4 Cupids Curse (13 page)

“I guess
’tis the season for chocolate.” Zak tossed a couple of boxes into the basket.

“I’m not sure we needed a cart for a few cartons of ice cream.”

“I figure we could pick up some other supplies as long as we’re here.”

G
rocery shopping with Zak was really romantic. We’d never actually shopped together before, and it was fun to discuss what brand of toothpaste to buy and what kind of cereal provided the most fiber. As we strolled up and down the aisles, I realized that I had probably learned more about Zak in the half hour we were in the store than I had in all the time I’d known him.

“I can’t believe you
’re so opinionated about laundry detergent,” I teased.

“A good detergent mixed with a quality presoak product can make all the difference in dealing with difficult stains.”

I laughed.

“Take this presoak.” Zak
picked up a bottle. “This one claims to instantly melt away any stain within minutes, and based on the exorbitant price, most people would feel they were buying a quality product, but the truth is that this stuff works about as well as water. This stain lifter, on the other hand,” he said, turning to a much less expensive bottle, “works every time.”

“You spend a lot of time presoaking?”

“Just call me the laundry master.”

I rolled my eyes
, but it seemed Zak also had quite a few strong opinions on everything from toilet paper to produce.

“We should do this more often,” I suggested as we made our way to the checkout. “It’s fun to get a peek inside your complicated brain.
”

“We can make a weekly date of it.”

I had to admit I’d never known anyone as diversified as Zak. He seemed to know a lot about pretty much everything. As I watched the hundreds of dollars’ worth of groceries Zak bought glide by on the conveyer belt, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I looked at the caller ID but didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello,” I said
, prepared to hang up at the first sign of a telemarketer.

“Zoe,” someone cried. “It’s Kevin. He’s been arrested.”

“What?”

“Please come. No one else can help me.”

“Kevin Michaels has been arrested,” I said to Zak as soon as I hung up. “His wife is beside herself. I told Maureen we’d come by their house as soon as we could get there.”

“
Don’t take this the wrong way, but why would she call you? Are the two of you close?”

“
We aren’t,” I agreed. “I guess Kevin might have mentioned to her that I’d been asking around about Trent’s murder.”

“
Yeah, I guess that makes sense. We’ll drop this stuff off at my house and head over there.”

“Maureen,” I said, holding the hysterical woman in my arms less than an hour later. “I understand that you’re upset, but you need to calm down and tell us what happened if you want us to help you.”

Maureen pulled back and took several deep breaths. Zak handed her a tissue and a glass of water. “Ok
ay,” she hiccupped.

“Why don’t we sit at the dining table
?” I suggested.

“Sorry about the mess
.” Maureen began to straighten up the things on the table. “Things have been hectic and I haven’t had a chance to get to the housework.”

“No problem
.” I felt empathy for the poor woman, who hurriedly ran a cloth over the table and picked up several clumps of thick red mud from her carpet.

“Seems the vacuuming is never done with a contractor in the family
.” She blushed. “If Kevin isn’t tracking in mud from a construction site, it’s sawdust from the mill.”

“I have three animals
, so you don’t have to apologize to me. Charlie seems to be a mud magnet. If there’s one tiny puddle, he’ll find it.”

Maureen smiled.

After everyone had taken a seat, I said, “Now tell us exactly what happened.”

“Sheriff Salinger came by a while ago. He said he had a warrant to arrest Kevin for Anthony Martucci’s death. That’s crazy. Kevin would never kill anyone.”

“Did they say why they suspected him?” Zak asked.

“Something about the murder weapon belonging to Kevin. I was so upset
, I didn’t catch everything.”

“I’m going to call a lawyer I know,” Zak announced.

“We don’t have a lot of money.”

“Don’t worry. Moses is a friend of mine. He
’ll be able to get the story a lot quicker than we can.”

I made Maureen tea while Zak talked to
the lawyer. Poor Maureen was beside herself. I tried to get her to sit and talk, but she wanted to pace, and pace she did; back and forth, endlessly, across the living room. Zak was probably only on the phone for two minutes, but with all the wailing and pacing, it seemed more like two hours. I could understand why Maureen would be upset that her husband had been arrested, but the degree of her distress seemed melodramatic and somehow contrived.

“Is your friend going to help?” Maureen asked the minute Zak hung up the phone.

“Yeah. He’s going to call Salinger to see what he can find out and call me back when he has news. In the meantime, let’s go over everything you know. Any detail, no matter how small, could be relevant.”

“What do you want to know?” Maureen twisted the tissue she was holding until it was shredded.

“I guess the obvious starting point is to establish an alibi,” I began. “Anthony Martucci died Sunday evening. Do you know where Kevin was then?”

