Secondhand Smoke

by Karen E. Olson

  “Annie, do you know what you’ve got here?”

  I looked up at Henry and snorted. “A fucking page one story?”

  Henry actually smiled. “This is the fucking lead story. It lets me off the hook, too. I was looking at the annual Thanksgiving dinner down at the homeless shelter with the sad but hopeful story of a family trying to pull themselves out of a hole.”

  Glad I could be of some help.

  “So you don’t know why the FBI is there?” Henry squinted at my screen.

  I shook my head. “No. Jeff Parker wouldn’t tell me. I even called my source, and if she won’t tell me, then no one will.”

  Henry scratched his chin. “We don’t know who the woman is?”

  “Tom Behr said she hadn’t been ID’d yet.” I’d been running through possibilities, however, the best one being LeeAnn Hayward, Sal’s hostess at the restaurant. I knew LeeAnn was more like family than an employee, but I wasn’t willing to share without being absolutely sure. No one had even mentioned her name, and it dawned on me now that I hadn’t seen her at Mac’s, which was unusual under these circumstances.

  Henry was nodding. “Okay, we can get that later. Wesley’s got some good shots. I wonder if he got any of the FBI guys.” He started moving toward the photo lab. “If anyone’s got the FBI guys in a picture, it’ll be Wesley . . .” His voice faded as he got farther away.

  Dick was fumbling with his notebook filled with his chicken scratches. “Wait a minute, Annie, I think I’ve got something. When I was talking to the neighbors, Jeff Parker came up and started asking questions.”

  “You talked to Jeff, too?”

  “No, not directly, but he started asking the old ladies stuff about Sal Amato, weird stuff like where were Sal’s chickens, were they killed in the fire, too.”

  Chickens? What was it that old guy had asked me about chickens?

  “What did they say?”

  “They said they didn’t know what he was talking about, but one woman got this look on her face, like she knew, but she wouldn’t say. Then he went over to talk to the firemen.”

  I took a deep breath. “Please tell me, Dick, that you asked him what it was all about.”

  Dick bit his lip and gave me a sheepish look. Shit. I’d have to follow up on it in the morning.

  We had a pretty good story, regardless. When we were finished with it and Henry was happy, I was exhausted. Up at six, and now it was after dinner. I had warm thoughts about my bed as I drove home, the snow sparkling in the streetlights along the way.

  My apartment was dark and cold. It looked as though both my neighbors were out, probably with family or friends, finishing up the turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce. I could still go to my mother’s, but after considering it briefly, I knew I couldn’t deal with it. I turned up the heat and put the yoga pants back on. I slapped together a ham-and-cheese sandwich, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and started channel surfing.

  I woke up about an hour later on the couch, turned off the tube, and padded into the bathroom. The door buzzer scared the shit out of me as I was brushing my teeth.

  I looked out the window, down to the steps below. A tall man in a gray overcoat stood on the stoop. He looked up at me, and I buzzed him in.

  My father gave me a big bear hug the second he came through the door.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call first,” he said as I handed him a beer.

  I pulled my feet up under me on the couch, and he settled into my rocker. I studied his face. Although I’d seen him only about six months ago, he was a little grayer and there were more lines in his face.

  “Everything okay, Dad?”

  He shrugged. “Long trip.”

  “Did you stop and see Mac?”

  “Came here first.” He ran his hand through his hair; I didn’t like seeing how he was aging. And before I could tell him about Sal, he surprised me by saying, “I’m thinking about retiring.”

  “Really?”

  “Everything’s changing, the technology, the owners, it’s not easy running a casino these days. Foxwoods has everyone stumped. How can those Indians be raking in all that dough in the middle of fucking nowhere in Connecticut?”

  I smiled. “You could come back and work there.”

  He shook his head. “No thanks. I can’t come back here.” He didn’t elaborate, and from the look on his face, it probably had something to do with my mother.

  “So where would you go?” Where does someone retire to after Vegas? Florida would be way too humid, California way too yuppie.

