Spoiled Rotten

by Mary Jackman

  Louise’s cheese store was closed. I looked in the window through the sun-protected, yellow-cellophane-covered glass and saw a notice tacked to the register at the front. A community meeting was being held in St. Timothy’s church around the corner on Spadina Avenue. Mrs. Wong came down the sidewalk toward me. We exchanged a few rounds of conversational Cantonese, phrases she had been patiently teaching me for years, and then I asked, in English, if she was going to the meeting.

  Not only was she going to the meeting, but all the storekeepers were attending. Very important meeting, she stressed. With the former city representative dead and his underling in charge, the meeting would be important to their future. I asked her if I could come. She said I could be her friend. I assumed she meant guest and agreed to meet her at her dry goods store at 6:30 later that day. We would walk over together.

  In the meantime, the customer who caused my restaurant to be closed down should be paid a visit. Although he didn’t ask to get sick, I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic toward the man. He was recuperating at St. Mike’s and when Rick called the hospital in the morning to enquire about his progress, a nurse told him Mr. Randolph’s quarantine was lifted.

  “Was he seeing visitors now?” he asked.

  “Oh yes,” she said merrily. “He was feeling much better.” Rick volunteered to go, but I said I’d probably better. Good public relations to have the owner of famed “death’s door” eatery personally visit a happily recovering customer.

  I picked up a bouquet of overpriced, albeit fragrant, miniature white roses in the hospital gift shop and consulted the directory before heading up to the ninth floor. Mr. Randolph was sitting up in bed eating lemon jelly and looking grim. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Hello, Mr. Randolph. My name is Liz Walker, mind if I come in?” I said with my biggest smile ever.

  “I never mind talking to a pretty girl,” he answered, surprising me with an equally big smile.

  “You might change your mind. I have to be honest with you; I’m the owner of the restaurant where you got sick.”

  He put the jelly down on the night table. “Have they told you?” he asked me sternly.

  Okay, I thought, here we go. This is where he’s going to tell me how much he’s suing the restaurant for. I wished Rick had come instead.

  “I’m very, very sorry you got food poisoning at the restaurant, Mr. Randolph. We don’t know how it happened. I shop for everything fresh and we take extreme precautions when handling food. We have all the coloured boards for cleaning and preparing foods. I mean we have red for raw meat and yellow for fish and green for produce. We have sanitation units at all the food stations and I, I …”

  “Please stop, Mrs. Walker. I have something to tell you.” He held up a hand, halting my babbling soliloquy.

  “Call me Liz.” I was trying to be friendly.

  “My wife is sick, too.”

  “What?” I gasped. “She wasn’t at the restaurant, was she? I thought you were alone. Somebody must have got it wrong.” I would kill Rick for not telling me.

  “Nope,” he said, “my wife got sick at home after eating a chicken sandwich. The same chicken I made my sandwich from the day before. She was out of town at an old girlfriend’s the day I went to your restaurant for dinner. Never been a big fan of cooking for myself, not very New Age, I’m afraid, and I’ve been to your place a few times and liked the food. Anyway, now she’s sick. After that power failure we had from the storm last week she forgot to throw out the mayonnaise. She only buys the whole egg kind and it had turned ripe with salmonella.” He drew in a breath and suddenly looked a hundred years old. A thin wisp of gray hair fell limp across his cheek; a puff of air from his curled lips removed it.

  “She’s down the hall in room 9E if you want to say hello,” he suggested shyly.

  It was my turn to be angry, except I felt for the guy. I didn’t say a word.

  “I’m so sorry, my wife is, too. If your business has suffered in any way, I feel responsible. I would be willing to call the newspaper and tell them it had nothing to do with your restaurant. The hospital is contacting the health board to allow you to open again as soon as possible.”

