Death of an Italian Chef

by Lee Hollis

  But that still didn’t get me out of helping my uncle insulate the attic.

  MOM’S FAVORITE BRANDY COFFEE

  INGREDIENTS:

  1 ounce crème de cacao

  1 ounce brandy

  1 ounce freshly brewed espresso

  1 ounce cream

  1 cup crushed ice

  Place all your ingredients in a shaker and shake until well mixed, strain in a cocktail glass and serve.

  My antipasto tortellini salad is insanely delicious and absolutely customizable to your own taste. I have been making it since I was sixteen years old, and I have made it with every kind of cheese and meats imaginable. I love them all, but this is one of my favorite combinations. By all means, feel free to add other ingredients or take away any of these depending on you and your family’s tastes and preferences. This is really a great salad to make and call it your own!

  ANTIPASTO TORTELLINI SALAD

  INGREDIENTS:

  16 ounces fresh or frozen cheese tortellini

  1 pint grape tomatoes halved

  2 cups cubed hard salami

  2 cups cubed provolone cheese

  1 cup chopped red onions

  ½ cup green/black olives

  1 cup peperoncini peppers

  1 cup mozzarella pearls

  ITALIAN DRESSING

  INGREDIENTS:

  ½ cup olive oil

  ¼ cup red wine vinegar

  2 cloves garlic, minced

  1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

  Pinch of red pepper flakes

  Kosher salt to taste

  Add all of your dressing ingredients in a mason jar and shake, shake, shake until well blended. Pour over your salad, mix gently to combine all of the ingredients and refrigerate until ready to wow your guests!

  Chapter 12

  Sergeant Vanessa Herrold certainly knew how to command a room, even a small semiprivate one at Bar Harbor Hospital. When she had first arrived, Hayley was out by the nurses’ station and had witnessed the orderlies and nurses almost snap to attention as the stone-faced, dead serious sergeant marched with military precision down the hall after getting off the elevator, trailed by Officer Donnie, who almost had to jog to keep up with her.

  She stopped to address Tilly, who was back manning the phones. “Who called 911?”

  Hayley raised her hand. “I did.”

  Officer Donnie snickered and Herrold spun around to glare at him. “What’s so funny?”

  Donnie suddenly felt awkward and self-conscious and sputtered, “N-Nothing . . . It’s just that Hayley has a long history of getting involved when there has been a purported crime . . .” He cleared his throat and glanced over at Hayley with pleading eyes. “Isn’t that right, Hayley?”

  Hayley had no intention of helping him out with his temporary commanding officer.

  Sergeant Herrold’s eyes narrowed. “And you find interfering with law enforcement amusing, do you?”

  Donnie vigorously shook his head. “No, I was just trying to explain—”

  Herrold whipped back around, ignoring him and focused her big, dead-serious brown eyes directly on Hayley. “You say you saw someone murdered?”

  “No, not me,” Hayley said. “My brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Down the hall.”

  “Well, what are we standing around here for? Let’s go hear what he has to say. Come on, Donnie,” Herrold ordered as she took off down the hall with Officer Donnie scampering after her like a loyal lapdog.

  Tilly snorted. “Rumor has it from a few well-placed sources at the police department that Sergeant Herrold is not what you would call, warm and fuzzy.”

  “It’s not just a rumor. We have the proof right here in front of us,” Hayley lamented before scurrying after them.

  Randy had told her that Sergio recently hired a new sergeant out of New Hampshire. She had a reputation of being tough and no-nonsense, her record was impeccable, and the Manchester police chief had written an effusive, glowing recommendation. She was just out of a bad marriage and wanted a fresh start, so she applied for a new position in Sergio’s department when she read online about an opening.

  Randy had not been impressed by her cold demeanor and distant personality when Sergio invited her over to dinner on her first night in town before starting work the following morning. But Sergio appeared to be impressed by her strictly by-the-book way of doing things. He even had the confidence in her to put her in charge when he left for Brazil.

  Officer Donnie, who was the usual pick to run things when Sergio was out of town, didn’t seem to mind too much that he was tossed aside for the more imposing Sergeant Herrold. In fact, Hayley observed when she entered the room, Officer Donnie seemed downright infatuated with his new immediate superior. He stared at her with adoring eyes and seemed to hang on her every word. Hayley could understand why. Even in a loose-fitting police uniform, she could see Herrold was physically fit, like one of those celebrity trainers such as Jackie Warner, who Hayley used to watch working out on TV while eating a box of Girl Scout cookies. Herrold’s silky, raven hair was pulled back into a bun, accentuating her pretty oval-shaped face. Her olive skin suggested she might be Greek or Italian. But there was no makeup, no will or desire to gussy herself up, which she probably considered unprofessional.

  Herrold stood by Randy’s bedside with Donnie shadowing her, practically on top of her. She stared down at Randy and offered him a tight but friendly smile, saying sweetly, “So tell me what happened, Randy.”

  The smile struck Hayley as decidedly uncharacteristic and forced, but then again, Sergeant Herrold was certainly aware she was talking to her boss’s husband.