  “Thinking about Utah.”

  “Ugh, all those happy Mormons? What do you want to do, marry a few women and make more babies?”

  He laughed. “Suzette’s enough for me, and you’re plenty enough daughter.” He paused for a second. “Thinking about building a cabin in the mountains.”

  I chuckled. “That doesn’t sound like you. What do you need, to go into hiding or something?” His face changed, and it took me by surprise. “I was just joking, or do you really need to go into hiding?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve been a crime reporter too long.”

  Which reminded me . . .

  “Did Sal Amato need to go into hiding?”

  He frowned at me. “What?”

  “Sal’s not dead, Dad. It wasn’t his body in the restaurant, and the FBI was there, sticking their noses into the scene. No one knows where Sal is.”

  “The FBI?” He got up, walked over to the window, and looked out over the square, toward Prego. “Oh, shit.”

  “One of the local FBI guys was asking about chickens. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Dad straightened his back a little and stretched his neck before turning around. “What the hell do chickens have to do with Sal?” But I could see something in his eyes that made me wonder if Sal did indeed have some sort of poultry problem that the FBI would be concerned about. But I had to drop it, at least for now. I knew if I pressed, Dad would clam up and I’d never get anything out of him.

  “Whose body was in the restaurant?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “All I know is it was a woman. Tom said there was no ID yet. Probably tomorrow. I didn’t see LeeAnn Hayward anywhere today. I hope it wasn’t her.”

  Dad sat down and rubbed his face with his palms. “Me too,” he said flatly.

  “You look tired. You should probably get some sleep. Where are you staying?”

  “Omni Hotel downtown.”

  I chuckled. “That sounds nice.”

  “I know the manager.” He knew everyone.

  Dad got up and kissed me on the top of the head. “I’ll come by in the morning, take you to breakfast.”

  From my window, I watched him walk down the sidewalk and climb into a car. I glanced toward Prego but couldn’t see it in the dark. I shut the lights out and went to bed.

  Chapter 7

  He could’ve told me he was going to bring Vinny along. “Look who I ran into,” Dad said as I came down the steps and nearly lost my balance slipping on some black ice. I gripped the railing, uncertain whether to tell Dad that Vinny had a habit of lurking around my apartment and it wasn’t too hard to run into him. At least that’s the way it had been two months ago, and it was looking like that was the direction we were headed in again.

  Vinny grinned at me, and I tried to look like I didn’t give a shit. I’m not sure I pulled it off, because he put his arm around me, no mean feat because I was again wearing my puffy coat; it was goddamn cold outside.

  “Let’s go to the diner.” My father didn’t act like he lived in the desert. His coat was unbuttoned, his hair flying in the frosty breeze, his cheeks ruddy. He grinned at me. “I miss this weather,” he said.

  Vinny and I huddled together to keep warm; at least that’s what I told myself. I missed that hat, but I’d improvised with a thick scarf I’d found shoved behind some stuff on the shelf in my hall closet. Between the big coat and the scarf, I looked like one of those Middle Eastern women in the be
ekeeper outfits.

  The diner wasn’t too far away, but I felt like a fucking snowman by the time we got there.

  “Joey!” The waitress had to be about my dad’s age, wisps of obviously dyed red hair falling out of the knot on top of her head.

  My dad leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Alma, always good to see you. Alma, this is my daughter, Annie, and Vinny DeLucia.” My father indicated us with a wave of his hand.

  Alma smiled, nodded. “I know Vinny, of course. Nice to meet you, Annie,” she said. “Coffee all around?”

  My father’s eyes twinkled at her. “Thanks.”

  We took off our coats and sat down.

  “Alma and I went to high school together,” my father said as he pulled a copy of the paper off the table next to us. He nodded at me. “Good story.”

  Sal’s face stared up at me from the front page.

  Alma came back and poured the coffee. Her eyes lingered on my father for a few seconds before she left.

  “Did you talk to Mac yet?” I asked my father.

  “I was over there this morning. So was Vinny.”

