by Fiona Grace
Dinardo continued to survey the body. “Looks like he was shot twice at close range,” he said, running a finger over the bullet wounds between the body’s shoulder blades. He looked up at Audrey, whose stomach was now turning. “Which reminds me, what were you doing here?”
“Well, I—”
“What seems to be the problem here?” a voice said from among the trees. A moment later, Rafael appeared.
Dinardo straightened. “A body was found on these premises. Who are you?”
Rafael tilted his head and looked, unsurprised, at the dead body. “I own this place.” He extended his hand and smiled good-naturedly. “Rafael.”
Dinardo shook it cautiously.
Audrey waited for Rafael to say the next, obvious question. Who is it? After all, if someone was found dead on her property, the first thing she’d register is shock. Then, she’d want to know if it was anyone she was close to. After that, she’d probably ask what happened.
But Rafael said absolutely nothing.
From the way Dinardo looked at him, Audrey got the feeling he was suspicious of this, too. He said, “You’re new here, eh?”
“I moved in last week,” he said. “It’s my family property. And before you ask where I was at the time of the murder, I was here at my estate. No, I did not hear or see anything. So no, I’m afraid I can’t help you very much at all.”
Audrey just stared. Rafael spoke coolly, as if it was some discarded trash that had been found on his property, and not a human body. As if this was the kind of nuisance he’d had to deal with often. And as Audrey let it simmer, she realized something. Had Dinardo even said it was a murder?
Dinardo reached into the man’s pocket and pulled out a wallet. “Pietro Grinelli,” he said, holding up some form of identification. “Either of you know the man?”
They both shook their heads.
Rafael frowned. “No. I trust that you two can take care of this tonight? I don’t want to have to deal with this. I came out here for peace and quiet. You understand?”
Dinardo squinted at him. “I’m going to have to question you, Signore . . . what did you say your last name was?”
He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t. It’s Piccolo.”
Audrey tilted her head. Piccolo. Why did that name sound so familiar?
Suddenly, Luigi’s voice came to her. The Piccolo clan is one of the meanest and worst. Cosa Nostra.
Her jaw dropped. Oh, no. If he was Cosa Nostra, and he had been prowling the orange groves prior to her arriving there, then . . .
He was probably a murderer. He’d probably murdered that man, right before he met her.
She jumped up. “I’ve got to go!” she shouted. As she said that, she remembered, she really had to pee. So it wasn’t a lie.
“Sit right down there,” Dinardo ordered. “I have questions to ask you.”
“All right. Fine. But I do have to get back to the clinic,” she said, sitting on a nearby rock and crossing her legs.
“Ricci, get Dr. Smart’s statement. I’ll interview Mr. Piccolo, here,” he said.
The junior officer fumbled with his pad and pen and smiled his million-dollar smile. “Hi, Dottore Smart. I’m going to ask you some questions,” he said.
“Yes. We’ve established that,” she said with a smile. She couldn’t fault him. He was still naïve, even after dealing with three other murders. “If we could just . . . move this along?”
“Uh. You got it,” he said, looking at his notes. One would’ve thought he’d be just as practiced with murder investigations as some big-city cops, what with the action Mussomeli was getting as of late. But he scratched his neck, unsure. “So what were you doing here?”
“I received a call from an anonymous person. A man, I think. He told me there was an injured animal out here and to follow the trail of blood.”
“I see. And did he give his name?”
“No.” She ordinarily would have humored him, but right now, her bladder was calling to her. “Thus, anonymous.”
“Right. So you arrived here and uh, what time?”
“Right before noon. I walked around and didn’t find anything.”
“Did you walk where the body was found?”
“I don’t know. It all looked the same. But I don’t think so.”
“Did you see anyone while you were out there?’
“No one, except Rafael, who invited me to lunch in the courtyard. When I was leaving at one-thirty, I saw the trail of blood and followed it, where I found the dead man, exactly where he is now. I didn’t touch the body. I know how this rodeo goes.”
“That’s good.”
“Oh—uh. But I did kind of trip over him. So that might’ve jostled him around a bit. Sorry.”
He scratched the side of his head as he stared at her, and his expression said, Of course you did. “And you’ve never met the guy?”
“Nope. Not that I know of. Like I said, I didn’t touch the body, and he’s face-down, so I don’t really know what he looks like.”
“And you . . .” He squinted, trying to think up the next question.
She answered for him. “I didn’t hear or see anything. So I’m really not that much help.” She went to take a sip of her water, but just then, her bladder started to send her warning signals. She stood up. “If we’re done here, I do have to go?”
His normally placid expression gave way to confusion. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I just have to get back to the clinic,” she said. As quickly as possible.
He closed his notebook. Just when she thought she was free, he held up a finger. “Wait one moment. I have to talk to Dinardo.”
He went down the trail, she watched him, wondering if it’d be okay to duck behind a tree. Or maybe she should ask Rafael to use his bathroom. But she couldn’t do that. He was mafia. And he’d just murdered a man. Shot him in the back and acted like it was nothing. Surely, Dinardo was finding that out right now, and would arrest him. Or would he? Maybe the Piccolo family had infiltrated the police of Mussomeli and would cover it up. In fact, that was probably why the two of them had gone off, together, alone. Maybe they were making shady mafia deals.
