Cooking the Books: A Sloane Templeton Novel (2012)

by Bonnie S. Calhoun

  "I guess you have an appointment tomorrow." Fifi held up a finger with the sticky note attached.

  "Me?" I took the note and looked at the title. "I don't know anything about books. That's your job." Before the words rolled off my tongue and were forever caught in the air, I knew I had sealed my fate. Fifi would remind me of this declaration whenever I tried to get her to take my place with Verlene. Yep! There it was.

  Fifi flashed a Mona Lisa smile. She glanced over her shoulder. "By the way . . . who's that behind the coffee bar?"

  "Barbara Nelson. She was sleeping in her car in our parking lot all night. I felt sorry for her, so I let her make coffee and gave her something to eat. Don't yell."

  Fifi shook her head. "You pick up strays like you do pennies."

  I winked. "Pennies make dollars." There I go channeling Grandma again.

  "Hey, I hate to interrupt you two, but I've got frozen food thawing in my trunk here, people. Can we shake a leg?" Verlene clapped her hands together.

  Fifi raised an eyebrow at me. "Shake a lil' ol' leg, sugah."

  The urge to reach out and touch her crossed my mind, but I reined it in. Reconciled with my fate, I joined Verlene at the front door. Scrubbing her had not dissipated the smell. She reeked of barbeque. The smell still made me hungry. Maybe this was how she lured victims into her web—where she stuffed them full of strange and supposedly edible items. She was like the black widow spider of food.

  Actually, she was a widow. Her husband, Burt, had died last year of food poisoning. The coroner was careful to point out that it wasn't Verlene's food that had offed him. But I wasn't convinced. As often as possible, I took a food taster with me to her house, preferably someone I wasn't too happy with at the moment. Her cooking logic centered on the idea that if foods tasted good separately, they must taste good together.

  Verlene pulled open the front door and there stood Rob Landry.

  Ugh! Him again. The mood I was trying to cultivate dissipated as quickly as the onset of one of Fifi's hot flashes. Hey! Maybe I could take him to Verlene's as my food taster. Nah! Bad idea. He'd probably live long enough to add a lawsuit to my list of annoyances.

  He slid through the doorway with another fake grin plastered on his face.

  I almost prayed out loud but decided to keep it in my head because if he made a snide comment I might go rabid and bite him. Why me, Lord? I'm not a bad person. What did I do to deserve this man? My arm waved in desperation. "Can't I get rid of you? Are you going to be the bane of my existence today? Or can we pretend this is Burger King?"

  "Burger King?"

  "Yeah, you know . . . have it my way."

  He returned a blank stare. Fifi and Verlene snickered.

  "Never mind."

  "Miss Templeton, I'm sure you can appreciate my position—"

  Overwhelming exasperation narrowed my eyes to slits. I glared, deciding whether I wanted to rethink the rabid path. "The only thing I'd appreciate is you leaving me alone. I do not want to sell my building today, tomorrow, or even next year. Comprende?"

  I bolted for the door. If Fifi could leave me with Verlene, I could leave her with Landry. "You are getting on my last nerve. My mom was against this, and so am I."

  Landry nodded. "Sorry for your loss, but—"

  "I did not lose my mom." We were toe to toe. "I know right where she is. Thank you, Jesus." My dear mom, God rest her soul, decided there was more pressing business with Jesus, and deserted me for a glorious Homegoing. I was left to deal with the lunatic fringe that had become her life.

  I almost think I saw Landry blush.

  "Miss Templeton, let's not get off point."

  "The point is, you may have suckered a few of these old people into signing, but it will be a cold day in Bermuda before I sign away this beautiful facade to the wrecking ball. And you can't do it without all of us selling out." I was smug in my understanding that there would be no eminent domain issues.

  "Your high-rise project is not going to ravage this block of Fulton Street, unless it's over my dead body."

  "Your mother didn't understand the concentration of businesses that could occupy this block when this project is completed. Coltrane Realty is willing to offer—"

  "Yes, I know . . . three times what the building is worth, which is insane in itself."

  "We could make you a very wealthy woman."

