Love in Bloom's (34 page)

“Why don’t you accuse your mother?” Jay asked. “She loves food.”

“I don’t eat Bloom’s food. It’s too expensive. And too fattening,” Sondra shot back. “She knows better than to ask me because she’s eaten in my home for twenty-eight years. If I was
going to steal three hundred dollars’ worth of food a week, it would be cheese crackers from the grocery store down the block.”

“This is true,” Susie confirmed.

“Then, what about Deirdre? You just said you’re Irish but you eat bagels.”

“Not a hundred-fifty a week,” Deirdre retorted. “Jay, you’re the obvious one because you get together with a hundred people every week—on a Sunday morning when people would want to have brunch.”

“She—” he pointed at Julia “—just said she considered me innocent.”

“And I’m saying, maybe we’ve got a hung jury here,” Deirdre argued.

“You sound pretty defensive,” Jay retorted.

Deirdre’s smile was bitter, and way too toothy. “The best defense is a good offense, huh?”

“Okay, okay!” Julia held up her hands like Gandhi trying to quell the rioting Indians. She glanced at Joffe again, silently questioning.

He shrugged. “It’s your family.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sondra asked. “Why are you even here, anyway? You’re supposed to be writing a nice article about what a great place Bloom’s is. The beauty of a family-owned establishment—”

“Yeah, it’s a real beautiful thing.” Joffe cut her off. “I’m here because at Ida Bloom’s behest, I examined the books. And your daughter—your
president
—is right. There’s something going on with this three hundred dollars’ worth of brunch leaving the store every week, unaccounted for. You’re all executives here. You’re supposed to deal with things like this.”

“I’m not an executive,” Susie declared. “Just family.”

Jay looked toward the desk, but he didn’t sense so much heat between Susie and her boyfriend now. The guy looked…bored, maybe, and bemused about why he was there. Jay could have
explained to him one of the immutable facts of life: sometimes a man had to sit through a lot of crap if he wanted to get laid.

Julia addressed Deirdre. “Did my father ever discuss a hundred brunches a week with you?”

“Why are you asking her?” Sondra blurted out. “Why don’t you ask me? I was his wife.”

Julia seemed momentarily rattled. “I asked Deirdre because it’s a business matter, and she was the person he discussed business with.”

“He discussed business with me,” Sondra asserted.

“Okay. So did he ever mention a hundred brunches a week to you?”

“Of course not.”

“He mentioned lots of things to me,” Deirdre said archly.

Jesus. Things were getting weird. Jay couldn’t believe he’d been dragged off the golf course for this—except that if he hadn’t come it would have been worse. They would have assumed he’d failed to show because he was busy hosting some weekly Bloom’s buffet at Emerald View Country Club.

“What, you think I don’t know you and he were close?” Sondra leaned over Myron’s lap to address Deirdre. Myron shrank back into the sofa cushions, looking as if he wished he could disappear like a hundred and fifty bagels. “You think I’m an idiot? You think I don’t know you and Ben worked
very
closely?”

“I’d kill for a cup of coffee,” Jay said, partly because he wanted to cut Sondra off before she flipped and partly because killing someone suddenly seemed like an appealing idea. He wasn’t sure who the victim ought to be, but given the tension level in the room, a murder wouldn’t be out of place. Even the lovebirds on the desk didn’t look so loving anymore. Susie had propped her feet on the desk and bent her legs so she could hug her arms around her shins and rest her chin on her knees. She was all tied up into a little ball. And Loverboy looked as if he had a mouth full of sawdust. Julia was paler than usual—which was pretty damn pale—and the reporter was taking it
all in. God help them if he was going to put any of this in his
Gotham
article.

“Mom,” Julia said in an ameliorating voice. “Let’s not go there.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sondra said, settling back into her side of the sofa. Myron looked measurably relieved. “All I want to say is, I was Ben’s wife. The only wife he ever had, and the mother of his children. And he never mentioned anything about missing bagels to me.”

“Nor to me,” Deirdre muttered through clenched lips.

“Okay,” Julia said with all the enthusiasm of a cheerleader whose team was down by a thousand points. “Is it possible someone downstairs might be filching three hundred dollars’ worth of brunch every week? One of the cooks or clerks?”

“Anything’s possible,” Myron offered. A big help he was.