Whatever. They could do whatever they wanted to. She needed to get out of here, soon, before she had a massively embarrassing problem.
A moment later, Dinardo jogged down the path to her. “Dr. Smart?”
“Yes?” she said, hoping he’d tell her Nothing to see here, and politely dismiss her.
“Officer Ricci here says that you’ve been acting strange? Elusive? Wanting to leave?” he asked. ”What seems to be the problem?”
She glanced at Officer Ricci, who was busy studying the sky and pretending they didn’t exist. She scowled. “No, I’m not being elusive. If I was being elusive, I wouldn’t have called you when I found the body, right?”
“Perhaps, but it seems logical that you might have been walking about, looking for this injured animal, and this man popped out and surprised you. So you shot him.”
“In the back?” she asked incredulously. “And with what gun? Detective, I will tell you, I don’t own a gun. I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. If you’re trying to come up with a theory, you’d better try harder than that. If you want, search me. There is no gun.”
“It could be anywhere. This grove is acres and acres. You had time to ditch it. Also, Mr. Piccolo said that he wasn’t in this area before he noticed you, but that you’d been coming from that direction, and you looked flustered.”
“He sneaked up on me!” she said, hardly able to believe she was having this conversation. Again. Every time she called in a murder, the police came after her. Sure, it was suspicious, but it was just her bad luck. Nothing more. “Yes, I got flustered when a strange man sneaked up on me. Believe it or not, I didn’t pull out the heat I was packing and blow him away.”
“Mr. Piccolo said it was strange to find you on his grounds, and that you appeared to be looking for something.”
“
Yes, well, I told you, I was out looking for that injured animal.”
“Which you did not find . . .”
“Right, but . . .” She knew where this was going, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“Maybe you made that story up?”
“Why? So I could go into the grove and steal oranges?” she asked with incredulity. “I like citrus, but not that much. I can just buy it at Pepe, you know.”
“Hmm,” he said, stroking his chin pensively.
How did I get to this point? she wondered miserably. Just an hour ago, she’d been so happy. She’d had a nice, enjoyable lunch, and had even been a little smitten with her host, who’d complimented her up and down, making her feel special. Beautiful.
Now, she was a suspect in a murder. Again.
This was getting old, fast.
And she wasn’t sure what worse—that she was kind of smitten with a possible mafia guy, or that he was trying to frame her.
Mafia.
The thought made her shudder. They had very powerful connections, and she was just an expat veterinarian. What chance did she have? “Why aren’t you even looking at Rafael Piccolo? He’s a strange guy, and this is his property. I hear he’s possibly—” she trailed off and looked around. In mafia movies, even the walls have eyes.
“You hear he’s possibly what?” Dinardo asked, eyes narrowed.
She cupped her hands around her mouth, ready to tell him, but then she remembered what she’d thought earlier, about the mafia having the police in their back pockets. She sighed. “Forget it.”
I can’t believe this. Mr. It’s-a-pleasure-lovely-doctor-lady is actually trying to frame me for a murder he committed. And the police believe the flimsy story he was shilling. This is ridiculous.
But from the look on the local law enforcement’s faces, she was in some serious trouble, indeed. They really did believe that she’d shot this man.
“Can I go now?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
The detective nodded. “Yes, but don’t—”
“I get it. Don’t leave town. I’ve been there before, Detective, remember?” She sighed and turned away from him, motioning to Nick to follow her.
As she walked, she could feel their eyes on her back. She didn’t want to make herself look any more guilty than she already did, so she forced herself to walk at a leisurely, nonchalant pace until she was out of their sight, behind the trees.
Then she broke into a run, all the way back to the clinic.
CHAPTER NINE
Concetta was at the front desk of the clinic when Audrey burst in.
“There you are! I was wondering—”
“Wait!” Audrey cried, rushing to the bathroom. She made it just in time, slamming the door and taking care of business. As she washed up, that problem solved, all the other ones seemed to avalanche on top of her.
Another murder.
A possible mafia guy, trying to frame her.
What other stress could she pile on top of that?
The moment she stepped outside, she discovered it. Concetta was waiting out in the hallway. “Bambino’s not any better,” she said gravely.
Audrey let out a deep sigh and went to the kennel to check him out. As she did, Concetta followed. “You were gone a long time. What happened? Did you find the injured pet?”
She groaned. “What didn’t happen is more like it,” she said as she plucked two gloves from the dispenser and snapped them on. She approached Bambino on his bed. He was awake, but lethargic. Yes, no improvement whatsoever. “And no, I didn’t find the injured animal. Instead, I found a dead man. “
Concetta laughed. She must’ve thought Audrey was joking. When Audrey didn’t smile, her jaw dropped. “You’re serious?”
“Dead. As was the victim. He’d been shot twice in the back.”
Concetta brought her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, my goodness. Who could’ve done such a thing? Mussomeli doesn’t have murderers.”
Apparently, over the past few months, they do, she thought, taking her stethoscope and listening to Bambino’s slow but steady heart rate. “You sent the blood out for testing?”
