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

by Rosie Genova

  Luckily, my stove and hot water were fueled by gas. I’d have warm showers and I could heat restaurant leftovers, assuming that old generator would hold out and the restaurant could still serve food. If I charged my laptop at the Casa Lido, I’d have a couple of hours of writing time when I came home. I can deal with this, I thought, as long as I can blow-dry my hair somewhere.

  After a quick shower (thank you, natural gas) I hopped on the beat-up Schwinn I used to get around town. I wasn’t the best of bike riders anyway, and the weight of my laptop in the basket made it hard to balance. Making my wobbly way down Ocean Avenue, I waved to store owners as they cleaned up their sidewalks. I stopped at the Seaside Apothecary, where Iris had put a WE’RE STILL OPEN sign in her window. The old-fashioned bell over the door tinkled when I pushed it open.

  Iris, in skinny jeans and a white T-shirt, stepped out from behind the counter with a smile. “Hey, Victoria.”

  “Hi, Iris.” I motioned to the dry floor and neatly stacked shelves. “Looks like you did okay in the storm. The store looks perfect.”

  She nodded. “I was lucky. The basement’s a little damp, and that’s it. Of course, without power I don’t have my register, but I can still do cash transactions.” She held up an old cigar box with a grin.

  “I hope you get customers. This whole end of the street is without power, and we need to get it back before next weekend.”

  “I can’t believe Labor Day is around the corner,” she said. “But you’re right. A lot of us do our best business Labor Day weekend.” She pointed out the window. “It’s the boardwalk stands who will be hurt the most, I think. But at least the Casa Lido managed to celebrate its anniversary.”

  “Nonna wouldn’t have it any other way, storm or no storm. And thanks for coming last night, and for sticking around in all the craziness.” I looked her up and down. “Gosh, you look great. I’m still getting used to this new look of yours.”

  She dipped her head modestly. “Thanks. And we had a lovely time. The food was amazing, as always. Richard was very impressed.” With the mention of Richard Barone, Iris’s face glowed.

  “He’s quite the dish, by the way,” I said. “That Italian charm will get you every time.”

  “I do like him,” she said in a tone that gave it all away. It was clear she had it bad, and I hoped that Richard felt the same way about her.

  “How long have you been seeing him?”

  “Just a couple of months. His divorce is fairly recent, so we’re taking it slow.”

  He is, at least. “That’s good,” I said. “I imagine his foundation takes a lot of his time.”

  “Yes, unfortunately. But his family’s been in the shore area for generations, and he really cares about the communities down here. In fact, he’s in the office today, generating help for storm cleanup and putting the pressure on the power company to get us back online.”

  I held up both hands with crossed fingers. “May he be successful. Well, my friend, I have to hit it. I want to stop at Sofia’s before I go down to the restaurant. And I’ll tell everybody you’re still open.”

  “Wait, before you go,” she said, “you heard about poor Stinky Pete, right?”

  “I did. Danny stopped back at the restaurant to tell us. Nonna was friendly with him.”

  Iris shook her head. “It’s such a shame. I felt so sorry for him when he came into the party. But your grandmother took care of things nicely.”

  “She’s good at taking care of things,” I said as I turned to go. “Bye, Iris.”

  “Bye, Victoria! See you soon.”

  It wasn’t until I was pedaling away that I had the sinking realization that yet again, someone had left the Casa Lido and ended up dead.

  * * *

  Sofia’s dance studio was another business along Ocean Avenue that seemed to be prospering despite the lack of power. There was a class going on when I got there, and it was a pleasure to watch Sofia, ever graceful despite her baby bump, execute pliés and pas de chat. Afterward we sat in her office, which twice now had served as our base of sleuthing operations.

  “So, are you here to report, SIL?” she asked, using our personal abbreviation for sister-in-law.

  Had she spoken to Danny? Did she know I’d already been up to the boardwalk? “About . . . ?” I asked.

  “Your night with Mr. Down on the Bayou, of course. Tell me everything.” She dropped her voice suggestively. “And I do mean everything.”

  “There’s not much to tell. Well, actually there is.” I gave her a description of Cal’s place, right down to the yellow “guest room” and what I found there.

  Sofia sat straight up in her desk chair. “Wow. You think he’s got a kid?”

  “Quite possibly. But I suppose the bunny could belong to a niece or nephew, though he’s never mentioned any siblings.”

  “Or it could belong to the child of somebody he dated,” she said with a knowing look.

  I winced a little at that one. “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “But I can tell you this, Sofe. Until I know more about Cal and his past, I don’t plan to get any more deeply involved with him.”

  One side of her mouth lifted in a grin. “And by getting more deeply involved, you mean . . .”

  “You know exactly what I mean, lady.”

  “I guess I do. But I also know you have trouble resisting his charms. But enough talk about pleasure—we need to move on to business. What do you think about Stinky Pete?”

  “What about him?” I toyed with the paper clips on Sofia’s desk, organizing them in little piles by color.

  She swept the clips into a container and held out her palm for the one I was holding. “Give it here. Now answer my question.”

