Don of the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  Relieved to hear me talking about what she assumed was everyday stuff and convinced that it proved that after everything, I was still the same old Pepper, Ella laughed.

  "You are too good to be true," she said. "Thinking about work. Even at a time like this."

  If only she knew that I wasn't thinking about the work she thought I was thinking about. I was thinking about Tommy Cavolo. I was thinking that I'd better find out how he figured in Gus's murder and why so many years later, somebody didn't want me to find out the truth.

  Before that same somebody sent somebody else to try and kill me again.

  "I know what you need. A nice, hot cup of tea." Ella popped out of her chair. "You'll be fine by yourself for a minute. I'll be right down the hall in my office getting the tea for you, and the police are outside." She promised she'd be right back and left.

  "You okay, kid?"

  I figured Gus was around somewhere. Luckily, he'd kept his mouth shut until Ella was gone and the door was closed behind her. I didn't think I could have dealt with the two of them. Not at the same time. Not that night.

  I shrugged in answer to his question. The T-shirt tugged over my chest. "I dunno," I told him because at that point, it didn't seem to make any sense not to be honest about the whole thing. "I know I wouldn't be all right if it wasn't for you. And Dan!"

  I'd been so busy being dazed and confused, I'd blocked Dan's sudden appearance from my mind. It came back at me like a cold Lake Erie wave, slapping me in the face. I looked at Gus in wonder. "What do you think that was all about?"

  "You mean how he kissed you?"

  It wasn't what I was talking about it, but once Gus mentioned it…

  A flicker of heat sparked inside me.

  Not something I wanted to think about with Gus watching me closely.

  "I wasn't talking about the kiss," I told him and reminded myself. "I was talking about Dan and the whole Jackie Chan thing. Was that weird or what?"

  "Some guys will do anything to impress a woman."

  "I don't think that's what it was all about."

  "You gonna talk to him about it?"

  "Maybe. One of these days."

  "And that cop of yours?"

  "Quinn is not my cop." I didn't add that I was glad he wasn't among the army of cops who had arrived, sirens blaring and lights flashing. He was probably at Pietro's sharing the candlelight and dinner that was supposed to be mine with another one of his conquests. I suppose, after the way we'd said goodbye, it was just as well. The middle of a mob hit was not the right way to say hello again.

  I twitched away the thought. My T-shirt strained. "For now, we have more important things to worry about."

  "You mean Tommy."

  I wheeled my desk chair back into place and hit the space bar on my keyboard. My computer screen flicked on. "What were those letters again?" I asked Gus. "The ones under the carving of the broken ring on Tommy's headstone?"

  "D.V.M." He supplied the information and it was a good thing. My brain was fried.

  "D.V.M." I repeated them to myself, connected to the Internet, and Googled.

  Unfortunately, when Ella's mind was made up, it didn't take her long to get a job done.

  My computer was old and slow, and Ella was back in my office, steaming cup of tea in one hand and organic shortbread cookies she claimed would make me feel better in the other, before I had a chance to find out much of anything.

  Then the cops showed up to interview me again. Between them, Ella's constant mothering, and the noisy, question-crammed reception I got from her three daughters, I was exhausted. By that point, I was also beyond caring about Tommy Two Toes, DVMs, or anything else except that I was safe and alive and once I had a long, hot shower, there wasn't a trace of Albert's blood anywhere on me.

  It was the next morning before I had a chance to try my luck with the Internet another time.

  Then again, maybe luck wasn't exactly the right word.

  "Do you have any idea how many doctors of veterinary medicine there are in the world?" I grumbled the question, not exactly at Gus, who was standing behind me, but at the universe in general. Just for good measure, I made a face at my computer screen and what seemed like the millionth page of vets, veterinary organizations, and magazines devoted to the practice of animal medicine that I'd seen in the last fifteen minutes. "I think we can be pretty sure those letters on Tommy's tombstone don't mean he was a vet."

  "He was an animal." It was a lame joke and I didn't acknowledge it. "There's got to be a better way than with that… what do you call it?"

