Basil Instinct (12 page)

Grabbing a small pack of something frozen hard as a rock, I swiped the sweat from my forehead and let myself out of the freezer, where I ran into Maria Pia, decked out in her midnight-blue satin Belfiere “chef jacket” gown. “Oh, there you are,
cara
!” she warbled, her arms outstretched, as she turned to give me the full effect. Gone was the cooking outfit from the Mao era. She looked like she was born
to be a member of the Crazy Club, what with her dramatic good looks, her thick hair you’ve either got from birth, never mind the gray, or you don’t, and her poise. I’d accept a plate of unrecognizable poison from her any day . . .

With my free hand I grabbed her wrist. “Gorgeous, Nonna,” I said sincerely.

While she bent my ear about whether she should wear her hair up or down—which was my cue to tell her it’s equally dazzling either way—and, if up, whether the diamond clips look better than the gold, I kept a smile plastered on my mug while I started to collapse a little inside just wondering how long Landon would last, pressed up against the uncomplaining Georgia in the Sub-Zero freezer before freezer burn held them together permanently. I gave Nonna a playful little shove. “Go try the diamond clips, Nonna, and I’d go with the charcoal-gray eyeliner, if I were you.”

“But,” she sputtered, “that’s at home!”

“Precisely. But well worth the trip.”

“But”—here she lowered her voice, her eyes darting sideways over the suddenly untrustworthy Choo Choo and Vera, who was dashing by us with rolls of toilet paper to restock the customer restrooms—“my, ah”—this she yelled because to Maria Pia screaming always carries a certain quality of convic
tion—“mah-jongg club will be here in twenty minutes.”

I wanted to fling her back into the office. “Then just use what you’ve got and tart yourself up right nice, missy, there you go!” Blinking at me, and about to launch into something fake-anxious about the evening’s menu, she nevertheless turned on her von Furstenberg heels and tripped back to the office. At which I flung open the freezer door and Landon fell into my arms, practically sobbing. He waved behind him in a way that was meant to convey that Georgia was just about as fine as she was going to get, and we twirled ourselves out of the frozen air and shut the door hard.

“How in the ding-dong doo-wop did she get in there?” I whispered.

He widened his eyes at me. “Well, I’m just guessing here, but I’m thinking someone else is on to us.”

We loped back to the kitchen, where Choo Choo was stirring something—I no longer knew exactly what—placidly. My money was on Choo Choo. I narrowed my eyes at him. Did he really think he could go moving our corpse without our figuring it out? Between this macabre little game he was playing and his responsibility for the CRIBS mess I was in, well, the flicked match most definitely stops here.

It was Landon, however, who came up with an
alternative explanation. “I’m thinking,” he said, scratching his chin, “that someone”—he lifted one eyebrow at me meaningfully—“happened to come across the poor unfortunate Georgia stretched out on the semolina in the storeroom and concluded—in much the same way we did, darling—that she just dropped dead on the sacks . . .”

I saw where he was going. “And then that someone moved her to the freezer—”

“Perhaps a spot less likely to be entered.”

“—until he could get her out the door, right?”

We turned our heads slowly to our majestic Bacigalupo cousin, who was humming in a highly suspicious manner. “Someone who is also protecting Maria Pia.”

I was about to jump on the hummer’s back and beat him about the head and shoulders with what turned out to be a pack of frozen beef short ribs, when Paulette marched through the double doors, planted her feet, and gazed around the kitchen appraisingly. I could tell she was about to make an announcement on the order of either a new pope having been chosen or the Beatles having broken up. Our wooden spoons stopped mid-stir. “Maria Pia’s”—her eyes glittered, the wily Paulette—“mah-jongg club is arriving.” She added, “Battle stations,” then headed in a stately manner down the short hall to the office to let the guest of honor
know.

*   *   *

The Belfiere ladies wafted into Miracolo in groups, kind of like jellyfish. Where they all parked and how they all rustled in their cheesy get-ups down the south side of Market Square without drawing just the kind of attention we were hoping to avoid was beyond me. I overheard our sweet Vera, who was standing by the kitchen doors at the time, tell Jonathan that she never knew mah-jongg clubs could be so elegant.

