The Spia Family Presses On (15 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re mom isn’t the killer. Maybe she took it off for some reason and gave it to someone and that someone was the killer. Who knows, but that’s beside the point.”

I shook my head. “Please. She would never do that. When do you ever remember my mom without a bracelet?”

She thought for a moment. “All right, so maybe she did it. And if she did do it, she probably had a damn good reason. And if she had a damn good reason, then it’s all taken care of. Obviously, most of the men in the family had to help her. How else would that millstone have gotten moved?”

I flashed on those papers I retrieved from the bank and a curious negative thought pried open my determination to clear my mom. Could my mom have pulled the trigger on Dickey because of that document, with the entire Spia clan standing by her side? The vision was a little over the top, especially if I focused on Hetty with her ruby-red lips and clown hair, but perfectly reasonable considering my family’s values.

The family that kills together . . .

Lisa continued. “Your family did whatever mobsters do to get rid of a body, which I don’t want to think about, but it was necessary in this situation. It clearly means that Nick isn’t a threat. Not as long as Dickey’s wearing cement boots floating on the bottom of some lake or river. Nick is simply a sweet guy who I’d like to get to know better.”

“Who just happens to be a detective.”

“Not a problem, at least not for me. I’m not part of your family, remember? I’m the friend. I can date a judge and it won’t make any difference. Besides, I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Oh?”

She rolled out of bed and stood there, staring down at me, looking rather put together for just having woken up. “Okay, so maybe we didn’t call the police the moment we found Dickey. We were just doing what we thought was right at the time. He was a bad dude anyway. A mob boss. You don’t seriously believe he didn’t kill Carla DeCarlo, do you? Or had something to do with it? Besides, nobody cares if there’s one less mobster in this world.”

She turned on her naked heels, padded off to the kitchen area, filled a kettle with tap water and placed it on a burner. I rolled out of bed and trudged off to the bathroom, eager to take yet another shower. A shower was always a place for me to think, and brother did I ever need time to think.

I grabbed a change of clothes from my closet and went into the bathroom. As soon as I stepped inside the scent of berries was almost overpowering. I figured it had to be coming from the clothes-hamper where I’d thrown my oily clothes.

When I placed my clothes on the counter, I nearly jumped out of my flannels. A bloody white handkerchief rolled up in a cylinder sat on the edge of the sink.

I took a step back, then slowly crept in closer, afraid the thing was going to jump up and bite me . . . I figured nothing was impossible after the previous night.

As I moved in closer to the bloody intruder, I picked up a toothbrush lying on the sink and poked at it a couple times. The hankie unraveled a bit and something that resembled a finger fell out of it and rolled around in the sink, leaving a streak of dark red blood.

“That’s disgusting,” I said out loud.

I leaned over the sink to get a better look and realized that it was, in fact, a pinky finger, a pinky finger with a long, perfectly manicured nail. Undoubtedly, this was Dickey’s pinky finger rolling around in my sink. My already tormented tummy reminded me just how disturbing this moment of severed madness was.

“Oh-my-god! Lisa, come’ere-come’ere-come’ere!”

Lisa ran in before I finished getting all my yells out. She spotted the severed digit as soon as she walked in the room and cautiously peered inside the basin.

“Wow,” she calmly said. “I hope this finger belongs to Dickey or your family is getting completely out of control.”

“It’s his. It has to be his. I remember the manicure.”

She poked around at the bloody hankie. “There’s a note.” She picked it up, carefully unfolded it and read the printed words: “If you give me what was on this finger, Dickey will disappear forever. If you don’t, you’ll regret it. This is my final offer.” She looked at me. “This is so Godfather. Couldn’t the killer have thought of something more original? I mean, come on. A finger? A threatening note? Whoever this guy is, needs to update his bag of mob tricks.”

The teapot whistled. She dropped the note in the sink and walked out of the bathroom, leaving me standing there still clutching my pile of clean clothes, completely put off by her flippant attitude. We were talking murder here and she was talking Hollywood.

