Murder at the Mistletoe Ball

by J. D. Griffo

  “That’s what they told me,” Sergio said.

  “Did Rudy do drugs?” Jinx asked.

  “Not in front of me, but if he did, I’d be surprised if Natalie would stand for it,” Sergio said. “She knew about the dangers of drugs, she mentioned it a few times, how friends of hers got hooked. I don’t think she would ever put herself in a position to wind up the same way.”

  There was a pause after Sergio finished. None of the women spoke, but Sergio could tell their minds were racing. He wanted to know why. “What’s with all the questions about drugs?” he asked.

  “The medical examiner found traces of some kind of drug in Natalie’s system,” Lisa Marie explained.

  “I was with her almost twenty-four-seven before she died and I didn’t notice any change in her behavior that would’ve been caused by drugs,” Sergio said.

  “Did Natalie ever mention the word Flower to you?” Alberta said.

  “Like a bouquet of flowers?” Sergio asked. “I’m sure she did, but I don’t get the connection between flowers and drugs.”

  “There’s a new illegal drug with the street name of Flower that’s been killing people,” Alberta said. “We don’t have the toxicology report back, but I’m guessing that drug is going to be found in Natalie’s system.”

  “It isn’t what killed her, but if it’s true, it’s a link,” Jinx said. “She may have been using and you didn’t know it.”

  Sergio looked stunned. It was as if a veil had been lifted and he was able to see his girlfriend in her true form for the first time. He shook his head and instead of getting angry, which was what Jinx feared he would do, instead of getting defensive, which was how Alberta thought he’d respond, he apologized.

  “I’m so sorry, Ma,” Sergio said.

  “For what?” Lisa Marie asked.

  “For not trusting you enough when you told me I was making the biggest mistake of my life choosing Natalie over my family,” Sergio said. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved her, I still do, but sitting here with a murder charge on my head, I’d be a complete idiot if I didn’t admit that I got played.”

  “Sergio, honey, we don’t know anything for certain just yet,” Alberta said.

  “Not the whole picture, but I know enough that Natalie lied to me,” Sergio said. “How much of our relationship was a lie I don’t know, but there’s so much I don’t know about her background, her business connections, now she might be involved in using drugs. It doesn’t change my feelings for her, and I wish to God she wasn’t dead, but the fact is I didn’t know Natalie at all.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, honey,” Lisa Marie said. “A lot of people get fooled when they’re too scared to face the truth.”

  Sergio started to laugh. “Now you sound like Natalie.”

  “Why would you say that?” Lisa Marie asked.

  “Because she always told me I had a scared look in my eyes,” Sergio said. “That I always looked like a deer in the headlights.”

  No one laughed along with Sergio because what they were thinking wasn’t funny. It was frightening. The most famous deer in the world just happened to be working at St. Clare’s Hospital and was two feet away when Natalie’s dead body was discovered.

  Thanks to Natalie’s message from beyond the grave, Bambi DeBenedetto just became their prime suspect.

  CHAPTER 22

  Un nome è solo l’inizio di una persona.

  If any night ever called for a smorgasbord of Entenmann’s samplings and pitchers filled with Red Herrings, it was tonight. The Ferraras had had a few difficult days and they needed to regroup and refocus their efforts. They had acquired a lot of information that, when examined individually, didn’t seem to mean very much, but when compiled, those unconnected scraps of knowledge could quite possibly form evidence that could be strong enough to prove Sergio wasn’t Natalie’s killer. They had done it before, there was no reason to think they couldn’t do it again. Unfortunately, they had two big strikes against them.

  First, Sergio’s story, while plausible, was filled with holes. No one else but Kwon could vouch for Sergio’s whereabouts the day of the Ball, and that was only for a few hours in the middle of the day. Vinny had told them that he interviewed Kwon and took his statement, but the only reason Kwon remembered Sergio had been in the Tranquility Diner was because he threw a cup of coffee against the wall. It had been an element of Sergio’s alibi that he didn’t disclose but, unfortunately, further proof that the young man had an anger management issue. It was hardly the type of revelation a murder suspect wanted exposed at their trial.

