Galliano Gold (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 5)

by Traci Andrighetti

  I put my hand on Luigi’s hunched shoulder. “I’m going undercover on the Galliano. I report for kitchen duty tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t you leave this to the police, kid? It’s too dangerous with Alfredo Scalino onboard.”

  “After investigating people who live as vampires, I think I can handle him.” I immediately regretted saying the think, but I did have my doubts. Alfredo Scalino could have been using his chef job as a cover for Mafia activities, just as the TV character Tony Soprano had claimed to be a sanitation worker. Plus, the alleged ghosts on the steamboat had me spooked. In my experience, hauntings were either concocted as a draw for tourists, or they were a shield for something nefarious.

  Luigi shot my nonna a lidded look and turned to me. “There’s something I need to tell you, Franki, and it’s not so good.”

  I grabbed a salami slice for nervous chewing. “I’m listening.”

  “There’s an old beef between the Pescatores and the Scalinos.”

  The nonna at the stove heard beef and carried a frying pan to the table. She prodded the contents with a wooden spoon. “Stigghiola.”

  My lips grimaced at the grilled, spiced lamb intestines. I would have rather eaten hardtack with Jefferson at the battlefield. “No, grazie.”

  “Mangia!”

  “Uh-uh.”

  She scowled and returned to the stove.

  I grabbed another salami slice. “So, what were you saying about a, um, feud?”

  “It has to do with his grandfather’s wine press, but I need to backtrack for a minute. You see, our families are from Sambuca di Sicilia, a little town in the Agrigento province of Sicily.”

  “It’s an hour from-a Porto Empedocle.” Nonna’s tone conveyed her pride in her hometown.

  Luigi pushed a wisp of hair over his scalp. “Gigi and I both went to Palermo for work, not together, of course. Like me, he earned money picking fruit and vegetables in the fields and immigrated to New Orleans. I learned how to sell produce, and he learned how to run a Mafia clan.”

  “I don’t get how the two are related to farming.”

  “If you worked on a farm in Palermo, you ran into the produce Mafia.”

  “Produce?” I leaned back. “Everyone knows the mob is involved in drugs, gambling, and prostitution. But lettuce? That’s almost embarrassing.”

  “They’re into everything, kid. If they can make a dishonest buck off it, they’ve got a black hand in it. And the Mafia started in Palermo because of the British Navy’s need for lemons to treat scurvy. It led to a whole citrus Mafia. Search it on the Google, if you don’t believe me.”

  I didn’t need online verification. I’d met the New Orleans citrus Mafia—the Sicilian nonne who force their granddaughters to steal lemons from church altars—and my nonna was their capo. “I’ve always associated Sicily with oranges, and the Amalfi Coast with lemons.”

  “Palermo has been known for centuries as Conca d’Oro, Shell of Gold, because of all the lemon trees in the bay.”

  Gold. There it was again. Did it have anything to do with Nick’s text?

  “Anyway”—Luigi swallowed a sip of water—“a cousin of mine married Gigi and Alfredo’s little sister, Serafina. And when their grandfather died, his father decreed that she would receive the winepress upon his death.”

  “Morto,” a nonna shouted, and I jumped in my seat. She had repeated the word death in Italian to heighten the tragedy of the moment. For the nonne, life was sorrow, and they never missed an opportunity to call attention to that—or to dish it out to family members like pasta on a plate.

  I plucked an olive from the antipasti and popped it into my mouth. “Why did he give the winepress to Serafina and not to Gigi or Alfredo?”

  “They were in New Orleans, and I think his father knew they were criminals and didn’t want either of them to have it.”

  Nonna gripped the handles of the handbag in her lap. “That would bring-a shame to his-a father’s memory.”

  “Vergogna,” a nonna shouted, repeating the word shame.

  I started and braced myself for the emerging pattern. “Let me guess—Gigi didn’t take it well because he was the oldest male and thought the winepress should’ve gone to him.”

  “And he was furious that it would be passed down among the Pescatores.”

  “So what did he do? Threaten your cousin?”

  Luigi clenched his jaw, and the skin on his neck tightened. “He had him strangled.”