  He seemed sincerely upset and he wasn’t solely to blame for causing the restaurant’s unfortunate closure. My chef was mysteriously linked to the slaying of Anthony Vieira and the fatal poisoning of a notable public city official. The sequence of events after Mr. Tony was found butchered would lead everyone to the conclusion that we were just as likely to be responsible for the food poisoning of one of our customers. “Something fishy going on there, better stay away, they would say to each other,” nodding their heads in agreement. I gave Mr. Randolph a kiss on his smelly forehead and sent his wife my blessings for a speedy recovery.

  I was so excited that the restaurant was going to reopen I couldn’t wait to leave the hospital and return to work. First I needed to phone Rick to tell him to notify the staff. Having left my cell in the car, I asked an orderly outside the door if there was a public phone on the floor and he pointed to the end of the hall.

  Halfway down the hall, Maria D’Agnole from the butcher shop ran straight into me. She was crying so hard, she didn’t recognize me. When I asked her if she needed help she shook her head and practically jumped in the elevator when the door slid open. Obviously she had just received some bad news. I hoped it wasn’t her father. The girls at Mr. Tony’s were talking about his health one day and I listened in. I think some days I was invisible to them, just a number holder waiting for my order to be filled. I heard a lot of stuff that way.

  I headed for the phones and looked into the patient’s room from which Maria had fled. I expected to see her father, Mr. D’Agnole, lying in the bed with a heart monitor beeping faintly, not a beautiful golden-haired woman, around thirty, lounging on top of the bedcovers. Instead of the prescribed hospital garb, she had on a hot pink peignoir set, which offset her tawny skin. A food show, on the tiny television suspended at the end of her bed, held her complete attention.

  The patient’s names were displayed in large print on dry-erase board outside all the rooms and Mrs. Cecilia Vieira was the only name on the board. I saw this woman once before in Superior Meats and assumed she was one of the store’s young recruits who were constantly passing through. I knocked lightly on the doorframe before entering a few steps into the room. She turned and poised with a chocolate halfway to her mouth, gave me the once-over from top to bottom. Was it just me or did everyone who ever worked at Mr. Tony’s learn how to give the evil eye? I twitched involuntarily.

  “Hello, Mrs. Vieira. I was just visiting another patient on this floor and I recognized your name on the board.” Lamely I pointed to the door with a silly half-grin. If this woman didn’t stop glaring at me soon, I was going to leave by backing up step by step until I was in the elevator. She had one powerful mojo going on and I didn’t want to get hexed in the back when I tore out of there. Then she smiled. Time stood still. Instead of being repelled, I felt the tractor beam pull of her eyes pull me into the room.

  “Don’t mind me, honey. I was trying to remember where I’ve seen you before. Now I know. You used to come into the store to shop. You own that cute little restaurant down on Queen Street, don’t you?” Her voice was cigarette-husky. It took me a second before I could answer,

  “Yes, that’s my restaurant. It’s called Walker’s Way. I hope I’m not disturbing you. I wanted to offer my condolences. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Don’t be. My husband won’t be missed, not by me, anyway. I’m free at last and once the will is read next week I’ll be rich, too. I get all his property and I can do anything I want with it.”

  “I’m sure that’s some consolation, but you must be very frightened. First someone takes his life and then you and Stephen Albright are poisoned. I’m sorry to hear about the councillor. I didn’t know him, but I take it the two of you were close. Sounds like someone might be targeting you.”

  She popped the
chocolate into her mouth and chose another from a two-layered box sitting on her lap. Were the chocolates gifts from friendly well-wishers, or perhaps a secret admirer? I wanted to ask her about her affair with the late Stephen Albright, but was too much of a chicken and felt I had already said enough. I didn’t want to get eyeballed again. Swiftly she thrust the candy at me, and, pointing under the bed, said, “Help yourself, I’ve got lots. There are two more boxes, down there somewhere.”

  I bent over to take a look and straightened. What was I doing? Who cared if she had a stash of chocolates under the bed? Between her vivid good looks and the sultry voice, the woman was a calculated distraction. Not many men would be able to resist her sexuality. I took a candy to be polite and joined her in watching a show demonstrating the fine art of fondue cooking. After twenty seconds of mind-numbing film footage, I thought, fondue this, and made a private gesture at the television set.

