Long Island Iced Tina

by Maria DiRico

The Versailles general manager went so pale Mia thought he might pass out. He gripped the edge of the worktable. He closed his eyes and muttered something in Greek. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled and opened his eyes. “It’s late and I have an early start in the morning.” He hurried Mia out of the kitchen, down Versailles’ long hallway, and outside onto the building’s front steps. “Good luck with Belle View.”

  The giant carved double doors closed behind Mia and she heard Garvalos lock them. She was about to summon a ride through the Pick-U-Up app when a linen supply truck drove toward Versailles. As it passed, Mia made out a logo for Quality Control Linen Supply. She ran through a list of local linen supply companies in her head. None sported this name. Mia followed its path with her eyes, watching as it stopped at a side service entrance. The driver hopped out of the truck. He was met at the door by executive chef Sandeep, who pushed a laundry bin toward him. The driver hefted the bin into the back of the truck with ease, indicating it held a light cargo, and pulled down the truck’s roll-up door. Sandeep then strode toward the employee parking lot while the truck driver got back behind the wheel. He backed up the truck, turned it around, and drove away from Versailles. Mia’s skin prickled, the result of suspicious instincts drummed into her from childhood. There could be a logical reason I don’t recognize the linen service, she told herself. But why are they picking up at this weird time? And why just one bin?

  Spooked, Mia tapped in a rideshare request hoping Jamie might respond. He didn’t. A message popped up that a driver would reach her in three minutes. Standing alone in the dying daylight of the quiet park, three minutes never felt longer. Finally, much to her relief, a Queens College student driving an older-model sedan whose back fender was covered with Grateful Dead stickers showed up. “You mind if I change my destination?” she asked.

  “No probs,” her young driver said.

  “Great. Drop me at Salambini’s Pizza and Pasta.”

  “Yes.” The driver pumped the air like his team had just scored a winning run. “Best pizza ever. Okay, now I want a slice. Ride’s on me, my friend!”

  Ten minutes later, Mia had inhaled a wedge of mushroom and sausage pizza that she washed down with a beer. She ordered a second slice, which she ate more slowly. As she crunched on the thick end crust, Mia contemplated the night’s events. There was the odd bin pickup from a mystery linen service. But that was less intriguing than Castor Garvalos’s unexpected reaction to the news of Tina’s death. It indicated to Mia that Tina was more than a client who threw a pricey bash at Versailles to Garvalos.

  The big question was, how much more?

  CHAPTER 7

  Mia returned home. Still hungry, she snacked on Elisabetta’s lasagna while perusing the Versailles website for any clues that might explain Garvalos’s behavior or the mysterious late-night linen service. She found nothing of interest, although she did emit a shocked gasp at the exorbitant cost of the banquet hall’s event packages. At midnight, she gave up the fruitless search and crashed for the night.

  When she woke up, she decided to prioritize her amateur sleuthing. Step one would be a deep dive into the machinations of the Miller Collection heist. She sat down at her desk and flipped open her laptop. Doorstop draped himself over her feet and Pizzazz perched on her shoulder as she called up her original search for stories on the heist. Mia landed on a long story in a leading art magazine and gave it a thorough read.

  Malcolm Miller was a man whose fortune came from “old money.” He’d inherited wealth and added to it through the kind of financial wizardry Mia couldn’t begin to understand. He used a hefty percentage of his millions to amass a huge art collection. Rather than donate it to a museum, he chose to keep it in tony Millville—a town his family helped found two hundred and fifty years ago and was loosely named after them—and built a building to house it on the family’s vast Long Island estate. One night more than twenty years earlier, thieves broke in and made off with a score of paintings, some priceless, some merely worth buckets of money. The security system was conveniently on the fritz that night; a new one was set to be installed the next day.

  Mia heard her grandmother huffing her way up the stairs and stopped reading. Elisabetta appeared in her doorway, followed by Hero. “Marone, I’m getting too old to come up here,” she said, clutching the doorframe for support.

  “I told you to call and I’ll come downstairs to you. What’s up?”

