Scam Chowder

by Maya Corrigan

  Val gave Ned two biscotti on a plate. He’d known her grandfather long enough to realize that the Codger Cook couldn’t cook. “Someone might have poisoned Scott before he came to dinner.”

  “Or a guest at the dinner did it. The police should investigate Lillian and Thomasina.”

  If Val had antennae, they would have quivered. “I want to hear more about that. First, I have to get some stuff from the fridge.” She hated to keep walking away from Ned, but she didn’t want to keep her customers waiting.

  Ned watched her put the hummus and veggies on the counter. “You may not know this, Val, but everyone out at the Village talks about what they used to do. Folks there know I ran a hardware store. If they have some small thing that needs fixing and they don’t want to wait for the Village maintenance crew to get around to it, they come to me because I have the tools and skills.”

  “Uh-huh.” Val wasn’t sure what this had to do with Lillian and Thomasina. Maybe Ned just needed to talk, but she needed to work. She spread hummus on the two wraps.

  Five teenagers came into the café, two boys and three girls. They shoved two bistro tables together and rearranged the chairs.

  Ned dunked a biscotti in his coffee. “A lot of the women at the Village were teachers or nurses. The ones who didn’t work for a living talk about what their husbands did. Well, Lillian and Thomasina never talk about the past. I don’t know what they did for a living or what their husbands did.”

  Val tucked peppers, cucumbers, and sprouts into the wraps. “You think they’re hiding something?”

  “Could be. The police should look into those two. Your grandfather wouldn’t like it if I stuck my nose into this and talked to the police about his lady friend.”

  “He wouldn’t like it any better if I did it.” She took the quiche from the oven. “I know you told my mother your concerns about Lillian. I passed that information to the chief. But could you please not tell her about the chowder dinner and Scott’s death? I don’t want her worried.”

  “As long as you know and you’ll take care of it, I don’t have any reason to call her.”

  Val delivered the lunches to the three women in the café and returned to the counter. She gave Ned her cell phone number. The next time he wanted to talk to her without her grandfather knowing about it, he wouldn’t have to drive to the café.

  “Hey, there’s no burgers or fries on the menu here. No hot dogs either.” The heavier of the two teenage boys waved the café’s menu. “Food fascism.”

  “Better than food fatism,” the girl sitting next to him said.

  Ned glanced back at the teenagers. His dark eyebrows almost met over the bridge of his nose. “I hope they never learn what fascism really is. Going back to Lillian and Thomasina, I can take some guesses about what they used to do. Lillian doesn’t talk about herself, but she tells folks any medical news she’s read. I think she worked in a health field.”

  “I got the same impression,” Val said, remembering how Lillian knew not only the name of what Granddad called upchuck syrup, but also how long it had been off the market. “What about Thomasina?”

  “She goes to all the dance classes at the Village. Her footwork is better than the teacher’s. Some people call her Twinkle Toes Thomasina. She was the star of the talent show with her tap dancing. I figure she must have been an entertainer.”

  Val could test Ned’s conclusions through some trivia questions. “Tomorrow I’m going to run the Brain Game at the Village. If you see Lillian or Thomasina, encourage them to go. I’ll come up with some medical and entertainment trivia to see if they know more than the average person.”

  “Thomasina may not want to go this week, but Lillian will probably be there. Me too. We’re regulars.”

  “Do you socialize much with them?”

  “Lillian keeps to herself. Thomasina goes to a lot of events. The Sunday ice-cream social and the Saturday wine and cheese. I was there last Saturday. She told me Scott was picking her up from there to take her to your grandfather’s house. That’s how I knew about the dinner.”

  And found out Granddad had left him out. “Are you and Granddad all squared away about that?”

  “We’re good now.”

  Val excused herself from Ned, approached the teenagers, and asked if they were ready to order. One girl wanted a Cobb salad. Another one requested a peanut butter and banana sandwich on walnut raisin bread. The girl opposed to food fatism asked for raw vegetables with a hummus dip. The two boys wanted ham and cheese on pumpernickel and sweet potato chips.

