To Kill a Matzo Ball (A Deadly Deli Mystery) (4 page)

Still reading from the iPad, she said, “But you still say you had time to turn and look out the window. ‘Like Governor Connelly in the Zapruder film,’ you put it.”

“That’s right.”

“Could he have seen something or someone
reflected
in the napkin holder? Something or someone he thought he recognized? A vehicle, a person, a weapon?”

“It’s possible. He just froze there with a matzo ball on the end of a shrimp fork.”

“And you’re certain he didn’t turn to the window?”

“Positive.”

“Do you think he was afraid someone would recognize him?”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Why would he be afraid of that? We were sitting right in the open. He didn’t sneak in.”

“Just pursuing angles,” the detective said. “Ms. Katz, this is a tough question, and I’m asking you to speculate. Impressions are important. Are you sure he pushed you, or could he have just struck you while he was getting out of the way?”

“He pushed me. That was my very, very strong feeling at that moment. Why does it matter?”

“Because it could be the difference between diving for cover in an unexpected situation or knowing he was out of time and wanting to avoid collateral damage. That will help me to sharpen the questions I ask Mrs. Chan, spare her a longer interview.”

I nodded.

“Are you still as sure as you can be that he pushed you?”

“I am very, very,
very
sure. That arm came at my chest, level and precise. I’ve probably got a bruise. Mr. Chan could have shoved me to one side. But that would have exposed me to the track some of the bullets ended up going as the gun passed by outside. No, he got me totally out of the line of fire and then grabbed onto me to keep me there. He saved the life of someone he didn’t even know.”

Detective Bean smiled. “Thank you. That’s helpful. One more question, and I need you to be really candid with me here. You can even be creative.”

“Murder arts and crafts?” My mouth was moving, that was all.

Bean ignored the comment. “Is there anyone, Ms. Katz, who might have a grudge against
you?
Say, a customer you might have argued with today or last week? An angry former employee? A jealous significant other? I understand you inherited this place—were there other family members who might have wanted it?”

The question surprised me, along with the exceptionally wide reach of her net. I felt oddly naked and a little violated.

“Are you asking my staff the same question?”

“I’m doing a thorough homicide investigation,” she replied. “Is there anyone we should talk to?”

She was clearly going to be a linebacker on this matter, so I ran through my mental yearbook. Was there anyone voted Most Likely to Kill Gwen—other than the people who had already tried in the course of my short but storied career as a private eye, a regular Jessica
Fleyshik?
I gave her a few names, adding that Grant already knew about them. She said she’d check them anyway. But I assured her they were nothing.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because none of them was NRA material, to my knowledge; their attacks on me were more or less crimes of passion, heat of the moment; most are in jail; and none of them has enough money or anything to trade to hire a hit man or woman.”

She asked for the spellings, corrected them on the transcript, then reviewed what I had said.

“You didn’t mention what time Mr. Chan first called,” she said. “Do you remember when that was?”

“Height of the rush, between a quarter and half-past eight.”

“Would it be possible for me to borrow the credit card receipts from that time until the attack?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Someone might have been casing the place, knowing that he’d be here,” she said. “It’s routine.”

“But the credit card information—isn’t that confidential?”

“I’m not going to buy a flatscreen TV or plane tickets on someone else’s dime,” she said. “I want to see if anyone who ate here this morning has a criminal record. I want to catch a murderer, and I’m sure you do too. I’ll scan them to a file, then delete them when I’m done. They won’t even have to leave the premises. But if you want to waste time while I get a subpoena—that’s your call.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said.

I wasn’t a member of the ACLU, and given how I ran the place, I believed in a little benevolent dictatorship. And she was right. I asked Thom to gather the slips. Detective Bean thanked me. She ran them across a plug-in to her iPad as if they were items in a grocery checkout line.

“Oh, and I’m sorry,” I said when she was done.

“About what?”

“My crack about the freshness of my memory. Apparently, you did need to prod me.”

“People recall a lot but remember selectively,” she said. “Trauma causes what we call the Disco Ball Effect. The bright spots shine, the details are sometimes lost.” She gave me a card. “If you remember anything else.”

“Sure.”