  Then I asked Mrs. Vieira, “I ran into Maria D’Agnole in the hall a few minutes ago. She seemed terribly upset. I thought maybe she had been visiting you and wondered if she was all right? I know her father has been ill.”

  “Listen, sweetie, I didn’t even know she had a father. I told her that now that Tony’s gone she shouldn’t expect any more cash for her favours. She was his whore — as if the world didn’t know — and the fun was over.”

  That was harsh. Maria never looked like she was having fun to me. More likely, she had been playing up to Tony because she wanted to keep her job. I took a chance and said to her outright, “Seems like everyone who knew your husband is under suspicion. My chef is being treated as their prime suspect. I’ve been questioned and I know the Superior Meats employees have been interviewed. Of course the residents of the market are very upset with this investigation hanging over their heads. I guess I don’t have to tell you about that, do I? I mean, the wife is usually the first person they accuse.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re not, and I shouldn’t be discussing this with you in any case.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the police warned me not to talk to anyone and I don’t know you from Adam.”

  Our conservation was ending on a low note. Mrs. Vieira’s smile had vanished, and, not wanting to cause her any painful memories or invoke a curse, I wished her well and left. I noticed the same orderly who gave me directions to the phone was standing outside the door again.

  “Find the phone alright ma’am?”

  I nodded and smiled. I get called “ma’am” one more time today and I’ll scream.

  My new priority was getting the restaurant open. My existence depended on it, not to mention my staff’s. We all have loans to keep up, bank loans, car loans, student loans, shark loans, all of the above. My engines were revving.

  I beetled it through the main lobby of the hospital, agilely side-stepping patients dragging drip poles, solemn-faced nurses, and lost visitors with flowering plants in their hands. I saw the sign for the cafeteria and knowing Walker’s was closed, thought a nice cup of tea and a cinnamon Danish might hit the spot. I made a hard right toward the pastry cart.

  Maria D’Agnole was sitting at a table in the far corner. I put a teabag in a Styrofoam cup, filled it with boiling water from a spigot attached to an enormous copper drum kettle, and paid for it. I forgot about the bun.

  “Hi, Maria. Mind if I join you?”

  “Hi, um, I’m sorry, I forget your name. Please sit down.”

  “Liz Walker, I used to come into the meat store a lot.”

  “Oh, yes, I knew I recognized you. I talked to you a couple of times in the market bakery. Please excuse me, I’m a little distracted.”

  “Is it your father, will he be all right?”

  She looked confused and slightly vacant, like she was mulling something over.

  “I’m sorry if I seem nosy,” I said. “It’s just that I lost my father this year and you look upset. If you need to talk about it, I can lend you an ear.”

  “Thanks, but it’s not just that. You heard about my boss Mr. Tony being killed? It’s been a terrible shock for me. I understand that your chef is the murder suspect.”

  “He was, maybe he still is, but the police haven’t arrested him. Not enough evidence or motive, apparently. Were you close to Mr. Tony?”

  Maria bristled at the suggestion. “Where would you get an idea like that?”

  “You just said you were in shock and it’s not hard to see you’ve been crying.”

  “I’m not made of stone. I found his body, you know. I’ll never get that picture out of my mind. It’s all starting to sink in. How do you think I’d react?”

  “Sorry, I thought you were good friends.”

  “I despised the man. He was repugnant.” She was venomous and in full attack mode.

  “Are you surprised that I would use such a word? I graduated from high school with honours and I’m taking a correspondence course through the University of Toronto to further my studies.”

  This was a side of Maria I had never seen before. I didn’t know why I ever felt sorry for her. She certainly wasn’t the poor little immigrant girl I had first taken her for. Remembering Winn’s request, I ignored the bitterness in her voice and pretended concern.

  “You were fairly young when you first started the job at Superior Meats, weren’t you?”

  “I wasn’t the only one. There were other girls my age.”

  “You’ve been there quite a while? You must have liked working for him at one time.”

