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“What’s going on?” my father asked. “Is Stephanie taking a job as a butcher? Will we get a discount?”
“We already got a tenderloin from Randy,” my mother said.
“Yeah, and it was a big one too,” Grandma said.
My father shoveled shells onto his plate and passed the casserole dish to me. “I like tenderloin,” he said, looking down the table for the red sauce.
My mother jumped on the red sauce and passed it with the antipasto to my father.
“There’s a ricotta cheese filling in the shells,” my mother said to Randy. “But there’s good capicola and roast beef from your store with the antipasto.”
“Glad to hear it,” Randy said. “There should be meat with every meal. Without meat there’s no meal, am I right?”
“I like this boy,” my father said. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”
“How do you feel about bacon?” Grandma asked.
“Bacon makes everything better,” Randy said. “Personally, I don’t like my bacon too crispy. I like to see some pink in the meat and some nice white fat glistening up at me.”
“Stephanie won a slow cooker at Bingo,” Grandma said. “She’s thinking about taking up cooking.”
“If you stop by the meat counter I’ll fix you up with just the right thing,” Randy said to me. “Some nice beef cubes, or maybe some chicken thighs. And if you want to try it out we could put a butcher’s apron on you and get you over to the carving station and let you butcher your own chicken.”
“Would she get to use one of them big cleavers?” Grandma asked.
“Sure,” Randy said. “She can use whatever she wants. If she comes to work for me she’ll even have access to the meat grinders and the power saw for when we get the whole side of beef in. I got a power saw that makes slicing through a steer’s thighbone child’s play. And she can make blood sausage and chopped liver.”
“It sounds like a r
eal exciting job,” Grandma said.
“I can’t wait to get to work every day,” Randy said. “It’s always something new. One day you get sheep brains, and then the next day it’s cow tongue.” He turned to me. “Have you ever had tongue? It’s a real delicacy. I like it when it’s sliced thin, but I know some people stew it up.”
I had half a shell in my mouth, and I didn’t think I was going to be able to swallow it. I’d had a decent amount of tongue over the years, but I hadn’t sliced or stewed any of it. I took a sip of wine and hoped the shell would slide down and not come back up.
“I’m not actually interested in the butcher job,” I said to Randy. “I’m not good with meat and poultry.”
He nodded. “It takes a special person. It’s a calling.”
“She’s a darn good bounty hunter, though,” Grandma said. “And she’s investigating about the murdered women who got thrown into Dumpsters.”
Randy forked in some shells. “I knew all those women. They shopped at my deli.”
“I would have thought they’d shop locally. Rose Walchek lived by the button factory on the other side of town. And Melvina lived in Hamilton Township.”
“They all belonged to the Senior Discount Club,” Randy said. “They got special deals at a handful of stores.”
“What were the other stores?”
“The liquor store at the Woodley Mall. The gas station on the corner of Hamilton and Bryant. Morton’s Bakery. There were some other stores, too, but I can’t remember them all.”
“How come I don’t know about this?” Grandma said. “I’m a senior.”
Randy spooned red sauce over his shells. “It’s part of the wellness program at the Senior Center. You have to be signed up for the wellness program.”
“I don’t go to the Senior Center much,” Grandma said. “I get depressed looking at all those old people.”
Isn’t it strange how life works? Here I was thinking I was paying a steep price for shells and chocolate cake, and then out of nowhere this nugget of information got dropped into my lap. All the women belonged to the Senior Discount Club. I knew there was a chance it’d be another dead end, but it felt meaningful. It was as if God had sent me Randy Berger. I smiled at him, and he broke out in a sweat.
