by J. J. Murray
But there might be, and until I know for sure, I’m going to keep trying. “I’ll start reading romances from now on, okay?”
“Is not romance also a mystery?”
I smile. “The worst kind.” I hold Nonno close. “I’ll try not to think too much from now on.”
“It is always good to think,” Nonno says. “But not too much.”
I step back from his embrace. “I’m going to get back to work on that truck.”
So I can think some more without him interrupting me.
Chapter 30
After making sure the real glass windows roll up and down smoothly and the door locks work, I use a little WD-40 on the hand winch for the windshield.
Mr. Simmons had locked all the doors of his house. He didn’t have any deadbolts. The doors were locked only at the knob. I’m sure the CSI people dusted the doorknobs—
“Gio!” Nonno yells.
“Yes?”
“You are thinking too much again.”
I pick up and shake a bottle of our homemade glass cleaner—water and a little vinegar, rubbing alcohol, and cornstarch—and spray the windshield, wiping it off with a copy of the Current. “I am not thinking too much, Nonno.”
“Yes you are. Your phone is buzzing.”
My phone is buzzing.
Why is my phone buzzing?
Rinaldo!
I dig it out of my pocket. “Hello?”
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asks.
“No.” Just fixing up a ’41 Chevy and going insane.
“We are slow tonight because of the weather,” he says. “It has rained all day.”
“I wish it would rain here.” I spray the passenger window and wipe it off. “So we can talk like normal people tonight.”
“Yes,” he says. “What are you doing now? I hear squeaking.”
“Washing the windows of a 1941 Chevy pickup truck.”
Nonno pulls down the garage door.
“Hold on, Rinaldo.” I cover the phone. “What are you doing?”
“You will go home now,” Nonno says.
“But we have so much to do,” I say.
He takes the window cleaner bottle and newspaper from me. “Come back tomorrow morning when your mind is clear.”
“But I’m fine.”
He guides me out of the garage to the workshop. “You cannot work and have romance at the same time. Go.”
I uncover the phone. “You still there, Rinaldo?” I leave through the front door of the shop, and Nonno locks the door behind me.
“Yes,” Rinaldo says. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m going home,” I say.
“I can call back later if you like.”
“No, I’d have to talk to you next to the world’s largest buffalo, and the mosquitos can be bad.” I get into the Jeep. “Do you have an unlimited long-distance plan?”
“No.”
“I do. Let me call you back.” I start the Jeep to let the AC wash over me then call him back.
“Hello, Rinaldo’s Kitchen.”
I smile. “You really aren’t busy?”
“No,” he says. “And I received a message this morning about someone wanting to talk to me live. I, too, have wanted to have a live conversation with you.”
“I hope I didn’t sound too pushy.”
“I like pushy,” he says. “I expect pushy from a Sicilian woman.”
“And not an African American woman?”
“Her, too.”
I turn down the AC. “I’m not that pushy.”
“Are you all right? Your voice does not sound as happy.”
“I’m fine. It’s just …” I sigh. “I have to tell you something, Rinaldo.”
“Will it break my heart?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I can take it. My heart is big.”
And I like that about him a great deal. “It’s not like that. About two weeks ago, I was restoring a tractor for a man named Mr. Simmons, and he died. I was the one who discovered his body.”
“That is so sad. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to burden you with it,” I say. “It happened before I heard your voice for the first time.”
“So tell me about it now,” he says.
“Okay. At first the coroner said it was a homicide, and many people around here think I had something to do with it.”
“How can they think this?”
“Well, it’s really because they don’t think,” I say. “Anyway, today the coroner says Mr. Simmons died of natural causes, but I don’t think he did.”
“What are you reasons?”
“You don’t think I should leave well enough alone?”
“No. What are you reasons?”
“Are you sure you want to hear them? My nonno thinks I’m crazy.”
“Let me hear your reasons first,” Rinaldo says. “Then I will decide if you are crazy.”
