Irish Stewed (An Ethnic Eats Mystery)

by Kylie Logan

  “Even you?”

  I laughed. “I don’t have any secrets,” I told him, and, yes, I did emphasize the I just so he’d know that I hadn’t forgotten what he’d told me about the Food Pantry Robin Hood. “My life’s an open book.”

  “But not everyone’s is.”

  He was right. He was also hungry, and while he looked over the menu and ordered appetizers—mussels with miso sauce and wonton wrappers baked into crispy little boats and filled with pulled pork and candied jalapeño peppers—I thought about what else I’d learned back at the food pantry, namely that there was not now and never had been an AA group that met at St. Colman’s Church.

  “You’re thinking about the case.” Declan’s voice snapped me to. “You’ve got that look in your eyes. Like you’re putting two and two together.”

  “And coming up with five,” I admitted, and hated doing it. “George lied to me about his alibi for the night of the murder.”

  “He’s got every reason in the world to hate Jack Lancer.”

  “Agreed. But . . .”

  He sipped his wine. “But?”

  “I can’t imagine George actually killing someone.” I drowned the thought with a sip of caipirinha because actually, yeah, I could imagine George as a killer. It was because he never looked me in the eye for long, and because he was always so darned surly. It was because I knew he hated Jack Lancer. He admitted it.

  But he wasn’t the only one who had a motive to off the newscaster.

  “And then there’s Maxine, of course.” I filled Declan in on what Jack Lancer’s exes had told me about his current girlfriend. “If they’re right, she could have been angry enough to want to do Jack in.”

  “See, you are getting somewhere.” Our appetizers arrived and he bowed his head for a second, then dug in. “Mussels?”

  “We were only supposed to be coming for drinks.”

  “You might be serving Irish food over at the Terminal, but you have yet to learn nearly what you need to know about the Irish character. You don’t just go for drinks. You drink. You eat. You talk. A lot. It’s all part of an evening out, and when I’m with a date—”

  In spite of the fact that I’d just taken a drink, my mouth went dry. “Is that what this is? A date?”

  “If you’re afraid your Hollywood friends will find out you’ve gone out with a lowly attorney from Hubbard, Ohio, I can be sworn to secrecy.”

  He was kidding. Maybe. I wasn’t when I told him, “That’s not it at all. For one thing, I don’t have any Hollywood friends. Not anymore. And even if I did, who I choose to date—”

  “See? It is a date!” The argument settled—at least in his mind—he piled mussels on my plate and with the tip of his fork, urged me to start eating.

  Since the mussels were fabulous and the wonton wrappers had just the right amount of crunch and the filling was delicious, I was glad I did. I finished the mussels and spooned a few more from the serving platter onto my plate. “I may have found my new favorite restaurant.”

  “Not the Terminal?” His eyes sparked with mischief.

  “I have you to thank for giving me the idea for the Irish food,” I admitted.

  His smile was as genuine as it was enticing. “I’m glad. If there’s ever anything else you’d like my help with, you’ll let me know, right?”

  There was something about the purr of his voice combined with his shimmering smile that made my knees weak. I guess that means it’s a good thing that I didn’t have much of a chance to think about it. There was a bar at the far end of the restaurant, a little jut-out to one side of the wine cellar, and from in there, we heard a whoop.

  “You hear that?” a man’s voice called out. He stuck his head out of the bar so everyone in the restaurant could hear him. “We’ve got the TV on in here. Just saw a report. Kim Kline, she’s going to announce it on the news tonight. She says she knows who killed Jack Lancer!”

  A buzz of excitement ran through the restaurant, and I guess I could see why. Upscale or not, the patrons of the Rockworth Tavern were as caught up in the drama of the Lance of Justice’s murder as the rest of us.

  Declan and I exchanged looks. “What do you think?” he asked. “Is there any way she could be that far ahead of us?”

  I thought about Kim of the too-shiny hair and the too-big nose. She was young, sure, but she must have had some qualifications to land the job she had. If she had the reporter’s instincts to go along with them . . .

