Rust in Peace (A Giovanna Ferrari Repair-it-all Mystery Book 1)

by J. J. Murray

  I pet her as she pants. “You get to go to the vet tomorrow.”

  Lovie wags her body.

  “And you’ll be getting shots. Aren’t you excited?”

  She yips.

  I’m not excited. It’s always more painful for me than it is for her.

  I let her out, feed her, and walk to the buffalo fence with my phone to listen to my messages. I only have one.

  Rinaldo.

  “Giovanna, welcome to my messy apartment. I do not keep a clean house. I keep a clean kitchen, of course. This is my television room. I do not watch television often. It is very dusty. I am not sure if it works. This is my … we will not go in there. I use that room as a closet. If I have lost something, it is in there. My bedroom … perhaps it is too early in our relationship for me to show you that.”

  He’s so flirtatious.

  “I have not made my bed. But it is only messy on one side. Perhaps … no. It is still too early in our relationship.”

  He’s very flirtatious.

  “This is my bathroom. We will not go in here either. Let us go to the kitchen. You will notice a shiny clean counter and an empty sink. You will also notice many leftovers in my refrigerator. We need to have a snack together, so I will serve you … hmm … I hope you have a sweet tooth. We will have zeppoli.”

  Yum! A zeppole is like a filled donut with the filling on top.

  “My zeppoli are fluffy, and I topped these with custard and chocolate crème.”

  This makes my toast and jelly breakfasts seem so wrong.

  “Oh. I should not eat in front of you. I hope you have a great day.”

  I am going to be thinking about zeppoli all day. And since my refrigerator and cupboards are nearly empty, I have to go to IGA.

  On my way to town after a long bath, I see a number of American flags hanging limply in the still, humid air. I call Mayor Parsons as I pass the trout hatchery.

  “Billy, it’s Gio Ferrari.”

  “What do you want?”

  Billy is usually chipper, the quintessential nice guy. “I’d like to register a tractor for the parade.”

  “You missed the deadline,” he says. “Registration is closed.”

  “I didn’t know there was a deadline.”

  “Well, there was.”

  “Maybe you can make an exception. The tractor belonged to Mr. Simmons. It looks spectacular, and I think it would be a great addition to—”

  “Registration is closed,” he interrupts. “I’m busy. Gotta go.”

  Click.

  That was rude. I didn’t know Billy could be rude. And how busy could he be? Kingstown has always run itself. And why is he so angry? I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the “death” of Gray Lake.

  I give Nonno a quick call. “Have you gotten any repair calls?”

  “No. You?”

  “None.”

  “Maybe because it is a holiday.”

  “No one really celebrates Flag Day, Nonno.”

  “They should.”

  At IGA, my zeppoli craving gets the best of me, and I put two dozen chocolate-topped Krispy Kreme donuts into the cart. I add my usual—eggs, milk, butter, bread, sharp cheddar, provolone, sausage patties, linguini, bacon, fresh tomatoes, peppers, and onions, and ground beef—and approach the checkout.

  “Hey, Brenda.”

  Brenda nods.

  While Brenda scans my purchases, I read yet another “special” edition of the Current, and I see nothing about Mr. Simmons. We’re back to recipes for cheese grits, hot collard slaw, and huckleberry pie.

  The front-page story (“No Rain for Three Weeks”) informs me that we could be having the hottest and driest year since 1933 and the Dust Bowl. “I have to use my bathwater to keep my garden going,” Nellie Mae Simpkins says. “We may have to have rolling brownouts this summer,” county commissioner Horace Whitely warns. Why? Kingstown shuts down at night when it’s coolest. I open to the second page and read about Zengler’s Mill. Owen says, “The mill will be operational by Halloween.” Really, Owen? In your dreams. On page three, I see a tiny advertisement with Peace Goods’ shorter “summer” hours. Pictures of a county animal control truck’s radiator spewing take up most of page four. If they would let me maintain the county vehicles regularly, they’d never overheat. I wonder why they didn’t call me to fix this one. I had already fixed three of their snowplow trucks last winter.