  She turned to go back to the counter.

  “Can I get someone to wait on me here?” The question came from a young woman lolling on the armless settee in the corner. She’d taken over the largest table in the café for herself. Val must have had her back turned when the woman came into the café. Otherwise, she couldn’t have missed seeing her. The woman’s black spiky hair had a streak of purple in it, her lips and nose had piercings, and she wore a white ribbed tank top resembling a man’s undershirt, perfect to show off her bulging biceps. Instead of the caveman-diet food Val expected her to order, the woman chose a Greek salad.

  Val went back to the counter. She made the Greek salad quickly and delivered it to the musclewoman in the corner. Then she tackled the teenagers’ orders.

  Ned cradled his coffee mug. “Your granddad asked me to find out more about the man who committed suicide at that other retirement place. I’ll talk to the woman at the Village who told us about it.”

  “Ask her the name and location of that place. Thomasina moved to the Village from another retirement community, but she didn’t say which one.”

  Ned stirred his coffee with what was left of his biscotti. “What are you thinking? That if Scott gave seminars there and bilked a man of his life savings, his mother might have lived in the community?”

  “Right. Did she ever encourage you to invest with him?”

  “She did the opposite. She told everyone Scott made a lot of money for other people, but she didn’t want anyone at the Village to take his investment advice. She was afraid if the market went down, folks there might blame her.”

  That didn’t sound as if Thomasina had been her son’s accomplice, but he might have had a less obvious partner in crime. “While you’re at it, try to find out if Lillian lived at that other place, but don’t tell Granddad I asked you to do that.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.” He pushed his empty mug toward her on the counter. “Thanks for the snack. See you tomorrow at the Brain Game.”

  “Thanks for stopping by, Ned, and please come again.”

  She finished making lunches for the teenagers and delivered them to their table.

  A shriek came from the woman at the corner table who’d ordered a Greek salad. “There’s a worm in my salad!” She pointed to her plate.

  Val zoomed to the woman’s table.

  One teenage boy beat her there. “Hey, look at that. It’s green, with dark stripes and black bumps.”

  Val peered at the plate of tomatoes, cucumbers, Greek olives, red onions, and feta cheese. A yellowish green critter an inch long sat on a bright red tomato. “It’s an earworm.”

  “Ew.” The woman clapped a hand over her much-pierced ear as if expecting the worm to grow wings and fly into it.

  “Not that kind of ear. When you shuck an ear of corn, you often find one near the tip. It’s actually a caterpillar.” And it would grow wings eventually. But how had it gotten into the salad? Val would have seen it when she was slicing the tomatoes and cucumbers. It certainly hadn’t arrived with the onions, olives, and feta cheese. She reached for the plate. “I’ll give you a new salad.”

  The woman pulled it away from her. “No, you won’t. I’m showing this to the manager. And I don’t want any more of your food with disgusting things in it.” She marched out of the café. Val wanted to follow her and defend herself, but she still had customers—though she wondered for how long. The two women with veggie wraps opened th
em up and peered inside.

  Val felt as if she’d stumbled onto the set of a play starring the musclewoman and her pet earworm. Act Three of Café Sabotage.

  The boys at the teens’ table were deconstructing their sandwiches, probably in search of crawling things.

  The girl who’d ordered a Cobb salad pushed it away. “I really don’t want to eat this. Could I have a smoothie instead?”

  The chubby boy guffawed. “If there’s a worm in the smoothie, it’ll be chopped so small you won’t even notice it.”

  Val had no choice. “Order whatever you like. Your lunch is free. All of you.”

  With that incentive, the five teens decided to risk drinking a wormy smoothie.

  After the café closed, the manager came in with the plate the complaining woman had shown him, now minus the salad and the earworm. With a temperament as even as his perfect tan, he usually greeted people with a smile worthy of a tooth whitener ad. Today his mouth was closed in a grim line. He asked Val the origin of her salad ingredients.

