"Between Le Chien Rouge and Miracolo." Probably the only brilliant thing I had come up with so far that day.

"But why?" she sputtered.

Figuring it out as I went along, I said I believed she needed to be careful not to overexpose herself as a performer. I added an a.n.a.logy about how people all love what's rare and turn their backs on what's common. And I finished up by a.s.suring her that I'd understand perfectly if she chose Eloise Timmler's fine establishment.

And at that moment I realized I would miss her. I'd miss having her around because she's an affectionate person who truly loves what she does, even if she doesn't do it particularly well.

Puzzled at the idea of overexposure, but sensing it might not be good business, Dana said she'd have to think it over. But tonight she was ours. "Speaking of Eloise," she lowered her voice in her Gossip Girls voice, "I think she's got a guy."

I was scrutinizing the dining room, trying to pinpoint what was bugging me. So far, nothing. I sighed. "Oh, yeah?" Was it possible there was a man besotted enough to look past the health code violations?

"I just came from there-I figured I'd stop by during the slow time-and caught them in the kitchen." She went on to describe how cozy it had all looked, Eloise sc.r.a.ping off the grill, the guy running his hands around her waist. "Very cozy indeed. Pillow talk missing only the pillows"-Dana winked-"if you know what I mean."

Dana thought he looked kind of familiar, like maybe she's seen him around town. A cool kind of look, denim shirt, rugged looks. "And I said to myself, well, Eloise has got herself a Marlboro Man!"

Seriously? Eloise Timmler?

When Dana left to go work on her personal "choosing crisis," as she called it, I sat back in the booth and thought about the latest problem. What was the likelihood there was another Marlboro Man in town? It could happen, I supposed, drumming my fingers on the table. And my definition of this subspecies might very well differ from another's.

But I found myself feeling pretty narrow-eyed at the thought that Mark was up to something behind my back.

Or . . . was Mark up to something behind Eloise's back?

Either way, I didn't like it.

The front door swung open and Vera Tyndall appeared, early. While she handed me the linens delivery bags and started covering the tables, she talked about how much better her brother was doing and asked about Maria Pia. Pulling a Joe, I went all monosyllabic on the subject. Vera looked at me with a grin and kept working, her hair held back in a pretty black-and-gold headband. No one managed the Miracolo "look" better than Vera, who could somehow make you think that a white tailored shirt and black pants were a radical fashion statement.

Giancarlo arrived stiffly.

Followed by Alma, who had had bangs cut-at the suggestion of her grief support group, she told me-and jazzed up her baggy black pants with a new sample of Art for Your Feet! Paulette breezed in, heard about the various crimes, and stacked the poor empty shadow boxes as though she was putting away kids' toys at the end of the day. When Jonathan sailed in with a basket of wine, I had a crazy moment of wanting to leave the Closed sign up and head out to the countryside with the staff for some late-afternoon wine and cheese alfresco.

I broke into all the chatter to tell them about tomorrow morning's meeting at Joe's for the Free Maria Pia operatives.

Choo Choo pushed through the double doors, and when Vera sailed a smile at him, I discovered my cousin's secret: he was sweet on Vera Tyndall. The ramped-up personal style, the small portions, the blush he was wearing that very second. My heart lifted.

I grabbed the two linens bags and went back to the kitchen, humming. Things suddenly didn't hurt so much-my shoulder, my pride, my grandmother, my uncertainties about Mark, my conversations with Joe, even the prospect of twenty years in the slammer. And, in honor of love, I decided to make my special filling for the Great Miracolo Cannoli Rebellion.

14.

Four hours later I was in the middle of the dinner rush, up to my sleeves putting the finishing touches on an order of scabeggio, my favorite marinated fish dish, when I realized what I wanted to do: stake out Mark Metcalf. Garlic always sharpens my thinking. Content now, I reimmersed myself in the wine, garlic, lemon juice, and (user-friendly amounts of) sage aromas of my work.

When I stuck my head through the kitchen doors much later, Mrs. Crawford-resplendent in a b.u.t.ter-yellow full-length gown with black embroidery-was finishing up her last set with Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue." Vera was erasing the words Ricolato cannoli from the specials board, to the satisfying sounds of inconsolable anguish from the customers. And as the night came in through the front windows, I could half shut my eyes and let myself think our soft hanging globes and flickering table votives were moons and stars in some benign universe where the air was scented with lemon and garlic. A place where you could believe the men were honest and true, and the women could sing on-key. Is that too much to ask?

As the late-night regulars drifted in-including Dana, who had added a double strand of pearls-I watched the final two couples gather their bags and wraps. In the kitchen, Landon and Choo Choo were discussing the Phillies' chances.

