by J. D. Griffo
Vinny stared at Jinx, and he looked like he wanted to cry. He took a deep breath and finally gained the strength to speak.
“We found a dead body at the Allamuchy State Park over in Stanhope,” Vinny said. “Preliminary reports indicate that it matches Sergio’s description.”
CHAPTER 4
Una donna non è una donna finché non è una moglie.
The gravity of Vinny’s words slowly descended upon the women, its weight crushing into their chests, making it difficult to breathe. Alberta latched on to the armrest of the chair next to her and managed to sit before her legs gave way underneath her. Helen grabbed Jinx by the elbow and guided her shaking body into the chair next to Alberta’s. Sitting side by side, Alberta and Jinx’s hands found each other and clasped as Helen stood behind them and found the rosary beads that she always carried in the pocket of her skirt, the ones given to her by the first Mother Superior she served under, Sister Mary Frances. She needed to borrow the nun’s strength because she didn’t have much of her own left.
“What do you mean, you found a dead body?” Alberta said.
Vinny moved from the side of his desk and knelt in front of Alberta and Jinx. He put his hands on top of theirs and bowed his head. He was praying like the rest of them.
“There is no reason to believe that this man is Sergio,” Vinny said.
“But it could be,” Alberta replied.
Vinny looked at the woman he’d known since he was in grammar school. She had the same bright eyes she had when she was a teenager and used to babysit him and his younger sister, Frannie. He looked over at Jinx, the young woman who could drive him crazy with her stubbornness and impulsive personality, but who he had come to respect and admire. He wanted to lie to them and tell them that the search for their family could not possibly have a tragic ending. But he couldn’t, so he told them the truth.
“Yes, it could be Sergio,” Vinny said.
Alberta and Jinx fought back tears and tried to control their breathing, but Helen wanted to know why Vinny couldn’t wait until he had definitive proof that the body was or wasn’t Sergio before sharing the information with her family. Why put the grandmother and sister through such agony if the dead body belonged to another family?
“Sergio doesn’t have a social media presence and I could only pull up his driver’s license photo from when he was nineteen,” Vinny explained. “That’s why I asked Alfie to come alone.”
“To identify my grandson’s body,” Alberta said.
“I was trying to cause as little pain as possible,” Vinny said.
“You did the right thing,” Alberta said.
Jinx understood that Vinny had wanted to spare her from worrying that the random dead body they found could be her brother, but she didn’t understand why he didn’t already know the identity of the corpse. Isn’t that what the police did? Identify dead bodies?
“Can’t you have someone send a photo of the victim?” Jinx asked.
“It’s out of my jurisdiction, but Tambra is on her way to the crime scene and I’ve asked her to text me a photo when she arrives,” Vinny explained. “I only found out about it because it came on the county blotter.”
“How long will it take for Tambra to text you?” Helen asked.
“It should just be a few minutes,” Vinny replied. He looked around the room helplessly and said, “Can I get you anything?”
You can get my mother, my father, and my brother, and bring them into this room to prove to me that they’re all alive, Jinx thought. Out loud, she said, “No, thank you.”
Alberta shook her head. She couldn’t believe she might lose the grandson she hardly knew. How could that be possible? He was so young, so full of life. She almost laughed out loud at such a stupid thought. What a stunod! How many times had she seen young men and women struck down in the prime of their lives? She knew better. Death didn’t care, it wasn’t choosy; whatever it wanted, it took. Alberta couldn’t believe that Death may have just taken her grandson.
Please don’t let this poor boy be my Sergio, Alberta thought.
Immediately, she felt ashamed. If God granted her plea, it meant that some other woman’s grandson had died. She remembered something Helen had once told her, something she never understood: Prayer can be complicated. She got it now.
The familiar ping of Vinny’s cell phone reverberated through his office, and the four of them remained frozen for a few seconds. Then Vinny leaned over his desk to grab his phone as Jinx and Alberta found the strength to stand. Helen stood behind them and they huddled together, waiting for Vinny to show them the photo that could change the whole trajectory of their search.
They couldn’t tell from Vinny’s expression if he recognized the man in the photo, but when he raised his cell phone in front of them, they all let out cries of relief.
