by Mary Leo
“This is not the time to debate women’s issues,” I countered. “We have more urgent matters to deal with first.” I turned to Giuseppe. “Was Angelina here to protect you, to protect my father against the Pisano family?”
“I think this was the case. Yes. But it did not work out so good.”
“Maybe not for Angelina, but you’re still taking in air,” Lisa refuted. “She did something right so I think you should show a little more gratitude for this woman.”
“I will show my gratitude by gutting the son-of-a-bitch who did this before she can do more damage.”
The word gutting made me almost sick to my stomach. “She? Do you think the killer is a woman?”
“Yes, Angelina thought whoever tried to kill me in Italy is the same person who tried to kill me on the orchard,” he said.
“Then it was a woman who broke into my apartment last night and stole my muffins and tried to kill us with gas? I thought for sure it was Angelina who shot you and broke into my apartment.”
He smiled, and shook his head. “She would never do any of those things. She was loyal to your father and to me.”
“It might be more than one person,” Lisa interjected.
“One person or twenty. It does not matter. I will kill each of them for what they did to beautiful Angelina.”
I flashed back on the conversation he and I had had over lunch. How angry he was and how he said that person deserved to die.
“Do you have any suspects?” I wanted to know. Just in case he suspected one of my family members I wanted to be able to warn that person that Giuseppe was out to gut them.
I shivered at the thought.
He shrugged. “I suspect everyone. It was someone who is sneaky and evil to have killed her this way . . . just like they tried to kill us last night with gas.” A devilish smirk crossed his lips. “It is part of the game, but now that she is dead, this situation has gotten much more dangerous. She was not shot or strangled.”
“No. It was the Freon,” Lisa said.
Concern stained Giuseppe’s eyes, as he put his hands together like he was praying and waved them up and down. “Who is this Freon? Another family? I do not know this name. Are they from America?”
His naiveté made me smile.
“Someone cut the Freon line in the mini-fridge,” Lisa told him. “It’s the gas that keeps the fridge cold. That’s the ammonia you smell. It’s why we opened all the windows.”
“This keeps getting better and better,” Jade grumbled from the comfort of her chair, still staring up at the ceiling.
It was at that very moment when we heard several car doors slam out in the parking lot. My mob-family antenna immediately went up.
Giuseppe walked over to the bank of windows and peered out.
“Freón. Ah! Good to know, but you ladies must leave this place. Now! Come.” He motioned for us to leave through the room door. “No one must see you here.”
Lisa pushed the mini-fridge back in place, slipped out of her rubber gloves and shoved them into her bag as a frightening thought flitted through my mind.
“How do we know you didn’t have one of your imported henchmen cut the line? How do we know we can trust you and that you’re not going to take us out somewhere, shoot us and bury us under an olive tree?” I could feel my panic rising, like the tide moving up on the shore.
He walked in closer to me, smiled that Adonis smile of his, his Farga-colored eyes looking all intense and earnest. I wanted nothing more than to believe this man was our savior and not our executioner.
He looked deep into my eyes, sending a hot chill up my spine, and gently touched my shoulder, then he slid his hand down my upper arm. The erotic sensation of his touch caught me by surprise. “I could never hurt you, Mia. You must believe me when I say these things to you. You, Lisa and Jade saved my life. I am forever in your debt. Please trust me when I say this: I would die before I let anything happen to any of you. I have promised your father that I will protect you, all three of you, and I am a man of my word.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. He had a way of doing that to me . . . sucking the words right out of my head.
Jade finally came to life. “Where is he? Where’s our dad Enzo? Mia thought she saw him at the orchard. Is he here in Sonoma? Can you take us to him?”
“He is someplace safe. This I can tell you, but I can not tell you where, because I do not know exactly. Now you must go.”
Again, he headed towards the room door.
“If we leave her, the police will think we killed her and ran,” I said. “Louie, the guy down at the desk, will be more than happy to turn us over to the nearest sheriff. It will destroy Spia’s Olive Press once and for all.”
