“Ahem,” Blondie said. “We would like two unsweetened iced teas with Sweet'N Low on the sideâmake sure it's Sweet'N Lowâand one Diet Coke.”
“Got that,” Dani said. “Would you like a lemon or lime with that beverage?”
“Did I ask for one?” Blondie said.
“You did not,” Dani agreed. “I thought, with so much on your mind, like pickle thumbs, you may have forgotten.”
The women glared at her.
“At what point do you tell us the specials?” Brownie demanded.
“Ma'am, I will recite them to you just as soon as I finish writing and you finish talking.”
And I thought,
Time to step in.
“Dani, why don't you go get started on the drinks?” I interrupted, crossing the near empty dining area.
“Our specials today are corned beef hash with two eggs, the Egg Lover's Sandwich, which is a western omelet on your choice of toast, and our classic matzoh brei. What would you ladies like?” I said.
“What I would
like
is for you to give that new girl a talking to.” Blondie frowned.
“Oh, I forgot. You also get a choice of home fries or fruit salad with your meal.”
Rule number one in dealing with the insane or the childish: divert their attention and ignore bad behavior.
“I'll take a small fruit salad,” Big Red said, starting it off. “Then the Egg Lover's Sandwich on rye, and I want home fries.”
“Very good,” I said, then braced myself. “But we had a run on rye and are out. We have wheat, sourdoughâ”
“I
do not
believe this!” Blondie huffed. “A deli without rye!”
“We had a problem withâ”
“Why don't we just go to IHOP?” Big Red asked the others.
For show. It sounded like they'd used this shtick before. Dani arrived with the drinks just in time to watch it play out.
“I wanted Diet Coke,” whined Blondie after sipping it.
“But that is Dietâ”
“It is regular Coke,” Blondie said, draining half the glass.
“Dani, just go get another.”
“Wow, that's so not kosher,” she muttered, turning. The women gazed after her. As if she felt their eyes on her, Dani turned and smiled and said, “Definition number two.”
Good girl,
I thought with a private little smile.
Thom approached from her perchâno, really, there was a picture of a fish on the stoolâand looked over her glasses at the women, unbemused.
“Nash, phone for you,” Thom publicized, using my nickname. “It's McCoy's Bakery.”
“Thom, can you just finish this up for me?”
Her look grew even more unbemused, which I didn't think was possible. “Yes, I can. You were giving directions to IHOP?”
I could hear the ladies protesting about having “three servers in three minutes, each ruder than the one before.”
I like that,
I thought as I made my way behind the counter. Servers
is a much better word than
waitstaffer. I picked up my office phone and pressed the blinking button next to line one. “This is Gwen.”
“Hi, Gwen. This is Brenda Silvio,” said the gruff-sounding woman on the other end of the line. Brenda and her husband, Joe, were the co-owners of McCoy's Bakery. I knew her husband only by phone, and I didn't know Brenda at all. “I understand there's an issue with your order?”
“Yes, Brenda. I haven't received it.”
“Okay, I'm seeing here that your extra bread order was put in at one a.m., by telephone. You left it with the night staff.”
“That's correct.”
“And you wanted same-day delivery.”
“I suppose yes, technically. One a.m. is the same day as today. But that was six hours ago.”
“Well, we don't do that here.”
“âThat' being what?”
“Same day. The night man should have told you that.”
“He did. And I told him that it was okay if I didn't get it until late in the day, because we wouldn't start preparing the sandwiches until after hours.”
“I understand,” Brenda said. “But I can't get the bread to you until tomorrow, late morning. The way our ovens are set up, with schedules, I can't add your fifteen extra loaves until after today's regular run.”
“You're saying a little over a dozen loaves of bread will throw off your entire operation?”
“No. I'm saying I won't let fifteen extra loaves throw off my operation.”
Nashville was sinking, and New York was rising. I had to give it a little free rein, just to keep it in shape.
