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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 the minute I dropped off my mother, that it was horrible, that my mother was impossible, and that she took the man’s ring. I don’t mention, however, that Drew Scoones was the investigating detective on the case.

      “Diane says the guy was shot between the eyes while he was on the can,” she tells me and shrugs at her sister’s choice of words. “She’s pissed because she was investigating a robbery when the call came in so she didn’t get to see it. She hates being low man on the police totem pole.”

      “Well, it wasn’t a pretty sight,” I assure her. Then I add that it sure would have been nice to see a friendly face there. Bobbie’s left eyebrow shoots up and I feel as though I’ve got one of those electronic banners running across my forehead announcing every thought in my head.

      “He was there,” she says, her short red hair glinting in the sunlight, the new blond streaks blinding me.

      I am silent.

      “Oh…my…God! He was there!”

      “He?” I ask, trying to be oh-so-casual. Unfortunately, her look cuts off this avenue of escape.

      “What did he say? Is he still gorgeous? Did your stomach hurt at the sight of him? Are you sorry you didn’t get those highlights I told you to get?”

      “What are you? Eleven years old?” I ask. Okay, that might be a little harsh, but she is really bugging me. “I just saw another dead body. I really thought that the first one would hold me for this lifetime. So yes, Drew Scoones was there. So yes, he’s still good-looking.”

      This last bit is the understatement of the year. And, so yes, my stomach did do flip-flops at the sight of him, but I’ll never admit it, because it was clear his didn’t do flip-flops at the sight of me. Maybe I should have sprung for the highlights after all.

      “For all I know, he’s married by now.”

      “He’s not.” Bobbie says this like she absolutely knows. When I give her the how-can-you-possibly-know-that? look, she smiles and says, “Diane.”

      I imagine Drew Scoones thinking that I am keeping tabs on him and want to crawl into a hole and die.

      “Mom!” Jesse yells out the front door to me, opening it enough to let loose Maggie May, the bichon frise I “inherited” from Elise Meyers, the woman I found murdered last year. (Okay, fine. So I stole the dog. She was dead and her husband, who was trying to kill her before someone else beat him to it, wasn’t going to take care of her dog, now was he?) Jesse gestures with his hand that there is someone on the phone.

      “It’s probably Howard,” I tell Bobbie. “He’s taking me out to some Iron Chef cook-off thing tonight. Maybe I can beg off.”

      Bobbie gives me the look. The one that says I’m breaking yet another Long Island rule—canceling an engagement the same day. It seems like, much to Bobbie and my mother’s dismay, I will never learn how to get ahead on Long Island. At nearly forty, it’s probably too late.

      Then she concedes that maybe, under the circumstances, it could be all right.

      “Maybe,” she says, grabbing Maggie May’s collar and dragging her into the house. “Like if you make up some wild story about seeing some murdered guy on the john….”

      “It’s Drew,” Jesse says breathlessly, and his face is lit up like it’s Superman calling. “You should invite him to dinner, Mom,” he says, then scrunches up his nose at the thought of my cooking. “Or something, anyway,” he adds.

      I pretend to be offended by my eleven-year-old’s suggestion as I ruffle his hair on my way to the kitchen, where I pick up the portable from the counter and say, “Hello.”

      “You’re gonna love this one,” he says, like there hasn’t been a three-month lull in our conversations, like I haven’t jumped every time the phone rang since the last time he called me, eighty-six days ago. “Your dead guy? He’s the one who shut down Sheldon’s of Great Neck. Isn’t that where you were planning to have Dana’s bat mitzvah?”

      He knows exactly where her bat mitzvah was supposed to be. He even went with me to look Sheldon’s over, to make plans, to pick which room to have the meal in, which one to serve the hors d’oeuvres.

      And then he just stopped calling. “What do you mean, ‘he was the one who shut it down’?” I ask.

      “He’s…that is, he was, with the Board of Health. He was the food inspector who claimed Sheldon’s didn’t meet the County’s standards. Looks like you are S.O.L. As usual.”

      “As long as it doesn’t make me a suspect,” I say. I mean, been there, done that, and “shit outta luck” beats having to prove I’m innocent—or that my best friend is—again.

      Drew just laughs.

СКАЧАТЬ