Diners, Drive-Ins, and Death: A Comfort Food Mystery (2 page)

“Of course I do. JoAnn used to work for me at
Brown’s right after she graduated from high school.”

“It was my first job,” JoAnn said, shifting on her feet, looking a tad embarrassed. “I left for Nashville to cut a record, but the closest I got was cleaning rooms at the Opryland hotel.” She put her hand on ACB’s shoulder. “And Antoinette Chloe sent me plane fare to return home.”

Tears pooled in JoAnn’s eyes as she hugged ACB, and then she hurriedly left.

“That was nice of you,” I told my friend. In my ten or so months in Sandy Harbor, I’d heard of several touching things that ACB had done for other people.

She shrugged and waved off my comment. “I told JoAnn that I’d pay her rent for a couple of months, that she shouldn’t give up on her dream, but her mother got sick, and JoAnn felt she should come home and try again some other time.” ACB shook her head. “She never went back, but she sings in the church choir and at funerals and weddings, and, well, I think that makes her happy.”

ACB picked up her menu and studied it, while I looked at the purple-black sky. We were going to have rain. A lot of rain.

“Antoinette Chloe, this is Meat Loaf Monday, but it’s also
Meatless
Monday, which means vegetarian lasagna is on special tonight, too. Juanita made it, and it’s fabulous.”

“Sounds good to me. I’ve been thinking of going vegetarian.”

Within minutes, JoAnn appeared again with pad and pencil in hand, looking much cheerier.

“Have you ladies decided yet?” she asked.

ACB handed her menu back to JoAnn. “I’ll have the vegetarian lasagna with three meatballs on the side, a salad with Thousand Island dressing, and a glass of chocolate milk. And can I get some extra veggies?”

“I can get you mixed veggies,” JoAnn said.

“That’ll work as long as there’s lots of butter on them,” Antoinette Chloe said.

“We can do that.” JoAnn nodded and scribbled on her order pad.

ACB tapped a long, sparkling nail on the table. “Oh, JoAnn, could you add a couple pieces of sausage to my order, too? After all, what is vegetarian lasagna without meat?”

JoAnn chuckled. “It’s vegetarian lasagna.”

ACB and I laughed. JoAnn was always quick with a joke and a tease. Everyone, but especially the truckers and the county snowplow guys, just loved to verbally spar with her.

“How about you, Trixie?”

“I’ll have the vegetarian lasagna, as well, with meatballs and one sausage, and house dressing on my salad.”
As God is my witness, I’ll watch my calories tomorrow, at Tara.

“What would you like to drink, Trixie?”

“Iced tea.”

“Got it. I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

When JoAnn left, Antoinette Chloe took off her peacockless hat and fluffed up her hair. “Trixie, I also called because I wanted to talk to you about the Miss Salmon Contest. We have a lot of work to do for it, since it’s our first contest, and I don’t
want to overlook a single tiny detail. But I did overlook a big detail—a
major
big detail.”

I sat back in the coziness of the red-vinyl booth, not wanting to hear what ACB had to say. I had so much on my mind, running the diner and the cottages, that one more thing was going to make my head explode. So I crossed my arms and let the well-worn vinyl take me away to the 1950s, when the diner was shiny and new, when I wasn’t the owner, and when ACB didn’t have a major problem with the Miss Salmon Contest.

I don’t know what it was, other than age, but the stuffing inside the booths adjusted to everyone’s body type. I’d been toying with the idea of getting all the booths reupholstered, but I’d decided against it. Why tamper with a good thing?

But ACB was still talking about the major problem, and I was still desperately trying to tune her out. Anyway, any problems with the contest should be presented to the Miss Salmon Committee, not me. I decided I should probably point that out to her before she got carried away.

“Antoinette Chloe,” I said. “We have a Miss Salmon Committee meeting today. Remember? It’s being held at my house in exactly two hours. Which reminds me—I need to vacuum. Yet again.”

Blondie, my sweet golden retriever, sheds so much hair every day that I could make another dog with all of it. I vacuum twice a day. Three times if I’m having company, and I’m not a cleaning fan.

