You Cannoli Die Once (11 page)

Then Chooch told me he’d been in the company of Arlen and Maria Pia about half a dozen times.

To which I responded, “Are you freaking kidding me?”

Apparently our nonna (though, as I lay there, I was willing to sign over my nonna rights to him and Landon forever, eternally and in perpetuity) had included Choo Choo when she and the beau went to Lancaster County for the day, Atlantic City for the night, and Manhattan for Chinese food. I was surprised by the strength of my jealousy. Yes, he has his appeal, but …

Not even a second grappa helped.

So the Volvo and I wended our way home to the tiny house I called home for the last three years. On the edge of the Quaker Hills Historic District was a piece of property owned by an old Philly choreographer who still, at eighty-four, dreamed of building on the site. She rented a corner of it to me, and I’d bought a Tumbleweed Tiny Home for $50,000 and had it delivered on a utility trailer to this little spot.

My house was a whopping 130 square feet of wonderfulness, with cedar siding and a tin roof that always made me long for rain. I set out big pots of splashy red geraniums and kept a little blue folding butterfly chair out front on my four-by four-foot porch, where I hung a wind chime.

The tiny home had everything I required: a sleeping loft; a two-burner stove, since I saved all my serious cooking for the restaurant; and lots of windows due to my love of light and air. I guess I’m no different from the geraniums out front.

I looked at the stars out the window in my sleeping loft, telling myself that if Nonna had something up her sleeve, she’d use Choo Choo to help her keep it there. If Dana had been fraternizing with a dead guy with two different names, it probably just had something to do with a pompous stage name (Maximiliano Scotti? Really?) and not a double identity.

All of which goes to show that if you really want to fool yourself, you have to go big.

I was wrong about all of it.

Thursday

The next day, Miracolo became like a Disney cartoon where mice or candlesticks are furiously furnishing a banquet, bearing impossible things on their heads, and singing their little animated hearts out. All of our suppliers showed up at once—the linens, the uniforms, the wholesalers. I actually wrung my hands when I stood at our propped-open front door and heard the griping car horns trying to get around the fleet of double-parked delivery trucks.

Paulette showed up early to play quartermaster and direct the action, freeing me up to figure out the specials. To keep the mayhem to a minimum, I decided to go with two easy but elegant vegetable pasta dishes,
pansotti
and
piccage,
and call it Vegetarian Night. As I wrote them up on the specials board, I could already hear Maria Pia’s complaints. But I was hoping she was so distracted by Arlen/Maximiliano’s murder that she would just let me be.

At 2:53 p.m., Choo Choo and Paulette were laying out the table linens.

Landon—who found a backup mortar and pestle—was making pesto for my
piccage
and happily discussing the career of Liza Minnelli with Jonathan.

Alma and Vera were filling vases. Alma was pouring the water and Vera was standing nearby with towels to mop up the spillage. She shot me a long-suffering look, a cross between
What’s with her?
and
Patience, someday we’ll be all be clumsy dinosaurs, too.

Kayla, dressed in layers of pastel gauze, was singing a Nora Jones medley and setting out greens and potatoes on the counter.

And then the double doors to the kitchen slammed open. “So now we’re asking the altar boys to perform the Mass?”

Jonathan stepped closer to Landon, who didn’t mind in the least.

I turned, brushing whole wheat flour from my hands. “What are you talking about, Nonna?” said I innocently.

“
Vegetarian
Night at Miracolo? Really, Eve?” Maria Pia was wearing a Saks version of widow’s weeds, a black drop-waist, high-collar dress.

“Yes, and it’s going to be great.”

Her nostrils flared at me. “You know how I feel about vegetables.”

You’d think she was accusing me of selling state secrets and shoving compromising photos under my nose.

So I recited the Maria Pia catechism. “Fine in their place, but handmaidens to the beef and fish and chicken.”

“Exactly,” she tipped her head in semiapproval. “So it’s not too late—”

But it was. And as much as I loved her, it wasn’t fine to be that unbending on somebody else’s watch. “Nonna, if your boyfriend hadn’t gotten himself killed here, maybe I would have had time to do something more ambitious.”

