Why Is Murder On The Menu, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

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СКАЧАТЬ to the right of the stage. Sure—he and I are well acquainted with disasters. I arrive in time to report them and he gets to clean up after them.

      An oven door is slammed, followed by an outraged shout about a soufflé and another about a rising cake.

      A time warning is issued and the chefs go into double time. The monitors look like someone’s hit the fast-forward button on TiVo.

      And I decide to go with the deep purple. Maybe it’s all the surrounding drama.

      At each station, one chef is tending the stove and the other is at the chopping block. Almost every monitor shows vegetables being julienned with knives the size of light sabers.

      A sudden gasp. Mine. Blood seeps onto the cutting board on Monitor Number Three—Nick and Madison’s station. Howard rises from his seat as Nick rushes to Madison’s side, wrapping her hand in a dishcloth and raising it up.

      Someone in the crowd announces that he is a doctor. A half dozen others jump to their feet and announce that they, too, are doctors, throwing specialities around the room like baseball statistics.

      “I’m a plastic surgeon.”

      “I’m a surgeon.”

      “I’m a urologist.”

      A urologist?

      Two or three doctors head for the stage, one even leaping up without bothering to use the stairs. And then Madison starts to scream, like she’s just realized what happened, and someone, I’m not sure who, knocks over one of those crème brûlée scorcher things. And suddenly there are flames leaping from the stage and people in the audience are screaming and Howard’s looking at me like it’s all my fault and he shouldn’t have brought me.

      People clamber over seats despite the fact that all the flames are confined to the stage and that the fire marshal is ordering everyone to stay calm. Someone keeps shouting about the nightclub in Rhode Island, and several lawyer-types are yelling something that sounds like, “Sue, sue!”

      Twenty minutes later, after we have been drenched by the automatic sprinklers, a police car has taken Madison, her severed fingertip and Nick to a hospital, and I have managed to pick the little padlock on Nick’s travel case with a bobby pin, Howard and I are gathering up his knives and tools.

      “Wish you hadn’t touched that,” a familiar voice drawls and there, in the flesh, twice in one day, is Drew Scoones.

      I drop the knife. “My mother’s right,” I say. “You are a stalker.”

      Drew tells me to feel free to put the knife away, now that my prints are all over it. I assure him that, despite the fact that I was here, there wasn’t any crime.

      “The woman just cut herself,” I say. “Heat of the moment,” I add, pointing toward the ceiling from whence, hair plastered to my forehead, I have been reduced to looking like a drowned rat.

      He looks at the debris-strewn floor and hands me what I think is a citrus reamer. “So what is it with you and disasters?” he asks.

      CHAPTER 3

      Design Tip of the Day

      “When we think of fooling the eye we tend to think only of trompe l’oeil, but there are many more ways of tricking the viewer than simply painting scenes on walls. There are faux finishes. There are fiber-board tables hidden under the fanciest of cloths. And of course, there are metallic paints and gold leaf, reminding us that ‘all that glitters is not gold.’”

      —TipsFromTeddi.com

      Until now the best thing about going out with Howard has been the food. I mean, only the finest restaurants, and all at Newsday’s expense, as long as I let him order for me and sample what’s on my plate. I mean, how great is that? I thought it couldn’t get any better.

      Only it has. Now the best thing about going out with Howard is that I get to tell Drew Scoones, when he calls this afternoon, that I am busy dressing for dinner at Madison on Park and can’t really talk.

      And no, I can’t possibly see him.

      Perhaps he’d like a raincheck? I say cooly.

      He says it’s not raining. “Gonna see old Nine Fingers? She gonna be there?”

      I tell him that I don’t know, that again I’m sorry, but like I said, I’m busy.

      “Oh, don’t worry about me,” he says. “I’m sure I can find something to do. It’s not like I’ll be sitting in my apartment pining, sweetheart. I can always go hang out in a pool hall, drop in at Hooters, find somebody to keep the old bed warm.”

      I tell him I’m sure he can, while I hold earrings up to my ears and pick a pair of long, dangly chandeliers that Bobbie would tell me are so “last year.”

      I don’t know why he feels he’s got to be mean to me.

      “Won’t be quite the same, though,” he says, like he doesn’t know why, either.

      And I say, “I wish we were still friends,” then gasp when I realized I’ve said it aloud.

      “I’m still your friend,” Drew says and his voice is so low and soft that it does that thing to me I don’t want done, deep in the pit of my stomach. So I tell him that I’ve really got to go, but just before I hang up the phone he says that maybe he’ll just spend the night working on my murder investigation with old Hal instead of me. And he adds that he’s surprised I’m not more interested.

      And, of course, I don’t hang up. “It’s not my murder investigation,” I say in my own defense. “I didn’t even know the man. And I want to just put it behind me. I don’t like feeling like a murder magnet.”

      Drew is pretty silent, no doubt giving me time to play the whole scene out again in my head, to smell that sharp bitterness that filled the men’s room at The Steak-Out, to see the look of surprise on the dead man’s face. And, in some small, petty recess of my mind, to remember that the dead man is the reason Dana’s bat mitzvah may wind up being held in some Korean restaurant where kimchee accompanies every dish.

      “Well,” Drew says, “you might ask your friend tonight if he isn’t interested. I’m pretty certain he knew him.”

      Howard is stunning in his navy sports jacket and his khaki shirt, which he wears open at the collar so that he is not overly formal, but still well-dressed. The man truly knows how to put himself together. He looks out of place in the parking lot that serves both the strip of stores and restaurants on Park Avenue in Rockville Centre and the local Long Island Railroad station. Spring is in the air, and there is just the slightest warm breeze, promising the summer to come. My skirt with the sequins scattered over the flowers catches the breeze and propels me toward Madison on Park, where Howard says that Madison wants to talk to me.

      The restaurant is dim—usually a sign that they are hiding worn carpeting, frayed linens and a chipping paint job, but, maybe because of the soft music playing in the background, the place still manages to pull off a romantic air.

      It’s warm, in that homey sort of way where you get the sense that people come here fairly often, but only as the default choice. Despite its reputation, СКАЧАТЬ