Page 15 of So Bleak

“You smell something boy?”

He snorted a negative, then continued to hunt. She reached down and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, boy. We’ll get him. Or her.”

“Your dog have fleas?” Russo asked.

Faith’s lips thinned. “No, my K9 unit does not have fleas.”

“I find fleas in my establishment, I call your boss and complain.”

Faith smiled slightly, imagining the fiery Russo in an argument with the gruff Special Agent-in-Charge Grant Monroe. That might actually be fun to witness. “Sounds good.”

Russo nodded curtly, then opened the door to a small office. The three FBI agents filed in, and as Faith suspected, Russo’s demeanor calmed considerably when the door closed. When he spoke again, his accent was far more subdued as well.

“Look, guys, I get you have a job to do, but I do too. You need to call ahead if you want to talk to me. I don’t mind coming down to the station. Or the field office or wherever. But I can’t have you guys in and out of my restaurant. It’s a bad look.”

“A woman collapsing dead in your dining room is a pretty bad look,” Michael pointed out.

Russo’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know. But I don’t know what happened to her. Look, I talked to the police. I knew who she was, and I knew she was coming. I personally inspected every single thing that we used for her. Even the tablecloths and the napkin. I made everything she ate and poured everything she drank. That makes me the number one suspect, I get that, but I also proved to them that I’m not an idiot. First of all, I don’t bear any ill will to Miss Crestwood personally. All food critics are imbrogliones, but I don’t hate any of them. I beat them by making food so exceptional that they can’t help but acknowledge it.”

“And if someone refuses to acknowledge it?”

Russo shrugged. “Then they’re idiots. “Any fool can taste my food and know it is exquisite. If Elizabeth Crestwood tried to claim otherwise, she would make herself look stupid. It wouldn’t affect me.”

“Your confidence is admirable,” Faith said drily.

He shrugged again. “I am good at what I do.”

“What if I told you I ate here last week, and it was the worst Italian food I’d ever tasted?”

“I’d say you were lying,” he replied immediately. “Listen, why would I kill her? Like your friend said, it’s a bad look for me. A very bad look. People don’t want to eat somewhere a woman dies in the middle of her meal. I worked hard to build my reputation, and because some porca puttana decided to poison someone in my dining room, it’s all gone.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. I didn’t kill Elizabeth Crestwood, but if you find out who did, bring him to me, and I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Faith said, “I’ll settle for hearing in your own words what happened last week.”

Russo sighed. “I prepare her table. I tell my maître d’ to treat her like gold. I make the bread and chill the water for her service, then prepare her meal. Caprese salad, beautiful minestrone, perfect prosciutto on crostini for the appetizer, grilled trout with risotto. I prepared the tiramisu myself as well. All of it by my own hand.”

“When did she die?”

"She eats the salad; then she dies in front of my server when he brings the minestrone. She never even got to taste my risotto.”

He seemed genuinely moved by that loss. Faith sighed and said, “And no one on your staff acted strangely that day? No one seemed suspicious?”

He scoffed. “Of course not. We are the finest Italian kitchen in Philadelphia. Why would we care if some imbroglione didn’t like our food? There is no reason to kill her over it. That has done far more damage than any review could.”

His face softened, and he said, “I do hope you find whoever did this. My daughter is training to be a chef. I don’t want her to suffer as I have.”

Faith stifled her disgust and said, “If you think of anything else we should know, please call us.”

She handed him a business card. He took it without looking at it and tossed it on the desk. Faith decided she liked Chef Ito better.

She led Michael and Turk out of the restaurant. When they were outside, Michael asked, “What do you think?”

“I think he’s telling the truth. He’s full of himself, but he’s not insecure. He’s not wasting any tears for Crestwood, but he’s sincerely pissed that she died in his restaurant.”

“So we still have nothing?”

“Not necessarily. Both of them died while eating their appetizers.”

“What does that mean?”

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