“The police will not find Angelina. There is no time to waste.” He peeked out in the hallway, then looked back at Jade who lingered behind. “You must come. Now! Before it is too late.”
Jade suddenly came back to life and rushed towards the door. “I don’t think—”
“No time to think.” He held out his hand for her, and she took it. Lisa grabbed her tote bag and straddled the straps over her shoulder. I grabbed my purse, and we all headed for the front door that Giuseppe held open.
But before we could make our hasty retreat, we could hear voices and footsteps coming up the staircase. Lots of footsteps and they were moving fast.
“We can escape through the windows,” Lisa proposed. “I’ve already scoped out how.”
“That is done only in the movies,” Giuseppe said. “We will shoot our way out.” He whipped out his weapon, and prepared it for battle. “It is the only way.”
“We’re not going to die tonight,” Jade said as she grabbed hold of my arm, then pulled out her automatic and pointed it at the open doorway.
“You brought your gun?” I asked, looking down at what I knew to be a Walther P99 semi-automatic handgun.
“I never go anywhere without it,” she said in a very matter-of-fact tone.
“Good to know,” I told her, ready to wet my pants when the shooting started.
“We’re not going to shoot anyone if I can help it,” Lisa assured us as she headed to the bank of open windows at the far end of the sitting room. “We’ll be fine. We just have to keep a calm demeanor and think about each action. Now you two follow me and do exactly as I do.”
Giuseppe closed and locked the door, but I knew it wouldn’t hold anyone back for long. The door, although pretty, was thin and fragile as a cracker. One good push, and those guys would be inside . . . whoever they were.
Lisa stood in front of the windows waiting for us as she quickly removed Angelina’s gun from her tote bag, checked for the feel of it, checked that it was loaded then slipped it back into her bag. She pushed out the screen on one of the open windows, secured a large hook attached to a cord to the window frame and began to climb out. She stopped and said, “When escaping from a second story window, it’s best to quickly surmise your path.”
“Lisa, just tell us what we have to do,” I told her. “No quotes.”
Jade was now standing next to Lisa, shoulder bag securely strapped across her body, over a black leather jacket. Giuseppe stood guard. Gun in hand, pointed at the front door.
“Just follow my lead,” Lisa said as she disappeared out the window sliding down the cord like a pro.
My heart skipped a beat until I gazed out and saw there was a tile rooftop that covered the wraparound porch only a few feet below. She had rappelled down and was now making her way across it.
I quickly followed right behind Lisa, trying not to shake as I grabbed hold of the cord as I eased myself down, glancing back up to make sure Jade was following in our tracks. I couldn’t see her. “Don’t worry about me,” I heard her say. “I’m right behind you.”
That was enough for me, so I dropped down on the porch roof and carefully followed Lisa as she slipped down a thick drainage pipe landing on a conveniently placed wooden bench. When I grabbed hold of the pipe, and swung mys
elf off the roof, my hands slipped, and my feet couldn’t seem to grip anything. I moved down the pipe in a kind of slow-motion panicked slide, landing hard on the wooden bench. My hands were scraped raw and stinging, while my clothes were now covered in dirt and spider webs. I leapt off the bench, slipped on the damp leaves that had fallen from the surrounding trees, and landed on my side. I lay there for a moment, rolling on my back, trying to get my bearings.
When I finally stood and saw Lisa standing a few feet away, she seemed completely unscathed, as if she’d just walked out of the front door. I could only imagine how I looked.
When I finally regained my footing on terra firma and looked back up for Jade, she was nowhere to be seen, and I swore I heard gunfire.
FIFTEEN
A Tale Of Two Trees
“What’s that on your tire?” I asked as Lisa and I stood stock still staring at the metal object attached to the back tire.
“It’s a boot. Somebody put a boot on my tire.”
“What the heck?”