  "The Internet." I clicked on Next and another page full of useless information loaded. "DVM stands for doctor of veterinary medicine… " I scrubbed my hands over my face. After a good night's sleep, another shower, and a quick trip home for a fresh change of clothes, I felt better. But apparently, my brain had yet to get the message. "None of it makes any sense," I groaned.

  "Maybe that's not all it stands for." Being careful not to make contact, Gus leaned over my shoulder and pointed at the screen. "DVM. What do you call that?"

  "Letters?" I rolled my eyes.

  "I know they're letters. No, I mean when you use just the letters like that. What do you call that?"

  "You mean an abbreviation?" I hated it when he was right. I needed to narrow my search, and Gus knew that without even knowing what an Internet search was. I did just that, adding the word "abbreviation" and making sure I put quotation marks around it. No use wasting my time with more useless junk.

  "Again. Vets." I scanned the first page and my shoulders slumped but I refused to give in so quickly. I looked over the rest of the page and found tempting hints that there might be life—or at least information—beyond veterinary medicine.

  "Distributed virtual memory. Digital voltmeter." I tried the next page.

  "Deo volento. Whatever that means and whatever the hell language it is." I whined but kept reading and scrolled down the page a little farther. "D.V.M. Genealogical terms."

  It was the first thing that had made me smile for nearly twenty-four hours. (Well, except for lying in bed and thinking about that kiss from Dan.) I clicked on the page and waited semipatiently for it to load.

  When it did, I poked the screen with one finger.

  "Paydirt," I said. "DVM. It's Latin and it stands for decessit vita matris. That means died while mother was living." I sat back, satisfied. "Told you it was a woman sending those flowers."

  "No Thomas Cavolo."

  The woman at City Hall was so sure of herself, she almost had me convinced.

  Almost.

  "There's got to be." My comment stopped her as she was about to walk away from the counter where she was filling out forms, consulting her computer, and helping folks get copies of birth certificates. "If there's no Thomas, try Tommy. Try—"

  "Look… " She glared at me over the rims of her glasses, and I guess I couldn't blame her. We'd been at it for nearly half an hour and the folks in back of me in line were getting impatient. So was the clerk. She drummed her fingers against the countertop, her inch-long nails clicking her frustration. "I tried Thomas. I tried Tommy. I tried the letter T just in case it's Tomaso or some other foreign name that translates into Tommy. It doesn't work. There isn't a Thomas Cavolo. Like I told you before, there isn't even one single Cavolo in the birth certificate system."

  "But there's got to be. I know he died. So he had to be born, right?"

  "Right." I would have been a little more encouraged that she agreed with me if not for the fact that even as she did, she waved the next person in line forward. "Only it doesn't mean he was born in Cleveland and Cleveland birth certificates are the only ones I have."

  "And if he wasn't born here?"

  Her glare dissolved into an expression that was more like oh-you-poor-thing-how-stupid-can-you-be. "Could'a been anywhere," she said. "Anywhere in the whole, wide world."

  "But he died here. He's buried here. I know he existed. I've seen his grave."

 
She shrugged. Clearly it was a sign that she was finished with me. "So try the obits."

  Sounds easy enough.

  And maybe if I was a real private investigator like I was pretending to be, it would have been a piece of cake.

  But who knew that the Cleveland Public Library maintained what they called a necrology file? It took me a couple days to find out that was the place I needed to look for what they called "historical" obituaries.

  "Thomas Cavolo." I read the name out loud to Gus, who was sitting in my guest chair. I breathed a sigh of relief, pleased that days of research had finally yielded something of value. "Age 22, died unexpectedly. That's putting it mildly." I scanned the rest of the obit. "Beloved son of Lester and Linda Mercer." I glanced at Gus uncertainly. "Ever heard of them?" I didn't wait for him to answer and I didn't ask myself what the chances were that they were still around.