  I sighed. “Well, God rest his soul, as Nonna would say. But what I think is immaterial. Your husband is convinced it’s an accident, and it probably is.”

  “I think that’s the consensus,” she said. “Have you seen this?” She turned her computer screen for me to see.

  Nina LaGuardia, my favorite local news anchor, appeared on the screen as blond, bland, and perfectly coiffed as always. “Thus far there’s only been one known fatality from the storm,” she was saying into a huge mike, carefully angled so as not to block her face. “Mr. Peter Petrocelli of Oceanside Park was found in the carousel house behind me, dead of an apparent drowning. His death is currently under investigation. In other storm news, power is still out in a number of towns along the shore . . .”

  Sofia hit PAUSE and leaned across the desk, her dark eyes gleaming. “What was Pete doing out there? Seriously: the carousel house? For what possible reason?”

  “Shelter, I guess. That’s what Danny thinks.”

  She shook her head. “Think about it. Homeless people have places they normally shelter in bad weather. Why wouldn’t he have gone to one of those?”

  “We don’t even know what his usual places were. What if the carousel house was somewhere he normally went?”

  “During the season, that rides pier is open until eleven every night. If Pete had tried to flop in any of those places, he would have been kicked out. And after it closes, that carousel house is locked up tight.” She grinned. “I know this because we tried to sneak in there once in high school.”

  “Of course you did, you scamp. So you think someone asked Pete to meet him or her there?”

  “I think it’s possible. It’s a long walk from the restaurant to that rides pier, and there must have been places along the way he could have taken shelter.” She looked up at me, and it was clear that we had the same thought. “Field trip!” she called, and scrambled up from her chair.

  We stood outside her studio on the sidewalk, taking turns looking up and down the block. We knew the center of town by heart, and it wasn’t hard to name some of the places Pete might have stopped. Sofia pointed west. “Okay, the restaurant is about six
blocks that way. But we can assume he didn’t try to duck in anywhere near the restaurant, right?”

  “We shouldn’t rule anything out, but it’s not likely. Our awnings were closed and the hurricane screens were pulled down. There’s an overhang over the kitchen door out back, but we would have seen him there and shooed him away. And if he’d gotten inside, someone would have seen him.”

  “Do you know what time he left?”

  A good question. What time had Pete made his appearance at the party and how long had he stayed? “We were still out in the garden when he showed up,” I said, frowning from the bright sun and the effort to concentrate. “I remember we were clearing the antipasto plates. We started a little after four, served cocktails and canapés until about five. We took our time with the antipasto, so it was probably after six when he showed up. He was out there only a couple of minutes before Nonna whisked him away. It took her a few minutes to get some food for him, so maybe it was six thirty or so when he left. I watched him round the corner of the building before I went back to work.”

  “Dang,” Sofia said. “We should’ve brought paper to start a timeline. Assuming he left the restaurant at six thirty, he would have gone somewhere to eat the dinner Nonna gave him.”

  “It wasn’t raining yet, but it was windy. I don’t think he would have gone up to the beach,” I said. “But he could have plopped down anywhere to eat. One of the benches along the sidewalk or even one of the side streets. I guess it would be too convenient to find one of our specially marked food containers right where Pete left it, huh?”

  “No such luck.” Sofia pointed to the busy, sweeping figures all around us. “If he left anything to show where he’d been, it’s cleaned up by now.” She shook her head. “Wish we knew the time of death.”

  “Well, we can at least estimate the time of discovery of the body. The party was scheduled from four to nine. Do you remember when Danny got his call to go out?”

  “I think it was about eight thirty or eight forty.”

  “That sounds right. I remember he was worried about the lights going out, and my dad had been fiddling with the generator. I think the lights went out close to nine.”

  “That’s easy to check,” Sofia said. “It’s public record. At least we have that to go on. I think Danny came back to tell us about Pete sometime between nine thirty and ten. I can check that with him.”

  “Must you? He’s already lectured me once about minding my own business.”

  “When?”

  “Um, today, down at the carousel house. I stopped on the way to my cottage and the police were there, milling around.”

  She curled her lip in disgust. “And you tried to play this off like you think it was an accident. Your first free minute you’re up on the boards snooping around.”

  “Okay, you got me. But back to the matter at hand—assuming Pete’s body was found at nine thirty or so, what were his movements in those three hours? Did he speak to anybody?”

  “Wait, Vic—I just had a thought. If the power went out around nine, that means the carousel house would have cleared out immediately. It would have to. Imagine the craziness if that merry-go-round was in motion and everything goes dark? There’d be a panic to get your kids and get out of there, right?”

  “Hang on—that actually happened once during a bad storm in Seaside when my mom was growing up. The power went out in one of the arcades and kids were on the merry-go-round. It was this really famous story. Now I remember. After that, Oceanside Park put restrictions in place. At the first sign of a storm, the pier shuts down. You wouldn’t want a bunch of people on the Ferris wheel with no way to get them down, would you? Again, Danny would know if they shut the pier down last night and when. But you’ve got me thinking: What if Pete was already in there when they closed up?”

  “It’s possible. But then why he was down there in the first place? And if someone killed him, how did the person get into the carousel house if it was locked? And there’s another question we need to consider, Vic: Who would want him dead?”

