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

by J. J. Murray

  I like Rinaldo’s honesty. My papa was a large man. Mama liked to cook, and Papa liked to eat. Nonno is a large man, too. I have to answer Rinaldo now so he doesn’t have a pity party all day about what he thinks I think about his weight.

  Naturally, my call goes straight to voicemail.

  Grr.

  “Rinaldo, I have no trouble with your size.”

  Should I tell him I have spent my life around big men? Not yet.

  “I would eat your cooking even if you were a skinny chef. As long as you’re happy and healthy, what does weight matter? Hey, I could write a diet book called Healthy and Happy: Why Your Weight Doesn’t Matter. It would probably sell millions. I know I could keep you busy, though. There are plenty of mountains to climb around here, and we could even walk the Appalachian Trail.”

  What am I saying? Even I don’t like to walk the AT.

  “I don’t want to sound pushy, but could you please leave your phone on? I have to talk with you. This phone tag is getting old, you know. So leave your phone on so we can talk back and forth without twenty-four-hour dead spaces. And if you don’t …”

  I can’t give him an ultimatum.

  “If you don’t, I’ll understand. But I’ll pout all day. I’m pouting right now. My lower lip is almost touching my chin. It is not an attractive look. You don’t want me to look unattractive, do you? And at my age, if I pout too long, I’ll be stuck forever in a pout. I tell you what. If I have to leave another message, I will …”

  What will I do?

  “I will camp out next to the buffalo field after dark where I will be eaten by mosquitos and buzzed by moths until you call to leave your nightly voicemail. You don’t want me to be eaten by mosquitos or buzzed by moths, do you?”

  I sound so desperate.

  “Oh, Rinaldo, call me today, please?”

  I end the call.

  I am so pitiful.

  I look down at Lovie. “I’m pitiful, aren’t I?”

  Lovie wags her body.

  I kneel and hold her close.

  I wish I hadn’t.

  The skunk rut continues.

  After an hour-long bath, most of two bars of soap, and half a bottle of shampoo, I don’t smell as skunky.

  I am so tired of being skunked.

  Today I am going to get some answers.

  On the way to the repair shop, I call Captain Downs at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation Field Office in Calhoun. After a series of transfers, I hear his voice.

  “Gio, hi,” Captain Downs says. “It’s good you called. I wanted you to know that we’re about to close the Simmons case.”

  No way! “You found out who did it? Was it Melville Taylor?”

  “No, Gio,” Captain Downs says. “We don’t think anyone did it. Dr. Henritze now thinks Mr. Simmons died from natural causes.”

  What? “But he was so sure Mr. Simmons drowned.”

  “Henritze took a lot of flak in the media for his initial assessment,” Captain Downs says. “People rarely drown in their living rooms, right?”

  If they have pulmonary edema, they can. “So the media changed his mind?”

  “Our lack of evidence helped him change his mind, Gio, and believe me, we looked. You saw us spinning our wheels at the creek.”

  “That was a circus.”

  “It’s a circus I’m having trouble living down, too. You wouldn’t believe what that cost the department. And you won’t see any kind of retraction in the paper or on TV because Dr. Henritze is never wrong.”

  And that won’t help me at all. People will still think I did it. “What are his reasons?”

  “Mr. Simmons was old. His lungs filled up with fluid. Henritze thinks Mr. Simmons drowned in his own juices. It sometimes happens to old people.”

  “Did you at least interrogate Melville Taylor?”

  “We talked to him, okay? And his alibi held up.”

  “He just happened to be at Pine Lake four hundred miles from his New Jersey home the day before his grandfather died.”

  “Trust me, Gio. His alibi is ironclad.”

  “Who was he allegedly delivering a boat to?” I ask.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he delivered a twenty-one-foot Bayliner to a very young woman.”

  Ew. Sponge Mel Sweaty Pants has a mistress. She must be blind.

  “But I didn’t tell you that, Gio.”

  “Tell me what?” I laugh. “Did the boat happen to have a name?”

