Basil Instinct

by Shelley Costa

  I felt cheated.

  In the morning, a quick glance to the front of my Tumbleweed showed me a pile of Landon and Abbie, asleep, so I slunk around getting ready for a day I could only praise for its not including a trip out to Quaker Hills Career Center in search of my daily dose of knives, sauces, and miscreants.

  * * *

  As I slipped out of my Tumbleweed, where I left kibble for Abbie—who gave me an arch look like she had everything under control—and a banana and some French-pressed coffee in a carafe for Landon, I felt a steely determination. Someone had killed my cousin Anna. Maybe this wasn’t a violation of omertà, because this crime went way beyond any “code of silence” that, finally, just seems like nothing more than aching, teenage secrets. No, this crime was a violation of family. Suddenly I felt so Italian I might start yelling at everyone I loved.

  In the meantime, I was heading back to the scene of the crime, where even if there weren’t clues, there might be tugs to the imagination. I would figure it out. And I would figure it out before Detective Sally Fanella figured out the hidden blood relationship between Georgia Payne and Landon Angelotta—and before she slapped Hot Pantuso with a court order giving her a right to look at Benigno Angelotta’s will.

  * * *

  I ask you: Where’s a good busybody when you really need one?

  It was 8:12 a.m. and I had already spent fifteen minutes crouched in the empty foyer at Miracolo, not registering anything new about the murder. Somehow, somehow, Anna Tremayne had been electrocuted and it was beginning to look like Zeus had flung a lightning bolt her way. I took a deep breath. Back it up, back it up. Anna hadn’t just decided to hang out in the foyer; she was there, after the workday was over, to lock up the place. Lock up. I looked up. Aside from the brass light fixture on the ceiling, there was no metal anywhere in the foyer except for the doorknobs. The dead bolt, and right underneath, the regular knob.

  Whatever happened to Anna Tremayne had happened right in that small space. Electric current had shot through her body and stopped her heart. Was it possible the current had hit her in the dining room and that she had crawled into the foyer, hoping to get outside for help? The mere thought made me sit back kind of helplessly right there on the tile floor. But from the little I had read on the grisly topic, I didn’t think crawling for help was possible, not with a lethal hit.

  As I sat frustrated on the floor, Anna’s murder was beginning to seem like a locked-room mystery.

  How did the killer get in? Either Anna knew him or he had a key.

  But if he could get in, why the elaborate means of murder? Harnessing some death-dealing electric current takes more in the way of planning than, say, stabbing or strangling.

  It was an interesting thought. Suddenly the killer possibilities could include women. And suddenly actually getting inside the restaurant wasn’t necessary in order to commit murder . . .

  When I heard some deep laughs coming from out on the sidewalk, I pushed aside the double-rodded curtain on the front door and saw the Jaycees were back, this time with flags and stepladders and boxes of twinkle lights. These were our bald, baseball-capped guys wearing identical cargo shorts, who firmly believe that civic life comes down to putting up flags and cutting your grass.

  Once I figured out who killed Anna Tremayne, I’d ponder whether they had a point. In Quaker Hills, this cheerful crew of Jaycees was as much a part of the landscape as the garbage collectors and street cleaners and our very own wandering philosopher, Akahana Takei.

  Scrambling to my feet, I unlocked the front door and stepped outside. The Jaycees were sharing stories about how one son was on the junior swim team and knocking ’em out of the water—spoken without irony—and how one daughter was in computer camp and available for babysitting. I approached them casually as they swarmed around the decorative streetlamp in front of Miracolo, and one of them went jauntily up the stepladder to unfurl what he called Ole Glory and jam it into the flagpole holder.

  My exchanges with this group always begin with Hey, fellas, and today was no different. After they reminded me with hearty good humor that their names were Gene, Bud, and Drew, I laughed, “Right, right,” and pumped them for information. Down to a man they came up short in the busybody department: nobody had seen any suspicious activity outside Miracolo on the night of the murder. Then they all had to make locker-room comments about just what they were at home doing with their wives at that hour. Which led right away to guffaws and more improv about what they weren’t at home doing with their, uh, girlfriends. Those cutups.

