Weddings Can Be Murder (26 page)

“Honey, I’m sorry,” Victoria said. “It
wasn’t like I was intentionally keeping things from you. Things
came to mind, as Charlie said, gradually. And it really wasn’t
until this week I had much reason to think about that part of my
past.”

“Please sit down, Ron,” I said, patting the
spot next to me on the lumpy sofa cushion.

“For some reason your mentioning Florida
brought back memories of my mother’s final days,” Victoria said,
leaning back in the chair. “I was only eighteen when she died and
it was so traumatic for me … I got myself through it, watching the
life fade out of her as the cancer took over, but after the funeral
I never wanted to relive those days again. I blocked out a lot of
the details.”

“If this is too much for you now …” I
reached out to take her hand.

“No, it’s okay. I’d be better off if I’d
talked about it much earlier. Something about having a parent die
in your arms … it’s horrible, but it’s also special. Mom and I
shared everything and there weren’t many others in our world. It’s
why I have a hard time sharing it. I’ve always felt that no one
else could possibly know what I went through. I know that’s
silly—many others go through losses every day. But at the time you
feel all alone with it.”

She reached for the afghan and pulled it
over her lap, winding the soft fabric around her chilly hands.

Her gaze grew distant. “One day—it was near
the end of Mom’s time, although I didn’t realize how close to the
end she truly was. Anyway, this one day she asked me to sit beside
her on the hospital bed we’d had set up in the living room. Said
she had something to tell me. I remember how I approached, thinking
she was about to give some kind of birds-and-bees talk or
something. I’d graduated from high school that spring and my only
halfway serious boyfriend was leaving for college out of state in
the fall. We hadn’t seen much of each other over the summer, what
with my time being devoted to my mother. I knew the relationship
was waning and I couldn’t even imagine getting involved with anyone
else for a very long time, which is why I approached this little
talk with a very offhand attitude.

“Mom began with things about her early life,
some of it stories I’d heard—her childhood in Texas, for instance.
But she had so little strength, I could tell there was something
important on her mind and she was determined to get it out. I
encouraged her to skip ahead, and she told me that she and her best
friend had left Texas right after their high school graduation and
moved to Florida. With no college degree and only secretarial
skills to her credit, she did all right for herself by working her
way up to better and better jobs.”

Victoria closed her eyes for a moment and I
began to wonder if this was all a bit too much for her first day
home from the hospital. I started to ask whether she’d rather get
back to bed, but she readjusted the sling’s pressure against her
neck and continued speaking.

“Again, I could see Mom tiring but she
wanted to tell me. After a few years in Florida she got a job offer
that went beyond her wildest dreams, working for a construction
company at more than double the salary she’d earned before. The man
was rich, lived in a mansion, and it seemed he was more than a
little bit attracted to her. She said he had the most dazzling blue
eyes.”

I glanced toward Ron. He’s such a
bottom-line kind of guy when it comes to long, drawn-out stories I
expected to see impatience in his expression. There might be a hint
of a yawn coming on, but he was definitely not distracted.

“Apparently, Mom became involved with this
man although it was cute to watch how she avoided admitting to an
affair. She only hinted around at the relationship. What she really
wanted to talk about was how she eventually discovered how
dangerous he was. Working in his office she’d apparently come
across things—he was up to something illegal.

“She was very tired by then and I suggested
the rest of the story could wait, but she said there wasn’t much
more. She told me to go to her bedroom and find a box she’d hidden
away on her closet shelf. ‘Bring me the box,’ she said. I had to
get a chair and then move a bunch of things out of the way. Mom
tended to let junk accumulate. By the time I located the box and
took it back to her bed, she was asleep. I set the box aside and as
I went on with the day the whole thing slipped my mind.

