The Spia Family Presses On

NINETEEN

The Devil’s in the Details

I went home with Leo, utterly scared to go anywhere near my apartment. Despite Leo’s corporal allure, I slept in his guest bedroom, alone. Although I was incredibly tempted, I wasn’t feeling as though sex was the answer to my problems. Basically, I was thinking sex would simply serve as another complication to my already overly complicated life. Therefore, I did the grown up thing and gave him a blow job and sent him on his way.

In my dreams.

In reality, he drove us to his house, and I was out of his car and in his guest room faster than a speeding bullet, or so it seemed. The only sex we had . . . hot and heavy with a lot of clutching and grabbing, and copious amounts of loud moans . . . was during an exceptionally long dream I had sometime in the early morning hours, while I dozed at his kitchen table. I had stayed up for most of the night baking olives, alone, in Leo’s kitchen.

I awoke a few hours later in bed, in the guest bedroom (I didn’t remember how I got there) satisfied that dream sex had been better than the real thing. Real sex would have led to mental anguish that I already had an abundance of, and any more would certainly cause my head to explode.

I showered, dressed in old ripped jeans I had left at his house before our second breakup, a borrowed flannel shirt and a pair of Uggs I had totally forgotten about. I slapped on minimal makeup, thought about food, but decided tea and a slice of white toast with butter was about all I could handle, and maybe a baked olive or two. Someone, most likely Leo’s housekeeper, had cleaned up the kitchen, leaving the platter of about a hundred baked olives sitting on the counter.

I barely remembered making them.

It had been a very long night.

Leo drove me home around nine, after we decided to take this thing slow, whatever this “thing” was. I apologized for thinking he’d lied about talking to Dickey on his porch, and he apologized for the last five years.

He dropped me off in my mom’s private parking lot—the chain still ran across the public driveway—and I gave him a long slow kiss then told him I’d call him when I landed in Maui. I was determined to be on that plane Sunday night despite the events of the previous evening.

I sprinted up my mom’s back stairs, eager to return her bracelet. I didn’t want it hanging around in my apartment. There was no telling who would show up to steal it so they could further incriminate her, if that was possible. Nick finding Dickey in her trunk seemed to lock up her guilt perspective rather easily, at least it seemed that way last night.

At any rate, I was hopeful that the slashed tire didn’t quite fit into the case-closed theory. I mean, why would my mom slash her own tire? Obviously, the killer was still trying to set her up, but by some stroke of cosmic fate, Nick was there to see it this time.

Still, I wasn’t taking any chances with anything else going wrong.

My sudden clear head was probably due to the great dream sex, or, I was obsessed with solving this whole murder thing because for one thing, my mother was not going to do time for something I knew she did not do, no matter what the evidence against her proved. Secondly, I had every intention of being on that flight to Maui Sunday night. Either way, I had a mission and heaven help the person who got in my way. This time I was determined to come up with the right Wise Guy or Wise Girl.

I’d read somewhere that mob wives and grandmothers were taking up the sword in Naples and Calabria when the men were either shot down or carted off to prison. Some of these gun toting grandmas were even more vicious than the men, and would shoot at each other in drive-by wars. Not that I had any intention of taking my vendetta against Dickey’s murderer to a firearm level, but I certainly intended to ferret out the creep by any and all other means I had available to me. If that meant I had to get down and dirty, then so be it.

Of course, I didn’t exactly know what “down and dirty” consisted of, but I figured when the time came my unique upbringing would kick in and I’d somehow know exactly what to do.

At least that was the plan of the moment.

Wow! Dream sex was powerful stuff.

When I walked into mom’s kitchen, there were no signs that anyone was around. Of course, that didn’t mean much, her back door was unlocked and an imported gangster had possibly taken up residency on the second floor.

Still, there were no signs that Benny had spent the night, no stogies in the ashtray on the counter, and his pink mug dangled from a hook under a cabinet. Hopefully, Giuseppe had already moved into his own apartment above one of the shops on the property.

What was I thinking?

