A Catered Mother's Day (18 page)

Chapter 35

I
t was business as usual at A Taste of Heaven, meaning the line was out the door, when Ryan and Matt walked into the shop at seven the next morning and asked to see Bernie and Libby.

“Hey, there are some kids to see you guys,” Amber called into the kitchen before she turned back to the customer she was waiting on.

That was all she had time to say because it was the mid-morning rush and she and Googie were swamped trying to fill the orders of the commuters who needed to make the 7:16 Metro-North into Penn Station.

“It's us,” Ryan yelled over the din of the crowd.

“Figured,” Bernie yelled back. “Come on back.”

Amber jerked her head to the left. “That way,” she said, directing the two brothers to the door on the left.

Libby looked up from what she was doing. “Could they have picked a worse time?” she muttered to her sister as she ladled raspberry muffin batter into three tins.

Not only was this one of the busiest times of the morning, but she and Bernie had overslept by an hour, so now they were behind on their lunch prep.

“Probably not,” Bernie agreed. She was in the middle of making a blue cheese and walnut potato salad. She'd eaten it down in a Gramercy Park bistro a couple of weeks ago and was anxious to see how it was going to do on A Little Taste of Heaven's menu.

She took the pot filled with new potatoes off the stove and poured the contents into a large sieve set in the kitchen sink. A plume of steam rose as the boiling water spilled out. Bernie gave the sieve a sharp shake to get the remaining liquid out, after which she conveyed the sieve to a second prep table, got a large bowl off the shelf, and dumped the potatoes onto a cutting board.

“Damn, they're hot,” she said after she'd sliced a few. “I need asbestos fingers. Why aren't you doing this?” she asked Libby.

“Because I chopped ten pounds of onions,” Libby reminded her.

“I guess this is better,” Bernie conceded.

She hated chopping onions. By the time she was done the tears were running down her face. She'd tried freezing them and peeling them under water, but that didn't work, so then she'd tried the match trick. That hadn't worked either. Short of a scuba tank and a regulator, nothing that she knew kept the fumes out of her eyes and that, as one of her Cali friends used to say, was a little de trop. She'd done a quarter of the potatoes when Ryan and Matt marched through the door.

“I got it,” Ryan announced. Then before Bernie could ask him what he'd gotten, Ryan pointed to one of the chocolate chip muffins cooling on the rack on the prep table over by the far wall. “Can I have one of those?”

“Can I have one too?” Matt asked.

“By all means,” Bernie said, avoiding Libby's scowl as the boys took two muffins apiece. “Now, what did you get?”

Ryan gave her a dumbfounded look. “The password to the laptop, of course.”

“Of course.” Bernie stopped slicing the potatoes and hit her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Sorry.” How could she have forgotten about Manny's computer? There was way too much going on. Either that or she was definitely losing her grip. “So you unlocked it?”

Ryan grinned. “That's what I just said. It was a snap,” he added, speaking through a mouthful of chocolate chip muffin. “I don't suppose you have any milk around here?”

“Just give me a sec to finish this up and I'll get you some,” Bernie told him.

If she didn't finish the potato salad now before the potatoes cooled off, they wouldn't absorb all the dressing. As Ryan and Matt watched, Bernie sliced up the remaining potatoes and poured the vinaigrette she'd made with walnut oil, lemon juice, a touch of Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper over them. Then she quickly added the piles of chopped parsley, scallions, blue cheese, and walnuts she'd prepped earlier, reached into the bowl with her hands, and carefully combined the ingredients, taking care not to break the slices of potato. When she was sure all the ingredients were properly distributed, she covered the bowl with a layer of plastic wrap and put it in the cooler to meld.

One salad down and eight more to go
, Bernie thought as she walked over to the three-basin sink and washed her hands.

“Now?” Ryan asked Bernie as she reached for a paper towel to dry them.

“Yes, now,” Bernie replied, and she went out front to get Matt and Ryan a couple of pints of milk. “We have to get more whole milk from Lee's Dairy,” she informed Libby on her way to the cooler. “We're almost out.”

“I know.” Libby didn't look up. She was carefully scraping the last of the raspberry batter out of the bowl and into the muffin tin with her spatula. “It's on the list.”

Bernie was back from the front a moment later. “How long did it take you to unlock the laptop?” she asked Ryan as she handed the boys their drinks. They both opened up the bottles and proceeded to chug the milk down.

“Ten minutes,” Ryan said when he was done. He wiped his milk mustache off his upper lip with the back of his hand.

“It took thirteen,” Matt said.

“I still win the bet.”

“By two lousy minutes.”

Ryan shrugged. “Two minutes is two minutes. I said I'd do it in less than fifteen and I did, which means you still have to drive me to the mall.”

Matt put the empty pint bottle on the corner of the prep table. “You know what I think?” he said.

“What?” Ryan asked.

Matt wagged a finger at his brother. “I think your watch is slow, that's what I think.”

Ryan frowned. “See. I knew you were going to punk out, like you always do.”

“Do not,” Matt protested.

“Do too.”

“Sez you,” Matt said, punching his brother in the arm.