  “I made a frittata for breakfast. Eggs, tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, with some sausage.” Hero, who heard the word sausage so much in the Carina household he was trained to respond to it, barked and wagged his tail. “Minniguccia made the sausage herself as a thank-you for helping to get Linda off the hook with the polizia.”

  “I haven’t done that yet and don’t know if I even can, Nonna. Do me a favor and stop making up stories about how I’m some genius amateur detective.”

  Elisabetta shrugged. “Meh. Can I help it if I’m proud of my granddaughter?”

  “Be proud of me for something else. Like helping to steer Belle View into the black instead of the red. But as long as you’re here and we’re talking about Tina Karras, listen to this.”

  Elisabetta settled down on the foot of Mia’s bed. Hero jumped on the bed and parked himself close to her. Doorstop followed. He playfully swatted at the chubby terrier mix, who wasn’t entertained. Hero growled until Doorstop grew bored and chose to curl up on one of Mia’s pillows instead. “That cat of yours is gonna push my Hero too far one day.”

  “Lucky for Doorstop, he can out-run Hero because that dog of yours is weighed down by all that pasta you sneak him.” Mia turned her attention back to the computer. “I’m reading about the Miller Collection heist. You know, where that painting at the shower came from.”

  “Crazy painting. Who rides a cow?”

  “It’s modern art.”

  Elisabetta made a face and shook her head. “Feh. Gimme a picture of a nice bowl of fruit that looks like fruit.”

  Mia fought back her annoyance at Elisabetta’s digressions. “Si. Bowl of fruit. Got it. Back to the heist. Like I thought, the police suspected it was an inside job. One person involved with it was caught, a man named Liam O’Dwyer.” Mia read from the article on her computer screen.

  “A smalltime crook, O’Dwyer’s assignment was to drive the stolen paintings to a beach parking lot where two masked men transferred the stash to another car. The heist made national headlines. O’Dwyer was nabbed by the police after he got drunk and bragged to patrons about his role in the operation when the story appeared on TV at his local bar. O’Dwyer swore he had no idea who masterminded the theft, and either couldn’t or refused to identify associates in the plot. He’s currently serving a ten-year jail sentence. The paintings were purported to have crossed the Atlantic and made their way into the hands of a European art dealer who was also rumored to be a fence for stolen art goods. Law enforcement has never figured out how the collection of famous and semi-famous paintings was transported from one continent to another.”

  Mia squinted at the date on the article. “This article is fifteen years old, which means O’Dwyer must have completed his jail sentence.” She typed in the ex-con’s name. A list of Liam O’Dwyers from around the world populated her screen. “Well, this isn’t helpful.” Mia checked the time. “Yikes, it’s late. I gotta get to work.”

  “After frittata,” said Elisabetta, who’d assumed a prone position on the bed, with Doorstep at her head and Hero at her feet.

  “Si. After frittata.”

  * * *

  Two helpings of Elisabetta’s frittata meant a bike ride to Belle View to burn off some calories. Mia sliced through the warm summer air on her ten-speed, welcoming the breezes her fast pace engendered. She locked up the bike and made a pit stop in the ladies’ room to fix her hair and makeup, both of which had taken a beating from the wind.

  As Mia brushed her hair, she re-lived the fight between Tina, Minnie, and Linda. She tried to recall Linda’s exact thre
at. Something about weighing Tina down and dumping her in the bay. Considering how close that was to the nasty woman’s actual demise, even Mia had to concede the police were justified in suspecting Nicole’s mother and Ron Karras’s jilted ex. Still, she’d practically grown up with the Karras family. Mia couldn’t imagine the woman who once nursed her through a horrible sunburn and left five-dollar bills under her pillow when she lost a tooth at the Karras house, being driven to murder. She was more of a mother to me than my own mother, Mia thought with a pang in her heart. Gia-formerly-Carina-now-Gabinetti was living in Rome with her second husband Angelo Gabinetti, deported back to his homeland after serving a jail stint for forgery. Mia rarely heard from her mother, a beautiful clinical narcissist. Some people have daddy issues, Mia thought to herself as she refreshed her blush and lipstick. I have mommy issues. Maybe that’s why I feel so attached to Linda. Mia rested her hands on the sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror. “Be honest,” she said to the reflection. “Are your personal feelings getting in the way of reality here?” She shook her head. “No. Remember the painting.”