“Brenda, I order bread three times a week, every week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The deli has been doing that for years. I told your man that I knew this order was unusual due to a special event I have tomorrow. I said I know it's not my usual day but that I wanted everything freshâ”
“Our bread is always fresh!”
“That's right, or we wouldn't be having this conversation,” I said. “I told him I wanted everything fresh and high quality, which is why I didn't just run over to the grocery store and grab what I need. He said he didn't think that would be any problem at all. I told him if he couldn't do it to let me know so I could buy from Sam's in Brentwoodâwho said he could handle the order. That was the last I heard until now. So here's the deal, Brenda. I need that order. If I don't get it, I will move my business to Sam's.”
“Excuse me, but why did you wait until today to place your order?”
“Fair question, Brenda. The answer is, someone on my staff was supposed to have placed the order. He forgot, probably because he was too busy setting up another business opportunity and quitting.”
“I see here that would be Mr. Siegel.”
“That's right. Richard Siegel, my accountant and inventory control wizard.”
Siegel was one of my uncle's last hires, someone he met in a steam room. The previous month, Dick had arrived in Nashville to work at a local subprime lender just before it went under. That was on the heels of having been given a semi-golden parachute from Owen-Wister-Storey in New York. So he went to work for Murray. As soon as I came down here, he started showing up at the deli, usually before closing, and hitting on me. That flopped for two reasons: I believe in the separation of church and state, of work and private life, and he wasn't my type. Physically, he was fine, but I didn't want another New York Jewish male with a Wall Street background.
He didn't take rejection well and started working from home in his bathrobe, running everything by computer. Then, starting a month ago, orders were getting placed incorrectly or not at all. On purpose, I suspect, because Dick reveled in schadenfreude, the German concept of deriving joy from the misery of others. I remember him sitting in the office we used to share, cackling gleefully on the phone because friends there told him that Owen-Wister-Storey was getting parcels meant for the unwashed masses of the other OWSâOccupy Wall Street. The firm subsequently changed its name to Virginian Capital, after one of the partners' mothers. It was immediately picketed by African American members of OWS, who insisted its “stars” logo replicated the Confederate battle flag. Dick claimed to have left the deli to work as an e-trader, investing funds for local widows. The whole thing had the reek of
The Producers,
but, thankfully, it was not my concern.
“So it would appear that Mr. Siegel is the one at fault here, not us,” Brenda said conclusively.
“We are actually in agreement there, Brenda,” I replied. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
I was starting to get heated, like I used to get with my ex-husband, Phil, especially toward the end of my “blissful” few years as Mrs. Silver. We'd get four sentences into a conversation and it would become an argument, no matter what the topic was. Now that I think of it, we once argued about bread, burnt toast, which happened because we were arguing about something else. And usually, two sentences after those four sentences, I was threatening to walk. Like I was now.
Brendaâwhom I really didn't know, and I wasn't sure I wanted toâapparently hadn't heard anything I'd said.
“Ma'am,” Brenda told meâin the same patiently insincere tone of voice I'd just used on the Repeat Returners, which didn't sit so wellâ“ma'am, I'm going to have to talk this over with my husband, Joe, who is the manager. But I think that this is too-short notice.”
In business, repetition is corporatespeak for “You're never going to get what you want.” I know. I did that for years, when I worked in finance.
“Brenda, let me take one final stab at this. I just had a tough time with three other women who didn't seem to understand English, so I'm going to make this simple. I get my order, or you lose my business.”
“There is no need for threats, Ms. Katzâ”
“Apparently there is. Did you not understand that I need the damn bread?”
“Or harsh language.”
I was about to unleash some harsher language when I heard someone say good-bye to her on the other end of the line.
Oh,
thought I.
This is about the shift ending. Overtime
.
“I'll tell you what, Brenda,” I said. “How about you put the brakes on one or two guys in your baking staff leaving? I'll pay for the bread and the overtime. Will that solve the problem?”
Brenda thought for a moment. “That will cost you an extra seventy-three dollars and ten cents.”