  I thanked them for making our street safe for parades and went in search of Akahana, a reliable philosophizing night owl of the first magnitude. Her presence in Market Square at all hours had led to a petition drive to persuade town council to enact an obnoxious curfew law, but it was met with enough resistance from the rest of us that it failed. The fact that Akahana herself had signed the petition made the council wonder whether anyone quite that innocent was a threat to public safety.

  I ran Akahana to ground on the west end of Market Square, our commercial district, where I learned she had been out of town at a Kierkegaard convention on the night of the murder. And to boot, she had heard no scuttlebutt about the case. “Even your tone-deaf singer lady knows more than her usual nothing, and not in a Kierkegaardian way.” With that Akahana went off to do some Dumpster diving.

  So, another couple of busybodies bit the dust.

  After collaring street cleaners, city service department workers, a couple of FedEx delivery guys, Quaker Hills’ single cabbie, Joe Beck’s florist brother James, and random dog walkers, I decided to quit before people started avoiding me like the Repent, the End Is Near guy, who wore a sandwich board around Quaker Hills for a while and then disappeared. We guessed that, when it came to himself, Repent must have been right. So I crossed back over to Miracolo, where only Bud was left. Gene and Drew had worked their way farther up the street with their flags.

  I watched Bud work on the red, white, and blue twinkle lights. The cover to the outdoor outlet, down near the woodwork, stood open, just waiting for his handiwork. I watched him strip some wires—and if there’s anything that interests me less than wires it’s balancing my checkbook—because, apparently, the strands were too short and he had to splice them. With his fingernails he peeled back the insulation, exposing the copper wires inside the cords of the twinkle lights. “What would happen if you plugged in the cord?” I asked him because it wasn’t even 10 a.m. and I had run out of ideas.

  It was a question that got a big reaction. “As long I kept my hands on the insulation here, nothing.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way,” said Bud, widening his billiard-ball-blue eyes at me, “I’d complete the circuit.” Then he added: “Only I wouldn’t be around to know it.”

  Welcome to Electricity 101. I crossed my arms. “So you actually have to touch the wires to complete the circuit?” A hazy image of Georgia/Anna was shimmering at me just out of reach, there in the Miracolo foyer as she went to lock up at midnight on the last night of her life.

  “Nope.” Bud shifted on his haunches just enough to pull out his keys. His big fingers nimbly held up one, which he brought close to the exposed wires. “This would do the job pretty good, too. Metal’s great for that.” He waggled the key at me.

  “Thanks, Bud,” I said, eyeballing the distance between the covered outdoor outlet and the locks on Miracolo’s front door. Five, six feet? Leaving him to his alterations on strands of twinkle lights, I let myself into the restaurant and very slowly closed the door behind me. My breathing felt shallow as I stared at the locks, the dead bolt, and the regular Schlage. Oh, Anna, you were just doing your job, and that’s what somebody was counting on, waiting. And then . . . you completed the circuit. Which sounds like some kind of achievement—but only for the killer.

  I was pretty close to
understanding how Anna Tremayne had died, but I didn’t have the whole picture yet. Not the details. Not the face on the other side of the door. All I had for sure was the method, and for now I was keeping that to myself. Maybe there was something to be said for omertà, after all. Maybe the code of silence has something to do with self-preservation in the shadowy company of a killer I couldn’t yet identify. I’d let what I discovered simmer along with the Bolognese sauce for my tagliatelle entrée special.

  For now, toting the box with my two special pots from home, I walked through the empty dining room, where the natural daylight filtered through the curtains and dust motes drifted. Everything around me seemed unfamiliar, like I was suddenly a stranger in a place I had known all my life. Everything seemed charged with mystery and poised for something—some final explosion of truth . . . and whatever else it would bring. The terrible thing is that this kind of alarm doesn’t make any noise, doesn’t give us a heads-up. Objects look sinister. People seem hostile. And trust is nowhere to be found.