  I scan the entire paper again but don’t see a single word about the investigation into Mr. Simmons’ murder. A man drowns in his own living room on the land that could have been a lake and no one cares.

  Brenda tells me my total, and I pay her. “How are you doing, Brenda?”

  “Okay.” She hands me my change.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” She squints at me. “Guess I won’t need suntan lotion for the beach, huh, Gio?” She looks at the next customer.

  Where is Brenda’s bad attitude coming from? “Um, no, I guess not, unless you take a trip up to Blue Lake.”

  “Oh, real funny,” Brenda says.

  I was trying to be. Blue Lake almost drained itself four years ago after the Army Corps of Engineers used dynamite in an attempt to seal a slow leak. They blew a bigger hole into the bedrock that kept the water in, and it’s little more than a pond now. Folks who owned cottages and houses on Blue Lake stopped trying to extend their docks to reach the water last year. From the air, Blue Lake looks like a big brown wagon wheel with fifty spokes, a greenish “hub” in the middle. The last annual “Blue Lake Boat Race” (a.k.a. “The Blubber”) lasted twelve seconds. Only two boats entered. The second place boat didn’t leave the starting line because its propeller was stuck in the mud.

  “Or you could go to Virginia Beach, Brenda,” I say.

  “Hey, Mrs. Tompkins,” Brenda says with a smile. “How’s your garden doing?”

  And now Brenda ignores me. It must be the heat.

  I cart my groceries to the Jeep, smiling at and saying “hey” to folks coming in to IGA.

  No one smiles back or speaks.

  What did I do?

  I get into the Jeep and call Hanley Hanson. “Hanley, it’s Gio Ferrari.”

  “What do you want?”

  That’s the second time today someone says this to me. “I want to know why there’s nothing in the Current about Mr. Simmons’ murder investigation.”

  “There’s nothing to report,” Hanley says.

  “Have you talked to anyone? Sheriff Morris? The state police? Captain Downs? Dr. Henritze?”

  “What for?”

  “To do your job maybe.”

  “I am doing my job,” Hanley says.

  “Filling space with recipes is not journalism, Hanley,” I say. “Don’t you think it’s strange that a man drowned on dry land?”

  “It’s not as if I can get anyone to talk to me, Gio,” Hanley says. “The Current is a bi-weekly, remember?”

  “You’ve been more than a bi-weekly recently,” I say.

  “What’s your point?”

  “I’m saying you could be doing some investigative journalism, you know, get to the bottom of things. A murder happened in this county, Hanley.”

  “No one cares, Gio,” Hanley says.

  I do. “Well, do you know anything about the investigation? Have you heard any rumors?”

  “The only thing people are talking about is who made out like bandits because of Mr. Simmons’ will,” he says. “You and your grandfather didn’t do too badly, did you?”

  “We had no idea that was going to happen, Hanley.”

  “Oh really? You discovered his body, and Tiny changed his will the day you were out there. And as far as anyone knows, you were the only person out there that day.”

  “Mr. Simmons’ lawyer was out there, too,” I say. “And so was Roberto Riva.”

  “Riva? Is he Italian, too?”

  “Yes. What’s your point?”

  “Just that y’all seem to stick together, that’s all. A man chang
es his will, he dies, you find the body, and you just happen to inherit some property. Sounds right suspicious.”

  “My being there had nothing to do with Mr. Simmons changing his will.”

  “Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t, but folks are sure saying that maybe it did. You have a nice day with your tractors, truck, and eighteen hundred bucks.”

  Click.

  Great. Three rude people in a row and the people coming in to IGA weren’t that friendly to me either.

  It hasn’t been easy being a Ferrari, which means “blacksmith” in Italian and comes from the Latin word for iron. Ferraris are the “Smiths” of Italy, and there are only two of us “Smiths” left in Gray County when there used to be dozens because of irrational treatment like this. The people of this county have never had any real respect for my family at all.

  They should.

