Basil Instinct

by Shelley Costa

  Both women made airy gestures. “No newsletter for one year,” Fina put in.

  “Suspension from three meetings,” chimed in Elodie.

  “And,” added Fina, “you’re cut off from any recipe exchange.” Both of them nodded solemnly, as if not being privy to somebody’s recipe for a low-fat béchamel sauce, say, was a fate worse than death.

  Elodie chuckled softly. “At the level of Belfiere, you need to be able to identify ingredients.”

  Fina pushed back a lock of raven hair. “It’s absolutely de rigueur.” And she pronounced de rigueur as though she actually knew what it meant.

  I still didn’t have the whole picture. “What happened at Anna Tremayne’s induction?”

  And Elodie Tichinoff went on to describe how she had been busy at her son Dimitri’s Manhattan restaurant, Magritte, that day, all day, before the ten-o’clock induction, trying to keep that losing proposition afloat, what with Dimitri’s mediocre food and poor business practices. And, as luck would have it, she was one of the two sisters who drew the short straw, so she had to take the “poison” test.

  She had not eaten all day, too busy, and she’s hypoglycemic, which, before that evening, she had failed to mention to anyone else. What with the lights, the heat (it was late June), and not eating, she passed right out. This happenstance she punctuated with a gesture that looked like an ump declaring someone “Safe!” at home plate. Kind of like passing right out was the coolest thing ever.

  Here Fina Parisi took up the story, recounting how naturally alarming Elodie’s fainting was to some of the members. Nobody quite knew what was going on, really, and Elodie wasn’t coming out of it quickly. But Anna Tremayne got hysterical—

  “Which,” added Elodie with a smile, “pretty much seemed to be her baseline, if you ask me, although I’d never met her until the night of her induction—”

  “And she took off.”

  “Ran right out of the meeting.”

  I set figgy David back down on Fina’s desk. “What did you do?”

  An elegant shrug was the answer from La Maga. “Nothing. I followed her to the door and watched her run down the drive to her car. She sideswiped Gwen Henning’s Honda as she tore out of here in a squeal of tires.”

  Something made me ask, “What time was this?”

  Fina and Elodie looked at each other. “Well,” said Fina thoughtfully, “we had already been through the induction, so Anna was technically a member, and it takes a while to set up the competition—”

  Elodie put in, “It’s very ceremonial, you have to understand. It’s where we put the ‘secret’ in ‘secret society.’ We like to ramp up the suspense. Otherwise—”

  Fina widened her eyes at me. “Otherwise it’s really just a silly parlor game.” She leaned against her desk. “As for the time, I’d say maybe around eleven thirty.”

  “I’m no help,” laughed Elodie, adjusting her stylish black reading glasses. “I was out like a cod.”

  I tilted my head at them. “About Anna Tremayne’s review of Magritte . . .” I said, looking squarely at Elodie.

  The woman snorted and waved it off. “Best thing that could have happened. That review singlehandedly closed Dimitri’s doors probably half a year sooner than they would have—which saved us investors a lot of money. The bloodletting stopped there. I was grateful to her, frankly. Anna Tremayne was a fabulous chef and a solid restaurant reviewer, but”—Elodie lifted her shoulders—“she sure seemed kind of emotionally unstable.”

  I wanted to argue the point, but didn’t have much to add, considering I’d only known Georgia/Anna myself for about two days. “What happened after that night, after she drove off?”

  “So fast I thought I heard a sonic boom,” Fina quipped.

  “We never heard from her again.”

  “So we moved her to Inactive status in Belfiere.”

  “Well, permanently Inactive now,” I said, “considering she was murdered two nights ago. At Miracolo.” Since they seemed genuinely flabbergasted at the news, although they had heard that a sous chef named Georgia had died at Maria Pia’s place—I bristled a little at the “Maria Pia’s place” line—I filled them in quickly. My brain by that point was running on two tracks, what with trying to integrate a whole new way of looking at the Crazy Cooking Club and now trying to cast about for a new suspect in the murder . . .

  Fina gave Elodie a little push in the direction of the meeting. “Please tell them I’ll be right in, okay? And, if you would, send someone back with two glasses from the flagon?”

  The flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true.