  He laughs. “The boat’s name was Genevieve.”

  That’s an old name for a young woman. “I’ll bet Mrs. Taylor wasn’t too pleased about Genevieve.”

  “Nope.”

  “Serves him right.” Melville may get a worse punishment than jail out of this. “But what about Mr. Simmons’ wedding ring?”

  “Yeah, we looked into that, too. We suppose it could have fallen off anywhere on that property.”

  “Mr. Simmons told me he couldn’t take it off. I think someone took it.”

  “Why would someone take a seventy-year-old wedding ring? It couldn’t have had much value.”

  “Have you checked pawnshops in Calhoun?”

  “There’s no point, Gio. There are hundreds of places that ring could be. He might have dropped it down the sink doing the dishes. I did that once.”

  “It was a very big ring, and I’ve already talked to Fernando Flores about it. He lives there now, and he hasn’t seen it either.”

  “Maybe Mr. Simmons sweated it off and it’s somewhere in the field.”

  “Or someone took it for sentimental reasons. Maybe one of his daughters.”

  “Gio, you have to let it go. We are officially closing this case.”

  “So I’m officially not a person of interest or a suspect anymore,” I say.

  “Right.”

  “But no one will know that because it won’t make the papers or TV,” I say. “Do you see what I’m getting at? Unless there’s something in the paper about me being totally innocent, the court of public opinion in Gray County will still think I’m guilty.”

  “I’ll call Hanley Hanson and give him a statement,” Captain Downs says.

  “But Hanley is one of the main people who think I’m guilty,” I say.

  “I’ll try to convince him otherwise, okay?”

  “And when Hanley doesn’t run your statement?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Gio.”

  “I have to worry about it, Captain Downs,” I say. “I live here. My livelihood depends on my customers trusting me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Captain Downs says. “I can be very persuasive.”

  I’m going to worry about it anyway.

  An hour later with my hair up under an old Massey-Ferguson hat, heavy leather gloves on my hands, safety glasses over my eyes, and a mask over my mouth, I feel much better because I am in my element. I use a dual-action sander with 80-grit sandpaper to remove significant rust on the Chevy’s running boards. There must have been a leak in the barn roof. When I think I’ve sanded all I can, I take a magnifying glass to inspect the metal. I still see rust pitted into the steel. Rust is like a cancer, and if you don’t get it all, it will come back. I switch to a metal grinder and put on my welding mask because there will be plenty of sparks. I grind carefully because this grinder can cut through steel in seconds. When I think I’ve removed all the rust, I inspect the running board. There isn’t much metal left in spots, but I think I have “killed” the rust.

  Nonno rushes in from the workroom. “Giovanna, did you hear?”

  I flip up my mask. “About Mr. Simmons suddenly dying of natural causes?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I called Captain Downs, and he told me.” I take off the mask and wipe my face with a shop towel.

  “This is excellent news, yes?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But you are not happy.”

  “No. I still think Mr. Simmons was too healthy to die, and it’s too much of a coincidence that he
died on the day he updated his will.” I hang up the grinder and start sweeping the floor.

  “Gio, life is full of coincidence. Death is full of coincidence. If your papa had left the house only five seconds earlier or five seconds later, he would still be alive.”

  “I know, I know.” Wrong place, wrong time.

  He takes the broom from my aching and vibrating hands. “You need my help.”

  “I can sweep a floor, Nonno.”

  “I want to help.”

  Because he’s not busy in the workshop. “Where’s Louise?”

  He shrugs. “I delivered her clock to her.”

  “You did? Why? You said it would take many months.”

  “I finished early,” he says.

  “Does that mean Louise won’t be around as much?”

  “I do not think she will be around at all,” he says. “You were right. Louise talked too much, and her cake was only good for dipping in milk. So dry.”

  I shouldn’t smile or laugh, but I can’t help it. “You broke up with her?”

  “What is this breaking up business? We were never together. You did not like her anyway because she was not your nonna.” He begins to sweep. “You work on the interior.”