  Suddenly, the mussels and the wontons didn’t taste so good anymore. I pushed my plate away. “She said Jack might have been looking into the story of the Food Pantry Robin Hood,” I told Declan. “She knew that Jack Lancer sat at the same table every day and that he had his eyes on your place. What if she decided to run with the story? If she breaks the news that—”

  “Impossible.” His voice rang with conviction, but he pushed his chair back from the table and offered me his hand. “Come on,” he said.

  “We’re going? Where?”

  We couldn’t see into the bar from there, but he glanced that way, anyway. “We’ve got to talk Kim Kline out of airing some story she shouldn’t. If she blows the cover of the Food Pantry Robin Hood, she’s not only going to accuse somebody who shouldn’t be accused, but a lot of hungry people are going to suffer, and Uncle Pat . . .” He whistled low under his breath. “If Uncle Pat catches wind that his ill-gotten gains are going toward spaghetti sauce and Cheerios, he’s going to be one pissed-off Irishman!”

  * * *

  If Kim Kline was planning on breaking a big story about Jack Lancer’s murder on the eleven o’clock news that night, I figured she’d be at the station.

  I was right. Sort of. The receptionist at the desk in the lobby of the offices of station WKFJ told us that Kim would be back, but that she’d left there a couple hours earlier after she’d recorded that snippet about breaking news we’d heard at the Rockworth. She’d gone home to freshen up and get changed.

  “You heard her spot earlier, right?” The phone on the receptionist’s desk rang off the hook. No doubt, there were plenty of people as excited about what they’d heard from Kim as we were. All for different reasons. “We’re going to scoop all the other stations tonight. Kim, she’s going to be a star because of this. You watch. You’ll see.”

  I told her I had no doubt of it and shot Declan a look. “We need to talk to her,” I told him on our way back to the car.

  “Already working on it.” He tipped his phone so I could see the text message he’d just received. “Kim Kline’s address,” he informed me.

  I glanced up at him. “How did you—”

  We got into his car. “Let’s just say that there are a couple cops around here who owe me favors.”

  “Let’s just say that makes me a little nervous.”

  “What?” Declan laughed. “You don’t think an attorney can be on the right side of the law?”

  There was no use arguing the point with him so I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I watched the scenery zip by. The offices of the TV station were in Youngstown, the region’s biggest city and, like so many northern industrial cities, Youngstown’s glory days were long gone. We passed closed factory after closed factory, shuttered buildings, and neighborhoods of homes that looked as worn-out as the area’s economy. Farther from the center of town, the lot sizes got bigger, the homes were better kept. Still, the whole area seemed as if it were holding its breath, waiting for the world to change back to the way it was when American steel was king and the men who worked to manufacture it lived the good life, thanks to overtime pay, fat benefit packages, and pension plans they thought would take them through their golden years.

  In the meantime, cities struggled and made do with what they could to cobble together some kind of economic viability for their residents. In Austintown, near where Kim lived, there was a new racino, and the parking lot was packed. Driving by, I could just about feel the vibes coming off the place like smoke from a three-alarm fire.

  H
opes and dreams.

  The chance to hit it big.

  The opportunity to turn lives around.

  I guess there’s no better place for dreaming than a town where so many dreams had already been dashed.

  Seems like Hollywood and Youngstown have a whole lot in common.

  “This is her street,” Declan said, drawing me out of my thoughts at the same time he made a left turn. I admit I was a tad disappointed when he’d picked me up at Sophie’s in a late-model Infiniti instead of his Harley. Then again, the leather seats were cushy. I sunk back and, through the growing darkness, helped him read the addresses on the mailboxes out near the street.

  Kim’s house was a single-story brick ranch with geraniums planted out front around a lamppost and a red Cooper Mini in the drive.

  The front door was wide open and light spilled from inside and onto the front step. One look and relief washed through me.