I decided everything looked under control, which, of course, is always worrisome, but I kissed my cousins good night, saluted Li Wei, and donned a black zipped hoodie I yanked from the lost and found. With my black pants, black top (with hood fully deployed), and black Keds high-tops, I looked like a ninja homey. In terms of stakeout chic, it was a little too "in the box" for my taste, but as a newcomer I had to start somewhere.

As I slipped into the night, I got a grin from the smitten Choo Choo and a "Tell me you're going to a mime bar" from Landon. I snaked through what backyards I could between the restaurant and the northeast corner of Market Square, pushed my way through some uncooperative hedges, and emerged onto the side street that connected us to Callowhill Street, where the streetlights were so bright you'd think it was Madison Square Garden.

I dashed into the shadows, and tried on a hiphop gait, head down, as I pa.s.sed a group of college girls. I was jazzed. I was pumped. Clothes really do make the manic. When I was in range of Full of Crepe, I oozed across Callowhill Street and looked totally suspicious loitering at the side of the Herb and Yarn Shoppe. On the one hand, I told myself, Be bold, and on the other hand, I thought, What are you, nuts?

Suddenly I wondered why it had not occurred to me to stake out Mark in my car. It would have made sense, parking across the street in an inconspicuous old car that draws about as much attention as a middle-aged lady in T-shirt and jeans in a bingo hall. But as Landon once pointed out to me, my brain always looks for the longest distance between two points. He calls it Eveometry.

When I hung back as a patrol car cruised down Callowhill Street, I realized Eloise's storage container in her driveway offered the perfect cover. Peeking around it, I could see that the restaurant was dark, but there were lights on in the back.

What's the plan, Angelotta? Well, first I should determine the worst-case scenario, which seemed to be discovery. Once I came to terms with that, I could relax and go for bold.

I decided to handle discovery by Mark with total honesty. The exchange would go something like this: when he asks what the h.e.l.l I'm doing skulking around, I would go all Needy Mental Case on him, accusing him of cheating on me, making up a slew of broken promises he had never made in the first place, flinging our nonexistent fling at him. In short, full-out pazza ragazza. Crazy girl.

Most definitely a plan.

Of course, the stakeout might prove that Dana was hallucinating, and that Mark and I were just a matter of time. The office couch was going nowhere. So I actually tiptoed along the side of the pod and frog-walked my way past the creperie windows. Although my thighs were screaming, my mouth was clamped shut. I rose upright just enough to get the lay of the land, stepped through the bushes lining the building, and cursed Eloise for planting something with stickers and p.r.i.c.kers. What didn't scratch my ankles gripped me by my hoodie.

Then a loud metallic roar, pretty much like how I imagined the End of Days to sound, sent me sprawling on the ground between the bushes and the building. My heart was trying to burst out of my chest and the words sitting duck leaped to mind, but then I saw that the side floodlight was broken. Phew. I twisted a smidge to find the source of the noise.

Near the bottom of the driveway, the metal door of the pod had been rolled up and the storage unit was standing wide open. A dim Coleman lantern sat at the edge of the bay while a dark figure moved around inside, carrying something. It looked like a dead body, and my stomach lurched. What was in my karma that seemed to place me within twenty-five feet of corpses?

The Coleman lantern may have been helping the mysterious mover, but it wasn't clearing things up for me, clinging full of dread to the earth. But when I forced myself to take a closer look, I decided the shape of the Thing Moved looked more like a rug than a body.

Okay, so Eloise Timmler was still moving in. That was kind of boring. But then the window just above me slid open and a voice called out. I chewed the dirt.

"That you out here?" Eloise herself.

Presumably, she wasn't talking to me.

Indistinct mutterings from the pod.

"Come on in. I'll be done soon," Eloise said, and I heard her walk away from the window. When I heard two feet on the driveway I looked as far over my shoulder as I could, catching only the edges of the shadowy figure, who shut down the lantern, set it on the driveway, and pulled the pod's rolling door back down.

There was no way I could just leap up, push my way back through the bushes, and spring away into the night. So I stayed as motionless as I could and hoped for some deliverance that did not include being pulled upright by the hoodie.

Footsteps.

I swallowed hard.

When I caught a peripheral glimpse of the figure heading for the front door of Full of Crepe, I shuddered with relief. Now would definitely be the time to ease myself to my feet and ooze off into the night, but I got stubborn. I wanted some answers.

After I counted to sixty, I rose up to the half-open window. Halfway across the dimly lighted room was Eloise Timmler spray-washing a pot. Lounging next to her was my Marlboro Man, Mark Metcalf. So Dana at least got that right: they knew each other.