I was dreading the Miss Salmon pageant meeting. As chairperson of the event, ACB wanted to be
the mistress of ceremonies. She was panting to be a part of all the glitz, glamour, and costume changes that the Miss Salmon Contest could muster. However, our mayor, Rick Tingsley, who was running for New York State senator, wanted the podium, the microphone, and the photo ops. Rose Starr of the Salmon Committee was going to talk him into being a judge instead and letting ACB be emcee.

The next ten days were going to be an epic battle, the likes of which no one has seen since the British sailed into this area during the War of 1812.

“But I’ve overlooked a really, really big detail,” ACB continued. “I’ve been getting e-mails from a bunch of contestants, especially from a girl named Aileen Shubert, telling me that there’s no room at any of the hotels in the area and that even the campgrounds are all filled up with fishermen. And Aileen wants to come early and settle in so she can take some time to practice before the big day. Oh, Trixie, this is a huge problem!”

I nodded. “Well, all my cottages are full for the next couple of weeks. I have a huge waiting list.”

JoAnn returned with our drinks, and we both reached for them at the same time and took a couple of sips.

“And on top of that, I feel like we have a responsibility to keep an eye on the contestants.”

“Won’t their parents be with them?”

“No, most are too old for chaperones, and a good dozen are coming a week earlier to work with our resident Broadway choreographer for our special dance productions. Aileen is one of them.”

Dance productions? Resident Broadway choreographer? Hm. I hadn’t missed a meeting, had I? This was all news to me.

“Who are you talking about, Antoinette Chloe? Who’s this Broadway person?”

“Margie Grace, of course.”

“Margie Grace isn’t a day under eighty-eight years old. She hasn’t been on Broadway since they named it Broadway.”

“But the contestants don’t know that,” she said with a smile.

“Can you spell
fraud
?”

“Oh, they’ll love Margie. And she might be an old bat, but she can still put together a dance number. She did the Tango of the Shepherds for the Episcopal Church’s Christmas play last year, remember? It was brilliant.”

“How could I have forgotten that? The shepherds had red roses in their teeth and they tangoed with their sheep.”

“It was unprecedented. Creative. Just what I want for the dance number in our pageant.” She pulled a little notebook from her—wait for it—cleavage closet again, along with a pen, and started scribbling. “Maybe Margie Grace could choreograph a tableau depicting salmon swimming upstream?”

I bit my lip to stop myself from bursting out into laughter. I didn’t think that the rest of the committee members would go for dancing, spawning salmon.

“Getting back to our problem of the girls without rooms who are studying with Margie Grace,
what can we do?” Antoinette Chloe sat back into the booth as JoAnn returned with our orders.

Both were presented nicely with carrot curls and radish roses to decorate the plate. ACB’s meatballs and sausages were served on an oval side dish with spaghetti sauce and fresh parsley. Her lasagna was a generously sized portion, as was mine.

Just how I wanted everything plated. I made a mental note to compliment Juanita Holgado, my day cook, when I saw her next.

“How many girls do you figure will come early?” I asked.

“About twelve or fourteen.”

“Hm. Maybe we could rent some trailers for them. I’d say we could have them park on my land, but they would require water hookups and pump-outs and all that, which I don’t have handy.” I shook my head. “That’s just too much. It just won’t work.”

ACB buttered a slice of Italian bread. “What about your house?”

Oh no. No way. No way am I going to entertain a houseful of young beauty contestants.
“Whoa. My house? Antoinette Chloe, what are you sniffing?”

“Yeah. Your house. The Victorian you call the Big House.”

I waved her statement away. “Oh, it’s not that big. I should really call it the Little Cottage.”

“You have—
what?
—like, four full bathrooms and a couple of half baths?”

My late, and dearly loved, uncle Porky believed in porcelain and lots of flushing, and expected a lot of visiting relatives when he built the house.

“That seems like a high estimate,” I protested.

“It’s way low. You have more like eight or nine bedrooms.”

“Perhaps. I never counted them.”

“Trixie, please! Help me out. It’ll only be for a couple of weeks. And when the pageant ends, they’ll be all gone and everything will go back to normal.”

How could I say no to my friend when she was in such a jam?