I padded out of the bathroom. “Doesn’t this scare you? Aren’t you worried, or at the very least, nauseous? Someone just threatened us, not to mention that he or she, although I’m thinking it was a he because the women in this family are pretty squeamish when it comes to blood. Anyway he was in here last night while we slept. The killer was in my apartment planting Dickey’s finger. That alone is disturbing.”

“I keep telling you to lock your door.” She pulled a white six-cup teapot from the cupboard. “It’s more corny than anything else. Okay, and disgusting. But nauseous? Umm, not so much. From all I’ve read about the mob, and from hanging around with you, this seems like some kind of vendetta that we shouldn’t be involved in. I mean, we don’t have the ring, so obviously the killer is completely misguided. We just need to let him know the facts and stay out of the way. Without a body, the murder isn’t our problem.”

She busied herself with filling a tea ball with loose tea, placing it inside the teapot then pouring in the hot water.

I sighed and sat down hard on the bed. It was all getting to be too much. “And just how do we let the killer know we don’t have the ring? Stand on my front porch and yell it out?” Hello, Mr. Killer, we don’t have the ring!”

“I hadn’t thought of that one, but we could leave a note on the front door: Dear Killer, Somebody else stole your ring. Sincerely, Mia and Lisa.”

“You’re not serious.”

She found dishes and flatware in the cupboards and placed them on my counter. “Kind of, yes. What else are we supposed to do?”

“Here’s the thing. The killer is not going to believe that we don’t have it. Not in this group. Too many trust issues. Besides, you said the ring was a lead.”

“Yeah, to the killer, not a thief. This is an entirely different game now. We’re suddenly in the crosshairs and I’m not sure I’m too comfortable with that. Can’t we just forget about the whole thing and leave for Maui early?”

I tossed my clothes on the bed, got up and walked over to the small wooden table in front of a side window. Lisa busied herself setting up a tea party for two complete with anise biscotti, and warm, olive focaccia bread courtesy of Aunt Hetty who routinely brought me a tray of early morning goodies, a couple of ripe pears, deep purple grapes, several thick slices of goat cheese, honey, and a cow shaped creamer filled with warmed milk. I pulled out a chair and made myself comfortable.

“We could do that, but there are a few things that I can’t seem to let go of,” I said as she poured me a cup of steaming Palm Court tea, our favorite ever since our last trip to New York City and our visit to the Plaza Hotel where we shared high tea. Of course, I had added a couple shots of bourbon to my cup, but that was in another life.

“What’s that?” she asked as she placed the tea pot back on the table.

“Why did the killer try to set up my mom? And what makes you think Nick will give up his search for Dickey when he found fresh blood on the millstone, my mom’s handgun floating in olive oil and the two of us acting so weird? And what does it say to the family if I don’t ferret out the killer? I’ve been working hard to keep them honest for the past two years. This murder blows that right into orbit. And besides all of that, what the hell do we do with Dickey’s pinky finger?”

Lisa stirred milk and honey into her tea and looked at me as if all my worries were totally insignificant. “About the killer setting up your mom, maybe he or she didn’t actually try to set her up. Maybe the killer threw the gun in the futso because the killer didn’t know what else to do with it when we walked in. Granted, the killer used your mom’s handgun, but that’s the only gun on the land, right?”

“As far as I know, yes, but these are ex-Mafiosi. Do you really think they gave up all of their hardware? Not likely. And what about my mom’s bracelet?”

“I think that’s legitimate. Meaning that somehow it came off while she was talking to him in the barn, and it simply ended up under his feet. Total accident.”

I was skeptical, but for the sake of argument, willing to go along. For now. “Okay. I’ll accept that, but what about Nick? He’s like a bloodhound. I don’t think he’s going to stop looking for Dickey.”

She drank down some tea and smirked. “Don’t worry about Nick. He’s all mine and after one night with me he won’t even remember Dickey’s name.”

“You’re that good, huh?”

Lisa leaned back in her chair and smirked. “Better.”