Concetta nodded.
“I think, if he’s not getting better by tonight, we should get an X-ray in. There could be a bowel obstruction, so we might have to perform surgery and repair the damaged tissue. Have you seen a colorectal resection done before, with intestinal anastomosis?”
She shook her head.
“All right, well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Let’s increase his fluids in preparation,” she said, pulling off the gloves.
“About this murder . . .”
“Right. The police think I did it.”
She laughed again. “Now, you have to be joking.”
“Well, when the only other guy who was there is a criminal with big connections to the mob, who else are they going to blame? I’m a patsy,” she said, going to the sink and washing her hands again.
Concetta raised both eyebrows. “Connections to the mob?”
“Yeah . . . well, no. Forget I said anything about that,” she said. The last thing she needed was for word to somehow get back to those powerful people that she was talking smack about them. “But Concetta . . . you’ve lived in Sicily all your life. Do you know anything about the mafia?”
She nodded. “There was always talk of the mafia in Palermo. Any crime around there, they were usually involved. Or those were the rumors. Supposedly, that was their home base. But I never saw them. I was removed from all that at the university.” She paused. “What does the mafia have to do with all this?”
Audrey shrugged. “Well, I’ve just heard rumors . . .”
“Oh.” Concetta nodded and clapped her hands. “I’ve heard those, too. About the mob moving into that old place down by the orange groves outside of town? But no one really believed them. Why would the mob move all the way out here?” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait. Are you saying you saw them, and you think they killed the man?”
Audrey shrugged. “I’m not saying anything. All I know is that I don’t own and never have owned a gun. I wouldn’t even know how to shoot one. I met the owner, yes. He invited me to lunch. He seemed really charming and kind, and he was clearly rich.”
“Handsome?” Concetta winked.
“Okay, yes. Handsome. I had a great time.”
“And then?”
“Well, then I found the body. And from what he told the police, he’s making it seem like I killed the man. But I don’t see how it could be anyone else but him. Other than his servants, who were in the house, there was probably no one around for . . .” She froze as a memory came to her. “Wait. There was someone else in the grove. Someone wearing a hat, or a scarf, that was white with red polka dots. I forgot to tell the police that.”
“Red polka dots? That sounds awful,” she said, making a face. “I don’t know why anyone would want to wear anything that makes them look like they’re breaking out in hives. Could it have been the handsome owner?”
“No. I don’t think so. He wasn’t wearing anything like that when I bumped into him a few minutes later. But who knows? Maybe he discarded his hat, just like the police think I discarded my gun. Not that I can picture him wearing red polka dots. You’re right. It’s hideous. He seemed too smart and savvy to fall for that kind of fashion faux pas.”
“That is very strange. Anyone, really, could’ve walked into the grove. It’s not like it’s fenced off. And who made that call?” Concetta asked. “Do you think it was the owner?”
Audrey shrugged. “It didn’t sound like him. And why would he call me there? I guess he might have, because he wanted someone to blame it on. He certainly didn’t seem surprised by it.”
Concetta shuddered. “How crazy. But don’t worry, Dr. Smart. I am sure that the police are doing everything they can and will clear your name soon.”
I don’t know about that, Audrey thought. The last few times, I had to do it myself. “Until then,” she said. “I can’t lea
ve town. It’s standard procedure.”
“Oh. Wow,” Concetta said, as they heard the sound of the door in the reception area opening and closing. The women moved out to the front desk. Audrey expected the next patient. Instead, she saw Bambino’s owner. The woman looked terrified.
Now there’s the sight of a woman who will be devastated without her beloved pet, Audrey thought.
“Hello,” she said kindly, approaching her. “It appears we’re going to have to keep Bambino a little longer for—”
“No!” she shouted, taking a step back, and then another, into the corner like a frightened animal. She began to unleash the longest string of rambling Italian Audrey had ever heard, her voice high and frantic. The only word Audrey could make out was Bambino.
She looked at Concetta, whose eyes were wide. “What is she saying?”
“She’s saying that she’s come here to take Bambino with her, and she’s not taking no for an answer.”
“Can you tell her that Bambino is very sick and needs to stay a little—”
“She doesn’t care. She’s saying you can’t keep her dog against her will.”
“What? Why does she want to take Bambino away? He’s not going to get better if--”
“She says she’d taking him into Palermo for a second opinion.” Concetta stared at her as she ranted, pointing out the door like a madwoman. “She says that she heard what happened at the orange groves.”
Already? How had that happened? She went to the computer and pulled up Bambino’s owner’s information. “Scusi, Signora—” She stopped when she saw the name on the card. “Ricci? Are you related to Officer Ricci?”
Concetta nodded. “Officer Ricci is her son.”
“Oh, well, tell her I know her son, and that—”
She started to explode again with Italian, so fast that Audrey’s head spun. Concetta shook her head, as if to say, it doesn’t matter. Nothing you will say matters.
Audrey’s face burned with indignation. Not only was that a bad sign on her clinic’s part, it wasn’t healthy for the dog. Moving him at this critical juncture wouldn’t be wise. “Could you please tell Mrs. Ricci that it’s extremely dangerous to move him right now?”