I didn’t recognize a single solitary one of the Belfiere members, except, of course, Fina Parisi. We were feeding an assortment, that was for sure, what with blue-satin-clad ladies running the gamut from spindly to squat. When Paulette and Jonathan seated them, they raised identical silver masks with handles that looked like tongue depressors to cover their faces, which was certainly an improvement. Meanwhile, Mrs. Crawford was inscrutable at the piano, and maybe it was me, but I could swear the middle of a famous aria from that tearjerker
La Bohème
morphed into “In Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home.”

Nobody else seemed to notice.

As I stood at the window to the kitchen door, she caught my eye and winked.

Once Chef Maria Pia Angelotta, who had gone
for the diamond bling in her hair, swept into the dining room, decked out in her Belfiere outfit, I stepped back, relaxing, but not before I saw Fina glide toward her with outstretched arms. What followed was a ceremony before Paulette, Vera, L’Shondra, and the irrepressible Corabeth served the first course. It consisted of the kind of choral hum you get in high schools where students have to choose between choir and woodshop.

From behind their raised masks they chanted something about keeping the flame alight, Maga, Maga, a sip before death, a taste before life, Maga, Maga, and then it seemed to veer off into promises of faithfulness to the alchemy of alimentary bliss. Which, for me, means avoiding hot peppers. How the wide-eyed Vera reconciled this stuff with mah-jongg, I’ll never know. But in the background Mrs. Crawford’s fingers were just moving across the piano keys from the spot
when them cotton balls get rotten you can’t pick very much cotton
to Rodolfo’s singing to Mimi that her hands are cold.

Each dinner guest then raised her free hand and the midnight-blue satin sleeves slipped down to reveal the Belfiere tattoo on fifty wrists. At which point, seated, they all thrust out their tattooed wrists toward the center of the table and waved them about—prompting Mrs. Crawford to slide into a few bold bars of “The Hokey Pokey”—
and then their voices dropped as they took what sounded like a pledge to chop till they drop.

But I reminded myself that it would be foolish to underestimate this group that looked like its idea of activity was a rousing game of chair volleyball. After all, there was still the little matter of the mysterious death of one of their own that went unreported. Of course, what with the contents of our own walk-in freezer, I wasn’t one to talk.

Finally, tattoos disappeared under flowing sleeves once more, and then Fina Parisi—from behind her silver mask—welcomed all to the culinary home of Chef Maria Pia Angelotta. Here my nonna—the only one without a silver mask, I guess because she was still uninitiated—bowed and scraped and waved her arms in the manner she usually reserves for the more passionate moments in her nightly signature song, “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

Then Fina nodded to the servers, Maria Pia joined Fina at her table, and the staff barreled into the kitchen while we started furiously plating the appetizer. Corabeth wanted to know if she should call Georgia, to which I could only reply airily, “That ship has sailed” and Landon added, “A dead issue.” Despite the assembly line of bodies either plating or power-walking with armfuls of Scallop Fritters with Roasted Chioggia
Beet Carpaccio, Li Wei chose this moment to do a spin kick that accidentally grazed the chin of the simmering L’Shondra, who told him in no uncertain terms to get his skinny little crackerhonkey ass out of her face. Only she said it like she was squaring off before a congregation of unbelievers. If it was a little too loud, we didn’t have time to care.

Vera chose this moment, as I handed her three plates of Scallop Fritters and shooed her away, to announce that she was going to learn mah-jongg. As she turned, beaming, back to the dining room, to serve a beautiful appetizer that wasn’t going to yield us so much as a cent, it struck me that this Belfiere gig was pretty much a way for members to get some free chow on a regular basis. So, I might have to reconsider my position on just how crazy they were.

Then it happened.

A break in the madness.

All the appetizers were being served, Maria Pia and her mah-jongg club were happily buzzing, Choo Choo must have wandered off to the john, and Landon and I had the Miracolo kitchen very much to ourselves. Our eyes shot to the back door: clear shot! With a now-or-never kind of desperation, we dashed to the freezer, steeling ourselves for dealing with both cold and corpse, and slipped
inside. “Hurry! Hurry!” Landon pushed me.

“All right, all right!” I whirled and flapped at him.

The plan was simple.

There was no plan.

I kind of liked it, to tell you the truth.

Out the back door with Georgia,
that was all we had.

