Why Is Murder On The Menu, Anyway?

“So, Teddi, about The Steak-Out…” he starts. “I wanted to ask you—” But Nick comes over, his chef’s hat askew, and interrupts him.

“Howard’s girl,” he says, nodding at me and grabbing up my hand to shake it. “Good to meet you again. Madison see you yet?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead he asks Howard if he can talk to him alone for a minute, apologizing to me as he asks.

Howard, looking horrified, says, “No,” really weirdly. Like just “no,” without any “sorry,” or “something wrong?” or anything. I remind myself that another of my New Year’s resolutions was to stop seeing perfectly ordinary things as suspicious. Just because Drew Scoones put a bug in my ear (or wherever he put it) is no reason to let my imagination run away with me.

“I have to powder my nose, anyway,” I say, putting my napkin beside my plate and coming to a stand.

Nick apologizes again and says he only needs a minute while Howard reaches out his hand to stop me from leaving the table. Drew is still watching, now from across the street, and I can just see relating this to him and listening to him guess that Howard’s credit card was refused.

I pat Howard’s hand and get up from the table. The layouts of most restaurants fall into two categories. Cheaper, funkier ones often have their restroom toward the side or front of the place. The ones that want to appear classier, more exclusive, have them in the back, near the kitchen, because they aren’t afraid of what a patron might see. The layout of Madison on Park and The Steak-Out are nearly identical—loos near the kitchen, only the placement of the Male/Female rooms are reversed.

Which explains why I am frozen in my tracks in front of the restroom doors, feeling slightly nauseated and just a trifle dizzy.

“Are you all right?” I hear someone say, and turn to find Madison standing beside me. “You look kind of green, dear.”

I assure her I’m fine, but my hand just won’t reach out and grasp the doorknob. I feel sweat break out on my upper lip.

“Shall I get Howard?” she asks, seemingly caught between leaving me to possibly fall down in a dead faint and wanting someone else to deal with it.

I explain about The Steak-Out and being the one to open the men’s room door and find the body.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she coos over me solicitously. Or, should I say, salaciously. She, like everyone else, no doubt wants the gory details. “So sad about Joe. Who would do a thing like that? In a men’s room, no less. Leave it to a man, right? I swear, it’s the sort of thing you see on television. A regular mob hit, or made to look like one, I’d say. So sad.”

“So you knew him?” I ask, wishing I could pull my antennae in. None of my business. None of my business.

Still…

“Don’t tell Nick,” she says, lowering her voice dramatically. “Especially now. But this was before I even knew Nick, anyway. Joe and I…we were kind of an item for a while. Not that anyone knew. We kept it hush-hush. I mean, a restaurateur and the health inspector. It could be misinterpreted.”

“You owned this restaurant before you knew Nick?” I ask.

“Not this one,” she says. “Another restaurant. In Boston, in fact. Nothing like this one. And I was just a chef, anyway. I’m embarrassed to even tell you the name.”

She can tell me who she slept with, but not where she used to cook. Howard always tells me that chefs take their knives to bed. Now I believe him.

My cell phone rings. It’s the theme from Home Alone, which means one of my kids is calling from home. I apologize to Madison, who didn’t even appear to notice, and I take the call. It’s Jesse, who tells me that his father wants to borrow my car. Only he doesn’t call him “my father.” He calls him “your ex-husband.”

Rio gets on the phone. Before he gets past “How ya doing?” I tell him he cannot borrow my car.

“You really get a kick out of busting my balls, don’t you? In front of our kids, too. You don’t even wanna know what I need it for?” he says like it’s an accusation.

I tell him I don’t. “Unless one of my children is bleeding on the floor and you need to take him or her to the hospital, you can’t borrow the car.”

“It’s something like that,” he says. “And I only need it for a couple of days.”

I ask him what he means by it’s something like that.

He says one of his kids needs to go the hospital.

“I’ll be right there,” I tell him, signaling to Madison that I’m sorry, waving to Howard that we’ve got to leave. He’s deep in conversation with Nick and I decide I can get home faster with Drew and his siren. I should never have left the kids alone. I am a terrible mother. I should be arrested for child abuse.

Only, then who’d raise my kids?

I dash out of the restaurant like a maniac, searching for Drew, while I try to get a straight answer out of Rio.

I should know better.

“Who is hurt?” I demand. Drew appears from nowhere.

“What’s happening?” he demands.

The kids, I mouth. “Rio, I swear to God I will kill you if you don’t tell me, this instant, who is hurt and how they are hurt.”

Drew hustles me toward his car.

“Nobody’s hurt,” Rio says. “I didn’t say anyone was hurt. Did I say anyone was hurt?”

I put up my hand to stop Drew, who looks pretty pale for a man who sees dead people on a daily basis. “If no one is hurt, why are you taking my kids to the hospital?”

“I didn’t say your kids,” Rio says. His voice changes like he’s cupping the phone. “I said mine.”

“What? My kids aren’t your kids?” I ask before I realize what he’s saying.

“I’m gonna be a father again,” he says. I lean against Drew’s car. My legs have turned to gummi worms. Relief? Jealousy? Drew leans into me the better to hear Rio’s news. “The kids are gonna have a new little sister, sometime in the next couple a days.”

“Put Jesse on the phone,” I tell Mr. High Sperm Count while Drew laughs at me and Howard comes charging toward us.

“Mom?” Jesse says, and my heart goes out to this middle child of mine who is always caught in the middle.

“Listen to me, Jesse,” I say as evenly as I can. “Go into my office. In my desk, in that little drawer behind the door that opens for the printer, is some money. Give your father fifty dollars and tell him to use it for a cab to take Marion to the hospital when the time comes. Do not, I repeat, do not, give him the keys to my car.”

Jesse asks if I’m sure he should give him the money and I tell him softly that we do not take out our anger at his dad on a pregnant lady and her new baby. Hell, how else is he going to learn to be a good man? A mensch? Surely not from his father.

When I hang up, the men at my side seem to have nothing to say.

“My ex is going to be a father again,” I say, trying to sound breezy about the whole thing. “What does that make me?”

“Mad?” Howard asks.

“Even crazier than usual?” Drew suggests.

“I mean, Marion is my kids’ stepmother, or will be if Rio ever bothers to marry her. But we’re already divorced, so what would his baby be to me?”

“A thorn in your side?” Howard says.

“A pain in the ass?” Drew suggests.

“I’m glad you two are so thoroughly enjoying yourselves. Too bad it’s at my expense.”