Sinnerman

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  “I believe you’ve said enough,” Giovanni said.

  “I don’t know where you get off even talking to me, but if I were you, I’d back off—now.”

  From across the room Agent Luciana sprang into action until Giovanni held his hand up, and then he halted like he was frozen in time and didn’t come any closer.

  Giovanni looked at Nick.

  “It would be in your best interest to watch your tone,” he said. “And I want you to understand something. This will be the only time I extend that courtesy to you.”

  Nick sneered and shook his head.

  “You know what?” Nick said. “Both of you can go to—”

  “Calhoun!” the chief said. “Enough.”

  Nick hesitated, but it was enough to keep him from foot in mouth disease. He gave me a look that indicated it wasn’t over and turned and went.

  CHAPTER 21

  A half hour later Giovanni and I shared a few rolls at an outside table on Main Street. The sun hadn’t set yet, but it had inched its way toward the side of the mountain. I loved this time of day. The sky changed color and produced an array of shades in purple, pink, and blue that I could sit and stare at for hours. It was just one of the aspects I had come to love about life in Park City.

  “So where are these guys who are my new keepers?” I said.

  “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  I turned to my left and tipped my head toward a man who flew solo at a table not far from us. About every third minute he fiddled with his wristwatch.

  “Is it him?” I said. “Because I’ve had my eye on him since we got here, and he fits the description.”

  “Why does it matter?” Giovanni said. “My men are in place so that they can protect you.”

  His men? So much for his brother leading me to believe I would be chaperoned by the FBI.

  “I know how much solving this case means to you,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I feel like I’m at a table full of men who have mapped out a plan and I’m the only one who’s not in on it.”

  “It was never my intention for you to feel that way,” he said, “and if that’s the case, I apologize.”

  “All of the sudden you show up after I haven’t seen you in months, and then your brother turns out to be the head of the FBI team that’s over the investigation. A bit too much of a coincidence—even for me, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “In my line of work I find it’s best to have people I can rely on in many different positions. Over time we’ve learned that this is the best way to…”

  To what? His arms went back to a folded position which told me one thing—he wasn’t going to say anything more on the matter.

  “This case is everything to me,” I said. “And I can’t just sit on the sidelines while everyone else runs around and searches for this guy. I just can’t.”

  Giovanni leaned closer to me and reached over and took my hand and enfolded it in his.

  “Find him then,” he said. “I’m not here to stop you.”

  I was more confused than the time I was in line at the post office and a woman approached me from behind and said, “Your shirt is on inside out dear,” and I had no idea how it got that way. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hand on my hand and how they melded together like ebony and ivory, and I had the sudden urge to pull back, but I didn’t.

  “I need to do this my way, on my own terms,” I said. “I’ve never been good at, well, working with other people. I can’t think unless I’m on my own; it’s the way I’ve always been.”

  He nodded.

  “Whatever you need,” he said.

  I’d spent the last several months of my life in a debate with Nick where I felt like I needed his permission to take any case that involved the slightest degree of danger, and now here I was with Giovanni, a man I didn’t know, who seemed to be interested in one thing—my happiness. It was liberating.

  “What do you get out of all this?” I said. “I don’t understand why a total stranger like me is even worth your time. Don’t you have a lot of other things you’re supposed to be doing?”

  He averted the question.

  “If we are to work together, I do need one thing from you,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to tell me everything you know,” he said.

  “I just spent the afternoon going over all of this at the station.”

  “Yes, and now I need you to tell me whatever it is you didn’t tell my brother,” he said.

  “What makes you think I kept anything from him?”

  He released my hand and then placed his in front of me palm-side up.

  “What is it that you want?” I said.

  “I have every confidence that you know.”

  I was right, he did know about the note I found in the park.

  “I guess it won’t do me any good to ask how you know about the note,” I said.

  “I suppose not.”

  I reached into my pant pocket and provided him the note. He read it and then folded it back up and gave it back to me.

  “This guy thinks he’s smart, and he must thrive off the confidence he has in himself. But I have a feeling you’re a lot smarter.”

  ***

  An hour later we were back at the park so I could retrieve my car.

  “Thanks for everything,” I said. “I appreciate what you are trying to do for me, but I want to give you one last chance to reconsider. I can manage on my own.”

  He leaned in until he was so close I could feel his breath on my cheek and I thought he would kiss me. I wasn’t sure what to do or even if I wanted him to or not. I closed my eyes and stuck out my lips just enough to make them seem more inviting, and then I felt his hand flit back and forth on my shoulder. When I opened my eyes he said, “You had a bug crawling up your shirt.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

  All I could think about was how glad I was that I couldn’t see my face in the mirror at that moment.