  Once through the double doors, I entered my little chrome and stainless steel kingdom, ready to begin my workday, but distracted by thoughts of Anna’s murder. Setting down the box, I pulled out the pots and discovered my Instructor Eve leather portfolio there—rocks and all, which I wouldn’t be needing again until tomorrow—and left it on the junk counter, along with catalogs and bills. I took a deep breath, my fingers clamped on the box. Just how far into my prepping could I get before somebody commented on my shaking hands?

  18

  If you can’t find a busybody to help solve the crime, then go for a string of nuisances. Their distraction value for you goes way beyond rubies. Throughout the afternoon on a day where all my trust was gone, maybe for no good reason, but gone nonetheless, a string of nuisances turned up and really went a long way toward keep me preoccupied. First came Kayla, who needed to be paid then and there for the bins of organic produce because she had to buy a new dress she’d just seen at Airplane Hangers.

  Then came Maria Pia, who declared she had her eye on a lovely fellow who worked on the road crew out on Highway 8. He was the handsome, burly one who held up the stop sign. Landon—who turned up telling me he might as well cook before he gets arrested for murder—and I sighed at this announcement, predicting even a lustier version of “Three Coins” that evening.

  Then came the carpet cleaning service, who declared they might have to sue us for providing them with a soiled carpet that probably clogged their cleaning equipment. Then off they went with more soiled carpets.

  Then came Mitchell Terranova and Slash the K, shirtless, demanding to know whether Don Lolo was a stand-up kind of guy who would honor their underworld ambitions. I threw them out before they could poke around and discover Choo Choo in his maître d’ suit at the podium, taking dinner reservations over the phone.

  Meanwhile, as the Bolognese sauce simmered, the primo nuisance in my life in Quaker Hills turned up early for want of anything better to do: Dana Cahill, what Akahana called our tone-deaf singer lady. Her husband, Patrick, was out of town on a business trip and she was extravagantly bored. So she wandered around my kitchen, yapping, in a white tank top and turquoise shantung Capri pants and wedge slip-on sandals with ghastly pink plastic bows. Landon and I pretty much ignored her and prepped silently for dinner.

  Dana helped herself to some tonic water and pulled a stool up to the center prep table, where she perched, circling her glass reflectively—which was about as reflective as Dana Cahill ever got—and talked about what a difficult day she was having. “Professionally,” she added, shooting us looks like we two would understand.

  I gave her my standard, “Oh?” which is all she ever needs to whip her into a conversational gallop. The only thing that was helping me at that moment in the afternoon was the image of drowning Dana in a blender of pulverized pesto. Finally, a practical use for the mess . . .

  And at that moment I got a call from Joe Beck, so I turned away from Dana and listened to his glum report that he hadn’t come up with a Donald Tremayne who wasn’t either older than thirty-nine or downright dead. I felt a little frisson of guilt, having forgotten to head him off, what with sorting out Anna Tremayne’s true paternity with Landon. So I thanked him prettily and left it that I’d fill him in on anything new in the case (I made it sound like “new” was just a remote possibility) tomorrow.

  Dana was still talking, explaining to a glassy-eyed Landon that what she really needed for the end of Grief Week—“One last song!” she pleaded when we got agitated and reminded her that Grief Week ended last night—was a really good dead-on-the-road kind of piece. Did we know any? Landon threw out the ever-sappy “Teen Angel,” which he said he was pretty sure she had already performed, no?

  “Hit by a train, Landon.” Dana smiled, her hands open wide like these differences mattered terribly. “And I feel Leo didn’t get to hear anything truly close to the, well, facts.”

  “Leo?” said Landon.

  “The facts?” said I. Then, to Landon: “Leo’s the mandolin player. The regular. You know. Leo.”

  “Okay.”

  Dana sighed. “He seems to be needing more, and if I can help him with my vocal gifts, you know I will.” While Landon offered me a spoonful of Bolognese sauce, which I tasted with my eyes closed, just to savor it fully, Dana leaned her elbows on the prep table and went to describe the hit-and-run accident that killed Matt Cardona, Leo’s son. Matt was twenty-eight and a marathoner, training out on county roads when he was hit. Dusk. Reflective stripes, but didn’t do him any good at that turn when the speeding car came along. There was a witness, who called 911, and the poor kid lived a little while.

