by Maria DiRico
“If you hear anything else,” Mia said, “can you let me know?”
“Will do. And when you see Evans, tell him I have the book. He’ll know what I’m talking about.”
Teri signed off. Ravello tugged on Mia’s sleeve again. “Who died? What happened?”
“Jeez, Dad, chill. You’re like a gossipy tween.” Father and daughter got into Ravello’s Lincoln Continental. “Teri called with news about Justine Cadeau, the art dealer at Nicole’s shower who it turns out that nobody knew. You know how I went to talk to her at her gallery in Manhattan, but she’d disappeared? They found her dead in Switzerland.”
“Marone.” Ravello made the sign of the cross.
“Teri didn’t have any more information than that. At least Ron can’t be a suspect in this case, which is a little good news. As soon as I get home, I’m gonna see if I can find out anything about it online.”
But when Mia got home, her internet search was delayed by an unwelcome event. It was almost nine P.M. Since Elisabetta’s target bedtime was usually eight P.M., she was surprised to find her grandmother and neighbor Philip sitting at the kitchen table, deep in conversation. Elisabetta wore a dress, not her go-to apparel of velour tracksuit, and her best wig. “Hi. Were you guys at another wake?”
Elisabetta, a sober expression on her face, shook her head. “We were about to leave for one, but Minnie called me with bad news. The man from Versailles who got hit on the head got all of his memory back. He said Ron tried to kill him.”
“The charge against your friend was upped to attempted murder,” Philip said.
“Oh, no.” Mia fell into the chair across from Elisabetta. “He’s lying, I know he is. Did Minnie call Mickey Bauer? He’s our lawyer,” she added for Philip’s benefit.
“Your grandmother told me. Mr. Bauer left today for a three-week river cruise of France’s chateau region.”
Mia pursed her lips. “Paid for by our retainers.”
“In my pre-parent life, I was a partner in a law firm,” Philip said. “I still take on cases sometimes. Mostly pro bono. Like this one.”
Elisabetta clutched his hands in hers. “He’s a saint, he is. God made you the way he made you, but oh, if you liked girls . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence, much to Mia’s relief.
“Back to Ron,” Philip, eager to change the subject, said. “After Minnie called Lizzie—”
“Whoa,” Mia said. “She lets you call her Lizzie? She hates that name.”
Elisabetta mimed a lip zip to her granddaughter. “Messina, silenzio.”
“Sorry. Philip, you were saying?”
“After Minnie called Lizzie, Lizzie called me in a panic. Thanks to a 1991 State Supreme Court ruling that mandated a twenty-four-hour deadline for all arraignments, I was able to get Ron’s case handled tonight.”
“That’s how good he is,” Elisabetta said. “Mickey made poor Ron rot in jail for a night.”
“I got lucky,” Philip, all modesty, said. “But they upped Ron’s bail to five hundred thousand dollars.”
Mia held a hand to her heart. “Marone mia.”
“He posted ten percent and put his restaurant up as collateral, so he’s out on bail. But he had to surrender his passport and wear an ankle monitor.”
Mia digested this. “Now that we’re at ankle monitor,” she said, “I don’t think we can keep what’s going on from Nicole anymore.”
“She knows,” Elisabetta said. “Linda had Ian tell her.”
Philip sighed. “So sad. Così triste.” He turned to Elisabetta. “Finn insists we speak only in Italian for an hour every day. He’s such a pisane wannabe. How’s my accent?”
Elisabetta made the half-and-half gesture with her hand. “We’ll work on it.”
Mia retreated to her apartment, where Doorstop greeted her with a demanding meow. She gave him a few tiny treats, then texted Ian to see how Nicole was handling the news about her father. Seconds later, her cell phone rang. “My father didn’t do this,” Nicole wept.
“I know, sweetie.”
“They’re going to try and say he killed Tina, too.”
“They can’t bring a case against him without proof, and they have squat.”
“Oh, Mia. This is the worst time of my life and it should be the best.”
Mia’s heart broke for her friend. “Honey, you need to stay calm and focus on that precious baby of yours. Trust me, people who love you are doing everything they can to find out who’s really responsible for what happened.”
“Like you.”
“Like me.”