But there would be endless chatter, lots of toxic hairspray and perfume, and hair in the drains. Not to mention giggling and sneaking out at night to meet up with boys, snacking in the beds, smuggling booze inside, smoking . . .

Oh, wait! I was thinking of my college-dorm days.

“Okay, Antoinette Chloe. Okay. On one condition: You have to move in and chaperone them and get them to clean up after themselves. They can take their dinner at the Silver Bullet. And you can make breakfast and lunch for them at the Victorian.”

She sniffed and blinked tears back. If she let them fall, there’d be two rivers of makeup dripping down her cheeks and onto her muumuu.

I couldn’t let that happen. ACB’s muumuus were like living things, plus mascara stains were a beast to get rid of. Reaching into my purse, I pulled out a little packet of tissues and handed it to her.

She pulled out a few, closed her eyes, and blotted them. “You’re a lifesaver, Trixie, and a good friend.” She sniffed and blotted again.

But no turquoise or purple eye shadow appeared on the tissues that she set down on the table. No black eyeliner, no black mascara, no orange blush, and no Pan-Cake makeup.

“And
you
are quite clever, Antoinette Chloe. I smell a setup. And the fake tears were a nice touch, by the way.”

She laughed. “Well, I was in show business, after all.”

ACB always astonished me. “You were?”

“Most definitely. I was a ticket taker at the Sandy Harbor Bijou when I was in high school.” Her eyes twinkled and she grinned. “I considered that show business.”

She’d set me up again, and I walked right into it.

“Sheesh. I didn’t see that coming.”

Suddenly, the smile left her face and she became quite serious. “I agree to your terms, Trixie. Matter of fact, I welcome them. I’ve been so . . . lonely lately. I’m sure chaperoning the girls will cheer me right up.”

Oh my. My friend was displaying a full menu of emotions tonight. She was ecstatic over her drive-in idea, mad at Nick for disappearing without saying anything to her, worried that the pageant contestants wouldn’t have a place to stay, sad that Sal was in jail and that her dreams of a retirement home on the water were dashed, and then joking about being in show business.

I was exhausted by it all and worried that Antoinette Chloe was headed toward a nervous breakdown.

“Trixie, it’s just awful being so lonely,” she continued. “Sal tried to kill me, and now his brother is ignoring me. I mean, is it me? What’s wrong with me?”

This time her tears were real, and they did drip down her cheeks. But, thankfully, she caught them before they hit her muumuu.

My heart was breaking for her. But I didn’t know what I could do other than to help her get some answers from Nick. Maybe if she had that, it would help her move on.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Antoinette Chloe. Maybe it’s the Brownelli brothers, but together we’ll find out where Nick went off to.” I patted her hand and vowed to give Nick Brownelli a piece of my mind. “And when we do, you can hear what he has to say for himself; then you can take him or leave him.”

“Yes!” She pounded her fist on the table, and it made me jump. The customers around us were also airborne. I swear our meals shot two inches into the air, then landed back on their plates.

I slid her ice water closer to her, thinking that a cold drink might refresh her, but she ignored the water and picked up the steak knife at her place setting and held it upright on the table.

Oh, this didn’t look good! For everyone’s safety, I got ready to spring into action.

She rapped the handle of the knife on the table. “As soon as I find Nick, I’m going to make sure that he never lies to me again!”

Could she be any louder?

Everyone turned to look at Antoinette Chloe as
if this was a dinner show. And, boy, she didn’t disappoint the spectators.

Very dramatically, she gripped the knife with both hands and lifted it over her head, and before I could blink, she plunged it into a plump sausage on her plate.

“Take that, Nick Brownelli!”

T
he Miss Salmon pageant meeting at the Big House was a disaster. The committee members got loud to make their points over each other, and Blondie started barking like a mad dog.

I phoned Sandy Harbor deputy sheriff Ty Brisco, one of my first friends when I moved here. Ty’s a transplant from Houston, Texas, and he can really work a pair of jeans and a white cowboy hat. If he adds his snakeskin boots and his brown suede bomber jacket, women of all ages melt like butter on toast.

But not me. I’m not interested. I’m still shell-shocked from my divorce from Deputy Doug of Philadelphia.

