Italian Iced

by Kylie Logan

  “No, no, no!” Two spots of high color rose in Wilma’s pale cheeks. “That is not possible. You know me, Laurel, you know I could never do such a thing.”

  “But I do know that desperate people do desperate things.”

  “Desperate? Yes.” As if all the air had gone out of her, Wilma sank into the nearest chair and put her head in her hands. “I have always been frugal. I never needed to spend my money. Oh yes, when I first went to work for Ms. Cohan, I did spend most of my salary. But then, I had an elderly aunt who needed my help and much of my paycheck went to her care. Once she died . . . well, what did I need the money for besides personal items? I lived in Ms. Cohan’s homes, I ate her food. I didn’t need to pay for my travel or my health care. She was a generous employer.”

  “She was.”

  “So all that money . . .” As if she was picturing fat stacks of dollar bills, Wilma sighed. “I put aside all that money.”

  “And then along came Guinevere.”

  “Yes. Ms. Cohan was so excited about the picture. She was going to star, of course, as well as produce and direct. Such a talented woman. One day, she told me all about it. Such a picture she painted!” Wilma’s smile was fleeting. “But you know how Hollywood is, Laurel. Fickle. Difficult. Ms. Cohan, she confessed that her production company was having trouble raising the funds for the film. Costume dramas are not the big draw they once were.”

  “So she asked you for help.”

  “Not in so many words. She said she was raising money from a number of sources, and I told her I would be honored to be part of such a project. I am not naive,” Wilma pointed out. “I am hardly the type to have stars in my eyes. But I knew that, like every other film Ms. Cohan was associated with, Guinevere should have been a blockbuster. I expected a very good return on my investment.”

  “Except that the leading man was busted.”

  “And his contract . . . well, there was some mumbo jumbo in it that said he was the only one who could play the lead role, no matter what. The film went down the tubes because of it.” Tears streaked Wilma’s cheeks. “At first when I heard the news, I couldn’t believe it. Ms. Cohan’s projects, they were always a sure thing. I spoke to her about it, of course. I asked what I could do. I explained it was all my money in the world and Ms. Cohan, she . . .” As if she still couldn’t believe it, Wilma shook her head in wonder. “She said, ‘That’s showbiz!’ And she went on with her life. And I looked into the future and wondered what would happen to me.” She sat up and straightened her shoulders.

  “I suppose it was a valuable lesson to learn. Unfortunately, I learned it too late in life. All my money, it is gone.”

  “And you were angry.”

  “Yes. Very angry.”

  “Angry enough to kill Meghan?”

  Wilma rose on shaking legs. “Yes. Of course I was. Who wouldn’t be? But I didn’t kill Ms. Cohan. I couldn’t have. I was right here that night. I couldn’t leave Spencer alone.”

  “Can anyone verify that?”

  Wilma’s lips folded in on themselves. “You are telling me I need an alibi.”

  “You were in town that night.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had plenty of good reasons to kill Meghan, about five hundred thousand of them, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Yes.”

  “So can anyone verify you were here? How about Spencer?”

  “No!” As if she thought I was going to go into his room and grill him right then and there, Wilma stepped to her left, blocking my path to Spencer’s door. “It is not right to involve him further,” she said. “He was tired from our trip and went to bed right after we checked in to the hotel. There’s nothing he can tell you.”

  “Then no one can vouch for you that night?”

  As if making up her mind about something, she closed her eyes. “Corrine,” she said. The decision made, Wilma opened her eyes and gave me a steady look. “Corrine called.”

  “She knew you were in town?”

  “No, she called my cell. She thought I was still in Malibu. We talked, and I told her I was here.”

  “Why?”

  Wilma did a turn around the small room, stopping long enough to look out the window near the couch. Like Corrine’s room, this one faced the parking lot. She pushed aside the vertical blinds and stared at the blacktop so long, I wondered if she forgot I was there. Finally, she turned to face me.

  “When Corrine called, she was extremely upset.”

  “Did she say what that was all about?”

  “I asked, of course, but she was crying so hard, it was difficult to get much out of her that made any sense. She said she needed to talk to someone. That’s why she called. She said . . .” Wilma swallowed hard. “She said she had done a terrible thing.”

  My heart slammed into my ribs. “A terrible thing like rolling through a stop sign? Or a terrible thing like murder?”

  She shook her head. “Corrine didn’t say. She couldn’t say. She was distraught, nearly unintelligible.” Wilma glanced at me from beneath her snowy eyelashes. “I have never been a fan.”

  I asked even though I didn’t need to. “Of Corrine, you mean?”

  As if the very thought was too much to consider standing still, she threw her hands in the air and paced to the door and back. “She’s disorganized. She’s disrespectful. She could never get phone messages straight. The woman is a disaster, start to finish.”

  “And yet Meghan kept her on.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Corrine told you she did something terrible.” I let the words settle in the air between us. “Do you think she murdered Meghan?”

  Another shake of her head. “This, I cannot say. I do know that the woman was so overwrought I couldn’t stand it. That’s when I told her we were here in Ohio, staying at the same hotel she and Meghan were. I told her I would meet her in the lobby so we could talk face-to-face.”