As I walked to my mom’s room I remembered Dickey’s open suitcase in one of the upstairs bedrooms and wondered if it was still there, the one with all the price tags still on the clothes. Experience told me, from some of the other ex-cons around here, that price tags meant he or she had just been released. My gut told me there was something in that case I needed to see. What that could be, I had no idea, but I wanted to check it out. Once I put the bracelet in my mom’s jewelry armoire I intended to do just that.

No stone left unturned, kind of thing.

First, though, I couldn’t stand how quiet the house was so I pulled the chains on the cuckoo clock to rewind it. Then I set the time, and once I heard that familiar tic tock I felt much calmer.

I slipped into mom’s bedroom and turned on the light. The curtains were drawn, keeping the room dark and free from any family snoopers. Mom owned a fancy antique-white, hand painted jewelry armoire with eight drawers, a flip up mirror, doors on either side that held several necklaces, and tiered drawers to hold rings, pins and her various bracelets and bangles. The top drawer also served as a music box. Whenever I heard Torno a Surriento it reminded me of those lazy rainy days spent with my mom playing with her jewelry.

Mom’s jewelry armoire had been magical to me, filled with fairytales and pixy dust. My mom and I would spend countless hours together trying on all her sparkly jewelry. I’d pretend to be a beautiful princess and Mom the beautiful queen waiting for her handsome king to return from battle.

All those years, waiting, wondering if my dad was still alive, and now . . .

Now I knew why the king never returned. Why be a mere king when you can be the ruler of all the kings?

Much more fun.

But I didn’t have time to waste getting lost in childhood fantasies, or kings and mob bosses, not when my mom was locked up behind a fortress with no one to rescue her but me.

Where the hell was Sir Galahad when you needed him?

As soon as I opened the top drawer, the song immediately began playing, reminding me of the last time I’d heard it . . . while I was standing up on the second floor talking to Dickey.

My stomach twisted in an immediate knot. I wanted to rubberstamp my forehead with a big red “STUPID.”

Of course! That music, and all those noises downstairs made sense now. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Someone had opened this armoire and stolen the codicil almost as soon as I’d put it away. So that meant that person had to know I’d left it there, which meant they had to be in the house in order to hear the music to figure out exactly where I’d stashed the papers.

But that would mean the murder was completely premeditated, not a far stretch for this family, but I was so hoping for a crime of passion, a crime of the heart or something equally as spur of the moment. After all, we were a recovering family! Didn’t that mean anything to these people?

I slammed the drawer shut, locked it and shoved the key into my pocket, angry that I hadn’t thought to lock it that first night. This time, if the killer wanted anything she would have to break the lock.

Besides my mom, there was only one other person who knew I had the papers that night, and only one person who could have heard that music.

On my way out, I took all the keys to the house then locked mom’s house up tight. No one was getting in this time unless they broke in, and that would leave glorious evidence. But at the moment, I was focused on one person. The person who lied, cheated, and had direct access to my mom’s house.

“You killed him,” I said to Hetty as I opened the back door to Dolci Piccoli. She was busy pulling a tray of four perfectly golden Italian breads out of the large oven. Without customers, she only baked enough for family and the pickers.

Aunt Babe was nowhere around.

“After last night, I didn’t expect to see you all day,” Hetty alleged in a calm voice.

I placed my hands on my hips. “You killed Dickey. You were in the kitchen when I stuck my mom’s paperwork in her jewelry box, heard Turno a Surriento and snuck into her bedroom while I was upstairs talking to Dickey. You snatched the documents, read the codicil and decided no way were you going to let Dickey take over the orchard. You pushed him under the millstone then shot him and planted my mom’s bracelet as evidence. Then as an added bonus you stashed grandma’s handgun in a futso. And,”—I was on a clue solving roll now—“you killed Peter Doyle, although for the life of me I can’t understand why. He was probably a very nice man.”

“He was a thief and a wife beater, but I didn’t whack him.”

She stared at me for a moment. Her hair arranged in its usual clown style, red lipstick radiant from the sunlight that streamed through the bank of windows behind me.

