Killer Salsa (A Mexican Cafe Cozy Mystery Series Book 2)

by Holly Plum

  “Hey,” Mari said, flinging a spoonful of tomato into his face. “Be careful what you wish for.” They both laughed.

  A Preview of MURDER CON CARNE by Holly Plum

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mari Ramirez swore quietly as she pulled into the parking lot of her family's Mexican restaurant. Her brothers, Alex and David, were supposed to have opened it by now. But of course, the restaurant was empty. Steve Wilson, the meat delivery man, stood near the glass doors with his hands in the pockets of his oversized jeans. He casually smoked his cigarette. Mari wondered why he hadn’t moved to the back of his truck where it was cooler. Summer mornings in Texas could be vicious. Sweat was already dripping down Steve's neck.

  Steve held up one hand as Mari emerged from her car. It was a half-wave, half-salute. Mari’s bulldog leaped out of the passenger's seat and began growling. Tabasco was not a fan of most delivery men, especially Steve.

  “Tabasco, hush,” Mari said sternly. Mari's dad hated it when she brought him inside, but Mari knew better than to leave a dog in a parked car on a warm summer day. Tabasco peered out from behind Mari’s ankles and glared with all the might he could muster. He hated Steve and Tabasco took the opportunity to make his feelings known whenever he saw him.

  “Took one of ya long enough,” Steve commented, though he didn’t sound angry. “I’m almost positive your dad’s in there, but either he can’t hear me or he’s too busy to come to the door.”

  “That sounds like Dad.” Mari jangled her keys by way of apology. “He usually shuts the door and tunes out the world when he goes over the accounts.”

  “Sometimes I think he sleeps here,” Steve responded.

  “Well, that’s the way we do things at Lito Bueno’s Mexican Restaurant.”

  Steve laughed as Mari unlocked the door. In the reflection of the glass, she saw the sun glinting brightly with the arid, blue sky around it. A single red pickup truck sat parked across the street at the Lucky Noodle, her least favorite restaurant, and her family's main competitor. For twenty years Mr. Chun, owner of the Lucky Noodle, had been trying to run them out of business with no luck. The town had one Mexican restaurant and one Chinese restaurant, and that was how people liked it.

  The lock had jammed, and it was only after several minutes of patient coaxing and a few minutes of impatient knocking, that Mari was able to pry it open. It was a relief to be in that cool room. Not just because of the heat but because the tension between her and Steve was like a third wheel that followed them wherever they went. Steve had liked Mari since her first year of college, and he had asked her out once. She'd said no, and Steve had never quite gotten over it. Now and then, when he thought no one was paying attention, a flicker of that old yearning would glimmer in his eyes for a moment. Mari was instinctively kind to him, half out of genuine affection and half out of pity.

  As Steve made his way to the freezer, Mari took in the whole room with a single glance. When she was a little girl, her brothers had often gotten her into trouble by daring her to run around the restaurant in the middle of business hours. They would set up their own obstacle courses and take turns trying to dash from one end of the room to the other, amid the square tables with their red tops and the long-legged strangers who were constantly getting up and sitting down again. Whoever made it all the way back without bumping into someone or being caught by their dad would get a prize. The prizes varied—anything from bubblegum to cherry soda. It was well worth the spanking she had gotten when they'd gotten home that night.

  In an hour or two people would begin pouring into the restaurant for lunch. The tables would be stacked with steaming plates of paella, homemade tortillas, enchiladas, chile rellenos, and the overhead speakers would play traditional Mexican music. At that moment, however, Mari heard nothing but the clicking of a calculator coming from a back office.

  Mari walked into the office, Tabasco tagging along at her heels.

  “Didn’t you hear me knocking?” Mari said by way of introduction.

  “I thought you were Steve,” her father replied, without bothering to glance up from his books. “What is that dog doing in my office?”

  “He followed me inside. I told him no, but he just wouldn’t listen.”

