A Dish Best Served Cold: An Italian Kitchen Mystery (Italian Kitchen Mystery, An)

by Rosie Genova

  “You’re supposed to be working. Come to think of it, I have more important things to talk to you about than dead relatives. We have the anniversary celebration to think about.”

  I stifled a sigh. Nonna was obsessed with the Casa Lido’s upcoming anniversary; it was clear I’d get no more family history out of her today. I briefly considered talking to Stinky Pete to find out what he actually knew about my grandfather’s mysterious brother. Grimacing at the thought of a one-on-one with the odiferous Signor Petrocelli, I told myself I didn’t have much time for writing anyway.

  It was August, and we were coming to the end of a busy season, one that would be capped off by a celebration of the Casa Lido’s seventieth anniversary and the last rush of Labor Day weekend. They were likely to be the restaurant’s most profitable events of the year, and we were counting on that revenue to make up for our slow start in the spring. (A dead body in the tomato garden tends to keep the customers away.) As I thought about the events of the last weeks, it struck me that I’d been back in New Jersey for nearly three months—almost a whole summer season. In that time I’d gotten myself involved with two men and two murders. That was some crazy arithmetic, even for me.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a loud rapping noise and I jumped a mile. “I’m talking to you, Victoria,” my grandmother said, banging her wooden spoon on the countertop. “Stop daydreaming. Hurry and finish those carrots; then bring me four jars of tomatoes from the pantry. And when you’ve finished that, you can write down the menu for the party as I dictate. It will be summer dishes—antipasto and bruschetta, cold salads, and maybe some shrimp . . .”

  She was off and running. And in all the bustle of preparation for the dinner service and the plans for the Casa Lido’s big day, Zio Roberto, his friend Alfonso, and Stinky Pete were quickly forgotten. Which turned out to be a mistake, because Stinky Pete was right: He did have a story to tell—one with more twists and turns than any mystery I’d ever written.

  * * *

  The last week in August would mark seventy years that the Casa Lido had been serving homemade Italian food to tourists and townies alike. Our plan was to have an outdoor celebration, and on the morning before the party, the restaurant garden was abuzz with busy servers, short-tempered chefs, and harassed-looking party-store employees. (My grandmother was directing them as they set up the tables. It wasn’t pretty.)

  Behind all the bustle, though, was a hint of unease. The delivery guys glanced at the cloudy sky as they unloaded; our servers moved double time setting up, as though something was chasing them. Something was—a hurricane making its way up the coast from the Carolinas; there had been storm warnings all week. Originally, it was supposed to have moved out to sea, but the latest predictions had it heading inland. Nonna, however, who saw herself as a fair match for Mother Nature, denied all weather reports and plowed ahead with plans for an outdoor gathering. I checked the weather app on my phone, which hadn’t changed from the last time I’d looked, roughly two minutes ago. I stared at the tiny map of New Jersey on my screen and the swirling red image that represented the storm: Yup, still heading our way.

  I searched out my mom in the swarm of figures; she wasn’t hard to find. My mom was sixty, but looked at least a decade younger. And let’s just say that her fashion choices were memorable, to say the least. She still wore her curly hair long, and last month’s purplish auburn had lightened to more of a strawberry red—a color that was just as unnatural but a lot less jarring. Today she was sporting a yellow sundress in a vintage floral pattern that was visible from one end of the garden to the other. The halter top only emphasized her already generous curves. I waved her over, and she tottered toward me on four-inch platform wedges. “Hey, Mom,” I asked, “are you at all worried about the weather?”

  She pushed a stray curl off her face and sighed. “Of course I am. But Nonna and your dad won’t hear of moving the party inside.”

  “Do we at least have a backup plan?”

  She nodded briskly. My mom had lived for too long with Frank Rienzi, bettor of long odds, not to have backup. “Yes,” she said. “Lori and Florence will have the whole dining room set up and ready to go—linens, silver, everything. We’ve got some extra servers lined up so we can clear the outside at the first raindrop or gust of wind. If we have to hurry inside, we’ll have diners carry their own plates, we’ll gather linens in bags, and the staff can store the rented tables in the shed. Last year we had hurricane screens installed for the big windows in front, so we’ll be safe inside. And as we speak, your father is getting the generator ready in case the power goes out.”