  Lines from old Danny Kaye movies come to me in my hours of greatest need.

  Fina Parisi was going to offer me a drink, apparently. Truth be told, I might be better off with it than a sip of Giancarlo’s absinthe. After Elodie disappeared, she turned and shot me a rueful look. “I can’t let you stay, Eve. You understand. It’s against the rules.” Fina leaned toward me conspiratorially. “Half the rules,” she confided, looking around, “are downright stupid, but it’s a bear to change the by-laws and I’ve got just one more year to go in my tenure as”—she sketched air quotes—“ ‘Maga.’ ” Here she touched my arm. “But we can have a drink together.” Her violet eyes twinkled.

  I turned to Fina Parisi. “Two questions,” I said, sounding ever so official.

  “Anything.”

  “What about omertà? Anna Tremayne violated omertà.”

  “She did?” Fina sounded genuinely unconcerned. Uninterested, even.

  “She blogged about that meeting right after it happened. She called it homicidal.”

  “Wow. Really? I never saw it.” Then: “Probably nobody else did, either. I’ve never heard any blowback.”

  “Well, what about her exposé of Belfiere?”

  Fina’s look was one of disbelief. “Exposé?”

  “She had written to publishers about writing an exposé of that two-hundred-year-old secret cooking society, Belfiere. As a Belfiere insider.”

  “And she got some traction with that?”

  Letters from just two publishers, when I really thought about it. “Well, preliminary.”

  Fina opened her arms at me. “What’s there to expose? We sing songs? We take a pledge? We share recipes? What?”

  It did sound absurd. “One more question.”

  A soft knock at the door was followed by Elodie Tichinoff herself, holding two stemless pewter cups. Without a word, she smiled, handed them to us, and flowed back out. “Go on,” said Fina, her eyes locked on mine over the rim of her cup.

  “Belladonna Russo,” I announced, biting off at the very last minute my powerful inclination to add “that strega,” the way my nonna always does. That witch Belladonna Russo.

  “My mama,” admitted Fina, circling the cup gently in her hands.

  “Why isn’t she a member of Belfiere?” A loving daughter protecting her own?

  For the first time, Fina Parisi laughed out loud and the contents of the cup sloshed close to the rim. “For the simplest reason ever, Eve.” She actually wiped away a tear with her index finger. I waited for the punch line. “She isn’t good enough! Lordy, that woman uses Stella d’Oro ladyfingers in her tiramisu, and then lies about it.” We sipped at the same time. “We aren’t close,” she added almost as an aside. “Here,” said Fina, stepping over to the bookcase, where she’d left the two pieces of the brown nougat Derringer. “Your half,” she smiled, offering me the butt of the candy gun. She nibbled on the rest of the barrel.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, then took another sip of the mysterious potion. Considering I hadn’t dropped in my tracks, I was pretty much thinking I’d be turning up back at my Tumbleweed, none the worse for wear from my visit to Gallows Hill Drive in Pendragon, Pennsylvania. Oddly enough, I was feeling just a little bit let down.

  Fina ke
pt her eyes on me while we sipped the mysterious potion. “Like it?” she asked finally. I smacked my lips. “We make it right on the premises. Strictly for Belfiere consumption. From a recipe as old as Belfiere itself. It’s one of our, oh”—she waved her cup around—“core activities, Eve. Very secret. Very central to the original idea behind the group. If there had been such things as Vision Statements back in 1810 when it began, this recipe would be in it.” She lifted the cup high. “So what do you think?” Her eyes twinkled.

  I took a long swig, let it roll around inside my mouth, then swallowed. And then the truth—but not about the murder of Anna Tremayne, a smaller truth than that—hit me. “It’s—moonshine,” I declared, staring into what was left in my cup.

  Fina wrinkled her nose at me. “Welcome to Belfiere, Eve,” she said softly.

  For the very first time in my life, I was jealous of Maria Pia Angelotta.

  * * *

  We gabbed for about two minutes about our Sarah Lawrence days, but it fell a little flat. Chatter about college days long after those college days have ended is something you always think is going to take longer and be more fascinating than it really is. After you cover how nonsensical some traditions are—which was why you blew them off—and how you didn’t have any of the same professors, you’ve pretty much exhausted the topic.

