You Cannoli Die Once (27 page)
Maria Pia Angelotta looked like she was about to strong-arm the slight Dana out of her way. “I must give them”—she slapped a hand on her breast—“what they want.” (In that case, Nonna,
grappas
all around.)
But Dana went on to remind my thwarted grandmother that the third week in June honors the losses suffered—in a bizarre coincidence—by the regulars during that week. Different years, same week. It all came back to me. It was the third week in June when the clarinet’s wife left him, the mandolin’s son died in a road accident, the drummer’s mother succumbed to a bee sting, Giancarlo Crespi’s father died on Okinawa during WWII, and Dana Cahill’s bassett hound, Booger, died (probably just to stop answering to that name).
So in a show of solidarity that annually drives away customers, our late-night regulars take the opportunity to play maddeningly mournful music. If the song features justice gone awry or star-crossed love, they were all over it. And if it wasn’t already down tempo, they’d work their anti-magic on it until it was.
Maria Pia glowered at the hang-dog regulars. “Oh, all right,” she spat.
Mrs. Crawford lifted her fishnet-gloved hands from the keys, and the regulars launched into their first number that I’m pretty certain was a dirge played for wailing crowds at state funerals in Kazakhstan, when Dana leaned in to me. “I love what they do with ‘Teen Angel,’ ” she whispered.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Landon slipping the invitation from Belfiere back to the spot our nonna had left it, just as she seemed to remember she had set it down, and turned to retrieve it. Landon patted his pants pocket, which I took to mean that he had stashed the copy there, and I looked at him quizzically.
Blinking, he mouthed a big exaggerated “Wow!” at me. So he had read it.
I wasn’t reassured.
He headed toward the kitchen and whispered as he passed, “Wait ’til you see it.”
“That bad?”
Staring, Landon kept walking. “No good can come of it,” he intoned.
*
Landon and I managed to clear everyone out of Miracolo by 11:52 p.m., well before its usual closing time. Grief Week was just going to have to be a tad less grief-filled this year; we had a crazy cooking society to discuss before collapsing into our beds.
The staff warbled their good-nights, Landon killed the lights, I locked up, and then we headed across Market Square to Jolly’s Pub, which stays open until 2 a.m.
The downtown commercial district in Quaker Hills, Pennsylvania, consists of shops and businesses that line all four sides of the three-acre green space called Providence Park. Straight across the park from us is Jolly’s Pub, owned by a second-generation, pencil-mustached Brit named Reginald Jolly. I think of him as the anti-Maria Pia—he’s as inscrutable and self-controlled as she is generally Out There. They approach each other warily, which is wise, and not often.
Landon flicked open the top two buttons of his shirt as we loped across Market Square and then the park. “Hi, Akahana,” I called to our Japanese bag lady, who was stretched out on the kiddie slide, reading by the halogen light of a head lamp. I could tell by her grunt that she was pondering the origins of consciousness, her favorite late-night activity.
The entire front wall of Jolly’s Pub had been raised up and out of sight like a garage door, and the drinking crowd had spilled out to scattered tables fronting Market Square. Inside was a long bar that gleamed like a grand piano and café tables holding battery-op candles that flickered like the real thing. No Grief Week on this side of the Square. Glasses clinked. Voices topped each other. Late-night laughter sounded like surf. The scent of Scotch perfumed the summer air. Floating close to the tin ceiling was the sound of Bob Dylan singing “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Maybe I could just hang out at Jolly’s for the rest of Grief Week.
Landon and I grabbed a table, signaling two short ones to Jeanette, the bartender. Listing over to one hip, he teased the copy of the Belfiere invitation from his pants pocket. Landon is probably my best friend and the closest thing I’ll ever have to a brother in this lifetime. After my mom died when I was nine and my father—Maria Pia’s oldest son, Jock—took off for parts unknown when I was fifteen, Landon’s dad gave me a home, partly to keep me out of his mother’s clutches. It almost worked.
He slid the paper across the table to me.
My fingers walked over to it and slowly drew it toward me.