  “Strangolato,” a nonna shouted.

  My hand went to my throat. I was prepared for the nonna’s cry but not for the shocking revelation.

  Luigi loosened his bow tie, as though he too felt suffocated by the murder. “The police said they didn’t have any evidence to charge Gigi, much less have him extradited. But everyone knew they were too scared to prosecute him.”

  “What happened to Serafina?”

  “She wasn’t home when he was killed. But she died a few months ago, and she didn’t have any kids.”

  “Then what did she do with the winepress?”

  He cast a heavy look at my nonna that was underscored by the bags beneath his eyes. “She left it to me, but I never had any kids either.”

  “Did you leave it to Nicky?”

  “Given his lifestyle”—he paused to glance at my nonna—“I didn’t think he was the right choice.”

  I exhaled, frustrated by all the stalling. “So where is the winepress?”

  Nonna raised her chin. “In a trunk-a in-a your closet.”

  “Closet!” I shouted it in English because the word didn’t exist in Italian. But that didn’t make the situation any less dramatic. Because if Gigi Scalino had ordered the strangulation of Luigi’s cousin, then I didn’t want to imagine what he’d have done to me when he heard that I not only had the winepress but was investigating him for Nick Pescatore’s murder.

  6

  I raised my head in the pitch black to roll onto my side, but there wasn’t enough room.

  That’s weird.

  I reached out on either side of me and touched a cold, hard surface. I definitely wasn’t in my bed. Where was I? Was I inside something?

  The freezer I’d found Nick Pescatore in came to mind, but that wasn’t possible because the police had removed it from the Galliano as evidence. And I wasn’t even on the steamboat. I was at home.

  Home. Terror swirled in my chest like a tornado. I’m in the trunk Luigi and Nonna put in my closet.

  The Scalinos had taken out their winepress and locked me inside. And I didn’t need to wonder why they’d done it.

  The trunk is my coffin.

  I heard rustling, like leaves.

  Oh, God. Are they about to bury me in the cemetery across the street? If so, I will haunt Veronica for the rest of her life for tricking me into moving to the fourplex, and I’ll haunt her in death too.

  A rushing sound ensued, and freezing water entered the trunk, drenching my feet.

  The terror sunk to my stomach like an anchor. The Scalinos threw me into the Mississippi to sleep with the catfishes.

  I thrashed from side to side. I couldn’t die yet. I had to turn thirty-one, get married, have babies so that I could find out what life was like without Nonna perched on my back, draped around my neck, and latched like a ball and chain to my ankle.

  Wait a minute…Nonna. I let her have my bed. So I can’t be in the trunk, because I’m sleeping in my clawfoot tub.

  I sat up in my sleep shirt. It had all been a bad dream, but the freezing water was real because someone had turned on the bathtub faucet. I turned it off and threw open the shower curtain.

  My mother screamed.

  I screamed back.

  Because she stood stark naked in front of the Louis XVI vanity.

  I yanked the shower curtain shut. It was a scene straight out of a French brothel horror film—if that were a genre.

  “What are you doing in there, Francesca?” she shouted in the what-have-you-done-now tone of my childhood. “You g
ave me such a fright I almost jumped from my skin.”

  Her reference to skin brought the brothel scene back, and I rubbed my eyes hard to wipe it out. “The nonne were so loud last night that I had to come in here and turn on the fan to drown out their wailing.” Speaking of drowning…I looked at my wet legs. “What are you doing in New Orleans?”

  “I came to help poor Luigi with Nick’s memorial.”

  And to help poor Luigi, who wasn’t poor at all, propose to Nonna.

  “I got up at three a.m. to drive here—this after staying up until eleven to make your father a lasagna, because God forbid the man who owns a deli would have to eat sandwiches for dinner. Thank goodness Mary’s in the kitchen making breakfast, because I’m flat exhausted.”

  I pulled my knees to my chest and hugged my dripping limbs. Waking up to my mother was a splash of cold water.

  “Would you mind coming out of there, Francesca? Everyone’s at the funeral home, and I was looking forward to a hot bath and a quick nap before they get back. And shouldn’t you be at work? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

  The employee meeting on the Galliano. I threw open the shower curtain and closed it again. “Mom, would you please put some clothes on?”