  José Ramirez let out a deep sigh. “You know the problem with kids these days? They don’t respect their elders.”

  This was an argument they had been having for so long that by now it was almost a game. Mari played the role of the difficult child while her father feigned world-weariness.

  “I bet things were better back in Mexico, huh?” Mari commented.

  “They were,” José stated. “When you told a woman to do something, she did it.”

  “Okay, Dad.” Patting him lightly on the shoulder, Mari turned and left the office. Her father was an old-fashioned man with dated ideas about a woman's role.

  Steve emerged from the freezer as Mari filled up the napkin dispensers. He was out of breath, and his black-and-yellow protective gloves were covered with small shards of ice. As she had done so many times before, Mari took pity on him.

  “Hey, before you go,” she said, “I think we have some Carne Asada left over from last night.”

  Steve grinned shyly. “You know I don’t speak Mexican, Mari. What does that mean?”

  “It’s meat that’s been marinated,” Mari answered. “I’ll warm some up for you with a side of rice and beans.”

  Mari walked past her dad's office, and he flung open his door.

  “Don’t encourage that boy,” José growled as he glanced at the kitchen. Mr. Ramirez wasn't a fan of freebies, and he could spot them a mile away.

  "Relax, Dad," Mari assured him. "It's just a small plate of food."

  "Marisol, how many times do I have to say it?" José was one of the few people who still called Mari by her full name. "Every penny counts."

  Mari nodded, acknowledging that she understood. She then quickly made Steve a plate of food anyway.

  Steve sat at the back of the restaurant, eating the meal with a hungry relish. Maybe it was because he hadn’t eaten all morning or maybe it was Mari's unexpected display of kindness, but for some reason, Steve seemed happier than usual. Most mornings he skulked to the freezer like a man with no purpose. This morning he seemed cheery, and more alert.

  Mari left Steve to his food and finished filling up the napkin dispensers. With a jingle of bells, the front door opened and Mateo the bus boy came into the room. Shrugging sleepily, Mateo slung his backpack down behind the counter.

  “Hola,” Mari said brightly, determined not to be intimidated by his gruff manner.

  “Hola, yourself,” Mateo replied as he washed his hands. Mateo was in his mid-thirties, but his baby face made him look more like a high-schooler.

  It was clear that Mateo had been up late the night before. Judging from the circles under his eyelids, Mari was inclined to suspect he hadn’t slept at all. She tried to think of a delicate way to approach the subject as they filled the salt and pepper shakers.

  “So, are you dating anyone?” she asked him. Mateo’s last relationship had flamed out in spectacular fashion when his girlfriend admitted to working for the Lucky Noodle. Mr. Chun, the owner, had paid her a considerable sum of money to learn the secret family salsa recipe. He had planned to offer it in his buffet just to spite Mari's father.

  “I'm not with that same nutbag anymore if that's what you're asking,” Mateo responded, though he seemed to be studiously avoiding her gaze as he said this.

  “I was just making conversation,” Mari said, over the yapping of Tabasco from the other side of the restaurant. Mateo managed a small smile.

  At that moment, Mr. Ramirez rushed out of the office looking as grumpy as ever. “Mari, would you silence that animal? Do whatever you have to do. I don’t care.” With an ominous gleam of malice, he crept back inside.

  Mari ran out of the kitchen, past the bar and into the cool dining room. She prepared herself mentally to have to pull Tabasco away from some enra
ged customer. But there were no customers in the restaurant at this hour. That is to say; there were no live ones. The half-finished remains of last night’s Carne Asada were sitting on a table at the back of the room.

  And under the table lay the body of Steve Wilson.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two hours had passed, and Lito Bueno’s Mexican Restaurant was already closed for the day. But the dining room was not empty. A small team of detectives was gathered around the body, taking pictures and collecting evidence. An unfriendly looking woman in a gray coat who couldn’t have been much older than Mari walked slowly through the restaurant with a phone in one hand. She appeared to be recording the crime scene.