She gasped. Outside the double doors I could see Paulette, Alma, Vera, and Choo Choo crammed together, watching. “That’s a terrible—”

I plowed on. “But he did, so guess what? Today the altar boys are performing the Mass.”

It was a standoff, the two of us staring each other down, our arms crossed. Then she suddenly sank into a fine old mope. “Well, at least it isn’t … cannoli.” She could hardly form the hated word.

With that, Choo Choo and the others slid aside and let her back into the dining room. When she was gone, complaining loudly about greens and calling me her least favorite granddaughter—brava, Little Serena, you’re suddenly back in the mix—I sank against the prep table, fanning myself with my chef’s hat.

Landon dashed over to me and wrapped me in a hug. “You prevailed,” he said, eyes filled with wonder.

“Believe me,” I said to him, “I’ll pay for it.”

He waved it away. “She’ll forget all about it.” I think he was just basking in the afterglow of shielding Jonathan from the Dragon of Market Square.

When the noise level rose out in the dining room, I peeked through the round windows. Mrs. Crawford had arrived, resplendent in a black-and-teal cocktail dress, black fishnet stockings and snood over her wiry brown hair, the predictable matching heels, and elbow-length gloves. Ready for work.

For my grandmother, coming face-to-face with Mrs. Bryce Crawford was like spying a sooty likeness of the Blessed Mother on the broad side of a barn. She was speechless. In her, speechlessness can go either way: either she’s winding up to a tirade, or the cause of her wordlessness achieves some strange iconic status in her weird psyche.

I was betting that Mrs. Crawford was going to be the human equivalent of the dreaded cannoli.

Landon elbowed me in the ribs.

Unaware, Vera and Choo Choo kept setting tables. Alma was now refilling the salt and pepper shakers, and Paulette was rearranging the mat in the foyer.

Mrs. Crawford and Maria Pia each extended a queenly hand to the other, waiting for some serfish slavering that was not forthcoming, so just a light shake ensued. When my grandmother turned away from our newest hire, I saw that I’d been wrong. No tirade was coming. She actually looked kind of cowed, muttering something that sounded like
buona fortuna
to our pianist as she headed for the bar, where ordinarily she never goes.

At the sound of a rap on the glass of our back door, I turned to see Joe Beck step inside.

“Hey,” said Kayla.

“Hey,” said Joe. He took a deep breath that I’d like to think had nothing to do with the nearness of my second cousin, and motioned me over.

Everyone else followed, and I found myself standing in a tight little knot in the middle of the kitchen floor, not far from where Arlen had fallen.

He gave the others a quick glance and then looked at me. “Where’s your grandmother?” he asked in a low voice.

“Out front.” I eyeed him closely. “Why? Do you want me to call her in?”

Joe shook his head. “I just want to give you a heads-up. The cops have found a witness.”

We all looked at each other like it was good news.

“So someone came forward?” breathed Landon.

For some reason, Joe did not look happy. He gave a little nod. “A DIRECTV installer.”

“Okay … ” I said slowly, wondering where this was going. Did the guy see Dana follow Mather into the restaurant to take care of a little business before reporting to work at Cahill Enterprises? Poor Dana. Poor Patrick.

Joe rammed his hands into his pocket. “He was on the block the morning of the murder.”

“And?” prompted Paulette.

“They showed him some pictures of key people, and the guy made a positive ID.”

“Dana?” I breathed.

“Choo Choo?” whispered Landon, knobbing a fist at his mouth.

“Landon?” Kayla guessed. At which we all turned to her.

Joe looked like he couldn’t see any way around it. Finally he said, “He’s prepared to testify that he saw Maria Pia enter the restaurant at ten thirty a.m.”

My heart was pounding. From the dining room came the sounds of Mrs. Crawford at the piano, accompanying Nonna in her lusty cover of Judy Collins’s “Both Sides Now.” She was up to the line that went,
Bows and floes of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air, and feathered canyons everywhere …
“And the coroner puts the time of death at … ” I struggled to recall what I’d heard.

“Between nine thirty and eleven thirty,” said Joe, looking grim.

Tears stung my eyes.

When Joe touched my shoulder, I actually sobbed. Landon wasn’t far behind. “Sally and Ted are on their way over. The fingerprints on the murder weapon came back a match for your grandmother.”