  And Fina was just about ready to head back to the moonshiners’ convention out in her parlor when she happened to gaze out the front-facing window while she adjusted her Belfiere gown. She let out a yelp of surprise, craning her neck for a better look, which was when I hurried over.

  There’s no mistaking the flashing lights atop a police cruiser. In the darkness all we could see was a shadow darker than the surrounding trees, swerve, dip, and move slowly toward us along the drive, red and blue lights strobing. “The moonshine?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Her lips were clamped tight.

  “Is it illegal in Pennsylvania?”

  Fina moved quickly around the desk, toward the door. At this rate, it might be some time before my nonna was inducted into Moonshiners Anonymous. “Only if we sell it.”

  There was no way I wanted to get hauled into the police station to explain my presence there, so I decided not to take a chance on the possibility that maybe the cops just wanted to hit up the wealthy Fina Parisi for a donation to the Police Athletic League. At this time of night. So I wiped my prints off the pewter cup and set it down on the desk.

  Fina and I hit the hallway at the same time, but when she turned left to head back to the parlor and deal with whatever was about to come through the front door, I turned right, unzipping my gown. “See you, Fina, thanks,” I called hoarsely after her, stepping out of the yards of Belfiere costume, snatching it up, and darting to whatever back door to this spread that I could find. Nonna was most definitely on her own. The image of what would be her queenly outrage at the intrusion of the local cops brought me almost as much pleasure as kissing Joe Beck. If Quaker Hills had anything close to resembling a paddy wagon, Maria Pia Angelotta would at least have a lot of company.

  Without all the satin fabric crowding my legs, I made better time eluding the cops, who at that moment rang a bell that launched into some ambitious chiming like it thought it was in a bell tower at a cathedral. I slipped out the back through what turned out to be the kitchen door—after a quick ogle at her hanging Calphalon pots and pans—and was honestly able to say: I slipped into the night. As I felt myself melt into the woods at the back of 7199 Gallows Hill Drive, I had one nagging thought about the cops: Who tipped them off?

  * * *

  By the time I drove home, locked up, turned on my ceiling fan, and fell into my loft bed, it was close to 1 a.m. I lay there spread-eagle and worked my way through my impressions of the time at Fina Parisi’s. There was plenty of information that, while interesting on some level—for instance, the excellence of nougat in the making of candy guns—seemed unrelated to the murder of Georgia Payne/Anna Tremayne. Below me, some plaintive meows in the dark drifted up from Abbie, who was trying to figure a way up to the loft.

  “Get some stealth, Abbers,” I called to her. “You got the black thing going on nicely.”

  When I sorted through everything illuminating I’d learned from Fina, I felt truly chagrined at having to let go of my pet theory that the murderous Belfiere was behind every foul deed since Hi-C discontinued the Ecto Cooler juice boxes. To Belfiere’s ambiguous motto, Never Too Many Knives, I could pretty much add: And Not Enough Hooch.

  If that’s the club activity that put the secret in secret society, well, Detective Sally Fanella was going to lose interest fast. Unless, of course, La gun-munching Maga was wrong about the moonshine line in the sand being whether or not money changed hands. And if the club members wanted to play competitive Name That Tincture, no one, including me, was going to call the cops.

  As for Anna Tremayne, I couldn’t get past the possibility that—notwithstanding a nice cat and a way with a utility knife—she just plain sounded as hysterical as her blog post. Once the coroner handed down an official time of death, I’d check with Fina about her alibi for murder. Despite the fact that I could see going out for lattes with the head of the Crazy Cooking Club—I have to admit I liked Fina’s style, not letting her own mother into the society—she still wasn’t necessarily off the hook in the matter of Anna Tremayne. Somebody wired Anna for something more than sound . . .

  Tomorrow I’d have to step back into the kitchen classroom at Quaker Hills Career Center and I had to face the fact that I did not have an asbestos suit in my tiny closet. Would Mitchell and Slash hit me with something new? Or did they now truly have the fear of Don Lolo Dinardo in them? Considering their interest in sketchy employment with the “organization,” I wasn’t so sure. The list of things I was unsure of was lengthening.

  How Anna Tremayne died.

