki’s townhouse. Matt was outside, leaning against the door of the SUV he’d rented, talking to Maxie and Jenna. Nicki got out of her very compact car and concentrated on not slamming the door. She deliberately strolled up to Matt and smiled when he looked at her.
“Mathew Dillon. Have you talked to Ty lately?”
Matt crossed his arms over his chest and stared right back at her. “Uh huh. And he’s coming to stay here while I’m in L.A.” Matt glanced over at Alex. “He didn’t mind since we both know Alex will make some excuse to be here too, if the rest of you are running off to investigate a murder. Isn’t that true?”
Alex crossed her own arms. “Maybe.”
“Oh give it up, you two,” Jenna interjected. She shoved her unruly mass of hair back over her shoulder. “Matt already confessed that all your manly men worked it out after the winery murder that if we ever got involved in another one, they were going to make sure at least one of them was with us at all times.” She threw her hands up. “We can’t stop them, so we may as well put them to work.”
“It would have been nice to have been asked first,” Nicki said pointedly to Matt, who didn’t bother to hide his grin.
“No point in that. You’d have said ‘no way’, and we would have come along anyway, so it was faster to just go ahead and coordinate all our schedules and skip over the arguing.”
Giving up, for the moment at least, Nicki motioned toward the townhouse. “Let’s go in and I’ll make a big pot of coffee. We need to update the murder board with all the information we got out of Suzanne and the chief.”
“The chief? He told me he didn’t have anything,” Matt complained as the group trooped into the house and down the hallway toward the kitchen.
They gathered around the large island while Nicki took out several bottles of water and the coffee grinder from one of the cabinets. “He said Catherine’s daughter didn’t find anything missing.”
“Ramona’s in town?” Maxie frowned. “I thought she was spending her summer with friends in Europe. At least that’s what Catherine told me.”
“Apparently not. The chief said she went by Catherine’s house to check if anything was missing, and nothing was. Even her cash and credit cards were still in her purse, which I noticed was in plain view on the kitchen counter,” Nicki said.
“So a robber wasn’t after something quick and easy.” Matt ran a hand over the side of his face.
“Or it wasn’t a robbery at all,” Jenna put in. “What are you thinking, Nicki?”
She looked up while the coffee beans were grinding away and smiled. “I’m thinking we should add all the suspects Suzanne gave us to the murder board, and then maybe get ready to go out and have a bite to eat.”
“Go out?” Alex blinked. “Wouldn’t it be better to order in salads while we talked all this out?”
Jenna groaned. “You get your salad, I’m getting a burger.” Jenna had a huge weakness for a good hamburger, and the greasier the better. It was a constant source of good-natured argument between her and the health-conscious Alex, with Nicki usually siding with one or the other, depending on her mood.
“A hamburger sounds good,” Maxie said. “But I’m thinking Nicki has a sudden craving for Italian food?” She beamed when Nicki sent her a wink and a nod. “I’ll call Mario’s and put in a reservation for…” Maxie hesitated as she quickly did a count of bodies in the room. “Five, since myMason is playing poker with his friends tonight.”
“The earlier the better, Maxie,” Nicki said. “Alex has to drive home tonight because she’s on duty tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” Alex said. “I also want to be sure you put Suzanne on the suspect list.”
“What?” Jenna and Maxie said in unison as Alex vigorously nodded her head.
Nicki handed several mugs to Matt. “The coffee’s ready,” she called out to get their attention. “Matt can pour, and then we’ll all go into my office and talk a little bit of murder.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“What would anyone recommend?” Matt asked the group as he opened the menu at Antonio’s Ristorante, which was located very inconveniently, for anyone but locals and wine-tasting visitors, in downtown Arson. But despite that daunting drawback, it still drew enough clientele from the bigger cities of Sonoma
and Santa Rosa to do a brisk business, even on a weekday night.
The decor inside was both rustic and cliché, with wine decanters surrounded by plastic grapes adorning the walls in between paintings of scenes in Rome, Venice and a number of other picturesque cities in Italy. One wall had a large portrait of Mario, his wife and two children, standing in front of the famous Trevi fountain lit up at night. Lisa, Mario’s oldest daughter, had shown them to their seats, batting her eyes at Matt the whole way much to his embarrassment and the obvious enjoyment of his four female companions, who’d trailed behind with wide grins on their faces. Lisa had managed to even linger at the table for several minutes until their waiter had shooed her back to the hostess station near the front door.
