Carlita’s face lit up. “Of course. I want you to rave about them.” She reached under the counter and brought out the tupperware container. “Have two.”
Jordan reached with both hands for the cake pops. It only took one bite for her to know that even if she didn’t get the recipe right then, these little goodies were worth the trip back. After she devoured both of them, she declined Carlita’s offer to wipe her hands on the towel and dragged her hands down the sides of her shorts.
“I wanted to tell you about how I came up with this recipe,” Carlita began. “One day I was making my favorite Italian cream cake, and it didn’t turn out so well.” She frowned. “My oven was on the fritz, and the middle of the cake caved in. There was no way I could ice it that way, so I decided to crumble it up and make a dessert out of it. That’s when I got the idea to turn it into cake balls. It was almost worth the money I had to put out for a new oven to get this recipe perfected.” She patted the tupperware, making Jordan wish for one more pop.
“That’s a terrific story,” Jordan said. “I’ll make sure I use it.”
Carlita reached under the counter and pulled out a notepad. She opened it up, tore out a page, and handed it to Jordan. “Here. I wrote it down as soon as you walked away. I thought for sure you’d come back for it.”
Jordan snatched the paper from her hand as if it were made of gold. “My friend got an important phone call, and we had to leave right away,” she lied. “That’s why I decided to come back and talk with you tonight. The more I know about you, the better the article will be. I’d also like to include a small piece about your sister.” She paused to scan the booths close by but didn’t see another woman who looked like Carlita. “And you said she also has a booth?”
Carlita pointed to an empty stand across the fairway. “Hers is over there with the other food vendors. But she went back to the hotel already. Said she had a headache from the heat.”
Jordan tried to hide her disappointment. She’d been looking forward to tasting the famous pizza bread. “Too bad. I would have liked to have chatted with her, too. It will make for great reading if I can showcase both of you in my column.”
“Ginny will be back tomorrow morning if you want to come by. But you’d better make it early. Like I said, she doesn’t do well in the heat.”
“I’ll do that,” Jordan replied, thinking she’d get Victor to run out there with her sometime before lunch the next day. The man loved free food more than she did.
Taking another glance around the food court, Jordan spotted the guy Georgette had been arguing with earlier standing by himself near the beverage station a few booths down from Ginny’s Chicken Cacciatore booth. She turned back to Carlita and pointed in that direction. “I’ve got to run and talk to him. Tell your sister I’ll be by in the morning to get her story.”
“That’s Frankie O’Brien,” Carlita said, her gaze following Jordan’s pointed finger. “He’s Georgette Calabrese’s son.”
Jordan had already started toward Frankie but turned back immediately. “Georgette and Emilio have a son?”
“Frankie was Georgette’s son from her first marriage, and from what I hear, he’s a total loser. No wonder Calabrese doesn’t want him running his business.”
“What do you mean?”
Carlita leaned closer as if there was a chance that the man she was about to talk about could hear her. “I heard Frankie’s tried every job in Emilio’s shipping business. Apparently, he hasn’t lasted with any one of them. Rumor has it that Emilio once joked he’d pay good money just to keep the boy out of the business.”
Jordan’s mind ran wild after that statement, and she remembered bits of the conversation between Georgette and her son when she and Natalie approached them earlier that day. Georgette had said something about now being the perfect opportunity for him to show Emilio that he could take charge. Could she have been implying that Marco’s death might be to Frankie’s advantage?
It might not be a smoking gun, but it could be interpreted as a possible motive for wanting Marco Petrone out of the way. Marco had been about to marry Tina Calabrese and become part of Emilio’s family. If Carlita was right about Emilio not trusting his stepson with his business, Marco would be the perfect candidate to take over. And from the way Emilio had been willing to overlook the man’s indiscretions the night of the party, it certainly didn’t look to be much of a stretch.
That had to make Georgette and her son angry, knowing Emilio was planning to crown an outsider as the heir apparent to his empire and totally disrespect his own stepson.
But was it enough to commit murder?
Anxious to get over and talk to Frankie more than ever now, Jordan waved goodbye to Carlita and told her she’d see her in the morning. Nearly sprinting to get to Frankie just in case he decided to leave, she approached him, out of breath, and tapped his shoulder.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the reporter who was here earlier.”
Frankie turned around to face her, his face pinched with irritation. As soon as he saw her, he smiled, letting his eyes travel up and down her body, making her wish she hadn’t worn cutoffs and a sleeveless top.
“I don’t know what you said to my mother, but whatever it was left her in a foul mood the entire afternoon.” He leaned in close enough that Jordan could tell he’d been drinking.
She allowed herself a few minutes to check him out before responding. Frankie O’Brien stood a little over six feet and was of average build. She wasn’t an expert, but she’d bet the man had never seen the inside of the gym, nor had he participated in any sort of manual labor.
She decided to ignore the reference to Georgette and Natalie’s altercation. “So, I’ve been told you’re high up in the Calabrese shipping business. Is that right?”
The smile on his face couldn’t have gotten any wider, and Jordan mentally high-fived herself for knowing how to butter him up.