  “Nicolina Rienzi, you never fail to amaze me.”

  My mother patted my cheek. “Thank you, darling.” She looked over at the old grape arbor, now draped with white linen and decorated with tiny lights. “Thank goodness your grandmother didn’t want a tent—imagine us trying to take that down in a storm.”

  “I shudder to think.” Scanning the group, I saw our head waitress and my old friend, Lori Jamison, who was carefully decorating the slate board that would feature tomorrow night’s menu. A number of our summer hires were out here, too, as well as Florence DeCarlo, a career waitress who called everyone hon or babe. Flo was a favorite among the five o’clock crowd, the group we privately called the Hungry Silverhairs. She gave us a cheery wave from across the garden, which I returned, but my mother did not.

  “What was that about?”

  My mom gave a small sniff. “Nothing. I don’t particularly like Florence.”

  “I know why,” I said grinning, “because she’s always showing her cleavage.” Florence wasn’t particularly well endowed, but made a habit of leaning over the male diners in a manner that probably brought her good tips in her younger days. “And she’s always talking to Daddy,” I added.

  “Oh, stop it. Daddy is a very sociable man, hon. If I had to worry about every woman who—”

  “Nicolina! Victoria! You have nothing to do but stand out here and talk?” The voice of She Who Appeared When Least Expected made us both jump. But before we could answer, my attention was drawn to a male figure in the parking lot.

  Walking toward us was Father Tom Figaro, pastor of St. Rose’s Church, family friend, and occasional member of my father’s Rat Pack poker games. I’d known Father Tom for most of my life, ever since he’d arrived in Oceanside as a young priest. He’d confirmed me and coached Danny in the church basketball league. He was a man of contradictions—a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth in north Jersey, he exuded a tough guy air. But he was also an opera buff, one of the most well-read people I knew, and a connoisseur of all things Italian. He was a regular patron of the restaurant, and from time to time Tim Trouvare, our sous-chef (and my ex-boyfriend), slipped him extra food for needy families in our parish.

  I turned back to my mom. “What’s Father Tom doing here?”

  My mother’s eyes darted toward the blue garden shed and then to my grandmother, who crossed her arms and tightened her lips. I looked back at Father Tom, who was carrying a mallet-shaped object I’d rarely seen outside Mass. “And why does he have that . . . that holy water thing he uses in church?”

  My grandmother’s nostrils flared; my mother just looked nervous. “It’s called an aspergillum, Victoria,” my mom said. “It’s for—”

  “You never mind what it’s for,” Nonna snapped.

  My mother took a deep breath, her bosom heaving like that of a middle-aged romance heroine. “You see, darling, Nonna thinks that we should bless the garden.”

  “I don’t get it.” I gestured to the rows of ripe vegetables and bushy herbs. “The garden’s doing fine.” I pointed to the chipped stone statue of Mary that stood forlornly in the corner of the field. “And you’ve already got the Holy Mother looking after it, right?” I said, smiling.

  My grandmother did not smile back. Still participating in her own version of omerta, she remained silent. Mom t
ilted her head ever so slightly back to the blue shed, her curls bobbing. The garden shed. Of course. The place I’d found the body of the dead television producer. And then the light dawned like sunrise over the ocean.

  “Hang on a minute: Are you telling me you want Father Tom to exorcise the garden?”

  “Zitte!” Nonna put a finger to her lips. “Don’t say such things!”

  “Oh, honey, no,” my mother said with an artificial laugh. “We’re just . . . cleansing it.”

  I frowned. “It’s not like that weird thing you guys do with the hair and olive oil for the evil eye, is it?”

  “Again!” my grandmother said, making the sign of the horns with both hands. “Why must you tempt the Fates by mentioning such a thing?”