“Mom didn’t forget about it though. The
moment she woke up she wanted me to show it to her. I remember
cranking the head of the bed up and placing the box on her lap. She
raised the lid and pawed through the contents. Once she was
satisfied about what was in there she closed the lid and handed it
back to me. ‘Hide this very well,’ she told me. ‘If a man ever
comes around, you use this tape and these papers to get rid of
him.’ She told me his name—something that sounded Italian—I’d
forgotten it for years. The man is dangerous, Mom said. Another
thing she told me several times during the conversation was that I
should never go to Florida. This man’s reach was apparently so vast
that he was to be feared.”

“What did you think about that?” I asked. I
noticed Ron had finally snapped to the fact that this might be the
reason Victoria had reacted so strongly to his plans for a Florida
honeymoon.

Victoria gave a small one-shoulder shrug.
“Truthfully, at that moment I kind of blew it off. I couldn’t
imagine how any of this related to me or why on earth someone from
twenty years or more in the past would come looking for some box of
papers.”

“Did you go through the box’s contents
yourself?”

“Barely. I remember taking the box, briefly
glancing in and then stashing it back on her closet shelf.”

“What was in it?”

Her eyes aimed skyward for a moment.
“Papers, as she had said. Some of them might have had writing on
them in Spanish? I hardly remember it now. I think there was a
cassette tape. My most vivid memory of the afternoon was that Mom
suffered a relapse and I had to call an ambulance. I suppose I had
put the box on the shelf before it happened, but it’s not important
now. They took her to the hospital and I sat beside her until the
end. I hated all the tubes and machines—I suppose it’s the main
reason I wanted to come home today, those memories are still
painful. Mom died the next day.”

Ron appeared lost in his own set of
thoughts.

“The rest of that year comes back to me in
little snatches of memory—the funeral, sorting through her things,
having to move from the rented house where we lived. I received
some money from a life insurance policy and decided the best thing
I could do with it would be college. I felt the urge to get away
from Albuquerque, but that would mean leaving everything about my
early life and all my memories of Mom behind. I ended up
staying.”

I didn’t especially want to play This Is
Your Life and cover the ensuing years. I brought her back to the
thing that seemed most relevant.

“So, about this box … do you still have it?”
It seemed if the mysterious intruder came here demanding and
searching for evidence, it might have to do with the papers and
cassette in the box.

“I’m sure I do. When I moved into this house
I came across it. I’m sure I stashed it somewhere.”

“Okay, this isn’t the best time for me to
put pressure on you but if those men didn’t find what they wanted,
they’re likely to come back.”

“Charlie—” Ron laid a hand on my arm. “Not
now.”

“They’ve broken in, threatened Vic, come
back and searched again. How much more immediate can the problem
be?” I ignored his fingers tightening around my wrist. “Vic, can
you remember where you put that box? If I can find it for you, we
could stick it in a safe deposit box or in the safe at our office.
It just needs to be out of reach of this guy.”

I guess my premise made sense; Ron’s grip
loosened.

Victoria yawned and I could tell the
conversation had taken a lot out of her.

“Let’s get you to bed,” I said. “Ron will be
right here.”

Tucked in once more, she immediately fell
asleep and I closed the bedroom door before cornering Ron again in
the kitchen. The pot roast in the oven was beginning to smell
pretty tasty and I peeked at it to be sure it looked all right.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I
asked Ron.

“That the guy who showed up here is the same
rich guy convicted of old crimes back in Florida?”

Well, obviously. “And the rich guy from
Florida is Victoria’s father.”

“So, this Florida guy was arrested for his
crime. It could explain why he didn’t marry Jane Morgan, or at
least why she didn’t stay in Florida to raise her daughter.”

“They didn’t routinely take DNA samples on
prisoners in the ’70s. I don’t know if the testing had really been
well-developed back then, much less widely used.”

“So, he got arrested much later than that,
sometime within the last ten years or so. Or maybe they took the
sample when they released him. Just to have it on file.”

I had no idea how all that stuff
worked—having never been close to many hard-timers—but there was a
simple way to find out.

“Call Kent Taylor,” I suggested.

The detective said he was out on a new case
and would be tied up well into the evening. “That’s okay,” Ron told
him, “just whenever you can, come by with a picture of the guy
whose DNA matched Victoria’s. We think it ties in.”