She said, “I just pulled some Amaretto cookies out of the oven about five minutes ago. They’re still warm. How about I fix you a nice plate with a glass of cold milk? You seem a little stressed this morning.”

I stamped my foot. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

She slid the hot bread off of the pan and onto a cooling rack. The entire room smelled delicious and any other time I would have sat right down and took her up on her cookie offer, but at the moment I was busy solving a crime.

“How could I not hear you? Everyone on the property probably heard you. Why don’t you sit down? You’re making me nervous.” She pulled out a wooden bar stool.

“I’m going to call Nick Zeleski in two minutes if you don’t talk to me.” I straddled the stool and pulled out my cell phone ready to dial up Nick, or at least Lisa. I didn’t actually know Nick’s number.

“Let me put the anise cookies in the oven, and then we can talk.”

I agreed but it was a tentative agreement. I still held onto my phone.

After she slid two trays of cookies into the large oven, she poured a couple tall glasses of milk, and assembled a plate of various cookies, amaretto being one of them, and sat down next to me. Her flour covered arms pressed flat on the high table.

I reluctantly snitched a cookie off the dish, not wanting them to go to waste.

“You’re right about the codicil,” she said. “I’d heard about it, but never knew exactly what it said, so yeah, I pinched it. My future was at stake, and your mom never liked to tell me nothing. I had a right to know the truth. It was no secret that you went and fetched her paperwork that morning, and as soon as I saw you clutching that folder, I knew exactly what you were carrying. Only problem was, you wouldn’t just hand it over no matter how much I might of asked.”

She had a point.

“You left me no choice but to swipe it. And you made it so damn easy. Who puts something that important in a place with a loudspeaker? We all know the song your mom’s jewelry box plays.”

I ate two more cookies amazed that getting a confession out of Hetty could be so easy.

“So Aunt Babe was right all along.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Just because I snitched the codicil doesn’t mean I killed the prick.”

I put the yummy cookie I was about to triumphantly devour back on the plate, and spoke with loud bravado, not wanting to repeat myself. “Why not? You love this place, and love this bakery. You had motive. After all the years of lies you’d told Aunt Babe you sure as hell didn’t want Dickey spilling the truth that you were simply jealous that he was two-timing even you. Although, moving that millstone must have been quite the challenge.”

I waited for a full confession, just like crime shows on TV where the villain comes clean in the end. I especially wanted to hear how she moved the millstone.

“Are you not listening to me? I had nothing to do with that murder.” She leaned in closer to me. “Here’s how it went down, and this is God’s honest truth. I swear.”

“On what?”

“Come again.”

“What do you swear on?”

“I don’t swear. Your Aunt Babe has the potty mouth, not me.”

I didn’t want this to happen again. I took a deep breath and spoke as succinctly as I could. “If you’re going to swear that you’re telling me the truth, I need you to swear on something that matters to you.”

“Humph,” she scoffed. “You always want more than anybody wants to give.”

“Then I won’t believe anything you say.” I began dialing Lisa’s number.

She reached over and grabbed the phone. “Okay, okay. Don’t go calling any cops. I swear on this bakery that I didn’t kill the bastard. I’d thought about it plenty of times. Even thought about how I’d do it, while the bastard was sleeping. I hate confrontations. But when I left him in the barn, he was still upright.”

“You met him in the barn?”

“Didn’t everybody?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then you didn’t know what a big stink that codicil caused with the family.”

She noticed the flour on her arms and proceeded to brush it away. It billowed around her then fell to the table in a fine white layer.

“It shouldn’t have. Dickey told me he didn’t care about this orchard. That he just wanted to marry Jade and start a new life.”

“And you believed him?” Her eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Had no reason not to.”

She leaned in closer to me. “How about because he’s gangster?”

“Okay, so that was all a lie, but still—”

“Look, all I did was barrow the codicil. Nothing else.”

“Did somebody steal it from you?”

“No.”

“Then how did it end up in Peter Doyle’s mouth?

“I don’t know. I gave it to Jimmy.”

