The Spia Family Presses On

SIXTEEN

You Look Just Like Your Papa

I awoke several hours later on my aunts’ sofa, alone, covered in a pink fluffy blanket, still wearing the vintage nightgown from the previous night, with Dickey’s pinky ring tucked safely into my left shoe. Aunt Babe had given it to me right before she’d slipped up to bed to grab a couple hours of sleep.

I figured if I took charge of the ring I might be able to smoke out the killer. Either this was the absolute smartest idea I’d ever had, or the absolute dumbest. Whatever happened depended an awful lot on how Lisa and I lured the fly to the ointment. I felt both scared and empowered. Lisa, on the other hand, was all about the game, whatever it turned out to be.

The house was quiet except for a ticking cuckoo clock. My aunts had their own clock from Bisnonno Luigiano. He liked to spread his cuckoos around. Even Federico had a clock.

Lisa was nowhere around. She must have gotten up earlier and was probably back in my apartment, haunting my closet, figuring out today’s outfit.

As I sat up, my thoughts swung to Hetty. Did she kill Carla and make it appear that Dickey did it? If anybody had motive, she sure did, but the ring just didn’t figure into it. At least not the way the clues were stacking up now.

Dickey knew enough to give that ring to my mom for safe keeping. He knew of its significance, so much so that the first thing he did when he got out was to parade it around at the party, almost begging the killer to come and get it. Regrettably, the plan backfired and Dickey ended up being just another victim, something I was hoping to avoid.

As events were beginning to gel in my head, I stood up and headed off to the bathroom.

Of course that was the reason for the freedom party. Why my mom was so insistent on having it. She knew what Dickey was up to. He never wanted the land back. It was all about Carla’s killer. So why didn’t she tell me? Why did she have to keep everything a secret?

Because she knew absolutely I would have never agreed to such a treacherous game. And I would’ve been right.

But it was too late for I told you so.

And how the hell did her charm bracelet get tangled up under Dickey’s feet? I was still hoping the killer had put it there. But how did the killer get it? Did she lose it out in the yard and the killer accidentally stumbled on it? I liked that scenario. If the clasp was broken, it could have fallen off anywhere, even right in the killer’s path.

Once again, I needed to talk to my mom, but today was olive picking day for almost everyone in the family, and I had no choice but to join in. Dickey’s murder would have to wait. And unless I stumbled over his body in the orchard, or my mom was up in the same tree I was, I really needed to give my full attention to picking.

Ten minutes later I was on my way back to my apartment still wearing the vintage pink nightgown and robe. The ring was now hidden in the left pocket of the fuzzy robe.

The very first thing that caught my attention when I stepped on the front porch were the three turkey vultures that circled high above my head. I knew they were vultures by their unstable flight pattern. They tended to tilt from side to side while they flew, plus those unmistakable deep-red bald heads that only another vulture could love. These birds of prey had a keen sense of smell and a reputation for locating carrion even inside a building with open windows or in this case, a barn.

I didn’t know where Dickey’s body was hidden, but it was a good assumption that they did. And, soon, so would the entire Sonoma Sheriff’s department. A clue this obvious couldn’t be ignored.

Could it?

But I was on a mission this morning that even vultures couldn’t keep me from.

Olives.

I knew by now everyone was out in the orchard working hard to harvest the fruit. Timing was essential with olives, and Uncle Federico had hired a small crew of twenty or so men to do most of the work. Today was the last day to pick our Koroneiki olives at their peak and most of my family would be out there helping. Even my mom would spend time out in the grove. She hated to climb up on the ladders. She’d fallen off of one once. Nothing broke, but my mom didn’t like risks of any kind, and from then on she refused to climb up even one rung.

Now she used a long wooden pole with a sort of double clamp at the end to shake the olives free so they would fall in the catchnet. The pole ran off an air compressor and shook the limbs and the olives fell off. She could clear a tree in a quarter of the time it took the rest of us to pick, but Federico didn’t like the mechanical rake. He said it damaged the fruit and the tree, but my mom won’t be intimidated. Her harvest went into yellow bins and was pressed first along with olives that he’d purchase from other groves who harvested in the same manner. That way there was no time for the possibility of mold or rot to attack the olives. Mom had learned this technique that Federico despised while she was in the Basilicata region of Italy with my dad on our one and only trip as a family.

