“About?”
“Kickbacks,” Mona said impatiently. She wanted to hear what Nolan had told the rest of the committee. “Evelyn wanted him to give her ten percent of the gross sales total in cash when she delivered the check from this committee. Then I asked the florists if they would put in writing what she’d said and done and they did and I gave it to Nolan and told him he’d better fire her,” Mona said loudly. She was pleased to see other committee members nodding as if to confirm her story. At least Nolan hadn’t tried to take credit for catching Evelyn Edwards all by himself. “The florists all said they didn’t mind taking someone out to dinner or giving them a bouquet for a big job but this gala was for the city, not some big corporation, and it seemed like she was stealing from everyone,” Mona explained.
“I don’t get it,” Heaven said. “Why did she, instead of an established Kansas City event planner, get this job?”
Mona turned to her friend with eyebrows arched. “Why, indeed. There are plenty of mysteries about this whole thing. We’ve all tried to keep our noses out of them and just take care of our own little areas of responsibility. Now, it seems we were wrong.”
A voice boomed from the direction of the door. “You got that right, honey. Wrong is what that piece of Tulsa trailer trash is, if she thinks she’s gonna get a cent out of Miss Ella!”
Heaven had never laid eyes on Miss Ella Jackson before, although they had recently talked on the phone. Miss Ella’s Soul Food was a Harlem fixture, famous for its catfish and cornbread. Two years ago, Ella had branched out and opened cafes in Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago. Kansas City was going to be home to the fifth Miss Ella’s, and the location was the new historic Eighteenth and Vine district. The grand opening was to coincide with the dedication.
Miss Ella was big, black, and beautiful. She had on a vintage dress from the forties. Heaven recognized it as what People magazine called her trademark fashion statement. What’s more, she had on vintage accessories, long black gloves, a sassy hat with feathers, platform heels. Her hair was marcelled. She was a knockout, and it was only a Tuesday. Heaven wondered what happened when she wanted to really strut her stuff on a Saturday night.
Right now, Miss Ella was angry. “Which one of you is Heaven Lee?” she asked. Smoke was practically coming out of her ears.
Heaven got up and held out her hand. “Well, this wasn’t exactly the face-to-face meeting I’d planned, but I’m brave. I’m Heaven Lee.”
“Why’d you sic that crazy woman on me, sugar? Surely you didn’t think Ella was a fool, now, did you?” Ella grabbed Heaven’s hand and pulled her close. The rest of the room tensed. The gesture had something erotic about it, and an element of danger, too. Was she going to slap Heaven or kiss her?
Mona walked toward the door, using hand signals to tell Heaven she was going to use the phone. What a chicken Mona was, Heaven thought.
Heaven used her free hand to pull a chair back from the conference table. She deftly guided Ella to the chair, and when she sat down, Heaven sat beside her. “Let me guess. Evelyn Edwards wanted a kickback from your catering?”
“And made no bones about it, girl,” Ella said. “Aren’t you in charge of how the food goes down for this weekend?”
Heaven nodded. “Ella, we just found out that Evelyn is hitting up some of the other vendors for money. Believe me, this is not how we do business in Kansas City. Don’t let this leave a sour taste in your mouth, please. As chairman of the food committee, I guess I’d better call the rest of the caterers and see if they’ve heard from Ms. Edwards.”
“And I’ll call the tent company,” someone chimed in. Suddenly the room was a buzz, with everyone talking about how they knew something was rotten in Denmark but hadn’t wanted to be the first one to mention it. Hindsight was, as usual, making geniuses out of everyone. No one defended Evelyn Edwards or even suggested they get her side of the story.
Heaven looked around the room. “How come she isn’t here?”
“She breezed in before the meeting started and said she had to check with the tech director, something about lighting cues for the big concert,” a city planner chimed in.
Heaven stood up. “I know we need to give our committee reports tonight. But our chairman and fearless leader left in a snit as I came in. I’m assuming that was about the Evelyn Edwards situation?” She looked around for an answer.