Her words sent a rush of heat through me and I sat up stick straight. “You gave it to Jimmy? Why?”

“Because he wanted it.”

“But how did he know you had it?”

“I showed it to him almost as soon as I took it. I wanted to make sure I understood what I’d read.”

“And how did Jimmy react to it?”

“He didn’t.”

“Could you be more specific?”

A bell rang. Hetty stood. Something needed to come out of the oven. “I don’t see what this has . . . ”

I threw her my-daughter-of-a-mobster look, not quite as bad as her evil eye, but I’d been told that it could be intimidating under the right circumstances. I was hoping this was one of those circumstances.

“. . . okay. Don’t be giving me no evil eye. You know I haveta be careful what I say out loud if I don’t want to end up like Dickey. No place is safe until the killer either disappears or we forget about all of this.”

“Neither of which is going to happen so you may as well spill it.”

She walked over to the large oven, grabbed two industrial sized oven mitts, opened the oven and proceeded to pull out several trays of golden rolls, then slid them onto a tall cooling rack. The smell of the warm bread was intoxicating and if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d just heard that sweet cousin Jimmy was looking more and more like a murderer I would have sat right down and eaten an entire tray of rolls, along with a stick of real butter. I was in desperate need of warm comfort.

She pulled the mitts off, let out a loud sigh and said, “He folded it up, slipped it into his pocket and told me that I never saw it.”

Red Mob flag.

My stomach clenched tight. Suddenly the smell of warm bread was nauseating. When one of these Wise Guys told someone they “never saw it” that meant the problem would be taken care of, no matter what the cost.

Rounding up Hetty as the killer was one thing, but rounding up and proving that Jimmy was the killer was in a totally different category. He would not go down easy, plus, I would need much more evidence if I was going to present this to the family. They would have to be convinced before they turned one of their very own over to the police, no matter how slack the “family” strings were.

Case in point, Uncle Sal:

It had been easy to kick Uncle Sal off the property three years ago for that little episode of pimping when suddenly three different women started hanging around the tasting room and leaving with some of our regular male customers. Besides, Sal wasn’t technically an uncle, more of an uncle of a cousin of an aunt who wasn’t a true aunt, but just a friend of Uncle Ray’s sister’s husband.

We had a family meeting and decided not to turn him into the Feds. He was having a problem getting the business off the ground anyway. The women were full-figured ladies, which wasn’t going over as well as he had expected, so instead we bought him and his girls plane tickets to New York City.

Sal became a high profile talent agent for full-figured models. I didn’t want to know if it was legit or not. Once they were off the property, they were no longer my concern.

But Jimmy was direct family, and if he had killed both Dickey and Peter Doyle, and probably Carla, he would have to be turned in, something the entire family had agreed upon when we first moved onto the land.

My only problem was getting hard evidence and only one person could help with that, and she was waiting for me to spring her from the Santa Rosa jail.

I wondered if normal people ever had these problems.



An hour later, after two tablespoons of our Italian blend olive oil—my sensitive tummy really needed it—and a handful of cured Lucques olives from France, crunchy but delicate with a hint of almonds and avocados, I headed up the freeway to pick up my mom. Those overworked prison guards had to be as tired of her by now as she was tired of them.

Santa Rosa was a forty-minute drive, give or take five or ten minutes depending on traffic. Of course, that didn’t take Benny’s phone call into consideration. Luckily, I had already strapped my Bluetooth earpiece around my ear before I stepped in the truck so I didn’t have to go digging for it in my purse when my phone did its doorbell ring.

It was Uncle Benny.

“Your mom’s been booked for Dickey’s murder,” he calmly said into my ear.

My speed picked up along with my heart rate, and my trusty little GPS that I’d activated through a connection in my now basically redundant cigarette lighter, estimated my time of arrival to be in exactly twenty-four minutes.

“On what grounds?” I asked, hoping against all that was even remotely good in the world this booking had no real basis and Benny could work his magic to spring her.