When I arrived in my apartment, there was a note on my front door from Lisa that she had gone home and would meet me at the ball that night. Her mom had stopped by to pick her up. Lisa probably felt a lot safer with her mom, and who wouldn’t? The woman was a tiger when it came to her cub.

I could only imagine how that went down. Her mom must have been in a complete meltdown when she saw the sling. I was glad I had slept through it.

As an afterthought on her note, she wrote, oh, by the way, Dickey’s finger is missing from the fridge. And might I suggest that you lock your door from now on. From the looks of things, the idiot-killer stopped by to search for the ring. Good thing we weren’t home when he/she came calling.

She signed it with a smiley face.

I opened my door to find my apartment in total chaos. The mattress was off the bed, the sheets had been ripped off, the closets were open and all my clothes and shoes were scattered on the floor, all the drawers in the kitchen had been emptied out, my fridge was open and the contents dumped, and what was the worst of all was that my mom’s espresso machine was in pieces on the table.

She would never forgive me or the dismantler.

Before I allowed myself to react, I immediately walked over, locked my door, not that it made a difference now, and phoned Lisa, only to get her voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. She didn’t like messages and rarely listened to them. My number on her missed calls list was all that was needed.

Then I sat right down on the floor and wailed, sounding very much like Zia Yolanda.

Two hours later, after I cleaned up as best I could—I was determined not to let the intruder get to me—I was out in the orchard, clad in jeans, a long sleeved sweater, a black hoodie, and hiking boots—the only shoes that weren’t touched—ready to do my share with the harvest.

The sacred ring was hanging from a silver chain around my neck, safely tucked under my clothing.

Okay, I admit this was strange behavior considering my apartment had just been trashed, but my self preservation was at risk of crumbling if I allowed myself to wallow in self pity, so off I went to pick olives and show the killer my True Grit, thank you very much, John Wayne.

“Start over on that row of trees,” Federico ordered when he saw me drive up in my pickup. I followed his directions, parking behind his brown Nissan pickup, along a row of countless bright red olive bins that lined the dirt road. I killed the engine and jumped out, totally psyched to pick as many olives as possible. It took a ton of milled olives to produce fifty gallons of oil. That was a lot of olives and after all, this was what Spia’s Olive Press was all about.

In the past few years we’ve had bumper crops with no frostbite or bug infestations, thanks to Federico. He pampered the trees and the crop as if they were his own children.

It had already been a wearisome day, to say the least, and I could still see those nasty vultures circling overhead. I would have laughed if I didn’t think the whole thing was ludicrous. After all, it was barely ten in the morning, plenty of time for my day to get even worse. But I refused to dwell on what else could possibly happen.

I would give my complete focus to the olives, joining Maryann and Uncle Benny as they moved from one tree to the next. I would concentrate on the task at hand.

But what about Dickey, a little voice echoed in my ear. What about the ring? And your trashed apartment?

“Over here,” Maryann yelled while standing on a ladder that leaned on a branch of one of the trees that produced Coratina olives, creating an oil that had a fruity fragrance, but a slightly bitter, spicy flavor. I forced myself to think of a tasty arugula salad with goat cheese and red onions that begged for our Italian blend oils. How these trees were to Italy like our Mission olive trees were to California. How Uncle Federico had imported them less than five years ago to add the oil to our Italian blends, and how well they had grown in our rich soil.

Incredibly, I was feeling better. Feeling one with the olives. With nature. With my bucket. My olive rake.

With my very own vertical wooden ladder, always at the ready, which I always kept in the back of my truck this time of year. I slid it out and was thinking of setting it up under Maryann’s tree when the vision of the endless sea of bright orange catchnets attracted my attention. The entire area was covered in a blanket of orange. They’d been put down in the last few weeks to trap the fallen olives. It had taken six men three weeks to put them down.

The refection off the nets caused the silvery trees to glow orange in the warm sunshine giving off a fun Sesame Street effect. As if Miss Piggy and Big Bird lived in our orchard and children would be hanging out of the trees playing hide and seek. At least that was the thought that always came to mind whenever I saw the catchnets.