“It’s a private boot. Not from the city. We have to get out of here,” Lisa quipped. “Now!” Grabbing my hand she pulled me along, heading towards the dark alleyway behind the inn. “It’s too dangerous to hang around and try to figure out why or who did it. Let’s just go.”
“Go where? We can’t leave Jade,” I told her, looking back to see if I could somehow climb back up that drainage pipe to get up on the porch roof again. Lisa kept dragging me away, and I kept holding back.
“Giuseppe won’t let anything happen to her. Now, come on.” Lisa seemed determined to get her way. “Sonoma Plaza can’t be more than a few miles away. We can hide out in a bar. Whoever put that boot on my tire won’t want to make a scene in a public place. And whoever came bounding up those steps won’t follow us to town. We’ll call somebody to pick us up from there.”
“Who the hell would put a boot on your tire? And when did they do it? And why?” I said as Lisa tried to get me to move.
“I don’t know, but we don’t have time to find out. We need to get out of here. Now!”
I knew for a fact that Sonoma Plaza was further than I could even walk, let alone run. Lisa could run it without taking a deep breath while I would be spent a quarter of the way there. Running from the mob hadn’t been a priority in my life, so physical exercise had never been my calling, clearly a miscalculation on my part.
“You’re assuming Giuseppe is a good little mobster and this whole thing isn’t some kind of setup. How can we be sure of anything? We’re dealing with the underworld,” I countered. “An underworld where one of its members just murdered Angelina, Giuseppe’s fiancée.”
“That underworld is your family. For now, we have to trust Giuseppe. He seems to be a gangster who’s on our side.”
“There’s a scary thought.”
We took off running while I assured myself that if anything happened to Jade, I’d have to seriously reconsider family values . . . mob family values. I wondered if I could ever have someone whacked. After all, I came from a long line of whackers so it should be easy.
That thought actually disturbed me more than the thought of running for several miles. I slowed to a walk and, besides, the pain in my side was already growing in intensity, and the alley seemed to be getting darker with each step.
“We really shouldn’t leave Jade. She’s too vulnerable,” I said while trying to catch my breath, as I pressed my fingers into my aching side.
“She has a gun and knows how to use it. Do you?”
As a good little mobster’s daughter, I resented the question.
“If I have to, I can point and shoot. The last time I tried, I hit my mark. I can’t leave her,” I said and gradually slowed my momentum forward. Lisa also slowed.
And no sooner had I begun my about-face when I heard Jade calling us further up the alley. “Guys, this way! Come on! Hurry up!”
Stunned to hear her voice ahead of us, I tried not to think about how she could have possibly gotten out in front of us, and instead simply ran toward her with Lisa leading the way. Relief surged through my veins and seemed to put some added speed in my weary steps. I was so glad I wore my most comfy black sneakers to this event. It was as if I knew that running would be involved.
“This way,” Jade repeated as we sprinted closer, and she disappeared into an open doorway of a large, red brick two-story building. A building I knew had been deserted for about a year, ever since the old Valley Of The Moon Chocolate Company went belly-up.
If I remembered the story right, the electricity was turned off in the warehouse during a heat wave in July causing all of their stored chocolate to melt. Kids in the area had a field day with the melting chocolate, and so did the adults. The owners, Fred and Myra Brookstooth, both in their mid-eighties, were later found in the office up on the second floor of the warehouse. Apparently, it was a murder suicide. The note left by Myra said she never liked chocolate, and refused to have to sell even one more bar to one more person who liked the “smelly crap.” It made Myra nauseous just to be around “that brown shit.”
The chocolate mavens were found dead in their office the day the melting chocolate began oozing out of their warehouse, and Miranda Pauler, the local committee chair for the Beautification Of Sonoma, trudged through the melting chocolate in her best rubber boots and found them sitting together on the sofa with an endless loop of the “Chocolate Factory” episode of I Love Lucy playing on an office monitor . . . probably what put Myra over the edge.