We
, kemo-sabe? Wasn’t I the one who
posed the brilliant deduction? At any rate, Victoria would sleep
awhile, the two of them had a ready-made dinner, and Taylor
couldn’t get here until tomorrow … seemed like a good time for me
to go home and tend to my own family, not to mention getting some
rest. This had become quite an eventful day.

As it turned out, Drake had steaks thawed
and a beautiful salad in the works when I walked in. Being pampered
by an excellent cook is always high on my list and I totally
relaxed into the experience. We were both ready to crash early and
I fell into a deep sleep punctuated by snippets of today’s
conversations and scenes. I woke before daybreak, thinking of the
box of papers entrusted to Victoria and wondering where it might be
now.

As soon as it seemed a decent hour to call
Ron and Victoria, I did so. She’d done fine through the night, he
reported.

“Kent Taylor called five minutes ago. He’s
planning to stop by here with the photo of Albert Proletti for
Victoria to look at.”

She had remembered the name being Italian. I
asked what time Taylor was coming and said I would be there.
Control freak—I know. The police and Ron could certainly handle
whatever would come up, but I hate getting news secondhand.
Especially from Ron. He tends to leave out important things.

I arrived about two minutes after the
detective and walked into the house to find him chatting with Ron.
Victoria looked a lot perkier this morning, with freshly washed
hair and a snuggly pair of sweats. She still wasn’t spending much
time on her feet; both were up on the couch and the afghan was over
her lap again. I gave her a peck on the cheek and sat in the
nearest chair.

Kent walked over and asked how she was
feeling. At her positive response, he got right down to business
and pulled a photo from his jacket’s inside pocket. I caught a
glimpse of a mug shot—never anyone’s best pose—with faded colors.
Proletti had dark hair, bright blue eyes, and Victoria’s nose. I
wondered if she would see the resemblance.

“It’s an old picture,” Taylor said. “From
nineteen eighty-one. Sorry, it’s all I was given. Even so, can you
tell if this is the man who broke in the other night?”

She stared intently at it. “Well, this one’s
a lot younger so it’s hard to tell. Thinner, too.”

Ron peered over her shoulder. Taylor just
watched her face.

She turned the photo over, but there was
nothing written on the back. Turned it back again and stared some
more. Ran her fingertip across the jawline, then pointed at the
man’s eyes.

“Yes, I’m fairly certain it’s the same man.
I mean, if I saw him in person in a lineup or something … I could
be more certain.”

“It may come to that,” Kent said, “but this
is helpful. At least we know who we’re looking for. Helps narrow it
down from the hundreds we have in our police files here.”

“His name is Albert Proletti,” Victoria
said, taking in the facts from the mug shot. “This says he was
arrested in Florida. Is he still in prison?”

“No. He did his time—twenty-five years on
drug smuggling charges.”

Her face became still as she handed the
picture back to Taylor. I wondered what her thoughts were.
Something told me she was holding back.

Taylor turned toward the front door.

“Kent?” I said, catching up with him. “If
this man served his full prison term why would he come here
demanding some kind of evidence? Victoria used that word when she
described what he’d said. He wanted some evidence. But how could
old evidence hurt him now?”

He considered my question, obviously not
having put it together until now. I gave him a minute on that one
and came up with another question, keeping my voice low.

“You didn’t tell her Proletti definitely is
her father. Is there a reason not to?”

“No particular reason. I thought maybe it
would be easier for her, coming from you or Ron.”

It probably would. “Thanks.”

“On your other question, Charlie, I’ll get
back to you. All I can say is that my request for this photo
generated some interest. Florida authorities told me ours was the
second department in recent weeks looking at Al Proletti.”

Chapter 28

Ron took to the kitchen—a rare sight—as soon
as Kent Taylor left, whipping up a batch of blueberry muffins from
a mix. Even though he called me in there several times (how do I
turn on the oven? what are these things they describe as muffin
papers?), the gesture was very sweet and Victoria clearly adored
his way of spoiling her.