  My Sicilian ancestors escaped Catania and volcanic Mt. Etna, settling in Old Town on Staten Island, New York City, in the late 1890s. Unable to make decent livings for their growing families, they escaped New York City in 1907 to mine iron ore near Motts Mountain and make Kingstown into a boomtown. When the mine petered out in 1932, only a few Ferraris stayed to become tinkers and to push carts through Kingstown. They sharpened knives and repaired clocks, watches, and eventually machinery. My great-grandfather Carlo, grandfather Franco, and father Franco, Junior, repaired anything that could break from butter churns to Coke machines, Ball Top GE refrigerators to pinball machines, Ford Models A-T to Studebakers—and every tractor ever built. The Ferraris have been necessary to this town for a long time, yet folks still turn on us in a heartbeat.

  But I do know someone who won’t be rude to me. I call Thomas’s cell phone.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” I say.

  “You didn’t,” he says.

  “You got a minute?”

  “I got plenty of minutes,” he says. “I’m at the station, Gio. I’m on duty.”

  “Since when do you work days?” I ask.

  “It’s a long story,” he says. “Hey, can you do something about the AC in here? It blows.”

  “It’s supposed to blow, Thomas.”

  “It blows hot air, Gio.”

  “I’m at the IGA. I’ll be there as soon as I drop off my groceries.”

  I drive home, unload my groceries, throw a stick into the creek for Lovie, then drive to the police station, park on the correct side of the street this time, and walk into an oven. Other than Thomas sitting at a desk with an oscillating fan blowing on his face, the station is empty.

  “It’s so hot in here bacon would fry on the floor,” I say.

  “It’s hotter than a goat’s butt in a pepper patch,” Thomas says into the fan.

  I get a chair, climb up on it, and look at an old Roper 5,000 BTU air conditioning unit that is woefully underpowered to cool off any part of the police station. If the town council would spend a little more on quality, they’d spend less on repairs like this.

  What am I saying?

  That might put me out of a job.

  I hope the town and the county always buy the cheapest appliances. I like to eat, and I’m saving up to visit Catania, Sicily, one day.

  After carefully peeling off the dirty, thin filter, I see a wall of ice on the evaporator. Because the filter is filthy and there’s little airflow going through it, the air conditioner thinks it’s a refrigerator instead of a dehumidifier. After taking the filter to the restroom to soak in the sink in some soapy water, I carefully chip away all the ice from the evaporator. I return to the restroom to wash a year’s worth of dust off the filter and dry it as best as I can. In forty-five minutes, I have that old Roper blowing much cooler air.

  “Thank you, Gio,” Thomas says. “That feels a whole lot better.”

  “Keep your filter clean,” I say. “When it gets dusty, the whole thing freezes up. Shake it out and wash it at least once a week in weather like this.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “And I have to charge y’all for a full hour this time.”

  “I’ll start the paperwork.” He pulls a work order from a desk drawer. “That’s all I get to do these days.” He begins filling it out.

  I wipe my face on my sleeve. “How’s the investigation going?”

  “What investigation?”

  “Mr. Simmons’ murder investigation.”

  “How would I know?”

  “Don’t you work here?”

  He slides the sheet to me. “Sign at the bottom.”

  I sign the sheet with a flourish. “Well?”

  “Gio, I’m a lowly deputy on desk duty. I get to sit here, play solitaire on the computer, and answer the phone that rarely rings.”

  “Didn’t you do that at night, too?”

  “Yeah, but the pay was better.”

  I lean on the edge of his desk. “Hey, at least you’ll get to see your kids more often. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “With less money to spend on them,” he says. “Real good.”

  “So how is the investigation going? Am I still a suspect?”

  Thomas sighs. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Cuz Sheriff Morris thinks you’re smart,” Thomas says. “Everybody knows you’re smart. You’re the smartest person anybody knows. The sheriff says you could have drowned Tiny in his living room and made it look like he died of natural causes. He also said you could have worked with that Riva guy to change the will in your favor.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “That’s what I said,” Thomas says.

  “I need to talk to Sheriff Morris right now,” I say.

  “No you don’t,” Thomas says. “He’s not even on the case anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Sheriff Morris washed his hands of the whole mess. He was on vacation when it happened, and he said to let the state police handle it.”

