BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (22 page)

“What
is it?” Sprig asked, looking at his arm and then up into his green eyes.

“I
can smell the liquor a mile away.
 
Dad’s
not going to be happy.”

“Fuck
your daddy!” Sprig blared.
 
“I’m not his
damn child. I can drink anytime I want.
 
Just because I can hold my liquor and he can’t doesn’t make me a bad
lady.”

“Nobody
said you were a bad lady,” Tony responded.
 
His aunt used to be a beautiful lady before she married Benny
Gabrini.
 
Now she had left him and didn’t
want to have anything to do with him nor their two sons, Tommy and Salvatore.
 
Sal never gave up.
 
He kept trying to have a relationship with
her.
 
But she wasn’t interested.
 
All she wanted to do was drink her life
away.
 
Her looks, along with everything
else, was going steadily downhill with each passing day.
 
She was the town lush now who refused to get
help, who refused to sober up, who refused to do anything but continue to drink
and party.
 
Charles had tried
everything.
 
He gave up too.

“Why
don’t you sober up first?” Tony suggested to his aunt.

But
Sprig wasn’t trying to hear any suggestions.
 
“I am sober,” she responded.
 
“What are you talking about?
 
I’m
as sober as you are.
 
More so because I
don’t give a damn what you or your daddy and anybody else says about me. I’m
the most sober person in this entire town,” she added.

Tony
knew his father was in shock as it was, and he knew he didn’t need the stress
of Sprig and her alcoholism too, but Nita was her niece and she and Jenay were
on good terms.
 
She was family too.
 
She had every right to be there.
 

Tony
released her arm, and let her go.

Sprig
made her way to the family room as if she knew it by hard.
 
Because she did.
 
When she first arrived back in Maine, after
running away from Benny Gabrini, she lived with her brother and his sons in
that very house.
 
Charles protected her
then. Until her drinking and partying got out of hand.
 
Until he realized she wasn’t interested in
getting her life on track.
 
Then she was
on her own.

“Jenay!
 
Bonita!” Sprig cried when she saw Jenay and
the baby.
 
She ran to them and leaned
over, placing her arms around them.
 
Although the stench of alcohol was overwhelming, Jenay gladly hugged
her.

Charles
stood up, and Sprig sat down beside Jenay.

“Thank-you
for coming, Sprig,” Jenay said, holding her sister-in-law’s hand.

“Don’t
think me!
 
You’re my sister.
 
Nee’s my niece.
 
I love y’all!”

“We
love you too,” Jenay said.

Sprig
held onto one of Bonita’s feet.
 
Bonita
stopped playing with her toy, and was looking at her.
 
Was undoubtedly smelling her too.
 
“When I heard what happened,” Sprig said, “I
thought I was going to have a heart attack!
 
They were telling me the baby got injured.”

“She’s
fine,” Jenay said.
 
“Thank God she didn’t
get hurt at all.
 
Thanks to Donald.”

Sprig
looked sidelong at her nephew. “Donald?
 
Don’t you mean Brent or Tony?
 
Donnie and Bobby ain’t worth sweeping out the door!”

“That’s
enough, Sprig,” Charles said in defense of his boys.
 
“You will not come into my home disrespecting
my children.”

“I’m
just telling it like I see it,” Sprig said, looking at her brother.
 
“They ain’t shit and ain’t gonna never be
shit.
 
You know why?
 
Because their daddy ain’t shit either.
 
That’s why!”

Charles
stared at her.
 
Everybody expected him to
throw her out on her rear, but he didn’t.
 
He just stared at her.

Sprig
then closed her eyes and shook her head, as if that alcohol was swimming in her
brain.
 
Then she opened her eyes
again.
 
“I didn’t mean all of that,” she
said.
 
Then she frowned.
 
“But whatever.”
 
She looked at Jenay.
 
“I’m going.
 
I’ve got places to see and people to be.”
 
She smiled.
 
“I mean, I’ve got people to be, and places to see.
 
I mean---”

“We
understand what you mean, Sprig,” Jenay said.
 
“You’d better go.”

Sprig
looked sidelong at the little baby, and then at Donald again.
 
And then she stood up.
 
Only she flopped back down when she attempted
to stand up.
 
Brent helped her to her
feet.

“You
aren’t driving, are you, Aunt Sprig?” he asked.

“No,
son, I’m not driving.
 
Mikey’s out in the
car.
 
You remember Mikey, don’t you,
Brent?
 
He’s my boyfriend.”

“I
remember him,” Brent said.

“You
would,” Sprig said.
 
“You and Tony still
give a damn.
 
Jenay and Nita are new to
the family, I don’t hold it against them.
 
But the rest of these clowns, from your daddy on down, can kiss my ass.”

“Come
on, Aunt,” Brent said, as he began helping her toward the exit.
 
Brent glanced back at his father.
 
He was always amazed at how much restraint he
showed whenever Sprig showed her behind.
 
If that
 
had been one of them
behaving that way, he would have stomped them through the floor.

Jenay
was amazed too.
 
But she knew the
story.
 
She knew how Charles allowed his
sister to call him every name in the book when he was only trying to help her.
 
He allowed her to lie on him and scandalize
his name around every bar in town.
 