Today was no exception. The bright orange always made me happy, and I was really trying not to let anything get in the way of that feeling.

As I walked over to Maryann, who was now waiting for me, I reflected on the hard truth that I now carried a house key in my hip pocket, something I hadn’t done for the entire two years I’d lived on the property. Something I had grown accustomed to. It was like living in a safe, small town and I liked it. Liked the fact that I never had to worry about break-ins or crazed killers. Too bad it had been a big fat lie. A false sense of security. The crazed killer was living in my very own house. Well not exactly in my own house, but close enough to walk in whenever he or she felt the need.

Of course, it had taken me almost a half-hour to locate an actual key; my mom had it hanging on a hook in her kitchen cupboard, along with every other key she owned, but who squabbles over such minor inconveniences when the entire ship was sinking. And for all intents and purposes, this ship was taking on water at an alarming rate.

But I was there to pick olives, and to be happy with the sight of our orange catchnets and not to ponder un-recovered gangsters. One of whom was probably the same dude who killed Dickey, chopped off his finger, threatened me, tried to run us off the road and trashed my apartment looking for the ring.

But it was all in the family.

The family that kills together . . .

“How’s it going?” I asked Maryann once I arrived under her tree.

“Great,” she said. “It’s going to be a good harvest.”

The catchnet was littered with olives, and dozens of red bins, filled with olives, were stacked on the side of the road waiting to be picked up.

I leaned my ladder up against a sturdy looking tree limb on the next tree over, knocking the branch a couple times with my ladder to make sure I didn’t hear any cracking sounds, a sure sign the limb wasn’t strong enough to hold me.

“Mia?” a voice called behind me. I turned, and there jogging toward me was Adonis, or Giuseppe, if I wanted to use his formal name. I preferred Adonis. It had that ethereal quality that I so needed at the moment. Thinking he was just another Wise Guy in my sea of Wise Guys was simply too disheartening.

So yes, it was weird that he was calling me by my name and was jogging toward me—my own personal fantasy coming to life—but in this family nothing surprised me anymore.

The morning sun glistened off his shiny hair, which was loose now, and strands curled around his face and down his neck. His white T-shirt clung to that incredible chest, and his muscled arms appeared to have enough strength to pick up several of our olive bins with one of those luscious arms tied behind his back. The vision was sufficient to make me want to run right for him and tell him to take me away from all of this madness.

Oh wait, Adonis was part of the problem. He was a suspect even though he said he didn’t whack Dickey. There was absolutely no evidence that I should believe this imported dude.

Pity, we could have had so much fun.

Adonis slowed as he came closer. I quickly pulled on my heavy gloves wanting it to appear as if I’d been working all morning. Why I wanted him to think this, I didn’t actually know, but I decided to go with it.

“Hi,” I said.

“Buon giorno. Sono Giuseppe Nardi,” he said with a little bow.

“Buon giorno,” I said in my best Italian. “Somehow I didn’t think I’d be seeing you this morning.”

“Ah, but I can no go home. Maybe I stay. Make my home, you know?” His eyes were the color of a Farga olive from Spain. A light green color when harvested early, but a sweeter oil when left on the tree to turn a dark purple which made the oil sweet and light with hints of almond. I wondered if he tasted like almonds.

Wait. Did he just say he was making this his home?

“Excuse me? But what did you just say?”

“That it is good to see you again.” He smiled and the earth moved. All right, maybe the earth didn’t move, but it should have. The man was a sexy menace to my otherwise unstable world.

“No. I mean about making this your home. Are you staying somewhere in Sonoma?”

“Yes. I stay in your mama’s house. She got a nice house, your mamma. Many rooms.”

This was not a good idea. This man, no matter how much I wanted him, was an active member of the mob and we didn’t allow active members to live on our land. It was the only thing that kept us from FBI scrutiny, and we had all agreed to this when we first settled here eight years ago. No way was Adonis— regardless of his spectacular smile or his Farga eyes or those incredible arms—going to change that. My mom was like a kid who took in stray animals, only these were stray thugs.

Possibly not the best idea.

“You could have one of the apartments over the shops. Two of them are available right now, but the apartment comes with certain restrictions. Uncle Ray will have to fill you in with the details. You may not like our rules,” I told him.