My heart battered against my chest. “She uses the mortar!” I cried.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s what they’re saying.”

“For grinding,” I went on, my voice a little high, and I swiped a dish towel at him. “Like I do.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Eve, just hers. I came because I thought you could prepare her for—”

Suddenly the music stopped.

We opened the doors to the dining room, where we saw Ted, Sally, and a uniformed police woman. Mrs. Crawford’s fingers floated above the piano keys, and Choo Choo held a napkin aloft.

Nonna gaily chided the newcomers, shooing them away in full grande dame mode. “I’m so sorry, but we don’t open until five p.m. If you want to return then for Vegetarian Night, we can—”

Ted grimly said, “Maria Pia Angelotta—”

“Yes?” she said, waiting for him to get on with it. Which, considering her supreme self-confidence, she probably thought was going to be some civic award.

Poor Ted looked like he’d rather be off somewhere fishing in the rain. “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Arlen Mather.”

“No!” shouted Landon, who flung himself into my arms, and we gripped each other like our lives depended on it.

Nonna looked at Detective Ted as if she couldn’t quite comprehend what he was saying.

His hands stuffed in his pockets, Ted rolled on, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you—”

If you can pass out without falling down, I think that’s what I did.

9

How we all got through the next eight hours, I’ll never know. I made the
pansotti
and
piccage,
but I could have been fashioning little people out of Play-Doh for all it mattered to me. At the moment of the arrest, Choo Choo declared he would follow Nonna down to the Bucks County jail. In his absence, he deputized Paulette to seat people. The woman who could kill fish with her bare hands actually seemed choked up at the responsibility.

Even in her shock, Maria Pia insisted we go ahead with the reopening. We all kissed her repeatedly and promised a lawyer, a kimono, and a copy of
Gourmet.

For me she had a special message, clasping my shoulders, and giving me her Obi-Wan Kenobi look: “Remember, Eve, food is the art”—she paused for effect—“we eat.”

Huh?
I murmured, “Yes, Nonna, I’ll remember.” I let out a little sob.

Then off she went, a tragic figure wrapped in a silver shawl, snagging a handful of after-dinner mints from the dish by the door, followed by Quaker Hills’s finest.

And Choo Choo.

Who, by the way, had accurately predicted the evening’s trade.

Halfway into the mêlée of that night, Giancarlo recruited his twentysomething biker grandson to help behind the bar. Nobody even noticed the chains and Grateful Dead T-shirt.

Our Lady of Reduced Circumstances, Alma, managed to break two water glasses and one antipasto plate. Had the woman always been this clumsy? I didn’t think so; she was just unnerved by the murder.

Even so, she found many opportunities to model the shoes on her feet, fabric painted to depict the nursery rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe. All the children’s heads were beads. Landon whispered to me that for a woman who had the fine motor skills to apply tiny crap to shoes, she sure broke a lot of stuff.

Paulette was everywhere all at once, truly the evening’s field marshal.

Dana, when she waltzed in wearing a midnight-blue sheath, fretted about Maria Pia’s arrest because now who was going to harmonize with her on “Those Were the Days”? She also argued with Paulette, who wanted her to bring out the bread and fill water glasses; Dana claimed it might confuse the customers, seeing the chanteuse perform a menial task.

Paulette pointed out that there’s nothing the little people like more than seeing a celebrity act like a real person, but no dice.

Mrs. Crawford kept customers without reservations happy with a patter I suspected was a little bawdier than Maria Pia would have condoned. Sadly, I couldn’t get close enough to tell.

Li Wei’s, hair stuck up farther as the evening wore on and the tower of dirty dishes mounted.

Kayla amazingly stuck around, washing, slicing, chopping, and peeling vegetables. She managed to stay normal for a full eight hours.

The first time I looked up from the three different sauces simmering on my beloved Vulcan, I saw Joe Beck toothpicking rolled prosciutto onto sliced melon. The second time I looked up, Landon was giving him a crash course in the Art of the Garnish.

Eye Candy Jonathan seemed to sharpen up under the general stress. He slipped in his wine knowledge wherever appropriate, and acted like he’d been waiting tables since his toddler days.