  Then there was the fact that Sergio was found at the scene of the crime literally holding the murder weapon in his hands. It was feasible that his depressed and angry emotional state caused him to truly not know that he was walking into the Ball from the kitchen. Vinny had been able to track down the banquet hall employee who held open the back door for Sergio while taking a cigarette break, but the employee couldn’t identify Sergio, nor had he seen Natalie and her companion enter the building. The story when taken in its entirety could be twisted by a prosecutor to make it appear that Sergio hadn’t followed his girlfriend per her instructions, but rather stalked Natalie to the Ball intent on killing her.

  The second obstacle was the DA. Roxanne Garcia grew up in poverty, spent time in the foster care system, earned full scholarships to both Rutgers University and Brooklyn Law School, and was the youngest person to become the DA in New Jersey history. She was determined, tough, and once she made a decision she would not bend.

  For whatever reason she had chosen to make an example of Sergio. Perhaps it was because she felt—incorrectly—that he was one of those spoiled kids who never had to work a day in his life. Perhaps it was because she had read about how the Ferraras had been instrumental in solving several other murders in the area and considered their help to be interference. Or perhaps it was because she was simply convinced of his guilt. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that she was going to exert every ounce of pressure and her considerable power as top legal dog in the state on the prosecuting team to make Sergio out to be the heartless, soulless, premeditated murderer she believed him to be. If the Ferraras were going to solve this case in time to prevent Sergio from going to trial, they needed to get their facts straight and sort out their clues.

  Before they did anything, however, they needed to convince Lola to take her nap somewhere other than the kitchen table.

  “Lola!” Alberta shouted. “Scoot.”

  Lola didn’t move. She was lying on her back, her front paws raised and framing her face, her back paws stretched and pointing outward. Her position was as unladylike as a lady cat could possibly get.

  “Lo-la,” Jinx sang. “We need to use the ta-ble.”

  The only thing Jinx’s singing did was act as a lullaby to put Lola to sleep. She yawned, stretched, and rolled onto her side. Her new tartan plaid holiday collar with the jangly bell jingled only once and then remained silent as Lola dozed off. As usual, Alberta’s cat wasn’t going to let the drama around her interfere with her nap.

  “Do what we always do and arrange the food around her,” Helen said.

  As they were placing the boxes of Entenmann’s on the table around the edges of Lola’s body, the cat meowed and rolled over onto its stomach. Jinx poured Red Herrings into everyone’s glasses and they filled their plates with several pieces of pastry before sitting down and calling to order this official meeting of their unofficial detective agency. As their designated leader, Alberta began the proceedings by shoving a piece of cheese danish in her mouth and saying the one thing that had been on everyone’s mind.

  “What do we really know about Bambi DeBenedetto?”

  “She’s got a stupid name,” Lisa Marie said.

  “Ma!” Jinx cried. “You seriously have to stop mocking people for no reason.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m one of those people who judges a book by its cover,” Lisa Marie replied. “And I don’t like her
cover.”

  “Un nome è solo l’inizio di una persona,” Alberta said.

  “If you’re going to yell at me, Ma, you have to do it in English,” Lisa Marie said. “I know about five words in Italian and only four of them are appropriate to say in mixed company.”

  “What mixed company?” Helen asked. “We’re all family here.”

  “I was referring to Lola,” Lisa Marie said.

  “What I said is that a name is just the start of someone,” Alberta explained. “There’s a lot more to Bambi that we need to figure out.”

  “She’s the hospital administrator at St. Clare’s,” Jinx said.

  “Which means she has an impressive position and probably makes a good salary,” Alberta added.

  “She doesn’t make as much as you think,” Joyce said. “The average salary is about one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year, and it could be less than that.”

  “That sounds like a pretty good salary to me,” Lisa Marie said.

  “Not for a widow whose husband left her a mountain of debt,” Joyce said.

  “Do you know about everyone’s financial background?” Helen asked.

  “No, but I know where to look,” Joyce said. “I did some digging into Ms. DeBenedetto after I saw her at a Mistletoe Ball meeting the other day.”