And there it went. My entire ship had just plummeted to the ocean floor pulling me down with it. I had asked an active mobster to give up his toughness and join the recovering “family.”

Yeah, like that was going to happen.

It was as though I had no control over my words, my thoughts or even my actions. It was almost as if I was drinking again, but I was stone sober. Not a good sign for my future.

“Ah, I go see Ray. This is good. Grazie.”

Deep inside, I knew how wrong this was, but I couldn’t help myself. The guy had some kind of magnetism that turned me into his slave. I grinned my approval.

Now that I had his attention, I thought I might as well ask a few questions. “By the way, last night, you said you had asked Dickey for something. What was that something that he refused to give you?”

“Why you want to think of such things? It is a beautiful day, yes?”

“Yes. It’s a beautiful day, but I was just wondering, that’s all.”

He threw me a wicked smile. “That is why I stay. I can not go back to my country without this thing. If I do—” He ran his index finger across his neck and made a slicing sound. “But maybe you know something you maybe want to tell me.”

“About Dickey?”

“Yes, about the something?”

“The something?”

“Yes.”

“No. Not a thing . . . about the something.”

I moved and the ring tickled my cleavage. It gave me a shiver. “I have work to do,” I told him.

“Ah, yes. The olives. I will help with this tree.”

He pulled on the gloves that were stuck in his belt behind his back. “I go up the ladder and pick. It is better this way.”

“No, thanks,” I said and grabbed hold of both sides of the ladder and carefully climbed to get up into the tree. I liked to pick up high. The olives were a little riper on the top of the tree and came off the branches easier. Plus, I could smell the olives from up there.

Call me strange, but I loved picking olives. I always felt at peace up in an olive tree. Some of my best memories of my dad were in Italy during a harvest. We had spent the entire day together picking olives, him training me on what a ripe olive looked like as opposed to a rotten one, or an overripe one. How to use a rake. How to secure my ladder in the tree. How to let go and trust the limb to support me.

That one day had begun my love for olives and olive oil.

“It is a big orchard. Many trees,” Adonis said.

I carefully raked the thin branch clean, the olives gently falling into my bucket then I turned slightly to get a look at Adonis, who stood off to my right.

That’s when I heard it, a hint of a crack, almost a whisper, and as if in slow motion, the rung broke under my feet and I grabbed for the tree, but I couldn’t quite hold onto it. My gloves were too cumbersome. I felt myself slipping out of the tree and with one more, sharp crack, I suddenly plopped right into Giuseppe’s open arms. Then we both toppled to the ground. Me lying prone on top of him.

For a moment, neither of us said anything. I was simply trying to catch my breath and understand what had just happened.

Then he spoke in Italian, “Dear God, are you all right?” And he began running his hands over my body. A pleasant sensation if I hadn’t just nearly died.

I pushed him away. “I think I’m okay.”

Funny how I suddenly could understand him. I guess my Italian significantly improved when death, or broken bones were imminent.

He switched to English. “Don’t move. I get the help.”

“Everything okay over there?” Maryann yelled from the next tree.

I sat up. “Yeah. Just lost my balance. I’m fine.”

“You need my help?”

“Nope. We’ve got it covered.”

“Okay,” she said and that was that. Nothing short of a broken appendage stopped Maryann from picking. She was like a one woman machine. Every year we had a contest to see who picked the most olives and Maryann always won.

“I carry you to bed,” Giuseppe said.

“What? No,” I told him, but I clearly liked the vision. “I’m fine. Really. But I wouldn’t be if you hadn’t caught me. Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said with a sensual smirk.

He stood and extended a hand.

When I was back up on my feet, I went straight over to the tree to check out the branch. I couldn’t understand it. I had never fallen from a tree. I was always so careful.

As soon as I walked closer I could see what had happened.

“Ah, the ladder, she was rotten,” Giuseppe said.

“Impossible. I just bought it this year.”

He leaned it back from the tree, tilted it on its side and there it was. We both saw it.

Someone had cleverly cut the very rung I had been standing on. Not all the way through, but just enough so that after I stood on it awhile it would break.

I was just about to collapse in a torrent of hysterics when he said, “This is not so good. You have an enema.”

“Enemy,” I corrected, chuckling at his bad English.