  He winced at her answer. “An organic farm market? No wonder. From now on, Val, check the produce from that market carefully or buy somewhere else.”

  If she argued that a total stranger had planted a worm in a salad, he’d ask why anyone would do that, and she had no answer. “Is the woman who ordered the salad a new member? I never saw her at the club before today.”

  “She bought a daily membership. But this isn’t the first complaint I’ve heard about things crawling in the café.”

  Could she persuade him those complaints had been trumped up? “On Monday, I found a dead fish in my car. This morning, I slipped on water someone threw on the floor here. The complaints about the café are just part of a campaign against me.”

  His raised eyebrows conveyed skepticism. “Did anyone see you fall?”

  “No.”

  Did he think she was lying, paranoid, playing for his sympathy . . . or all three? She couldn’t tell. With a curt nod, he turned on his heel and left.

  She envisioned her follow-on café contract slipping away. It was obvious who would benefit if she lost the contract—Irene. Maybe she’d hired the musclewoman to plant a worm in the salad.

  As Val put together a breakfast casserole to be baked in the morning, Bethany called to confirm that she’d work from ten to two tomorrow if Val still needed her. Val certainly did. Between playing a tennis ladder match this afternoon and meeting with Junie May this evening, she wouldn’t have much time to come up with the questions for the Brain Game unless Bethany relieved her at the café. Val told her about the water on the floor and described the woman who’d claimed to find an earworm in the salad. Unless the purple streak in the woman’s hair turned green and the piercings disappeared overnight, Bethany would recognize her and watch out for trouble.

  Val took extra care cleaning the café, making sure nothing was crawling around. When she finished, she had just enough time to change into her tennis shorts and rush out to the courts.

  A pair of teenage boys played on one court. A woman stood alone near the net on the far court, a tall blonde in a body-hugging white tennis dress. That had to be Val’s opponent, Petra Bramling.

  As Val approached the court, she recognized the woman from her intricate French braid—Gunnar’s ex-fiancée.

  Chapter 15

  Val and Petra introduced themselves and shook hands. They didn’t mention their connection to Gunnar, but they didn’t need to. Petra could have challenged any of the twenty women on the tennis ladder. Challenging Val was no coincidence.

  Val couldn’t control whether Gunnar returned to his fiancée, but she could control this match. So what if Petra had legs six inches longer? Most of Val’s opponents had height in their favor. With good anticipation and stamina, she could prevail over taller players.

  Trouble began early in the match. The first time Petra called Val’s shot out when it was good, Val chalked it up to a mistake, possibly her own. After all, her opponent had a better view of where the ball had hit the court. The second time it happened, Petra was dead wrong. Val’s shot had gone exactly where she’d aimed it—inside the line. But she didn’t question the call and even gave Petra’s shots the benefit of the doubt when they hit just outside the line. Experience had taught Val that generous line calls encouraged the opponent to reciprocate.

  Other opponents. Not this one.

  The third time Petra made a bad call, the ball was so far in the court that Val couldn’t let it go. “Are you sure that ball was out?”

  “Positive. I call the lines on this side of the net. You call the lines on your side.”

  Okay, no more charitable line calls for her. Competitive juices gushed through Val like a rain-swollen stream. She blasted shots across the net and made Petra work for every point, running her from one side of the court to another. She was so fired up that she sometimes overhit, giving away a point. The score stood at four to two in Val’s favor when Petra announced it in her own favor and immediately served the ball. Val hit the return into the net, distracted by the incorrect score.

  “You made a mistake in the game score,” Val called out as Petra prepared to serve again. “You have two games. I have four.”

  “That’s not true. I’m winning.” Petra served the ball before Val could get into position to return it. “Now I’m ahead thirty-love in this game.”

  Val felt her blood pressure rising. She approached the net. “When I served the previous game, I announced the score as three-two. Then I won that game, making it four-two in my favor.”