  “Sorry,” I said, and with no other option before me, I made a hasty sign of the cross. I could never quite understand the Italian inclination to conflate religion and superstition, but conflate it they did. Father Tom’s “blessing” of the garden was just the Catholic version of keeping evil spirits away. But as I glanced at the blue garden shed, I couldn’t help suppressing a shiver. The discovery of a dead body in one of my books was only a pale imitation of the real experience. And I’d been nowhere near as brave as my fictional detective, Bernardo Vitali, who’d solved eight mysteries with confidence and aplomb. My real-life experience had left me decidedly jumpy, so a few prayers and some holy water certainly couldn’t hurt. And if they brought some comfort to my eighty-year-old grandmother, who was I to judge?

  “Gather round, everyone,” Nonna called out, and clapped her hands loudly for attention. Servers, chefs, and anyone else in the garden froze in place; then one by one made their reluctant way to where my grandmother and Father Tom waited, hands clasped behind his back.

  “What’s she doing?” I hissed to my mother.

  “She’s calling everyone together, hon. For the blessing,” she added helpfully.

  “Wait—are you telling me I have to participate in this weird ritual?”

  “You won’t be alone.” She gestured to the back door of the restaurant, where Tim, our line cook, Nando Ortiz, and our head chef, Massimo Fabri, were filing slowly out the back door, looking like a group of errant schoolboys about to face the principal. The three men took their places at the back of the crowd—Nando respectful, Chef Massi annoyed, and Tim cranky. (I knew Tim’s cranky face very well; it was one he wore in the kitchen most of the time.)

  Father Tom bowed his head and we all followed suit. “Dear Lord,” he said, “please bless this place of bounty and labor. Bless those whose hands till its soil and harvest its gifts. Protect it—and us—from the forces of darkness that gather around the unwary.”

  Forces of darkness? Sheesh, Father Tom. Laying it on a little thick, no?

  “Lord,” he continued, “remember us in this undertaking, as we prepare to feed the multitudes.”

  My grandmother was nodding, whether in agreement with the blessing or in hopes of “multitudes” showing up tomorrow, I wasn’t sure. As Father Tom concluded his prayer, he shook the holy water over our heads, and I blinked as the water hit my face. I couldn’t help thinking that this tiny shower was a harbinger of a much larger one to come.

  “Maybe he should have added some prayers to hold off that storm,” I said quietly to my mother. But Nonna’s sharp ears picked up every word.

  “There is not going to be any storm, Victoria. Those weather people are never right. My whole life I’ve lived on this coast. That hurricane will blow out to sea, you mark my words.”

  Oh, I marked them, all right. For all the good it did me.

  Chapter Two

  The next day dawned bright and sunny, and I began to think that Nonna had taken Mother Nature in the first round. I stood outside admiring the handiwork of our staff—the grape arbor forming the centerpiece for ten circular tables set with white linens and jars of fresh flowers. A long table covered in a red-checked tablecloth was set up as a bar—my dad’s domain. I smiled as he lined up the stem glasses and turned every wine bottle so that the labels faced the same way. When he saw me, he smiled and waved me over.

  “Hey, Vic, did you see my latest wine labels?” He held out a bottle for me to inspect.

  “Frank’s Thursday Chianti,” I read aloud.

  My dad pointed to the label. “You know it’s the old joke about homemade wine, right? When was it bottled? Thursday! Get it?”

  “I get it, Dad. It’s funny. And the printer did a nice job on these. I like the gold lettering and the little grapevine. Very classy.”

  “Thanks, hon.” He looked back at the bar. “You know what? I think we need a few more whites.”

  “Don’t let me keep you,” I said, and patted his arm. “I have to finish setting.”

  As I placed votive candles down on each table, I tried to ignore the insistent breeze that lifted the corners of the tablecloths and sent the tomato plants swaying. I was deliberating about looking at my weather app again when a familiar number appeared on my phone.

  “Hey, stranger,” I said. Cal Lockhart was renovating our antique wooden bar, and we’d been casually dating for the last month or so. But he’d been away on one of his mysterious errands for the last week, which tended to get in the way of our relationship. “What’s cookin’?” I asked.