Okay, so he was helping Eloise move in. Nice of him. This was one of the reasons I liked him. He was helpful, like an Eagle Scout. How he knew her, and for how long, and why exactly, were none of my business. (Which was both true and false all at the same time.) He'd probably just happened by Le Chien Rouge one day, craving something sweet and syrupy, and knew her as a customer. Maybe there was a little flirtation between them, whatever Dana saw or thought she saw, but was that any reason to- They started talking, but it was hard to make out the words over the sound of the power spray hitting the metal pot.

Eloise: "-much longer, Mark."

Mark: "-patience, it's not-" (He stepped behind her and nuzzled her neck, and my mouth went grim.) Eloise, who sprayed the wall by mistake: "-risk just keeps-"

Mark the b.u.m: "-beyond our wildest-" (He supplemented his cliches with some hand work that I, after three dates, had never seen.) Eloise, who dropped the pot: "-last time, I don't think I-"

Mark the Groping b.u.m: "-baby, sweetie, tastykake-"

"Tastykake?" I mouthed. Was he kidding me? I didn't know about Eloise, but the word tastykake always put me in mind of round, chocolate-covered dream treats with a layer of peanut b.u.t.ter inside-not s.e.x. But clearly, the crepe cook and I were different people. She attracted Marlboro Men. I attracted corpses.

Since I didn't want to stick around to learn just what the word tastykake led to, I elbow-crawled and frog-walked my way back down the driveway to the cover of the pod, to steal silently into the night. But not before running into the Coleman lantern, which fell over with a clatter.

Sat.u.r.day As I hung out with a ratty afghan in my b.u.t.terfly chair at 1 a.m., with a shot of Laphroaig in my hand, I took turns between pondering Big and Little Dippers and the faithlessness of men. In the partial moonlight the constellations were particularly lucid, which was more than I could say for myself. I sipped a little more. Looking up at the brilliant night sky was all I could do, because gazing toward the center of Quaker Hills was making me sadder than I could stand.

I knew that I was really kind of lucky to be just a witness to Mark's faithlessness and not more intimately involved. When finally neither the afghan nor the Scotch kept off the night chill, I went back inside my tiny Tumbleweed home, locked up, and climbed alone up to my sleeping loft.

In the morning I woke up in a bad mood. So it didn't help that the milk was sour. And that I still couldn't figure out what was bugging me about the murder. And that I couldn't find my phone. And that I had a sudden craving for Tastykake. All this was bad, bad, bad. I threw on a top and a pair of shorts, and found my phone under the heap of stupid red dress I had kicked off the edge of the loft the night before.

When I headed out to my Volvo, even the dew on the gra.s.s bugged me. Some days it was galling that the world went on spinning, even when you were pa.s.sed over by love and headed for twenty years in the slammer. If there was any spoliating to be done, I had wanted it to be by Mark. I was pretty sure that wouldn't have landed me in the big house. Hurling an epithet at the morning dew, I slammed myself into the car and realized there was some fog that could receive some choice words as well.

My GPS took me, bad att.i.tude and all, straight to Joe Beck's place for the meeting of the Free Maria Pia ops. It turned out to be a carriage house on the margin of the Quaker Hills Historic District, and I discovered that renovated carriage houses were right at the top of the list of what annoyed me that morning. It was old brick and old ivy and old slate roof. So trite. When I saw a silver Subaru that could only be his, I rolled my eyes. If he served anything other than Tastykake, I might blow sky-high.

Landon pulled up behind me, so I waited for him, scuffing my thonged toes in the gravel. He looked me over. I crossed my arms, adjusted my sungla.s.ses, and crossed my arms again.

"Mime bar not work out?" he asked softly.

I looked around, then spilled it. "Mark Metcalf is seeing Eloise Timmler," I said through barely moving lips. "In a manner of speaking."

"Ah," said Landon. "And Mark Metcalf would be . . . ?"

"Well, this morning I'm thinking he's not the love of my life, after all."

Alma and Vera crunched across the gravel toward us. I gave them a wan smile.

Landon went for reasonable. "Perhaps he has an explanation that wouldn't rule out the love of your life part."

I snorted. "And Tastykakes grow on trees."

Kayla and Dana crunched across the gravel together. I shot 'em a world-weary look.

Landon grabbed my arm and steered me toward Joe's front door, which, lucky for Joe, did not have a cutesy sign reading Welcome Friends on it. "Suspend judgment," whispered my cousin.

I kept my sungla.s.ses on and, when Joe let us in, muttered something that had some of the right syllables to be taken for "Good morning." With his jeans, he was wearing the kind of shirt that makes you think he likes the Great Outdoors. And he was barefoot. That morning I didn't care for feet. Or Crate and Barrel coffee cups. Or gravel. He had all three. He also had a few sisal rugs, saddle-brown leather couches, bookshelves with actual books, and a wall of windows at the back so he could look out at the fog and the gravel while he sipped French-press coffee from those Crate and Barrel coffee cups.