  I grabbed the phone and the phone book and ten minutes later, I had not only found Lester and Linda, I'd somehow talked myself into a face-to-face meeting with them. By five-thirty that evening, I was standing on their front porch.

  The Mercers lived in what I'd charitably call a modest house in a neighborhood just this side of the Cleveland city limits. There was a twelve-year-old Chevy up on cinder blocks on their front lawn and from what I could see, the postage-stamp-sized backyard offered a panoramic view of a steel mill that had been abandoned years before.

  The mill might be gone, but no way could it be forgotten. The stench of chemicals still clung to everything from the boarded-up house next door to the convenience store across the street where I was forced to park in a lot strewn with broken bottles because there were no spots anywhere else.

  I shifted from foot to foot and tried the doorbell. I didn't hear a sound from inside the house and I waited a few more minutes. When no one answered, I knocked.

  The door opened a crack and a skeleton-thin woman with a long nose stuck her head out just far enough to get a look at me.

  "You must be the girl that called." Linda Mercer was no bigger than Carmella, maybe five feet tall. Her hair was a color somewhere between mousy brown and mousier gray. Her eyes were pale, like her skin. Her nose twitched like she was nervous and she refused to meet my eyes. "I got to apologize. When you called, I thought I could help you but… well… " She made a move to close the door.

  Now that I was this close, I wasn't about to let the trail go cold. I stuck my foot between the door and the jamb.

  "You told me on the phone that you knew who I was talking about. You said you knew Tommy Cavolo."

  Linda licked her lips and threw a quick glance over her shoulder and all I can say is that her instincts must have been better than mine. Then again, she'd probably had years to hone them.

  Before I even knew he was anywhere nearby, Lester appeared in the doorway.

  He was a big man. Maybe sixty years old and at least a hundred pounds overweight. He was wearing brown polyester pants that sagged over the bulge of his beer gut, and a sleeveless, wife-beater undershirt. He smelled like stale cigarettes and beer. He needed a shave. And a bath.

  Something told me that wasn't the reason Linda held her breath when he came up behind her.

  "You heard what my wife said." Lester's voice was rusty, like he'd breathed in too much steel mill residue. "Must be some kind of mistake. We don't know who you're talking about. Go away. Or I'm gonna sic the dog on you."

  Considering that I could see into the window and right into Mercer's living room and that the dog in question was a rotund Chihuahua who was sound asleep on the couch, I wasn't very worried.

  I tried for the reasonable tone of voice that always worked on the old people who took my tours. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you and I promise not to take up too much of your time. I'm just looking for information. About Tommy Cavolo. I'm sure you knew him."

  "You're wrong." Lester tugged on his wife's arm.

  "But your names are in his obituary."

  "Must be a mistake."

  "But it said you were his loving parents. Is that a mistake, too?" When her husband gave her another rough tug, Linda backed away from the door and followed him wordlessly.

  But not before she glanced at the store across the street.

  Chapter 18

  It was hard to be inconspicuous in a store where the clerk was inside a booth made of bullet-proof glass and the other patrons were (in no particular order) one teenaged mother with a squealing baby in her arms and another on the way, a homeless guy with Bob Marley hair who was talking to himself while he whisked containers of ramen off the shelf and stuffed them in his pockets, and two young punks who whistled when I walked in, cruised the aisle where I was pretending to look at the canned soup, and told me that I was (in their words) the sweetest piece of ass they'd seen in as long as they could remember.

  By the time Linda Mercer showed up with four bucks clutched in one bony hand and a request to the kid behind the glass for a pack of Winstons, I was so relieved, I smiled like she was my long-lost aunt.

  She, on the other hand, acted like I wasn't there.

  I was teed off and frankly, more than a little disappointed. I thought that telling look back at the house actually meant something. Like Linda and I were sharing a secret. Now, Winstons in one hand, gaze firmly on the pitted linoleum, she walked by me without a word or a glance and right out the back door.

  Okay, so it took me a while. But I finally got the message.

  Or at least I hoped I did.

  I waited what seemed the right amount of time, paid for a can of tomato soup that I promptly handed over to Bob Marley, and followed Linda outside.