He smiled, shrugged and we laughed out loud. One of those tension releasing kinds of laughs. All I could think of was what a great laugh he had. The man was a total charmer and I was a sucker for a charmer.

He slipped his hand under my chin. “When you smile you look just like your papa.”

His words felt like a slap. I backed away from his touch. “My papa? How would you know that?”

My heart raced, and there was a lump in my throat. I could feel my entire body stiffen. How could this man know my dad? That seemed totally impossible. In my blind lust for his touch, I must have misunderstood him. My dad was one of the mysteries of my life. As far as I knew, no one knew if he was alive or dead. It seemed impossible that this Young Turk could know anything about him when my own family didn’t.

He held a finger over his mouth. “Shhh,” he whispered, turning away from Maryann, and the rest of the pickers. I pulled off my gloves and followed right beside him, anxious to hear what he had to say.

“Your papa, how you say? He no can come out. Too many enemies in America, but he got a lot of friends in Italia.”

It just seemed impossible for this Italian import to know where my dad was living when we had been looking for him since I was twelve. How could this be true? I needed more information.

“So,” I said. “You never actually saw him?” I figured this Turk didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Ma-sure. Your papa, how shall we say, an important man in Calabria. He send me here, you know, to ask for the . . . ring and if he no give, then to do some work.”

I decided to play along with this elaborate hoax. It had to be, right? “Do some work on Dickey?”

He shrugged and bobbed his head in complete gangster fashion letting me know I was exactly right, but not really saying it out loud. “I call him. We meet. We talk and he say no. Then before I can, you know . . . another person do my work.”

“But why did my father want Dickey’s ring?”

He shrugged again, grinned and looked at me as if I was the silliest person alive. “I no ask this kind of question. I am a picciotti d’onore, a soldier. I follow the orders from the capobastone.”

It hit me like a ton of olives! I was convinced he was telling me the truth. My own father, the man who had disappeared like Jimmy Hoffa, was not only alive and well, but he was some kind of boss in the worst mob Italy had to offer, ‘Ndrangheta, and he had put out a hit on his own cousin, Dickey.

I so needed a drink.

Fifteen minutes later, after having picked only slightly more than a bucketful of olives, I called it a day. Giuseppe packed my now broken ladder back in my truck and I left him on the side of the road with Federico giving him picking orders.

I was on a quest for a big, overflowing glass of wine. I was absolutely going to drink it this time. And not just one glass, the entire bottle seemed like the way to go. I even decided on red rather than white. It reminded me more of blood, and blood was the word of the hour. My blood, my dad’s blood, and Dickey’s . . . we were all related, but that didn’t seem to matter in this family. Vendettas mattered more than blood, and heaven help the person who stepped in front of a personal vendetta.

I drove my truck, loaded with my viciously tampered with ladder, back to the barn and parked behind my mom’s house, completely distracted by my quest for wine.

Heading straight for the case I’d shelved in the barn the night Dickey was murdered, I figured I’d grab a bottle of Leo’s Pinot, and show up on his doorstep wearing my best rueful smile. We’d have great make-up sex and I’d be over this ridiculous sobriety I’d enforced on myself forever.

Whose idea was this sobriety gig anyway? Certainly not mine.

After my tryst with Leo, I’d return refreshed and renewed to help my mom and aunts prepare tonight’s feast. There was always a big feast the last day of our first harvest. We had one more harvest that would take place sometime in early November when the remainder of the fruit was at its peak of ripeness. That would constitute a major party, but for now, we celebrated all the hard work and the fact that it didn’t rain during the harvest. Rain during harvest is the single most destructive natural force for olives. Even a mist can hamper a successful harvest. Fortunately, neither of those scourges had taken place, so we were in for a fantastic harvest, and what looked like a profitable year.

I had phoned Lisa on my short drive back to the barn, wanting to share the news that my dad was alive and well and playing Godfather in Italy, plus I wanted to tell her the sinister details of my attempted demise, but she still wasn’t answering.

Opening the barn door, I was eager to get on with my new found sobriety freedom when I ran smack into Nick Zeleski. There were several other men in dark suits who were busy snooping around. Two police officers from Santa Rosa stood watch just inside the door. I figured the whole group must have parked in the tourist lot, and had come in through the opposite door or I undoubtedly would have seen them, even if I was utterly distracted by my desperate wine need.

