Long Island Iced Tina

by Maria DiRico

  Mia chortled. “Ha. Not surprised. Is he coming with you today?”

  “Yeah. He did some acting in high school and is great at being sad.” She buckled a black belt around her waist. “You look nice. You got some tours lined up at work?”

  “No. I’m going out to the Island. I’ve got a meeting with the people at the Miller Collection.” Elisabetta raised an eyebrow. “They rent out the place for events,” Mia explained. “I set up a presentation for our offsite catering business but what I really wanna do is poke around and see if I learn anything useful about the heist and Tina’s maybe involvement in it.”

  “You think she was involved?”

  “I do.” Mia swung her legs back and forth. The old wicker creaked a warning, and she stopped.

  “Va bene, but be careful. I don’t trust rich people. They got enough money to do whatever they want. They kill someone and then pay a lawyer a million bucks to get them off.”

  “I don’t think that’s always true.”

  “It’s true enough times for you to watch your back.”

  Mia’s phone signaled an incoming text. She checked it and stood up. “Jamie’s here. He’s going with me.”

  “Good.”

  “We’re using it as a driving lesson.”

  Elisabetta made the sign of the cross. “Nonna, that’s not nice,” Mia scolded.

  “Nice or not, I want Il Dio in the car with you. And I bet Jamie does, too.”

  Mia huffed out of the house and scurried down the front stoop to where Jamie and the brown beater car were parked. He lowered the driver’s side window. “You look great.”

  “Thanks.” Mia allowed herself a frisson of pleasure at the compliment. She waited for him to exit the car. He didn’t move. “Aren’t we gonna trade places? Me driving, you in the passenger seat?”

  “Not until we get off the expressway.” He patted the seat next to him. “Andiamo.”

  Mia stomped around to the side of the car and pulled open the passenger’s side front door. “It would be nice if people had a little faith in me,” she grumped.

  “I’m willing to give you another lesson after the last one,” Jamie said. “I’d call that faith.”

  Jamie took off, following a labyrinth of local roads until he reached the Long Island Expressway. A half hour later, they exited the Island’s main artery. “Now?” Mia asked, impatient with anticipation.

  “Not yet. Too much local traffic.” Mia muttered in Italian. Jamie glanced at her, amused. “Ouch. That’s some mouth you got on you.”

  They drove through a series of shopping districts and strip malls. Eventually the road took a turn toward residential. As they drove closer to Millville, with its tony Gold Coast location on the north shore of Long Island, the homes and their plots of land grew larger by the square footage and acreage. Jamie pulled over. “Now you can drive.”

  “About time,” Mia grumbled. “I thought you’d accidentally forgotten.”

  The two got out of the car and switched positions. Mia buckled herself in. She put her foot on the gas and the car shot forward, as it had the first time that she drove it. She slammed on the breaks. “I know, I know. Slowly.”

  Mia eased the car onto the road, alternating between braking and accelerating. Luckily, traffic was light to nonexistent. She assumed everyone who serviced the mansions they passed was already gardening, butler-ing, or maid-ing. “This is like America’s Downton Abbey,” she said.

  “Uh huh.” Jamie looked slightly green around the edges. “Make a left at the next gate.” He pointed a short distance ahead. “There.”

  “Already?” Mia protested. “I hardly drove.”

  “We got you out on the road. Let’s consider that progress.”

  Mia shot Jamie a nasty look but did as she was told. She made a left at an ornate black iron gate framed by tall, gray stone pillars. A road composed of powdered oyster shells split around a guardhouse made of the same gray stone. A uniformed guard motioned for her to stop. “Hi there,” he said, his tone not unfriendly but definitely officious. “Name and ID please. For both of you.”

  “Oh,” Mia said, worried. “I’m meeting Larkin Miller-Spaulding. My friend Jamie here drove me. I didn’t mention that, so he’s not on the list. He’s teaching me to drive, and we thought this would be a good opportunity to practice on your beautiful local roads.” She followed this with her sunniest smile.

  “I don’t think he needs your life story,” Jamie said under his breath as the guard disappeared into his small stone house.

