Irish Stewed (An Ethnic Eats Mystery)

by Kylie Logan

  It did cheer me right up.

  Well, except for the sourness that suddenly filled my stomach.

  Hey, blame it on the pastrami.

  I know I did.

  * * *

  By the next morning, I’d decided that two could play the same game. Declan was out to charm his way to information? Well, even on my best days, I’d never been accused of being charming. But I sure as heck could be proactive and clever.

  As soon as ten o’clock rolled around and I knew George, Denice, and Inez didn’t need any help at the Terminal (why would we when our parking lot was empty and the parking spaces in front of Caf-Fiends were full?), I headed over to Artisans All, the gallery across the street that was wedged between the beauty shop and the empty storefront.

  Like Caf-Fiends, Artisans All was housed in a redbrick building that had seen better days. Still, somehow the faded bricks looked just right with the tasteful robin’s-egg blue front door and the wreath of bright spring flowers that hung there along with the OPEN sign. Like Caf-Fiends, the front window was decorated to the hilt. This time, there were no stuffed bees or paper flowers. Instead, the gallery window held a tasteful array of handmade jewelry, a hand-painted silk kimono, ceramic pots, and hand-dipped candles.

  I had never been a fan of artsy-craftsy and what I saw sure wasn’t worthy of Rodeo Drive, but most of it was interesting and some of it was downright impressive.

  I pushed open the door and was greeted by a woman of sixty-some years with frizzy red hair piled loosely at the top of her head. Her orange caftan and bead-encrusted sandals seemed more suited to Key West than they did to Hubbard.

  “You’re Laurel.” She held out a hand and, before I had a chance to shake it, she introduced herself as Carrie Farmer and added, “You know, we’ve all been talking, everyone in the neighborhood. We knew you were coming. Sophie told us. But no one imagined you’d bring so much excitement along with you.”

  “The excitement has nothing to do with me,” I was sure to tell her.

  Carrie smiled. She wore a thick gold hoop in one ear, a thinner, bigger hoop in the other, and three rings on each hand. “I’ve got coffee,” she said, and turned to glide to the back of the store. “Cream and sugar?” she called from a back room.

  I asked for sweetener and took a minute to look around. As I suspected from the display in the front window, the gallery was filled with pretty things: framed photographs of wildflowers, handmade soaps from a place called A Goat in Bubbles, beaded jewelry, knitted scarves. It was all displayed with style, and the prices . . .

  I checked out a pair of earrings—dangling purple stone balls—displayed near where I stood.

  I was in the Midwest; the price was a steal. Back in the day when I had a job—I mean a real job—I wouldn’t have thought twice. These days . . .

  I set down the earrings, and when Carrie returned to the front of the gallery I took the cup of coffee she handed me.

  “So . . .” She looked me over. “I guess everything they say about you is true.”

  I sipped my coffee. “That depends on who they are and what they say.”

  When she laughed, she opened her mouth wide and threw back her head. “Alexander McQueen shoes, and that green-and-black-striped jersey top is from the spring collection at Saks, if I’m not mistaken. The jeans . . .” She gave them another look. “Maybe not top-of-the-line, but very close to it. You were some hot shot out in Hollywood, weren’t you? Just like Sophie told us.”

  “Sophie tends to exaggerate. I was a personal chef, that’s all.”

  “Well, you were a personal chef with very good taste.” Carrie set her china coffee mug down on the glass-topped display counter and folded her hands together at her waist. Her fingernails were very long and painted a blue that matched the front door. “And now you’ve got a murder mystery on your hands.”

  I was grateful she’d brought up the subject. It saved me from doing it. “The police have released their only suspect.”

  Carrie wore lipstick that was nearly the same shade as her flowing caftan. When her top lip curled, it left a smudge of orange under her nose. “Those people!” She snorted. “You can’t tell me that little twerp didn’t do it.”

  “You know Owen Quilligan?”

  She tsked. “I don’t have to know him. I know them.”