  "Do you really think money is the only thing that makes people rich? Then you must not know the Lord." Verlene amen-ed me.

  "I don't want to get into a religion debate with you—"

  I bristled. "The Lord isn't about religion." I pointed at the door. "Now get out of my store."

  Landry gripped his briefcase with both hands, not moving.

  "Get out. Before I have a carnal snap." Pastor Dann always used that phrase to describe our missteps in our before-Christ lives. And at this moment I really wanted to revert to type and poke him right in the nose. For a split second the thought moved from downright violence to inviting him to Verlene's to sample her latest gastrointestinal fiasco, but my head cleared of the sugarplum thoughts. "I said, get out of my store." I moved back toward the counter and reached for the phone. "Do I need to call the police?"

  His smile faded. Landry clamped his lips together, then raised a hand. "That's not necessary. I'll leave. The boss will probably take over from here. But this isn't the end. You should have taken my offer."

  Was that fear or defiance in his eyes?

  "Is that a threat?"

  He didn't answer; he just stared at me.

  I brushed past him and traipsed out the door. Old, recognizable fear gripped at my chest, making me light-headed.

  4

  I OPENED THE PASSENGER DOOR TO VERLENE'S '92 OLDSMOBILE, HALF expecting to see a river of sauce across the seat, providing me a perfect excuse for not having to go. The bucket seat was clear except for her oversized leather purse where she had left it while she was in the bookstore. Good grief, the woman was just asking to get robbed! Her white Cutlass with the black vinyl roof was a very sought after vehicle in muscle car circles.

  I dropped the purse to the floor and slid into the seat, acutely aware of the barbeque smell.

  Fleeing from the scene of an impending disaster had forced back a repressed memory. Landry didn't answer my question. I ran away before he could. It had to be because of the flashback.

  My hands trembled. The tone of his voice reminded me of my ex-husband. I shook my head and tamped the thought down, but it clawed its way back up. The incident happened a year ago, but was just as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday.

  I shifted on the seat and pulled my legs up tight, trying to draw them close to my chest. A shiver. A flash of recall. I often fought against going to that dark recess.

  Smack!

  I flinched. The movie in my brain rerolled the incident from a year ago . . .

  "Is that a threat?"

  The words had barely left my lip when Alan Templeton answered my question with the back of his hand crashing across my face. I tasted blood.

  I reeled backward, tripping over the coffee table. I remember thinking, I'm going to fall on it. My body slammed into the center of the glass circle, shattering it and leaving a four-inch-long shard protruding from my left thigh and a mile-long scar on my psyche. . . .

  A cold shudder spider-walked across my shoulders, propelling me back to the present and the aroma of barbeque sauce.

  I raised my eyes to the ceiling, clenched them shut, and released a heavy sigh. Even though a year had passed, the pain hurt like it had just happened a minute ago. It took quite a while to get over being mad at God about that one. I still don't understand why He didn't protect me . . . sheesh—or at least give a girl a warning. When I left the hospital that morning with a two-inch line of sutures, the only option had been to hop on the train out of Manhattan and head home to Brooklyn. Fort Greene meant safety.

  Shake it off. Those days are long gone. I will not be a victim again. It happened so ma
ny times in the past. I need to stop making excuses for the men in my life. But why did I keep picking men who needed excusing? Did I really have that much resolve or would it all melt like ice on a blistering hot day?

  Verlene snatched a parking ticket from under the windshield wiper. She plopped onto the driver's seat and flicked her wrist over her shoulder, throwing the ticket into the backseat. Glad for the distraction, I swiveled around and watched as it floated into a large glop of "special sauce" covering the left floor mat, and join what looked to be about a dozen more tickets. At least the red sauce was color coordinated with the burgundy leather seats and carpeting. It all went together in a sort of bizarre Salvador Dalí-esque kind of way.

  "Are these all tickets?" My glance moved upward from the pile of colored papers and across the abundance of groceries overflowing the backseat. There had to be enough stuff here to feed a small country, and enough vegetable oil to fuel Mickey D's for the next month.