“He was here with me. All night,” Maureen assured us.

“How would you describe Kevin’s relationship with Trent?” I asked.

“Kevin liked Trent. The
y got along very well. In fact, Trent came by once a week or so for dinner. He particularly loved some of the things I made from recipes I learned from Mom. Kevin is a finicky eater, so I didn’t make them often, but once I realized Trent and I shared similar tastes, I started having him to dinner more often.”

“Did Trent ever mention his life before he moved to Ashton Falls?” I asked.

“Not really. I’m pretty sure he was instructed not to speak about it.”

“Did Kevin tell you how he came to hire Trent?”
Zak wanted to know.

“Yeah, he
filled me in on the Fresh Start program. He figured I should know about it before he agreed to participate.”

“Do you happen to know why Kevin was approached
about the program in the first place?” I realized that might have been a good question for me to ask Kevin when I’d had the chance.

“No, he never said,” Maureen answered.
“Kevin said that the prison system was looking for a small, out-of-the-way town where Trent could disappear, and since they’d trained him in construction, I guess Kevin was a logical choice.”

“And Kevin wasn’t told what Trent had done to end up in prison?” I clarified.

“No, other than the fact that he was involved with a bad crowd.”

Zak’s cell rang as Maureen and I spoke. He excused himself to take the call
, which he informed us was from Moses.

It occurred to me that it might be worth our while to have Zak check into the
Fresh Start program. When Kevin had first mentioned it, it had seemed to make sense, but the more I thought about it, I had a harder time believing that anyone would take someone into their life without being aware of the
specific
reason
they’d gone to prison in the first place.

“I
think the best way to help Kevin is to figure out who
did
kill Anthony Martucci,” I told Maureen. “Can you think of anything? Anything at all that might point us in a direction?”

“Not really. Kevin and I were both very upset when we found out about Trent.
We might have felt the urge to hurt the man who killed him, but I can assure you that neither of us acted on it. It’s natural to feel rage when someone you care about is needlessly slaughtered. It’s possible that someone else in the community who Trent had helped out and gotten to know might have felt that same rage.”

I thought about Willa, Tawny, Old Man Johnson, and Mary
Grayson. None of them seemed like the type to kill a man. I had the feeling there was something important I was missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it could be.

“So?” I asked
as soon as Zak walked back into the room. Maureen still looked like she might pass out.

“Anthony Martucci was hit over the head with a pipe wrench.
The sheriff thinks whoever killed him was in the room when Martucci arrived. It appears the killer hit Martucci with the wrench and then threw it into the Dumpster behind the motel, where it was found. The weapon had both Anthony’s blood and Kevin’s fingerprints on it.”

“Oh
God.” Maureen went white.

“
According to what Moses could find out, Kevin claims he lent the wrench to Trent over a week ago and hasn’t seen it since,” Zak added. “Kevin believes someone is setting him up. The problem is, Salinger talked to a couple of his workers, who said that Martucci came by the Mendoza worksite to talk to Kevin a few days before the murder. And several people saw Kevin arguing with him the day before he died.”

“
What now?” I asked.

“
There’s nothing we can do today. I’m going to suggest we pick this up tomorrow,” Zak said.

“Is there someone we can call for you?” I asked Maureen.

“My neighbor. Her number is by the phone.”

After the neighbor arrived
, Zak and I got back in his truck and headed toward his house. “Did it seem like Maureen knew something she wasn’t telling us?”

He nodded.
“I got the feeling that her answers were guarded. She called
you,
so I’m not sure why she’d lie to us, but there was definitely more going on than she would admit to.”

“I want to believe that Kevin didn’t k
ill Martucci, but it’s starting to bother me that there are a few too many holes in the story. For one thing, if, as Kevin suggested to Moses, someone went to the Zoo, found Trent’s body, realized that Martucci must have killed him, and then decided to kill him but frame Kevin for the murder, they would have had to have been in possession of a whole lot of information.” I began to count off facts on my fingers. “First of all, they would have had to have known that Trent was going to be at the Zoo. Second, they would have had to have known that Kevin’s wrench was in Trent’s possession
and
have had access to his tools. And thirdly, they would have had to have known that Martucci was looking for Trent, that there was reason to suspect him of killing Trent,
and
know where Martucci was staying. There really is only one logical suspect.”

“
Kevin,” Zak agreed. “So what now? Do we continue to try to prove Kevin’s innocence?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe we should go by
to talk to him tomorrow. Maybe he knows something he hasn’t mentioned yet.”

By the time we’d gotten home the previous day, Zak and I were physically and emotionally exhausted. I fed the cats while Zak let the dogs out, and then we both fell into his big bed and a restless slumber. When we got up the next morning, we filled Mom in as best we could and headed into town.