"Cara mia!" chirped Landon. "Your hair!" As he started raking his fingers through my hair, I realized that I hadn't combed it. I accepted the offered coffee, my sungla.s.ses in place. Let everyone think I had tied one on last night, or woken up with a migraine. Landon brought me a plate that held a toffee brioche, which I accepted wordlessly. A brioche on a plate is better than a Tastykake in the head.

Then I sat silently, shoulder to shoulder with Landon.

When Joe shot him a look like What's wrong with her? Landon gave him a face that said Dunno, this is how I found her. I elbowed him and he winced. Once we were all a.s.sembled-Choo Choo, Paulette, Jonathan, Alma, Kayla, Vera, Landon, Dana, Joe, and I-Joe made his report. He had visited his client, Maria Pia, in jail yesterday afternoon and discussed the evidence with her. (Here he looked at me and I could tell he was itching to ask about the bracelet, so I slid my sungla.s.ses down just far enough to give him the look that usually precedes an especially vigorous malocchio.) Undaunted, he went on to tell us that he'd explained that she'd be arraigned on Tuesday-which meant she'd hear the formal charges and enter a plea of Not Guilty-after which she'd be out on bail. He'd a.s.sured her that we were all at work on the investigation, and that the blue kimono Choo Choo had brought did indeed look lovely on her.

Suck-up, I thought with a smirk.

He looked directly at me. "Only because she asked."

Then he called for a report on any recent findings.

Alma reported that Sasha Breen of Airplane Hangers was having her hair colored at the time of the murder-which Alma had verified-and that she'd agreed to display three pairs of Toscano's Tootsies. We all clapped. Alma blushed.

Jonathan reported the results of his research on Mather. Dabbing his lips with a napkin, Jonathan told us about Mather's golf handicap, his charitable donations for the past year, and his attendance at three different interior design trade shows. I wondered what light any of this might shed on the murder, but Landon gushed and we all clapped anyway, because we liked Jonathan a lot, and he seemed pleased.

Vera reported on Arlen Mather's address, his delinquent taxes, and his political party.

Paulette pulled out a spiral notebook, put on purple drugstore readers, and made her report on the east quadrant shops. A stakeout of the blind bookstore owner yielded the info that he was cheating on his wife, but three different witnesses verified his alibi for the time of the murder. Repeated quizzing of the old lady who owned the card shop resulted in having to personally drive her to the ER, where Paulette was happy to report that she fully recovered. As for the Korean kid at the dry cleaner's, she ended up following him to a martial arts cla.s.s, where she learned he's a second-degree black belt and decided to eliminate him from suspicion. "I mean, why would he have to use a mortar on his victim?"

"To divert suspicion?" Landon put forward.

Paulette waved it away. "Anyway, he was in his AP calculus cla.s.s at the time of the murder. His teacher verified it, and we're going out for drinks next Wednesday." We cheered and Paulette snapped her reading gla.s.ses shut with a modestly pleased look.

Choo Choo reported on Maria Pia's life in jail. Sympathetic whimpering ensued.

Kayla reported on a mole problem at the farm.

Landon reported on the evidence against our nonna, just so we all knew what we were up against. Neither he, Joe, nor I mentioned the silver bracelet.

When my turn came, I sipped my triple-ethical (organic, shade grown, fairly traded) coffee and said cryptically that I was pursuing inquiries. This grave p.r.o.nouncement was met with some nods and furtive looks. So many furtive looks, in fact, that I found myself wondering what all their alibis were.

Then Dana, who had waited for all the other operatives to wind down, stood up, smoothed her skirt, and informed the rest of them that the dead Arlen Mather was actually a man named Max Scotti. She and Patrick had known him as a financial adviser. And apparently Mr. Scotti was an opera lover.

Everyone reeled with all this new information. Energy surged; coffee cups were refilled.

Alma stepped up and insisted on investigating the personal history of Maximiliano Scotti.

Jonathan teamed up with Landon to go door to door in the deceased's old neighborhood, wherever that may be.

"Mather's?" asked Vera. "Or Scotti's?"

Landon and Jonathan consulted briefly. "Mather's."

Vera said, "Then I'll take Scotti's." Since that could be harder to find, she asked Choo Choo if he'd like to team up with her.

We all took his speechlessness for a.s.sent, and he spent the rest of the meeting with a glazed look on his face.

Paulette a.s.signed herself the task of investigating Mrs. Crawford, citing the old crime-solving adage, Cherchez la femme.

"Good luck with that," was all I said. When Joe laughed, I caught his eye-and his smile-and didn't mind the bare feet or the gravel so much.