The Spia Family Presses On (8 page)

I snatched the phone out of her hand and threw it in the open fusto. “I can’t let you do that.”

“Tell me you didn’t just throw my phone, with all my contact information, and my notes for my next book into a vat of olive oil.” Lisa stood with her arms akimbo, mouth tight, eyes narrowed, head tilted as if her brain had suddenly gotten heavy with thought.

“You gave me no other option,” I told her.

“There are always options. You simply chose to ignore them.”

“We can’t call the police.”

“Fine, but did you have to destroy my phone in the process? Do you have any idea what a nightmare that little act of defiance is going to cause me?” Her voice went up an octave.

We heard the soft clunk of the phone hitting bottom. She winced.

“I’m sorry, but my mother is not going to prison for something she didn’t do. I already lost one parent to this damn family, I won’t lose another.”

Her face softened. “Ah, now I get it. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“I wasn’t conscious of it until this very moment. I just knew my mom wasn’t guilty and you were getting ready to call the police and I simply reacted. It was a gut level thing.”

“Next time your gut wants to tell you what to do would you please ask your head if it agrees?”

“That’s not always an option, but I’ll see what I can do. So, any suggestions?”

She eyed the futso. “You think the three minute rule applies to phones floating in olive oil?” She bent over and peeked into the open thirty-liter futso, then slowly knelt next to it trying to get a good look inside, careful to place the long black screw down next to her.

“That’s the three second rule, and it only applies to food you drop on the floor. This is an entirely different animal.”

“I’m going in,” she said and plunged her hand into the olive oil, our Italian Blend, made from a combination of Frantoio, Leccino, Moraiolo and Pendolino olives. Not for the timid. This oil was pungent and spicy.

Half her arm disappeared inside the futso. She began to cough as the scent of the oil caught in her throat. “There’s . . . something . . . else…”

But her coughing stole her voice. She retrieved the phone and held it over the futso so the oil could drip back in from both her arm and the phone. A somewhat startled look spread across her otherwise tranquil face.

“What?”

She tried to speak, but still couldn’t. Instead, she pulled a handful of tissues out of her shoulder bag to wipe off the glistening olive oil from her arm and phone, careful not to let any of it drip on the table or on her clothes. Neither one of us wanted to contaminate the crime scene if we could help it, but that was probably a moot point by now.

In the meantime, the little problem of one dead mobster still haunted my thoughts and the more we stood there, the more panicked I became that someone would walk in on us. “Hurry,” I told her. “We need to get out of here and lock this place up while I think of what to do next.”

Lisa finally gained control of her voice. “There’s a handgun in there,” she said in even tones as if finding the gun along with her phone was a natural occurrence. “I’d say there’s a relatively good chance it’s the murder weapon unless this is some new way of storing the family weapons.”

I gave her a wry look. She didn’t flinch.

“Why would the killer leave the weapon where anybody could find it so easily? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Does any of this make sense? I don’t know. Maybe he or she thought the police would never look inside these things, or at least not right away and that would give them time to remove it. I think we interrupted the killer before he or she could make a clean escape.”

“But we never heard a gun shot.”

“It could have happened right before we came in and the killer didn’t want to take the chance of leaving with a smoking gun, so to speak.” She focused on polishing her phone. It looked dead, but I could tell she was hopeful.

She said, “Or the killer wanted it to be found. Tell me your mom doesn’t own a handgun.”

“Is it one of those automatic things?”

She glanced back in the futso. “No, so that’s good, right?” She smiled as if everything would be fine now. “It’s a small revolver, with a mother-of pearl handle.”

For some reason her teeth looked as if they could glow in the dark, or was that just my imagination playing tricks with the mother-of-pearl image playing inside my head. “Then I can’t tell you my mom doesn’t own a handgun.” It sounded exactly like the one my dad gave her as an anniversary present when I was a little girl. The evidence was beginning to pile up. “Just tell me one more thing. Does it say anything on the handle?”