  “What for? I just told you that I’m going to take a bath.”

  With a sigh, I averted my eyes, opened the curtain, and climbed from the tub. I wrapped a towel around my waist and squeezed past her to my bedroom. I opened my closet.

  The trunk loomed like the coffin of my nightmare. After I’d recovered from the shock of learning about the winepress, Luigi had said that he wanted me to have it, which was touching. But given its family history, I wanted the winepress back in Italy, or at the bottom of the Mississippi.

  “What’s that old thing?” My mother stood beside me—still in her brothel birthday suit.

  I pointed to the robe hanging from the bathroom door. “Why don’t you put that on?”

  She strode to the bathroom and slammed the door. “How did I raise such a prude?”

  Uh, you sent me to Catholic School? was my honest reaction, but I kept my mouth shut so she’d stay in there.

  I pulled the hot pink duvet from my bed and tossed it on the trunk, tucking it around the sides. The cover wouldn’t fool the Mafia, but it made me feel a little better.

  There was a knock on my door, and I closed the closet. “Come in.”

  Mary entered. She was younger than the other nonne, but no less short, round, and old-fashioned, as evidenced by her mourning dress and coat with the obligatory hat and veil.

  “I made some cartocci,” she said, referring to Sicilian breakfast pastries filled with ricotta cream, “and now I’m headed to the funeral home. But first, I wanted to let you know that Santina and I have a national prayer request underway for your nonna.” She touched my forearm to underscore the gravity of the situation. “This has never happened before, so we had to take drastic action.”

  The “this” she was referring to was the act of an old-school Sicilian widow going rogue from her lifelong mourning duties. “I understand.” I used my church voice in accordance with the solemnity of the occasion. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t mention this to my mother.”

  “Why not? I’m sure she’d want to know that we’ve sought resolution through the church.”

  My mother would sooner drown Mary and Santina in my bathtub than lose a shot at Luigi’s millions. “It’s just that it’s still such a sensitive matter in the family.”

  “Ah. Indeed.” She turned to leave. “Oh, I almost forgot. The exterminator came.”

  “I didn’t call an exterminator.”

  She pressed a hand to her cheek. “He said you had. He probably meant your landlady.”

  Not likely. The one time I’d asked Glenda to exterminate, she said bugs gave the place character. “What did he do?”

  “He looked in the cabinets and closets.”

  The word closets hit me like a blast of insecticide. Had Gigi Scalino sent one of his thugs to find the winepress? “Did he come in my room?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry. I wouldn’t let him go near the bathroom since you were in there.”

  Bathrooms drew bugs, and a real exterminator would’ve known that. “Is he planning to come back to spray in there too?”

  “Oh, he didn’t spray anywhere. He said you were insect free.”

  My spider and pill bug roommates begged to differ. The guy was a fraud. “What did this man look like?”

  “I was busy cooking, so I didn’t get a good look at him. But he was young and seemed shy because his hat was pulled down.”

  He’d been hiding his face—like that roller-skate girl at the Confederate Hall Museum. Were they connected somehow?

  Mary looked at her watch. “I need to get to the funeral home. In the meantime, don’t worry about your Nonna.” She patted my shoulder. “We Catholics have it covered.”

  “That’s so comforting,” I murmured as she left the room. But I wasn’t comforted in the slightest.

  I grabbed a pair of jeans and pulled them on, pondering the exterminator incident. If my suspicions were correct, I needed to get in on a national prayer request.

  So that I didn’t get murdered, like Nick.

  Ruth clucked as I sat at the table in the Galliano’s Huck Finn Dining Hall. She pulled up the bill of her orange-and-white sun visor that, combined with her receding chin, made her look like a horned-rimmed-glasses-wearing goose. “I know who’s not going to win employee of the month.”

  I was in no mood to spar after my morning with my mother, but I couldn’t resist a comeback. “So what job did Marv get you? Annoying—I mean, assisting—the captain?”