“You know,” Susie said, her head bobbing with each word because she kept her chin pressed to her knees, “I can’t believe the bagel department hasn’t noticed anything strange. I mean, Casey, you and Morty run that department. I know you told me you didn’t know anything about missing bagels, but how could you not notice? You keep track of what’s being baked and what’s being sold, don’t you?”

Loverboy shifted, putting another inch between him and Susie. “We keep track,” he confirmed. “But I don’t know anything.”

“Casey.” Susie lifted her head so she could peer into his eyes. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

He glanced away. “Look,” he said quietly. “Okay? I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

“You
do
know?” Susie appeared shocked.

Julia moved in front of her chair. “You know, Casey? You see? I’m not a crackpot! I’m not crazy!”

“Who says you’re not?” Myron retorted. “This guy’s your character witness, and he’s not talking.”

“Please tell us, Casey,” Julia implored.

Susie took another tack; she socked him in the arm, nearly
knocking him over. “You lied to me! I asked you about this weeks ago, and you said you had no idea.”

“Because I was sworn to secrecy.”

Julia stepped forward. “I’m the president of Bloom’s, Casey. We’re all family here—even Deirdre and Myron, in a way.”

“He’s not family,” Jay observed, pointing to Joffe.

“He’s my character witness,” Julia declared, shooting the reporter a quick smile that raised the air’s temperature again.

What was with Sondra’s daughters? Both of them were in heat all of a sudden?

Julia turned back to Susie’s boyfriend. “Do you want me to empty the room out? Do you want to tell just me?”

“That sounds like a plan,” Jay said, starting to rise. Sondra sent him a scathing stare, and he sank back into his seat.

“I made a promise,” Casey said. “Someone’s taking the brunch food every week, and that person doesn’t want anyone to know about it, so Morty and I have been covering.”

“But we all do know about it,” Julia argued. “Whoever this person is, he’s stealing from Bloom’s.”

“No.”

“He is. He’s taking three hundred dollars’ worth of food and not paying for it. That’s theft.”

“It’s your grandmother,” Casey said, then looked stricken. He leaped from the desk and stalked to the door. “Excuse me,” he muttered, then stormed out, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click.

The silence he left in his wake was broken by Susie’s springing down from the desk and racing after him, slamming the door on her way out.

More silence. “She’s sleeping with him,” Jay commented to Sondra. Saying that was a poor substitute for killing someone, and it wouldn’t result in his getting a cup of coffee. But he was tired, it had been a long morning, he’d had a lousy, rainy eleven holes, and now this: his mother was stealing bagels. He decided he was no longer responsible for anything he said.

“What am I, an idiot?” Sondra grimaced. “What am I, blind?
You think I don’t know what’s going on in my family?” She gave the reporter an accusatory look. “It would have broken your heart to ask her out so she’d stop throwing herself away on a bagel man?”

“He’s sleeping with me,” Julia announced.

More silence. Jay gazed upon his niece with newfound respect. She had guts. He’d never realized that before. Maybe she’d never had them before. But now, after this whole
farkakteh
meeting, she was showing what she had, and he was impressed.

Sondra was obviously too stunned to speak, but Deirdre didn’t have that problem. “Does this mean,” she asked Joffe, “that you’ll write a nice article about the store for your magazine?”

“I’ll write a good article,” he promised. “I don’t do ‘nice.’”

“Why do you suppose Grandma Ida has been stealing bagels from the store?” Julia wondered aloud.

“You’d better ask her,” Joffe said.

They gazed at each other long enough for the room’s temperature to fluctuate like a woman in the throes of menopause. Jay had been through that with Martha, and he hoped he never had to go through it again—although he supposed that if he stayed married to Wendy long enough, he would have to.

“I’ve got to go talk to Grandma Ida,” Julia said. “This meeting is adjourned.”

Joffe came upstairs with her, for which she was grateful. He’d already met Grandma Ida, he knew her, she trusted him for some reason, and anyway, Julia didn’t think she could get through the experience of accusing her grandmother of stealing from the store without having someone by her side. Preferably someone smart, someone strong and someone who wasn’t a Bloom.

Lyndon answered the door. “I’m sorry she missed your meeting,” he said, exchanging an air kiss with Julia and then offering one of his patented sunbeam smiles. “Hello, Mr. Joffe!” He turned back to Julia. “She slept late today. She’s only just finishing her breakfast now.” He checked his watch and winced. “Lunch, I guess.”

