Don of the Dead (8 page)

Nick snorted. "Mad at Mr.Scarpetti . Mad at the world." He leaned in close and for a moment, I wondered if I needed to worry about Nick's fiftieth birthday and what had apparently happened in the kitchen that night. Lucky for me, Nick had other things on his mind. Like getting his name in the book I wasn't writing.

"She was a drinker, you know. Tanked up most of the time and when she was, she was as nasty as they came."

"And she was drinking that night?"

"Hotter than a firecracker. Stumbled in here toward the end of the evening and started cursing a blue streak before the door was closed behind her. There she was,yellin ' at Mr.Scarpetti so that everyone could hear.Disrespectin ' a man of his stature." He shook his head, as disturbed by the whole thing as he had been when it happened. "She didn't mince no words, neither. She laid it on the line, told Mr.Scarpetti that he had a lot of nerve spending every night of the week out with his associates. She demanded, right then and there, that he come home with her, where he belonged."

Somehow, the notion of Gus as henpecked didn't fit with his mob boss image. "That must really have pissed Gus off."

Nick shrugged. "Mr.Scarpetti , he didn't show emotion like that, you know? He listened for maybe fifteen seconds, decided Carmella wasn'tsayin ' anything he hadn't already heard and didn't want to hear again, and let one of his boys take care of her. Last I saw,Pounder wasescortin ' her out the back door.

Right there." He pointed toward the far wall, and the door just beyond the industrial stove. "And Carmella, even while she was being half pushed, half carried out, she was stillcursin ' like a sailor,sayin '

that she wouldn't be treated this way. That Mr.Scarpetti wasgoin ' get his."

"And you never told the police about this?"

Nick laughed. "If Carmella was the one who ended up dead that night, it might have been important. The way it was—"

Again someone called Nick's name and this time, he wasn't about to miss out on any more of the fun. He pushed the kitchen door open and the sounds of the party washed over us.

"If you have any more questions, they'll have my new address and phone number here at the restaurant.

Give me a call sometime." He grinned. "It's been a pleasure talking to you, honey. Too bad you weren't what my friends sent over for the night."

The door swished closed before I had a chance to even try to come up with a polite response.

I don't know how long I stood there in the kitchen, thinking about everything Nick had told me. Long enough to picture the scene at Lucia's all those years before. Gus busy with his vealparmigiana and his criminal empire.

While the Little Woman sat home and drank herself silly.

One of the waiters bustled in and I shook myself back to the present and gave myself a mental high five.

A couple little white lies and a too-close call with Nick's libido had resulted in me knowing more than I knew when I got there. I knew about Carmella and I knew she threatened Gus. It was a not-so-little detail he'd forgotten to mention.

The night wasn't a total bust.

I punched open the door and headed back into the restaurant. The first person I saw was Dan. He was standing in the doorway that led from the bar into the restaurant. He was wearing his blue wind-breaker and he had a beer in one hand and a sour-apple martini in the other.

I'd forgotten all about him.

I swallowed down the guilt that mingled with the what-are-you-nuts-how-could-you-forget-such-a-hotty

, waved, and headed over to him, an apology ready on my lips. It wasn't until the last second that I realized my story about the ladies' room was never going to hold water; I hadn't even tried to clean the smudge of dirt off my shirt.

Maybe I was lucky. Or maybe Dan had had his fill of looking at my chest. He didn't notice the dirt was still there. Instead, as soon as I was within range, he handed me my drink along with a half-smile I'd seen before.

I braced for the letdown and reminded myself to look on the bright side. At least this time, I hadn't ordered the invitations and bought the gown.

Dan raised his voice to be heard over the noise. "I got a call. From one of my research assistants at the hospital. She's in a bind about some computations. It can't wait until morning. She needs the data for a paper she has to turn in to a professor tomorrow. I'm going to head back to the hospital to help her out."

I managed an anemic smile that told him I understood. And I did. Honest. Dan was dumping me and I knew it really had nothing to do with his research assistant. I'd left him sitting in the bar all by himself for who-knows how long. I couldn't blame him for giving up.

I set down my martini and followed Dan out the door.

It was dark out and sometime while we were inside, it had started to drizzle. The neon signs from nearby restaurants, coffeehouses, and bars were reflected in the wet sidewalks. It was a film noir sort of way to end what we had of a relationship, and I was about to tell Dan exactly that when he tapped the manila folder that he had tucked inside his windbreaker.

"I looked at the address in your file," he said. "I know you live close by. Your car is probably parked close by—"

"I left it at home." I answered automatically, not sure where we were headed and afraid of saying the wrong thing.

"Then you walked here?" Dan asked.

I nodded and he smiled. "I did, too," he said. "From the hospital. And you're kind of on my way back.