  "Yeah." Verlene put the car in gear, drove down two blocks, then hooked a left onto Greene. "I haven't been over to the 88th all week. When I get over there, I'll get 'em taken care of." Two blocks over, she made a left onto Carlton Avenue, her street.

  I sat up straight and turned to look at her. "Verlene, you can't just decide when you want to go pay a ticket. Good grief, woman! The po-po will be knocking at your door."

  The 88th was the precinct for both Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, and it was only eight blocks away from her house in a straight line down DeKalb. With sirens turned on, they could be there to arrest her in less than a minute if they needed the money to balance their donut budget for the week.

  Hold the phone! "You don't pay tickets at the 88th. Brooklyn Criminal Court over on Schermerhorn, between Adams and Smith is where you pay tickets." I stared. She looked like she was avoiding me.

  "If you must know, I have a fella that's sweet on me over at the 88th, and he takes care of my tickets."

  I stifled a smile. Check this out. Verlene has a sweetie pie. "Honey, the days of 'fixing' a ticket are long gone. This guy must be actually paying your tickets. And with your lack of skills that could be quite expensive for him. Sounds kind of serious to me. When were you going to mention this development?"

  "A girl's gotta have her secrets." Verlene winked at me. I'll be. Sheesh, I guess she must not have fed him yet.

  I looked back at the tickets again. "And now you've basted them in barbeque sauce. That is not the way to win friends and influence people." Before Mom's passing I hadn't spent much time with Auntie, basically because I was avoiding her food. But now, I was beginning to wonder if she was splashing around the shallow end of the family gene pool. Wait a minute . . . was I missing something? "Why did you have to go to the precinct before? How many more parking tickets have you gotten?"

  "That was to get my sweetie to take care of the citation. Maybe the next time those nice firemen come over, I can get one of them—"

  "Citation? Firemen? What firemen? Why are firemen coming to your house?"

  Verlene stopped at the corner of DeKalb. I could see Fort Greene Park in the next block. It encompassed an eight-block area of beautifully peaceful park. But therein lay the conundrum. During the day it was peaceful and at night it was full of pieces. It bothered me that Verlene lived so close to all that nighttime violence. But every time I thought about convincing her to move closer to me, I gagged . . . literally.

  "Verlene? You didn't answer me."

  She bit down on her lower lip, calmly crossed DeKalb, and pulled up in front of her neat brownstone in the middle of the block. "I wanted you to see that the house was all right before you exploded. You're just like your ma, always going off half-cocked when I make a little mistake. Don't you think I can take care of myself?"

  "Verlene!"

  "All right. So I had a couple small fires."

  My chest contracted. I tried to get the words out calmly, rather than screaming like the homicidal banshee I felt coming on. "Why did you have a couple small fires?"

  Verlene angled out of the car, and moved around to the trunk. "Nobody told me that I needed to drain the fruit cocktail first." She shrugged her shoulders, unlocked the trunk, and grabbed an armload of groceries.

  I snatched a couple of bags from the mound in the backseat, and several stacked cases of cat food came into view. It caught me off guard. Verlene didn't have any cats that I knew of. I hurried behind her. "You're trying to avoid me by talking in single sentences. I'm not going to stop until I get the full story, so you might as well man up and spit it out."

  Verlene jostled to hold the packages and get the key in the lock without dropping anything or talking to me. The door swung open.

  Pop!

  What is that sound?

  We were greeted by impeccably polished hardwood floors and the wonderful coolness of her central air, and an odd hot smell that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

  "I was learning how to make Fruit Noodle Pudding, and I used fruit cocktail instead of mandarin oranges, cherries, and walnuts," she said, as we walked past the gleaming mahogany staircase and down the hall to the kitchen. "I didn't drain the fruit cocktail and it bubbled over and set the oven heating element on fire."

  Pop!

  I started looking for the source of the noise.

  The hallway opened into the large airy kitchen that Burt had enlarged several years before he passed. He pushed out the back wall across the whole twenty-five-foot width of the brownstone and did a fabulous job of creating a huge gourmet kitchen. With the walls painted creamy white, the wide expanse of windows, and the triple French doors, it was almost as bright inside as it was outside.

