The Spia Family Presses On (21 page)

I leaned back on the plastic chair. “Now you’re talking like the Lisa Lin I know and love, but first we need to get rid of the doll, as Aunt Babe would say. And quick.”

“What doll?” Nick asked as he slid back the curtain.

Somehow, in the family and doctor frenzy, I had completely forgotten about relentless Nick.

“A doll I had when I was a kid,” I said.

He grinned. “You don’t really expect me to believe that’s what you were talking about, do you? The officers at the scene told me about the black Tundra that tried to run you ladies off the road. According to Jade, if it wasn’t for Lisa’s defensive driving abilities, you girls might be lying in intensive care right now instead of getting a thumb stitched up. Want to tell me who might want to harm you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said about as convincingly as a five-year-old caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Let’s see, Dickey seems to be missing, there’s a blood stain on your antique olive press, I have a handgun in my possession that has recently been fired, and now someone’s tried to kill the three of you on the highway. I’d say there’s a reasonable chance you both know exactly what this is all about, but for some reason you’re choosing not to tell me or anyone else for that matter. You do know that I can get a warrant and haul both of you into the station for questioning, or you can make all this easy on me and come clean right now.”

“Jade is overreacting to a pushy tourist. Okay, so maybe we were bumped a little. Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Lisa told him.

“Your car is totaled, and your rear bumper was completely torn off. I’d say that’s a little worse than a little bump.”

“My car is totaled?” Lisa whined. “I loved that car. It was my baby, my friend. I swear it had a personality. I’ll never get another one like it. Never.” She lay back on the bed, crestfallen.

I liked the effect.

Nick reacted.

“I know what you mean,” he said, walking closer to her. “I had a sixty-five Camaro like that. A drunk driver plowed into it while it was parked in front of Bectal’s ice cream parlor. I was sixteen. My first car. I cried for two solid days.”

As if on cue, Lisa began to cry.

“Now don’t go doing that. I’m not good at crying women, especially one I like.” He turned to me. “Do something.”

“When she gets like this, I’ve found it’s best to just to sit with her until it passes.” I glanced at my watch. “Oh, look at the time. I have to run.” And I rushed out of the room, hoping that Nick wouldn’t follow me, which he didn’t.

As I walked out of the ER I ran into Jade carrying the two cups of coffee.

“Guess what?” I said. “I got in touch with Dickey and told him all about the accident. He was relieved to know you’re all right.”

“Is he on his way?” she asked all doe eyed, handing me a concoction of coffee that must have been five hundred calories. I took a sip. It was like drinking straight syrup.

“That’s awful,” I said and dumped it in a trash can. Then I took Lisa’s and did the same thing.

“Why would you do that? I don’t get you guys. There’s something strange going on here, ya know? I may not always come across like I’m smart, but I’m a member of Mensa and I know when someone’s trying to put one over on me.”

“There’s nothing strange. Everything’s fine. Just fine.”

“No it’s not and I’m not leaving this hospital until you tell me what’s going on.”

She sat down hard in a chair in the ER waiting room, folded her arms and planted her feet, a look of determination on her smudged face.

I sat down next to her. “Here’s the thing,” I began, trying to figure out how to tell her that Dickey was dead. She stared at me and I could tell she wouldn’t take the news well. “Do you have a friend you can stay with for a few days?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But what does that have to do with anything? I feel fine.”

“I think whoever was driving that truck was actually after you.”

Okay, so I couldn’t tell her about Dickey, but I was telling her the truth. I really did think the guy in the Tundra was after her.

“Me? Why would anyone want to hurt me?”

“Jealousy,” I whispered. All right, it was a big fat lie, something I was getting quite good at.

“You mean somebody’s jealous because I’m engaged to Dickey?”

Not where I was going, but it worked. “Shh. I wouldn’t say that too loud around here. There’s no telling who could be listening.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Oh yeah. Dickey was a babe magnet. Somebody might want you out of the way.”

“Out of the way, like in dead?”

I gave her a look, nodded and pretended to check out the room like there might be someone listening to us. Of course, there were only two other people in the room, a man with a gash on his forehead, and a middle-aged woman who looked as if she was about to pass out in her chair.

“My advice would be to get as far away from here as possible and to stay with a friend for a few days.”

“But what about my honey-bear? He loves me and I love him.”

“If he loved you, he would have been here at the hospital. Last I looked he hasn’t shown up. Not a good sign.”

Big tears rolled down her cheeks. “Maybe we were moving too fast. My friends said I should think about it a little more before I commit.”

“I’d have to agree with your friends. Especially after today. Don’t you think?”

She nodded, pulled out a tissue from her pocket wiped her tears and blew her nose with a great big high-pitched honk. It made me want to laugh, but I controlled myself.

“But now I’m scared to drive back to the city.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a plan.”

Which I did. Suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do with Jade Batista.

The big white tour bus idled in our parking lot in front of our tasting room like it did most days. My mom had made friends with most of the tour guides, and knew several of the drivers on a first name basis. I didn’t have a problem talking the guide into taking Jade after I offered everyone on the bus a free three-once bottle of our oil. Luckily, there were only thirty people on the bus and the tiny bottles were a great promotional device. It was one of those win-win moments.

Jade and I stood in front of the bus handing out the oil as everyone boarded. They smiled, thanked us and went away with both the oil and a brochure detailing Spia’s olive oil club. For about forty dollars every quarter, the participant received two bottles of extra virgin olive oil of our choice, along with a few recipes, and a fifteen percent discount on any online purchase. A great deal for the EVOO connoisseur.