  I found myself in a back alley and I had to look around twice before I saw Linda. That's how well she blended with the drab surroundings. I might not have seen her at all if I hadn't heard the click, click of a lighter and followed the sound of a long, anxious intake of breath. I saw a stream of smoke rise from between a garbage can and what looked like it used to be a doghouse before it rotted into a pile of soggy wood. There she was, wedged there where no one could see her, darting anxious looks out at the street.

  Like maybe she was expecting company.

  "We got to be quick." She didn't explain why and I didn't ask. One meeting with Lester was all it took to figure out that he was a no-good bastard. "I wouldn't of even come except… " She took in another lungful of nicotine.

  "Except that his obituary says that you were Tommy's loving mother." She didn't have to elaborate. I knew my mention of the obituary back at the house was what finally made her cave and I played the sympathy card again for all it was worth. "Are you the one who sends flowers to Tommy's grave every week?"

  Linda laughed. Her teeth were crooked and yellow. "Do I look like I got the money to send flowers?" She shook her head and maybe she was emphasizing her point. Maybe she was just wishing she could have sent those flowers. "Even if I did have the money, Lester, he'd find a way to spend it. On something other than sending flowers to that boy."

  "But you did know Tommy?"

  I held my breath, partly because I was waiting for her answer. Mostly because she blew out another puff of smoke and I didn't want to take the chance of inhaling any of it.

  "Raised him," she said. "And you know what? He was nothing but trouble from the day I brought him home."

  "You didn't say 'from the day he was born.' You weren't his biological mother, were you?"

  It was the first time she actually looked me in the eye. "Why do you care?"

  I knew it was bound to come to that, and on the way over there, I'd come up with a story that was plausible, even if it wasn't true. It was all about my burning interest in genealogy and how Tommy was the final branch on a family tree that was oh-so important to my gray-haired granny.

  Funny, looking into Linda's lifeless eyes, I decided nothing short of the truth was good enough for her.

  "I need to know how Tommy might have been mixed up in Gus Scarpetti's death," I told her.

  She dropped t
he butt of her cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of her worn sneaker. "Tommy died back in the sixties and that Scarpetti fella, I remember seeing him on the news. He died way later. Around the same time Lester was laid off from the paper plant."

  "But there was some connection between Tommy and Gus. Something more than the fact that Tommy was a foot soldier in the Scarpetti Family."

  "A connection? Yeah, I guess you could say that." She looked me up and down. "If you know what's good for you, you'll be satisfied with that and leave it alone."

  "I can't. Besides, it's already too late for that. I've poked my nose in one too many places. Somebody's trying to kill me and the only thing I can figure is that it has something to do with Tommy. If I can find out the truth, maybe I can get these people off my back."

  "Think so?" Her lips thinned into an expression that wasn't exactly a smile.

  And I wasn't exactly going to back down. Not when I was this close.

  I stepped nearer, sensing that Linda might share her story if she felt safe. "I've got to find out. And you're the only one who can tell me. I know that Tommy died before his mother did. If you're not her… "

  "He was a foster kid. Even had a different name from ours. Nobody was ever supposed to know where he came from."

  "But you did. And it wasn't from Children's Services or any formal agency like that, was it?"

  She aimed a look at the convenience store as if she could see through it to the shabby house across the street. "I had plans for the money we was paid. Thought maybe we'd take a vacation sometime. You know, Florida or Vegas. Like regular folks do. Even thought maybe we'd have a couple kids of our own. But Lester, he said I couldn't make those decisions, me being only a woman. Turned out it didn't much matter. He spent the money before I ever could think what to do with it."

  "Then someone paid you to take Tommy?"

  Linda's hands were small and nervous. They flittered over her face and through her thinning hair. "You're young and things are different now. You don't know what it was like in the old days. A girl who was single and pregnant… well, it would have been a big scandal if anybody found out. They sent her away. To New York. When he was born, she was supposed to put him up for adoption."