  "Okay, so that doesn't seem so bad. You had me worried that there was more than one fire."

  Pop!

  A sharp sound whacked the stove hood and a small object shot across the room in my direction. I ducked. The white mini-bomb smacked the kitchen cupboard and plopped to the counter. It looked like a scorched egg. "What the . . . ?"

  "Oh no!" Verlene dropped her packages on the butcher-block countertop in the center of the room, and hurried toward the stove. Another pop. She recoiled.

  Pop!

  A blackened egg hit the inside top of the hood and sizzled back onto the cooktop.

  Pop!

  With a hand in front of her face, she reached around the enameled Dutch oven and shut off the cooktop.

  Pop!

  Another egg missile hurled from the scorched pot and whacked the wall, bouncing offthe edge of the counter and onto the floor.

  I looked for empty counter space to drop the packages.

  Pop!

  I flinched. Everywhere I turned there were appliances—tall appliances that looked like guillotines, silver appliances that looked like drill presses, wide appliances that looked like they could eat a hand. I shivered, set the bags on the floor, and turned to face the exploding stove.

  The two walls at the west end of the kitchen were dotted with small dark spots. There were even a couple of marks on the ceiling. It looked like the kitchen had caught the chicken pox. Eggshell carnage littered the floor.

  "What's going on?" Another pop sounded. I grabbed up a quilted potholder and in the style of A-Rod, snatched a flying egg out of the air like a New York Yankee infielder.

  Verlene wrung her hands. "I didn't know I'd be gone so long. It's Mrs. Stattler's fault. She made me try all the products on her sample table at Costco."

  Pop!

  Another egg ricocheted off the stove hood and directly at my leg. I hopped and made a backhanded catch into my oven mitt.

  Another pop!

  A prickling sensation ran up my nose. I put the back of my mitt-covered hand to my nose. I sneezed. A burned egg whacked me in the forehead. I stumbled back, blinking.

  Verlene hurried to turn off the stove.

  "Look at this pot. I'll never get it clean." Verlene slipped on a pair of potholders and scurried to the sink with the scorched Dutch oven. She reached for the cold-water handle
.

  "No!" I lurched forward but it was too late. That cold water hit the heat-blackened pot and eggs and steam blew up in all directions. I snatched Verlene away from the sink as the rest of the eggs exploded like popcorn. "Verlene, please tell me you didn't go out of this house and leave eggs boiling on the stove."

  I eased over to the sink and shut off the water. A few remaining blackened eggshells swirled in the dark water.

  Verlene touched one of the spots on the wall across from the stove. "Shoot! I just had this wall painted—"

  "Verlene!" Count, Sloane. Count to ten. Augh! Count to fifty! Verlene's face scrunched up into a pucker. I felt bad for yelling but this could have been serious instead of just an egg-tastrophy. I threw her a dirty look. It wasn't as if she was actually going to listen to me or anyone who even remotely resembled family. It had been hard enough getting her to listen to Mom, and with me, well, she had purses older than me. I was like a gnat flying in front of her face. I got no respect.

  "How did this happen?"

  Verline grimaced. "I just told you. I went—"

  "No . . . I mean the eggs. They don't normally turn into missiles like that. How did this happen?"

  "I don't know. I even had one of these eggs shoot out of the microwave when I opened the door after heating it too long. One of the ladies at cooking class said that might happen if the eggs are too old. They get gas, or air spaces, or something like that."

  I stared at the shells all over the floor. "Then why didn't you throw them away?"

  "Girl! That was a full tray of eggs!"

  "Tray? Verline, how many eggs were there?"

  "Well, I'm not sure. At least three dozen."

  I could feel my eyes widening to where they could've fallen out of their sockets. "What in the world were you going to do with that many eggs?"

  Verline shrugged. "I don't know, but they were on sale. I couldn't resist the price."

  My mind whirled. "No wonder they were cheap. They were probably going rotten."

  She looked around the kitchen with obvious disgust. "There were a couple dozen eggs in that pot. What a waste. I guess I don't have the hang of setting this new timer. It was supposed to turn off the burner after twenty minutes."