  “She must still be home. She’s probably just leaving. Now all we have to do is think of what to say, what to tell her so that she doesn’t run that spot about Robin Hood.”

  When I got out of the car, Declan did, too. “You could present your theories. You know, about other suspects. Once she realizes Robin Hood couldn’t possibly have killed Jack Lancer, maybe she’ll decide not to say too much too soon. If you get her excited about those other suspects . . .”

  His words dissolved and, as if we’d choreographed the move, we both stopped cold five feet from Kim’s front door.

  It was wide open, all right, and there was a pool of something fresh and wet and very red on the beige carpeting, and Kim Kline lay right in the middle of it.

  Her arms were thrown out to her sides and those glossy ringlets of hers were a mess. Her eyes were wide open. They stared up at the ceiling, cold, unseeing, and very dead.

  * * *

  One murder is more than enough for one lifetime.

  Two in one week is just plain wrong.

  I leaned against the blue and white patrol car that had come racing to Kim’s when Declan called. Someone—maybe one of the paramedics who was now bent over Kim’s body?—had thrown a blanket over my shoulders, and I tugged it tighter around myself and watched the cops go through the motions of the beginnings of their investigation. Declan and I had already answered what questions we could—who we were, what we’d seen, how long we’d been there—and now, Declan spoke to a detective who stood nearby. They knew each other. I could tell from the easy way their conversation bounced back and forth, and when they were done, Declan came to stand next to me and slipped an arm around my shoulders.

  “You okay?”

  If I hadn’t been toughened by a lifetime of empty promises and by hoping to see the best of people and then seeing those hopes squashed by reality over and over, I think I actually might have shed a tear.

  “She was awfully young.”

  He settled next to me, his hip brushing mine, and slipped his arm around my shoulders. “If it’s any consolation, Charlie Martin, the guy I was just talking to, he says it looks like she was hit from behind. Her skull was crushed.”

  I had enough presence of mind to give him a scathing look. “That’s supposed to be consolation?”

  “Charlie said she went fast. She never knew what hit her.”

  “What did hit her?”

  I felt rather than saw his shrug. “Something big and heavy, and whatever it was, it doesn’t look like the murderer left it behind.”

  “How long—”

  “They don’t know yet. Not for sure. But I heard one of the techs tell Charlie that he figures it’s been about an hour.”

  Honest, I didn’t mean to sigh with relief.

  “What?” Declan unwrapped his arm from around me and took a step forward so he could pivot to face me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I could have denied knowing what he was talking about but, hey, we’d just found a dead body together. We owed each other something, and we might as well start with the truth.

  “It means you didn’t do it,” I said.

  He bit back whatever words were going to fly out of his mouth and chewed them over for a moment before he asked, “Did you really think I did?”

  “No.” That was the truth, too. “But, hey, it doesn’t hurt to eliminate suspects.”

  “And I was a suspect.”

  “You know you were. Not a serious one,” I added quickly when he made to walk away. Just to be sure he didn’t, I put a hand on his arm. “But I had to consider all the possibilities. You have to admit, you were acting mighty fishy the night I found Jack Lancer’s body.”

  “I explained that. Sophie and I were talking. About business.”

  I nodded my understanding. “And I believed you. But this . . .” From inside the house, we saw the paramedics lift the body and put it on a gurney. “This sort of seals the deal.”

  “It did for Kim Kline.”

  “Do you suppose . . .” The thought had been niggling around inside my brain since the moment we saw the blood and the body, and now I took a moment to let it settle. “Whoever killed her, I bet he saw the same promo spot we heard about back at Rockworth. She said she was going to reveal who killed Jack Lancer.”

  We watched the paramedics wheel the body to a waiting ambulance. “Looks like somebody didn’t want that to happen.”

  Chapter 19

  “So I know you didn’t kill Kim, because we were together last night at the time of the murder, and I know Sophie didn’t kill Kim. And before you ask,” I added, glancing across the stainless steel counter in the Terminal kitchen at Declan, “I know this for a fact because I called over to Serenity Oaks last night and double-checked. According to the woman at the front desk, Sophie was in the lounge all evening for oldies night. With that guy. The one with the fancy mustache. She never left so she couldn’t possibly have killed Kim.”