  But he didn’t respond with a joke or his usual How are you this fine mornin’, Victoria? In fact, his voice was tense. “Is your family still plannin’ to go ahead with the party tonight?”

  “Of course. You know Nonna.”

  “You’ve seen the weather report, right?” he asked, his voice growing louder with each word. “That hurricane’s heading this way, cher. It’s on a straight course; there’s no avoidin’ it. Tell them to cancel. Or at the very least, bring it inside.”

  The man on the other end of the line sounded nothing like the laconic, soft-spoken guy I knew. But I understood the reason for the panicky edge in his tone. “Listen to me, okay?” I lowered my voice in the hopes that he would do the same. “It’s already been downgraded from a category three to a two—”

  “Even a category two can wreak all kinds of havoc,” he interrupted. “Dangerous winds. Flooding. I don’t have to tell you that, do I? You grew up on a coast.”

  “And you lived through Katrina,” I said. “And that’s your point of reference. I can’t even imagine how terrible and terrifying that must have been, but this storm is nothing like that. By the time it hits us it’ll just be a good old-fashioned summer thunderstorm,” I added, sounding more confident than I felt.

  “You don’t know that, Victoria. And I sure hope you don’t have to find it out the hard way.” There was a momentary silence and then I heard him sigh. “Will they at least have it in the restaurant?”

  “At the first raindrop or gust of wind, we’ll move indoors—I promise. In fact, they’re setting up the dining room right now, just in case.”

  “Okay. I’m heading back in a little bit.”

  Cal was off on one of his mysterious errands, and while it was a little early in the relationship to press for details of his comings and goings, that didn’t stop me from wondering. “You’re still my date for tonight, right?” I asked.

  “You bet,” he said, sounding more like his old self. “But I’m not sure how much of a date it’s gonna be. If I know Giulietta, she’ll be putting you to work, girl.”

  Cal was the only person I knew who got away with calling my grandmother by her first name. Perhaps she’d fallen for his Southern charm, but more likely it was that her granddaughter was involved with someone other than Tim. “You’re right about that,” I said. “And speaking of work, I’ve got to get back to it. I’ll see you later. And try not to worry, okay?”

  “Easier said than done, cher,” he said.

  I finished up some of the other details outside and took a last look around the garden and then up the sky. T
he first clouds were rolling in.

  * * *

  Back inside the Casa Lido, all hands were on deck in the kitchen, including mine. I was at my usual place, the vegetable and salad station, where I was chopping fresh arugula by hand. Heaven forfend I should use the food processor and bruise the precious produce. Nando was carefully slicing pancetta, and Tim was at work on his specialty, homemade pasta. And all the while Chef Massimo bellowed orders at us in a confusing mixture of Italian, Spanish, and English.

  I looked up to find Tim at my elbow, and he pointed out the window that overlooked the garden. “It doesn’t look good out there,” he said, shaking his head. “And by four it will only get worse. Having this party today is a bad idea, Vic.”

  “You sound like Cal.”

  He made a face. “You mean there’s something Lockhart and I agree on?”

  “Besides me, you mean? Apparently.”

  “Funny. I still say we should have postponed it.”

  “Who’s ‘we,’ Trouvare? The Rienzis own this place. You just work here, remember?” I said it with a smile, but sometimes my ex needed reminding that he was still a sous-chef, and that he’d only been hired back last year because of my parents’ forgiving natures. As I watched Tim work, head bent, a loose curl over his forehead and wearing that work frown I knew so well, eight years seemed to roll away. It didn’t seem that long ago that we were young and in love, making plans for a life together that included taking over the restaurant someday. But Tim broke my heart and lost his job at the restaurant. So I took myself, most of my belongings, and my unused business degree and ran away to the big city, where to my shock and surprise, I ended up writing mysteries.

  “Ah, lass,” he said in his favorite Irish brogue, “I remember it all.”

  So do I, I thought but didn’t say. “Regarding the weather, though,” I said, “I think we’re stuck going through with this. We can just bring everything inside at the first sign of the storm.”