“It isn’t Sergio,” Alberta announced.
They grimaced at the sight of a dead man sprawled out on the ground near the dumpster of a fast-food restaurant, his neck slightly swollen, burn marks at the corners of his mouth, but they were thrilled that they didn’t recognize the dead man’s face. They did, however, recognize the two men who burst into Vinny’s office without even knocking.
“Sloan, what are you doing here?” Alberta asked.
“Same goes for you, Freddy,” Jinx added.
“I texted them both and asked them to come down here,” Vinny confessed. “Just in case you needed some emotional support.”
“What do I look like?” Helen asked. “Tippi Hedren?”
“I thought you might need a little support too, Helen,” Vinny said.
“You’re a good man, Vinny D’Angelo,” Alberta said. “And so are you, Sloan McLelland.”
Alberta kissed Sloan on the lips and hugged him tightly. She knew she could lean on Sloan, but she had never noticed how strong his body was until now. She didn’t want to be protected, and yet it was good to know her boyfriend was more than capable of taking care of her.
“Same goes for you, Freddy Frangelico,” Jinx said.
Freddy rushed to Jinx’s side, wrapped his long arms around her slender frame, and kissed her. She held on to him for a few moments and, like Alberta, was comforted to know she had found a man she could count on.
“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I guess this means the dead body isn’t Sergio,” Sloan said.
“Correct,” Vinny replied. “For now, he’s a John Doe who looks like he died of a drug overdose.”
“That’s terrible,” Alberta said. “I didn’t think there were many drugs in this area.”
“Drugs are everywhere, Berta,” Vinny said. “No neighborhood is immune. And neither is any family.”
“I’m glad our family was spared,” Freddy said.
“Our family?” Helen asked. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, sonny boy.”
Their tears turned into laughter. Alberta hugged her sister tightly and hoped she knew how much she was loved. Alberta felt as if she had whiplash, first fearing her grandson was dead, then knowing her granddaughter was loved. It had been an emotional morning and it was about to get worse.
The door to Vinny’s office burst open again without warning and this time it was Joyce who stood in the doorway. Her dark brown skin had lost some of its color and she looked like she had run a marathon.
“I found them!” Joyce screamed.
“Who?” Vinny asked.
“Lisa Marie and Tommy!”
“Where?” Alberta asked.
“The Tranquility Arms,” Joyce replied. “I saw them while I was meeting with Sanjay.”
“Dio mio!” Alberta cried. “This is a miracle!”
“How’d you know to find us here?” Helen asked.
“I turned on the Find My Friend app in all your phones,” Joyce said. “None of you can make a move without me.”
“Aunt Joyce, what did my mother say? Why hasn’t she returned any of our calls?”
“I didn’t speak with her,” Joyc
e said. “They didn’t even see me.”
“But, dude, you said you saw them,” Freddy replied.
“I’ll explain it all on the drive over to the Arms,” Joyce said.
“Guys, come with me and we’ll meet them there,” Vinny suggested.
The guys and girls split up, with the guys jumping into Vinny’s police car, which, despite the seriousness of the situation, made both Sloan and Freddy feel like they were living out a childhood fantasy and going on a high-speed police chase, and the girls piling into Joyce’s Mercedes. Despite the smooth handling of her car, Joyce had a bumpy ride fielding questions from her passengers.
“Tell us everything, Joyce,” Alberta said as she sat in the front seat and fastened her seat belt. “How’d you wind up seeing Lisa Marie and Tommy at the Arms?”
“I was having a meeting with Sanjay and some other members of the Tranquility Business Association to discuss who should be awarded this year’s Small Business Owner of the Year award,” Joyce explained. “It’s usually given at their annual conference, but this year they thought it would be exciting to announce the winner at the Mistletoe Ball.”
Helen leaned in between Joyce and Alberta from the back seat. “Nobody cares about that, Joyce, get to the meaty part of the story!”
“As we were having our meeting, I saw Lisa Marie out of the corner of my eye check into one of the rooms and I almost passed out right there at the table,” Joyce continued. “I thought I might have been hallucinating, so I asked Sanjay who was in room seven and he said it was a couple on their way to Canada.”