  “Well, I’m relieved to know we’re officially off your suspect list.” He’d brought something all wrapped in foil into the Terminal with him that Monday morning and he set the roundish package on the counter and unwrapped it.

  “Bread?” I leaned over for a better look and, while I was at it, I took a deep breath of the wonderful aroma that only fresh homemade bread has. “What kind?”

  I would have thought an attorney was beyond the whole rolled-eyes thing, but apparently Declan felt he had just cause. “Soda bread, of course. You really need to add it to your Irish menu. I made a couple loaves when I got home last night and—”

  “You bake bread?”

  “I bake Irish soda bread.” The way he said it made me realize that in his mind, there was a very real difference. “I couldn’t sleep last night and—”

  “You, either, huh?” I wasn’t going to mention it because really, if I did, I’d have to admit that every time I tried to close my eyes the night before, all I could see was that pool of blood soaked into Kim Kline’s carpet and Kim in the middle of it, her eyes staring up at the ceiling.

  I wrapped my arms around myself. “It’s hard to get that kind of thing out of your head.”

  “Which is why I resorted to baking.” He found a bread knife and sliced into the squat, round loaf. “There’s no yeast in soda bread so you don’t have to wait for it to rise, but still, it took me a couple hours to get all the ingredients together and get it mixed and baked. It was better than thinking about—”

  “Yeah.” I wished I’d thought of baking. Instead, in the hours when I couldn’t sleep, I’d paced Sophie’s living room, dodging Muffin’s bared claws and ignoring Muffin’s disapproving meows. As if to prove it, I stifled a yawn and checked out the thick slab of bread he put on a plate and handed to me. “No raisins?”

  “Not in my recipe!” He made it sound as if just asking was an insult, but since he smiled when he said it, I didn’t take it too seriously. “However . . .” With the tip of the knife, he pointed to the incision at the top of the loaf. “I always follow the tradition of putting a cross in the top of my soda bread,” he told
me. “Some people say it helps the bread grow. Others believe the tradition started either to ward off evil or to let the fairies out.”

  I slathered butter on my bread and took a bite. It was soft and crumbly, the best soda bread I’d ever tasted. “Which do you believe?” I asked him before I took another bite. “Are there fairies?”

  “Of course there are fairies and don’t you believe anyone who tries to tell you there aren’t. But this loaf . . .” He took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “When I cut that cross, I thought about warding off evil. The way things have been going around here lately, I’d say that’s our best bet.”

  “You got that right!” I finished my piece of bread and accepted another one when he offered it.

  “So?” he asked. “You going to add soda bread to the menu?”

  “Are you going to give me your recipe?”

  He whisked the already typed-up recipe out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself,” I told him.

  It was very early and the sun was just starting to creep through the windows high up on the wall to my left; the kitchen was filled with shadows. Declan’s smile brightened each and every one of them. “One thing I’ve never been accused of is a lack of self-confidence.”

  This, I was sure of.

  I got us cups of coffee and when he offered another piece of bread, I was tempted. I opted for half a piece, instead, at the same time I hoped he was planning on leaving what was left of the loaf at the Terminal. I was already dreaming of soda bread along with an afternoon cup of coffee.

  “So . . .” I broke off a piece of buttered bread and popped it in my mouth. “If Sophie didn’t kill Kim and if you didn’t kill her, who did?”

  He brushed crumbs from the front of his black T-shirt. “Good question. And here’s another thing to think about. We can be reasonably sure the story Kim was going to break on the eleven o’clock news wasn’t the story about the Food Pantry Robin Hood because Sophie and I are the only ones who would have cared if that news came out, and since you’ve so graciously”—he gave me a quick little bow—“eliminated us as suspects, there has to be something else Kim was about to reveal.”