Franki Amato Mysteries Box Set

by Traci Andrighetti

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed that Vince was regaining consciousness across the room. If I could have walked or even crawled to his side, I would’ve knocked him out again.

  Vince sat up and rubbed his jaw where he’d been elbowed. “Are you okay, babe?”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “You mean after finding you in bed with a woman who just tried to kill me? Yeah, Vince. Doin’ great.”

  “I can explain…”

  “That’s classic.” I turned my head to hide my tears. “Do us both a favor and shut your mouth.”

  Stan popped his head into the room. “Uh, Vince, can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

  Vince nodded and followed Stan out the door. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I would have sworn that I heard them chuckle. I watched furious as they solidified their male bonding moment over a handshake before Vince got into his car and drove away.

  Stan reentered the room, and he nonchalantly pulled out his report pad and started to write.

  I looked at him from my supine position on the floor. “Um, Stan? Do you think maybe you could help me up? Since I’m injured?”

  “Huh? Oh sure. One sec.” He finished writing his sentence and ambled over to me. He put his hands on his hips. “You looked pretty funny hanging upside down over Suzy Schwarzenegger’s shoulder. Did you know your butt was showin’?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I replied through clenched teeth. I was forever on the receiving end of his asinine comments.

  “Sure, Franki. That’s what partners are for.”

  I snorted. Since starting this job, Stan had been about as helpful to me as a ball and chain around my ankle and a noose around my neck. I had watched in frustration as the other rookies flourished under the watchful eyes of their respective partners while I had languished under the disinterested gaze of mine. And when I’d finally gotten up the nerve to privately request a new partner, I’d been publicly branded as a troublemaker and earned the nickname “Finicky Franki,” as though I were a petulant child or, even worse, a cat.

  Stan helped me off the ground, and he let out a loud, greasy fart. “Hooo! That felt goooood.”

  I closed my eyes—and my nostrils—and promised myself that I would learn how to meditate.

  “You know, I’ve really got to see somebody about my stomach,” he said for what must have been the hundredth time since I had met him. “I think I might have some kind of problem, but I don’t know why. Hell, I’m in the best shape of my life.”

  Stan patted his spare tire belly as he walked—and I hopped, unassisted—to the squad car.

  As soon as he climbed into the seat, he emitted three resounding sausage-scented belches. “Ugh, this heartburn is a killer. I feel like Old Faithful’s eruptin’ in my gut. Hey, could you hand me my antacids? They’re in the glove box.”

  By this time, I knew very well where he kept his antacids, anti-diarrheals, and anti-gas tablets, all of which I regularly replenished out of my own pocket unbeknownst to Stan. I opened the glove compartment and handed him the box of antacids. Then I rolled down my window for life-sustaining oxygen. He’d already left me to die a violent slamming death. I’d be damned if I was going to let him suffocate me too.

  “You okay, Franki?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, you rolled down your window like you needed some air. You feelin’ dizzy?”

  Oh indeed I am, but not because you let the Teutonic Titan spin me around the motel room for half a freakin’ hour. He had absolutely no concept that his bodily functions might present a problem for me, both in terms of my physical safety on calls and my ability to breathe.

  We arrived at the station and took Petra to booking. After she was processed and taken to her cell, Stan turned to me for his customary end-of-the-shift lecture. “You know, you’ve really got to pay attention when you’re out there on the street. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to come to your rescue.”

  “Stan, I—”

  “I mean, I’m not bragging or anything,” he interrupted, “but I’m the best of the best. If you can’t learn from me, then I don’t know if you’re gonna make it on the force.”

  “Stan, you—”

  “You know I have to write this in my report, Franki. You put me in real danger out there. I had no backup. I could’ve been killed.”

  That did it. Although I was mostly mad at Vince, Stan was about to find out what it was like when I lost my filter. And it’s not like he didn’t have it coming. “Let me get this straight. I put you in danger? Are you freakin’ kidding me? You put me in danger when you left me alone with the Deutsch Destroyer. And this was hardly the first time. I mean, I’m always covering my ass while yours is parked on a toilet seat.”