  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. I was sure from the tone of her voice that whatever she was talking about, it was sure to piss me off. “Them? You mean the Quilligan family?”

  “Like I said, never met the kid. Or his family, as far as I know. But the Sheedy family, the Fury family . . . all those types who call themselves Travellers. That’s who I mean. I wouldn’t put it past any one of them to kill somebody and not blink twice.”

  Her assessment didn’t jibe with what Declan had told me about family and loyalty. “What can you tell me?” I asked Carrie.

  “Gypsies. Crooks. Every one of them.”

  Oh, don’t think I’d forgotten that Declan was only out to charm the socks off me so that he could help his cousin out of a bind. But that didn’t make him dishonest. Did it?

  “They’ve got records?” I asked Carrie.

  She gave an unladylike snort. “They should. You know what they do, don’t you?” she asked, then without waiting for me to answer, she told me. “They live by some old-time, old-fashioned, outmoded set of rules and they keep to themselves because they have plenty of secrets and they don’t want anyone on the outside to find them out. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them spend their days gazing into crystal balls and reading tarot cards! The rest of them? They travel through the area, mostly in the summer. They go around and offer to do maintenance work on people’s houses. You know, new roofs, new driveways. Then they do a half-baked job. Or they use crappy materials. Or they take a person’s money, start the work, then never come back to finish it. Travellers!” Another snort emphasized her opinion. “Around here, we know better than to trust any of them.”

  “Declan doesn’t seem to be like that.”

  “He doesn’t have to be, does he? All right, I admit it, the man deserves one of those Sexiest Man of the Year awards. No doubt you’ve noticed. But, you know, him being over at that gift shop, that’s just a front of sorts.”

  I guess I was not as immune to charm and a handsome face as I’d hoped because the very thought made it hard for me to get the words out. “A front for something dishonest?”

  “For his law practice!” From the way she said it, I wasn’t sure Carrie thought that made it dishonest or not. “The man’s job is to keep his relatives out of trouble and when that’s not possible—and believe me, it’s not usually possible—his job is to get his relatives out of trouble. You know that, don’t you? He’s an attorney, all right, but he only has one client, his own family. You can see why they’d need him, all those Traveller types showing up here from down south and pulling their scams. And that uncle Pat of his . . .” Carrie leaned closer and lowered her voice at the same time she slid a look in the direction of the beauty shop next door. “They say he used to run the Irish mob in this part of the state, you know.”

  “Used to?”

  “Not what it used to be.” I couldn’t tell if she approved or if she thought less of Uncle Pat because he hadn’t made it to Al Capone status. “Not nearly as influential or as violent as they were back in the day. But that doesn’t mean they still don’t get in trouble. The whole lot of them! Oh yeah, Declan, that’s his job. He runs interference between his family and the law.”

  Another thing he’d forgotten to mention.

  I made a mental note of it, but rather than get distracted, I got down to business, and since Carrie apparently had something against Declan and his family, I decided to leave him out of it. “Myra over at the coffee shop told me that on the night of the murder, she saw something outside the Terminal. A car. Parked there sometime before Sophie and I showed up around nine o’clock. I don’t know if you were open late that night, but—”

/>   “Monday nights, I close at five.”

  I guess Carrie saw the way my shoulders drooped because her plucked-to-a-hair-breadth eyebrows rose and she was quick to add, “But I was here late that particular night, going over the books.”

  My head came up. “Did you see the car?”

  “A car?” As if it might kick-start her memory, she strolled toward the front window and looked across the street at the Terminal. For a long time, she stood lost in thought before she said, “You know Jack Lancer spent a lot of time over there these last few weeks.”

  “So I’ve heard.” I joined her. From this vantage point—with that pink and white kimono, a flowered teapot, and a row of silky scarves framing the scene—the Terminal looked more dreary than ever. “Do you know what he was doing there?”