  “Sometimes adding a personal touch helps,” Mia said, with a hint of attitude.

  The guard appeared in the guardhouse doorway. “You’re good to go. The house is about a half mile down.”

  He waved them along. Mia, trying not to gloat, carefully accelerated. She drove for a while, and then pulled to the side of the road. “I don’t want to show up in this junker. I’ll walk from here.”

  Jamie jumped out of the car before Mia could open her door. “No problem. It’ll give my stomach a chance to settle. I’ve never been carsick before. It sucks.”

  They agreed to meet in the Miller Collection parking lot, and Mia took off, her high heels making it difficult to negotiate the uneven roadbed. After what felt like the longest walk of her life, the Miller mansion finally came into view. Mia stopped and took in the breathtaking sight. The palatial home, a magnificent piece of architectural history dating back to the Roaring Twenties, was designed to look like a castle, and just as large. It was surrounded by manicured gardens that ended at acres of woods. In the distance, Long Island Sound served was the estate’s backyard, lapping at the massive compound’s shore. To the right of the home was a newer building that mirrored the style of the original house. Mia saw a discreet sign over the building’s door and followed a path that led her to it. The sign read THE MALCOM MILLER ART COLLECTION.

  Mia took out a compact and checked her makeup. The breeze wafting in from the Sound was far cooler than the muggy air of Astoria, but the walk on the oyster bed had made Mia perspire. She dabbed on some powder and knocked on the door. No one answered. Mia waited, then knocked again. Still no response. Please don’t tell me I got the date wrong, Mia thought, heart hammering. She peered through a window into what looked like a museum. “Hello,” she called out, despite guessing this was fruitless. Left with no other choice, she trudged over to the massive carved wood door of the main house. She was searching for a doorbell when the door opened silently. A young Hispanic woman wearing a maid’s uniform gave a slight nod and gestured for Mia to follow her.

  They wandered through spectacular rooms boasting carved paneling, beamed ceilings, and antique furnishings, and ended up in a glass-walled conservatory. The room, while beautiful, was claustrophobic with humidity. A middle-aged woman with a helmet bob of platinum hair and the kind of sharp features that were more striking than pretty sat at a wrought-iron, glass-topped table, her pale gray eyes glued to a laptop screen. Across from her sat a man of similar age. Mia could tell he’d once been handsome, but now his face had the florid cast of a heavy drinker. He sipped from what looked like a Bloody Mary. After delivering Mia to the room, the maid departed without saying a word. The woman at the wrought-iron table closed her laptop and stood up. The man didn’t. “You must be Mia Carina,” the woman said, extending a hand for a perfunctory shake. “I’m Abigail Miller. This is my husband, Spencer Spaulding.”

  The man responded with an amused smile tinged with superiority, and a little wave. “Hello, there.”

  Mia had done her homework on the Miller family. She knew Abigail was the CEO of the Miller hedge fund and the brains of the operation. Her husband was retired, although Mia could never track down from what. Whereas Abigail wore a navy pantsuit that reeked of expensive tailoring, her husband was clad in bright-white tennis togs. Mia got the impression he spent more time in a clubhouse than on the court. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” she said, doing her best to tamp down her Queens accent.

&n
bsp; “The Collection is really our daughter’s bailiwick,” Abigail said, the timbre of her voice low and in Mia’s mind, boarding school-y. Mia took a guess that “bailiwick” meant area of expertise. “She apologizes for keeping you waiting. She’s on the phone with Sotheby’s confirming a purchase she made at last night’s auction.”

  “Sotheby’s is a famous auction house,” Spaulding said.

  “I know. I’ve been there many times.” Mia had never set foot in the place and wouldn’t be able to tell the superior man where it was if he threatened to hit her over the head with the tennis racket collecting dust in a corner of the fancy room. But no way was she going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that.

  Spaulding sipped on his drink. “We had our people research your place. We were a bit concerned about getting involved with the Mob but couldn’t resist meeting a real-live mafia princess.”

  “Spencer, that’s rude,” his wife scolded. “Don’t be an ass.”