But
when she needed to get away from Benny Gabrini, Charles was the one who went
and got her.
 
When she needed a place to
live, Charles was the one who took her in. He was the one who used to beg her
to get some help, and attempted to force an intervention on her numerous times.
 
But it did no good.
 
She wasn’t interested in being cured.
 
Her pain was apparently too great to face, so
she decided to bury it beneath an avalanche of alcohol and men.
 
And Charles stopped trying.
 
He couldn’t want her cured more than she
wanted it herself.
 

When
she left, a kind of terse peace descended on the room.
 
It remained there even after other people
came, offered their comforting words, and left.
 
People like Denise and Norm, and the pastor of their church, and friends
in the community.
 
But there still was
that feeling of what could have been.
 
How easily it could have gone the other way.
 
How suddenly their grateful day could have
been the most tragic day of their lives.
 
And they mourned Tess too.
 
It was
a tough day.

But
it got even tougher when Chief Joffee came by.

Especially
when his visit was less about telling Charles and Jenay what he believed might
have happened, and more about questioning Donald.

Joffee
sat on the coffee table, in front of Jenay and Donald.
 
Tony had managed to pry the baby out of
Jenay’s arms, and was standing nearby bouncing her in his own arms.
 
Brent and Robert was still in the den too,
sitting in the flanking chairs.
 
Charles
was standing up, leaned against the wall beside the window, and he was staring
at Joffee.
 
He was wondering what in the
world was Joffee trying to imply.

“So
what you’re telling me,” Joffee said to Donald, “is that you parked your car
around the corner and decided to walk all the way up Harvey Street to the
drugstore?”

Donald
nodded.
 
“That’s right.”

“Why?”

Donald
hunched his shoulder.
 
“Because I wanted
to.”

“Even
though that was a long walk up Harvey Street?”

“So,”
Donald said. “I like to walk.”

“So
where were you walking to?”

“The
Pharmacy,” Donald said.
 
“Why you keep
asking me that?
 
I told you I went in the
drugstore to pick up my prescription.
 
That’s when I heard the explosion.”

Joffee
looked at Charles.
 
Joffee was acting as
if nobody deserved an explanation but Charles.
 
“Whoever planted that bomb in Mrs. Sinatra’s car,” he said, “had to have
still been in the area in order to detonate it.
 
According to our experts, it was the kind of bomb with a stopgap. In
other words, they couldn’t press a button and the bomb immediately blew.
 
There was a delay.
  
There was a built-in delay from the time the
remote control button was pressed, to the time the bomb would actually
explode.”

“What
are you saying, Chief?” Brent asked.

Joffee
answered Brent’s question, but he directed his answer at Charles.
 
“The fact that Mrs. Sinatra and Reuben had stepped
off of that curb and was heading to the car,” he said, “was probably when the
button was pressed.
 
But their
progression was suddenly interrupted by that reckless driver who almost ran
them over.
 
That’s why she wasn’t at the
car when it exploded.
 
That reckless
driver saved her life.
 
TO be clearer, we
believe the perp saw your wife and Reuben stepping off of the curb and heading
for the car.
 
The remote control button
was pressed at that time.”

  
“But why so soon?” Brent asked.
 
“I understand about the built-in delay, but
why couldn’t the perp wait until Jenay was inside the car?”

“Because
whoever the perp was didn’t want the car moving where it could kill
others.
 
It needed to be stationary.
 
Because of the delay factor, the perp
couldn’t wait until Mrs. Sinatra got into the car.
 
She might have cranked up and took off and
put too many others at risk.
  
Maybe even
the perp himself would have been at risk with that scenario, since he or she
still had to have been in the area.
 
He
or she was protecting him or herself.
 
So
no, the perp had to press that button when they thought Mrs. Sinatra and Rueben
were walking across the street. The fact that they were almost hit by that
reckless driver changed the entire equation.”

“What
does any of this have to do with Donald?” Charles asked.

Everybody
looked at Joffee.
 
“That’s a fair
question,” Joffee said.
 
“It’s no secret
around town that your son and your wife aren’t exactly bosom buddies.
 
It’s a known fact that they have had a lot of
tension lately, including rumors that Mrs. Sinatra recently fired Donald from
working with her at Jericho Inn.”

“I
fired Donald,” Charles said.
 
“But go
on.”

Joffee
exhaled.
 
He knew this wasn’t going to be
easy.
 
“We checked out Donald’s story,”
Joffee said.

“And?”
Brent asked.
 

“It
didn’t check out,” Joffee said.

Jenay
frowned.
 
“What didn’t check out?”

“Everything,”
Joffee said to her.
 
“He claimed that he
parked his car right around the corner.
 
He didn’t.
 
Surveillance footage
showed that he parked his car nearly two blocks away.”

“So?”
Donald asked.
 
“Is that a crime now?”

“No,”
Joffee said to Donald, “but lying to a police officer is.”
 
Joffee exhaled again, and looked at
Jenay.
 
“He further said that he went
into the drugstore to pick up a prescription.” He looked at Donald.
 
“That was a lie too.
 
We checked.
 
The pharmacist had no such prescription waiting for Donald Sinatra to
pick up.”

Jenay,
Brent, Tony, and Robert looked at their father.
 
But Charles continued to stand against the wall and stare at Joffee.