I was left feeling stupid and empty. You always wonder how you’ll respond if you’re ever really tested by something horrible. I always imagined I’d keep my head, deal with the situation like Molly Pitcher ramrodding her Revolutionary War cannon at the Battle of Monmouth. The truth is, even as the event rolled out in what seemed like slow motion, I didn’t have time to do anything except turn my head. I didn’t process the danger fast enough. Even falling, my arms barely had time to take the hit. I don’t know what Ken Chan saw, but now that I thought about it, he obviously took that second or two to assess the threat, decided he was doomed, and made his move to save me.

Jesus.

My fingers were throbbing now, and I looked at my palms. They were black-and-blue from wrist to mid-thumb. So were the edges of my pinkies and all the tops of my fingers. But that, and some tightness in my shoulders, was all I got. I wondered when survivor’s guilt would hit me. That was another bequest from my great-great relatives.

I went to my office, looked down the hall, and saw local WSMV Channel 4 TV reporter Candy Sommerton shooting video over the crime-scene tape, past the cop at the door, right at me. If poor Mr. Chan hadn’t been lying on the floor a few feet away I would have flipped her out. That seemed disrespectful, under the circumstances. I just turned, entered my office, and shut the door.

Crime is like a loose tooth. When it’s in your face, you can’t stop playing with it.

Grant kindly stopped by the office to see how I was, showing old-Grant concern for me. I was touched without being moved. In my defense, I was busy calling my insurance agent and various contractors and glaziers. If the past was any indication, business would boom due to what had happened. That wasn’t why I made the moves to get repairs on the calendar; my staff needed to work, and so did I.

The calls were all rote. They took about a half hour, after which I went back to the kitchen. Detective Bean was talking with Thom. As I looked down the corridor I saw the body of Ken Chan being wheeled out under a white sheet. There was very little blood. Most of that was probably on my floor.

Grant was following the body out. He looked back, saw me, came over.

“We’ll keep the tape up and two officers to move the rubberneckers along,” he said. “I can recommend a good cleanup crew if—”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

“Gwen—”

I held up my hand to stop him. I saw the blood on my sleeve. “If I don’t do it myself, it’s always going to be there like a snapshot.”

He looked at me sadly. “I understand. Anything I can do?”

“Yes. When you talk to his family, please tell them I’m sorry.”

“Sure,” he told me.

I knew him well enough to know, from that tone, that he wouldn’t be mentioning my name anywhere near them. That was okay. I’d do it myself. They had to know what their husband and father did for me.

Detective Bean followed Grant by a few minutes, after which I marshaled the troops in the kitchen. There was no door—swinging doors are just as dangerous as they appear in the Three Stooges—so we moved to the enclosed pantry. Though open, it was out of view of the dining room and Candy Sommerton and the flashing of cameras in the street. There, among the shelves of canned goods and bags of flour, sugar, and other perishables, we were like a little family in a bunker.

That was when we all lost it. We hugged, huddled, clutched, and said nothing. It may only have been a minute; I don’t know. But we all felt cleansed somewhat when we were through.

“We’re glad you’re okay,” A.J. said, as she blew her nose with a handkerchief from her apron.

“Did anyone call Dani?” I asked.

“She called me,” Luke said. “She wanted to come down—I told her not to. I said I’d come and see her as soon as the police were done.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Okay, look. I want you all to go home. I’m going to stay and clean up—”

“Not alone you ain’t,” Thom said.

“Alone I am,” I insisted. “You are all going to march out the door and not look to your right. There are reporters out there, and if you want to talk to them, it’s your call. Just remember that if you go down that road and you lose it, you’re a viral video. So I suggest you just keep your eyes down and your mouths shut and let the police help you through if necessary. If anyone doesn’t feel like driving, we’ll call a cab.”

“I’ll drive whoever doesn’t want to,” Newt said.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve called to get the place fixed up over the next few days, and obviously there won’t be any eat-in. But I still want to open the kitchen for takeout.”

“People will think we’re cashing in on the shooting,” Raylene said.

“People are pathetic gossips,” I told her. “If we don’t open they’ll say, ‘I hear they’re closing,’ even if they haven’t heard that.”

“They do like the sound of their voices,” Thom said.

“Exactly. So we do that starting tomorrow. I’ll be outside with menus, explaining the situation to anyone who asks and dealing with anyone who thinks it’s in bad taste.”

A.J.’s mouth twisted. “I was actually wondering that. Isn’t it?”

I looked at her. “How do you honor a man who did what that stranger did? By putting your life on hold or moving ahead?”

“I would say a little of both,” she replied. “Maybe put up a sign that says we’ll be open for table service on Friday and not advertise that we are open for takeout.”