  “I apologize,” he said with a mock bow to Mia. “And don’t worry, it would never stop us from renting out the Collection and squeezing a few more dimes out of Malcolm’s ego fest.”

  “Ignore him,” his wife said. “He gets like this when he’s had a few drinks.”

  It’s ten in the morning, Mia thought to herself. “I want to make it clear that Belle View Catering is a completely legitimate enterprise,” she said in her most professional voice. “If you’re interested in our services, I can provide you with a long list of references from satisfied customers, all of whom are upstanding citizens.”

  A mousy-looking woman around Mia’s age hurried into the room. Her light-brown hair, scraggly at the ends, was half up and half down, a non-hairstyle that telegraphed she’d either run out of time or interest. Given her utilitarian outfit of a shapeless gray jersey tunic over leggings in the same shade, Mia’s money was on the latter, an assumption enforced by the woman’s footwear, which were the kind of sneakers New Yorkers wore during a transit strike when they had to traipse miles to the office, where they could put on their nice shoes. “Are you Mia?” the woman asked. “I’m Larkin. Sorry I’m late. I had to take a call. It’s a long walk here from my bedroom.”

  In this house? I bet. “No worries,” Mia said in a cheery voice. “I had a nice chat with your parents.”

  Larkin snorted. “Like that’s possible.”

  “Larkin, do not start,” her mother said with a strained expression on her face.

  “There’s a waste of family therapy.” Spaulding polished off his drink.

  Larkin glared at her father, then focused on Mia. “Come on, I’ll show you the Collection.”

  The Collection’s director took Mia’s hand. Mia found the intimate gesture unsettling, but she was determined to gather clues about the infamous art heist, so she let Larkin lead her out of the house. The oyster shell path crunched under their feet as they walked to the building where the current collection was housed. When they reached the steel front door, instead of using a key, Larkin held her thumb up to a pad under the doorknob. “Fingerprint recognition,” she explained, opening the door.

  They walked into an expansive space lit by natural light. The walls were bright white, the floors ash, the temperature perfectly climate controlled. Track lighting focused attention on art hung on the walls and sculptures in the center of the room. “My babies,” Larkin said, her voice cracking with emotion. She walked Mia through the Collection, jabbering in minute detail about each piece. Mia recognized some names: Picasso, Pollock, Lichtenstein. The rest of the artists meant nothing to her, nor did the convoluted processes they went through to achieve what looked to Mia like the doodling she did when she was bored out of her mind during high school classes.

  After half an hour of artistic minutia, Larkin finally, blessedly stopped talking. “So that was our first room,” she said.

  Mia’s heart sank but she tried to cover. “There’s more?” she said, hoping to sound enthusiastic. To sell it, she added, “Yay.”

  Larkin, fired up with excitement, nodded so vigorously she knocked her eyeglasses askew. “We have four more rooms.”

  I’m gonna be here forever, Mia thought. Jamie will kill me.

  Larkin’s face clouded with anxiety. She nervously adjusted her eyeglasses. “Don’t hate me, but two of the rooms are closed because we’re hanging a new exhibit. ‘AIDS and the Art of the Eighties.’ We have several Basquiats and Harings and the work of less well-known artists who passed away before the world discovered them.”

  “It sounds great,” Mia said with sincerity.

  Larkin beamed. “It will be. But we have an art installation in the next room I can show you. Wait until you see it. The piece is site-specific and forces you to question everything you know about modern life.”

  Mia followed Larkin into a pitch-black room, almost tripping over something as they entered. Mia looked down and saw an empty takeout container. “What’s this garbage doing here? I’ll throw it out for you.”

  She bent down to pick it up. “No!” Larkin screamed, grabbing her arm. “That’s part of the installation.” She pushed a button and a row of spotlights illuminated a trail of trash leading to a tombstone. A blow-up sex doll with its head replaced by a globe of Earth had its arm draped over the tombstone. Water meant to be tears, but dyed blood red, streamed down the globe’s face, such as it was. An old speaker like the one from the nineteen-seventies that Mia’s father still had in his living room, played a soundtrack of moaning and weeping.