  Stan smirked. “Well, you didn’t do such a good job of covering your ass tonight, now did you?”

  Why did I have to mention my ass? I’d practically handed it to him on a platter with that remark.

  “And that’s the problem.” He gestured toward a window overlooking the street. “You can’t protect yourself out there, and you can’t be relied on to protect your partner from loonies like Schotsie the Sausagestuffer, either.”

  “Petra the Pretzelmaker.”

  “And if you really want to know something,” he said in an offended tone, “it’s inappropriate for you to discuss my bathroom habits.”

  Me? I’d had to endure play-by-play reenactments of the ins and outs of his bowels—make that the outs—on a daily basis since the first day of our partnership. But Stan was too self-absorbed to ever be able to realize that, much less admit it. Our conversation hadn’t amounted to anything, just like my career. There was nothing more to say. Actually, there was one thing.

  “I quit.”

  I shoved the crutch that the emergency room doctor had given me into the backseat of my 1965 cherry red Mustang convertible and winced as I climbed into the front seat. The pain in my sprained knee was intense, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my heart. I reached into my bag for my car keys but pulled out my phone instead. I glanced at the time on the display—seven thirty a.m. If I knew my workaholic best friend Veronica Maggio, she was already toiling away at her new detective agency. I debated waiting to call her until after I’d had some time to sleep on the painful events of the night shift, but I decided that I’d rest a whole lot easier knowing how she was going to react to my news. I scrolled through my contacts, tapped her name, and held my breath.

  “Private Chicks, Incorporated.” Veronica’s phone voice was clipped and professional. “If you give us the time, we’ll solve your crime. What can I help you with?”

  I tried to pretend she was next door instead of five hundred lonely miles away in New Orleans. “Do you always answer the phone that way?”

  “In this economic climate, you have to be aggressive. So I answer with my phone version of the thirty-second elevator pitch.” Unlike me, Veronica was extremely practical and all business. Though, no one could tell that about her at first glance because she looked and acted a lot like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde—petite, blonde, perky and perfectly put together—only she had a cream Pomeranian named Hercules instead of a tan Chihuahua named Bruiser. Veronica was everything I wasn’t, and that was putting it mildly.

  “I guess that’s a good idea,” I said. “But I don’t know about the ‘If you give us the time’ part. It makes it sound like it could take you a while to solve a case.”

  “It’s an expression, Franki. It means that if you hire us, we’ll solve your case.”

  “I suppose.”

  An awkward pause ensued.

  “So?” Veronica prodded. “What’s wrong?”

  I did my utmost to feign surprise. “Why would you think something’s wrong?”

  “Because you’re doing everything you can to avoid telling me why you called.”

  I straightened in my seat. “I called because I’ve decided to take you up on your offer to join your PI firm. I’m moving to New Orleans.”
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  “Really? What about Vince? And your job?”

  “Vince and I aren’t together anymore.” There. I said it. And it had hurt.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Her tone had softened, prompting self-pity to prick at my eyelids. “Let’s just say that I was in a committed relationship, but he wasn’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Franki.”

  “Me too.” I leaned my head against the headrest and wiped away tears with the back of my hand.

  “But I hope you’re not leaving your job because of Vince.”

  “He’s got nothing to do with it.” It was a fib, but if I had told her that I discovered Vince’s betrayal thanks to a 911 call, she would’ve never believed that I was leaving the force because it was the right thing to do. “The hard truth is that I’m not cut out for the police force. I gave my two weeks’ notice this morning.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her pitch rose with each syllable. “You’re a born cop. I mean, you still need some experience and all, but you come from a Sicilian family, and you grew up in Houston. If you don’t know crime, who does?”

  “Verrrry funny. Need I remind you that you’re half Sicilian too?” I asked, half-heartedly playing along.