  “See this?” She tapped a badge pinned to her khaki vest that said Fun Meter. “Your pointer’s going to be set to Min, as in Minimum.”

  “Uh, it won’t because I’m not wearing one of those stupid things.”

  “You bet your patootie you are, because you’re looking at the new cruise director. You spoil my fun, and you’ll be talking to Captain Vandergrift.”

  I wondered whether there was a river equivalent of Davy Jones’s Locker, the maritime version of hell, because I had a feeling that was where the Galliano was headed with Ruth at the helm. “Speaking of spoiling, don’t blow my cover. While I’m on this steamboat, I’m Franki Rockford.”

  “Don’t you dare compare yourself to Jim. He was the best PI there was.”

  I didn’t think the comparison was that far off. “Jim Rockford is a fictional character, so he can’t be the best.”

  “James Garner was Jim Rockford, may he rest in Hollywood heaven. You besmirch his honor again, and I’ll revoke your Fun Meter.”

  Little did she know that my Fun Meter had been revoked the minute she’d gotten a job on the boat.

  A thin, sixtyish woman took a seat at our table, and I blinked thinking I was seeing double—and not double my fun. She was practically Ruth’s twin with her line frown, too-tight bun, and chained-on black horned rims. I scanned the room for life jackets. Two Ruths could sink the ship.

  Ruth lowered her glasses and gave the woman a skeptical sizing up. “Who’re you? The hash slinger?”

  Like a mirror reflection, the woman gave her the same going over. “Marian Guidry,” she growled. “The gift shop clerk.”

  Ruth sniffed. “Luckily, I’m not here to tchotchke shop. But since I’m the cruise director, we’ll have to talk about stocking troll dolls and rabbit feet for my bingo peeps.”

  “I am a historian. I only stock items that reflect the history of the steamboat, and I definitely don’t sell animal parts.”

  “Well, I am the cruise director. And if you talk to me like that again, we’ll be selling your parts to my bingo players.”

  Marian hissed, and Ruth did the same. Then their necks elongated, and their shoulders went back, almost like wings about to flap.

  Wanting to avoid a goose attack, I leaned toward Marian. “I’m the new galley employee, Franki Rockford.�
� I pointed to the only other occupied table in the dining hall. “Will any of those people be working with me?”

  She cast a disinterested look at the table’s occupants. “The baby-faced man in the white sailor suit is Tim Trahan. He used to work on a cruise ship, but now he’s the first mate. The chubby one is the bartender, Wendell Baptiste, who plays in a jazz band, and the skinny Katy Perry wannabe is the cocktail waitress, Kate Wilson.”

  Kate’s gaze shifted, as though she’d heard her name. She did a double take when she saw me and jerked her head away.

  My hair was in a ponytail, and I wasn’t wearing my Sophia Loren-style cat eyeliner, or any makeup for that matter, but I didn’t think I looked that bad. I just hoped she hadn’t recognized me from somewhere. If she had, my cover and the investigation were blown. “Um, Marian, the guy who got me the job mentioned an employee meeting a few days ago. Are Ruth and me the only ones who missed that?”

  “That was just for the captain and the chef. This is the first employee meeting.”

  If this was the first time the employees had been on the steamboat, that meant Alfredo Scalino and the captain were still my prime suspects. But I had to question the trio at the table on the off chance one of them had known Nick.

  Ruth tapped my arm. “Because you were seventeen minutes late, Roquefort, you did miss Captain Vandergrift’s welcome and history of the steamboat.”

  I glowered at her. “It’s Rockford. And it sounds like I didn’t miss anything important.”

  Marian’s eyeglass chains came out swinging. “We’re helping to carry on a noble tradition.” Her tone held a harrumph. “Nicholas Roosevelt, the great-grand-uncle of Teddy, introduced the steamboat to the Mississippi in 1811, when he steered the New Orleans into the river from the Ohio.”

  Ruth nodded, her chains bobbing. “At a speed of ten miles per hour, like we’ll be travelling tomorrow for our test cruise.”

  Marian glanced over her shoulder. “Since the captain was just interrupted by a call from the police, I doubt we’ll set sail tomorrow. It’s too soon after the discovery of that body.”