by Leslie Karst
A car that was about as distinctive as any in the whole of Santa Cruz.
Chapter 9
Javier was right about one thing. The power was still out over much of Santa Cruz the next morning, including my neighborhood on the West Side and the downtown area where Gauguin is located. I called the chef to see if he’d been down to the restaurant, and he said no, agreeing to meet me there at ten thirty.
Although the rain had subsided for the time being, it was still windy, and driving down to Gauguin I had to dodge an array of branches, overturned recycling bins, and bottles and cans that littered the streets. Not only that, but the wind was whistling through the slash in the T-Bird’s ragtop. I’d need to do a temporary fix with duct tape till I could figure out how to do a real patch job.
The building looked fine from the outside. Water was pooled up along the edge of the parking lot and we had some cleaning up to do of leaves and other debris, but no roof shingles appeared to have come loose, which had been my main concern. The two of us walked around back to check on the generator, and as soon as we rounded the corner of the building, we heard the reassuring roar of its natural gas–powered motor.
Javier unlocked the side door and let us into the garde manger. “Let’s check the temp in the refrigeration units,” I said, and he followed me into the walk-in. The wall thermometer read thirty-eight degrees. “Good. And the fans seem to be working, too.”
After confirming that the freezer was also at the proper temperature, we headed to the kitchen. Enough sunlight streamed through the two windows for us to see that, although our cleanup job the night before hadn’t been perfect, we’d done a pretty good job of it, given that the only light had been from the dim, battery-operated lamps.
“Have you heard anything about when the power’s supposed to come back on?” Javier asked. He took a side towel from the stack on the counter and wiped a spot of gunk from the stainless-steel table running down the middle of the kitchen.
“I checked this morning, and they’re saying a bunch of lines were knocked down. They’re not expecting to have them all back up till late tonight at the earliest. And if this wind keeps up, it could be even longer.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.” I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket. “So I guess that means we all have the night off. Better get busy calling folks to let them know. You wanna take the kitchen staff and I’ll call everyone else?”
“Sounds good.”
Javier retreated to the office to make his calls while I sat in the dining room and phoned the hostess as well as all the servers and bussers scheduled for tonight. Gauguin was closed on Mondays anyway, so even if the electricity wasn’t restored until tomorrow night, we’d lose only one day’s business.
That done, I headed upstairs to the office, where Javier was leaving a message for Kris. “Any news on the money transfer for Gauguin?” I asked once he’d punched off his phone.
“I was hoping for tomorrow,” he said, “but it got delayed a day because of the power outage, so now they’re saying Tuesday.”
“Well, I’ve got the papers all drawn up and ready to go. Maybe we can have a signing celebration that night at the restaurant, to celebrate your new status as co-owner. Oh, that reminds me, did you decide on the specials for Tuesday?”
After conferring with Javier about Dungeness crab, Asian pears, and rainbow chard, I took off back home. Evelyn was in the living room, with the battery-powered transistor radio I’d unearthed that morning tuned to the 49ers-Seahawks game. Both dogs were snuggled on the couch with her, but Buster jumped down and came trotting over to greet me as I opened the door.
“Who’s winning?” I asked through slobbery dog kisses.
“Seattle fourteen, Niners zip,” she said, “with seventeen seconds left in the second quarter. But we’ve got a first-and goal, so hopefully we’ll score at least three points before the half. How’s the restaurant?”
“Fine. But it doesn’t look like the power will be restored in time for us to open tonight.” I stood up and shook the dog hair from my pants. “I’m gonna go call my dad to see about Sunday dinner.”
“Oh, you going over to his house tonight since Gauguin will be closed?”
“No,” I said with a chuckle. “It’s a lunchtime dinner thing my family’s done since I was a baby. My nonna makes this braised meat dish—the Sunday gravy—and pasta, and so much other food that only an Italian grandmother could imagine you’d possibly be able to consume it all in one sitting. But I’m guessing with the power out, it’s not happening today. Too bad, ’cause the gravy’s delicious and I was hoping you could try it out today. But hey, there’s always next Sunday.”