  “Yeah, but I’m also half Swedish, which tempers the Italian-ness considerably. You’ve got it on both sides, so you’re screwed.”

  “You’re a laugh a minute, you know that? I tell you what, let’s leave ethnicity out of this,” I said, as though I believed that were possible. Veronica and I had bonded as pre-law students at the University of Texas, and not over our criminology classes but over all things Italian—our Italian language courses, our families, endless bottles of Chianti and, of course, Gucci, Prada, Armani, and Dolce and Gabbana (in Cosmopolitan and Vogue, that is). “I might have the makings of a good cop, but that doesn’t mean I belong on the police force.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with your trusty partner, does it? What happened this time? Did the diarrhea king leave you high and dry again?”

  “Something like that.” I looked out the driver window and thought of Petra heaving me repeatedly into the air and rubbed my wounded knee. “But Stan’s not really the issue. I need to get off the night shift and return to the world of the living. And I want a job that’s a little more predictable. As a private investigator, I’d have some say in the cases I take.” And the situations I find myself in.

  “Do you regret going to the police academy after UT?”

  “You know I had no choice. I wanted to prove to my family that women could do more than make pasta and birth babies.”

  “I know,” Veronica said. “But I still stay that becoming a cop was taking rebellion to the extreme.”

  “It was the best way I could think of to show them that I was as tough and capable as any man. Besides,” I said, eager to change the subject from my family, “you weren’t happy as an attorney, and I knew that I wouldn’t have been either, especially not as a criminal defense attorney. I want to catch criminals, not defend or prosecute them. If I work for you, I can still do that but in a less restrictive environment. I can be my own boss. You know, call my own shots and that sort of thing.”

  “I certainly understand wanting to be your own boss. But aren’t you going to feel like you’ve proven your family right by leaving the force?”

  “They’ll probably see it that way. But I’m just going to have to figure out a way to prove them wrong.”

  “O-kay.” She drew the word out, unconvinced. “As long as you’re sure that you’re leaving Austin for the right reasons, then I could really use your help down here.”

  “I’m sure, Veronica.” I gripped the gear shift and gathered my resolve. “Austin was a great place to go to school, but now I need to move on. And with the New Year just two weeks away, it’s the perfect time to start a new life.”

  “And just in time for Mardi Gras. Laissez les bons temps rouler!”

  “Oui, cher,” I cheered in the Cajun custom—but with a joie de vivre that I definitely didn’t feel.

  2

  Sitting on the floor of my empty apartment, I stared at my cell phone. I wasn’t waiting for Vince to call. I was avoiding calling my parents—for the past two weeks. Joe and Brenda Amato were as open to change as the Catholic Church, so the news of my breakup with Vince and the police force was going to hit them and my live-in Sicilian nonna like a divorce and an excommunication. As for the news that I was moving to New Orleans instead of home to Houston, they would view that as nothing short of my eternal damnation in hell. And based on what I knew about NOLA summers, that judgment might’ve been fairly accurate.

  But since I was leaving in the morning, I sucked up my courage and sucked in a breath. Then I tapped their number and imagined that each ring was the toll of a death knell.

  “Hello?” My mother’s voice was so loud and shrill that Napoleon, my brindle cairn terrier who’d been sleeping in a corner, raised an ear.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Francesca? Is that you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, it’s me. Your only daughter?”

  “Well, I know that, dear.”

  A conversation with Petra the Pretzelmaker would be easier.

  “Is everything all right, Francesca? It’s a Wednesday.”

  “I know it’s a Wednesday, Mom.”

  “You usually call on a Sunday, dear.”

  “Ah.” I hadn’t realized I was so predictable. “Listen, I’m calling because I have some things to tell you and Dad.”

  “Well, I hope they’re good things. You know how your father worries about you. He just can’t sleep at night if he thinks the slightest thing is wrong with his baby. And then he’s absolutely miserable at the deli the next day. He acts like Anthony and me and the customers don’t matter.”