Mona, who had slipped back into the room, looked like she’d seen one of the Eighteenth and Vine ghosts. Her mouth was pinched into a thin line. Heaven held her hands upward, looking at Mona as if to say, What’s going on?
Mona hemmed and hawed. “Nolan was . . . ah . . . hopping mad on the phone to someone and . . . said ‘she’ should be arrested. I hope it was the mayor he was talking to and Evelyn Edwards he was talking about.”
Heaven stood up. “Well, we aren’t going to get anything else done tonight. I suggest we reschedule the nuts-and-bolts meeting for tomorrow and then ask Evelyn Edwards to come in here and have a little talk. She turned to Ella. Are you in Kansas City until your restaurant opening?”
Ella got up slowly, as if trying to decide if she would allow herself to be dismissed or stay around for the fireworks. “Yes, I am, sugar. I have to put those finishing touches on the place that only Miss Ella can do. You and I will talk tomorrow, Heaven. I expect you to take care of this little problem very soon.”
Heaven looked at her watch for effect. “It won’t be a problem much longer, I guarantee it.”
The rest of the committee members mumbled soothing words to Miss Ella.
Suddenly, the lights went dim. Two flickers, then darkness.
“What the hell?” Miss Ella’s booming voice demanded.
Heaven was closest to the door. She opened it and let the fading sunlight from the windows in the hallway shed some light on the darkened room. She looked down the hall. “The electricity is out everywhere.” She could hear workers yelling outside. “Come on, it’s brighter out here. Maybe the workers cut a cable or something.”
All the committee members, plus Miss Ella, trooped out into the hall. Through the window, they saw Nolan Wilkins running down the sidewalk. “Do you think Nolan has a generator in his car?” Heaven joked.
As they passed the open door of the concert hall, the lights flashed back on. The stage was bathed in fuchsia, purple, and midnight blue light. “They must have been looking for the perfect lighting colors for Tony Bennett,” Mona said.
“Wait a minute, honey,” Miss Ella barked, holding her arms out to block the hall path. “That sure don’t look like old Tony up there on the stage,” she said as she pointed stage right.
Next to the lighting board a figure lay crumpled on the floor. Everyone ran down the aisle. Mona, the most nimble of the group, leapt onto the stage. She stopped short when she saw a stream of water ending in a puddle near the body. “Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” she said softly. “It’s Evelyn Edwards.”
The smell of singed hair was not a good sign.
Plum Tart
Enough pastry dough to cover a one-crust tart pan, or a frozen pie crust
4 oz. marzipan (almond paste)
4–6 plums, halved and pitted
½ cup cream
½ cup sugar 4 eggs
1 T. vanilla flavoring
½ cup slivered almonds
Combine the eggs, sugar, and cream and beat until frothy. Add the vanilla and the nuts.
Spread the marzipan over the crust. Place the pitted plums facedown on the marzipan. Fill the shell with the custard mixture. Depending on the size of the tart pan, you may have custard left over. I just put it in a little glass custard cup and bake it along with the pie.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 40–50 minutes, until the custard in the middle of the tart is set. This is more beautiful baked in a tart pan as you can fit in more plum halves.
Three
Detective Bonnie Weber slipped off her high heels. “I tell you, it’s a hell of a thing when a friend requests your pr
esence at a homicide investigation like she was asking for her favorite waiter at a restaurant.”
“Hush,” Heaven said as she set out a platter of cold soy-and-peanut noodles, half a plum tart, and some dessert plates and forks. “Just because I’ve been involved in enough murders to have a favorite homicide investigator, you think that’s bad? And I needed you to be there, especially since you finally got rid of your nasty partner. What do you want from the bar?”
Bonnie looked over at the bottles of booze lined up, and reflected a second time in the mirror behind the bar. “Harry went to Vice; I didn’t get rid of him on purpose. Beer, no, wine. You’re going to have wine, aren’t you?”
“Wine for the table?” Heaven asked.
Mona Kirk and Ella Jackson nodded. “Red,” Ella said.
“White, please,” Mona said glumly, not looking up or noticing she hadn’t gone along with the crowd. Mona wasn’t used to finding dead bodies. It had taken the starch right out of her.