  “This is called Earth???? With four question marks.” Larkin spoke with reverence. “To make you think. If you want to absorb it, I can leave you in here alone for a while.”

  “No! I mean, I would love to, but I do need to get back to Belle View eventually.”

  “Oh,” Larkin said, disappointed.

  She flipped off the light. Mia followed her back into the main room, blinking and squinting as they transitioned from darkness into sunny brightness. “The installation is wonderful,” she lied. “All of the art is. This is a fantastic venue, Larkin. I have, like, a million ideas for what we could serve at an event here.” The last part was the truth. Mia could envision fantastic parties in the sleek building. She glanced around the room and noticed a blank spot on the wall. Here was her chance to shift the conversation to the art heist. “I see that spot over there is blank. Someone told me a bunch of paintings were once stolen from here. Is that where one of them used to be?”

  Larkin grew rigid. Her face flushed. She worked her jaw as if trying to manage her emotions. Then she gave up and burst into tears. “Hoop and Boy,” she sobbed. “They stole Hoop and Boy.”

  Mia, discomfited, gave Larkin an awkward pat on the shoulder. “There, there.” It was a lame response, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Boy was the sibling I never had,” Larkin cried. “That painting spoke to me.” Given the woman’s oddness, Mia wondered if she meant this literally. “And it’s lost forever. It was my painting brother.”

  Mia continued to pat the distraught woman on the shoulder. “That painting was by Ferdinand Vela, right?” Mia impressed herself by picking up a theme to the painting’s titles.

  “Yes.” Larkin fell into a chair that Mia had assumed was a sculpture and buried her face in her hands. Her body heaved with sobs.

  “You know, another one of his paintings just showed up, Cow and Woman.” Mia decided not to go into detail with the emotionally fragile art aficionado about the painting suddenly appearing at Belle View. “I heard it was stolen in the big robbery here.”

  “Yes, the police called about that.” Larkin lifted her head. She took a few gulps of air and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “It’s ours. We’ll get it back as soon as they confirm provenance.”

  “For that painting to appear out of nowhere after all these years, I bet it’s a sign that the other paintings are going to be found, too. Including Hoop and Boy.”

  “I hope.” Larkin stood up. She balled up her fists.
“When I find whoever stole that painting,” she said, eyes glittering with anger, spitting fury into each word, “I’m going to tie them to the hitch on my mother’s Range Rover, drive them over a bed of hot rocks, and have people watch them die like it’s an art installation.”

  “Mm hm,” Mia said. “So . . . I’d like to come back and set up a tasting.” She pulled a tablet out of her purse-slash-tote bag. “I have photos of some sample arrangements we’ve created specifically for the Miller Art Collection. Let me show you.”

  Larkin expression cleared like she had flicked on one of the building’s hi-tech light switches. “You don’t have to. I can tell you’re an art lover. You’re in.” Larkin was now all business. “Come to the opening of our new exhibit. You’ll get a sense of how the space works as a venue and see if you need to make any adjustments for Belle View’s offsite catering services.”

  “I would love that,” Mia said, pocketing her tablet.

  They left the rarified air of the Collection and emerged from the building. “Thank you so much for the tour,” Mia said. “It was . . .”

  She pressed her hands together as if praying and looked up toward the heavens. Larkin responded with a knowing smile. “Art. It’s a religious experience, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. An experience.”

  The two women went their separate ways. Mia checked to make sure Larkin was out of sight, then took off her heels and ran toward Jamie, with the oyster shells that hadn’t been ground into dust cutting her feet. “Ow, ow, ow, ow.” She jumped into the car and pulled the door shut. “Let’s get out of this looney bin.”

  “Wow. That’s a reaction.” Jamie tossed the textbook he’d been reading into the backseat and gunned the engine.

  “You remember Crazy Teeth Franky? How he got those dental implants and then swore they’d put another person into him who was talking through his new teeth?”

  “Sure. He got sent to a place upstate. I hear they take good care of both of him.”