Unholy Matrimony (8 page)

It was Richie Sambucco.

He smiled apologetically. “Sorry to bother you on the Lord’s Day, Lucille. I hope you don’t mind.” Then, “Can I come in?” as Lucille continued to stand there, openmouthed.

“Sure, sure. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course you can come in. Have you eaten? Are you hungry? There’s plenty, although I got to admit I overcooked the pasta a little. Still, the marinara sauce turned out real good—”

Sambucco held up a hand. “Thanks a million, but this here ain’t no social call, I’m afraid. It’s about the murder of Donna Grabowski.” He looked down at his fingernails as if they had suddenly become utterly fascinating.

Lucille tried to catch his eye but failed. What was wrong? Why was Richie acting so strangely? But she pulled the door wider and motioned for him to step inside.

“Everyone’s out in the dining room.” Lucille pointed in that direction.

“I’d rather talk to you alone, if that’s possible.”

Lucille stopped abruptly. “Sure, sure. We can go into the living room.”

Lucille had decorated the living room more than twenty years ago when she and Frankie moved into the house. The furniture still looked as good as new, seeing as how they spent most of their time downstairs in the rec room or sitting at the kitchen table.

Lucille perched on the edge of the sofa. She’d bought it because she liked the flower print, but it was stiff and had never been too comfortable. Sambucco took the armchair opposite Lucille, pulling it slightly closer. It hadn’t been moved in a long time—Lucille could see the deep dents left in the carpet by the legs.

Sambucco sat with his hands dangling between his knees, his eyes on the floor. Lucille wished he’d get on with it. Her pasta was getting cold, and she really needed to check on the chicken in the oven. She glanced over at the door to the dining room. That seemed to get Sambucco going.

“It’s about the murder of Donna Grabowski,” Sambucco said again.

“Yeah, I kind of figured seeing as how you said this wasn’t no social call.”

“We’re pretty much at sea as to why she was killed. A public place like that—there’s no use trying to look for fingerprints. Besides, if it was some kind of domestic thing, the perp’s fingerprints aren’t likely to be on file anyway.”

Lucille nodded, wondering when he was going to get to the point.

“As I said, not much to go on.” Sambucco sighed and slapped his knees. “But I did manage to persuade a contact of mine at the phone company to look up the records for Donna’s cell phone. And let me tell you, getting someone to do that on a Sunday ain’t easy. Fortunately she owed me one.”

Lucille couldn’t help wondering who
she
was and what she looked like and what on earth she could owe Sambucco for.

“Anyway, as I was saying, there’s not much to go on, but we did find two interesting things.”

The way he said it made Lucille’s head shoot up. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like this.

“First off, we checked on who was the last person to call her. The call came not too long before Donna was seen heading over to the church. The dry cleaner across the street saw her car pulling into the lot so we know what time she arrived.”

Her pasta would be stone cold by now, Lucille thought. And she could smell the chicken parmigiana in here. She hoped it wasn’t burning. It was bad enough that the ziti was overcooked. She couldn’t afford to do no more damage to this meal.

“Yes?” Lucille said by way of encouragement.

“Do you know who the call came from?” Sambucco asked, but Lucille knew it was one of them questions you weren’t really supposed to answer so she kept her mouth shut and her hands clenched in her lap.

Sambucco heaved another sigh as if the words pained him. “The call came from you, Lucille.”

Chapter 9

“Yo, Lu, you okay? What’s Sambucco doing here?” Frankie suddenly appeared in the doorway.

Lucille realized she had uttered a small shriek at Sambucco’s words. Surely he didn’t think she had something to do with . . .

“Put your head down,” Sambucco commanded, reaching out and pushing Lucille’s head between her knees.

She stayed that way until the gray haze that threatened to envelop her retreated.

“Lucille. What are you doing? Dinner is getting cold, and when I checked on the chicken parmi—” Angela said from the doorway.

“Leave it, Angela, okay?” Frankie said with such a sharp tone to his voice that Angela spun on her heel with a soft
hmmph
and retreated back to the dining room.

“What’s going on?” Frankie’s fists were clenched, his shoulders stiff and his jaw set. He turned to Sambucco. “Why are you bothering my wife?”