“Ty, can you come over and take Blondie? I have a real heated meeting going on here, and she’s barking her head off.”

“Sure, Trixie. I’ll be right over to get her. We’ll go for a long walk.”

“Thanks, Ty.” I just loved his drawl. I could listen to him read the phone book.

It wouldn’t take Ty long to walk to the Big House. He lives above the Sandy Harbor Bait
Shop on the other side of the Silver Bullet in a fabulous apartment that Uncle Porky and Mr. Farnsworth, the bait shop’s owner, built. It also has a huge corner window that overlooks the lake and the Big House. Sometimes I can see Ty in that window, looking at the lake.

“Trixie! We need you in here!”

The melodious voice of ACB bounced off the walls of my house. Blondie howled. I wanted to howl along with her.

“I’m coming.” I guess I couldn’t stall any longer.

I didn’t see Ty yet, so I got Blondie’s leash and headed into the kitchen until he arrived.

“What did I miss?”

Pam Grassley, the third-grade teacher at Sandy Harbor Grammar School, raised her eyes to my vintage tin ceiling. “Someone needs to take charge of this meeting. I haven’t got all day.”

I looked at Blondie’s pink leash loaded with fake rhinestones. Some were missing. When I looked up, the committee members were staring at me.

“It’s your kitchen, Trixie. You should run the meeting,” Jean Harrington, the co-owner of the Gas and Grab on Route 3, said.

Thankfully, there was a knock on the door, and I hooked Blondie’s leash on her collar. She knew it meant a walk, and she just about jumped out of her fur.

“That’s Ty Brisco. He’s going to take Blondie,” I explained. “Come in, Ty.”

The committee members quickly fluffed their
hair, applied lipstick, and waited in anticipation for Ty to walk into the kitchen.

Sheesh.

“Well, hello, ladies.” Ty tweaked his white cowboy hat with his thumb and finger.

Yes, his jeans were perfect, his snakeskin boots were polished, and he was wearing the hell out of a brown suede bomber jacket that probably was as soft as it looked. And his eyes were as blue as Lake Ontario on a clear summer day.

Not that I noticed.

I handed him Blondie’s leash, and he leaned over and whispered, “Bad meeting?”

“The worst.”

He winked. “I’ll keep Blondie for the rest of the day. I think I’ll go for a jog.”

“Good-bye, Deputy,” said Kathy Prellman, the owner of an auto-repair shop. Kathy could take apart a motor and put it back together again, and she looked like a swimsuit model. Actually, she still modeled for the Ford Models agency in New York City from time to time. She was going to be the head Salmon judge.

“See you, Kathy. Ladies.” He tweaked his hat again, and we all watched him walk away.

“Nice butt,” ACB said, expressing what we were all thinking.

“Let’s get down to business,” I said. “I’m sure that we all have things to do, so let’s rock.”

I decided that I’d lead the meeting after all, because I had to cook at the diner in about ten hours, and I needed to get some sleep.

“We need to discuss accommodations for the
out-of-town contestants. I understand from Antoinette Chloe that there are twelve contestants who need a place to stay for a week or so before the Miss Salmon pageant to practice routines with Margie Grace. I’ve volunteered to house them all here. This house. They’ll have to double or triple up. Antoinette Chloe will move in to help me and to chaperone. She will prepare breakfast and lunch for them. They can walk over to the Silver Bullet for dinner.”

“What will be the charge for dinner?” Kathy asked.

“I didn’t think of that,” I said honestly.

“I’ll cover the cost,” ACB said. “I should have thought about the lack of accommodations in town when we decided to go forward with this idea.”

There were protests around the table, and it was finally decided that we’d charge the contestants a minimal amount and ACB could cover the rest.

More items were raised, and Margie Grace agreed to put together a dance that would signify the importance of salmon to Sandy Harbor. Again, that was ACB’s idea, and when I glanced at Margie’s notes, I saw a doodling of two rows of fish heads complete with legs and arms.

I could just imagine the contestants wearing salmon heads and tap-dancing or doing a kick line.