“That would be correct. I’m in on all the important decisions the company makes.” He leaned even closer, and Jordan took a step backward.
If what Carlita had said was true, this guy was lying through his teeth. And at the moment, Jordan was inclined to believe Carlita.
“Impressive,” she said, not daring to say what she really wanted to. “So you’re a big part of the festival?”
“That’s right, sweetie, but I can still find time to party every now and then.” He did another scan of her body, lingering on her chest before his eyes moved up to her face. “How about you joining me for dinner and drinks at the hotel right now? I’ll show you how I let my hair down.”
Sheesh! The man didn’t even know her name, and he was already propositioning her. No wonder Emilio gravitated to Marco instead of him. But then again, Marco had a reputation as a womanizer, too.
“Sorry. I’ve already eaten, and I have an article to get ready for the newspaper.” She hoped he didn’t hear her stomach which decided to growl at that precise moment.
Frankie touched her shoulder and let his fingers slide down her arm. “Too bad. I have a pretty good feeling you and I would hit it off, sweetie.”
Jordan gritted her teeth, thinking if he called her sweetie one more time, she’d barf. She had to get him talking about Marco instead of concentrating on putting the moves on her. She wanted to get out of there as fast as she could.
“So were you and Marco friends?” She watched his face, knowing his first reaction would tell the story.
And it did.
His brows narrowed into a V in the middle of his forehead. “Marco was engaged to my sister, but I wouldn’t say we were friends.”
“That’s funny. Someone told me that Emilio was grooming Marco for a high-level position in the company. I would think that since you were going to be working closely with him, you’d be friends. After all, he was about to become your brother-in-law.” She knew that was really reaching, but she hoped he’d take the bait.
“Friends don’t sleep with your mother,” he blurted
before snapping his mouth shut and looking away.
But it was the perfect opening for Jordan—and she moved in quickly. “Did that make you mad enough to push Marco over the railing?”
This time Frankie didn’t even try to hide his rage. “Listen, sweetie, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but let me set you straight. I was the one who introduced my sister to Marco. Why would I want to kill him?”
“So you were friends?”
“Business partners. We…” He stopped and smiled before pulling out a flask and taking a drink, then offering it to her. When she declined he said, “So what about tomorrow night? The hotel serves a mean ribeye.” This time when he touched her shoulder, she moved away.
There was no way she was going anywhere with this guy—not even for a free dinner at the swanky hotel. And especially not for a steak. She hadn’t eaten one of those since she was a teenager and her dad had forced her to try a rare one. The image of blood on the plate still gave her shivers. “Can’t tomorrow, either.” She took one last shot. “What did you mean when you said you and Marco were only business partners? Are you part of Marco’s import/export business as well?”
Frankie stared at her for a moment then shook his head. “You misunderstood me. I never said we were business partners.”
“Yes, you did.”
His face was flushed with anger, his fists clenched at his side. Jordan had seen enough angry men in her life to know that the man standing in front of her was about to explode. She knew she should back off, but if Frankie O’Brien knew anything at all that might help Kate, she wasn’t about to leave until she found out what it was.
“I misspoke. With Marco marrying into the family soon, it was family business,” he said, simply. “Now, if you’re not going to have dinner with me, I need to get back to what I was doing.” He turned and walked away, leaving Jordan to ponder if finishing off that flask in his shirt pocket was part of that plan. Maybe she should stick around until he was good and liquored up and got chatty.
Deciding that was a bad idea, she returned to her car, wondering why Frankie had lied to her—first about being a bigwig in Calabrese’s company and then about denying he and Marco were business partners after he had just admitted they were.
Business partners in what? She had no idea, but she was darn well going to find out. She had a gut feeling it might be something helpful to Kate’s defense.
A partnership gone bad was a perfect motive for murder.
CHAPTER TEN
On Monday morning Jordan was surprised to see the older woman who used to occupy the cubicle next to hers settled into another space on the other side of the newsroom. Given the woman hadn’t said two words to her the entire time she’d been a Ranchero Globe employee despite Jordan’s frequent attempts to make nice, it wasn’t hard to figure out she’d probably asked to be moved.
Oh well! With the exception of her friend Sandy who worked a couple of rows over, nobody else had gone out of their way to get warm and fuzzy with her, either. Sandy had suggested that since most of them had been at the Globe since high school, perhaps they saw her as an outsider and a threat to their jobs.
Sheesh! Like writing the personals was the job she’d deliberately try to steal from anyone!
But if she really thought about it, she could see how that misconception might have originated. She’d only been on the job for two months when Dwayne Egan had called her into his office and offered her the culinary column. Although he’d done it because of her journalism degree and success as a sports reporter at the University of Texas, it wasn’t difficult to see why they might feel a little snubbed because he’d chosen an outsider over one of their own. She wished she could stand on her chair and holler that she had no interest in taking any other job—except maybe a position reporting in the sports department—but she knew that would only further alienate her coworkers.
“Are you ready for the write-off this week, Red?”