  “And why?” I added. “Why would anybody want to kill an elderly, homeless alcoholic?”

  It wasn’t until I was pedaling back to the restaurant that the answer to that question arrived in the form of Stinky Pete’s own words to me not so long ago: “I have stories to tell.”

  Chapter Eight

  Saturdays during the summer season kept us running: figuratively, as in business is brisk, but also literally, as in sore feet and no time to breathe. And on this particular Saturday, there were already people lined up on the sidewalk outside, some of them carrying computers. I slipped in through the back, where I found my mom and dad going over the lunch menu.

  “Hey, guys, what’s with that line outside?”

  “Oh, hi, honey,” my mom said without looking up. “There are lots of people without power and some of them had to throw food away, so I think we’ll have a busier day than usual.”

  “Yeah,” my dad added, “and since we got power, I let people know they can charge their phones and computers here.”

  “Too bad we can’t run an extension cord down to my cottage so I can pump that water out of the basement,” I said.

  My dad looked up with a grin. “So you got my present?”

  “I did, thank you. Maybe one of these days I can use it.”

  “That power will be back on before you know it,” my dad said.

  “I hope so. In the meantime, I could use a working outlet.” I hefted my computer from my bag. “Okay if I put this in your office, Mom?”

  “Sure, hon. And then would you go help Nando finish prepping? We’re doing a limited cold menu for lunch.” She glanced at her watch. “We’ll be opening our doors in less than a half hour.”

  And once those doors opened, I had very little time to contemplate whether Stinky Pete had been murdered or not. I was far too busy shuttling between the kitchen and tables of hungry customers, some of them working on laptops between bites. As long as my dad’s generator was humming, our dining room would be full.

  Between my late night and today’s hectic lunch service, I was hazy and tired by the end of my shift. The minute I was done, I poured myself a double espresso. Grabbing a biscotti from Nonna’s secret stash, I backed in through the kitchen doors to find a quiet spot to eat it. Nando had gone, and Tim was just arriving to start the sauces for dinner. I took a seat well out of his way but one that gave me a view of his work. (Not to mention his broad shoulders and well-muscled arms.)

  “Hey,” he said, buttoning his chef coat, “how’d lunch go?”

  “Busy. People are kind of congregating here, which is nice, but I’m shot. This is the first I’m sitting down all day,” I said with a yawn, and took a fortifying sip of my coffee. “You’ll be hopping tonight, I think. And Chef Massi’s not coming in, is he?”

  At that, Tim stood taller, lifted his nose in the air, and tossed his head in imitation of our temperamental head chef. “I find I no longer wish to work on the weekends,” he said with an Italian accent.

  “Ha! Don’t let him hear you imitating him—he’ll have your head.”

  Tim grinned at me over his shoulder. “Or some other vital parts.”

  “True. Listen, I’ve got the onion and garlic prepped for you in the bins. They’re in the walk-in fridge.” I dunked my biscotti once—one must not oversoak them—and savored the coffee flavor.

  “Thanks,” Tim said as he readied two stock pots. “So I guess your dad’s generator is keeping us going. Hey, did you have any water in your cottage last night?”

  “Some, but Frankie left me a sump pump as a gift. Not that I can use it without power.”

  Tim appeared to be studying the pots as he asked me the next question. “Did you stay there last night?”

  “I did not, as it happened. Not that it—”

  “Is any of my business. I know.” H
e strode past me to the refrigerator and came back bearing the onions and garlic I had so lovingly prepped. He held them up to me. “Good job, by the way. Your knife skills are getting there.”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling a rush of warmth that had little to do with the hot coffee or the August afternoon. “When are you going to teach me to make fresh pasta?”

  “All in good time, lass. All in good time.”

  “So let me ask you, Tim—does Lacey find that Irish brogue of yours charming?”

  “Lacey finds everything of mine charming.”

  “I guess I set myself up for that one. Did she have a nice time last night?” As I asked the question, I flashed on the image of Tim toweling her hair. Do not go there, my subconscious warned me.

  “She did. We didn’t have much time to spend together, though.” He shook his head. “My hours here are long. I gotta say, it’s kind of an issue with us.”

  I tried to ignore the tiny lift of my heart at the mention of even the merest hint of conflict between Tim and Lacey. But I tried to be gracious. “It’s always hard in the beginning of relationships. But she’s a wedding planner; she must work her share of nights, too.”

  “Not as many as I do. I mean, you know what it’s like, restaurant work. You grew up here.” His expression softened and he smiled. “Geez, I remember you in a ponytail following me around when I bused tables.”

  “Must I remind you of the rules, Tim? There Shall Be No Reminiscing.” But I couldn’t help smiling at the memory of my thirteen-year-old self, crushing on a gangly, curly-haired busboy.

  “I remember the rules, Vic. Believe me. But we can’t unwrite our history.” His words were an echo of my own thoughts. He set the flame going under both pots, and we were both quiet as he waited for them to heat up.

  “Now, that’s a surprisingly elegant turn of phrase there, mister,” I finally said.