“You have someone to pick you up at the bus drop-off and someone to stay with for a few days, right?” I asked her. I had to make sure she would be safe.

She nodded. “My ex-boyfriend.”

I could tell she was scared, and I felt sorry for her. I knew that feeling well. Plus she kept running her hand over the welt on her head, which was already turning a deep purple.

My shoulder was sore and stiff. Whatever drug they had given me in the hospital was wearing off and it was time for another dose from that filled prescription my mom had picked up.

“Here,” she said pulling off her engagement ring. “Tell Dickey I don’t want to be engaged anymore. I don’t like car chases and sneaking around. That’s for movies and books, not for real life.”

I closed her hand around the ring. “You keep it. Believe me, he doesn’t need it. Sell it and use the money for something you want.”

“I can’t do that. It’s not right.”

“Consider it payment for all you went through today.”

“No, I—”

“Trust me on this.”

She smiled and slipped it back on her finger.

“Tell me about your ex.”

“He’s just a guy I met when I first moved to the city. We were going to get married, but he didn’t like me writing to Dickey or working on the island. I only wrote to Dickey because of research for my thesis, ya know? Same reason I worked on the island. When Dickey was released, part of me got engaged to him just to show my ex I’m my own person, ya know? But it was all a game.”

She piqued my curiosity. “A game?”

“Yeah. Confidentially, all that stuff about sex with Dickey, I made that up. I only ever slept with one other boy in my entire life before Jay-Jay, that’s his name. And really, all we did was sleep together, and maybe fool around a little, but nothing serious happened. I was a virgin when I first made it with Jay-Jay. I don’t like to admit that. Makes me sound like a real nerd or something, which I kinda’ was before I moved to San Francisco. Ruins the mystique, ya know? I don’t even know if I would have gone through with it with Dickey. I mean, the guy was old enough to be my grandfather, ya know?”

I smiled. “I know. We all like to play games with our sexual prowess.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure. Even Dickey.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for all his bravado, he told me he never slept with that Carla woman. That she told him she really was a virgin, and meant to keep it that way until she was married.”

“But I thought they were having an affair?”

“That’s what she wanted everyone to think, just like our affair. He said he thought she was playing him and all she really wanted was for some other guy to get jealous and marry her.”

“Some other guy?”

“Yeah. Dickey said he really loved Carla, but she didn’t love him. He said it was sort of like Sophia Loren, Cary Grant and Carlo Ponti. I mean, I know who Sophia Loren is, and everybody knows Cary Grant, but I have no idea who this Carlo Ponti dude is or was, but anyway, he said that somebody killed Carla before she could marry her Carlo Ponti. Does this make any sense to you?”

I nodded. I knew all the details because of Aunt Babe. It was one of her classic Hollywood love triangles. “So Carla was seeing someone else besides Dickey?”

“That’s what Dickey said, but he didn’t know who. She never told him.”

“As far as I can remember, this never came up in the trial.”

“Dickey said he told his lawyer, but without concrete evidence, it was inadmissible.”

“Then Dickey came back here with the same sort of situation going on. You’re still in love with this Jay-Jay dude, aren’t you?”

Her eyes watered. “I guess so, only honey-bear, I mean Dickey, and I were supposed to announce our engagement last night. He said he had some kind of plan to ferret out Carla’s killer, but then he got a phone call yesterday morning and suddenly he had to meet somebody at Russo’s winery. You know where that is?”

“I do,” I said, my heart in my throat.

I now had verification that Dickey was on that porch with Leo. I wanted to cry, but first I needed to eat. Food seemed like the only thing that might keep me from passing out from all her disturbing information.

“He told me to wait until I heard from him before I drove over, but when I never did, well, you know the rest.”

The driver interrupted our conversation. “Time to go, Miss.”

Jade and I hugged. “Call me when you get to Jay-Jay’s.”

She nodded. I gave her my phone number and she quickly punched it into her keypad, fingers moving at warp speed. I never could do that. Then she turned and boarded the bus.

I gave her a little wave as the bus drove away.

Jade turned out to be a sweet girl. She was going to be sad when she heard about Dickey’s demise. Jade was one of the few people I knew who cared about Dickey, Jade and Maryann and perhaps Aunt Babe.

“What was that all about?” Lisa asked, walking up behind me, right arm in a blue sling.

“I’ll tell you about it over dinner. I’m starving. I’ll cook. Afterward, we have to sneak into a private meeting and try to pick out Carlo Ponti.”

Scallops with Myer
L
emon and Fennel Dressing –
L
evel
O
ne

3 tbs. Liquirizia from Calabria or any other licorice flavored liquor

3 tbs. Mission EVOO or any mild tasting EVOO

1 large clove of fresh garlic, crushed

Salt and cracked pepper to taste

Hot-pepper EVOO

10 to 16 Scallops

four skewers

Dressing

2 tbs. Myer lemon juice (Myer lemons are sweeter and yield much more juice)

1/4 tsp. grated lemon zest

2 tbs. Champagne Balsamic vinegar or cherry vinegar

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

1/3 cup Mission EVOO (or forgo the lemons and use lemon infused EVOO)

2 tbs. chopped fresh fennel tops

Salt and cracked pepper to taste

To make dressing: Blend the vinegar, lemon juice, zest, and mustard in a bowl. Gradually add the Mission oil until well blended. Add the chopped fennel and salt and pepper to taste, mix again. Breathe in the aroma, relax, breathe, feel the tension leaving your body. Set the mixture aside to allow the flavors to meld.