  “The Mistletoe Ball crashed and burned already,” Alberta said. “Were you having another meeting to dwell on what went wrong?”

  “To figure out how to salvage the wreck,” Joyce said. “The Ball was supposed to ring in the season, but it was also supposed to act as a fundraising event for the hospital. It’s been decided that the Ball will be resurrected yet again in another week.”

  “Are you serious, Aunt Joyce?” Jinx asked. “I hadn’t heard anything about it at the paper.”

  “It took a lot of persuasion and I had to use every negotiating tactic in my toolbox, but we just got confirmation from the Manor this morning that they would give us the Diamond room and we’d only have to cover the cost of food and drink,” Joyce explained. “The announcement will be made tomorrow.”

  “Freddy will be so excited,” Jinx said. “He’ll finally be able to get his award.”

  “Unless something happens that makes the second Mistletoe Ball more of a disaster than the first,” Alberta said.

  “Ma! How could it possibly be worse?” Lisa Marie asked. “A woman was murdered and my son was carted off to jail.”

  “Hang around in this town long enough, honey, and you’ll never ask that question again,” Helen said.

  “Joyce, tell us more about Bambi,” Alberta said, getting the conversation back on track. “What made you want to dig up information on her?”

  “At the meeting I noticed she was wearing a Cartier Panthère watch,” Joyce said.

  “I noticed that too when I interviewed her,” Jinx said. “It costs thousands.”

  “Depending upon the exact style, it could go up to twenty thousand,” Joyce replied. “Which is a lot of money to spend on a watch for anyone, but especially a woman who, financially speaking, is in the same boat as a waitress working for tips at a diner.”

  “I didn’t notice her watch when I bumped into her the other day,” Alberta said. “I did notice she was carrying shopping bags filled with purchases from the most expensive stores in town.”

  “She’s definitely a clotheshorse,” Jinx said. “Thanks to the crash course in fashion I’ve received from Aunt Joyce, I can confirm that Bambi’s wardrobe is expensive.”

  “When emotions are tied to financial well-being, people act irrationally,” Joyce said. “I don’t know Bambi very well, but it’s common for people, women mostly, to overspend when they’re broke. The rush they get from buying an expensive item tricks them into thinking they’re actually well-off.”

  Lisa Marie raised her hand. “Guilty!”

  “All of us at this table except for Lola and Helen have done the same thing at one point in our lives,” Joyce said.

  “How do you know Bambi’s expenses are considerable?” Lisa Marie asked.

  “When it comes to money Joyce is an expert,” Helen said.

  “I worked hard for my money, but also too, I worked hard to make my money work smart,” Joyce said. “I invested wisely, and unlike Bambi I never lived beyond my means, especially when it came to real estate.”

  “What did you find out?” Alberta asked.

  “Her husband, Walt, was a dentist, but he drove his practice into the ground because he preferred to spend more time at the track betting on the horses than in his office working on his patients,” Joyce explained.

  “Hold on for just one God forsaken second!” Lisa Marie yelled. “Bambi’s husband’s name was Walt as in Walt Disney?”

  “No, Walt as in Walter DeBenedetto,” Joyce said. “But you’re right, I never made that connection before.”

  “Isn’t that something, Walt and Bambi,” Alberta said. “I wonder if that’s what brought the two of them together.”

  “I always thought Bambi was Tony Bennett’s distant relative,” Helen said. “His real name is Anthony Dominick Benedetto.”

  “She’s a distant relative of Mickey Mouse!” Lisa Marie shrieked. “And you people call yourselves detectives?”

  “When it’s a detail that doesn’t help us in any way, Ma, we just gloss over it,” Jinx said.

  “Speaking of details, Joyce, what were you saying about Bambi living beyond her means?” Alberta asked.

  “When I saw the kind of watch she was wearing and Alberta told me her suspicions, I thought I’d be proactive and dig around a bit to find out her net worth and what kind of a mortgage she has,” Joyce said. “Let’s just say she’s no Ebenezer Scrooge. Her money doesn’t stay in one place long enough to get dusty.”