  “I’ll say goodnight then,” he said. “Until tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 22

  It was interesting how serene the house had become without Nick there, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. One thing I did know was that I liked the quiet; I basked in it. And I also liked being alone. There was something to be said for being in charge of your own domain. Now I could watch all those girlie shows without any rebuff from the peanut gallery.

  With Nick gone, Lord Berkeley had taken over as man of the house. Steadfast in his newly acquired position, he roosted atop the sofa and performed a scan of the immediate area outside the house. But the stage had long since faded to black, and I wasn’t sure his efforts would yield any results.

  I entered my bathroom and twisted the knob on my jetted tub. Water spewed forth from the spout and then trickled down and formed a pool. I grabbed some bath salts out of the cabinet and poured them in, and then when I thought I’d sprinkled in a sufficient amount, I peppered in a little more. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used my tub, but I knew one thing: it had been too long.

  I lit the candles on the windowsill and got in and tried to unwind from the long day. So much had happened that was unexpected. Seeing Giovanni again left me with mixed feelings. I knew so little about him, and yet there he was, ready to drop everything in his life and help me. Why? I couldn’t believe it was because he felt he owed me some type of favor. There had to be more to it than that.

  My thoughts turned to Sinnerman, whoever he was, and about whether we’d be able to stop him before he killed again. I hated to think of it, but my guess was that we would fail, and it was possible it would happen more than once before he was within our grasp. The second victim had been taken five days after the first, and that didn’t leave me a lot of time. Two days had already gone by, and I still had little to go on save the paper he jotted his terse notes on. The fed’s were hard at work on their end, and now it was time for me to do some of my own res
earch.

  I stepped out of the tub and followed the sound of my cell phone to my room.

  “Hey Maddie,” I said.

  “How’d everything go today?”

  “I don’t know—good, I guess.”

  “Why am I not swayed by that?” she said. “Spit it out.”

  “I just don’t have a handle on things like I want to. I don’t even have a clear direction.”

  “Maybe not yet,” she said. “But I know you, and I’m sure you will.”

  She popped a huge bubble into the phone.

  “You never talked to me about the second victim,” I said.

  “I knew you’d say that. That’s why I called. There’s not much to tell though.”

  “You never know,” I said. “Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference.”

  “She was a bit younger than some of his other victims by a few years.”

  “I don’t think age has much to do with it. For him, it’s more about convenience,” I said. “An easy target. What else?”

  “This one fought back which would be the first time since…”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It would be the first time a woman has fought back since he took Gabby.”

  “I think he underestimated her—his latest victim. I found definite signs of a struggle. She had a few lacerations on her right hand that were consistent with a six and a half-inch blade, which also seems to be what he uses to slice their legs. But, they’ve been cleaned and so have the inside of her fingernails.”

  “He’s intelligent enough never to leave any evidence behind,” I said.

  “So that’s about it,” she said. “Not much to tell. You got any more questions for me?”

  “Just one,” I said. “What do you know about the mafia?”

  CHAPTER 23

  Maddie sat across from me and shoveled a spoonful of scrambled eggs in her mouth.

  “Thanks for having me over for breakfast,” she said.

  “I’m glad you came.”

  She took her fork and turned it to the side and cut her sausage into five pieces and then launched one of the pieces off the side of her plate. It flew through the air like a miniature Olympian doing the catapult and then plopped down on my tile floor.

  “Maddie,” I said, “Boo is spoiled enough as it is.”

  Lord Berkeley snatched the piece of meat and moved all four paws across the room at rapid speed to the corner where he could enjoy the fruits of his labor in solitude.

  “Oh come on, you know I can’t resist him when he gives me his pouty eyes.”

  Few could refuse him when faced with his long, sad stare, and that was the reason he did it.

  “So what was with the question about the mafia last night?” she said.

  I told her about the return of Giovanni and the events that occurred the previous day. When I was done she titled her head back and laughed so hard I thought some of her food was going to come back up.

  “Honestly Sloane, you have the most vivid imagination of anyone I know,” she said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are,” she said. “That’s why it’s so funny.”

  “You tell me what line of work he’s in then,” I said. “He drives a car that’s worth more than my house, and one of his suits is probably the equivalent of my entire wardrobe.”

  She tilted her fork toward me.

  “Minus your shoe collection, of course,” she said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And that makes him some mafia person who takes people out for a living?” she said.

  “I don’t know if he kills anyone,” I said, “maybe his posse takes people out for him.”

  “I’m pretty sure they don’t call it a posse,” she said.

  Maddie stabbed two spoonful’s of eggs onto her fork and placed them inside her mouth on both sides of her cheeks. She scrunched up four fingers, pressed them into her thumb and held them in the air and transformed herself into a character from The Godfather.