“The bullet in Dickey’s head came from your mom’s revolver.” Of course it did. Lisa already said it would. I tried to breathe through my nose, slowly, but my chest was locked down at the moment. The most I could do was take in a short burst of air and try not to drive into the nearest ditch.

“Are you still there?” Benny asked after what seemed like forever.

“I’m here,” I said in some deep voice I didn’t recognize. “Go on.”

“I cannot seem to get a straight answer out of anyone about how them cops came across her gun. Your mom never pulls that thing out. Where did the police find it? Do you know? As I recall, they did not have a warrant to search the house.”

“Umm,” I hesitated, so not wanting to tell him what happened.

“Are you there? Damn cell phones. I hate these things.”

I had no choice but to tell the truth. “I’m here. They didn’t need to search the house. It’s a long story, but long story-short, it fell out of a futso.”

I could hear him suck in a breath. “How did . . . in the barn?”

“Well, no, actually. Out in Mom’s parking lot.”

A moment of silence.

“You want to tell me how that happened?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Is your mother’s life important to you?”

“Do fish need water?” I didn’t know why that phrase came to mind, but I guessed because he was being ridiculous.

“Just tell me how this happened.”

I told him the sordid details and all the while I could hear him sucking on his cigar. When I finished he said, “Just tell your mom I’ll do everything I can to have her out in time for her weekly Sunday afternoon card game.”

As if that was somehow important. “I wouldn’t want her to miss that,” I shot back, knowing I sounded like a total bitch.

“Mia, it is the routines of life that keeps your mom happy. You of all people should know that by now.”

“You’re right.” But this changed everything. My mom’s life was truly at stake.

“You need to reassure her that everything is going to be fine.”

Like anyone had that kind of power over my mom. “Me? Why me? Can’t you do the reassuring? Seems as if you’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”

That didn’t come out the way I’d hoped.

“Yeah, so what? Your mother needed comforting when she found out Dickey got it, so I spent a little time with her in the house right after we found him while you and Lisa were busy entertaining Leonardo and his cop friend. One thing led to another and now me and your mother are, shall we say, officially an item. But right now I have to concentrate on the paperwork to get her out of there, and you have to be a good daughter and convince her that this rap will never stick.”

That explained his absence from the porch the night Dickey was killed. At least I knew he wasn’t in the barn moving the body. He was in the house moving my mom.

“Do you know who did it?” I asked him.

“I am working on it, but I have to admit, going legit has its limitations.”

This was not the news I wanted to hear. I was probably closer to tracking down the killer than he was.

How did this happen?

“But why did my mom take Leo and Nick out to the barn that night if she knew Dickey was in there?” Something that had always bugged me.

“What, you think I am crazy? I did not divulge the details of Dickey’s whack to your mom. She was in no state to hear it. I merely told her that he had met with an unfortunate end. It was all she needed to know at the time.”

This was good news. “But she lied about the worker cutting his hand on the millstone. Why would she do that?”

“Sweetheart, your mom has been around the block. Give her some adlib credit, will you?”

“So my mom didn’t lie, she improvised?”

“Yeah, that is what she does. She improvises.”

And to finally understand the way my mother’s mind works?

Priceless.

“Okay. I’ll talk to her, but can I see her so soon after she’s been booked?”

“Yes. I got a special circumstance approval from the shift supervisor for you just a little while ago.”

“How did you know I’d agree to this? Wouldn’t it be easier if you just bailed her out?”

“It’s going to take a few hours for the family to raise bail. Besides, you know how to handle your mom better than I do.”

“You owe me,” I told him. “Big time.”

“Sure, hon. Whatever you want.”

“A different family.”

“That I cannot do.”

“Then, don’t make offers you can’t keep.”

“I will try to remember that next time.”

He chuckled and hung up.

I hit number two on my phone and Lisa picked up on the first ring. “My mom’s been booked. She’s in jail for Dickey’s murder. The bullet in his head was from her gun just like you said, but please don’t tell me Nick already told you ‘cause I won’t be able to handle that you didn’t tell me as soon as you found out. I mean, my nerves are pretty much shot right now and knowing that my best friend—”

She interrupted me. “Mia, of course I didn’t know. He wouldn’t tell me something like that, and if he did, I’d have called you the minute I knew. So stop fretting and slow down.”