“A figure arrived at how?” I asked.
“It's a random but fair number that just came to me,” she said.
“That's a lot of bread, but I need the bread,” I said, wondering if I'd ever have a chance to use that line again. “And I'm willing to accept that we screwed up on our end, so I'll assume, just this once, the extra expense.”
I wasn't typically into appeasement, but this had gone on long enough, and truth be told, I hadn't contacted Sam's. And store-bought rye just wasn't going to cut it. Not for a meeting of the people who were supposed to select the Best of Nashville in my profession.
“I'll tell you what,” Brenda said. “Hold on while I make a quick call.”
“Sure.” I held on. Could it be that my willingness to accede to her needs actually got her to show some compassion? Did such yin and yang actually exist in the business universe?
She came back, sounding light, almost buoyant.
“Ms. Katz, if you're willing to give me a few extra hours, and come in a little early tomorrow, I will get it to you before the usual rounds. Joe will bring it to you personally, fresh from the oven.”
“Bright and early?”
“Before five a.m.”
“For certain? You'll have it here before I open, waiting for me on your little plastic pallets?”
“Still hot,” Brenda said.
“Deal,” I said and hung up. Before she could change her mind.
As I stepped from my cramped office and returned to the deli counter, I saw Luke frozen with a look of horror, Dani all blue eyes, and Thom with her hands crossed over her chest and eyebrows raised. I turned my eyes toward the table of the Repeat Returners as they shook their heads slowly from side to side, sipping on their drinks.
I looked over at Newt in the kitchen.
“I didn't close my door, did I?”
Chapter 2
I had a date that night. I went to a movie with Detective Grant Daniels, whom I helped solve a real murder at a murder mystery party I catered. It was our first catering gig. Naturally, there had to be a homicide. But my uncle used to say, “Wherever there's a loss, there's a gain,” and Grant was it.
Sort of.
Physically, we were a perfect match. Intellectually, he was not like the NYU professor I fell hard for when I was a student, or even Phil, who had an IQ of 120, despite a complete lack of self-awareness. But Grant was pretty sharp and had a lot of Southern graces.
He was also on call 24/7, and that was a pain. Especially because more crime happened at night, when I was in need of companionship and R & R. Not that I was a total day at the beach, either. Phil had left me pretty scarred, since I apparently couldn't measure up to his mother, and after a day of being surrounded by needy customers and almost as needy staff, I didn't have a lot left to give.
The movie was so-soâI am not a fan of Meryl Streep, even though it was sweet of Grant to think I'd want to see her as Margaret Thatcherâand we decided to stay in our respective places since I had to be up real early to make sure the bread was there.
He dropped me at my door, a forty-year-old colonial my late father and his brother had shared on the unfortunately named Bonerwood Drive.
“See you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Sure?” he said, wounded. “Not hell yeah!”
“Hell yeah!” I said.
He frowned. “I know, you're tired.”
“Beat.”
He cupped my face, kissed me softly on the lips. It was a short kiss. We didn't have time to get overstimulated.
“You are surely different from any woman I have ever known,” he said.
“I hope that's a good thing.”
“So far,” he said.
He left with a stiff-armed wave, like a politician getting into a campaign bus. I had an unhappy feeling, but I didn't know why.
I woke fifteen minutes before my alarm went off. The earliest rays of the sun were shining through the crack in the drapes, pinkishly illuminating the flyaway cat hair dancing through the air. I looked down toward the bottom of the bed to see the two wide-eyed, hungry culprits.
“Okay, I'm up. Let's get you fed.”
After emptying a cup of kibble into each of their bowls, I stepped from my cotton robe into a hot shower. Today was going to be great. I could feel it. Sure, the day before had been stressful and I hadn't entirely been myself, but today was the day after the storm, the day the sun came out and the earth smelled clean.