  “I know what he wasn’t doing!” Carrie tossed back her head. “Man sure wasn’t looking for a story idea. First day he showed up, see, it was all anybody around here could talk about. Then the next day, he was back again. I heard about it from Denice when she came outside for a smoke. Hey, I know how these TV types are. They’re always looking for something new and interesting. So I figured, what the heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I put this on.” She pointed to our right and a display of chunky stone jewelry and touched a finger to a necklace made of sterling beads and lapis drops polished to a velvety finish.

  “Wore that, and took a walk over to Sophie’s place.”

  The why wasn’t a mystery. Hollywood had taught me a lot about self-promotion.

  “You were hoping he’d realize that you sell wonderful art and do a story about the gallery. What did Jack Lancer say?”

  “The son of a gun didn’t even notice my jewelry. He did”—Carrie elbowed me in the ribs—“he did notice me, though. Not only did he ask me to join him for coffee, he wondered what I was up to that night and just about came right out and propositioned me.”

  Kim did say Jack was something of a ladies’ man. “And you told him?”

  Carrie hooted. “I told him that I sell art, not myself. And I didn’t have coffee with him, either, in case you’re wondering. He might have been a TV star, but Jack Lancer was not my type. Too loud. Too pushy. You know what I mean?”

  “But even after that day, Jack kept coming back to the Terminal.”

  “So I hear. I never saw him again. I never bothered.”

  “And the night of the murder, when you were here late doing the books?”

  Carrie turned around and went to retrieve her coffee cup. “There was someone there, all right,” she said, glancing across the street over the rim of her cup. “About seven o’clock.”

  I didn’t want to look too eager so I stopped myself just as I was about to close in on Carrie. “Who?”

  When she shrugged, her caftan rippled in orange waves. “Long shadows on that side of the street at that time of the evening. I couldn’t really see who it was. But I did see the person go in through the front door.”

  “But the back door was broken into. That’s how Jack and the killer got inside!” I didn’t want to say too much, but it really didn’t matter. Like the rest of Hubbard, Carrie had obviously been glued to TV coverage of the Lance of Justice’s death.

  “The killer got in through the back door. Yeah, that’s what they said on the news. But I didn’t see anyone go around back. Like I said, I couldn’t tell who it was, but I saw a person walk up to the front door and open it with a key.”

  * * *

  Whatever I had expected to hear from Carrie, it wasn’t this. I pretended I wasn’t knocked for a loop, told her I’d be back on a day when I had more time to look around her shop, and made a beeline across the street and into the Terminal kitchen.

  Since there were no customers out front, George, Denice, and Inez were taking a break.

  “Who has a key?” I asked.

  They looked at me in wonder.

  “To the restaurant. Who has a key to the restaurant?”

  George grunted. “You.”

  “And?” I turned to Denice and Inez.

  Denice had been checking her messages and she tucked her phone in her pocket. “Nobody,” she said. “Nobody but Sophie and now, you.”

  “But . . .” I paced a pattern between the food pickup window and the grill. “What happens when Sophie’s sick?”

  “Sophie’s never been sick,” Inez said.

  “Well, what about if she takes a day off?”

  “That’s never happened,” George said.

  “When her sister died out in California a few years ago, Sophie closed the restaurant for a week or more.” Denice rose from the chair where she’d been sitting. “Besides, she always said if something like that would happen . . . you know, if she would get sick or something . . . then she’d call one of us and we could stop over at her house for the key.”

  We heard the front door of the Terminal open and Inez popped out of her chair and hurried out of the kitchen. “She was always the first one here in the morning,” she called over her shoulder. “And she was always the last one to leave at night. Nobody ever needed a key but Sophie.”

  Sophie, and whoever had let themselves into the Terminal on the night Jack Lancer was murdered.

  The thought burned through my brain along with the fact that if that was true—if someone came in through the front door—then that broken window on the back door that led directly into the kitchen was just for show so the cops would think the person got in that way. I kicked this around while I went out to the restaurant to see who’d just come in. Stan, Dale, Phil, and Ruben. Early that day, and no doubt anxious for the day’s special, chicken fried steak.