All she needed was for Frankie to take a swing at Sambucco and end up in the slammer. Lucille put up a hand. “Take it easy, Frankie. Everything is fine. Richie just has a few questions about what happened yesterday. Okay? You go back and eat your dinner before it gets cold. And tell Angela to take the chicken parmigiana out of the oven, would you?” she yelled after his retreating back.

She could hear him grumbling under his breath as he made his way back to the dining room.

Sambucco waited until they heard the scrape of Frankie’s chair. “As I said, the last phone call recorded on Donna’s cell phone was yours, Lucille.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“It’s like this.” Sambucco spread out his hands. “The chief seems to think that you called Donna and asked her to meet you at the church. Easy enough to do. You wanted her opinion on the flowers or the seating or one of them things you women worry about. And from what people have said, Donna was always more than happy to give her opinion.”

“But that don’t mean . . . I mean I didn’t . . . you can’t say that I . . .”

“It’s not me.” Sambucco pointed at his own chest. “It’s the chief, see. He thinks you lured Donna to the church and then killed her.”

“But why would I . . . ?” Lucille felt as if the world around her was disintegrating. Or like she was falling into one of them sinkholes down in Florida they kept showing on the news.

“Why? Only the killer knows that,” Sambucco said, leaning back in his chair. It creaked under his weight.

“So you don’t think I . . .”

Sambucco cracked his knuckles. “It’s like this, Lucille. In a murder investigation we got to go by the clues and the evidence. Feelings, they don’t enter into it. The way it looks, you called Donna, got her to go on over to St. Rocco’s and then you killed her. Simple as pie.”

Lucille started to open her mouth but Sambucco stopped her.

“You don’t happen to have an alibi, do you?”

Lucille thought back to the day before. She remembered leaving the house, checking on Mrs. S. and Mrs. P over in the kitchen at St. Rocco’s, then going to the church. She was missing something.

“Macy’s,” she shouted suddenly. “I went to Macy’s to buy a pair of pantyhose. You have no idea how hard it is to find a—”

“Anyone see you? Anyone who can vouch for you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the salesgirl might remember me.”

“You didn’t happen to glance at her tag and maybe catch her name, did you?”

Lucille shook her head.

“Do you have the receipt? Sometimes they put the time as well as the date on them now that they’ve got all these computers and such.”

“Sure. I put it in my purse. Let me go get it.”

Lucille trotted over to the hall closet and retrieved her handbag. She sat on the sofa with it on her lap and began to riffle through the contents. “Here’s my wallet,” she said, putting it down on the coffee table. “I know I didn’t put it in there. I should, Frankie is always telling me to pay more attention to things, but I was in a hurry and just threw it in my purse.” She continued to dig around in her handbag. “Here’s my lipstick and compact and a packet of tissues.” She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper with a cry of triumph. She smoothed it out. “Here it is.” She handed it over to Sambucco.

He pulled a pair of reading glasses from his pocket. “The time and date are missing from this here receipt.” He waved the paper at Lucille. “Looks like the clerk tore it off wrong. See.” He held it out toward Lucille. “This part here looks like it belongs to the person who bought something before you.”

Sheesh, Lucille thought. For once she didn’t lose the receipt and here it wasn’t going to do her no good.

“But you can see I did go to Macy’s,” she said and gestured toward the paper in Sambucco’s hand.

“Sure, sure. It just doesn’t prove you went on Saturday while Donna Grabowski was being murdered.”

Lucille felt sick to her stomach. She was glad she hadn’t eaten no lunch yet. Suddenly she smacked herself on the forehead. “I went to the Clip and Curl to get my hair done. How could I forget? Any of the gals there will tell you that’s true. Carmela, she washes my hair—Rita, she does my cut and—”

“This was after you went to Macy’s?”

“Yeah. Right after.”

“How long did your trip to Macy’s take?”

Lucille thought back to Saturday morning. She had had to drive around a bit to decide where to park, then she had had a job of it finding the hosiery section in Macy’s. “An hour? Hour and fifteen maybe?”

“What time was your hair appointment?”

“It was at eleven thirty a.m. Normally I go on a Tuesday, but because of the wedding—”

“So you left for Macy’s at—”

“Right after I called Donna. The mall had just opened when I got there so it must have been a little before ten.”