  “Uh . . . hello?”

  Mia turned to see Evans standing in the doorway. “Oh, hey.”

  “I was looking for you. I thought I heard two people in here.”

  “Just talking to myself,” Mia said to allay the chef’s concerns, whose expression indicated fear about her mental state.

  “Ah. Got it.” He relaxed. “Are we hosting one of those Mommy and Me get-togethers this week?” Belle View had endeared itself to locals by allowing non-profit groups to use their facilities for meetings or meetups during off hours.

  “No. Why?”

  Evans held up a juice box. “Because a few flats of these showed up in the kitchen instead of the industrial-size jugs I asked for. It’s gonna be hard to make an updated version of the Harvey Wallbanger for that seventies-themed class reunion with juice boxes.”

  Mia slapped her hands to her face and cursed. “Benjy. I told him exactly what to get and how to do it, and he effed it up. I’ll talk to him. And get you your jugs.”

  Mia left the bathroom and marched down the hall to Cammie’s office. Benjy was at the desk pounding away at the computer keyboard. Mia didn’t waste time wondering if he was working on Belle View business. “Benjy, you messed up the juice order.”

  He glanced up from the computer, a puzzled look on his face. “I got orange juice like you said.”

  “I told you to get jugs. You got juice boxes.”

  The puzzled look was replaced by a blank stare. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes!” Mia bellowed this. She took a deep breath to calm herself down. “Sorry. I know you’re new to this business. I should have explained things more. The price differential between an industrial-size container of orange juice and those little boxes is huge. When we order industrial-sized supplies, we get the wholesale rate. They’re meant for business, not individual, use. Evans—you remember who he is, right?”

  “Yeah, the black guy.”

  “Oh, please do not describe him like that.” Am I too young to have a stroke? Mia wondered. Then she continued. “Evans is a man of many talents. The latest is coming up with cool drinks for our parties. He’s working on a signature drink for the class reunion this weekend where the theme is the nineteen-seventies. We can’t mix that drink for a hundred people using juice boxes.” Mia mimed ripping open one juice box after another. “You see what I mean.”

  “Kinda.”

  Ohmygod!

  “Put a call in to the supplier,” Mia said, speaking slowly so as not to blow. “Tell them you need to exchange the juice cartons for jugs. Today.”

  “Okay.” Benjy face lit up. “I just got a great idea for a run. What’s the deal with those tiny straws they give with juice boxes? You can never get them into the box. It’s like, why wait until you grow up to fail at something, kids? Learn to fail when you’re a toddler.”

  Mia grabbed the keyboard before Benjy could jot down his brainstorm. “That’s more depressing than funny. Call the supplier. Then you can type.”

  The twentysomething pouted but picked up the phone, and Mia put down the keyboard.

  Rather than return to her office, she went outside and pounded on the stucco-ed back wall of Belle View in frustration. This proved more painful than satisfying. She leaned against the wall, staring out at the marina as she nursed her bruised fists. She thought of Nicole’s late stepmother. “How did you wind up here, Tina Karras?” she murmured. “How? And why? Why here?” A thought suddenly occurred to her. Was it farfetched, or might it offer the answer to these questions? Either way, it was a thought worth running by someone. And she knew exactly who.

  A few hours later, Mia sat across from her brother at the beat-up old metal table in the Triborough Correctional Facility’s visitor’s room. Henry Marcus, a guard who’d grown close to the family due to the multiple incarcerations of the Carina men, leaned against a wall checking his cell phone, casting the occasional perfunctory eye at the duo.

  “So, how was your day?” Posi asked.

  “Are you asking to be polite or are you genuinely interested?”

  “Both, to be honest. It’s the polite thing to do but also, once I get out of here, I’m hoping there’s a spot for me in the new family enterprise. I believe I could charm a lot of business our way.”