“Do you have any leftovers?” Julia asked, knowing the answer. She could smell the velvety aroma of coffee, the mellow fragrance of toasted breakfast pastries.

“A couple of bialys and a little herring in cream sauce. Are you hungry?”

Julia was tempted, but she had to take care of business first. She was the president of Bloom’s, and she had to get through this confrontation. “Maybe we’ll have a snack later. Let me talk to my grandmother.”

“Lyndon, who is it?” Grandma Ida’s voice drifted in from the dining room. “Not those people with the Chinese-restaurant menus again, is it?”

“It’s your granddaughter,” Lyndon shouted back, waving Julia and Joffe inside. Joffe brushed his hand against the small of Julia’s back, a tiny touch, just enough to remind her that he was with her, supporting her.

Drawing in a breath, Julia headed for the dining room, Joffe and Lyndon behind her. Her grandmother sat at the head of the long table, her hair arranged in inky waves around her face, her eyes dark but clear.

“Julia,” she said, as Julia circled the table and kissed her cheek. “Lyndon was just telling me you were having one of your meetings today. I slept terribly last night, though—I stayed up to watch an old Alfred Hitchcock movie. Hello, Mr. Joffe,” she added. “Do you like Alfred Hitchcock?”

“Some of his movies. I thought
Psycho
was silly.”

“Very silly, that dead lady in the rocking chair. With Anthony Perkins’s voice, no less. A dead lady wouldn’t have a man’s voice, even if he talked all squeaky. What I saw last night was
Vertigo
, and it kept me up half the night. So Lyndon let me sleep until noon.” She lifted her cup of coffee to her lips, then paused. “You’re not hungry, are you? If you had one of your meetings, you must have had food.”

“We didn’t have time for food,” Julia said. “But that’s all right. Joffe and I had a nice breakfast.”

“I’ll get you some coffee,” Lyndon offered.

Julia declined with a wave of her hand. “No, that’s all right. Grandma, we need to talk.”

“
Nu?
Sit down.” She pointed to a chair.

Julia sat. Joffe sat next to her. His nearness helped. His nearness and her own sense of—not power but
rightness
. She was the president of Bloom’s. The store was no longer just the legacy she’d inherited; it was the legacy she would leave to her heirs. It was hers to lead, to nurture, to build into something even more wonderful than it already was.

“Grandma. Tell me about the bagels you’re stealing.”

“Bagels? Stealing?”

“Your secret is out, Grandma. You’ve been stealing bagels, coffee and cream cheese from the store every week, to the tune of three hundred dollars.”

“Who told you such a thing?”

“Someone from the bagel department—and he’s very upset that I made him reveal your secret. Don’t be angry with him, Grandma.
You
were the one who was stealing.”

“
Oy
, what are you talking? I don’t steal. I own the store. How can I steal what I own?”

“You’ve taken things without accounting for them. You do this every week, and all we have are numbers that don’t add up. Why?”

“Why? You want to know why? I’ll tell you why.” Her eyes tightened as if they were screwing themselves deeper into her face. “It’s none of your business, that’s why.”

“It
is
my business, Grandma. You made me the president of Bloom’s. That makes it my business.”

“What are you talking? I’m still the chairman.”

“So what are you doing with all this stuff you’re stealing every week?”

“Lyndon!” Grandma Ida hollered, the strength of her voice belying her age. “Lyndon, bring them some coffee. They need to eat. They need to fill their mouths with food.”

“So we won’t be able to talk?” Julia laughed. As recently as a couple of months ago, she would have been cowed by her
grandmother’s indignation, but now she wasn’t. Nor was she angry. She was amused. Grandma Ida was actually pretty funny. “Grandma, tell me. I’m not going to get mad. I’m not going to fire you. I’m so glad we’re not getting ripped off by some outsider, or by my mother or Uncle Jay—”

“You don’t mind getting ripped off by your grandmother? Not that I’m doing that. Ripping off. I don’t even know what it means.”

“Tell me about the bagels, Grandma.”

She sighed. She tapped her fingertips together. Her bracelets clattered. “There are people in this city,” she said. “Old people. They aren’t sick, they don’t live in homes, in—what’s the word, facilities? They live by themselves, they get by, they don’t like to complain. But it’s hard for them. Day to day, they get the pension check, the Social Security, but there’s no money for anything special.” Her grandmother tapped her fingers together again.