Sambucco pursed his lips. “I wish I could say that helps, Lucille. I really do. But the dry cleaner saw Donna’s car pulling into the church parking lot around ten o’clock. He said he noticed it because it’s not every day you see a Mercedes like that. That was about fifteen minutes after your call to her cell. You could have easily met her there, killed her and still made it to your hair appointment.”

“But, but . . .” Lucille sputtered.

“And,” Sambucco said, holding up a hand, “Donna’s cell phone is missing. It wasn’t in her purse, her car or anywhere at the church. See how that makes it look? The killer calls her on the phone and then steals the cell so that we can’t find it. They don’t know about my gal over at the phone company. She was able to tell us you were the last one to call the victim.”

• • •

Lucille had another bad night, tossing and turning. When she finally got out of bed, her eyes felt gritty and she ached all over. Maybe she was getting arthritis, or, as her mother called it, “Arthur Itis,” like it was some guy she knew. When did she get so old?

She couldn’t believe that Sambucco thought she was a murderer. They’d known each other forever—surely he knew her better than that. Lucille had a momentary thought about how well Sambucco had almost gotten to know her and she could feel her face get hot. But, like Sambucco said, evidence was evidence.

Lucille tiptoed out of the bedroom—Frankie was still sleeping—and went into the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face. The shades were down in the bedroom and the room was in shadow. Lucille grabbed some clothes she’d tossed over a chair the other day, pulled on the T-shirt and capri pants and headed down to the kitchen.

While she was waiting for the coffee to brew, she began to cry. It was all too much. Bernadette still wasn’t married, Frankie was acting strange, Donna was dead, and the police were trying to blame her. A tear dribbled down Lucille’s cheek and landed in the sugar bowl. She stuck a hand in her pocket. She always seemed to have at least one crumpled tissue stashed on her. She was forever forgetting to remove them before doing the laundry and Frankie was always complaining that his black socks came out of the dryer with bits of white lint on them.

There was a tissue in the pocket, and something else as well—something hard and square. Lucille pulled out the object and stared at in disbelief. It was Donna’s cell phone. She’d picked it up to call 911 and had forgotten all about it. When she realized that it made her look even guiltier, she jumped and dropped it onto the floor like it was some kind of red-hot coal. The back popped off and slid under the refrigerator and the glass on the front splintered like a piece of ice.

“Coffee ready?”

Lucille looked up to see Frankie standing there in his boxers and T-shirt, his hair rumpled in that way that always got to her. But right now all she could think about was Donna DeLucca’s phone. She didn’t want Frankie to see it. At least not until she’d figured out what she was going to do. She managed to push it underneath the overhang of the cupboard with the toe of her slipper. Frankie wouldn’t notice it there—he sure never noticed the clumps of dust, bits of onion peel or other morsels of food that suggested he might get out the vacuum and give it a pass around the baseboards.

Lucille poured out a cup of coffee, added two spoons of sugar and a splash of milk—just the way Frankie liked it—and slid it across the table to him. He stirred it absentmindedly and reached for yesterday’s paper that had been left on one of the chairs.

Lucille turned her back to him and, after a quick glance over her shoulder, eased the cell phone out from under the counter. Her back gave a loud crack as she bent to retrieve it, but when she looked, Frank was engrossed in yesterday’s sports stories.

Now to find the piece that had disappeared under the fridge. Lucille got down on her hands and knees—her knees giving an even louder crack than her back had—and felt underneath the refrigerator. Nothing. Well, not nothing, there sure was a lot of dust under there. Lucille blew it off her hands and stifled a sneeze as it rose in the air.

She couldn’t reach no further like that so she got down flat on her belly and swept her hand as far under the fridge as it would go.

“Whaddya doing, Lu?”

Lucille looked up. “Nothing,” she said and was relieved when Frankie grunted and went back to his paper.

Her fingers touched the edge of the cell phone back, and she teased it out slowly. She clasped it to her chest and heaved herself onto her hands and knees. She grabbed the edge of the counter and pulled herself to her feet. Frankie was still engrossed in the paper, and she managed to shove the two pieces of the broken cell phone into her pocket.