Basil Instinct by Shelley Costa Read Free Book Online Page A

them. I’m not quite sure what that would entail, but I think it would have to include weapons more impressive than my cheese grater.
    I could scare them. I would hint at consequences that might imply the loss of body parts. I would conveniently let slip the indebtedness of Don Lolo Dinardo to me for performing the Heimlich maneuver on him when his scungilli appetizer was literally taking his breath away. As I yanked open my car door when the first class meeting ended without that strega Courtney Harrington having to call the fire department, I found I was liking this total fiction about a mythical goodfella named Don Lolo. Mitchell Terranova and Slash Kipperman (who informed me that he was to be called Slash the K, the little brat—I silently added the brat part myself) may beseventeen-year-old sociopaths, but they were still just seventeen-year-olds.
    I could most definitely play with their heads.
    So, when class ended, I kept Georgia Payne and Corabeth Potts around. Corabeth let me know she was anxious about missing the bus back to CRIBS. I thought this concern showed some good stuff in the big girl. She was actually sweating a little. Narrowing my eyes, I had a moment wondering whether she was either high or snowing me, but thought not. Narrowing my eyes again—this time, trying to picture her dressed in the Miracolo look—I thought I could work with this girl.
    So, I brought on the temporary help.
    I hired Georgia—who mentioned she was hoping to get back into kitchen work after being away for a while— to be a second sous chef for the next few days. She seemed pleased, ready to show up at Miracolo the next day, and reasonably well dressed, without any part of her backside telling whole chapters of, say, the Tolkien trilogy. Corabeth I would turf to Paulette and Vera for a nuclear makeover that would find her waiting on customers before she could say Callowhill Residential Institute for Behavioral Success. I’d call the stalwart folks at CRIBS and square it with them. Georgia even offered to pick her up on the way to Miracolo later that afternoon.
    On a mission, I swung by Target and shoppedfor the Corabeth makeover. A size-16 pair of black pants with elasticized waistband. A white Oxford button-down shirt in XXL. And a box of Nice ’n Easy hair color in black, but then I thought the effect would be a little too Lily Munster, so I exchanged it for ash blonde. If Corabeth kicked up rough at the changes, Paulette would have to make it clear these were, well, conditions of employment. She needed to conform to the Miracolo “look.” Which I secretly believed was tiresome, but while Maria Pia Angelotta was in charge, what are you going to do? Black pants, white shirt.
    In just forty-eight hours, the Miracolo “look” would also include murder, but for now, as I slung the Target bag into my car, we were keeping it down to nothing more than pants and shirts. When life was still simple.
    Halfway back to my place, my phone sang out some Scott Joplin ragtime at me, and I picked up. “Hey, Eve,” said the caller. “It’s Joe Beck.” He always tells me his whole name, like I’m not going to recognize his voice, or he’s distinguishing the Joe he is from all the other Joes I must know, or he’s not quite comfortable being on just a first-name basis with me.
    “Hi, Joe Beck. I’ve got a problem.”
    “You mentioned.”
    He didn’t sound nasty about it, so I forged ahead. “It’s my nonna.”
    “I figured.”
    In an acquaintance of just one month, already he got the picture of life in the Angelotta brood. Life happens to Maria Pia, and all the rest of us scramble around trying to push it back or just jump out of its way. In a sense, I suppose, life was not unlike lighted matches being flicked at you. “It’s a long story,” I told him, which is when I discovered that I thought it was.
    “Highlights?”
    “Oh, possible homicide, reckless endangerment, abuse of a recipe . . .” Was there no end to the