  “Listen to me Sloane Monroe,” she said, “I have this like amazing kind of offer that you—”

  “Nice accent, and you’re not even close by the way.”

  “I thought that was pretty damn good,” she said.

  “Look, the guy is into something, I just can’t figure out what.”

  “So, you’ve tried?” she said.

  “What?”

  “To find out who he is?” she said.

  I shot her a wink.

  “What kind of PI would I be if I didn’t?”

  “You run a background check while you were at it?” she said.

  “Maddie, be serious.”

  “You did!” she said. “I can tell. You need to chill. From what you’ve told me about this guy he’d be much more inclined to whisk you away somewhere for dinner in his private jet than bust a cap in your ass.”

  “Nice.”

  She smiled.

  “I want to show you something,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said with a wink, “you have a secret peg board here too?”

  “Better.”

  I pulled out the folded piece of paper I uncovered at the park. Maddie raised an eyebrow.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I can’t believe they let you keep that,” she said.

  I glanced at her but said nothing.

  She brought her hand to her mouth.

  “Sloane…?”

  “What?”

  “They don’t know about it, do they?” she said.

  “No, and I intend to keep it that way. They have all the others, and this one isn’t going to reveal some major clue that they just had to know.”

  She held her hand out, and I gave her the note.

  “Well I, for one, applaud you,” she said. “You know me; I’m all about going rogue. Does anyone else know about this?”

  “Giovanni.”

  “How?” she said.

  “You can add that to all the other mysteries of the universe that I haven’t solved about him. I have no idea how he knew, he just did.”

  “So where’d you get this?” she said.

  I told her.

  “I can’t believe you found it like that,” she said. “What a fluke.”

  “He knew I would,” I said. “It’s like he knows how I think—how I work. It’s almost like he’s in my head and I can’t get him out.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Two hours later I was in front of the counter inside The Pretty Pen, an old-fashioned shop in a weathered stucco building decorated on the inside in painted stripes the color of milk chocolate and baby blue. I frequented it often since they peddled two of my favorite things—books and customized stationary.

  A black-haired boy was hunched over the opposite side of the counter with his eyes fastened on a page of a Stephen King novel. His hair had been shaped with great attention and a lot of grease, and he had holes in his ears the size of nickels. When he stood upright, I got a peephole view of the shelf of books on the wall behind him. It was like looking through a magnifying glass without any magnification. After a minute or two it became clear that he either didn’t see me or he didn’t care, and my patience was spent.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  He made an upward whipping motion with his head in my direction, but his hair didn’t move an inch.

  “What’s up?” he said, or tried to say. Given the fact that he mumbled the words under his breath, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Robert around?” I said.

  “Yeah, but he’s chillin’ in the back right now with like some boxes of books that came in and I think he’s busy with that so he told me to come out here and help the customers.”

  The operative word being help, as in to actually offer assistance when needed.

  “Can you just tell him Sloane is here? He knows me.”

  “Oh uh, I dunno. He said not to bother him, and he gets kinda mad whe
n I do, so…”

  I crossed to the other side of the counter and walked toward the back room. The kid seemed put off by this and shouted out after me.

  “You can’t go back there,” he said.

  “No worries,” I said, and I pushed open the partition that separated the main part of the store from the back room.

  A voice from the back sounded off.

  “Dammit Kyle, I told you not to—”

  “Kyle’s still up front,” I said. “It’s just me, Robert.”

  The man poked his head around one of the boxes and looked up at me.

  “Oh Sloane, how are you?” he said.

  He grabbed a paper towel from the green Formica countertop next to him and wiped his hands off and then stood up.

  “I hope you don’t mind me coming back here,” I said.

  He swished the air in a downward motion with his hand.

  “Naw,” he said. “You’re my best customer.”

  “Who’s the new kid?” I said.

  He rolled his eyes.

  “My nephew. I promised my sister I’d give him a job for the summer. He’s only here for another five days or so.”

  “Sounds like you’re counting them down,” I said.

  “You have no idea. I’d pay him not to come in at this point.”

  “Wow, that bad, huh?”

  “I got what you asked for.”

  “Really?” I said. “You found it?”

  “It wasn’t easy, but I sure did. Come over here and take a look.”

  I followed him over to his desk. He opened the drawer and pulled out a big piece of cloth and set it in my hands. I unfolded it and stared in wonderment at the book before me.

  “Well,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I can’t believe you were able to find one in such good condition,” I said. “I’ve dreamed about owning this for years.”

  “Sorry it took so long to procure it for you,” he said.

  “Don’t be. It was worth the wait.”

  In my hand I held a UK first edition copy of Agatha Christie’s first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I’d collected her works for years and always hoped one day I would be able to afford the first book she ever wrote.