  “And did you?”

  Wilma ran her tongue across her lips. “No. After all that, she did not want to meet. She said she’d be fine. But don’t you see, Laurel, I talked to her the night of the murder, and I was right here when I did it. Isn’t that enough to prove I had nothing to do with Meghan’s death?”

  I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I know, I know . . . it was hardly the reaction a detective who claimed to be objective and unbiased should have, but I couldn’t help it. Spencer had been through enough in his young life. I didn’t want to add Wilma going to the slammer to the list.

  I looked at her suitcase. “The cops, they’re all right with you leaving?”

  “I will check, of course,” she assured me. “But I don’t know why they would care. They can find us if they need us. And if you need us, Laurel . . .” Her silvery brows dropped low over her eyes. “I will call and leave you the information.” Wilma sucked in a breath. “Ms. Cohan’s houses, they will all be sold, won’t they? Honestly, I don’t know where I’ll be going or what I’ll do when I get there.”

  “If I can help . . .”

  She stepped forward and put a hand on my arm. “Thank you, Laurel. You were always a good friend to me. Someday, perhaps I will take you up on your offer. For now, I need time to sit quietly and think. What you can do to help . . .” Color touched her cheeks and she tightened the hold on my arm. “Find out who killed Spencer’s mother. Bring that person to justice. It is all he has now.”

  “He has his father.”

  Wilma patted my arm. “It is all Spencer has now.”

  I was still considering her words when I stepped out of the room and saw Corrine walking down the corridor.

  I called out to her. She hesitated, then kept walking.

  Like I was going to let that stop me?

  “Corrine!” This time, I closed in on her when I yelled, “You’re just the person I want to talk to.”

&
nbsp; I heard her gulp before she turned to face me. “I am? Why?”

  I wondered if my smile looked as strained as it felt. “Why not? We’re old friends, aren’t we?”

  As if she expected some secret camera was hidden someplace, recording our every move, she looked around. “Are we?” she asked.

  Rather than lie, I scooted around her, effectively blocking off the door to her hotel room. “Why don’t we go sit in the lobby?” Before I even suggested it, I got ahold of her arm and was moving that way.

  Corrine might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but she knew when she was outmaneuvered. A minute later we were seated on the not-so-comfortable couches on either side of a massive coffee table piled with magazines and adorned with a fake flower arrangement in shades of mauve, navy, and white.

  I moved to my right, the better to see Corrine beyond the silk foliage.

  She moved to her left.

  I moved to my left.

  She scooted to her right.

  “So . . .” Leaning over, I grabbed the arrangement and moved it from the table to the floor. “What have you been up to?”

  “Up? To?” She folded her hands together on her lap. “Nothing, of course. What makes you think I’ve been up to anything?”

  “Just wondering how you’re passing the time.”

  “I’m . . .” She glanced away.

  “Thinking about all the money you didn’t inherit?” I suggested.

  Corrine played it cool. Or at least she tried. The little twitch at the corner of her mouth told me she wasn’t as unflappable as she pretended to be.

  “It’s no wonder you’re upset,” I said. “Who wouldn’t be?”

  She made a little clicking noise with her tongue. “Meghan dissed you in her will.”

  “She did. But she flat-out eviscerated you in it.”

  “Not exactly,” Corrine countered. “What she did was—”

  “Insult the heck out of you and everyone else who thought she cared for them.”

  Her shoulders slumped. But only for a second. In a heartbeat, Corrine was back to playing the brave little soldier. Chin up, shoulders back, she tipped her head and studied me. “Is this what we came all the way down here to talk about?” she asked.

  Since “all the way down here” was maybe thirty steps down the hallway, I ignored that part of her question. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the night of the murder.”

  “I didn’t do it!”

  I think the denial—as abrupt and passionate as it was—surprised even Corrine. She swallowed hard and did her best to fold herself into the navy and white upholstery. When that didn’t work, she blinked and stared and waited for me to make the next move.

  I let her sweat for a couple of minutes.

  “Actually,” I finally said at just about the time Corrine looked like she was going to jump out of her skin, “I wanted to ask you about the phone call you made to Wilma that night.”

  If Wilma’s story was a lie, I expected Corrine to jump in with both feet and ask, Phone call? What phone call?

  When she didn’t, I knew I was onto something.

  “What were you upset about?” I asked her.

  She tried a little too hard to look like it didn’t matter. “It was nothing. Really. I just . . . well, I just got a little carried away about something. Something personal.”

  “Something terrible.”

  Like a robin sighting a worm, she leaned forward. “Terrible? Is that what Wilma told you? I don’t recall saying anything like that.”

  “Wilma remembers it very well.”

  She blew a puff out of one side of her mouth. “Wilma’s old.”

  “But not stupid.”

  “She’s confused.”

  “She asked if you wanted to meet to talk about whatever was bothering you. Why didn’t you?”

  As if I’d slapped her, Corrine reared up. “What do you mean, why didn’t I? I told her I would.”

  “Here in the lobby.”