I backed my lead foot off the gas. I had been doing almost ninety. “But how did you know I was driving?”

“I didn’t. I was talking about slowing down your emotions.”

“Oh,” I said now that the speedometer read sixty-five. “That too.” I eased my death grip on the steering wheel.

“I haven’t heard from Nick since last night. When did this happen?” She sounded sleepy.

“I don’t know. Benny just told me. I was on my way to Santa Rosa to pick up my mom, and now it’s just for a visit. This could get ugly.”

“Look at it this way. You’ll finally be able to talk to her alone.”

She made my mom’s incarceration seem like an advantage.

“Do you always look at the bright side of things?”

“Only when my best friend is running on empty. You probably hardly slept last night, and I know you’re not eating, which describes the life of a teenager, but not a thirty-year-old woman. You’re going to self-destruct if you don’t slow down.”

“I’ll slow down when I’m on that plane to Maui.”

“We’re still going? I thought now that your mom—”

“Nothing, short of my own death, can keep me from going.”

“You made my skin prickle. Don’t say that kind of shit out loud. Not while there’s a killer running around in the family nest.”

I let out a heavy sigh. She was so right.

“One more thing to add to the family tree, whoever killed Dickey had it all planned.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. After catching Liz last night this sleuthing thing is getting easier. Thugs always seem to screw-up. We just have to find the screw-ups. Wait. I just realized your phone is working. Since when?”

“Since my mom picked up a new one this morning. There’s a real saint under all that bluster. They were able to save my SIM card so everything’s cool.”

When she said “cool,” I thought of Jimmy and an idea saturated my thoughts. “Hey, what are you doing later this afternoon? I’m thinking we should pay Jimmy a visit. Clues are adding up in his favor, especially since my conversation with Hetty.”

“Don’t jump to any conclusions until you talk to your mom. There’s no telling what she might say now that she’s facing a life sentence. Maybe Benny did it, or Ray. Did you ever think of that?”

“Benny was still in witness protection when Carla was murdered, and Ray was living in New Jersey running his fake plumbing business. As for killing Dickey we would have never found the body if either one of them did it. Those guys traveled in higher circles. No, either Jimmy did it himself or he’s connected to the person who did. I really need you to come with me when I talk to him.”

“Can’t,” Lisa said. “I have a signing in an hour, but it shouldn’t last more than a few hours. I can meet you afterwards.”

“Your signing’s go that long? What do you talk about?”

“I don’t. It takes that long for me to sign all the books.”

“Who are you and what did you do with my best friend who once refused to read anything other than comic books?”

“I shut her down and replaced her with a clone of an English major.”

“Oh, that’s right. I seem to remember a dorm room, and a campus of some sort, but everything else is just a blur. Too bad. I might have a different life right now if I’d paid attention. One that doesn’t include trying to finger my cousin’s murderer or talking to yet another family member behind bullet proof glass.”

“I’ve never done that. Take me with you next time?”

“I’m hoping there won’t be a next time.”

“Sorry, sweetie, that’s my life, not yours.”

“Rub it in why don’t ya?”

She giggled. “Gotta run. Call me later. I’ll meet you at Jimmy’s bar. Wait. I don’t think you should be hanging around there alone. Might not be safe. I have a bad feeling about this. On second thought, maybe you should wait for me. Safety in numbers and all of that.”

She had a point. Jimmy was now suspect number one, and he might not react well to my snooping. “I’ll call Federico and have him meet me there. He’ll act as my body guard.”

“Good idea. Where’s the ring?”

“Around my neck. Still seems like the safest place.”

“Seems like it makes you a huge target.”

“Only if the wrong person finds out about it.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be. Federico won’t let anything happen to me.”

“Okay, but be careful. Damn, I wish you’d read my books.”

“Believe me, so do I.”

We clicked off and I immediately phoned Federico who was more than happy to meet me at Jimmy’s bar.