I left her as the tinny radio crowd groaned in unison, indicating the kicker had missed his field goal. So much for scoring at least three points.
Dad picked up after the first ring. “Hi, hon. How you doing this blustery morning?”
“Not bad. And you? You didn’t open today, did you?”
“No way. Back in the day, you can bet I would’ve. But nowadays with all the damn rules and regulations they have, no can do. So instead I’m taking the opportunity to organize my tackle box. Only four months till the opening of salmon season, after all, and it may take that long for me to untangle this mess of lures and lines I seem to have.”
“I’m guessing Sunday dinner isn’t happening.”
“Nope. I stopped by to see how Nonna’s doing, and she’s got half the parish over there. She told everyone to come by after mass this morning, ’cause she’s worried all the food in her freezer will spoil and wants to give it away.” He snorted. “I tried to tell her the food would be fine as long as she didn’t keep opening the freezer door, but she wouldn’t listen to me, of course.”
“C’mon, what do you expect?” I said. “It’s not as if you ever listen to my advice, either. Parents are stubborn that way. Anyway, at least we both have a full day off for a change. You got any plans?”
Dad didn’t answer right away. “Uh, yeah, I do,” he finally said. “I have …” A pause, then, “Someone coming over.”
“Someone? Do tell.”
“Just this woman I met. She moved here from LA last summer and doesn’t know many people in Santa Cruz yet, so …” He trailed off.
“How’d you meet her?”
“Uh, well, actually, it was on one of those computer sites where you meet people.”
“No way, Dad! You signed up for an online dating site?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to tell you about it yet, because I thought you might be mad. You know, that you might think I was trying to replace your mother or something.”
“I’m not mad, Dad. But I gotta say, I am surprised. So what’s she like? What’s her name?”
“Abby. She’s a real estate agent. In fact, she was salesperson-of-the-month for November at her agency, so I’d say she must be pretty good.” Did my dad just giggle? “And she’s really into food and wine and stuff, so I’m sure you’re gonna like her.”
He wants us to meet? How serious is this?
“Uh, sure, Dad,” I finally managed to say. “I’d love to meet her. Maybe next week at Sunday dinner. I was thinking of bringing Evelyn, too, if you don’t think Nonna would mind that many people.”
“I doubt she’d mind,” Dad said. “But I’m not sure I want to subject Abby to Nonna just yet. She’s about as opposite from Italian as you can get.”
I laughed. My grandmother could be pretty hard on people outside her insular little group of parishioners and the Italian American community here in Santa Cruz, especially if they were dating one of her own. I remembered how hard she’d been on Eric when I’d first brought him to Sunday dinner, making cracks about his blond hair and fair complexion and how she should have prepared potatoes instead of pasta for the meal.
“Well, I think you should bring her. If you’re at all serious about her, she’ll have to face Nonna at some point. And besides, I’d like to meet her.”
“We
’ll see,” was all he said.
After hanging up, I stared out the window at the liquidambar tree across the street, its gray branches, now bare of their glorious fall color, whipping about in the wind. I should call that attorney who drafted Jackie’s will. I fetched the file from the kitchen counter and punched in the number at the top of the document, only to have the call go straight to voicemail—not surprising, given it was Sunday.
Using my best lawyerly voice and somewhat rusty attorney vocabulary, I left a message saying I was calling on behalf of Jackie’s daughter “in regards to her mother’s recent death and the provisions of her will” and asking him to please return my call “at your earliest convenience.”
I didn’t go so far as to claim I was “representing” Evelyn or that she was my “client.” That would have been unethical, since as an inactive member of the California bar, I was prohibited from engaging in the practice of law. But if he merely assumed I was an attorney, perhaps he’d call me back that little bit faster. That done, I turned my thoughts to lunch.