  Petra joined her at the net. “I didn’t hear you say that score, or I would have corrected it. And I won that last game, not you.”

  Val felt rattled. Could she have announced the wrong score? Possibly, but probably not. She’d never done that before. What’s more, she remembered every point of the previous game. “I can refresh your memory about that last game. I won the first two points on the serve—”

  Petra twirled her racket. “The score is four-two, thirty-love. Let’s play . . . unless you’re giving up.”

  Val’s teeth clenched. “We have to agree on the score before continuing.”

  Petra looked down her nose at Val. “You might as well give up. You don’t seriously think you can compete with me. I always win.”

  Not talking tennis here, are we? “I’ve seen how you win . . . by cheating.” Val walked off the court, her racket tucked under her arm.

  “Winning is winning,” Petra said. “And you just defaulted.”

  Val went to Yumiko’s office and told her what had happened. The tennis manager said she’d talk to Petra and try to resolve what must have been a misunderstanding.

  Good luck with that. “No misunderstanding. She was cheating. She’ll tell you I’m a sore loser and defaulted. You know me better than that, and you don’t know her at all. So whose version will you believe?”

  “She is the customer, Val. You work here. The customer is always right. If you cannot reach agreement, her name will replace yours on the tennis ladder.” Yumiko pointed to the ladder list posted on her bulletin board. “You can speak to the club manager if you like.”

  Not a good idea, given how low Val’s stock with the manager had sunk. “Don’t involve him. I accept your decision.” Val pivoted, took a few steps, and turned back to Yumiko. “When Petra Bramling first came to the club, she asked for Gunnar. You sent her to the café. Did you talk to her after that?”

  “Yes, later that day. She said she went to the café and the woman working at the counter didn’t know Gunnar. She must have spoken to Bethany. I told her your name and what you looked like. You were in the café too, she said, and heard her asking about Gunnar.”

  “I didn’t hear her.” Petra must have declared war on Val from that moment on. “I wish you had told me that the woman who challenged me was the one who asked about Gunnar.”

  “She did not give me her name the day she asked about him. I’m sorry the match turned out so bad for you.”<
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  Val went back to the Cool Down Café. She made a cranberry spritzer and took it to the corner table. The bad taste in her mouth from the tennis match disappeared quickly. The match had told what she couldn’t have guessed earlier—that Petra hadn’t succeeded in winning Gunnar back . . . yet. If she had, she wouldn’t have bothered with the tennis confrontation. She’d acted out of frustration on the court, using tactics that couldn’t possibly get her what she wanted, but revealed her character.

  Petra played dirty. She would relish harassing Val, and all the dirty tricks had happened since Petra came to town. She could have found out what kind of car Val drove by following her to the parking lot after the café closed on Sunday. Easy to imagine Gunnar’s ex thrusting a fish into a car, complaining about the café food, and throwing water on the floor, but Val couldn’t pin the salad worm on her . . . unless the musclewoman was Petra’s friend or even a relative. Both women had pinched features and steely eyes. Or was that just wishful thinking? Yes. Val was getting carried away because of her annoyance over the tennis match. She couldn’t prove Gunnar’s ex guilty of harassment.

  She phoned Bethany and asked her to be on the lookout for both Petra and the musclewoman at the café tomorrow. Bethany said she’d keep her phone handy. If she saw the dirty-tricks suspects together, she’d snap a picture of them with her camera.

  Val doubted the two would be stupid enough to hang out with each other anywhere at the club. Her phone rang a minute after she hung up with Bethany. The New York sommelier whose cookbook she’d publicized was returning her call.

  “Hey, Val. Got your message. Yow!” Brakes screeched and horns blared. “I’m in a cab. Some idiot nearly sideswiped us. What can I do for you?”

  He sounded in a hurry. She’d better get to the point fast. “Do you happen to know a sommelier named Omar Azamov? He works in the D.C. area.”