“Did you go to room seven and confront my mother?” Jinx asked.
“No, because Sanjay told me the couple’s name was Lana and Nicholas Goldschmidt,” Joyce explained.
The revelation made Jinx groan, but it made Alberta and Helen gasp. It was proof that Alberta’s daughter and son-in-law were in Tranquility.
“I can’t believe Lisa Marie and Tommy are in town!” Alberta shrieked.
“They’ve been right under our noses the entire time,” Helen added.
“No, they haven’t,” Jinx said. “It’s some random couple named Lana and Nicholas Goldfarb.”
“Goldschmidt,” the three other women corrected.
“There’s nothing random about that name,” Alberta said. “Lana and Nicholas Goldschmidt are your Uncle Paolo’s daughter and her husband.”
“We have people named Goldschmidt living in our family tree?” Jinx asked, having never heard of the name before.
“It’s a hardship, Jinxie, but we carry on,” Helen said.
“It was a struggle, but Lana finally convinced her father to allow her to marry Nicholas, who didn’t have an ounce of Italian blood in him and was the son of a German immigrant,” Alberta said.
“The only reason Uncle Paolo allowed the marriage to take place was because Nicholas’s father, Gunter, made the best Wiener schnitzel in Jersey and promised Paolo a free supply for a lifetime,” Joyce added.
“The only reason he let his daughter marry the love of her life is because he got some free hot dogs?” Jinx asked.
“It’s a veal cutlet,” Helen corrected. “And you should know by now that this family is obsessed with food.”
“This is a fascinating oral history of the Ferrara clan, but what does this have to do with my mother?” Jinx said as Joyce careened into the parking lot of the Tranquility Arms and pulled into a spot next to Vinny’s police car. “Maybe Lana and Nicholas are in town for a visit.”
Joyce and Alberta looked at each other with raised eyebrows, silently deliberating who would fill Jinx in on the more salacious part of their family’s history. Because they were in a time crunch and Joyce was the one who had found the Goldschmidt imposters, Alberta felt it appropriate to let her sister-in-law get to share the juiciest part of the story. Helen had other ideas.
“Lana and Nicholas moved to Stuttgart back in the nineties in kind of a rush and they aren’t allowed back in the States,” Helen said.
“But it isn’t entirely their fault,” Alberta added as they all got out of the car and ran toward the men, who were standing at the entrance to the Arms.
“Nicholas had no idea the man he punched for making a pass at his wife was a Mafia kingpin,” Joyce said. “Fredo was blond.”
“When I see my mother I may kill her for keeping these stories from me,” Jinx said.
“Speaking of your mother,” Vinny said. “Follow me.”
The entrance to the first-floor rooms at the Tranquility Arms were accessed from a wraparound porch. They all followed Vinny in single file as they worked their way to room seven. With the impatient group behind him, Vinny knocked on the door. When there was no response, he knocked again and said, “Open up! This is the police!”
“How can they open up? There’s nobody inside!”
They all turned around to see the real Sanjay Achinapura, the owner and manager of the Tranquility Arms, standing behind them. The most compelling characteristic of the sixty-year-old man was that he was loud. Much louder than his skinny frame would lead an observer to believe.
“What do you mean, there’s no one inside?” Joyce asked. “I saw Lisa Marie go in there less than a half hour ago.”
“That wasn’t Lisa Marie, it was Lana,” Sanjay said.
“It was my daughter and her husband using fake names,” Alberta replied. “Did they say where they were going?”
“They wanted to get on the road to reach Minneapolis before it got dark,” Sanjay said.
“You told me they were here on a stopover on their way to Canada,” Joyce said.
“Don’t be mad at me, Miss Joyce!” Sanjay bellowed. “They must have changed their minds!”
Sanjay’s second-most compelling characteristic was his undying love for Joyce. Despite the fact that he was married to Urja, who lived with their three children in Mumbai, he was constantly asking Joyce out on dates, and Joyce was constantly trying to keep him at arm’s length. Now she needed to keep him talking.
“Why do they need to go to Minneapolis, Sanjay?” Joyce asked.