Jeremy had called asking for help
, so Zak went to speak to Moses to see, what, if anything, we could do to help Kevin and I headed to the Zoo, where my assistant was knee deep in pets and people. Apparently, despite our slow start, now that people knew we were open, it was raining cats and dogs. Even with Jeremy’s colorful description of the chaos at the Zoo, I wasn’t entirely prepared for the line outside the door that greeted me.

“All these people have animals they want to turn in?” I asked.

“Most want to adopt, a few are just lookie loos, but a few actually have animals to place.”

“So where did all the animals come from?” I wondered as I walked down the hall and viewed the full cages.

“Once the other shelters in the area heard we were accepting overflow, they started sending them faster than I can process them. I have people who want to adopt many of the new arrivals, but I need to check them in and have Scott give them shots and exams before we can release them.”

“Didn’t the shelters they came from have the
ir shots updated?”

“Most did
, but like I said, I need to go through all the paperwork and see what’s what.”

“Okay, one of us will work the desk and the other will check in the new animals. Which do you want?”

“Honestly, as much as I normally hate paperwork, I had a rough night last night and could use the peace and quiet of doing the intakes.”

“Too much partying?”

“Too much baby-mama drama. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Mulligan
’s after closing? My treat.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Jeremy headed into the office, where we kept our files, computers, and other business equipment, and I headed toward the front counter. “Can I have everyone’s attention?” I yelled. “While I am thrilled that so many of you turned out for what appears to be our second grand opening, I’m afraid we’re in a bit of a bind as far as our paperwork is concerned. I’d like to have two lines. If you’re here to adopt, please step to the left; if you’re here to drop off, please step forward, and if you’re here to see the place, please come back tomorrow and I promise to not only give you the grand tour but to provide refreshments as well.”

A
fter my speech, more than half of the people standing around left. I called Pappy and asked if he could bring over doughnuts and coffee for those who had chosen to wait. He did, and everyone seemed to enjoy the “adoption party,” as each potential adoptive parent discussed what they hoped to find in the new animals that had arrived. Only four people were dropping animals off. Normally, four in one day would be unheard of, but we’d been closed since the first of November, and people were waiting to leave their animals with us rather than take them to the kill shelter in the valley.

“And who do we have here?” I asked Phyllis King, a member of the book club
at the senior center.

“This is Tazzy,” she
said, handing me a long-hair black cat. “She’s really sweet, but she doesn’t get along with my Annabelle. When my neighbor moved and couldn’t take him, I promised to give it a try, but it simply isn’t working. I’ve asked around, but Tazzy has some bad habits and is really a one-pet cat, so I haven’t had much luck. His shots are current and he’s been neutered.”

Tazzy really was a beautiful cat
, but he hissed at me when I accepted him from Phyllis, and the long scratch where he dug his claws into my arm quickly started to turn red. “I’m sure we can find someone who will be just right for him,” I assured Phyllis.

The next intake was a man who had gotten a Saint Bernard as a Christmas gift for his daughter and claimed he had no idea how big he would get. It’s amazing how many big dogs are brought in because the owner saw a cute puppy and didn’t bother to research the specifics of the breed. I refrained from giving my do
-the-research-before-you-adopt speech and instead handed the man a pamphlet on the different breeds: their size, temperament, and special needs.

The next dog was a Doberman who hadn’t been properly socialized and was aggressive
, followed by a poodle puppy Mom had bought but Dad wanted nothing to do with. While I hate to see an animal who doesn’t work out with a family, I’d much rather they come to us so that we can properly place them than have them remain in a high-stress, abusive, or otherwise undesirable situation.

Once I’d completed the intakes
, I began to interview potential adoptive families. There’s a misconception that all it takes to adopt an animal is to show up with the proper fee and take home a pet that night. Many shelters do it that way, but I’ve always been of the mind that if I make a careful placement the first time, I won’t see the animal back in a few weeks. Some potential dog and cat families are well versed in the tasks of pet ownership and know exactly what they want, while others . . . Let’s just say I tend to be concerned when someone comes in and asks for a white dog or a big dog, without knowing anything about the breed they’re adopting.

“How’s it going?” Jeremy asked after I had completed the intakes and started on the adoptions.

“Really good. We have some excellent candidates.”

“Any going home today?”

“I told Silvia she could take that sheltie that was brought in with the animals from Bryton Lake last week and Hazel that she could take the black kitten. Silvia’s an experienced dog owner who has had a sheltie before, and Hazel has been waiting for a kitten to be eligible for adoption for quite some time. Other than that, I told almost everyone I’d call them tomorrow or the next day. I’d like to get a chance to meet the animals and look over the applications.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jeremy answered. “Now that you’ve finished with
the interviews, you can finish the paperwork and I’ll clean the cages and exercise the dogs.”

