A Brisket, a Casket
Delia Rosen
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
Dedicated to three whose memories
most especially brought this book to life:
Uncle Jack, Harry Burke,
and Noni Kosinski
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter One
“Hey, watch it. Ya’ll almost knocked over my babka!”
“Did not.”
“What you mean, Jimmy? I saw you bump the babka. Makes you the second person tonight.”
“There you go again. A bump’s a whole ’nother thing from knockin’ it over. Besides, how come you’re only on my case if somebody else did it too?”
“’Cause you’re the one’s here right now. And the one who ought to know better.”
“Since when’s ignorance an excuse, Newt?”
“Never mind. Bump my babka before the dough rises, you might as well knock it to the floor. Ain’t nobody wants a flat babka.”
“Saying that’s true, for argument’s sake. If it already got bumped twice on that there counter, maybe you should think about makin’ some kinda change.”
“Like what?”
“Like puttin’ put your babkas someplace else.”
“Like where?”
“Like anyplace except where they block the way to my machine…”
Turning from my office stairs—they were in the kitchen near its swing doors—I stared at the roast pig that should have been a pastrami and tried to ignore my bickering staffers. Newton Trout was the restaurant’s head cook and baker. Jimmy DuHane was my dishwasher. Their nonstop arguments could be annoying at the best of moments, and I was a certified wreck.
I’m Gwen Silver née Katz, owner of the only Jewish deli in Nashville. It’s named Murray’s, after my dear, late uncle, Murray Katz, the illustrious Swami of Salami, who’d bought the place for a song thirty years ago and made it a Tennessee two-stepping success. When he left the business to me after his recent death, I’d been living in my native New York and was sure I wouldn’t want any part of it. But sometimes things happen to make “sure” go out the window with…well, whatever else you toss. In my case, it was a twenty-four-karat gold Tiffany wedding band that I’d contentedly worn for half a decade.
Long story, details to come. Right now, I was too horrified by the stuffed pig on the counter in front of me to grit my teeth about my ex-husband Phil, who I suppose could be considered the pig I left behind.
Not that my present company wasn’t a quality hog. Cooked to a deep golden brown, glazed to perfection, it lay on a platter of romaine lettuce with a bright red apple in its mouth, redder cherries for eyes, and seedless watermelon wedges tucked under its outstretched forelegs like fruity sofa cushions. Though larger and plumper than my new cat Southpaw, it had little piggy ears that curled exactly the way hers did when she was getting set to torment Mr. Wiggles, the elder of my two feline hell-raisers.
The difference being that the tips of the pig’s ears were crisp.
Thankfully, I’d never seen Southpaw’s ears with crispy tips. In fact, the image was almost upsetting enough to trigger a cigarette craving in me. Not that it took much.
“Hey, Nash…the kid fetch the pastrami yet?”
I tore my eyes from South—um, the roast hog. “Nash” was short for Nashville Katz, a nickname I’d kind of acquired with the restaurant. More on that later too. Promise.
As I turned toward the kitchen’s swing doors, I saw that Thomasina “Stonewall” Jackson had poked her head in from the dining room amid a blast of karaoke music, her sprayed, soaring bubble of hair almost colliding with the upper door frame.
Thom’s hair is a metallic bluish gray color that matches the restaurant’s old-fashioned tin ceiling. I mention this because it’s wise to remember that she describes it as snow-white, and says the poofing effect makes it look like a “yummy vanilla parfait.” Anyone who differs might want to think twice about going public.
“Luke hates when you call him a kid,” I said.
“Well, I hate when people cuss, and you do more of that than a cowhand with saddle itch.”
“Who’s cursing? Did you hear me curse?”
“Night’s still young. And besides, the kid ain’t here.”
I made a face. Thomasina had been my uncle’s powerhouse manager forever. To know her was to love her. Well, okay, I’m full of it. She might’ve come within a half mile of tolerable on the best of days. Like when the sky was full of sunshine, my hair was relatively tame, and I weighed in at 135 before breakfast. And when I won at least fifty bucks on the scratch Lotto. And the guy who cashed my ticket was an ultimate blue-collar hunk.
“Luke phoned from the airport a few minutes ago.” I wobbled my cell phone in the air. “He had a problem at the baggage claim.”
“What’s the pastrami doin’ in baggage claim? I thought it came on a super-duper air cargo flight?”
“It did.”
“Then why ain’t it at the cargo terminal?”
“Good question,” I said. “All I know is there was a mix-up somewhere. And that the pastrami wound up on the carousel.”
“At a passenger terminal.”
“Right.”
“With people’s suitcases?”
“I guess.”
“You guess? Did the pastrami land or not?”
I shrugged. “Luke spotted it on the conveyor belt and pushed his way through the crowd. But it got carried back around behind the wall before he could grab it.”
“And then what?”
“That was the last I heard from him.”
“So you don’t know that it got here.”
“I told you, Luke saw it. They packed it in a special cooler.”
Thomasina looked skeptical. “They” meant the Star Deli in Burbank, California, and she mistrusted anyone or anything beyond the Tennessee border. Never mind that I’d only phoned in a long-distance pastrami 911 because our local meat distributor messed up my order, which I’d in turn only placed after our online corporate catering orders had mysteriously gotten