Jordan snapped out of her daydreaming in time to see Loretta Moseley drop a box on the empty desk beside her. She prayed Loretta had stopped by to torment her and was not really planning to take over that spot. Competing with the woman was one thing—having her just an arm’s length away while doing it was an entirely different story.
It didn’t take long to realize that her nightmare was coming true. As she watched in horror, Loretta began unloading items from the box and placing them on the empty shelf above the computer.
Crap!
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Jordan responded, turning away so Loretta wouldn’t notice how worried she really was.
When she’d agreed to compete with the woman who’d originally written the column for so many years, she’d asked Egan what would happen if Loretta won her job back. She couldn’t quit thinking about his response. He’d implied that Jordan would be demoted back to writing only the personals—or worse.
“Good. Even with your best stuff, you don’t stand a chance. I had dinner with Uncle Earl and Aunt Sarah last night, and I can tell you there’s no way that man will pick you over me.” She turned and gave Jordan a mock salute. “Goodbye, Red. It was nice knowing you—not!
“I wouldn’t get too comfy over there, Loretta,” Jordan fired back, surprised by the woman’s cheeky attitude. “I established a pretty good fan base while you were gone. They might not take too kindly to me getting canned.”
Loretta laughed. “You’re forgetting that they were my fans long before you came on the scene.”
Jordan could have reminded her that only half the people now following her column belonged in that category. Since she started printing Rosie’s and Ray’s great recipes, subscriptions to the newspaper had doubled. Technically, only half of the followers belonged to the arrogant reporter she’d now have to look at every day—or at least until one of them got the boot.
“No response to that, Red?”
Jordan smiled, thinking Loretta would probably win out in the end, but there was no way she’d go down without a fight. She mentally crossed her fingers that Carlita’s Italian Cream Cake Pops were as big a hit as she hoped. It could turn out to be her secret weapon.
Thinking about the cake pops, Jordan remembered she was supposed to swing by and talk to Carlita’s sister. Glancing at her watch, she silently cursed. It was already after ten and Carlita had said her sister would only be there until the Texas sun got too hot. The window to interview her about what she might have seen at the party the night Marco was killed was closing by the minute.
Grabbing her purse from the drawer, Jordan stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going for an early lunch, and then I have an interview. If Egan calls, tell him I’ll be back around three.”
Loretta’s eyes widened. “Who are you interviewing?”
Jordan smiled to herself. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” She couldn’t resist a quick peek over her shoulder.
Yes! she mouthed, seeing the concern in Loretta’s eyes. It made her day knowing she’d wiped the cocky grin off her rival’s face. She almost turned around to comment on that, then decided to play it cool and let it slide. Her time for gloating would come when Egan named her as the culinary reporter, although that would take a lot of great recipes to win out over the nepotism advantage—aka Uncle Earl.
It was only three blocks to Yesterday’s Treasures, Victor’s antiques store, and she headed that way first. She’d meant to ask if he’d go with her to question Carlita’s sister when she’d returned from the fairgrounds the night before, but he and Michael hadn’t been home. Then she’d gotten so engrossed in starting Thursday’s column, she’d forgotten to go back over to his apartment later.
Sliding into the only available parking space in front of the antiques store, Jordan turned off the motor, climbed out of the car, and walked into the store. Victor was with a middle-aged couple who were examining a bedroom set in the far corner of the store. He looked up and waved whe
n he saw her approaching, then turned his back to the couple and rolled his eyes.
Jordan bit her lip to stifle a grin. The one thing Victor hated was a customer who didn’t know antiques and only saw them as overpriced old things. She’d bet money she was looking right now at two who fit that category.
“We love it, but you’ll have to come down at least two hundred,” the man said.
Victor pressed his lips together, and Jordan braced herself for his sarcastic comeback. Instead, he simply shook his head. “This is a fair price. I can show you a less expensive set if you want.”
The woman whispered something into the man’s ear before he said, “No, we really like this one. Is that your final offer?”
Victor nodded, sneaking a sideways glance Jordan’s way.
Again the woman whispered to her husband and then turned to Victor. “We’ll leave our phone number with you. If this set doesn’t sell and you’re willing to come down on the price, give us a call.” She pulled out a business card and handed it to him before they made their way to the door.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Victor exclaimed when he glanced down at the card. “These people own Bubbles Champagne Bar in McKinley. Last I heard, that place was packing ‘em in every night, and yet they’re trying to squeeze me out of a lousy few hundred bucks.” He tsked. “I paid good money for this set.”
“Isn’t this part of the new haul you got at the estate sale over in Greenville last weekend? The stuff you said made you feel like you should go to confession because you got it for such a steal?” She tried unsuccessfully to hide the amused look she knew had to be all over her face.
“A guy’s got to make a living, Jordan. I have overhead.” He giggled. “So what brings your smart-mouthed self down here at this time of day?”
“Had lunch yet?”
“No, and I only had an English muffin for breakfast. Want to run by the new all-you-can-eat place near the mall and pig out?”
“I’m thinking more along the lines of free chicken cacciatore and pizza bread.”
Chicken Caccia-Killer (A Jordan McAllister Mystery) Page 9