“That’s why we make such a good team. You’re always willing to do the dirty work.”

After we closed up for the evening
, we headed over to Mulligan’s. I was tempted to call Zak to ask him to join us, but Jeremy seemed to want to talk and I wanted to be there for him.

“So what’s up on the baby front?” I asked as I paid for the beer
and an order of artichoke dip in a bread bowl. Jeremy had just turned twenty-one a few weeks earlier, and I was still getting used to the fact that he could join me for an after-work cocktail.

“Gina is just so uncomfortable and so unhappy
, and she blames me for it all. I’ve tried to be there for her, but last night she went completely off the deep end. She was so hysterical that I didn’t feel like I could leave her alone. It’s really not like her to be so irrational.”

“Pregnancy hormones can wre
ak havoc with some women,” I cautioned. “Add that to the fact that she never wanted the baby and I’m sure she’s finding herself regretting her decision. You, my friend, make an obvious target for her anger.”

“Yeah
, I guess. I just hate to think about how Gina’s anger is affecting Morgan.”

“Maybe Gina needs a break. Does she have any friends who might be willing to go on a trip with her?”

“She’s in her seventh month. I don’t think she should be traveling. Although to be honest, I think that’s part of the problem. Gina has always traveled a lot. She’s used to having a busy life. She doesn’t have a lot of friends, so she ends up sitting home all day by herself. By the time I check in with her every evening, she’s totally worked up and wants to kill me.”

“Let me think about it. Maybe I can come up with something. In the meantime
, be patient with her. I’ve never been pregnant, but I understand that it can be very uncomfortable.”

I realized as I spoke to Jeremy that hooking
up Gina with my mom might be a good idea. My mom was more than twenty years older than Gina, so not an obvious friend, but both had traveled extensively and enjoyed being pampered and partaking of the finer things in life. My mom was at Zak’s all day, most times alone. I’m sure she could use the company and if nothing else, Gina would enjoy the facilities the extravagant estate afforded. Not only was there an indoor pool and workout room but there was a fully equipped spa that my grandmother had used when she was in residence. She’d had a staff to administer the spa treatments, but I was willing to bet there was someone who could be hired to come in on a temporary basis.

Of course
, I’d need to discuss the idea with Mom first, so I refilled Jeremy’s beer and turned the conversation to baby buggies and bassinettes. By the time we—mostly Jeremy—had finished off the pitcher of beer, Zak had wandered in looking for me. We decided it best to drive Jeremy home rather than risk a DUI, so Zak took him while I ran over to the boathouse to pick up some more clothes before meeting back at his place.

When I arrived at Zak’s, he was pulling into the drive with takeout bags from one of my favorite Mexican places. Mom hadn’t eaten yet, so the three of us sat down at the kitchen table and dug into the delicious food. I told Zak about my day and the plethora of animals that had shown up, and he shared that Moses has spent most of the day looking for legal precedents while he’d been busy helping a client through a software nightmare.

“It seems,” Zak continued, “that
if we believe Kevin is innocent and want to help him, our best chance of getting him off the hook is to figure out what really happened.”

I cut off a bite of cheesy enchilada and popped it into my mouth as I thought. “We know that
Martucci most likely came to town looking for Trent, or maybe I should say Joey. We know Trent was part of a relocation program. Do we know what he was arrested for?”

“Double homicide,” Zak informed me.

“Homicide? Sweet, giving Trent killed someone?”

“Two someones,” Zak confirmed.
“Joey Marino was involved in the gangland murder of two members of a rival Mafia family when he was just sixteen He was tried as an adult due to the severity of the crime and sentenced to a good, long time in prison. According to his parole officer, once he was isolated from the influence of his family, he began to see the error of his way and eventually agreed to provide sensitive information to law enforcement in exchange for an early release.”

“I’m guessing the family he ratted out
found him.” I felt bad for Trent. He’d had a rough start in life, but based on the little I’d found out about him, he seemed to genuinely want to live a helpful and honorable life.

“It looks like Anthony
Martucci was some type of enforcer for a Mafia family based in New York.”

“Mary
told me she’d overheard Trent talking to someone named Bruno, who apparently had spoken to someone named Giovanni.”

“
Giovanni Lombardi is the name of the head of the family Joey Marino was connected with,” Zak confirmed.

“That fits. Mary said it sounded like Trent feared this man
, but also held him in reverence.”

“Okay, so
Martucci catches up with Trent and kills him for betraying the family. So who killed Martucci?” Mom asked.

“
That’s the million-dollar question,” I said.