Bernie intervened. “That is enough!” she cried before the battle escalated.

The boys stopped talking and looked at her.

Ryan hitched up his pants. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Me too,” Matt said, reseating his baseball cap on his head.

“Apology accepted.” Berne smiled. She turned to Ryan. “So you unlocked Manny's laptop in less than fifteen minutes?”

Ryan nodded.

“That's pretty fast.”

“I was trying for ten.”

Bernie grinned. “Boy, that makes me feel dumb,” she said. “I don't think I could do it like ever.”

Ryan's smile lit up his face. Bernie figured he didn't get too many compliments.

“It's really easy once you know the tricks,” Ryan told her. “You want me to tell you how I did it?”

“By all means,” Libby and Bernie said together. They looked at each other and laughed.

Ryan's smile grew so large it threatened to engulf his entire face. Then he went into a long, technical explanation of how he'd done what he had, of which Bernie and Libby understood maybe every tenth word, and that was because they were prepositions. When he was through, Ryan reached into his backpack, took out Manny's laptop, and ceremoniously handed it to Bernie. “Here you go,” he said. “Nothing too interesting on it that I can see. It was pretty much all standard stuff. Yahoo. An AOL account, which I opened up for you too, by the way.”

Ryan scrunched up his face. “I mean who uses AOL anymore? That's an old person's e-mail. He also had Excel, but nothing in it. There were no photos. He didn't even change his desktop settings. It's like it was when it came out of the factory.” He rubbed his nose with his knuckle. “I gotta say this guy had the same taste in music as my mom and he played solitaire like she does. I mean WTF. Oops.” He put his hand to his mouth. “Sorry about the language, but how lame is that? At least if he was playing Warcraft.”

“So you could open all the apps?” Bernie asked him.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I got 'em all opened. Nothing like using the same password for everything. I mean who does that?”

Bernie looked down at the ground. She did. Otherwise she couldn't remember any of them.

“And we'll be able to open them too?” Libby asked, referring to her and her sister.

Ryan gave her an incredulous look. “What would be the point of this if you couldn't?” And he gave them the password. “You wanna write it down?” Ryan asked.

Libby reached for a pen and a scrap of paper. If she didn't, she'd never remember it.

“After I opened everything up,” Ryan said, “I took a look around. I was hoping I'd find some info on why this guy Manny was killed. Like that he was blackmailing someone or dealing drugs or that he was an international arms dealer. You know, something like that.”

“And did you find anything?” Libby asked.

Ryan shook his head. “Not that I could see.”

“I didn't see anything either,” Matt added.

Bernie decided both boys sounded disappointed.

Ryan continued talking. “Most of the stuff I looked at was pretty boring,” he confided. “It was all about real estate and things like that.” He sighed and yanked up his pants, which were almost down around his thighs. “I just hope there's something on there that helps my mom.”

“Me too,” Bernie said. “Me too.” The boys looked so crestfallen that Bernie added, “Thank you again. This is going to be an enormous help.”

“Really?” Ryan asked, brightening.

“Yes, really,” Bernie answered. She only hoped that was the case.

Chapter 36

“S
een your mom again?” Bernie asked as she rested the Dell on the prep table and opened it. She couldn't resist taking a peek even though she and Libby had a ton of work to do.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “This morning.”

Bernie looked up. “She's home?”

“No. She's still at that motel place, but she came back home last night and she and my dad shut themselves in the study and told us to go to bed. I guess she left after I went to sleep, but we got a text message telling us where she was and not to worry, but I don't know. She looks kind of weird. Her hair's all funny and she's not wearing any makeup or anything.”

“Doofus, that's because we woke her up,” Matt said.

“She said she wasn't sleeping,” Ryan told his brother.

“She didn't say that.”

“Yeah, she did. You were taking a piss.”

“Oh.” Matt stopped for a moment while he processed that. “Yeah. Well. Maybe.”

“Definitely, dude.”

Matt ran his hand through his hair. It looked as if it needed to be combed. “I wouldn't be sleeping either staying in that place.”

“She's on the other side.”

“So what? It's still the same place. I'd rather sleep on a park bench than stay in there. I think what happened affected her brain.” Matt tapped the side of his head with his finger to emphasize the point. “Especially when she can be sleeping at home.” Ryan turned to Libby and Bernie. “We brought her some cereal,” he explained. “Lucky Charms.”

“That was nice of you,” Libby said.

“Yeah, well. She said she missed having breakfast with us,” Ryan said. “I figured it was the least we could so, especially since this is our fault.”

“It really isn't,” Libby said.

“Yeah, it is,” Ryan replied. “If we'd gotten her a birthday card none of this would have happened.”

“Did Ellen say that?” Bernie asked.

“No. Dad did,” Matt replied.

“No, he didn't,” Ryan said.

“He did too. I heard him.”

“That may be overstating things a bit,” Bernie said, and she turned to Manny's laptop, effectively ending the conversation. “Let's take a look at this, shall we?”

“Cool,” Ryan said as he, his brother, and Libby crowded around Bernie.

“You're right, Ryan. This is pretty basic,” she noted now that she'd taken a good look.