“Fair enough.”
And then I spill it all and tell Rinaldo about Mayor Parsons, Sheriff Morris, Hen/Philip Parsons, Fernando, Owen, Melville, Bobbie, Billie, and even Dodie Loney, Jack, and Sherry Stringfield. Rinaldo doesn’t interrupt me at all.
“So, Rinaldo, is this our last conversation? Am I crazy?”
“No. You care about Mr. Simmons, a man you only just met. I like that a great deal.”
“I only just met you, too.” Sort of.
“Does that mean you care about me, Giovanna?”
“Yes.”
“I am very glad I called.”
“So am I.” I sigh. “But I should do what Nonno says and let this thing go.”
“You could, but you won’t because you have too many unanswered questions and so do the people in your town. It is like a dish with too many spices. It confuses the palate.”
“Unanswered questions are all I seem to have.”
“Then we will simplify the dish. I have been taking notes.”
“You have?”
“It keeps my hand from shaking because I am nervous talking to you.”
That’s so sweet. “Why?”
“Tu sei la donna più bella che abbia mai visto.”
Oh, and that’s even sweeter, even if he’s wrong. “Rinaldo, I am not the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen because you haven’t seen me yet.”
“I have seen your picture,” he says. “I did an online search and saw you when you were young. You were standing beside this strange looking engine.”
The International Science and Engineering Fair! “I don’t look anything like that now.” And that was nearly thirty years ago!
“But your eyes have not changed, have they? Your eyes are what make you beautiful to me.”
“Thank you.” I am having difficulty breathing. “But it was a black and white picture, wasn’t it?”
“I have a good imagination,” he says. “I saw your hazel eyes. Now, to the questions I have written down. One. Who fed the dog?”
What? “Out of everything I told you, you ask me who fed the dog.”
“It is a question that has not been answered,” Rinaldo says. “Who fed the dog?”
“I don’t know.”
“Question two. Why would someone feed chicken bones to a dog?”
“No one who owned a dog would do that,” I say. “Jack was in serious pain puking them up.”
“So therefore Mr. Simmons did not feed Jack.”
“Okay.”
“Question three. Why did the farmer take a bath and dress up so nicely?”
“He had a two-thirty a.m. meeting with his lawyer.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I find it strange that he put on his best clothes to meet a lawyer who had been around his property for several days. Therefore, the farmer was expecting someone else. Could it have been you?”
“What?”
“Would the farmer have taken a bath to impress you?”
I laugh. “I doubt it.”
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“Whoever he was expecting, it had to be someone he cared about.”
“I guess, but that man didn’t care about anything but his dog, his cows, and his truck.” Where have I heard that before?
“Question four. Why is the phone missing?”
“I think it’s so I couldn’t call nine-one-one, and maybe it had the killer’s or killers’ fingerprints on it.”
“What if the phone was a memento, a trophy?”
“What?”
“It may have been something for the killer to remember Mr. Simmons by.”
That’s absurd! “I don’t know about that.”
“Last question. Where is the ring?”
I look at my own empty ring finger. “Who knows?”
“Someone obviously wanted that ring.”
I want one, too.
“You could say that someone needed that ring.”
I need one, too.
“Don’t you see, Gio? The ring is another trophy.”
“It’s a better trophy than the phone was.”
“I believe that both the phone and the ring are trophies of equal value.”
He’s so sure of himself. I wish I was.
“Thus, Giovanna, all you have to do is find a person who Mr. Simmons cared about who hates dogs and steals phones and wedding rings. Si tratta di un pezzo di torta.”
“A piece of cake, huh? I’d rather have your zeppoli.”
“I also make cassata Siciliana. It is so moist and creamy it will melt in your mouth.”
The things he says! Cassata is a traditional wedding cake. “I will have to taste it one day.”
“Yes. Soon.”
Very soon.
“One moment, Giovanna.”
I have all the time in the world tonight.