  I open the passenger side door and slide in. Even though the seat is only four inches thick, it’s still springy. The dash appears solid, the steering wheel has only a little play, and the glove box is still stuck. I pry it open with a flat-head screwdriver.

  A pile of old letters spills out of the glove box into my lap and onto the floor.

  Each 3½ by 5-inch envelope is addressed to “Freddy Simmons, The Simmons Farm” and still contains a folded letter.

  The return address is “Dodie Simmons, P. O. Box 19.”

  What in the world?

  Dodie wrote a lot of letters. After I pull some out from as far back as the firewall, I count two hundred and eleven letters.

  Who writes that many letters?

  And who hides them in the glove box of a 1941 Chevy pickup truck that’s been sitting in a barn for over seventy years?

  I slide out of the truck, get an old wooden milk crate I sometimes use as a chair, and dump the letters inside it. I carry the crate to an empty worktable in the workshop and begin sorting them by date.

  Nonno walks in carrying the broom. “What are those?”

  “Letters Dodie wrote to Mr. Simmons,” I say. “I found them in the glove box.”

  He picks one up. “Dodie Simmons? She has been Dodie Loney all of her life. They were never married.”

  “I know, Nonno.” I take the letter from him. “It’s called wishful thinking.” I once wrote “Giovanna Marie Bryan” five hundred times in a notebook … and gave my hand a cramp.

  “What are you going to do with them?” He picks up another letter.

  I snatch it back. “I’m going to put them in order.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to, okay?”

  He backs away. “I am sorry I asked.”

  I sigh. “I’m sorry, Nonno. I could use your help.” I grab a stack of letters. “Sort these by the postmark.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He pulls up a stool. “And if I cannot see the postmark?”

  I get him a magnifying visor and settle it onto his head.

  “And if I get curious and want to read one of these?” he asks.

  “Later, Nonno.”

  “Okay. You are the boss. Oh look, a three-cent stamp. I have not seen one of these—”

  “Nonno.”

  “I am sorting, I am sorting.”

  After half an hour of creating piles by year and putting each year in chronological order, we find that the letters started in July1946 and ended in May 1987. Dodie wrote to him for over forty years! I pull out and unfold the first letter dated July 7, 1946.

  Nonno looks over my shoulder. “Such poor penmanship. Can you read it?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It says, ‘Freddy, you sure looked handsome in your wedding suit. I wish that was me standing beside you. Did you see me? I wore my best dress just for you. I know I wasn’t invited, but I missed you so much, Freddy. I dream about you every night. Do you dream about me? I love you, Dodie.’”

  “Dodie wrote to a married man after his wedding,” Nonno says. “Why?”

  “To try to win him back,” I say.

  “But she did not win him back,” Nonno says.

  I nod. “But she sure didn’t quit trying.” For forty years!

  I pull a letter from the 1950 pile. “‘Freddy, Blanche is looking so fat and ugly! She should stop eating her own cooking, and you should stop getting her pregnant. Do you ever think of me? I still dream about you every single night. Come back to me, Freddy. I will always love you, Dodie.’”

  Nonno peers at the letter. “She did that one on a manual typewriter with a flying letter E, perhaps an Underwood. I could have fixed that.”

  I pull and scan several other letters, one typed on Gray County Health Department stationery. “Did Dodie work for the health department?”

  “Yes,” Nonno says. “She was the receptionist for a time. She gossiped too much to keep her job, or so I hear.”

  “You heard gossip that she gossiped too much,” I say.

  He rolls his eyes. “Louise told me.” He taps the stack from the 1980s. “You have noticed when the letters end.”

  “About the time Blanche died,” I say. “Dodie finally had Mr. Simmons all to herself.”

  “And they were hidden all these years in that glove box,” Nonno says. “A strange place for Mr. Simmons to hide them from his wife.”

  “Yeah.” Wait a minute. “Or for his wife to hide them from him.”

  “Why would Blanche hide them? Why would she not destroy them?”