  “How much debt does she have?” Helen asked.

  “She’s had a mortgage on her home in Newton for seventeen years and still owes seven hundred fifty thousand dollars on it,” Joyce conveyed.

  “She lives in Newton?” Alberta asked.

  “Forever,” Joyce replied. “First in a condo by herself and then in this house. Why?”

  “Well, Sergio said Natalie had a meeting with a woman in Newton,” Alberta explained.

  “You think Natalie was supposed to have a meeting with Bambi?” Jinx asked.

  “It’s possible,” Alberta said. “What else did you find, Joyce?”

  “Her stock portfolio, which is very small, hasn’t shown a gain of more than three percent in ten years, and she owes over thirty thousand in credit card debit and another twenty-five to the IRS,” Joyce explained.

  “Santo Cielo!” Alberta cried. “What’s her credit score?”

  “Does she even have one?” Helen asked.

  “Around four hundred, which is considered very poor,” Joyce said. “Or as we used to say on Wall Street, ‘Next!’”

  “How can Bambi afford all the stuff she’s been buying if she has to pay off such a huge sum with the IRS?” Lisa Marie asked. “Tommy and I had a bit of a tax issue a couple of years back and I will say the IRS worked with us to come up with a repayment schedule, but they were relentless until it was paid off.”

  “She steals things,” Jinx announced.

  “Lovey, do you have proof of that?” Alberta asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Jinx replied.

  Jinx took out her cell phone and scrolled through some photos until she came to the one that captured the incriminating evidence.

  “Voila!” Jinx exclaimed. “Proof that Bambi is more like Ursula.”

  “Who’s Ursula?” Lisa Marie asked.

  “The octopus who stole Ariel’s voice in The Little Mermaid,” Helen replied. “You have to brush up on the classics Lisa Marie.”

  “Bambi is a thief!” Joyce cried. “Those are my shoes.”

  They examined the photo more closely, and Jinx explained that she took the picture in Bambi’s office because the vintage red patent leather pumps she was wearing were Joyce’s
. Bambi admitted that she took them from Joyce’s closet years ago and had no intention of returning them. That in itself was proof of thievery, but Alberta thought there was something else interesting in the photo.

  “What’s that in her closet?” she asked.

  “Looks like a clump of yellow material,” Lisa Marie replied.

  “Did she steal my yellow cashmere sweater, too?” Joyce asked. “For the life of me I can’t find that thing.”

  “I don’t think it’s a sweater,” Alberta said. “I can’t be positive, but it looks like a wig.”

  “Gram you might be right!” Jinx cried. “And there were strands of synthetic yellow hair found on Natalie’s body.”

  “That’s proof that Bambi killed Natalie!” Lisa Marie exclaimed.

  “Not necessarily,” Alberta said. “Even if it is a wig, it might not be the same one and Bambi does have an air-tight alibi since she was at the Ball when the murder took place.”

  “Maybe the killer hid it there thinking it would be safe among the rest of Bambi’s stolen goods,” Helen said.

  “Dio mio! I remembered something else about Bambi’s watch!” Alberta cried.

  “We’re back to the watch?” Lisa Marie asked. “I feel like I’m down in Boca watching some retirees play tennis.”

  “What about the watch, Berta?” Joyce asked.

  “Like I said, I didn’t notice what kind of watch it was, but I did notice that it was on Bambi’s right wrist,” she replied. “Which would suggest that she’s left-handed, just like Pedro thinks the killer might be.”

  “Maybe the southpaw is the murderer,” Helen said.

  “Natalie could have gone to meet with her to blackmail her and expose her part in whatever scheme she was really up to,” Alberta said. “It’s a long shot I know. I mean, if Bambi is the murderer and she’s involved in something illegal and is in debt up to her eyeballs, how does she run around town like she doesn’t have a care in the world?”

  “Because she’s figured out a way to make some money on the side,” Jinx said.

  “By doing what, lovey?” Alberta asked.

  “Selling drugs on the street.”