Why Is Murder On The Menu, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman
got the double entendre. I try to look bored.
“What it is with you and murder victims?” he asks me when we sit down at a table in the corner.
I search them out so that I can see you again, I almost say, but I’m afraid it will sound desperate instead of sarcastic.
My mother, lighting up and daring him with a look to tell her not to, reminds him that she was the one to find the body.
Drew asks what happened this time. My mother tells him how the man in the john was “taken” with me, couldn’t take his eyes off me and blatantly flirted with both of us. To his credit, Drew doesn’t laugh, but his smirk is undeniable to the trained eye. And I’ve had my eye trained on him for nearly a year now.
“While he was noticing you,” he asks me, “did you notice anything about him? Was he waiting for anyone? Watching for anything?”
I tell him that he didn’t appear to be waiting or watching. That he made no phone calls, was fairly intent on eating and apparently flirted with my mother. This last bit Drew takes with a grain of salt, which was the way it was intended.
“And he had a short conversation with Tony,” I tell him. “I think he might have been unhappy with the food, though he didn’t send it back.”
Drew asks what makes me think he was dissatisfied, and I tell him that the discussion seemed acrimonious and that Tony appeared distressed. Drew makes a note and says he’ll look into it and asks about anyone else in the restaurant. Did I see anyone who didn’t seem to belong, anyone who was watching the victim, anyone looking suspicious?
“Besides my mother?” I ask him, and Mom huffs and blows her cigarette smoke in my direction.
I tell him that there were several deliveries, the kitchen staff going in and out the back door to grab a smoke, that sort of thing. He stops me and asks what I was doing checking out the back door of the restaurant.
Proudly—because while he was off forgetting me, dropping in every once in a while to say hi to my son, Jesse, or leave something for one of my daughters, I was getting on with my life—I tell him that I’m decorating the place.
He looks genuinely impressed. “Commercial customers? That’s great,” he says. Okay, that’s what he ought to say. What he actually says is “Whatever pays the bills.”
“Howard Rosen, the famous restaurant critic, got her the job,” my mother says. “You met him—the good-looking, distinguished gentleman with the real job, something to be proud of. I guess you’ve never read his reviews in Newsday.”
Drew, without missing a beat, tells her that Howard’s reviews are on the top of his list, as soon as he learns how to read.
“I only meant—” my mother starts, but both of us assure her that we know just what she meant.
“So,” Drew says. “Deliveries?”
I tell him that Tony would know better than I, but that I saw some come in. Fish. Maybe linens. “And there was produce, I guess,” I say, recalling seeing a delivery man leave wearing the usual white jacket, this one with a picture of a truck covered with vegetables and fruits all over its side.
“This is the second restaurant job Howard’s got her,” my mother tells Drew.
“At least she’s getting something out of the relationship,” he says.
“If he were here,” my mother says, ignoring the insinuation, “he’d be comforting her instead of interrogating her. He’d be making sure we’re both all right after such an ordeal.”
“I’m sure he would,” Drew agrees, then studies me as if he’s measuring my tolerance for shock. Quietly he adds, “But then maybe he doesn’t know just what strong stuff your daughter’s made of.”
It’s the closest thing to a tender moment I can expect from Drew Scoones. My mother breaks the spell. “She gets that from me,” she says.
Both Drew and I take a minute, probably to pray that’s all I inherited from her.
“I’m just trying to save you some time and effort,” my mother tells him. “My money’s on Howard.”
Drew withers her with a look and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “fool’s gold.” Then he excuses himself to go back to work.
I catch his sleeve and ask if it’s all right for us to leave. He says sure, he knows where we live. I say goodbye to Tony. I assure him that I will have some sketches for him in a few days, all the while hoping that this murder doesn’t cancel his redecorating plans. I need the money desperately, the alternative being borrowing from my parents and being strangled by the strings.
My mother is strangely quiet all the way to her house. She doesn’t tell me what a loser Drew Scoones is—despite his good looks—and how I was obviously drooling over him. She doesn’t ask me where Howard is taking me tonight or warn me not to tell my father about what happened because he will worry about us both and no doubt insist we see our respective psychiatrists.
She fidgets nervously, opening and closing her purse over and over again.
“You okay?” I ask her. After all, she’s just found a dead man on the toilet, and tough as she is, that’s got to be upsetting.
When she doesn’t answer me I pull over to the side of the road.
“Mom?” She refuses to look at me. “You want me to take you to see Dr. Cohen?”
She looks out the window, elegant as ever in yet another ecru knit outfit, hair perfectly coiffed and spritzed within one spray of permanently laquered, and appears confused. It’s as if she’s just realized we’re on Broadway in Woodmere. “Aren’t we near Marvin’s Jewelers?” she asks, pulling something out of her purse.
“What have you got, Mother?” I ask, prying open her fingers to find the murdered man’s pinky ring.
“It was on the sink,” she says in answer to my dropped jaw. “I was going to get his name and address and have you return it to him so that he could ask you out. I thought it was a sign that the two of you were meant to be together.”
“He’s dead, Mom. You understand that, right?” I ask.
“Well, I didn’t know that,” she shouts at me. “Not at the time.”
I ask why she didn’t give it to Drew, realize that she wouldn’t give Drew the time in a clock shop and add, “…or to one of the other policemen.”
“For heaven’s sake,” she tells me. “The man is dead, Teddi, and I took his ring. How would that look?”
Before I can tell her it would look just the way it is, she pulls out a cigarette and threatens to light it.
“I mean, really,” she says, shaking her head like it’s my brains that are loose. “What does he need it for now?”
CHAPTER 2
Design Tip of the Day
“A wonderful trick for unifying a room is to use a repeating motif. For example, you could purchase a fleur-de-lis stamp and use it above the chair rail, repeat the pattern with the drapery rod finials, a lamp finial, etc. Keep in mind, though, that too much repetition can lead to monotony.”
—TipsFromTeddi.com
My best friend and business partner, Bobbie Lyons, is watching for me out her window and she runs over to greet me in my driveway before I’m out of the car. It’s the middle of the afternoon and I happen to know for a fact that she was home all day and has no plans to go out. Despite that, she is wearing silk capris, kitten-heel suede slides and more diamonds than you’ll find in the window of Kay Jewelers. “I can’t believe it happened to you again!” she says as she slips one of her slides on and off repeatedly.
I tell her, as I already did on the cell