Before I could say anything, Nick said, “Sorry about this, Mia, but I have reason to believe something happened to Dickey Spia while he was on your property, specifically in this barn. Gloria Spia gave us permission to have a look around.”

I opened my mouth to protest just as Uncle Benny walked out from behind a row of shelves and stopped me. “Once your mom gave him permission, there’s nothing we can do, Mia.”

“Why? What happened?” I asked, upset that these intruders had not only destroyed my perfect wine vision, but were now causing weeks’ worth of work to put everything back together again. Not to mention that they were sure to find blood evidence that Dickey was murdered about ten feet away from where we were all standing.

“Do you know a man named Peter Doyle?”

My knees almost buckled as I flashed on the notary who had signed the last page of my mom’s documents, the now missing page of my mom’s documents. But why would Nick know about the notary?

“I—”

Uncle Benny interrupted. “She never heard of him. And even if she did, she does not have to tell you anything.”

I closed my mouth. Nick grinned. “This will go a lot easier if you cooperate, Mia.”

“She has nothing to say,” Uncle Benny said.

I knew enough to listen to Uncle Benny and keep my mouth shut, but at the same time I wanted to know what this was all about. I moved in front of Benny. “Never met the man.”

“But do you know who he is?”

This question presented a problem. I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t want to offer the truth either. Especially since I could feel Uncle Benny’s eyes burning a hole in the back of my head. “What does Peter Doyle have to do with any of this?”

“Neighbor found him locked in his garage early this morning with the motor running. It might have looked like a suicide if it wasn’t for the piece of paper shoved in his mouth. Funny thing about that piece of paper, it was eight years old and notarized by one Peter Doyle. Seems he’d notarized a document that gave all this land back to Dickey Spia if he was ever released from prison. Peter’s mistake was he’d been blabbing that info to a few of his friends and neighbors. Do you know anything about that document, Mia?”

My mouth went dry. I wanted to spill my guts but Uncle Benny stopped me.

“She does not know anything. She has been out in the hot sun all day, picking olives. She is tired and cannot think straight.” Uncle Benny gave me a look and I knew I should keep my mouth zipped, as Hetty liked to say.

As I gazed around at the people snooping and tearing at our barn, something odd struck me. Why weren’t there more police, more local sheriffs buzzing around? And why was everyone dressed so, well . . . trendy? Their suits fit perfectly, and their shirts had color, not the drab white most detectives wore. And why in hell did everyone except for Nick look so Italian?

Nick interrupted my concerns. “I paid a visit to that worker your mom said cut himself while assembling the antique millstone and he didn’t know what I was talking about. Not a scratch on him. Any idea why your mom would lie?”

I didn’t answer. Instead I stood there, wide-eyed and trying desperately to hold it all together. Trying to piece everything together. Nothing was adding up, at least nothing that my now completely muddled brain could figure out.

“My mom doesn’t lie,” I told him.

Benny said, “That’s all she has got to say right now.”

Nick was silent for a moment then he looked at me and said, “Maybe you’d feel more comfortable talking to me at the station.”

“That won’t be—”

“She will talk when I see a warrant,” Benny said. “Till then, I’ll answer whatever you want to know.”

“That’s fine,” Nick said. “Can you—”

But just then a woman in a designer suit called him over to the antique mill and he walked away.

When he was out of earshot Benny mumbled, “Keep away from him, Mia. He is big trouble for the family, if you know what I am saying. Go help the women with the cooking. I will take care of this,” Benny ordered, cigar smoke encircling his head.

I nodded and walked away as random thoughts floated into my overworked brain. I mean, what if Benny was actually behind the murders? Maybe he felt as though he was protecting my mom or the orchard or himself from some past deed, like the murder of Carla De Carlo.

Or was this recent murder just another hit that my mobbed-up father ordered and Giuseppe snuffed out Peter Doyle right before he flirted with me out in the grove.

But which thug sliced my ladder? What motive would Benny have had, especially if he was courting my mom. And I knew Giuseppe didn’t do it, he’d offered to climb my ladder.

