LITMIR.BIZ

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there was a cozy scene. They had Glen Miller playing on the record player while Ruth and another old woman fussed around in the kitchen making salad and mashed potatoes. Adele sat at the counter with a drink and a cigarette, telling some story about her late husband and how men are. The table was set with old-fashioned china, nice silverware and a pot of flowers. I smiled and felt like I was a kid back home in New York with Ma and my grandma cooking Sunday dinner.

      “Look what I found, girls,” Della announced with a broad smile. “Shall we set another place at the table?”

      Ruth turned around, sucking mashed potatoes off her thumb, and lit up. “Mr. Martini, what a nice surprise. Yes, please stay, we have a ton of food here.”

      Ruth had silver gray hair cut short in a man’s style, rimless glasses, and wore jeans and a plain sweater. She looked like the type to ride her bicycle everywhere and she was probably in better shape than I was.

      The other woman, a powder-faced lady older than any of them, looked fairly sour at the prospect of a strange man joining the party. I assumed she must be Fern.

      Adele said, “Sure, come on in, I’ll make you a drink. What’s your poison?”

      This was old-fashioned entertaining of the kind they just don’t do anymore, and it wouldn’t have taken much to make me believe I’d stepped back about forty-five years. I think I fell in love on the spot.

      “You know, ladies, I would be honored to join you. Just let me go upstairs and put my groceries away.”

      There was a chorus of approval from all but Fern, so I took my bag up to my apartment and grabbed a bottle of wine and the last of my Disaronno. I know what’s expected of men at dinner parties like these—they bring liquor and they flatter ladies. And I was in a mood to flatter ladies.

      When I returned, they had Peggy Lee playing and they were putting dinner on the table. Fern was just taking a pan of white rolls out of the oven, and my stomach growled at the smell of fresh bread.

      I looked at Adele. “Do you have a corkscrew?”

      She nodded and crushed out her cigarette, coming around into the kitchen to get one.

      “Oh, how lovely,” Della said, clasping her hands.

      I opened the wine while Ruth plopped butter on top of a bowl of steaming green beans, and Fern poured dressing over the salad, tossing it before passing it to Della. There was a Key Lime pie on the counter next to the sink.

      Adele put out wine glasses, and I went to pour, but Della stepped into my path. She fondled the lapels of my suit jacket. “Don’t you just look sharp as a tack,” she purred. “You’ll dress up this little party very nicely.”

      Adele rolled her eyes. “Wipe the drool off your chin and sit down.”

      Della shot a look over her shoulder. “God made men good lookin’ so we could appreciate them. It would be rude not to.” She turned back to me and gave my jacket a little tug. “Would you like me to hang this up for you?”

      “Thanks,” I said and let her slip it off me, switching hands with the wine to get my arms out of the sleeves.

      I filled the glasses while Adele and Ruth went to the table, then I held a chair for Della who smiled and sat down like a queen. Fern came shuffling out of the kitchen with a big platter of sliced pot roast, which I offered to take for her. She scowled, but she let me, so I figured I was making progress. When I held a chair for her too, I’m sure I saw her flick a suspicious glance at me.

      Dinner itself was a marvelous affair, with swinging music, good conversation, and amazing home cooked food. I made a silent toast to the guy who tore down my old place and thought maybe he’d done me a favor.

      I learned a lot about the quartet. Adele was originally from Jersey, and Fern was her sister-in-law. Adele and her husband had moved to Florida for his health shortly after they married, and opened the hardware store. When Adele’s brother Walt died, Fern came to live with them, and when Adele’s Henry passed away, they closed up the shop and rented out apartments.

      Ruth had been an Economics professor in Pennsylvania, but was now retired and spent a lot of her time traveling. Like the others, her husband was long gone, but she’d divorced him in her forties.

      Della was born and raised in South Carolina and had also come to Florida with her husband when he retired. She didn’t say so, but I gathered they had come from money, and living in an apartment above an old hardware store was most definitely not the style to which she’d become accustomed. To her credit, that didn’t seem to squash her spirit in the slightest.

      After dinner, Fern served pie. I got up to pour myself a glass of amaretto and offered some to the ladies.

      “My, how elegant,” Della said, coyly holding out a glass of ice.

      Ruth looked amused. “You are an interesting man, Mr. Martini,” she said, but accepted a glass as well.

      “You can call me Dino,” I said.

      She smiled and nodded.

      Adele passed in favor of bourbon and water, and we all sat down again.

      Then Ruth asked the thousand dollar question. “So, Della says you’re a consultant? What kind of work do you do?”

      “Yeah, interesting story there.” I studied the ice in my glass and figured it was time to come clean. “That is the truth, but not the whole truth. What I am is a private eye.”

      “Oh, go on,” said Della waving a hand at me.

      I grinned and took out my wallet to show her my P.I.’s license.

      She looked it over and said, “Very sexy!”

      Yeah, okay, it wouldn’t be the first time I got a kick out of impressing someone with it, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Sue me.

      Adele, on the other hand, looked a little ticked off, and she pointed at me with the two fingers clutching her latest cigarette. “That’s what you want to use the storefront for,” she said, “and have a bunch of thugs running in and out of here like a Mickey Spillane movie?”

      I tried my very best placating smile on her. “It’s not like that, I swear. It’s mostly very run of the mill stuff,” I said, and I told her about the lawyers and the insurance agents and the sweet, elderly ladies who just wanted little Jimmy from the old neighborhood to have something to remember them by.

      “You can really lay the crap on thick, can’t you?” she said.

      “Yes, ma’am. Comes with the job. I got top marks in my crap spreading class.” I grinned, because she was, and added, “But I’m serious when I tell you I have almost never had an incident at home I would call at all dangerous. Mostly it’s just pissed off husbands who want to take a piece out of me for telling their wives they’re cheaters.”

      “My goodness,” said Della, fanning herself with her napkin.

      “And what do you do about that?” Ruth asked.

      I leaned back in my chair and smiled. “I’m a charming guy. I just explain to them how it’s all better off this way, and she was gonna find out anyway, and that really I’ve done them a favor.”

      She leveled her gaze on me and said, “And if that doesn’t work?”

      “I knock ’em on their asses and threaten them with police action or blackmail, whichever I think will scare them the most. That usually does the trick.”

      Fern looked positively scandalized, but the rest of these ladies had been around the block a few times, and I got a sense that while on the one hand they were concerned about safety and the sanctity of their homes, on the other, they were all thinking that having a resident P.I. would be a kick.

      “Ladies, please, you won’t even know I’m here unless I get hungry and come looking for more pot roast.”

      Della giggled, and Adele

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