“Eve, murder is good for business.”
“Bah!” I flipped a hand at him in a very Maria Pia kind of way.
Choo Choo gave me a knowing little smile. “Trust your Choo Choo, bella ; tomorrow night you’ll be thinking we’re a truck stop outside Nashville. Too bad Mr. Mather didn’t meet his maker here in the dining room. The gawkers are really going to get in your way.”
Was he right? I sagged. Were there going to be all sorts of customer ruses to get into my kitchen—to praise the veal, condemn the risotto, equivocate about the snails—in order to eye the Spot? Maybe we should just point to some place close to the piano, I thought, looking around like a wild woman. Mrs. Crawford could handle anything.
“No!” I told Choo Choo. “I refuse!” I declared. “Miracolo will not capitalize on what happened to that poor unfortunate.”
Choo Choo lightly tapped the magazine, then pushed it toward me. I picked up the old issue of Inside Bucks County, the local What to Do, Where to Eat, Whom to Envy rag. “Page twenty-three,” he said phlegmatically.
The page turned out to be “County Doings,” the lowdown on fancy parties. And there it was. One of the photos showed the glitterati who attended the Roller Ball, a gala two years ago that raised money for kids with spinal cord injuries. And there was Dana Mahoney Cahill, laughing it up with a martini glass in her hand. On one side of her was Patrick, looking quietly classy in a tux. But on the other side …
On the other side of Dana, the guy she had her arm around, was our very own gawker magnet: Arlen Mather. Only that wasn’t the name in the caption. Under the photo was the caption L to R: Patrick Cahill, Dana Cahill, and Maximiliano Scotti.
8
I lay sleepless in bed, tangled in the ratty quilt I had had since I was two, trying to figure out what it all meant. Choo Choo had said the dude in the photo sure looked like Nonna’s dead boyfriend, hey? Whereupon I had to grill him: “How do you know what Mather looked like?” He wasn’t around when Landon and I discovered the body.
Then Chooch told me he’d been in the company of Arlen and Maria Pia about half a dozen times.
To which I responded, “Are you freaking kidding me?”
Apparently our nonna (though, as I lay there, I was willing to sign over my nonna rights to him and Landon forever, eternally and in perpetuity) had included Choo Choo when she and the beau went to Lancaster County for the day, Atlantic City for the night, and Manhattan for Chinese food. I was surprised by the strength of my jealousy. Yes, he has his appeal, but …
Not even a second grappa helped.
So the Volvo and I wended our way home to the tiny house I called home for the last three years. On the edge of the Quaker Hills Historic District was a piece of property owned by an old Philly choreographer who still, at eighty-four, dreamed of building on the site. She rented a corner of it to me, and I’d bought a Tumbleweed Tiny Home for $50,000 and had it delivered on a utility trailer to this little spot.
My house was a whopping 130 square feet of wonderfulness, with cedar siding and a tin roof that always made me long for rain. I set out big pots of splashy red geraniums and kept a little blue folding butterfly chair out front on my four-by four-foot porch, where I hung a wind chime.
The tiny home had everything I required: a sleeping loft; a two-burner stove, since I saved all my serious cooking for the restaurant; and lots of windows due to my love of light and air. I guess I’m no different from the geraniums out front.
I looked at the stars out the window in my sleeping loft, telling myself that if Nonna had something up her sleeve, she’d use Choo Choo to help her keep it there. If Dana had been fraternizing with a dead guy with two different names, it probably just had something to do with a pompous stage name (Maximiliano Scotti? Really?) and not a double identity.
All of which goes to show that if you really want to
“Bah!” I flipped a hand at him in a very Maria Pia kind of way.
Choo Choo gave me a knowing little smile. “Trust your Choo Choo, bella ; tomorrow night you’ll be thinking we’re a truck stop outside Nashville. Too bad Mr. Mather didn’t meet his maker here in the dining room. The gawkers are really going to get in your way.”
Was he right? I sagged. Were there going to be all sorts of customer ruses to get into my kitchen—to praise the veal, condemn the risotto, equivocate about the snails—in order to eye the Spot? Maybe we should just point to some place close to the piano, I thought, looking around like a wild woman. Mrs. Crawford could handle anything.
“No!” I told Choo Choo. “I refuse!” I declared. “Miracolo will not capitalize on what happened to that poor unfortunate.”
Choo Choo lightly tapped the magazine, then pushed it toward me. I picked up the old issue of Inside Bucks County, the local What to Do, Where to Eat, Whom to Envy rag. “Page twenty-three,” he said phlegmatically.
The page turned out to be “County Doings,” the lowdown on fancy parties. And there it was. One of the photos showed the glitterati who attended the Roller Ball, a gala two years ago that raised money for kids with spinal cord injuries. And there was Dana Mahoney Cahill, laughing it up with a martini glass in her hand. On one side of her was Patrick, looking quietly classy in a tux. But on the other side …
On the other side of Dana, the guy she had her arm around, was our very own gawker magnet: Arlen Mather. Only that wasn’t the name in the caption. Under the photo was the caption L to R: Patrick Cahill, Dana Cahill, and Maximiliano Scotti.
8
I lay sleepless in bed, tangled in the ratty quilt I had had since I was two, trying to figure out what it all meant. Choo Choo had said the dude in the photo sure looked like Nonna’s dead boyfriend, hey? Whereupon I had to grill him: “How do you know what Mather looked like?” He wasn’t around when Landon and I discovered the body.
Then Chooch told me he’d been in the company of Arlen and Maria Pia about half a dozen times.
To which I responded, “Are you freaking kidding me?”
Apparently our nonna (though, as I lay there, I was willing to sign over my nonna rights to him and Landon forever, eternally and in perpetuity) had included Choo Choo when she and the beau went to Lancaster County for the day, Atlantic City for the night, and Manhattan for Chinese food. I was surprised by the strength of my jealousy. Yes, he has his appeal, but …
Not even a second grappa helped.
So the Volvo and I wended our way home to the tiny house I called home for the last three years. On the edge of the Quaker Hills Historic District was a piece of property owned by an old Philly choreographer who still, at eighty-four, dreamed of building on the site. She rented a corner of it to me, and I’d bought a Tumbleweed Tiny Home for $50,000 and had it delivered on a utility trailer to this little spot.
My house was a whopping 130 square feet of wonderfulness, with cedar siding and a tin roof that always made me long for rain. I set out big pots of splashy red geraniums and kept a little blue folding butterfly chair out front on my four-by four-foot porch, where I hung a wind chime.
The tiny home had everything I required: a sleeping loft; a two-burner stove, since I saved all my serious cooking for the restaurant; and lots of windows due to my love of light and air. I guess I’m no different from the geraniums out front.
I looked at the stars out the window in my sleeping loft, telling myself that if Nonna had something up her sleeve, she’d use Choo Choo to help her keep it there. If Dana had been fraternizing with a dead guy with two different names, it probably just had something to do with a pompous stage name (Maximiliano Scotti? Really?) and not a double identity.
All of which goes to show that if you really want to
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