I couldn’t believe either one of these guys would try to hurt me or the orchard. Giuseppe was simply a henchman for my dad, which was weird in itself, and no mob boss would try to kill his own child. It just would never happen. Even the worst gangsters had their limits when it came to their young.

So it couldn’t possibly be either one of them.

That would explain some things. I mean, why would anyone connected with this recovering family and this land do all this nasty stuff when it obviously incriminated everyone living and working on this land, not to mention that it could completely close us down with no chance reopening.

That’s when the obvious answer hit me right between the eyes . . . the killer wants to close us down.

But why?



“It’s all happening too fast,” Mom said as she pulled the perfectly toasted brochette bread out of the oven. She was referring to the meal she and every other woman in my family were preparing in her kitchen and not the events in the last forty-eight hours.

It was now late in the afternoon. Spia’s Olive Press was already getting bad press on the local news stations and was essentially shut down until the police were finished with their investigation. It seemed the blood on the millstone was enough evidence for a warrant and those trendy detectives wanted to search more than just the barn. Now they were busy with the tasting room as we cooked. Uncle Benny was working hard on fixing all of that, but so far he wasn’t having much luck. Essentially, the entire establishment was shut down. Given how slowly these detectives were working, we would probably be shut down tomorrow as well.

Nick and his team tried to get statements out of everyone, but that proved a waste of time. My extended family acted like captured soldiers repeating rank and tag numbers, only with my family they repeated the health benefits of olive oil.

“Mom, I really need to talk to you. It’s important,” I said, while I chopped a ripe plumb tomato for the salad. No response so I leaned in and whispered, “I need to know how your bracelet got under Dickey’s feet in the barn?”

She turned to me, forehead practically wrinkled, lips tight, eyes glaring as if she was about to pounce. After a moment, she looked away, took a breath and chugged an entire glass of red wine. When she finished she carefully placed the glass down on the table and turned back to me once again, looking much calmer. “Is that where you found my bracelet? Under his feet?”

I nodded. “Plus I have other news. Can we go upstairs for a few minutes?”

“No. I don’t want to.” She stomped her foot, like some bratty kid. “I’ve got way too much cooking to do to answer your questions. I had enough questions thrown at me for one day. My head’s going to explode, and my timing’s all off as it is. The stuffed zucchini are gonna be done way before the pasta pomodoro, and my braciole di manzo needs another twenty minutes to simmer. The beef was a little tough. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I can’t seem to get it together. We can talk later, dear. Right now, I have to cook.”

She smiled at me and brushed my check with her flour-covered index finger. Mom was busy kneading a firm ball of dough for the fresh recchitedde, tiny round pasta disks that she would layer with a thick, tomato pork ragu. Fresh linguini hung from the wooden dowels of a sturdy rack that Federico had made for her several years ago when her collapsible laundry drying rack toppled over from the weight of the pasta and, “heaven forbid,” she’d had to use packaged pasta for our Christmas dinner

“But—”

She held up her hand.

“Fine!” I said. “Later.”

“Try to be nice, darling. It’s so much more becoming.”

I wanted to scream. I had so much to talk to her about, but lately it was never a good time for her. Of course, she was right, now was most certainly not the time. She was obviously experiencing a culinary meltdown at the moment and talking to her about my dad and her bracelet would only add to the cuisine challenge.

“It’s all that louse’s fault. May he rot in hell,” Hetty said, making the sign of the cross then kissing her bunched fingers.

Maryann, who busied herself assembling the roasted red pepper and artichoke salad, had a different view. “Dickey’s in purgatory, not hell and I don’t care what you say about him.” She slammed down the cleaver she was using to chop artichoke hearts. I was glad of that. Hurling sharp objects was not something I wanted to be involved in.

She began to weep. Zia Yolanda joined her at a much louder pitch.

Hetty went over to Maryann, careful not to actually touch her. “I’m sorry, honey. How about you play us something fun on your accordion? We could all use a little cheering up right now.”

Maryann nodded, swiped at her tears then wiped her hands on the white apron she was wearing, walked over to a chair in the corner of the kitchen, picked up her ever present accordion and began to play Dean Martin’s Volare.

“Volare, oh-oh, Cantate oh-oh-oh,” she crooned.