After about three seconds, Landon erupted into fits of exhaled air and pulled his chair around so he was shoulder to shoulder with me. I smiled at him. Bullets leave guns slower than the limits to my beloved cousin’s patience. “Oh, here,” he cried, as if I’d bungled the unfolding. In what looked like one motion, he unfolded the copy of the Belfiere invitation, smoothed out the creases, and spun it to face me.
Centered at the top was what looked like a coat of arms. The shield seemed shaped like a funnel, which I suppose made more sense than something you’d carry into battle. Even on the worst days, the kitchen at Miracolo didn’t get
that
bad. In the upper right quadrant were three silver knives with identical ebony handles laid side by side. A carmine-colored slash ran diagonally from there down to the lower left quadrant, where a black mortar and pestle was pictured. Below the funnel-shield was a scroll with the words NUMQUAM NIMIS CULTRI. Possibly Latin for Crazy Cooking Club?
And then I read:
The Society of Belfiere
honoring the gustatory delights of life and death
welcomes you as a member
You will first undertake to receive the traditional 3cm
“B” tattoo in Bastarda font
on the wrist of your stirring hand
You will prepare an exclusive evening meal for fifty
guests on Friday, June 20 at 9 p.m.
You will provide yourself with the traditional Belfiere
gown in midnight-blue satin
for your induction
on Sunday, June 22 at 10 p.m.
at 7199 Gallows Hills Drive
Pendragon, Pennsylvania
You must arrive and depart alone
You must perform all instructions faithfully
and
In all things pertaining to Belfiere you must observe
omerta
We are 200 years old and our traditions are known only
to ourselves
In matters of our history we are Clotho
In matters of ourselves we are Lachesis
In matters of food we are Atropos
We are Belfiere
I shuddered.
“I know!” whispered Landon, his green eyes wide.
Our Scotch arrived—Laphroaig for me, Oban for Landon—and we stared at the amber liquid. Whatever this whole Belfiere thing was, Maria Pia Angelotta had unquestioningly bought into it, so the prosciutto was about to hit the fan.
“Our fortress has been breached,” I told Landon moodily, picking up my drink.
“The barbarians are at the gates,” said Landon, lifting his drink, adding, “and they are
so
wearing last year’s fashions.”
“Dwelling on the line about the midnight blue?”
“Well,” he lifted his elegant shoulders, “coupled with the
satin
—” He punctuated his scorn with a little sound that went something like “Puh!”
I took one sip I let slosh from side to side, then knocked back the rest. “I mean, what’s their brand? On the one hand, bastard tattoo fonts—”
“On the other,” said Landon, sipping, “an elegant dinner for fifty. I agree. And girlfriend, let’s not even touch the”—his voice dropped—“
omerta
line.”
Omerta
is the code of silence, usually reserved for certain Italian neighborhoods. Usually understood as the cost of doing business with certain Italian businessmen. Or getting the business from certain Italian business men. The fact that Belfiere members were bound by this code of silence gave me the creeps.
I signaled for a second glass. “There’s a lot of death talk in this invitation,” I pointed out. “
Omerta,
the Three Fates—”
Landon took the paper back. “ ‘The gustatory delights of … death.’ ” He shivered. “What are they talking about? What
are
those?”
Indeed. “Do they believe in some kind of epicurean afterlife, or … ”
Landon caught my drift. “Or does Belfiere ‘help’ you on your way? An assisted suicide cult?”
My skin prickled with danger. I didn’t like this one bit. I whispered, “Or … could Belfiere be … a murder club?”
SHELLEY COSTA
is an Edgar Award–nominated, internationally published author of short fiction; her stories have appeared in anthologies and journals including
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, Blood on Their Hands,
and
Crimewave
from the U.K. She holds a Ph.D. in English and is the author of
The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe
. Her first novel,
You Cannoli Die Once
, kicks off her Miracolo mystery series.
A former New Yorker, she lives near Cleveland and is on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she teaches fiction writing and screenwriting. Visit
www.shelleycosta.com
.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Shelley Costa
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Designed by Jill Putorti
ISBN 978-1-4767-0935-2
ISBN 978-1-476709376 (ebook)
Contents
Eve’s Recipe for the Rebel Cannoli
The Ziti That Never Sleeps
Excerpt
Table of Contents
Eve’s Recipe for the Rebel Cannoli