I'll Be Seeing You. Beverly Bird
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watched her unload the red wagon and put things away, then rearrange it all in the cupboards and drawers. When she was done, every spice bottle faced forward, its label visible. He felt his eyes bug a little as he observed the process, and something happened to his blood pressure. Then finally the clock on the window seat began to chime midnight.
Her shoulder blades shifted under that starched white cotton as though she was bracing herself. “Okay, let’s get this over with. I’m tired.”
He wouldn’t argue with her on that one. Raphael leaned forward to take the tiny tape recorder from his jeans pocket and put it on the coffee table.
She cleared her throat carefully. “I’ll ask you again. Am I a witness or a suspect?”
“You’re a witness unless you say something that would indicate otherwise.”
“What if I lawyer up?”
It happened again, yet another facet of temper. This one was a small man standing inside each of Raphael’s temples, battering with tiny, hot fists. “Lawyer up,” he repeated.
“Ask for a lawyer.”
“I know what you meant.” He clenched his jaw. “How about if you leave the cop jargon to me?”
“Fine.” Kate dropped onto the sofa opposite the small love seat he’d chosen. She clasped her hands together and bracketed them with her knees. Her eyes widened as he went through the routine for the tape—his ID, who he was interviewing, the location and the time.
He thought, in spite of himself, that she really did have beautiful eyes. The slant of light from the fringed lamp made them look almost black again, and they shone.
“Okay. First question. What were you supposed to be catering tonight?”
Kate blinked at him and said nothing.
“Care to have me repeat the question?”
“Of course not. I heard you. You just never struck me as stupid.”
Raphael turned the tape off with a deliberate snap. “Can we leave the personal opinions out of this?”
“I wasn’t—”
“Just answer my questions!” He lowered his voice. “Like you would if you were in one of those books you said you liked. You know, the ones where they lawyer up.”
“Then you might try questioning me like they would in those books. What do you think I was catering? It was food. You ate some of it.”
More tiny fists, Raphael thought. Boom-boom-boom at his temples. With a careful, precise motion, he turned the recorder on again. “There was no party in that house tonight. What did McGaffney need a caterer for?”
“Allegra, I would imagine. I didn’t ask. It’s none of my business, except in the respect that it affects what I serve and how I serve it.”
Raphael pressed his thumbs against the little men inside his head. “Ms. Mulhern. I’ll ask again. What were you catering?”
Kate flopped against the sofa cushions, looking at him disbelievingly. “Filets with orange béarnaise sauce for the entree. The appetizer was oysters Rockefeller, followed by a hearts-of-palm salad. Well, you saw what he did to that.” Raphael reached for the tape again, and she hurried on. “We never got to dessert, but I had pears in a caramelized brandy sauce for that course. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“All this for two people?” Raphael clarified. Something in his jaw ticked again.
“That’s what I do.”
“You cater for two people.”
“That’s my niche. Otherwise, I’d be just like every other caterer in Philadelphia. I needed to do something different if I was going to stand out, make my mark.” She shrugged. “I’ve gone for as many as dinner for six, but then it starts negating my purpose.”
Raphael began to understand. “So you do take-out dinners.”
Kate stiffened. “Of course not. Restaurants do takeout. But what do you get? Food in little cartons that someone has to reheat—”
“And then it’s stale.”
She nodded urgently as she would at a clever child. “That’s it exactly. And someone has to be in the kitchen to do all that, to spoon it all out and put it on the table. But I cater.”
“You bring it over and spoon it out and put in on the table.”
He might have just suggested that she shot McGaffney herself. She pulled her spine straight again. Somewhere Raphael thought he heard fingernails scraping down a blackboard.
“I prepare on the premises,” she said stiffly.
“You took all this food over there and cooked it for McGaffney, and served it.”
“Yes. I do all the elegance and service and variety of eating out, but in the privacy and comfort of one’s own home.”
“So how much did this cost him?”
“Two hundred and eighty seven dollars. Plus tax.”
Raphael felt his brows climb his forehead. “McGaffney paid three hundred dollars to have dinner at home with Allegra Denise?”
“He did unless his check bounces. What’s wrong?” She didn’t like his expression.
“Why?” he said, almost to himself. “Why would he do that? Did he call you himself to set this up?”
“I don’t remember. But I can tell you in a minute.”
She got up and disappeared down a short hallway. Raphael waited, wondering. Why hadn’t McGaffney just taken Allegra out, especially for that kind of money? Obviously, he had wanted to be alone with her. But why?
Sex came readily to mind. But knowing Allegra, McGaffney would have gotten that regardless. So he must have had something important to discuss with her. Inside word on the Eagan clan?
Kate came back with a notebook. “He called me himself,” she said, waving it at him.
Raphael nodded. “When?”
“Two days ago. On Wednesday at three forty-seven p.m.”
“You wrote down the time?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Why not? There was no specific reason for it, but it didn’t hurt to do, and who knew when she might need the information, like now? She stared at him without answering.
Raphael looked at her a moment too long. She made a good witness, but her ingrained sense of perfection was irritating the hell out of him. “Did he say why he wanted to engage your services?”
She seemed to think about it fiercely. “No.”
“Nothing,” Raphael clarified.
“He just said he was having a lady over.”
“Did he say where he had gotten word of your business?”
“No, but I had a great review in the newspaper in June. Ever since then, I’ve been doing four or five dinners a week. I’ve even had to cut back on my hours at the diner.”
“You cook at a diner, too?”
She nodded.
“Why? If you’re doing five of these dinners a week, you’re knocking back maybe fifteen hundred dollars, right?”
“Wrong. That’s before costs. And paying the help. And taxes.”
“Who helped you tonight?”
“No one.”
“Then what does your help do?”
Kate sat back and rubbed her