The drive downtown was easy as baking apple pie. That's a wonderful thing about Nashville: there's never any traffic any time of day, even during football games and music events. And that morning every light turned green for me, and there was no line at my favorite Starbucks, inside the neighboring Hotel Indigo. Even though I often made my favorite coffee at home and served coffee at the deli, I couldn't break my Starbucks routine when I wanted a latte. Okay, habit. Old New York addictions are like New York cockroaches. They just don't die.
I parked in my usual spot in the public garage, said my hello to Randy, the parking attendant, then rounded the corner and walked past the Arcade, with its cafés, shops, and salons, where I sometimes sneak off for lunch. I just say that I'm running over to the post office there. One can eat only so much deli food on a daily basis. As a result, I'd gotten pretty tight with all the café owners, since they also came to my deli to eat whatever I had fresh that day. And so our incestuous little culinary world goes round.
I stuck the gold key that I had seen my uncle Murray flip between his fingers countless times into the smooth lock and let myself in. In New York, if you own a great deli, you feel like part of a mob or something. A community that knows all kinds of secrets passed by oral traditionâand the occasional index cardâthrough the generations. I was just starting to get that feeling here: being a part of something great, being talked about around town, and hopefully sealing the deal by being voted Best Mid-Range Restaurant in Nashville as soon as I'd successfully hosted the Best & Worst Committee luncheon that afternoon, which I'd won by lottery. It was sponsored by the local newspaper, a local radio station, the local chamber of commerceâin short, more locals than you find in the New York City subway system. As Murray used to say, “If you can't beat 'em, feed 'em,” and I was about to do both very shortly.
I opened my office, set my grande vanilla latte on my desk, put my purse on Murray's old chair in the corner, and sat down at my desk to check the office voice mail before going out back to make sure the bread was there.
There was only one message. It was from McCoy's.
“Hey, this message is for Gwen Katz. Hello, Gwen. This is Joe Silvio from McCoy's Bakery. I just wanted to let you know that I'm on time to reach your place with your special delivery. It's about four fifty-five in the a.m. today, Thursday, and I should be there in approximately five minutes. I apologize if I'm later than expected, but you are the first stop on my route and I don't get to make up time by rushing. Thank you, and I'll see you in a few. Okay. Again, this is Joe Silvio from McCoy's Bakery. Bye now.”
Okay,
I thought with relief.
That was an hour ago. The bread's definitely here by now.
I went to the back door that led out to my loading dock, which was just a simple concrete ramp designed to make loading and unloading a little easier. I used my key to disarm the emergency-exit push bar, then opened the door slowly, in case my bread had been placed right there.
It hadn't been. What was there, though, was the rear end of a bread truck with a smiley-faced French bread baguette and swirly black lettering that spelled MCCOY'S.
I propped open my heavy door with a cinder block that was there for that purpose. I had a class operation, top to bottom.
“Hello!” I called out.
It was very weird that Joe wasn't coming from the truck. The delivery truck's back door was partly open, and I could see straight through to the front, where the driver was sitting. Maybe he was on the phone? Or taking a power nap?
“Hello? Joe?”
I tried, and failed, to stop my brain from going into a rhyme my father used to say: “Hello, Joe. Whaddya know? I just got back from a vaudeville show!”
I walked down the ramp and stepped up into the back of the truck, ducking my head as I stopped a few feet from the driver. I noticed among the many paper bags of bread a large bunch marked with a black MD for Murray's Deli. I started gathering them in my arms.
“Joe?” I whispered as sweet as tea, in case he had dozed off. “Joe? Can we please just get this bread inside and let me sign for it? I have a really big day, as I'm sure you do, too, since I'm noticing a lot of places still haven't gotten their orders.”
My foot skidded slightly on the floor as I lost my balance. Dropping the bags, I grabbed the back of the driver's side seat, letting the driver's head recline slightly as I did and revealing a pair of bulging eyes and a wide-open mouth. A large chunk of the right side of his neck was completely gone. I was still slipping, as if I were on an icy side street in Hell's Kitchen. I looked down at my feet in slow motion, trying hastily to put things together. My left foot was covered in blood and tissue. That was what I'd slid on.