She moved to get a better look inside while I made excuses for the handgun. After all, a lot of people owned guns with mother-of-pearl handles. It didn’t have to be my mother’s gun, at least I hoped it wasn’t. “I can’t tell. There’s not enough light.” She twisted herself and backed up a bit. I held my breath. “Wait. There’s something, L-U . . .”

My heart skipped a beat. “ . . . C-I-L-L-E,” we said in unison. She looked over at me. “It was my grandmother’s name, and her weapon of choice. Some families pass down jewels, my family passes down handguns.”

“You want me to fish it out?”

As if on cue, the back door creaked open and a voice echoed through the barn. “Hey, Dickey, you in here?”

It was Uncle Benny. Lisa quickly stood up without retrieving the gun, took a step back, caught her foot on the edge of the overturned olive mill, and nearly tumbled on top of it. I grabbed the back of her sweater and pulled her upright just in time. “No, Uncle Benny. It’s just Lisa and me,” I yelled. “We’ll be right out.”

“I’m right here,” he said behind me. His baritone voice startled me and I let go of Lisa who instantly lost her balance and fell on top of the stone, which caused it to tilt to one side allowing Dickey to pop out like a golden lupini bean bursting out of its shell.

Uncle Benny yelled, “Marone! What the fuck!” and took a couple steps back losing his balance due to those boxes I had moved earlier. He began to fall backwards as he spun around grabbing at air, then for me. I tried for stability by leaning forward. Big mistake. We landed only inches away from Dickey.

On the up side, we didn’t hit our heads on the stone mill. On the down side, between the three of us, we had sufficiently contaminated the crime scene so that the police would now believe we were somehow all involved.

As Uncle Benny and I lay there, holding onto each other, staring into Dickey’s blank eyes
—
he was now facing us
—
I realized that Dickey smelled a little sweet. I took another whiff. Definitely berries. Or was that Uncle Benny who smelled like a ripe berry?

“Are you wearing cologne?” I asked, my face only inches from his.

“What the hell kind of question is that?” When he spoke I caught the scent of tobacco not berries.

He moved away from me in a flurry of frustration and pushed himself up to stand next to Lisa who had managed to get off the millstone on her own. I remained on the floor, and slid in closer to Dickey and there it was again . . . berries. I eased myself up a bit, the stone mill pressing in on my back. That’s when I spotted Dickey’s left hand pressing up against the millstone
—
obviously an attempt at stopping the stone from crushing him
—
twisted abnormally flat against his chest. His perfect manicure now ruined with broken nails and traces of blood.

I stared at his hand for a moment thinking something else was wrong with it. Then it came to me. The horseshoe pinky ring I’d given him was missing. And not only was the ring missing, but his pinky was covered in glistening olive oil that pooled on his suit coat and stained his golden shirt. I didn’t have to get closer to know it was our Italian blend, the same oil my mom’s handgun was now floating in.

Dickey had said the ring was going to give somebody heartburn. Could that heartburn have turned into murder?

Uncle Benny leaned over toward me. His graying hair slicked back with olive oil, no doubt, and his black, trendy Italian-framed glasses sliding down his Roman nose. “Get the hell out of there, will you? I do not like you lying with that piece of shit. It ain’t right. What are you doing? The man is dead.”

I grabbed Benny’s arm, slid out from under the millstone and stood. “Sounds as if you didn’t like Dickey much.”

“Too hungry for power. I have no use for that kind of person. Plus, he killed a woman. Murder is one thing, but killing your own woman, that is something I do not condone.”

It was comforting to know Uncle Benny’s murder limits, just in case I ever stumbled on a dead girlfriend of his. At least I could cross him off the list of suspects.

“But wasn’t he just cleared of that murder?”

He smirked, as if I should know better. “Let us just say he was cleared of being in close proximity when the event took place. That does not mean he did not have anything to do with the event.”

I hadn’t thought of that, probably a good thing.

“What’s going on in here?” Jimmy asked, appearing behind Uncle Benny.