  Posi smiled his trademark sexy smile, a smile that Elisabetta once said could charm a nun out of her vows. The comment was extreme, but not wrong. In fact, according to Family rumors, it might also be true. “Consider yourself hired,” Mia said, adding, “if you stay straight. But speaking of hiring, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The most recent addition to the Belle View staff.” Mia shared the backstory of Benjy’s hiring with Posi. “I’m starting to wonder if Benjy is purposely messing things up. Like, is he a plant?”

  Posi furrowed his brow, then stopped. “I gotta remember not to do that, I’ll get wrinkles. But a plant how so?”

  “Maybe Benjy’s grandfather has an ulterior motive for parking his grandson with us.”

  “Such as?”

  “Revenge for something we don’t know about. Or . . .” Mia sat up straight. Was she about to connect some disparate dots? “I met with the general manager of Versailles on the Park. Obnoxious guy named Castor Garvalos. He got together with me because he wants to buy Belle View. He said he had an investor with ‘deep pockets.’ Could it be Vito Tutera?”

  Posi looked doubtful. “Seems like a longshot.”

  “Maybe,” Mia acknowledged. “There’s still a lot of work to be done on the facility, but from a booking angle, Belle View’s looking pretty good these days. I think some of the other Families might be seeing how the catering business could work for them, and not in the laundering money way. As a legit business they can be proud of. But if you wanted to buy us out, you’d wanna do it a low price. Vito could have planted Benjy at our place to mess things up. Business goes down, he swoops in with an offer that we’d have to take or go under.”

  Her brother crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned back in the rickety visitors’ room chair. “Sis, you been reading those Steve Stianopolis books?”

  “No,” Mia said, annoyed at Posi’s patronizing tone. “What I’m saying isn’t so farfetched.”

  “Maybe not. I’ve been out of commission here for a while, so I don’t know what’s going on outside. Hey, Henry. You been listening? What do you think?”

  “I’ve had some of the Tuteras in here before,” the guard said. “Between us, they’re a hinky bunch. But they been quiet lately. Might be like your family right now, you know, trying to play it straight. Or using straight as a cover for something not straight. You never know with these guys.”

  “Amen to that, my friend,” Posi said. “You might wanna wait before running this by Dad, sis. You don’t want to go putting ideas in his head. That could go bad in a big way.”

  Mia sighed. “You’re right. Benjy might just be incompetent
. He doesn’t want to be there, that’s for sure. He’s got this dream of being a comedian.”

  Posi snorted. “Seriously? Have you heard any of his material?”

  Mia wrinkled her nose. “So far, not so good. I wish I could fire him, but the last thing I wanna do is start a war between the Families. I don’t need that.”

  “You don’t, but it keeps us in business,” Henry said, with a chuckle that Posi echoed.

  “Okay, I’ll put that theory on hold. There’s also some major weirdness with the Versailles on the Park staff. This Garvalos guy almost passed out when I told him Tina had been killed. Like, he knew her in some way. And I happened to see a linen company pick up a laundry bin.”

  Posi’s expression was skeptical. “Which happens every day at every party place. How is that a thing?”

  “It’s a thing because it was only one bin at eight o’clock at night, which means overtime, and who wants to pay that? And why a run for one bin? Also doesn’t make sense. Unless you were desperate for those linens, you’d wait until you had a full load and schedule a pickup during work hours. Also, I didn’t recognize the linen company.”

  Her brother stroked his chin. “Now, that adds up to a thing.”

  A cell phone rang. “That’s my ring tone,” Mia said. She had turned her phone over to Henry upon checking into the visitors’ room. “Henry, you mind checking for me to see who it is?”

  “Sure.” Henry checked. “It’s your grandmother.”

  “I’ll call her later. Thanks.”

  Henry declined the call. The phone pinged a text. “Some guy named Benjy says supplier doesn’t have juice jugs, oh, well.”

  Mia uttered an epithet and pounded her fists on the desk. “Now you do think the Tutera angle is a longshot?”

  “A little less so,” Posi acknowledged.

  “Henry,” Mia said, “Can you do me a favor and type, ‘Go to a grocery store?’ Make it all caps with a lot of exclamation marks.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”