  “Is she even allowed to be here?” asked Mr. Ramirez. He was upset because the restaurant had been forced to close for the day.

  “She is, Dad,” Mari answered. “She’s collecting evidence.”

  Her father sniffed disapprovingly as if to insinuate that where he came from, women knew better than to become police detectives. Between this and the fact that he seemed more concerned about the business than a man’s death, Mari was beginning to feel annoyed.

  “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, anyway,” she said in her most sarcastic voice. “The whole family gets a day off, and business is going to go through the roof. Everyone will want to eat at Lito Bueno’s. I bet they’ll be lining up to sit in the chair Steve was stabbed in.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t share your enthusiasm,” Mr. Ramirez replied. “And you shouldn't speak of the dead like that.”

  “I have to joke about it.” But Mari stopped short of explaining why. Thinking about her friend being murdered while she stood in the other room filling salt shakers with Mateo was too much to process. Mari would reflect on it when she was alone and not surrounded by reporters and policemen. “Anyway, you don't look too sad yourself.”

  But Mr. Ramirez barely seemed to be listening. “What happened was very tragic.” He said it in an unconvincing tone. “If your brothers had been at work when they were supposed to be, it might never have happened.”

  “Yeah, where were they?” Mari asked.

  José shrugged. “Hopefully this will teach them. How many times have I said we must never leave the dining hall unattended during business hours?”

  “I don’t think anyone was expecting a murder,” Mari commented.

  “Well, that’s what happened. And now the rest of us are going to have to deal with it.”

  Mari felt unprepared to handle the subject of death. One minute Steve was alive and then he was gone. Mari wondered if the dead body at the back of the restaurant could have been hers. Even her father, for all his mercenary considerations, stared soberly through the window of his office into the dining room as though contemplating his own mortality.

  Mari felt the regret that came from knowing she could have treated the dead with more kindness. Dating Steve Wilson was never an option, but she remembered all the times she and Alex had laughed about him and called him names behind his back. Even the fact that she had fed him a meal that morning didn’t make up for it.

  As if the situation wasn’t already frightening enough, there was the possibility that Steve had been murdered by someone she knew. The police were treating the case as a criminal investigation. They would probably press charges. But against whom? Who did Mari know that could be a killer? Mateo had been with her the whole time. Her dad had been in his office, and in any case, he wasn’t a killer.

  Who did that leave?

  An officer whose dark uniform seemed too tight for his large belly came toward them. His hair was graying at the edges, and his eyes were small and beady. The loose network of red veins running around their edges looked like the map of a city. He coughed as he approached.

  “I'm Detective Price,” the man said, extending one hand to Mari and then to her father, who shook it in turn. “I’ll need to interview both of you separately. You can decide which of you wants to go first. Also, can I borrow your office, Mr. Ramirez?”

  Mr. Ramirez seemed less than enthusiastic about having to relinquish his private space, but Detective Price didn't wait for his permission. Mari chose to go first. The detective followed her into the office and closed the door.

  “How long had you known the victim?” he asked when they were both settled.

  “Since college,” Mari said. “He was a few years older than me, but we met while I was working here during the summers to put myself through school. He asked me out once. I don’t think he had ever had a girlfriend.”

  “And you made it clear you weren’t interested?”

  “Yes, not that it stopped him from trying,” Mari answered.

  “Can you elaborate?” The detective waited.

  “Oh, nothing huge. He would just find ways to do nice things for me. Flowers left in my dad’s office. Chocolates. Framed photographs. You know...”

  “But you wouldn’t describe his behavior as threatening or stalker-like,” the detective added

  “No, he was harmless,” Mari answered honestly.

  “What did the rest of your family think of him?”

  “They often made jokes about him,” Mari confessed, feeling the guilt churning in her stomach.

  “What kind of jokes?”

  “Not so nice things. Please, don't make me say them. I feel bad enough about it now that he's dead.” Mari felt the heat rising into her face.