  “Doesn’t Gray County have jurisdiction?”

  “That’s what I asked, too,” Thomas says. “But Sheriff Morris found out that about half an acre of Mr. Simmons’ property was in Calloway County, so he says that entitles the state police to the case. Wasn’t but a sliver of an acre, maybe two trees, a stump, and a rock.”

  “But the murder happened in Gray County, Thomas.”

  Thomas shakes his head. “Sheriff Morris said it’s not conclusive that he drowned here.”

  “Oh, come on, Thomas,” I say. “As if someone is going to drown a four-hundred-pound man in another county and bring him back here.”

  “We think alike, Gio,” Thomas said. “I said pretty much the same thing to the sheriff.”

  “Despite how wrong he is about me, Sheriff Morris should be working the case. You should be working the case.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you want to solve it?”

  Thomas sighs. “You know I do, but lowly deputies on desk duty don’t solve crimes. We play solitaire and answer the phone.”

  “If you solve the crime, you know you’ll be on the front page of the Current. And you’ve been a deputy long enough, Thomas. Solving a case like this could help you run for sheriff this fall and put old do-nothing Morris out of a job.”

  “It takes money to run for office, Gio, and I don’t have any. I live in a trailer. I have alimony and child support to pay, and I’m going to have to bus tables and wash dishes at The Swinging Bridge now to make ends meet because I’m no longer working nights.”

  “When did you start working days?”

  “Yesterday,” he says. “Lucky June thirteenth. Sheriff Morris came back from vacation and demoted me.”

  “Why did he demote you?”

  “Sheriff Morris blamed me for the whole mess.” He turns down the fan and whispers, “He said I should never have called the coroner.”

  I move closer. “Why?”

  “He said I should have gone out there to the farm myself. He said that I should have called him wherever he was, and we would have handled it, not the state police, and
not the coroner in Calhoun.”

  “This from the man who thinks I did it and then gave the case away,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “He actually said ‘handled it’?”

  Thomas nods.

  “A man was murdered,” I say. “You have to do more than only handle it.”

  “That’s what I said,” Thomas says. “I said we owed it to Tiny to find out who killed him.” He throws out his hands. “And here I am. I questioned the sheriff and got put on the day desk.”

  Why would Sheriff Morris want to hush it all up at the beginning and then give the case completely away in the end?

  Thomas checks his watch. “Going on break.”

  “What if the phone rings?”

  “It hasn’t rung all morning,” Thomas says.

  “But what if it does?”

  He sighs. “I’ll leave the door open.”

  We walk outside to a somewhat shady spot on the sidewalk. Thomas lights up a cigarette. “Nasty habit, I know. Keeps me awake, though. I’m not used to working during daylight yet.”

  “Why did Sheriff Morris want to keep things quiet?”

  “I can’t tell you.” Thomas laughs. “I might lose my cushy job. I’m getting pretty good at playing computer hearts, too.”

  “Then don’t tell me directly. Tell me off the record, you know, hypothetically.”

  “Huh?”

  Thomas eventually graduated at the bottom of his class a semester late, but I was desperate for a prom date, and he treated me like a lady when he was a sophomore. That was his problem, however. He liked to treat a number of women like ladies simultaneously. “Tell me what Sheriff Morris said, but don’t use names. Say Mr. X dies …”

  “Who’s Mr. X?”

  “Mr. Simmons.”

  “Wouldn’t he be Mr. S.?”

  Work with me here, Thomas. “If I call him Mr. X, I’m not giving away his name. That’s how you speak hypothetically.”

  “Oh.” Thomas takes a long drag. “Okay, if Sheriff … Q can make it seem like Mr. X died of natural causes, Mr. X’s death isn’t scandalous. That was the word he used. Scandalous.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “Well, Sheriff Z—”

  “Q,” I interrupt.

  “Whatever. So if Mr. X dies peacefully in his sleep or something, there’s no scandal. No gossip. No one saying there was foul play involved because the old man was so old. Easier to keep things quiet that way.”