Heaven went over to the bar. The cafe was closed. By the time the women were released from the crime scene, it was almost eleven, the time Cafe Heaven stopped serving food during the week. Only one waiter and a busboy were working, resetting the last tables. Usually, the bar stayed open until midnight, one-thirty on the weekends. Tonight, Heaven had told the bartender to start his checkout early. Now he was down on his knees, restocking the bottled beer cooler. She grabbed a wine list and looked at it for a minute. “Tony, while you’re down there, can you reach into the white wine cooler and pull out a bottle of Newton unfiltered Chardonnay?”
Tony glanced up at his boss and scooted over to the next cooler on his knees. “What are you celebrating? We don’t get much of this stuff.”
“I know we don’t, but I don’t care. We’ve had a rough night. And the answer to your question, what are we celebrating, is a death. Now, don’t ask any more questions. I think for red we’ll have that Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet.”
“Wow. The ’94?”
Heaven nodded. “The vintage of the decade, that’s what they said last year at least. The decade’s not over yet. I know, Tony, don’t fuss at me. I know I’m spending the week’s profits that we haven’t made yet. Like I said, I don’t care.”
Heaven took glasses over to the table.
“And then this one here says ‘She won’t be a problem much longer, I guarantee it’ and looks at her watch,” Ella Jackson said, pointing at Heaven. “You sure got that right, baby. What did you have, a timer.”
Bonnie shook her head and moaned. She had her trademark legal pads in front of her, the ones marked “Motive,” “Means,” and “Opportunity.” “Great, Heaven. You forecasted the victim’s demise just moments before she turns up fried on the stage of the Ruby. Just great.”
Tony brought the wine to the table and uncorked the bottles. “Tony, when you’re done with whatever you’re doing back there, take off. We’ll be fine.” Heaven turned to the women. “And I didn’t say anything about her being fried. I was referring to her larcenous ways’ being nipped in the bud.”
Bonnie Weber lifted her glass for a toast. “I hope this is the last time you three show up in this investigation. I would hate to have to pin Evelyn Edwards’s murder on any of my drinking buddies. To Eighteenth and Vine, long may the joint jump.”
Mona blanched. “Please, Detective, don’t use the word jump after what happened to Evelyn. I have a feeling the electricity made her . . . , you know.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Bonnie said soothingly. “Mona, I didn’t know you were such a wimp. You should see gunshot victims.”
Mona’s chin jutted forward. “I didn’t choose a career in blood and guts, thank you very much. And as much as I disliked the woman, I’m sorry she touched the wrong knob, or whatever happened. I still hope it was a tragic accident. This is a good tart, by the way.”
The other three women looked at Mona as if she were speaking an alien tongue. They had all decided that Evelyn Edwards had been murdered.
“Yeah, Mona, someone just happened to stop up the stage sink and leave the water running so it would run over and reach Evelyn’s size-ten feet while she was tinkering with the light board,” Heaven said. Mona was gazing out the window and just moaned. Heaven was immediately sorry she’d mentioned Evelyn’s feet; they were charred on the bottoms, not a pretty sight.
Bonnie pointed to her legal pads. “Motives for killing this broad are available by the dozens. Mona, you didn’t get along with Evelyn, and you just happened to leave the room to use the telephone minutes before she was found dead. Ella, you came to the meeting late and were gunning for Evelyn. You could have stopped up that sink before you came into the meeting.”
“If I were gonna kill someone, I sure wouldn’t leave everything to chance. No sir, too many ways the whole thing could have fallen apart before the old girl kicked. Besides, if she weren’t such a bitch, this would smell more like an accident than a murder,” Ella said coldly.
“I don’t know, Ella. Maybe this had nothing to do with Evelyn Edwards,” Heaven said.
“What do you mean?” Mona said, jolted back to the conversation.
“Well, it could be part of a bigger plot, or someone could be after the tech director, or maybe Tony Bennett . . .” Heaven murmured.
“What did the tech director say?” Mona asked with worry in her voice.