  Sad, no denying it. Landon and I widened our eyes at each other. Kind of blew the death of Dana’s dog, Booger, right out of the water. Still, one man’s grief is one man’s grief, and that’s enough. At that moment, Jonathan turned up looking like he’d just come from a haircut and a particularly nice coffee date, decked out in the Miracolo “look.” Landon sent him a tight-lipped smile—he seemed to be getting nowhere with his crush—and turned quietly back to the almonds he was toasting.

  Setting down a new bottle of Barbaresco he had discovered in Philly and wanted us to try, Jonathan rolled up his sleeves and jumped into the conversation. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “didn’t it come up the other night, before Maria Pia’s big dinner here? Remember?” He actually slung an arm around Dana.

  “When?”

  “You, me, Vera, Georgia—poor Georgia—Leo, maybe Corabeth.”

  “Oh . . . right,” she said, leaning into Jonathan, but probably not remembering what he was talking about at all.

  “We were talking about cars, and from there it went to road accidents—”

  “Leo mentioned Matt, right, I remember.”

  Jonathan lifted his very attractive shoulders. “Then, what with too much Grief Week—”

  “—to lighten the mood,” put in Dana, with a quick smile that was meant to show us how good with people she was—“I mean, there’s just so many dead wives, dogs, and kids we can handle.” Ah, the sensitive Dana Cahill.

  “But then it got fun, right?” Jonathan squeezed her shoulder, at which Landon started knocking back toasted almonds with a grim look, and I began to wonder about our sommelier’s sexual orientation. And taste in women. His other hand sketched a marquee in the air: “ ‘Worst Loser Cars We’ve Ever Owned.’ ”

  Dana burbled.

  Landon rolled his eyes, thinking maybe he was learning more about Jonathan than his crush could take in order to survive.

  Me, I found myself strangely riveted. Between the two of them, Dana and Jonathan remembered that Georgia Payne had mentioned having owned a white Cadillac Escalade, at which conspicuous consumption all the rest of them groaned. “If you want a big-ass old-rich-white-lady car, why not just buy a Land Rover?” That was Corabeth.

  And Georgia said what
made her get rid of it was that it didn’t corner well, practically going off country roads—okay, okay, even if she was doing 55 in a 35 mph zone, still. There were just so many mailboxes and raccoons a girl could take out, said Georgia, making them all laugh, before changing her wicked ways and getting more reliable wheels. Then the rest of them offered up stories about an Optima, a Yugo, and an Aztec from yesteryear.

  It turned out to be a packed dining room from the time we opened the doors until the last diner stuffed her credit card receipt into her purse and toddled out. There were still a few stragglers, happy just to kick back and watch the regulars set up their instruments. Dana was warming up with lame repartee with Leo, who switched to guitar and left the mandolin in an open case, and the lanky, long-haired social studies teacher, who seemed to be engaged in an athletic event just tuning his bass.

  The splats of Dana’s jokes went right over the head of Giancarlo, who was smiling benevolently in every direction as he poured after-dinner liqueurs—mainly because Maria Pia was flirting with him. Which was always Nonna’s default when she sensed fences needed mending.

  Mrs. Crawford, a vision in knee-length, mint-green chiffon with a gold-colored flapper’s cloche pulled down around her ears, packed up and left to meet a friend for a nightcap. Choo Choo, Vera, Landon, and I were intensely interested in this friend, since it was her first mention in the month she had been our pianist that she had a life outside our four walls. Not that any of us ever doubted it. But this was the closest she had let us come to knowing anything. In a bit of a hurry, off she went at a brisk clip in her towering heels.

  I circled behind the bar, brushing by Giancarlo and Nonna, who was ladling it on thick about his passionate nature, and finding something to interest me in the stack of dirty barware stashed under the bar. It was the closest I could get for staking out the regulars. They had been doing this gig-of-their-own-devising at our restaurant for a few years, but I’d never paid them any attention.