We accomplished a lot more, including accommodating the five contestants from the Sandy Harbor Golden Age Apartments. All five were in wheelchairs and they called themselves the
Wheeling Grannies. We were proud of the fact that the Miss Salmon pageant was open to all ages eighteen and up, and Margie Grace assured us that she’d be able to work them into her program.

I brought up a few more items—an emcee for the event was one of them. Several names were hashed around, including Antoinette Chloe, Ty Brisco, Reverend Clem Reynolds of St. Luke’s of the Lake, and Chef Nick Brownelli.

The mention of Nick’s name sent ACB into a fit of hysterics, then rage.

The alarmed committee members voted for ACB to be emcee, probably just to shut her up—which worked, I might add. She turned into a ray of sunshine, giddy with being selected. As she talked about designing a formal muumuu for the event and decorating new flip-flops, one by one the committee members put their dishes into the sink and backed out of the kitchen to the front door.

As I walked them out, all of them expressed concern for Antoinette Chloe and her mental health. Kathy, Pam, and Margie were at the Silver Bullet when ACB shouted Nick’s name and violently stabbed her side order of sausage. It had left them quite shaken and worried.

After everyone else left, I sat down across from Antoinette Chloe at the table and took a deep breath. I might as well jump in with what I had to say.

“Antoinette Chloe, do you think you might need someone to talk to? How about seeing a counselor or Reverend Clem or someone?”

She raised a penciled eyebrow. “What for?”

I put my hand over hers. “Maybe you can talk about Sal and how you feel about his incarceration.”

“He tried to kill me. How do you think I feel?”

“I know, sweetie.” And, trust me, I did. Sal tried to kill me, too. However, I pressed on. “But maybe you could talk about Nick? You said that you were lonely without both of them. And then you stabbed the sausage when you thought about Nick. You seemed pretty mad.”

“I’m definitely mad, Trixie. And I’m feeling sad and lonely and betrayed, and all because of the Brownelli brothers. But why should I go to a counselor? I have you to talk to.” She studied a huge purple ring. “And I have to keep busy: the Miss Salmon pageant, for one, and I have to get Brown’s remodeled—yep, I’m going to do that—and then there’s the drive-in. I want to break ground on that soon. Hopefully next Thursday.”

“You are definitely going to be busy.” That was good for a person like ACB.

“Absolutely.”

“Can you fit a counselor in?” I patted her hand.

“Like I said, I have you!” She squeezed my fingers and then stood and stretched. “How about going to Nick’s house with me? Maybe there’s something I missed. Something that would give me a clue as to where he went.”

“So, you’re not going to a
real
counselor and you are still going to search for Nick?”

“Yes to both. So, will you come with me to Nick’s house?”

“Now?”

She nodded.

I looked at the clock on my wall. I guess I didn’t need all that much sleep. “Let’s go, Antoinette Chloe.”

“I’ll drive,” she said.

“Let’s both drive. I don’t want you to have to come back here to drop me off.”

“Good thinking. I’ll meet you at Nick’s. He’s at 1302 Third Street, and I have the key.”

I gave her the thumbs-up sign, but I had a queasy feeling in my stomach. She was a friend, though, so I grabbed my purse, slipped into my yellow raincoat and headed for my boring gray car to spy on ACB’s boyfriend, the brother of her incarcerated husband.

*   *   *

Nick’s house on Main Street was a cute Craftsman bungalow. It reminded me of a cartoon house with windows that looked like two eyes; the roof seemed like it was wearing a beret, and the front porch could be its teeth.

I stared at the house, willing it to talk like a cartoon and give up its secrets.

ACB was already there, as the front screen door was open and banging on the side of the house in the wind.

Walking up the stairs, I cautiously stepped over the threshold as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. No wonder ACB left the door open.

“Antoinette Chloe? I’m here.”

“I’m in the bedroom.”

I half expected to see Nick’s body on the floor at
my feet. I don’t know why. Maybe it was due to Deputy Doug and all his cop stories. Or maybe it was because I was addicted to all the cop shows with or without initials.

Hearing a sob, my heart pounded louder. “Hello? Antoinette Chloe?”