Zia Yolanda smiled through her tears and began to sing. It was the first time I’d ever heard her actual voice, which was completely off key.

Aunt Hetty and Aunt Babe drowned her out and joined in. “Let’s fly way up to the clouds, away from the maddening crowds.”

Then Valerie and my mom chimed in. “We can sing in the glow of a star that I know of, where lovers enjoy peace of mind.”

I would never admit this to anyone, but I knew every word by heart. My mom must have played it a million times while I was growing up. I sang as loud as I could. “Let us leave the confusion and all the delusion behind. Just like birds of feather, a rainbow together we’ll find. Volare, oh-oh, Cantate oh-oh-oh . . .”

We sang the entire song, each of us busy with food preparation, smiling as if all was right with our little world, but we all knew better. That was the endearing feature about my utterly dysfunctional family. Each and every one of us had developed a coping mechanism that seriously distorted our perception of reality, and whether that perception was good or bad, it was what got us through the tough times.

When the song ended, Maryann continued to play while the rest of us continued to chop, pour, sauté, bake and plate the massive meal. We seemed to be in a collectively better mood, or at least everyone else was when we finally served the meal to our friends, family and the hired pickers who had helped bring in our first harvest of the season.

We spread the meal out on long sturdy tables in mom’s front yard, everyone taking a seat around the yard to chow down on the fabulous Italian delicacies, enjoying not only the food, but the wine and each other. Laughter rose up from the crowd and for a brief moment, I allowed myself to simply enjoy the ambiance.

We’d be picking and pressing on and off for the next couple of months, but the first full day of harvest was the most important. It gave Federico a good idea of how good the harvest would be, and according to how heavy the trees were with fruit, we would have a bumper crop this year.

My only hope was that Spia’s Olive Press would re-open long enough to reap the rewards, but from the looks of those damn turkey vultures still circling overhead, that hope didn’t seem like a viable assumption.





Braciole Di Manzo Al Ragu – Level Two



8 thin slices of beef (top round steak, about 2 oz. each)

1/2 cup Italian Blend or other robust EVOO

3 large cloves of garlic crushed and minced

1/2 cup finely chopped Italian parsley

1/2 cup grated Pecorino cheese from Sardinia or Sicily

1/2 cup pitted and chopped Kalamata or Picholine olives

hot red pepper flakes to taste

cracked pepper to taste

salt to taste

kitchen string

A hardy blend of olive oil for frying



Grate the cheese slowly. Enjoy how easily the cheese slides over the grater and fills the room with its tender fragrance. Cut off a slice and try it with a drizzle of honey. It’s divine! Set aside the grated cheese. Pit and chop the olives, tasting as you go. Have a bite of cheese and an olive. A truly great combination. Whisk the oil, garlic, parsley and cheese until thick. Add the olives and gently whisk a few more times. Place the meat on a flat surface and spread each slice with 1/8 of the mixture. Sprinkle on some hot pepper flakes, and cracked pepper to fit your taste. Tightly roll each one and fasten with kitchen string.

Add an olive oil blend (the kind you can buy in a grocery store) to a large frying pan over a medium heat. When the oil is hot, carefully add the rolls and quickly brown them on all sides. At this point, if you’re secure in your resolve not to drink, you can add 1/2 cup of dry white wine to the pan and cook down. If you can’t have wine in the house, then skip this step and remove the rolls from the pan and drain on a paper towel.

Sauce:

5 or 6 chopped ripe tomatoes that have been peeled (drop the tomatoes in boiling water for no more than a half-minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and tear the skin away from the flesh).

1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley

3 chopped basil leaves

2 tbs. chopped onion

1 to 2 small garlic cloves, chopped

3 tbs. tomato paste

Cook the onion and garlic in any EVOO until tender, but not brown. Add the tomato paste and let fry for about a minute. Add the chopped tomatoes and stir adding one half cup water if sauce looks too thick. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add rolls and let simmer on a back burner, turning every so often for about 1 1/2 hours. Serve over pasta or by itself with crusty Italian bread and a glass of sparkling water. Makes 4 hearty servings, so add a salad and invite some non-drinking friends over. Enjoy!





“I like to have a martini, two at the very most. After three I’m under the table,

after four I’m under the host.”—Dorothy Parker