  “Especially after reading them.” Why would Blanche save them? “I don’t know why either of them would have saved these letters.” This is a puzzle. “Okay, let’s assume Mr. Simmons saved them. Why would he have done that?”

  “I have never had this problem,” Nonno says.

  Nor have I. “If Mr. Simmons loved his wife, and I believe he loved her very much, he would have destroyed them or thrown them out without reading them. But someone opened and read these letters, and if it wasn’t him, it had to be Blanche.”

  “Why would Blanche read these?”

  “Maybe to see what her competition was up to,” I say. “Dodie was much younger than she was.”

  “Yes,” Nonno says. “By twelve years.”

  “Dodie was hot to trot, and Blanche didn’t want to lose another man.”

  “That is right. Blanche’s first husband Larry died in the war.”

  “Blanche read her husband’s mail to keep an eye on him and Dodie. I suppose it’s kind of like checking your significant other’s emails. You read them, but you don’t destroy them.”

  “But would Mr. Simmons have seen these letters, too?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s possible.” Even probable. Only he could have put these letters in the glove box, right? “Nonno, back in the old days, did folks have to come to the post office to collect their mail?”

  “Yes,” he says. “We all had post office boxes. There was no door-to-door mail service.”

  “Before Blanche died, the only time I saw Mr. Simmons was at church,” I say. “I don’t think I ever saw him in town. Did you?”

  “Not often. At church always.”

  So Mr. Simmons came to town on Sundays … when the post office was closed. “Did you see Blanche in town?”

  “Oh, all the time. She loved coming to town. I fixed a yellow Hamilton Beach stand-up mixer of hers once. Fifteen speeds. Oh, and a Maytag wringer washing machine. She brought fresh milk to the general store every day except Sunday.”

  “She drove the milk in.”

  “Oh yes. She was a much better driver than Tiny was. He did not see so well.”

  “So Blanche had to be the one to collect their mail,” I say. “She would have seen these letters
first.”

  “And yet she saved them all these years,” Nonno says. “I will never understand women.”

  It goes both ways, Nonno. “So Blanche intercepted them, read them, and then put them here in this truck.” Or he did. This is so confusing! But why would Blanche put them in the glove box? Think! “She put them in the truck … where she knew Mr. Simmons would never look. She knew her husband let rusting things lie.”

  “But we already know he took great care of the truck,” Nonno says.

  “Right.” I shake my head. None of this makes sense! “Unless she saved them to use against him. These letters were proof of something going on with Dodie. But Nonno, this truck is not a rust bucket. It’s rusty on the running boards, yes, but otherwise it’s fine. If he really wanted it to rust into dust, he would have parked it outside the barn. Why would it sit unused in that barn all these years?”

  Nonno snaps his fingers. “They got a 1947 Buick Roadmaster. Four doors. Very sharp. Not much power, but more room for their children to ride in than in his truck.”

  “And yet he kept the truck running in top condition,” I say. “Why?”

  “He loved his truck.”

  Around Gray County, this is an acceptable reason that ends most arguments. “Okay, so if Blanche collected and read these letters, who collected the rest?”

  “You think there are more?”

  “Dodie had been writing to Mr. Simmons for over forty years,” I say. “That’s a hard habit to break. Mr. Simmons would have gotten his own mail after she died, right?”

  “I hardly saw him after Blanche died,” Nonno says. “When his Ford flatbed died in town, he had nothing but a tractor to drive. I offered to fix the Ford for him, but he refused. He was very good at refusing me.”

  “When was that?”

  “In the mid-nineties, I think.”

  “When everyone in Gray County was required to have a mailbox at their residence.”

  He nods.

  “So Mr. Simmons would have gotten the rest of Dodie’s letters at his house, and they’re probably still there.”

  “There is the matter of Gray Creek, Gio,” Nonno says. “There are times when a mail truck cannot cross it. He may have kept the post office box in town for that reason. And without a vehicle, he would not have collected his mail. Those letters, if they exist, might still be at the post office.”