  She settled down, gaining control quickly. “It was difficult at first. Most of the girls quit because of the long hours and low wages. I didn’t have the luxury, I’m afraid. A few of the older women had butcher’s degrees from schools they attended in the old country, but they were of little use at Superior. The store had a strict policy — men only were allowed in the cutting room.”

  Maria shuddered. I wondered what she was thinking.

  I asked her quietly, “What is it, Maria?”

  “In the beginning, when I undersold or wasn’t fast enough, I was sent back to the packing station where the large commercial orders were made up for delivery. I hated that windowless room, so claustrophobic and always bone cold. It was like being buried alive.”

  “Things will be a lot different at the store now, I would think.”

  Maria smiled, “Oh, I think so, I’m quite looking forward to it.”

  After my conversation with the widow upstairs, I hoped she had alternative means of employment.

  “I dropped in to say hello to your boss’s wife,” I said. “She seemed fine. I mean being poisoned doesn’t seem to have bothered her much. In fact she seemed in a pretty good mood.”

  Maria’s eyes became instantly hooded and she looked down at her watch. Obviously she didn’t want to talk about it any further. She twisted her watch around on her wrist so that she could read it. “I’m sorry, I really have to run. Since the store is closed today, I booked a dance rehearsal for this afternoon and I don’t want to be late.” She stood, spilling a little unfinished tea in her cup on the table. “Nice talking to you. Bye.” She left quickly.

  I was sliding my chair back and reaching for my purse when I spied a gold plastic shoe bag under the table. I opened it and pulled out a small piece of silky material. Several flyers were wrapped around it and a deck of playing cards still in their box spilled out and fell to the floor. I was about to pick up the cards, but Maria beat me to it. She palmed the deck of cards in one hand and reached her other hand out to me. “That’s mine. It’s my dance costume.” I handed everything over to her except for one of the flyers. I read the bold black lettering printed across the red paper:

  TOSCANO’S DANCE HALL

  DANCE COMPETITION

  FIRST PRIZE $5000.00 DOLLARS

  REOPENING CELEBRATION

  JOIN US FOR FOOD, FUN AND

  DANCE, DANCE, DANCE

  DOOR CHARGE: $25.00 PER PERSON,

  COUPLES $40.00

  “Do you dance competitivel
y?” I inquired.

  She smiled wide. Nice teeth. “Yes, my boyfriend, Nicky, and I are contestants. We qualified for the finals last night. When we win this competition we’ll qualify for other national contests. I’m so excited. I’ve always wanted to travel.”

  Finally, something she was happy to talk about.

  “I’m selling tickets to help out with the door, would you like one?” Maria asked.

  “Sure, why not. What kind of dancing?”

  “It’s all Latin, rumba, tango, salsa, you know. We don’t do any ballroom style.”

  “Sounds wonderful, I love the tango. I’ll take two.” I figured I could find someone to go with me, maybe Jon or Rick, although they probably had dates. Well, maybe one of my old girlfriends. I haven’t seen Diana for a while. Then a plan occurred to me. If my new detective friend wanted more information on Maria, then he might be interested in accompanying me to the dance. I threw my head back and let out a triumphant laugh, it was genius, I tell you, pure genius.

  chapter ten

  * * *

  Rick was on his way to Walker’s. The chief health inspector had notified him that the source of food poisoning was not attributed to Walker’s, a fact that Mr. Randolph already confessed to me in the hospital. The sanction was lifted. However, we would have to wait for an official green pass to put in the window before we could legally reopen. Our local inspector phoned to say he wasn’t sure what time he could meet Rick to give him one. In any case, Rick wanted to wait for him at the restaurant and would call me as soon as he heard any news.

  Whether we opened tonight or the next morning, the staff had to be alerted and the prep started from scratch. Rick was anxious to get the show on the road. In the meantime, I had somewhere else I wanted to go. It was almost 4:30, hours before I promised to meet Mrs. Wong for the market community meeting later tonight. I had plenty of time to spare.