“The woman said they had to see the statue,” Sanjay said.
“What statue?” Sloan asked.
“The one they built to look like Mary Tyler Moore from her TV show where she’s throwing her hat in the air,” Sanjay explained.
The women gasped so loudly it made the men jump. It was proof that Lisa Marie was deliberately trying to avoid seeing any of her family.
“That’s a lie,” Alberta said. “Lisa Marie hated Mary Tyler Moore.”
“That must be a lie,” Vinny said. “No one hated Mary Tyler Moore. She was universally beloved.”
“She’s right; my mother hated that show, specifically the women who starred in it,” Jinx said. “She would comment all the time about how that Mary person destroyed the American family.”
“That is insanity,” Vinny said. “Mary Tyler Moore helped shape the modern American woman.”
“She was a feminist icon, Vin, you’re right,” Joyce said. “But Lisa Marie did hate her guts.”
“Una donna non è una donna finché non è una moglie,” Alberta said. “That’s what she’d say all the time. ‘A woman isn’t a woman until she’s a wife.’ My daughter can be a bit old-fashioned.”
“Joyce, you should’ve told me that you wanted me to keep that woman here,” Sanjay said. “You know I’d do anything for you!”
“Thank you, Sanjay, but I figured if she had checked in here under fake names, she was trying to be incognito. I didn’t want to confront her alone for fear that she’d run off,” Joyce said. “Which is exactly what she did.”
“Miss Joyce!” Sanjay cried. “If it’s the last thing I do in my life, I will make this up to you.”
He ran back to the lobby of the Arms, ashamed and upset. Joyce turned to face the rest of the group, distraught that she had let them down.
“I’m sorry I let them slip through my hands,” Joyce said.
“It isn’t yo
ur fault, Joyce,” Alberta said. “But what I don’t understand is why they’re staying at a hotel when they could be staying with me.”
The only one who looked confused was Alberta. The rest of the group understood that even though Lisa Marie had reached out to her mother for help after almost a decade and a half of silence, there was no way she would live under the same roof with her again, even if that stay was temporary. No one wanted to share this with Alberta, so they all went into action. They were all moving and talking so quickly, they couldn’t believe Alberta didn’t notice.
“I’ll put an APB out on them,” Vinny said.
“Remember, according to Mrs. Passanante, they’re driving a Subaru,” Jinx said.
“Vinny, why don’t Jinx and I go back to the station with you and then use my car to drive around town?” Freddy said. “Maybe we’ll spot them.”
“I’ll go with you too and get my car to head back to the library,” Sloan said. “I have a quick meeting and then I’ll come over by you, Berta.”
“That’s fine,” Alberta said. “Joyce, could you drop me off at the police station? My car is there.”
“Of course,” Joyce replied. “I have another meeting at St. Winifred’s Academy to discuss the student choir’s role in the Mistletoe Ball, but I’ll stop by later.”
“Vinny, it goes without saying that the second you find them, you call me,” Alberta said.
“Alfie, I’ll bring them right to your doorstep,” Vinny promised.
He wouldn’t have to worry about keeping his promise because when Alberta walked into her kitchen, she saw Lisa Marie and Tommy sitting at her table. Lola was purring softly, nestled in Tommy’s lap, and both he and Lisa Marie were smiling. Alberta’s expression could not be described as joyful.
“What’s wrong, Ma?” Lisa Marie asked. “You don’t look so happy to see me.”
CHAPTER 5
Dai nemici mi guardo io, dagli famiglia mi guardi Iddio!
Happy? Was Alberta happy to see her daughter after such a long absence? She pondered the question and couldn’t immediately come up with an answer. She was greatly relieved to see Lisa Marie and Tommy alive and seemingly unharmed after thinking they could have been killed or racing toward the Canadian border to escape the country for some mysterious, but possibly felonious, reason. She was disappointed that her grandson, Sergio, wasn’t also sitting around her kitchen table and she was confused as to why and how the couple were under her roof. But happy? It had been a long time since Alberta had been happy in connection with anything pertaining to Lisa Marie. She couldn’t say that out loud and she could never say that to her own child, but she could use a tactic her child had regularly employed. She could lie.