“I am sorry, Giovanna. A large group has shown up unexpectedly, and I must go cook now.”
And now I don’t have all the time in the world tonight. I don’t want to let him go! “Call me anytime, okay? I always leave my phone on. Good night, Rinaldo.”
“Vedrò i tuoi occhi nei miei sogni, il mio dolce Giovanna.”
He says he’ll see my eyes in his dreams, and he called me sweet. The man is working on my heart before he even feeds me!
Saturday, June 17
Chapter 31
While Nonno works again on Louise’s grandfather clock, I spend most of Saturday morning timing up the Chevy’s engine so it doesn’t ping or misfire. As I use an old timing light and fiddle with the distributor until this old engine sings new and smoother notes, I realize my life has been like a misfiring cylinder since I found Mr. Simmons’ body.
I need to shed some new light on all this.
My first thoughts about some conspiracy to kill Mr. Simmons made little sense. Il secondo pensiero è il migliore—Second thoughts are the best.
Rinaldo says I have to find a dog-hating person. Everyone I know in this county likes or owns dogs. Okay, donkeys don’t like dogs. Maybe one of the donkeys did it! The donkey with the moustache had a sinister gleam in his eye. Yes. Mustachioed villains usually do the deed. Jack is smart to avoid that donkey. Dodie said Jack was dumb and let anyone come up to the house, that he would eat anything, even a rock. How would Dodie know? She wouldn’t have had a clear view of the homestead from Spectacle Road no matter how good her Bushnell scope is. That’s half a mile away. Maybe Dodie doesn’t like Great Pyrenees.
Or maybe Dodie’s just crazy.
Rinaldo also says I need to find someone who steals phones. Who would steal what was probably a rotary dial phone? Does anyone still own rotary dial phones? Dodie had a rectangular yellow rotary dial phone on her kitchen wall, but that doesn’t prove anything. Those were the style in the 1960s and 1970s, and Dodie is obviously living deep in the past. And a phone like that would be heavy, and Dodie has low iron. At least she says she has low iron, yet she can fire off a Winchester at her feral cat.
I think Dodie is losing it.
Rinaldo says I need to find someone who needs Mr. Simmons’ wedding ring. Who would need Mr. Simmons’ ring? Dodie wanted it all of her life. At the funeral she said, “He should have been buried next to me” and that Fred should have been her son.
Why do I keep coming back to Dodie?
Dodie has—had—dozens of cats as pets. That doesn’t mean she didn’t like dogs. Dodie has a yellow rotary dial phone in her yellow kitchen that just happens to be rectangular. That doesn’t mean she stole it from the Simmons’ homestead. Dodie has wanted to be married to Mr. Simmons for seventy years. That doesn’t mean she would steal his wedding ring.
It can’t be Dodie.
I’m probably only thinking of her because of those crazy letters. Dodie was in a strange love triangle. Sort of. It was more of a “Love L” with Blanche on top, Freddy at the bottom, and Dodie to the right. Blanche and Freddy loved each other, and Dodie loved Freddy. Dodie spent forty years watching another woman have three children with her first love. She waited thirty more years for him to come back to her after Blanche died. She waited seventy years.
And then Mr. Simmons died.
Of allegedly “natural causes.”
But I’m not going to go there.
What a waste of Dodie’s life. I hope that’s not me when I turn eighty-eight.
This engine is really humming nicely now. It might actually go twenty-five miles an hour up that mountain. Timing an engine correctly can make all the difference in the world. I tighten the bolts on the distributor and rev the engine.
Nonno walks into the garage. “It sounds wonderful.”
“It sounds okay,” I say. “At least it sounds different.”
“Different is good,” Nonno says. “How much longer will you be … revving?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I gassing you out?”
“A little.”
I turn off the engine. “Sorry about that.”
“It is okay. What will you do next?”
I shrug. “I want to build up some of the low places on the running boards. It’s Bondo time.”