My instinct was to tell her no. But I needed my staff to be on board. It could be that they needed a day off. I looked at Newt, then Luke, then Thom. “I had planned to bring everyone in—but you three are the ones I’d need most. What do you want to do?”

Thom answered first. “I just want to go to church and get on my knees and stay and thank God for your life and pray for the soul of the man who gave his. But I can do that tonight and be here tomorrow.”

I looked at Luke. “I kinda want to be with Dani, and I think she wants to be with me. But I’ll do what you say, boss.”

Newt shrugged and said, “Whatever works for you.”

I did not rule over a democracy. But I’d asked, and the staff had answered. “All right,” I said. “Tomorrow it is.” I looked at A.J. “But I appreciate that you told me your concerns.”

She smiled weakly. A.J. and Raylene liked me, I think. But, older by a score of years than the kitchen crew and waitstaff, they looked out for the kids in the trenches. Because Thom looked out for me, they waged the proxy wars so we didn’t have to fight. If this wasn’t a first, it was a rarity.

I hugged everyone individually, then told them to go. Luke considered going out the back door and climbing the fence, but I vetoed that. I told him that if the cops saw him, they might think he was a finger man for the shooter, hiding out there.

As they left, I thought about the credit card receipts and wondered if there
had
been someone here. It seemed absurd: you wouldn’t need to case a place you were going to shoot up from the outside. At least, I couldn’t think of a reason. Unless they figured I might take him to the office. It would be easy to get a peek inside when someone went to the loo.

And then do what with that information ?
I wondered.

Could be that someone signaled the car that we were sitting in the dining room and it was okay to pull the trigger. Literally.

I shut my brain down as I went to clean up the blood. The cops outside saw me bring out the mop and bucket and made sure that even the people on the outside of the tape moved along. That included Candy and her camera operator. My nemesis protested, and her videographer tried to get a shot of the bucket, but I went over, shut the door, and pulled down the shade. There was still the jagged hole that had been ripped through the center of the window, destroying most of “Murray’s.” But the blocked-off sidewalk and moving traffic made it impossible for anyone to linger. Why they would want to do that was a puzzle. I used to think that rubbernecking was an atavistic bloodlust, but those same people would look away from a squirrel or deer that had been hit on the highway or a bird that had flown into a window and snapped its neck. Maybe it was a secret dislike for humankind. Or a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God reaction. I didn’t know, other than that I never had it.

I turned off the overhead lights and moved the tables and chairs back, creating an arena-like feel to the big oval of blood. I stared at it, transfixed. The blood was deep, oxygenated red in the daylight, with a syrupy consistency. There were streaks and smears, almost like strong brushstrokes, where the body had been moved or dragged. There were no footprints. The awful canvas was pure Ken Chan, save for the part on the top, near the counter. That was my collaboration, a diaphanous, wing-like shape where my arm and hip had been.

Part of me—a part I honestly didn’t recognize—wanted to preserve it as a memorial, rope it off like at a museum. Another part of me—also from Gwen Terra Incognita—started examining it like an ink blot. But it was asymmetrical, so I didn’t see any images. I thought of clouds, wondered if there was some kind of shape, a message from beyond.

All of that flashed through my head in a moment. It lasted about as long as it took to sigh tremulously, suck down another breath, then push the mop across the oval of blood. I began to clean before the horror in my heart rose up and challenged my resolve. I told myself to keep going, that life was marked by the ripples it caused and not the fluids that drove the engine. This wasn’t the man who had saved me. He was gone.

I moved quickly, then urgently, then almost frantically. The blood was now just a messy film on the floor, dirty water in a pail. There weren’t even any nicks in the floor from bullets. Ken Chan’s slender body had absorbed them all. I worked by rote as I relieved the moment when I had been in
that chair,
the one just ahead of me. I suddenly savored the thumping of my heart, the anxiety in my belly, the air in my throat—being alive. And as the blood vanished and that seconds-long eternity stopped replaying, when every pop of a closing trunk or bang of a rolling delivery truck door returned to being just background noise, not gunfire, my brain went somewhere else.

I had been going back and forth about visiting the martial arts school Chan had founded, about meeting the family he left behind. If not for me, he might still be alive. I didn’t know if I wanted to subject myself to those looks, that raw sadness or hate. But as I swabbed the tile and wrung the man’s blood into a bucket, I decided I had to go. I needed those ripples of his life to permanently wash away the blood at my feet.