“He’d gone to the lighting supply shop. Evelyn had asked for some gels he didn’t have. She told him she’d work on the lighting cues while he was gone, as if she could do cues without knowing the running order for Tony’s set. He said he thought she was just wasting time. Then he said he personally hadn’t touched the sink for hours, claimed everything was fine when he left, everything except her attitude, of course,” Bonnie answered. “Although he might have had the means, I doubt he had the motive. He hadn’t known her long enough. That’s more than I can say for Nolan Wilkins. If he was talking on the phone about having her arrested, he might have decided to stop her himself. I wonder where the guy went.”
“Have you tried to call him?” Mona asked.
“Someone at the station has him on redial even as we speak. I hope he has a good reason for running away,” Bonnie said. “I have to go pee,” she added as she got up and headed to the women’s room.
Heaven looked up and saw Tony motioning to her. “I’ll be right back.”
“So, sugar, when are you going to tell the cop you were yelling at Evelyn Edwards in her office just this afternoon?” Ella asked pleasantly.
Mona Kirk let the wine slop out of her glass as she set it down with a jerky movement. Her already pale face turned paler. “What are you talking about?” she asked, a little tremor in her voice.
“Don’t you think Detective Bonnie would want to know you two had a big old-time blowout just hours before she ends up dead? I think she would.”
Mona tried to mount a defense but her face collapsed back into a worried frown. “I don’t know anything about lighting and electricity. My family was in air-conditioning. And I guess it wouldn’t do any good to ask where you were while I was having what I thought was a private conversation?”
Ella looked at Bonnie Weber, coming back to the table. “Doesn’t air-conditioning involve electricity here in the sticks, Mona? Or do y’all still have houseboys with big old feather fans?”
“What’d I miss?” Bonnie asked as she slid into her chair, kicking her shoes out of the way.
Ella slapped Mona on the back, and Mona shrank even smaller. “I was just getting acquainted with Mona here.”
Heaven had been watching Mona and Ella in the mirror behind the bar. What had transpired that had upset Mona even more? Heaven sat down again and put two glasses in front of her, one of white wine, the other of red. Finishing off the white, she started on the red.
Ella Jackson burst out in a big hearty laugh. “I like your style, Heaven. And who ever said Kansas City was a dull little cow town? I’ve been here ten hours and I’m around for a murder and got me some ne
w friends. I love Kansas City. And I’d like to buy whoever killed Evelyn Edwards a drink. Good riddance, as far as I can see.” She laughed that big laugh again. The other women couldn’t help but laugh along with her. Everyone but Mona Kirk.
Nolan Wilkins was pacing. He couldn’t put it off much longer. He had to return all the calls that the police had left on his answering machine or have a good explanation for why he hadn’t. The messages hadn’t mentioned Evelyn, of course, but he knew that was what they were calling about.
Nolan had no idea why he had panicked. It wasn’t like him. People in politics couldn’t afford to panic. He had been so angry at the stupid bitch, he could feel the pulse in his temples throbbing even now. He had longed to wring her neck.
Giving Evelyn Edwards the contract to manage this gala, some might have called it bad judgment from the first. But wasn’t everything in life based on give-and-take? Doing favors for friends, using people you knew to do jobs, hiring people who might be able to help you later or had helped you in the past, that was how business worked. The private sector thrived on it. Why did government have to be different? Nolan paced, sickened by his own pitiful whining. Government was not the private sector, and that was that.
If the press discovered all the facts, they would yell blackmail or extortion—Nolan couldn’t remember the exact legal definitions of the two. To an observer, it might seem that Evelyn had exerted some illegal pressure on Nolan. Who was he trying to kid—it had sure as hell felt like that to him. But it wasn’t like he put a pipe welder in charge of brain surgery. She was an event planner, had been for years. He just didn’t know she was a crooked one. Of course, if she was blackmailing him, why did he think he would be the only one? Now that she was dead Nolan hoped he wouldn’t get caught in the undertow. He hadn’t counted on Evelyn Edwards’s business dealings being examined under a microscope.
The Cornbread Killer Page 3