  I could make the case that he was right about my brother Anthony. “Mom, can you just tell Dad to get on the line?”

  “Of course, dear. All you had to do was ask.” She slammed the phone down onto what was undoubtedly the kitchen counter. “Joe! Get on the other line. Francesca’s calling from Austin.” She picked up the receiver again. “Franki?”

  “Still here, Mom.” I sighed. “Dad knows where I live, by the way. I’ve been here for fourteen years.”

  “Well, you know your father can’t hear anymore. I told him to have his ears checked, but he won’t listen to me. He’s got that wax build up that older men get. One second, dear.” She slammed down the phone again. “Joe!”

  To my relief, I heard my father pick up another line.

  “I’m here, Brenda.” He’d used his irritated, this-had-better-be-good-news voice. “What’s going on, Franki?”

  “Hey, Dad. I was just calling to tell you guys about some things that are in the works.” I’d added the spunky “in the works” line in a desperate attempt to put a preemptive, positive spin on my news.

  “I hope everything’s okay.” His tone was unhopeful.

  “Everything’s fine,” I lied through my teeth.

  “Well, that’s good because thanks to your brothers, I just don’t know how much more bad news we can take around here.” His tone had gone from unhopeful to downright unhappy. “It’s looking like Michael’s going to get laid off from the accounting firm, and Anthony’s decided that the deli’s not good enough for him anymore. He wants to go and manage a bar, of all things. Sometimes I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy. Amato’s Deli is a solid business. I built it from the ground up, and I’m proud to go to work there every day with our family name on that sign. Besides, you don’t just up and leave a good job on a whim in times like these, whether your family owns the place or not.”

  “Y-you’re right, Dad.” I leaned my back against the wall. “But anyway, my news is definitely good. I’ve got a new job as a PI at Veronica’s agency and a new place to live…and I’m single again.”

  The other end of the line went silent for what seemed that eternal damnation in hell as we all search
ed for something to say.

  My mom, who’d long suspected that I was solely to blame for the fact that I was pushing thirty and unmarried, cleared her throat in preparation to take the call to a dark place. “What did you do to Vince, Francesca?”

  I decided to dispense with the pleasantries and make it painfully clear that I’d had nothing to do with this breakup, unlike a few others I could think of. “I caught him in bed with another woman, Mom.”

  “Now Francesca, are you sure it was Vince?” she asked with her characteristic talent for denial. “You know how quick you are to jump to conclusions.”

  I mentally replayed the scene of bursting into that motel room and seeing Vince’s naked backside in bed with pair of long and not-so-feminine legs wrapped around his waist. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  My dad, who’d never spoken to me of sex in his entire life and who’d taken great pains to feign sleep during unexpected sex scenes while watching TV with me, cleared his throat in preparation to shift the focus of the conversation. “You couldn’t hack fighting crime with the protection of the law on your side in a nice college town like Austin, so now you’re going to go it alone as a PI in a dangerous city like New Orleans. Is that what you’re telling us, Franki?”

  “Dad, I made it onto the force, so clearly I can hack it. I just don’t like the rigid structure of police work. And you’ll be glad to know that being a PI is actually safer than being a cop. Instead of going toe-to-toe with drug dealers, armed robbers, and murderers, I’ll be investigating things like insurance fraud, infidelity, and missing persons cases.”

  “While you’re out-a there looking for all-a those-a missing-a persons, maybe you find-a that husband you’re missing,” my nonna Carmela interjected.

  I silently cursed my parents for having three phones in their house. “Hi, Nonna.”

  “Don’t-a hi-a me. Now, I have-a no problem that you’re gonna go to New Orleans. You know that your nonnu, God rest-a his soul, and I raised your patri and his-a four brothers there. There are still a lotta nice Sicilian boys in New Orleans, even for a zitella like-a you.”