“Everything here is pretty good,” Jenna said in response to Matt’s question. “And since three of us here, anyway, are used to the really superior Italian restaurants in New York City, that’s saying something.”
“Unless you’ve eaten at Osteria Francescana.” Nicki said. “It might be the best Italian restaurant in the world.”
Alex’s eyes sparkled just a little as she looked at Nicki. “Really? Are you planning on dining there any time soon?”
“Not at those prices.” Nicki inclined her head at her landlady. “Maxie’s eaten there.”
“You have?” Jenna raised an eyebrow at the older woman. “How much did that set you back?”
Maxie laughed. “Oh I’m sure the meal was well over five hundred dollars for two, and probably closer to one thousand with the wine. But I didn’t pay for it, of course. One of my genealogy clients did. She’s Swiss, extremely wealthy, and was very pleased with my work.”
Jenna shook her head in disbelief while Maxie turned a sunny smile on Matt.
“Our editor friend here has also eaten at Osteria Francescana. And probably more often than I have,” she announced as Matt hunched his shoulders and hid behind his menu.
Nicki blinked and then stared at him, her hazel eyes wide with surprise. “You have?”
Jenna reached around Nicki and pulled down the top of Matt’s menu. “Hello? Want to tell the rest of us peasants how you managed to dine out at a thousand-dollar restaurant not once but several times?”
“My grandmother lives in Italy,” Matt mumbled.
Nicki continued to stare at him. “You have an Italian grandmother named Dillon?”
Heaving a big sigh, Matt adjusted his glasses and looked around at the four faces turned in his direction. “No. I have an Italian grandmother named Gaspari. It was my mother’s maiden name.”
“And Lucia is as charming as her grandson.” Maxie nodded as she picked up her menu. “But a great deal richer, of course.”
Matt’s face turned a fire-engine red, and he slumped down in his chair even more as he shot Maxie a glare. Nicki smothered her laughter as Matt looked every bit like a ten-year-old boy who hated being the center of attention for all the wrong reasons.
“Oh sit up and be the gentleman I know you are, dear,” Maxie admonished. “If you’re going to pursue Nicki, then you’ll have to tell her something more personal sooner or later. You can’t always discuss the business of running an online magazine, and you certainly can’t expect to talk only about food and wine forever. That won’t get you anywhere.”
“Well. That’s certainly putting it right out there,” Jenna declared, lifting her wine glass in a salute to Maxie while Alex coughed discreetly into her napkin.
Nicki didn’t think it was possible, but Matt’s face turned even redder. He looked positively miserable, and she felt more than a little twinge of sympathy. She shook her head at Maxie who was perusing the menu, apparently oblivious to the very uncomfortable Matt sitting next to her.
“Maxie, stop teasing him. He’s outnumbered and, as you said, way too much of a gentleman to contradict you in front of other people.” Nicki shifted her gaze from her landlady to Matt. “Don’t pay any attention to them. We tease each other all the time. If you want to stick around and be Dr. Watson, then you’ll have to get used to it.” She quickly picked up her menu and dropped her voice to a loud whisper. “Shh, everyone. Here comes Mario. Remember why we’re here.”
“To get something to eat?” Jenna said, still grinning at Matt when Alex gave her a nudge under the table with her foot.
“Shh,” Nicki repeated before putting on a properly sober look as Mario came up to the table. Short and slightly balding with a large belly, Mario had a snow-white apron tied around his waist and showed a toothy smile underneath his drooping mustache.
“Nicki, Nicki!” He grabbed one of her hands and clasped it to his chest with both of his. “I should have called you to be sure you were all right. I shall forever feel like a goat for sending you to check on poor Catherine rather than go myself.” He gave her hand a hard enough squeeze that it almost brought tears to her eyes. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Matt suddenly stood up and stuck out his hand. “I’m Matt Dillon.”
Nicki gave a sigh of relief when Mario was forced to let her hand go in order to shake Matt’s.
“Since I have already met the boyfriend on several occasions here at my ristorante, you are her brother?” Mario looked from Matt to Nicki. “Or a cousin perhaps?”