  “Last night I woke up, and I saw a man standing over Chef Romeo’s bed, and he was injecting something into one of the tubes Romeo was hooked up to,” Randy explained, a little more clear-eyed now than when Hayley had first arrived at the hospital.

  “What time was this?” Herrold asked, scribbling notes down on a pad of paper with a pen.

  Randy shrugged. “I don’t know . . . Maybe three or four in the morning . . . I can’t be sure . . . I was still pretty much out of it from my operation.”

  Herrold frowned. “I see. Did you know this man? Had you ever seen him here before?”

  “I really couldn’t see his face. He was wearing one of those medical masks,” Randy said softly.

  Herrold cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a nurse administering some pain medication?”

  Randy shook his head. “No. I know all the nurses on this floor who are on duty during the night shift. This guy wasn’t one of them.”

  “But you said you couldn’t see his face because of the mask,” Herrold said.

  “Yes, but there is only one male nurse on this floor, Fredy, and it definitely was not him. This guy was much taller and beefier.”

  Herrold glanced at Officer Donnie skeptically. “I see.” She was trying to be careful not to be dismissive of Randy’s story, but she was obviously finding that a challenge.

  “Wait, there’s more,” Randy said, struggling to sit up in bed, but still too weak. He laid his head back down on the pillow. “While the guy was using the syringe to inject something in the tube, Chef Romeo suddenly woke up and asked what he was doing. The guy stopped what he was doing and clamped a hand over his mouth, and held him down until whatever he put in the tube took effect and Romeo stopped struggling.”

  “Did you try and call for help?” Herrold asked.

  “Yes. But I had cotton mouth and was having trouble speaking, and I was feeling so weak. I tried to reach for the call button to get someone to come to the room, but I couldn’t reach it. I remember falling out of bed, then all these bells and whistles started going off because Romeo was going into cardiac arrest and the guy took off. I must have passed out again, because the next thing I knew, I was back in bed and they were rolling Romeo out with a white sheet covering him.”

  Herrold stopped writing on her pad and tapped the t
op of her pen against her chin a few times. “You were under heavy sedation. Is it possible all this might have just been a bad dream?”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s it,” Officer Donnie agreed. “I remember my dreams all the time. In fact, it’s a funny thing, last night I dreamed about you, Vanessa—”

  “Not now, Donnie,” Herrold snapped. “And can you please stop crowding me?”

  “Oh, of course,” Donnie said, looking wounded as he took a giant step back, away from her.

  “I know what I saw,” Randy said firmly. “It was not a dream.”

  “I want you to know, Randy, that I will take this seriously,” Herrold assured him.

  Her words sounded right, but Hayley didn’t hear much conviction in them. It was almost as if Herrold was just humoring him, already convinced that he had been hallucinating the whole event.

  “Now you get some rest. I’ll talk to the doctor, see what he says about the cause of death, if Romeo’s heart just gave out, or if there’s something more sinister going on, and we’ll take it from there, okay?”

  Randy nodded, a dubious look on his face.

  “What a shame. Chef Romeo opens a brand-new restaurant in town, and then he dies before he even has the chance to get it off the ground,” Herrold remarked.

  “He was doing great business right out of the gate. His food is delicious,” Hayley piped in.

  Herrold gazed over at Hayley as if noticing her in the room for the first time. “Huh. Well, I probably was never going to dine there because I can’t stand Italian food.”

  How odd, because despite her name, she looked so Mediterranean, as if she had just stepped off a fishing boat in Portofino.

  “You know, I hate Italian food too,” Donnie blurted out. “It’s probably because the only thing my ex-girlfriend could make was spaghetti and meatballs, which tasted awful, by the way. How do you screw up spaghetti and meatballs? Still, what a coincidence we both don’t like Italian food!”

  Herrold rolled her eyes, annoyed by Donnie’s fumbled attempts to prove the two of them were somehow meant for each other. “Come on, Donnie.”

  Herrold turned to go. Donnie raced to catch up with her, and got so close he walked right up on the back of her shoe, causing it to come off her foot, giving her a flat tire. She stopped in the doorway, bent down to slip her shoe back on, then sprang back up, eyes leveled at Donnie. “Let’s pretend we still have to socially distance and you stay six feet away from me!”

  She stormed out.

  Donnie tried not to look too devastated as he hastily followed behind her.

  Randy slowly turned his head toward Hayley. “She doesn’t believe me. She’s not going to do anything.”

  “Let’s just wait and see,” Hayley said, moving closer to the bed. “It’s her job.”

  “I wish Sergio was here,” Randy lamented. He then reached out and grabbed Hayley’s hand and squeezed it. “Will you do it?”

  “Will I do what?”

  “Find out who came in here last night and killed Chef Romeo! I did not dream this, Hayley! He was murdered!”

  She could see him starting to stress out.

  His blood pressure and heart rate began rising on the digital monitor next to the bed.

  She just needed to calm her brother down, and she knew there was only one way to do that.

  “Yes, Randy, I will find whoever did this. I promise.”

  She just hoped it was a promise she could keep.