The coroner’s report later came out that they had been dead for at least two months. The residents of Sonoma couldn’t believe that no one had checked up on Fred and Myra, but then Fred and Myra weren’t very well liked. Ever since Myra refused to allow children under the age of ten in her store, the good people of the valley simply stopped talking to Myra and Fred and boycotted their chocolate store.
The warehouse had been up for sale for at least the past year, but the overpowering smell of chocolate and death had deterred any potential buyers.
Not so much for a mob family. The smell of death was part of their MO, but the smell of chocolate . . . not so much . . . especially for the Spia family.
We followed Jade inside and the heavy door banged shut behind us. I thought I would be overpowered with the sweet scent of chocolate, but to my surprise, a mild earthy fragrance caressed my senses.
Of course, it didn’t ease my inner tensions over this crazy escape route.
The dark narrow room we ran into felt tight and cold. The only light seemed to be coming from Jade’s cell phone, which she directed to the cement floor. I couldn’t see where we were going, but I could hear the distinctive sound of a police siren as it sped by. I wondered if that police car was heading to the inn, and to Angelina.
“Where are we going?” I whispered, thinking this was merely a diversion for the real escape.
“Nowhere,” Jade said. “We’ve already arrived. Isn’t it cool?”
A series of old mob movies flashed before my eyes, mob movies with people strapped to chairs who would get beaten into talking by other mobsters. Only this time they might threaten us with bars of old, melted chocolate. I’d heard they’d never removed all the old bars of chocolate, and they were still stored in parts of the warehouse.
“This might not be the best place to hide,” I whispered. “I heard it might even be haunted.” There’d been rumors that kids had heard the old I Love Lucy show coming from the second-floor office.
“Relax. It’s all good,” Jade affirmed. “You guys are going to love this.”
“I’m sure we will, if we could actually see anything. How did you know about this place?” Lisa asked as she also lit up the floor with her phone.
Funny thing about this empty room, I swore I could smell olives, and rich earth instead of chocolate and death like everyone had said. I wished someone would flip a switch.
“Giuseppe knew about it,” Jade said, sounding almost jovial. “Said that even Angelina knew ab
out it.”
“Oh, well, that’s comforting,” I said thinking we were all going to die . . . or worse.
“You worry too much,” Lisa added. “Trust your sister.”
I sucked up my fear and decided to go with it . . . at least for the moment.
We were walking toward a dimly lit area in the front of what seemed like a completely empty warehouse. No sign of chocolate anywhere.
But still . . .
“Are you sure this isn’t some sort of trap?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from sounding as panicked as I felt.
“This is no trap. It’s the only way,” a hushed female voice said once we reached what seemed like a large kitchen. The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
Someone finally flipped a light switch and the room illuminated with rich earthy tones, an exposed red brick wall, and a massive oak table with seating for at least twelve or fourteen sat directly before us.
Everything else on two walls was chrome and stainless steel. We were in some sort of a kitchen, a kitchen built to entertain, a kitchen that could serve an entire restaurant or cater an event. A kitchen I could only dream about.
I focused on the woman standing at the other end of the table. At first, I thought it had to be Aunt Babe or Aunt Hetty, but then my eyes adjusted and I realized I was staring at Giuseppe’s Nonna, Mariateresa. She looked positively lovely dressed in a beige stylish linen pants ensemble, with matching pumps.
But the elephant in the room wasn’t Mariateresa, it was the two gnarled, enormous ancient olive trees, the tops still covered with a burlap mesh to protect the tender leaves during transport, no doubt. They sprang up at least twenty- to twenty-five feet and were securely fastened with guy wire to two ginormous wooden crates that had been parked at the far end of this massive, but extraordinarily beautiful warehouse. A two-story rolling metal ladder stood adjacent to the trees.
“Whoa, what are those?” I asked to no one in particular.
“A wedding present from your papa and me,” Mariateresa announced, grinning. “One is from his land, and the other from mine. They are spectacular treasures.”