  “No.” She shook her head so hard, that too-red hair of hers twitched over her shoulders. “Not here. Wilma suggested we meet here, but I didn’t . . .” As if she might still be there, watching, Corrine looked down the hallway. “I didn’t want Meghan to show up and see us together talking.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like I said, it was personal.”

  So was the way I’d been thinking about the alibi Wilma had flung my way. Had I been so worried about Spencer that I was willing to believe whatever Wilma told me about how she hadn’t left the hotel room that night?

  Before I jumped to (any more) conclusions, I reminded myself to get a grip.

  “So where did you meet?” I asked Corrine.

  “Well, that’s the funny thing,” she said. “It’s not like either one of us is familiar with the area. So I looked in one of those magazines, you know, the kind in the room that list restaurants and activities in the area. And I found a Denny’s that’s open twenty-four hours. That’s where we agreed to meet.”

  Denny’s.

  Away from the hotel.

  Away from Spencer.

  And far from the alibi Wilma had given me.

  I reined in the tingle that told me I might be onto something.

  “And . . . ?” I gave Corrine the kind of look that told her I needed more to go on.

  She shrugged. “And nothing. Wilma never showed.”

  Chapter 16

  “Never showed because she had second thoughts and decided she didn’t want to leave Spencer alone? Or never showed because she was here in Hubbard clubbing Meghan on the head and dragging her into the freezer?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  I’d just finished tearing fresh spinach leaves and putting them into a colander so they could be used as the finishing touch in our Friday lunch special, penne pasta with bacon, tomatoes, and spinach. I took the colander over to the sink so George could drain the pasta over it. The boiling water would provide all the cooking the tender baby spinach would need before we mixed the dish together.

  Back at the counter, I cleaned up the bits and pieces of spinach stem that I’d discarded.

  “What do you think?” I asked Declan.

  “What do you think?” he asked me in return.

  “I think . . .” I finished with the cleanup and plunked down on the high stool next to the counter. “I think I don’t know. And I think I hate not knowing. And I think . . .” I screeched my frustration. Quietly, of course, since it was lunchtime and the Terminal was hopping and I didn’t want to scare our customers.

  “I think I’m tired of wasting brain cells on what’s becoming more confusing by the moment,” I confessed. “I’m supposed to be the Terminal’s chef, not its personal detective. You know what I think?” My mind made up, I gave the stainless counter a slap just to prove how determined I was. “I think I’m going to spend the rest of the day thinking about food instead of murder. Starting right now.”

  I kept my word, throwing myself into cooking and cleaning and menu planning with so much zeal, Declan was forced to take cover back at the Irish store, and George learned—fast—to stay out of my way. I chopped mushrooms. I made sauce for the pizzas we’d feature on the evening menu. I called Luigi Lasagna and each and every one of his amici to make sure they’d be at the Terminal at six sharp to provide the music that evening. While I was at it, I even requested they play a couple of songs, one of which just happened to be the sort-of-Italian-sounding “Que Sera, Sera” just to remind myself that when it came to the investigation, what would be, would be.

  Ready to face what was sure to be a busy Friday evening, I poured a cup of coffee and thought about the next week’s specials.

  We’d keep pizza on the menu because it was popular, easy to make, and, according to our customers, the best-tasting pizza in
town.

  We’d get rid of the shrimp and lemon with fennel and basil because as much as I hated to admit it, George was right: our customers weren’t crazy about the taste of fennel.

  We’d add . . .

  I was holding a pencil, and I tapped it against the counter where I was seated, thinking about the Italian dishes I’d made throughout the years, the ones I’d loved, the ones I’d hated, the ones that were too complicated or too expensive for a place like the Terminal, the ones that were simple enough to prepare and always made an impression.

  “Fra diavolo!” I announced. Probably too loudly since over where George was washing a sink full of pans, he jumped. “It’s a pasta sauce,” I explained just as loudly so he couldn’t fail to hear me.

  George grumbled.

  This did not deter me. Filled with fresh enthusiasm for the job that was supposed to be my job when I wasn’t working on a job that wasn’t and getting nowhere doing it, I pulled out a pad and wrote down the ingredients we’d need for the simple, spicy sauce.

  Tomato puree.

  Garlic.

  Basil, mint, parsley.

  I had these fresh herbs growing in pots back on the kitchen windowsill of Pacifique, and I wrote a note to myself so I wouldn’t forget to bring them to the Terminal.

  Red pepper flakes.

  Again, I tapped my pencil as I thought, wondering what I could substitute for so common an ingredient to add a little more pizzazz, a little more something for our customers to talk about, a little more (forgive the pun) spice.

  I decided on chile de arbol peppers, those small, long, and skinny peppers that are often used on wreaths because they don’t lose their color after they’re dehydrated. The peppers have about as much kick as red pepper flakes, but they are a little more exotic, a little more flavorful, and I liked the thought of putting my own spin on an old tried-and-true recipe. Chile de arbol are just spicy enough. They would be the perfect way to add the right kick to a dish that literally translates to “devil monk.”

  “Fra diavolo,” I said, this time to myself because for some reason I couldn’t explain, the words tapped around inside my mind like a Morse code message.