Evelyn helped me rustle up a can of bean-with-bacon soup and a pair of grilled-cheese sandwiches made with Gouda, horseradish, arugula, and thinly sliced apple. As I rinsed the salad greens and then shook them dry in a colander, I watched her deftly core and slice the Fuji apple for our sandwiches. “By the way,” I said, “I have some bad news.”
“Oh?” She set down the paring knife and turned my way.
“Yeah. Your mom’s laptop was stolen from my car last night.” I told her about the person running away from the T-Bird and how I’d found my wallet on the seat. “So my guess is the thief was someone who was at Jackie’s memorial service and overheard what I said to Detective Vargas about her computer being in my car.”
Evelyn sucked in her breath. “If that’s the case, then there’s a good chance whoever stole it was Mom’s killer.”
“I know. Super creepy.” I shivered, then gave an angry shake to the colander. “And now I also have to break the news to Vargas, how I managed to lose a valuable piece of evidence in the case.”
Evelyn picked the knife up again, brow furrowed, and I finished drying the greens and then set to work buttering the bread and slicing cheese. Neither of us spoke as she continued cutting up her apples and I got the bread grilling in a cast-iron skillet.
“Hey,” Evelyn said after a bit, scraping the apple pieces into a small bowl, “I have an idea. Since you’re not working tonight, how about I cook that dinner for you I talked about? After all, it won’t make any difference to me that there’s no lights.” Evelyn grinned as she wiped the paring knife clean with a dish towel.
“Sure, that sounds fun.”
“But would it be okay if we did it at my house? It’ll be way easier for me to cook there, since I know where everything is.”
“You don’t mind hanging out there that long?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It should be okay, especially since you’ll be there, too. And I think it’d be good to see how I feel being at the place for more than just a short time. You know, to try to work my way up to being able to spend the night there, and move back in one of these days.”
“I think that’s a great idea. So it’s a date, then—assuming there’s a gas range.”
“Yep. And a gas oven, too. And candles, for you poor sighted folks who can’t live a single second in the dark.”
“Thanks,” I said with a laugh. “Will you make your famous pasta from scratch that you were telling me and Javier about?”
“Absolutely.” Evelyn carried the bowl of apples over to the stove and, lightly touching the buttered bread browning in the skillet, began arranging the slices on top of the cheese I’d placed on the bread. “Do you happen to have any porcini mushrooms?” she asked. “For the dinner tonight?”
“I do, actually. My dad and I hosted this huge banquet a couple months back and we got about twenty pounds from the Santa Cruz Fungus Federation—way more than we needed. So Dad dried the ones we ended up not using. Here.” I pulled a plastic bag full of the dried bolete mushrooms from the cupboard above me and opened it, then held the bag under Evelyn’s nose. “He gave me some. Smell.”
“Ahhhh, yes!” she said. “Let’s get some of these soaking right away. I know you have garlic, onions, and Parmigiano cheese, but I don’t suppose you also have any peas, do you?”
“Just the frozen variety. It’s not really pea season.”
“That’ll work. Not quite like fresh, but way better than canned. So you’re in luck. I’m going to make you Nonna Sophia’s fettuccine with mushrooms and peas. It was my father’s favorite when he was growing up, according to Nonna, anyway.
“Oh, man. Sounds incredible.”
* * *
After lunch, I finally got up the nerve to call Detective Vargas. It is Sunday afternoon, I thought, so maybe he won’t pick up and I can just leave a message. But no, he was apparently one of those always-on-the-job types.
“Vargas here,” his deep voice answered before the second ring.
“Oh hi, it’s Sally Solari. I, uh … have some bad news.”
From the groans and exaggerated sighs coming over the line, I could tell he was not at all happy about the laptop, but he did let me recount my story without interruption. “So it seems to me it must have been someone at the memorial service who stole it,” I finished.
“Given what you said about your wallet being there in plain sight, I have to say—much as it pains me to do so—that you may very well be right.” Another audible sigh.