“Not hardly,” Jenna murmured right before Nicki cut her off.
“He’s my editor at Food & Wine Online,” she quickly supplied along with a sharp warning glance at Jenna. She wasn’t at all surprised when Mario gave Matt’s hand another enthusiastic shake. After all, Matt Dillon’s online magazine had a large subscriber base, and a word of praise on its website was worth a lot of business to that fortunate restaurant or winery.
“You are that Matt Dillon,” Mario gushed.
Nicki lifted a hand to hide her smile. Matt’s mother had been a big fan of the old TV western, Gunsmoke, and named her son after the leading character, Marshal Matt Dillon. Nicki doubted very much if Mario had ever heard of anyone else by that name, so she was fairly certain her editor was the only “Matt Dillon” that Mario had ever met.
“I should have known when you came in with Nicki. Are you here on business?” Mario asked, an eager note in his voice.
“Not tonight,” Matt told an immediately crestfallen Mario. “But I’ll be in town for a while.”
“Mario,” Maxie said, drawing his attention. “Won’t you sit down for a few minutes and keep Nicki company while Jenna and I give our visitors a short, lovely tour of the square? I promised Matt I would show him our world-famous grape statue.” Maxie rose and pulled Alex up with her.
“Great idea,” Jenna said, getting to her feet and jerking her head at Matt. “Let’s go see what the grapes look like at sunset.”
“Yes,” Alex chimed in, turning a megawatt smile on the restaurant owner. “Nicki’s still distraught from finding Catherine the way that she did. And so soon after the last body she stumbled across. It would do her a world of good to be able to talk to you.”
Matt put his hands on the stuttering Mario’s shoulders and all but shoved him into a chair next to Nicki. “Thanks. We appreciate it and I’m sure Nicki will too.”
Nicki rolled her eyes when she heard Maxie say, “Don’t you think that was a little harder than necessary, dear?” And even kept her smile in place at Matt’s curt “no” before he ushered all three women out the door. She looked out the big window that was behind Mario and watched them cross the street that was still busy with late afternoon traffic before disappearing into the square.
“I’m sorry you had such an upset.” Mario gave her hand lying on the table a firm pat. “It must have been very unpleasant.”
“It was. And shocking.” Nicki lowered her voice and quickly put her hand in her lap to keep him from giving it another bone-crunching squeeze. “Mario, I don’t understand why she went home? When we found her, it looked like she was eating her dinner, but why didn’t she eat here?”
He gave an expressive shrug of his shoulders. “It was her dinner break. Maybe she didn’t want
to spend her dinner break with the rest of us. I didn’t ask her.”
“Did she always order food from the restaurant and then take it home to eat during her dinner break?”
Mario’s eyes squinted a bit when he looked at her. “She didn’t take any food home with her. At least not from my ristorante.”
“Are you sure?” Nicki pressed.
He gave another shrug. “I walked to the door with her to find a time when we could talk some business. She only had her purse. No food.”
Nicki frowned. She wouldn’t have left it in her car because her house was an easy walk from the restaurant. And Nicki was sure that pasta was from Mario’s. “Is there another restaurant in the area that serves langoustine?”
“Certainly not.” Mario puffed his chest out and raised his chin. “No other restaurant from here to San Francisco serves it besides Mario’s. Have you seen such a fine meal somewhere else?”
“No, I haven’t,” Nicki said, filing that away as she tried another topic. “Catherine told me she’d bought an interest in your restaurant.” She ignored the sudden stiffness in Mario’s expression. “She also said you wanted to buy it back.” Which was a little stretch of the truth. Nicki had actually learned that from Suzanne during the distraught woman’s litany of ungrateful acts against her best friend.
“This is my son’s legacy. I never should have allowed an outsider to buy a piece of it.” Mario looked away and Nicki spied his clenched fists which weren’t quite hidden by the tablecloth. “I explained this to Catherine, so she would understand and sell her interest back to me.”
“Did she agree?” Nicki asked.
“Not yet, but I’m sure she would have very soon.” Mario returned his gaze to Nicki’s face. “That last night, she asked about my son. She wanted to know if he was going to take extra classes in the wine section of his culinary school.” A smile slowly crept onto his lips. “He is going to the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. One of the best schools in the world. It’s where you went, yes?”
