Majoring in Murder

Chapter 4

I spent the whole week thinking about visiting the restaurant to find Carlo, if he was there, and according to Daniel, Carlo was there a lot. Obsessing about where to find Carlo and what to say when I did helped keep my mind from consuming me with what I did to my former teacher.

I left school early Friday afternoon, around three o'clock, and drove to Buckhead. I pulled into a parking space a block away, fed the meter, and walked to the restaurant. When I entered, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. I wasn't surprised to find that there weren't many people in the dining area.

"Just one, sir?" the maître d behind the podium asked.

"No. I'm meeting someone who's already here," I lied and walked past him into the dining area. I made my way slowly across an elegant wood floor, scanning the room for Carlo. Garlic strings hung from a wide circular light fixture in the center of the room and I could hear the sound of food searing in the kitchen. An orange flash in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I turned to glimpse a white-clad chef tending a large open rotisserie grill through the kitchen door as a waiter exited. My stomach growled with hunger at the aromatic scents of meats, fish, and onions on the grill. I saw no sign of Carlo and wondered if I'd ever be able to find him. Then I noticed a stairway ahead of me at the end of the dining room and headed for it. When I reached the top, I found a bar to my left with shelves packed with a wide array of liquors. A mirror behind the bottles gave the room the illusion of being wider. A stack of crystalline tumblers formed a pyramid on the counter beneath the bottles. Black wooden barstools stood before a marble countertop lined with padded leather.

A solitary drinker at the bar waited as the bartender poured him a glass of scotch on the rocks. Three small alcoves to my right gave way to private dining tables. I walked past the first and peeked inside to find that it was empty. In the second, Carlo sat facing me with his back to the wall. He was stuffing a forkful of rigatoni into his mouth. When he saw me, he straightened in his chair, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin, and waved me in to join him.

"Would you like something to eat?" he asked very casually.

Despite the seriousness of my visit, I realized I was famished. I looked over my shoulder and noticed the waiter patiently waiting to take my order. I ordered some calamari, and the waiter disappeared as quietly as he had arrived.

"I was wondering when you were going to come see me," Carlo said as he poured more wine into his glass. I saw that the bottle in the flask was Rosso Chianti. He gestured for me to have some, but casual dining with Carlo hadn't been my purpose. I was scared, pissed, and I wanted some answers. Despite my emotions, though, I had some of the Chianti.

"You must've heard about what happened at...about the explosion," I began.

Carlo finished chewing and wiped his mouth with the linen napkin. "Yeah, I heard about that. It was too bad." He shook his head and took up his wineglass.

His calm demeanor seemed so out of place that it rubbed me the wrong way. I felt the urge to reach across the table, grab the lapels of his sport coat, and shake him until he admitted that he was the one responsible for killing Professor Ginley, not me. He had put me in a precarious situation and ruined my life. I thought better of it when I remembered just who I was dealing with. "You don't seem very upset about what happened," I said, nearly on the verge of tears.

Carlo shoved another bite of food into his smacking mouth and chewed while staring at me across his plate.

My anger began to simmer. How could he sit there so calmly after everything that had happened? He didn't act as though Professor Ginley had been killed in a tragic act of cowardly violence but instead acted as though the man had simply moved away. "I think I'm gonna go to the police and tell them what happened," I said. "That I didn't know what was in the package. I liked him and I'm not gonna be implicated in this."