  “You might as well hear it from me. Mac’s hired me,” Vinny said.

  I frowned. “For what?”

  “To find Sal.”

  I had a sneaking suspicion that if Sal wasn’t around, it was because he didn’t want to be.

  “I can’t drag him back kicking and screaming, that’s for sure. But Mac wants me to make sure he’s okay.”

  “She’s paying you to find him?” I asked.

  Vinny actually blushed. “I told her I didn’t want her money, but, well, you know.”

  I did know. Mac was proud and didn’t want a handout from anyone. I also knew that Vinny would find a way to keep her from paying him. “What does the FBI want him for?”

  Vinny shrugged. “Mac says she doesn’t know.”

  “Do you think she does?”

  “Beats me.” He stared into his coffee cup, making me think he definitely had an opinion on this, and it was annoying me that he wasn’t sharing.

  I looked from him to my father. “Do either of you know?”

  Vinny took a long drink from his cup, and my father flagged down Alma with a broad smile. These two knew a helluva lot more than I did, I would bank on it. We all ordered eggs and toast before my father looked at me again.

  “You’ll find out soon, I’m sure. You’re too good a reporter.”

  “Why don’t you make my life easier and tell me now, and I can just get it confirmed.” And I thought it was bad when I had a cop boyfriend who wouldn’t tell me anything.

  “Have you talked to your mother?”

  I could play this game, too. “Have you?”

  Dad grinned, his brown eyes flashing with amusement, and I could see what my mother and Suzette and Alma and probably a million other women had seen in him. “I thought maybe you could tell her I’m in town.”

  “Only if you tell me about Sal.”

  He sighed. “Maybe I don’t know anything. Have you considered that?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. I just hadn’t.

  “I can tell you that I think I know who the woman was who died in the fire.” Vinny’s voice surprised us.

  “LeeAnn Hayward?” I asked, and it was Vinny’s turn to be surprised.

  “How the hell do you know?” he asked.

  So I was right. “Educated guess,” I said.

  Vinny nodded. “Mickey came around last night to the restaurant looking for LeeAnn. He didn’t know about the fire, because he was in Boston for the holiday. He said LeeAnn left the night before, they had a big fight.”

  Mickey and LeeAnn Hayward had been fighting since they met fifteen years ago, when Sal hired LeeAnn as his hostess and Mickey as his head chef. From what I’d heard, it was instant heat between them, and Sal had to reprimand them more than once for screwing around, literally, in the supply closet. But when they weren’t screwing, they were fighting, and sometimes it got pretty messy. Mickey had given LeeAnn a black eye at one point, but only after she’d stabbed him with his favorite knife. That was my first story as cop reporter. You never forget your first story on any beat, and that one was a doozy. Apparently Mickey thought LeeAnn was fucking one of the dishwashers, and LeeAnn thought Mickey was fucking one of the waitresses. I couldn’t put that in my story, but Mickey had gotten twenty-five stitches and LeeAnn went to a battered women’s shelter for a night.

  The next day they were in the supply closet again. Sal almost had a heart attack trying to keep them from killing each other, one way or another.

  “So LeeAnn’s missing?” It made sense, then, that perhaps she was the body in the restaurant. I’d never warmed up to her, we were really only acquaintances, but I certainly hadn’t wanted any sort of harm to come to her.

  Vinny nodded. The waitress came with our breakfast, and we were all quiet for a few minutes while we ate and digested this new information. “It would make sense if it was LeeAnn, but then, if she came home early, why wasn’t she at home, why did she go to the restaurant?” I asked after a few bites of toast.

  “Who knows. There could’ve been a million reasons for her to go there,” Vinny said.

  We pondered that a few seconds before I remembered something, a complete non sequitur.

  “You know, I had a little chat with Dominic Gaudio yesterday.” The way they looked at me, you’d have thought I’d said I’d fucked Mick Jagger.

  My father stared at me. “When?” He didn’t look as if he were pleased to get this news.