Prop her up at the farthest table on the patio, maybe stick a drink in her hand.

Prop her up behind the compost bin, maybe stick a drink in her hand.

Prop her up in the front seat of Landon’s BMW, maybe stick a drink in her hand.

I was feeling positively creative, and very nearly lighthearted. We were actually going to pull it off, postponing any dealing with death until after this meal for the Psycho Society. I was so happy envisioning just driving Georgia to the ER and explaining with so many Italian shrugs and hand gestures that she just up and
died
, that the roadway seemed strewn with more goodies than the Candy Land game board.

However, by the time Landon and I passed the chicken breasts, the short ribs, and the flank steaks, we found a hitch in any of the loose plans to prop up the problem somewhere for just another two, three hours, max. One thing nice about
a commercial-grade walk-in freezer: it’s frost free. But at that moment in my life on Friday, June 20, it was also Georgia free.

She was nowhere around.

Landon and I let out a wail.

7

Within five minutes Landon and I had eliminated all other hiding places—short of the Miracolo dining room, which was just too painful to consider—in this game we were apparently playing with the dead but nevertheless elusive Georgia Payne. We dashed by each other in the back hallway. Landon slowed just long enough to whisper, “Office is clear,” and I shot back, “So’s the storeroom.” And off he went to check out the customer restrooms while I pushed open the door to the staff restroom, which was empty of Georgia but not of Choo Choo.

When Landon got back and shrugged his findings, we huddled by my Vulcan stove. “Look at it this way,” I said with sudden insight, “this is actually good news.”

He nibbled a nail. “Explain.”

“She’s nowhere inside the restaurant.”

He tapped the tip of his nose while this idea sank in. “Someone else has achieved what we have failed to do.”

“This is so.”

“Still, I’m troubled.”

“Is it your whole competitive thing?”

“No, no, no.” He waved away the very idea. “Although I’m”—his voice dropped as he talked to my shoulder—“relieved that Georgia is not likely to be an obvious problem while Nonna’s psycho sorority is here, I’m troubled that we’ve only eliminated hiding places inside the restaurant.” His voice dropped even lower as he talked to the side of my neck. “If you catch my drift.”

It was a reasonable point of view. “I see,” I said gravely as Jonathan swanned into the kitchen to announce that the Scallop Fritters with Chioggia Beet Carpaccio was a big hit. Although this was excellent news, my knees clacked together kind of uncontrollably—truly, I believe, from the stress over the problem with the dead Georgia Payne’s whereabouts.

But at that moment I mistook Jonathan for some kind of savior. All I wanted to do was hear his full report from the battlefield, but only after I flung myself sniveling into the poor lad’s arms. I think Landon was wishing he had thought of it
first. Tough. Jonathan pried me off his shoulders and smiled so sweetly, telling me it was all going just perfectly and I shouldn’t worry. I was hoping he would add
your pretty little head
, but he didn’t.

As I sank onto the stool with
Lee Way
stenciled on the back, and my whole face was trying to work up the energy to blubber, two things happened. Neither of which included Georgia Payne miraculously reappearing. One, the servers started trooping into the kitchen with appetizer plates, and two, the Sestri Salad with Grappa and Fig Vinaigrette was supposed to get plated.

While I blubbered softly, fingering one of Jonathan’s shirt buttons, and he regaled me with stories about how the mah-jongg ladies were out there happily disagreeing about the last winner on
Top Chef Masters
. . . and Maria Pia consulted with Mrs. Crawford about whether a little “Three Coins in a Fountain” would be amiss, and learned that it would be . . . and Dana Cahill had pressed her nose up against the front window, but Paulette lowered the blind . . . the back door opened.

And in walked Joe Beck.

I pushed myself to my feet with as much dignity as any woman could whose face had recently been featured on the side of a building doing highly suspicious things with Italian pastry. I straightened my shoulders, I straightened my toque, I straight
ened my bra strap as I pushed my way through the obstruction called L’Shondra Washington (who was giving Joe a crocodilian smile) and over to my lawyer. Landon and Choo Choo, whose combined twenty fingers were furiously arranging sweet butter lettuce on gold-trimmed glass plates, called out a hi to the man who had been an old Angelotta family retainer for all of three weeks.