  I greeted the men, then hurried to the office, the better to have a few minutes to think over everything I’d learned that morning.

  Jack had been a Terminal regular as of late.

  I’d heard that much from any number of people, so that wasn’t a surprise.

  The question of course was why he was suddenly interested in the Terminal.

  But that wasn’t my only question. Now that I knew Sophie was the only one Carrie could have seen earlier that evening, the only one with a key, I had to wonder why she’d made an after-hours visit to the Terminal and why she hadn’t mentioned—to either me or to the police—that she’d been there earlier that evening.

  Even those questions weren’t as disturbing as the final one that pounded through my brain.

  What was Sophie trying to hide?

  Chapter 11

  “How was the chicken fried steak?”

  “No hello?” When I got to the hospital that Thursday evening, Sophie was sitting up in the green vinyl-covered chair in the corner of her room, so I perched on the edge of her bed. “The first thing you ask about is today’s special?”

  “Today’s special, tomorrow’s special.” She shifted in her seat and for a moment, her face contorted into a mask of pain. Settled, she took a deep breath. “Better I should think about the Terminal than about what those doctors did to me.”

  I didn’t even have to ask. From this angle, I couldn’t help but see that both above and below the bandage that swathed her knee, Sophie’s right leg was swollen. There was an IV in her arm that slowly dripped what I hoped was enough painkiller to alleviate what must have been terrible discomfort.

  “No problems at the Terminal,” I told her without bothering to add, no customers, either. “Everything’s as right as rain.”

  “George is behaving?”

  I assured her he was.

  “Denice is still as on top of things as ever?”

  This, too, I had no problem telling her was true.

  “And how about Inez?” Sophie frowned. “Nice girl. And she needs the job to help support that kid of hers because that no-good lowlife of a husband walked out on her. But she’s not always as conscientious as I would like. She hasn’t been late, has she?”

  Since I didn’t want Sophie to worry, I lied.

  “So . . .” I slipped off the bed. “Y
ou’ve probably been watching a lot of TV.”

  “You mean about the Lance of Justice’s murder.” Sophie nodded. “It’s all anybody can talk about. My roommate . . .” She poked her chin in the direction of the second bed in the room, but that bed was empty. “Before she went home today, my roommate said I should be sure to give her a call. You know, when the police solve the mystery. She was mighty impressed about how Jack was found at the Terminal, I can tell you that much. She acted like she was sharing the room with a celebrity.”

  “There’s certainly been a lot of talk about the murder,” I told Sophie and this time, it wasn’t a lie. “Everyone has their own theories about what happened and why.”

  “I sure do.” Sophie shifted in her seat again and when she reached for the pillow propped at her back and couldn’t quite get it the way she wanted, I went over to help. “It had to be someone he was investigating,” she told me, keeping her voice low as if she were the only one clued in to the possibility. “Someone wanted to keep the Lance of Justice from blabbing about something.”

  Something he was investigating. Like a certain restaurant where he’d been spending an unusual amount of time?

  I didn’t dare come right out and ask. Not if I expected any kind of answer that actually might help.

  Instead, I went over to the bedside table, poured a glass of water, and handed it to Sophie. “You need plenty of water when you’re recovering from surgery,” I told her. “And plenty of time to rest and relax and let all your cares fade away. Maybe if there was something you were worried about . . .” I gave her a knowing look.

  She returned it with a blank stare.

  I drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “I’ve been talking to the other merchants in the neighborhood,” I told her.

  “That’s good. That’s just the kind of thing I was hoping you’d do. It’s a great way to build morale, don’t you think?”

  “It might be if we were talking about business.”

  As if I’d never dropped that not-so-subtle remark, Sophie’s eyes twinkled. “I hope Declan is one of the people you’ve been talking to. He likes you.”