“Then you will really gas me out. I will close the door. Make sure you use both fans.” He leaves the garage.
Bondo is gray, odoriferous putty used to fill dents and dings, and I really don’t like using it. I look at the running boards, and some parts look thin. I could sneak some sheet metal underneath to make the running boards sturdier, I suppose, and I may have to replace them completely one day no matter how much Bondo or sheet metal I use. I hate to remove original parts if I can save them because someone always notices the difference.
Different isn’t always good.
I sit behind the wheel, shut the door, and close my eyes, thinking back to the two nights I was at The Simmons Farm. On the first night, the cows were near the creek and Jack was all over me. On the second night, Jack wasn’t around, and the cows were all over me. Why was that? The heifer moaned at me because someone needed to milk her. But Mr. Simmons was already dead by then, wasn’t he? He could have milked the heifer after Mr. Daniels left. Someone milked her or she would have been mooing at me both nights, right?
I really should start drinking more milk at my age. When was the last time I had any milk? Oh yeah. I had some warm milk at Dodie’s cottage the day I fixed her “fritzy fridge.”
I open my eyes and grip the steering wheel.
Dodie fed me strong, warm milk the day I “repaired” her refrigerator. The milk tasted as if it were unpasteurized. She called me on D-Day. She wore gardening gloves and was sweaty from working in her yard. A bag of kale, which I now know isn’t good for cats to eat, blocked one of her vents. Did she block that vent on purpose?
Why?
To give her milk an alibi?
That’s ridiculous!
I am definitely reading too many mystery novels. I’ll have to find a romantic comedy to read next.
But wasn’t that milk slightly yellow? Did I taste some cream? Did Dodie give me “fresh-squeezed” milk?
No, her fridge w
as on the fritz. Her milk was going sour.
Wow. My brain is fried. There is no way little Dodie Loney had anything to do with this. She’s eighty-eight, and there is no way she would have or could have “drowned” Mr. Simmons!
You don’t drown your first love, right?
Take Dodie Loney for a ride up to Motts Mountain in this Chevy truck, Mr. Simmons said in the will. Her love letters to him were in the glove box, letters I think Blanche intercepted and hid there. But Mr. Simmons might have found them and read them because he maintained this truck.
Was he hoping that Dodie would open the glove box during our ride to see that he saved her letters all these years? He knew I would open the glove box someday. For whatever reason, Mr. Simmons wanted Dodie to find the letters after he died. Why?
To let her know he had thought about her all those years.
It’s somewhat romantic in a warped and twisted way. Hey, Dodie, I’m dead, but I was thinking about you when I was alive. Sorry I couldn’t do anything about it while I was alive, but now that I’m dead, here’s proof that I cared about you.
My second thoughts are creeping me out.
I need to think some third thoughts.
I take a break and walk out to Motts Creek, which barely trickles past me.
I know Mr. Simmons didn’t really drown but had pulmonary edema. What are some of the causes of that? I use my phone to Google “pulmonary edema” and click on an online article. Pulmonary edema causes shortness of breath, low oxygen levels in the blood, and a cough with frothy sputum.
I didn’t see any frothy sputum that night. Mr. Simmons’ shirt was clean.
I look at the list of possible causes for pulmonary edema: congestive heart failure, kidney failure, collapsed lung, aspirin overdose, and ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome). What causes ARDS? Lung infections, lung trauma, radiation, and the inhalation of toxins.
But Mr. Simmons was healthy as a horse. The air at The Simmons Farm is sweet and clean. He wasn’t huffing and puffing that hot day. And Dr. Henritze surely would have detected an aspirin overdose.
I feel the heat and wish I had brought a bottle of water with me.
Mr. Simmons took a bath. Is that how fluid got into his lungs? It’s possible. He might have swallowed some soapy water by accident. I don’t use Dial because it dries out my skin and makes my skin itch. I can only imagine what that kind of soapy water would do to my lungs. Maybe taking a bath led directly to his death.