  “Oh, he said to say hello. In his car, after he left Mac’s.” I paused. “He said nothing is as it seems. Does that make any sense to either of you?”

  Vinny frowned. “You know LeeAnn Hayward is Dominic Gaudio’s niece, don’t you?”

  I didn’t know that, and he knew it. I scowled at him. “So? He thought Sal was dead in that restaurant when he went to see Mac.” But as I said that, I wondered again about his words and whether he knew more about what was going on over at Prego.

  “Sal hired LeeAnn as a favor to Dom,” my father said. “She’d been taking care of her mother, who had cancer, and when she died, LeeAnn needed something to do. Sal needed a hostess, and Dom got her in.”

  At that moment, the door opened and a tall, mustached man wearing a long black trench coat stepped inside. He and my father exchanged a nod before he sat at the counter.

  My father pushed his plate to the middle of the table and drained his coffee cup. “Excuse me, my appointment is early.” He got up and took the seat next to the man in the coat.

  I was in a goddamn Martin Scorsese movie.

  Vinny had my coat in his hands, and in seconds I was wearing it and we were outside on the sidewalk.

  “What’s that all about?” I asked.

  Vinny shrugged. “I have to get going.”

  “To find Sal?” I asked sarcastically.

  He grinned. “Smart-ass. Yeah, to find Sal.”

  “Why don’t you just ask those two”—I tossed my head in the direction of the diner—“where he is?”

  “Aw, that’d be too easy.” He chuckled. “See you later.”

  I HAD TO WALK PAST Prego on the way to my car. The crime scene tape was flapping in the breeze. Tom stepped out from behind the building as I stood staring at it.

  “You always come back to the scene,” he said matter-of-factly, as though he expected me to be there.

  “I heard the body was LeeAnn Hayward.” Well, not exactly, but sometimes it was easier to get a confirmation if I presented my speculations as fact.

  That surprised him. “How the hell did you find out?”

  “So it’s confirmed that it’s her?”

  “Dental records don’t lie.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Dentist faxed them over about an hour ago, and the medical examiner made a positive ID.”

  “Mickey must have been pretty worried. I heard he was looking for
her last night.”

  “The husband? Oh, yeah, he came to the department.”

  “Does he know why she was in the restaurant?”

  “She works there.”

  “But the restaurant wasn’t open, it was before six in the morning.” I could tell he was wondering why she was there, too.

  “Want to get a cup of coffee?” Tom was asking. “It’s cold out here.”

  “Just had some with my dad.”

  Tom frowned. “Why’s your dad here?”

  I thought about my father’s “appointment.” “He came because he thought Sal was dead,” I said. I wanted to believe that.

  Tom ran a hand through his blond hair, and he wouldn’t look at me. He didn’t believe it, either.

  A Ford Explorer was coming toward us. As it got closer, it slowed down, and Vinny waved as he passed. I raised my hand, sort of like the Queen Mother.

  “What’s going on with you two?” Tom asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “But you want it to.”

  I couldn’t lie to him, but I didn’t want to say it out loud, so I kept my mouth shut. I should learn how to do that more often. But it backfired.

  “You know, Annie, the chief’s been on my back about you. Anything that’s in the paper, he thinks you got it from me.”

  I usually did.

  “You know, our relationship has changed a lot in the last couple of months,” he continued, and I had a bad feeling about what he was about to say. “Maybe we should just keep it professional from now on.”

  And I wouldn’t get shit out of him anymore. That’s what he was really telling me. I wasn’t stupid. Or maybe I was. Why the hell was I waiting around for a guy who wouldn’t make up his goddamn mind when I could have Tom, even though we’d had our own commitment issues?

  “I don’t think you should call me on my personal cell phone anymore,” Tom was saying. “Let’s cut all the ties.”

  I felt a huge swell in my chest, as if this were the first time we were breaking up. But did I want to cry for our lost relationship or because I wouldn’t get any more information out of him?

  It sucked that I didn’t know.

  I mumbled something like “Sure” or “Fine” and took off.