LITMIR.BIZ

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heavens for relatives that give me sanity breaks once in a while.”

      I smiled. Grace, her sister-in-law, had two kids of her own and was taking the gathered bunch on an overnight outing to Nashville Shores.

      “Chris is away on a long one, huh?”

      “He’s back on an international track…Memphis, Chicago, London,” Cazzie said. “It’s a week-long trip sequence. Eight days to be precise. They’ve got him doing two a month, plus a domestic run.” She paused. “How’d you know?”

      I shrugged. Her husband was a commercial airline pilot, and he’d been on a domestic routine when we first met. But the airline had done some reshuffling because of employee cutbacks.

      “I don’t need to be psychic,” I said. “The boys always act up when their dad’s gone for long stretches.”

      Cazzie raised her cup, took a sip of coffee. “His new schedule’s hard on them.”

      I nodded.

      “Hard on me too,” she said.

      I nodded again.

      Caz sighed. “Whiny, whiny,” she said. “I shouldn’t complain.”

      I noticed that she looked a bit awkward. Cazzie knew about my ex, Phil, and his personal strip club revue. But I wasn’t that sensitive. Being divorced was lonely. But no lonelier than living with a man whose extramarital affairs would have left Tiger Woods holding his putter in exhaustion.

      “You never finished telling me about last night,” she said, changing the subject.

      I tried to recall where I’d left off.

      “The food samples,” Caz prompted. “You mentioned that you eventually learned why the police took them.”

      “Oh, right.” I ate some cereal. “Except it wasn’t me who found out. It was my waitress, A.J. I think you’ve met her.”

      Cazzie nodded. “That pretty blonde who gets all the looks.”

      “Looks aren’t the half of it, but let’s not go there right now,” I said meaningfully. “Anyway, one of the cops spilled the beans to A.J. when he took her statement. He mentioned a case in Lexington, Kentucky. This was just last month…a restaurant customer died from the food. The poor guy ordered the Harvest Chicken, which I guess is a chicken, herb and vegetable platter. But somebody messed up and he got the Caribbean Reef Chicken by mistake.”

      “The dish tasted so bad it killed him?”

      “Very funny, Caz. The fact is there was crabmeat in that Caribbean Reef dish. He was allergic to seafood and had a severe reaction.”

      “That’s terrible.”

      “I’ll say. It gave him fatal convulsions on the spot.”

      “But it sounds to me like a freak accident,” Cazzie said, shaking her head. “What’s it got to do with you?”

      “Nothing whatsoever,” I said. “Lexington’s a long way from here. And Sergeant didn’t convulse at all. I hate to sound cold about it, but he just dropped dead. Turned purple and, boom, hit the floor. Well, the floor of the stage.”

      Cazzie looked thoughtful. She topped off her coffee, motioned toward my empty cup with her carafe. I shook my head, having already reached my two-cup limit for the morning. But I was admittedly ogling the cereal boxes again.

      “You said this incident in Kentucky took place a month ago?” she asked.

      “Right.”

      “Then it’s possible the police here are only being extra cautious,” she said. “Did you ask if they noticed any parallels between the two deaths? Other than both taking place in restaurants?”

      “How could I? I didn’t know a thing about the man in Lexington till A.J. gave me the scoop…and that was after the cops left.” I sighed. “Think about it a second. This is something a police officer confided to my employee while I was practically hanging out on the sidelines. I’d might as well not have been there. I was useless, not to mention helpless. A—”

      “—gefilte fish out of water.”

      “You’ve got it,” I said, dotting the sentence in the air with my fingertip.

      We sat quietly in the warm June sunshine. With the Great Toothpaste Spitting War suspended by maternal decree, we could hear the boys hurrying around their room as they prepared to be picked up.

      “From a legal perspective, you face a couple of potential issues,” Cazzie said, shifting into lawyer mode. “One is your restaurant’s potential responsibility…”

      “Huh?” My eyes widened. “Wait a minute, Caz. Wasn’t it you who called Buster Sergeant’s death a freak accident!”

      “That’s why I used the word potential,” she said. “I’m almost sure you won’t have any problems. But it wouldn’t hurt for me to speak with a colleague of mine who’s a liability attorney.”

      “And spread the word that Murray’s Deli does toxic catering?”

      Cazzie offered a thin smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure everything’s discussed under privilege—”

      “Okay, let’s change the subject before I hyper-ventilate,” I said, glancing out the window. “It’s a beautiful morning. I wonder how it’ll be the rest of the day? I love beautiful days. Have you heard the weather forecast, Caz?”

      Caz sat there as her green apple clock ticked away into the silence. “Gwen, trust me, you just need to settle in a little,” she said. “I’m a South Side girl. Never thought I’d be happy living outside Chicago. Then I meet Chris in an O’Hare waiting lounge…and zap! We’re engaged before I know what’s hit me. Cut ahead a year, I’m in Nashville, married to him, listening to his favorite hometown country music stations on the radio. And these days…well, you know how much I like singing along when I drive the kids to baseball and soccer practice.”

      “So you’re saying precisely what? That I should get preggers and become a soccer mom who’s memorized Tammy Wynette lyrics?”

      Cazzie shooed me with a wave of her hand.

      “Moving here was a big change for me,” she said. “It took a while to make the adjustment. I don’t know about feeling like a gefilte fish. But I was definitely an Aurelio’s pizza in a Domino’s box.”

      I looked at her. “I’m not sure the comparison works.”

      “Want an alternate?”

      “Maybe next time.”

      Cazzie smiled gently. I smiled back.

      “I’m not claiming my experiences were identical to yours…but I can relate to enough of them,” she said after a bit. “Give Nashville a chance. I think you’ll fall in love with it, same as I did…and I do love this place. The weather, the people, everything about it. That includes those Goo Goo bars I gave you, and am wondering if you’ve sampled yet.”

      I didn’t answer, afraid to hurt Caz’s feelings. How could I own up to passing on the Goo Goos so soon after she’d gone gaga over Nashville?

      Fortunately I was saved by her sister-in-law. Well, the sound of her car pulling up to the sidewalk out front.

      As Caz craned her head to look out the window, the boys stampeded into the kitchen with their beach totes, playfully flopped up my already mutinous mop of hair (I’m a lifer in the Unruly Hair Club for Jews), and took turns hurrying to get their sports bottles out of the fridge.

      It gave me the perfect opening to exit gracefully before Cazzie could ask about the Goo Goo bars again.

      “You leaving?” she said as I pushed up off my chair. “Grace is popping in for a minute—”

      “I’ll

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