The blood didn't look like ketchup, as it had when Hoppy Hopewell parachute jumped through Lolo's ceiling without the benefit of a silk canopy a few weeks back. This was more like a fine red wine, except for the blood that had mixed with some of the flour on his white apron, which created a Play-Doh-like paste. Blood had also pooled in the creases of his starched apron in the middle of his chest. Just underneath that pooling, stitched in swirly black thread, the name Joe was still visible. There was a bagged rye bread lying on the gear shift.
I must have dropped my keys, because I heard the loud ting of metal on metal, which caused me to jump backward. The top of my head bumped hard off the ceiling; my right hand shot out reflexively to keep my body upright as several of my fingertips smeared blood on the cold steel enclosure.
Instinctively, I looked out the back of the delivery truck and happened to see Luke standing just inside my deli's back door, his arm hanging weightlessly on the guitar strap slung over his shoulder. I covered my gaping mouth with my unsullied left hand. Neither of us moved.
“Is that real blood?” Luke asked.
“Yeah,” I managed to reply.
“So, like, that guy in there is dead?”
“Y'know . . . I think so,” I replied. “I didn't check. But enough of him is missing from his body.”
“Man. The curse of Murray's.”
“Don't go there,” I warned. “Call nine-one-one.”
“Anything you want me to say, other than we have a dead bread guy?”
“Tell them I found him like this when I went to pick up our order. And bring me paper towels when you're done.”
“Hey, I don't think you should mess with a crime scene. I saw that on a TV show.”
“It's for my hands,” I told him. “I have some of his neck on me, I think.”
“I'm on it,” he said, which made no sense, because it seemed to take him forever to move.
I felt the walls closing in, and I started to get queasy, blood and scraps of ripped tissue and loaves of bread strewn about. The last threads of dawn had given way to Nashville's blazing morning light. I was momentarily scared to move. I heard the bell on the deli's front door jingle.
“It's my pick today, boys and girls! I hope ya'll are ready for some Patsy Cline.” It was the familiar and comforting voice of Thom approaching. Thank God and all His prophets. “Nash, what's going on with Luke? He looks like he's seen a . . . Oh, my dear Lord,
what?
”
I had my head crouched down slightly and saw her fill the open door. I just grimaced stupidlyâit was either that or cry or scream or possibly bothâas Thom reached in and pulled me from the truck, putting her arm around me right before I lost my legs. She sat me on the concrete ramp just outside the deli doors.
“Sit tight. I'm calling nine-one-one,” Thom instructed.
“Luke is,” I told her. I had the strangest urge to sneeze. I suppressed it.
“Okay, fine. I think Luke can manage that,” Thom said. “You want something? Water?”
“I don't think I could get it down,” I said, my nose still itching.
Luke showed up a few seconds later with a bottle of water and an entire case of paper towels.
“The cops are on the way, on the double,” he said.
He tore into the thin plastic casing of the towels as he stared at the macabre tableau. He finally handed me a fresh roll, which I struggled to unspool. I felt like a fingerless cat, and I just started clawing at the glued seam to tear off a clean sheet, my bloody fingertips leaving streaks on the outermost layer.
“I've got to get my keys,” I said stupidly.
“You leave 'em,” Thom said, taking the roll of paper towels and wiping me as if I were three years old and had just made my first, messy Easy-Bake Cake. “We all have keys. Nobody's goin' back in there.”
As I sat there, I heard the bell on the front door jingle again.
“Sorry I'm late, ya'll! I had a late-night line dancing session at the Crazy Horse.”
“Luke, keep Dani in the front of the deli, please!” Thom yelled back.
“What?” Dani said, reaching the door. Her iPad earbuds literally flew out and down as her head snapped back. “Holy bejesus! That's, like,
so
nasty!”
From the mouths of babes,
I thought. . . .