Would it be okay if I walked you home?"

He didn't mind being abandoned in the bar? I wasn't being dumped?

Even as I smiled my agreement, my spirits rose. They might have stayed right up there in the stratosphere if I hadn't followed Dan's lead and started acrossMayfield Road when the light changed.

I hadn't gone three steps when it hit me. That was exactly where Gus died.

Traffic was stopped and I took the opportunity to look up and down Mayfield, trying to imagine what he had seen that night when he walked out of Lucia's and straight into a hail of gunfire. Did he get a look at the car that careened around the corner and came at him full speed? Did he hear the first shots?

I guess I was in a unique position of sorts. The next time I saw Gus, I could ask. But at the same time, I wondered how much he'd leave out, just like he'd left out any mention of his wife the drunk. If I asked, would he tell me what the last thing he thought about was? Was it the taste of Nick's vealparmigiana ? Or was Carmella's tirade still ringing in his ears?

Did he feel the first bullet tear into him and know the end was near? Did he regret his life of crime? Or did he look over at the school and picture the playground he built behind it?

The sound of Dan's voice calling to me from the other side of the street snapped me back to reality and I found myself staring at the blacktop and thinking one thing: It was a lousy place to die.

Aberrant behavior.

There was no other explanation for it.

Because as I hurried out of the way of oncoming traffic and over to where Dan was waiting for me, a single tear slipped down my cheek.

Dan never questioned what I was doing with Nick
. It would have been nice to think he was giving me space, but I had a sneaking suspicion that until he happened to see me walk out of the kitchen, he never really noticed I was gone. The good news is that he was true to his word; he escorted me all the way to the door of my apartment. I might have been feeling better about the whole date-that-wasn't-a-date thing if while we walked he hadn't spent the whole time talking about brains and scans and something called synapses. He asked if he could call me again, too, but the warm-and-fuzzy moment was dampened by the fact that he said something about his research study in the same breath.

I actually might have taken the time to be pissed at Dan.

If I wasn't so busy being pissed at Gus.

How did Gus expect me to get to the bottom of his murder if he didn't tell me the whole truth and nothing but? He'd failed to mention Carmella or her threats. How much else hadn't he told me?

As much as I tried, I couldn't keep the questions from bouncing through my head all night. I couldn't sleep. And it was all Gus's fault. By the next day, I was keyed up, wrung out, and dragged down. I was also ready to have it out with him.

I would have done it, too. If I knew where to find him.

It wasn't like he had a busy to-do list. The least he could have done is made an appearance so that I could read him the riot act.

Instead, I spent the morning taking care of the little details that were all part
of
my job. I accompanied our head groundskeeper on a golf-cart circuit around the cemetery while he pointed out the various unusual trees and plants he thought should be included on a new horticultural tour. I scheduled a visit for a third grade class from a local school and even though the little darlings wouldn't be arriving for another month, I spent some time planning how I would call in sick that day. Against my better judgment and no doubt to the horror of my college English professors should they ever catch wind of it, I gave in when Ella pressured me to write an article on tombstone symbolism for the next issue of the Garden View monthly newsletter.

But I never saw Gus. Not even once.

I actually would have been happy about the turn of events and thrilled to consider the possibility that he might be gone forever if I wasn't seething inside and so hot to let my anger out, I could barely sit still.

Let's face it, I couldn't exactly take it out on anyone else. That wouldn't be right. I couldn't explain my sour mood, either. What would I say?

Sorry I'm so cranky today. No, it's not PMS. It's GSS. Gus
Scarpetti
syndrome. You see, there's this
ghost
…

I snapped out of the thought just as the Garden View visitors' bus rolled up to our first stop. As if they'd choreographed the move, the members of the Sacred Heart Ladies' Guild got up from their seats en masse, and I knew I had to get moving, too. Time to introduce them to the first angel on our tour.

Like I always did, I got off the bus before anyone else and stepped aside so that Bill, our driver, could stand next to me and help if he was needed. I reminded the ladies to watch their steps at the same time I waved them over to where I would start into the script I hadn't even read until right before they showed up.

Naturally, the slowest movers were the last in line. I offered my assistance to a lady in blue pants and a green sweater who was having trouble walking. Once she was safely settled, I climbed back onto the bus to grab on to another woman who was wearing orthopedic shoes and mumbling something about how steps were hard for her. I helped her, too, and handed her to Bill. He had been doing this for a long time and two hard-to-maneuver old ladies were nothing to him. One on each arm, Bill started toward the angel. Without looking, I automatically reached for the next person in line.

Turns out it wasn't a person at all.

I stopped just short of poking my hand right into Gus's stomach.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

He shushed me, one finger to his lips. "You want these nice ladies to think you're crazy?"