“Dickey’s dead,” Lisa announced as she brushed herself off and carefully checked her hands and face for injuries.

“No shit. Want I should clean it up?” He looked at me when he said it.

“No. We’re calling the police,” I told him. He took a couple steps back, as if he was getting ready to bolt.

Jimmy had that innocent, freshly-washed looking face, bright amber eyes, perfectly shaped nose, high cheekbones, and creamy skin that always had a hint of a shine. Not an oily shine, more of a clean glow. Other than my dad, he was by far the best looking man in the family, and he knew it. He went through women like a kid goes through crayons. He even dated Lisa for about a minute a few years ago, but she figured him out before their second kiss and dumped him. Lisa was always better at dating than I was. She could spot a truly bad boy just by the way he stood or laughed.

I, on the other hand, could always pick them out in a crowd, but instead of walking away, I would be dawn to them like a masochistic moth that can’t seem to avoid the flame. Case in point: Leonardo Russo.

“Hey everybody, party’s outside. Whoa!” Uncle Federico spotted Dickey and his eyes bugged for a moment, then he looked away. I almost detected a slight grin, but it vanished as soon as it appeared. “This looks real bad. Tell me it was some kind of accident.” He stopped just inches behind Uncle Benny and Jimmy.

And I had so hoped Lisa and I could keep this to ourselves for awhile.

Who was I kidding?

“Not an accident,” Lisa said, shaking her head.

“You mean somebody whacked’ em?” Uncle Ray asked. I hadn’t even seen him come in. It was as if he just materialized out of the shadows. His large frame dominated the cramped space we were standing in.

“Bullet in the left temple.” Lisa delivered the news like a pro, indifferent and to the point. “At close range, I’d guess.”

“Poor bastard. Not out more than twenty-four hours and somebody takes him out,” Federico groused. “You’d think whoever did this could have waited ‘til Dickey left the orchard. This is a problem for the family, especially Gloria.”

My thoughts, exactly.

Federico didn’t like anything even slightly off-color happening on the land, at least nothing that attracted the police. He was a tightly wound man and except for his weekly poker games with my mom and whoever else was willing to try their luck
—
Federico always seemed to win
—
the orchard was his only interest.

Suddenly the sound of sobs echoed through the barn. Zia Yolanda had arrived on the scene. “Somebody get her outta here,” Uncle Ray ordered.

Jimmy said, “I’ll do it.”

“Good, and keep the rest of the women outta here.”

Jimmy nodded and took off. Zia Yolanda’s sobs drifted off leaving a strange sort of echo inside the barn. Normally, her sobs didn’t bother me, but the lingering echo of genuine heartfelt weeping was enough to make me sad for Dickey’s demise, a man who probably was responsible for more human misery than I could ever imagine. That right there produced goose bumps, along with a few shivers for added emphasis.

“You girls should go. We’ll take care of this.” Uncle Ray liked giving orders, and most of the time I would follow them, but not this time.

I shook my head. “No. This family doesn’t cover up a murder anymore. Remember? We’re honest, law-abiding citizens now.”

“Tell that to whoever shot Dickey,” Uncle Benny said, chomping on his unlit cigar. Uncle Benny always carried a fat stogy. When it wasn’t peeking out of his shirt pocket he held it between his fingers or it dangled from the corner of his mouth. He was trying to cut back on his tobacco addiction, so he only lit up twice a day, but the habit of playing with a cigar was too imbedded in his psyche to abandon.

“Somebody shot Dickey?” Aunt Hetty’s voice rang through the barn. She walked up to us with Valerie, an overly fit redhead, mid-fifties, piercing green eyes, and an old scar that ran along her otherwise delicate jawbone. Valerie liked to say she got the scar in an old biker accident, but we all knew her first husband gave it to her one night during a battle over the correct way to prepare shrimp. Now Valerie was married to Uncle Ray, a man who had an unnatural aversion to anything that lived in water.