  Chapter 13

  “He said what?” Sal hollered through the phone after Hayley had stepped outside Randy’s room to call her boss and let him know what was happening, and why she would be late to the office.

  “He says he saw a man hold Chef Romeo down and inject something into one of his tubes right before he suffered a fatal heart attack.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “Well, obviously the coroner is going to have to conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death, but Randy has already reported what he saw to the police.”

  “Of course Bruce would have to be out of town when something like this comes up! Okay, Hayley, don’t worry about coming in today. I want you to stick around the hospital and see what you can find out. You’re always butting into police business all the time anyway, you might as well be the one to fill in for Bruce and cover this story while he’s gone.”

  She opened her mouth to protest his assessment that she was always butting in, but realized that he was, for the most part, 100 percent correct, so she declined further comment. “Okay, Sal.”

  “One more thing,” Sal said. “There is a rumor running around town that you’re taking over Chef Romeo’s restaurant. How the hell are you going to juggle your full-time job here at the Times and run a restaurant?”

  “I’m not,” Hayley explained. “I only agreed to help Romeo out when he was on the mend from his heart attack. Now that he’s sadly passed, there is no point in me even taking over temporarily. I’m sure there will be some provision in his will as to what to do with his business.”

  “Okay, good. I don’t want you stretched too thin. You have very important responsibilities here at the paper that need to be taken care of,” Sal warned. “By the way, if you do swing by here at some point today, could you bring me a half dozen of those cream-filled glazed doughnuts from the Cookie Crumble Bakery?”

  Somehow tending to her boss’s insatiable sweet tooth did not strike her as a serious responsibility.

  But as usual, Hayley bit her tongue and replied, “Of course, Sal.”

  Hayley ended the call, stuffed her phone in her bag, and wandered down to the nurses’ station where Nurse Tilly was on her feet, phone clamped to her ear, in obvious distress. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, but I can’t cover this whole floor all by myself. Can you please spare one person to come up here and help me?” Tilly wailed. “I told you, I don’t know where he is! I’ve got three call buttons buzzing right now and nobody up here but me to answer them!”

  Tilly slammed down the phone, rushed out from behind the circular desk in a state of panic, nearly mowing down Hayley as she raced to see what all the patients needed.

  Hayley headed in the opposite direction toward the bank of elevators. She was starving and planned on buying a Danish and coffee down in the cafeteria. When she returned about ten minutes later, the Danish already eaten and carrying her second cup of black coffee, Tilly had returned to her station and appeared a little less frazzled, although still slightly annoyed.

  “Busy morning, I see,” Hayley said, sipping her coffee.

  “It’s been nonstop since last night, one thing after another, and one of our nurses decides to pull a disappearing act, leaving me here all by myself! Anyone who knows me can tell you, I have never dealt well with too much pressure!”

  If that was true, entering the nursing profession seemed an odd career path, in Hayley’s opinion, which she kept to herself.

  “Who disappeared?” Hayley asked.

  “The new guy, the good-looking one,” Tilly said brusquely as she shuffled some papers at her desk.

  “Fredy?”

  “Yes,” Tilly sighed.

  “Could he just be taking his break?”

  “No, he started at midnight and would have taken his break long before this. His shift is scheduled to be over in less than an hour. I have no clue what could have happened to him!”

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened. A nurse, short and stout, late fifties, no-nonsense, hustled out, shaking her head as she approached the nurses’ station. “I searched the whole hospital. I can’t find him anywhere.”

  “I’ve been trying his phone,” Tilly said. “It keeps going directly to voice mail.”

  The stout nurse stopped and grabbed the desk to steady herself, out of breath. “I just can’t imagine where he went. This is so unlike him. He always seemed so conscientious and responsible.”

  “And the patients adore him,” Tilly said. “Oh, well, I guess you never really know abo
ut someone.”

  “Well, I am not going to waste any more time trying to figure out why he left,” the stout nurse snorted. “What can I do to help pick up the slack?”

  “The urinary-tract infection in two-thirteen slept through breakfast and they took her tray away and now she’s hungry, and the hip replacement in two-nineteen is going to need help with going to the toilet,” Nurse Tilly said.

  “I’m on it,” the stout nurse said before waddling off.

  Hayley finished her coffee and held up her paper cup. “Is there a trash can around here?”

  Without looking up, Tilly shot out a hand. “I’ll take it.”

  Hayley handed it to her, and Tilly dumped it in a can underneath the desk.

  “Thank you,” Hayley said.

  Tilly didn’t respond.

  Her eyes were glued to a medical chart.

  “Tilly, I know you’re crazy busy, but I was just wondering: Were you on duty last night when Chef Romeo died?”

  Tilly popped her head up. “What?”

  “I was just wondering—”

  “I heard the question. Why do you want to know? Are you accusing me of not acting fast enough to save him after he went into cardiac arrest?”

  Hayley threw up her hands. “No, of course not!”

  “Good, because this is a hospital. Things like that happen all the time,” she said, flustered.

  Hayley studied Tilly.

  She noticed her hands were trembling as she closed the file folder and set it aside.

  “Tilly, I’m sorry, I did not mean to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset.”