  Whether Joe Beck was playing me.

  Who tipped off the cops to the Belfiere moonshine.

  Whether my loft bed was off-limits to Abbie—wait: a soft landing followed by triumphant purring and padding told me it wasn’t.

  And finally . . . where, in any of the places I had ever known or imagined, was Landon Angelotta?

  15

  On Monday morning, after I landed the materials I had removed from Anna Tremayne’s apartment on the passenger seat, hoping for some time to fine-tooth comb them, I fielded three calls on the way to my Basic Cooking Skills class. It was like heading for a 10 a.m. appointment in a Tenth Circle of Hell that even Dante didn’t know about. One call was from Choo Choo, who told me Maria Pia got inducted into Belfiere, finally, after a visit from the sheriff’s department delayed the ceremony for about half an hour.

  While he drove her home afterward, she practiced the Belfiere pledge the whole way—oh, and he thought she’d been knocking back some whiskey. Then my monumental cousin Choo Choo added, “And Landon’s called in sick.” I got queasy suddenly, which I didn’t for a second chalk up to the cheese Danish I had left out on the counter overnight and still ate, and told him to move around the personnel and put himself back in the kitchen as sous chef. Choo Choo grumbled but hung up quasi-willing to make the calls.

  The second call, as I hit the country road that led straight to the Quaker Hills Career Center, was from Joe Beck. Considering how all-business he sounded, I suddenly found myself wondering whether any of the delicious making out yesterday had actually happened. Too much too soon? Too little too late? Second thoughts? Since I was about a mile away from the battleground I was headed to and had made the probably fatal mistake of bringing only my invisible armor, I didn’t have the stuffing just then for figuring any of it out.

  “Got the results of the postmortem, Eve.” He sounded like I was a line item on his Monday morning punch list. “I used to date one of the morgue assistants.”

  Ah, Mondays. Always reassuring. “And . . . ?”

/>   “She died around midnight.”

  “The morgue assistant?” Why was this so confusing?

  A beat. “Georgia Payne.”

  “Okay.” I’d need some serious alone time to toss that fact into my mental hopper and see who or what it kicked out.

  “And—just as we thought—she was electrocuted.”

  Not what we thought—I thought Georgia had dropped dead with no help whatsoever.

  I noisily blew out some air. I’d like to think it had nothing to do with the fact that he was right. I felt my eyes widen as I wondered whether death was instantaneous—or whether in those final moments she had known her killer, or wondered what would become of Abbie.

  To tell you the truth, I felt kind of stricken. All over again.

  “Eve?”

  “Here,” I said. “Thanks, Joe. I’m just about to turn in at Quaker Hills.” I flicked down my turn signal. “Where I’m teaching them how to make a simple white sauce that I’m pretty sure will end up either down my back or dumped on my car seat.” Then I actually babbled something to him about having a nice day. He said something kind of quick—it might have been as complicated as “Wait!”—and I thumbed the phone off.

  As I wheeled a little too fast into the parking lot—were those my tires screeching?—I got the third call.

  “Eve?”

  “Fina?”

  “Maria Pia gave me your number.”

  While she started to tell me about what happened at Maria Pia’s induction after I left last night, I turned off my ignition and watched a blue-and-white minibus emblazoned with Callowhill Residential Institute for Behavioral Success pull right up to the front door of QHCC’s main building. Out jumped Corabeth Potts, Mitchell Terranova, Slash the K, and Renay Bassett, who somehow managed to get inside the building while they punched, tripped, mocked, and otherwise reviled each other. Ah, the groves of academe.

  But in a matter of seconds, Fina Parisi had my complete attention.

  The cops who came to 7199 Gallows Hill Drive around 11:30 the night before, explained Fina, were from the county sheriff’s department. Fina imparted this tidbit as though the difference between town cops and county sheriffs was the key to everything worth knowing. These worthies had just received an anonymous call about the death of Anna Tremayne, who had died violently at Miracolo Italian restaurant, a popular eatery in Quaker Hills. (At that I cringed, hoping the word eatery never made it to my nonna’s ears, although the word popular might soften the blow.) “So . . .” I followed up slowly, “it wasn’t about the special Belfiere brew, after all?”