“That's what I told you,” Ryan said. “There isn't even any porn.” He sounded disappointed. “At least none that I can see.”

Bernie laughed and opened up Manny's AOL account and took a peek. Ryan was right again. It was boring. Manny's e-mails were mostly junk mail—stuff about eating healthy, offers for miracle pills that helped you lose weight, exercise programs that promised to help you gain fifteen pounds of muscle mass in five days, offers for Viagra and penis enhancers, Groupon offers—stuff that went straight to Bernie's spam folder.

A little more promising were ads from firms touting various kinds of property investment schemes, stuff from Zillow, and two articles about a firm called Bruce and Calle, who were developing a parcel of land in Brooklyn.

“I guess Manny was interested in real estate,” Bernie noted.

“I wonder why,” Libby mused. “He didn't strike me as someone who had money to invest. He couldn't even afford his own place.”

“Maybe he watched too many reality TV shows about flipping houses,” Bernie said. “Maybe he thought this was how he was going to make his fortune.”

“You going to call them now?” Ryan asked.

“Who?” Bernie asked, not getting Ryan's reference.

“That company that's selling stuff.”

“You mean Bruce and Calle?”

Ryan nodded his head. “Yup. I looked them up. They're like this really big deal.”

“I don't know what I'd ask if I did call them up,” Bernie said.

Ryan shrugged. “Ask about Manny. I mean isn't that like a lead or something? They're always following up stuff like that on TV.”

“It's really unlikely that Manny would have anything to do with them,” Bernie observed. Then she looked at Ryan's face and changed her answer to, “I'll call if I need to,” as she continued to scroll down Manny's e-mail.

She found more ads from real estate firms, most concerning parcels of land all over the United States, a shipping confirmation for an order containing a pair of jeans from the Big and Tall shop, and notification that three books on playing chess had been sent from Amazon. She checked the trash and spam. It was all junk mail and a few orders from Amazon. What there weren't, noted Bernie, were any e-mails from friends and family.

Bernie moved on and opened up Manny's Facebook account. Evidently, Manny had one friend—Daisy. No one else was listed. There was one post from a couple of months ago that read, SEE YOU. And that was it.

Bernie sighed and shook her head. “Too bad,” she murmured. She'd been hoping for more.

“What's too bad?” Libby asked.

“That Manny didn't use social media,” Bernie said.

“So?” Libby pointed to herself. “I don't have any social media accounts. What's wrong with that?”

“Seriously?” Ryan asked, clearly shocked. “You're not on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat?”

“No, I'm not,” Libby retorted. “Why? Is that a problem?”

“How do you talk to people?”

Libby put her hands on her hips. “The old-fashioned way. Face to face.”

Ryan yanked his pants up. “That's so . . .”

“. . . so what?” Libby demanded.

“Old,” Ryan said.

Libby glared at him.

“Lots of my friends aren't on social media either,” Bernie told Libby in an effort to make her feel better—even though all of them were. “It just would have made it easier for us to find out stuff about Manny if he was on some of the sites.”

“Maybe that's why he wasn't on them,” Ryan suggested as he yanked his pants up for the third time. The boy definitely needed a belt, Bernie decided. “Maybe he was on the down-low.”

“Could be,” Bernie concurred. It was certainly a possibility.

Libby snapped her fingers. Bernie, Ryan, and Matt turned to look at her. “You know, come to think of it, I don't think Manny had a cell phone.”

“Everyone has a cell phone,” Matt scoffed.

“I didn't see one in the motel room,” Libby told Matt. She turned to Bernie. “Did you?”

“Now that you mention it, no, I didn't,” Bernie replied. “And he didn't have one on him.”

“Someone probably stole it,” Ryan declared. “Those things are worth money. You unlock them and sell them on Craigslist.”

Bernie tapped her fingers on the prep table. “Or the killer could have taken it.”

“And sold it on Craigslist,” Ryan interjected.

 

Bernie turned to Ryan. “How easy would it be to erase stuff off Manny's computer?”

Matt answered. “It would be a piece of cake.”

“I checked and no one did anything like that,” Ryan assured Bernie.

“And anyway,” Matt continued, “if they were that serious they would have taken the hard drive out and run over it.”

“Or wiped it clean and sold it,” Ryan observed.

“Get real,” Matt sneered. “The thing can't be worth more than thirty bucks.”

“Hey, lame-o,” Ryan said. “Thirty bucks is thirty bucks.”

Matt snorted. “You've got money on the brain.”

“So much for that idea,” Bernie said, interrupting the two brothers. She closed the Dell. “Time to get back to work,” she announced.

“That's it?” Ryan cried. “That's all you're going to do.”

Bernie patted his shoulder. “I promise we're going to spend more time on this after the lunch rush.”

Libby chimed in with a “we definitely will,” which seemed to mollify Ryan. Bernie once again thanked Ryan and Matt for everything they'd done and was heading for the office, laptop in hand, figuring she'd stow it there, when she heard a commotion out front.

Amber was saying, “You can't go back there,” and a man was replying, “Oh yeah? Watch me.”

A few seconds later, Bruce burst into the kitchen. Amber was right behind him.