  "Fair enough," Detective Price agreed. “Tell me about your dad, Ms. Ramirez.”

  “What about him?” Mari tilted her head curiously,

  “What did he think of the victim?” The detective waited in earnest, studying Mari's every movement.

  “Honestly, he didn't think much of Steve. I mean, he's messed up our meat orders more than once. Hopefully, it isn't a rude thing to say about him but Steve wasn't that great at his job."

  Mari was getting flustered and feared she wasn’t fully in control of her senses. She also couldn’t help noticing how determined Detective Price was to bring the subject back around to her dad.

  “But your father,” he said. “Did he ever express frustration towards the victim? Anger? Did he ever lash out at him?”

  Mari shook her head, struggling to keep her composure. “He would mumble things under his breath. That was as mean as he ever got.”

  “What kinds of things?” the detective asked.

  “One time he called him a big banana head when Steve locked the keys to the freezer inside the freezer. Honestly, he could’ve said a lot worse.”

  “Was Steve what you would call a jokester?”

  “Not particularly," Mari answered. "The whole key thing was an accident.”

  “Was he clumsy? Accident-prone?” The detective jotted a few things down.

  “In the extreme,” Mari said. “We used to joke that he wouldn’t know which shoes to put on which feet if someone didn’t write it down.”

  “Did someone write it down?”

  “No, it was just a joke.” Mari wrinkled her nose, annoyed by the detective's questions.

  “Did Steve ever show signs of depression?” Detective Price continued.

  Mari had to think about that one. “Not around me. I guess if I were him, I would’ve been depressed, just because of the nature of my life, you know? But if he was, he never showed it.”

  “What did the other staff members think of him?”

  Mari shook her head slowly. “You would have to ask them.”

  Detective Price had kept his attention studiously fixed on his notepad throughout the interview. As Mari watched him writing, a new thought occurred to her. “We are talking about a murder here, aren’t we? Not a suicide?”

  “Ms. Ramirez,” the detective replied, setting down his pen and paper and looking at her directly for the first time. “At this moment, I honestly don’t know, and I think it would be useless to speculate. A few hours ago a man was found dead in the back of your restaurant, a knife sticking out of his back. Obviously, given the mann
er of his death, suicide seems unlikely. But that leaves us with the other possibility, the one that no one here wants to face, or admit to.”

  "What's that?" Mari asked.

  "That a murder has taken place at your family's restaurant," Detective Price answered, "and my leading suspect is your father."

  CHAPTER THREE

  David and Alex finally showed up for work two hours later. Neither of them had a convincing explanation for where they had been. They were both surprised to learn that a murder had taken place at the restaurant in their absence.

  “This is your fault,” José Ramirez shouted, as the two brothers stared at the bloody floor. “If you’d been here when you were supposed to be, no one would’ve died, and we wouldn’t be losing an entire day’s worth of business.”

  “Sorry,” David answered. “Me and Alex were…”

  Silence fell over the restaurant as everyone waited for David to conclude the sentence. After this had gone on for two or three minutes, Mr. Ramirez shoved his hands into his pockets. And with a disgruntled snort, he returned to his back office.

  By now, news of the murder had spread throughout the small town. Steve Wilson had no family to speak of, and no friends. Yet, everyone in town had a story about the time they had run into him stocking the freezer section of the local grocery store or beaten him at poker, or found him ripping apart a whole loaf of bread to feed to the geese that ran through Birchwood Park. A spontaneous crowd had gathered in the street between Lito Bueno’s Mexican restaurant and the Lucky Noodle, singing songs and looking solemn. An old woman to whom Steve had been especially kind had arranged rose petals in the shape of a beef steak. Inside the petals the townsfolk placed candles and pennies, and anything else they thought might convey their respects. Steve Wilson had turned out to be more popular in death than he had ever been in life.

  “I don’t get it,” David said, watching the scene through the window. “A man dies, and suddenly everyone pretends they were his best friend. I just don’t get it.”