I smiled as I poured milk into my tea then drank down half the cup. “One last thing, Ms Vixen, we have a bloody finger sitting in the sink, and a killer who thinks we have Dickey’s ring. What exactly do you propose we do next?”

She shrugged. “Bury the finger, and let it be known that we do not have the ring and that we’ll forget about finding Dickey’s killer. You’ll simply let this whole thing slide as long as they don’t ever kill anybody else.”

“Simple,” I said. “I slap their hands and tell them they were bad and I’m done with it.”

“Something like that, yes,” she said, in between sips of hot tea.

My stomach wasn’t buying any of this. It cramped up so tight I thought I was going to hurl my tea.

“You’re doing it,” I told her.

“Doing what?”

“Falling for the lure of the mob. This is how they suck you in. Their way seems so easy, so simple, but believe me, something always goes wrong. It may not happen right away, but eventually you end up like Dickey.”

She sipped her tea for a moment, put the cup down and stared at me, all serious. “You know everything I said was complete bullshit. We have a fucking severed finger in your bathroom sink, a missing dead body, a murderer who thinks we have something he was willing to kill for, and a cop who smells trouble. I’m scared out of my friggin’ mind, Mia. Could it get any worse?”

That’s when we heard heavy footsteps on my stairs.

Focaccia with Olives and Salt –
L
evel
Two or T
hree

3
1/2
to 4 cups unbleached flour

2
1/4
tsp. active dry yeast

3/4
cup warm water (not hot to touch)

1/3 cup Italian Blend EVOO

1/3 cup dry white wine (or water depending on your resolve)

1/4
tsp. sugar

3/4
tsp. salt

2 tbs. fresh rosemary leaves, chopped

3/4 cup chunked Kalamata olives

1/4
cup chunked Toscano olives or for a more intense flavor, use Sicilian

12 halved, pitted olives (a blend of the above)

Kneading bread dough is always soothing and distracting, so take your time with this one. It’s great to make bread whenever you’re feeling especially hostile, tense or jittery. Try to focus on the dough rather than anything else.

Drop 3
1/2
cups of flour into a large bowl, add sugar, salt and half of the rosemary. Give it a quick mix with a fork. Then make a hole in the middle, building up the flour all around the sides, like the top of a volcano. Pour in
1/2
cup of the warm water into that hole, add the yeast, and stir briefly with your fork. Let stand for about 8 minutes or until it gets creamy and bubbly. Take this time to relax, breathe in the scent of the yeast, and chop the olives. When the yeast is ready add the wine, oil, and remaining water. Make sure all the liquids are warm or at room temperature or you will kill the yeast. Mix ingredients with your hands. Here comes the level three part. When you have a nice big ball, and you’ve gotten all of the mixture to come away from the sides of the bowl (this can be accomplished by adding a bit more olive oil), move the dough to a lightly floured surface and work the hell out of it until the stickiness is gone, about five or six minutes or until it turns smooth and elastic. Add the chunked olives and knead for a few more minutes. All this kneading will take about ten full, glorious minutes to accomplish. Keep adding flour as needed.

Place this beautiful ball of dough in a clean, oiled large bowl, then flip so there’s now a soft sheen of EVOO on the top of the dough. Cover with a pretty dish towel, place in a warm spot for 1
1/2
hours or until it has doubled in bulk.

During your wait, you can clean up the kitchen, make an accompanying dish, like a beautiful salad, or take a long walk. Getting physical exercise gets those positive endorphins working, which only helps with sobriety resolve.

Set oven to 450 degrees. Gently punch down the now beautifully swollen dough. Let it sit for about five more minutes. Place it on a lightly floured surface and shape into either a
3/4
inch thick rectangle or round and transfer to an oiled baking sheet. With your fingers, press down on the dough making several indentations on the surface. Brush lightly with olive oil. Press the 24 halved olives into the depressions, sprinkle on a little coarse sea salt and the remaining rosemary. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden browned. Remove from oven, and allow to cool for about ten minutes. Cut into squares or triangles and serve. Can be eaten warm or cold.