I laughed. “Well, that’s something, anyway. Which means we need to figure out who was there who could have overheard us talking, and which of them would have any reason to want Jackie’s computer—or to want her dead.”
“Hold on,” Vargas said. “Just because someone may have wanted her computer doesn’t mean they murdered her. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t a suicide.”
“But what about what Evelyn said, about how her mom never called her by that name? And don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that the computer was stolen just days after Jackie died? Oh, and there’s another thing.” I told him about finding the bottle of cranberry juice in the wrong place in the refrigerator. “Would the police who searched the house have moved things around in the fridge?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “But I don’t see how that proves much. Jackie could have moved the bottle that night. Given all the alcohol and drugs she’d ingested, she could easily have neglected to put it back in its right place.”
Exactly what I’d said to Evelyn.
“Back to the memorial service,” Vargas went on. “Why don’t you give me a list of all the people you can remember who were there.”
“Okay. Lemme think …” I ticked off the names for the detective: Stan, Max, Sarah, Maya, Rachel, Al, the two women who’d worked with Jackie at IHOP, the two Tamarind cooks, Evelyn’s four friends, my dad, and his Cousin Sophia.
“And then, of course, you, me, and Evelyn,” I added. “Oh, and the gal who led the service and the guy who played the piano. There were other people there too, but those are the only ones I know anything about.”
“And out of those people, are there any you have reason to believe might have wanted to steal Jackie’s computer?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly why this might make him want her computer, but Evelyn and I did just find out that Stan, her ex-stepdad, had been paying spousal support to Jackie. And then there’s Al, the guy you saw get all weird with those two women at the reception. He’s Jackie’s old boss and apparently thinks she stole recipes from him when she left Tamarind.”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember the people I’d seen at the memorial service. “Oh, and I almost forgot. This woman, Rachel, who recently quit working for Jackie’s pop-up restaurant—apparently over some argument they had or something—she was at the memorial, too. So that makes three suspects we have at this point.”
“Okay, thanks,” Vargas said with a chuckle. “That’s
a start. And on the subject of suspects, I think it goes without saying—”
“But you’re going to anyway,” I cut in.
Vargas ignored my interruption. “That you should let us do our job without any interference on your part. But if you do happen to come across any other evidence relevant to the case, I’m assuming you’ll be a little more careful with it, yes?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I promise.”
Chapter 10
Evelyn’s house was not only dark but also cold and damp when we got there at six o’clock that evening, and the first thing I did while she went in search of candles was locate the thermostat. Yes. It was an old-style gas heater that didn’t require electricity. I cranked the knob up to eighty degrees. Once the place warmed up a bit, I could turn it down.
“Look what I found,” Evelyn said, emerging from the hall closet. She held up an object that, when I shined my phone’s light on it, proved to be a large camping lantern. “Let’s see if the battery’s still good.” She flipped the switch and brightness filled the room.
“It works!” I said. “Awesome.”
“And I found a bunch of candles, too. But since I never use them, I’m not sure where Mom kept the matches or candle holders.”
“That’s okay. We can use the flame from the stove to light them.” I followed Evelyn into the kitchen, and after setting up the lantern and lighting several candles and placing them on saucers, we set about organizing all the food we’d brought over for the meal: the rehydrated porcini mushrooms, a chunk of Parmigiano cheese, the packet of frozen peas, an onion and head of garlic, three eggs, and half a baguette I’d discovered in my freezer. “Okay,” she said. “I should get the pasta going first. It needs to rest for a while before I can roll it out.”
Evelyn pulled a dry measuring cup from a drawer, then lifted the lid off a 1950s-era metal canister on the counter with FLOUR written on its side in elaborate script. She filled the cup from the canister, scraped across its top with the flat edge of a butter knife, and dumped the flour onto a large cutting board. After adding a second cup to the mound, she used her knuckles to make a well in the flour, then cracked the eggs into its center.