I followed the sobbing down the hall and came to what had to be Nick’s bedroom. It was a mixture of cooking-related items and motorcycle paraphernalia. There were paintings and framed photos of plates of meat right next to various blueprints of motorcycles. There was a display of chef hats in various shades of yellowing, along with a rack of motorcycle bandannas and caps.

His bedspread and curtains went with the motorcycle theme. His rugs had the name C
HEF
N
ICK
’
S
—
B
OSTON
,
M
ASSACHUSETTS
.

I wanted to ask ACB when Nick had his own restaurant. But now was not the time to ask her anything. She was sitting on the bed, hugging a black T- shirt to her chest.

“This is Nick’s,” she said. “I remember when he wore it. We were riding with the Rubbers.”

“The what? The who?”

She turned the shirt around for me to see. “Roving Rubbers, 2013 Ride-a-lot Against Cancer,” I read aloud.

“I remember this day.” ACB looked up at the Harley-Davidson ceiling fan. Her pale blue eyes pooled with unshed tears. “I was riding in Nick’s sidecar, and he kept smiling down at me. We had these helmets that were connected by wire, so we could talk. But we didn’t need to talk. His big
brown eyes told me everything. They told me that he loved me. Why would he leave me without a word, Trixie?”

“I don’t know, Antoinette Chloe. That’s why we’re here. To find out what’s going on. If Nick loved you like you think he did, then maybe he left you a note or something.”

She raised her hands in frustration. “I looked for a note the last time I was here.”

“Maybe it slipped behind something. Maybe it slipped under the fridge or an end table. Come on. Dry your eyes, and let’s look around.”

The red bandanna appeared in a flash, and ACB dried her eyes and blew her nose. In another flash of red, the bandanna disappeared again.

“Let’s rock and roll, Trixie.”

Finally, ACB was back from the land of the lovelorn and ready for action. “Let’s search the kitchen first,” I suggested. “That’s where I’d leave a note.”

For a man who always looked unshaven and grubby whenever I’d seen him, Nick was an immaculate housekeeper. Not a fork was out of place. Not a fragment of uncooked spaghetti was on the floor. Not a piece of eggshell was left on the stove. His stainless-steel fridge didn’t have one magnet on it or one fingerprint.

And there wasn’t a note to be found anywhere.

“Trixie, let’s try the living room.”

The living room was sloppier. There was a Harley blanket draped over the couch, which was a little crooked. Oh, and the lines of his vacuum cleaner were not all going in the same direction. What a slob!

No note. No tablet. No laptop. No cell phone. There was nothing electronic that we could check for a clue. A Harley calendar had nothing written on it except an entry for two days ago that said
Doc Stanley. Noon.

“Who’s Doc Stanley?” I asked.

“Dentist. He’s on Seventh North Street in that ugly building that our not so beloved Mayor Tingsley owns.”

“How about calling Doc Stanley? Find out if Nick went to his appointment.”

“I’m way ahead of you.” ACB was already punching in numbers on her cell phone. I heard her ask if Nick Brown or Nick Brownelli had seen Dr. Stanley on Tuesday.

It didn’t take long before she shook her head and mouthed the word
no
. She clicked off her phone and it disappeared into her muumuu. No wonder she never carried a purse.

I shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

“Nick would never miss a dental appointment. He took great pride in the fact that all his teeth were his—no bridges, no caps, no root canals. He’s had just a handful of cavities.”

ACB walked over to the couch and slid off the Harley blanket. She put it around her and flopped down on a brown recliner next to the couch. This must have been her spot when they were watching TV. She started drifting off into her memories again, and I quickly realized I was losing her.

“And my Nick had a great smile. It was like Sal’s, but when Nick smiled, little dimples appeared. I loved to watch for those dimples. And
his teeth were such a brilliant white. You know, Trixie, they reminded me of Ty Brisco’s teeth.”

That was more than enough dental discussion, but it did remind me that I was long overdue at the dentist myself.

Time to corral ACB and get her to focus. I needed to get back and get some sleep before my shift, or I’d fall asleep in the dough for the dinner rolls that I planned on making.

“Let’s search Nick’s garage,” I blurted, startling Antoinette Chloe out of her daydreams.