Nicole ended the call with a stream of thanks. The instant she signed off, Mia grabbed her laptop and booted it up. “That dirtbag Garvalos is totally full of it,” she said to Doorstop as she deposited herself on the bed. “While the police are figuring that out, we’re gonna follow some actual leads.”
Mia let Pizzazz out of her cage. The parakeet perched on her shoulder as she typed “Justine Cadeau Switzerland” into the search bar on her laptop. No links to news about the art dealer’s death appeared on the screen. Mia assumed Teri was right and Interpol was withholding information on it. “She was either murdered or they must have found a connection to the art theft,” she mused to Pizzazz, who pecked at her shoulder. “Otherwise, why would they care?” Mia canceled the Justine Cadeau search and instead sent Pete Dianopolis an email detailing what she’d learned from Hugo Hartley about Tina’s drug trafficking ruse. She added a “you probably already know this” at the end of the email with the news of Cadeau’s death. With Ron on top of the attempted murder /possible murderer suspect leaderboard, she didn’t want to risk insulting the detective. She got a quick response back from Pete. It was a thumbs-up emoji, which she took as a positive sign. He followed this with a question: “Is Cammie working tomorrow?” Mia wrote back that she hoped so, considering Benjy was gone, but she couldn’t predict anything Cammie might or might not do. To which Pete replied, “TELL ME ABOUT IT!”
Doorstop yawned, inspiring a yawn from Mia. The day had been a long, fraught one. She placed Pizzazz back in her cage and covered it for nighttime. Then she changed into a large sleep tee and crawled under the covers. Doorstop curled up in the crook of her back. Mia loved feeling him snuggled up against her. “You’re my support animal, buddy. Did you know that? You and Pizzazz.” Mia stroked the cat’s orange-gold fur. “So much happened today. So much. I can’t believe I’m only back from Connecticut about five hours. It feels like I was there weeks ago. It’s pretty, that’s for sure. Could you see us living there?” Doorstop responded with a light snore. “I know. Neither can I. Why is that? It’s quiet. It’s more than pretty, it’s gorgeous. What’s wrong with me? I could learn to love it, I guess. I didn’t like Florida when I first got there. Actually, I didn’t like it much better when I left. But that was more about the whole Adam disappearing thing and me being a suspect.”
“Mia!” Elisabetta called from the foot of the stairs. “I hear you talking to someone. Who’s up there with you?”
“No one, Nonna. I’m talking to Doorstop.”
“Marone. You’re turning into one of those crazy cat ladies. You need a boyfriend. Buona notte.”
“ ’Night.” Mia turned off the light on her nightstand. “I don’t need a boyfriend. I’m doing great on my own. Then again . . . I’m still talking to a cat.”
In the morning, Mia did another search for details about Justine Cadeau’s death and again found nothing. She showered and readied for work, then carried a yogurt downstairs, where she found her grandmother using a sturdy pasta machine clamped to the dinette table to crank out homemade fettuccine. “Dinner tonight?” Mia asked.
“Sì, with meatballs I’ll make later.”
Mia opened a drawer and took out a spoon. She removed the lid of her yogurt and stirred the contents. “You’re in your housecoat. No funerals this morning?”
“No,” Elisabetta said with a sigh. “The way things are going, poor Gugliemo’s gonna be barefoot the rest of hi
s life.”
“Technically, his life’s over. You mean for eternity.”
“That sounds even worse.”
Mia finished her yogurt, rinsed out the container, and placed it in Elisabetta’s small recycle bin. She bent down and kissed her grandmother on both cheeks. “I gotta get going. I’m biking to work today.”
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Jamie—”
Mia, defensive, interrupted her grandmother. “He’s got a girlfriend, Nonna. I’d never interfere with that.”
Elisabetta shot her a look. “I was gonna say, with Jamie and the driving.”
“Oh.”
“Posi can teach you when he gets out. That’s not gonna be too long from now.”
“I don’t think anyone can teach me,” Mia said, resigned. “The universe has sent that message in a big way.”
The bike ride to Belle View proved rejuvenating. The day dawned cooler than previous days, which Mia hoped was a harbinger of fall weather. She noticed Evans’s motorcycle in the Belle View parking lot, which reminded her of the message Teri requested she pass on to him. Mia locked up her bike and made her way to the catering hall kitchen, where Evans was washing out a mixing bowl. Mia inhaled the scent in the air, which was a delicious blend of melted butter and chocolate. “Whatever you’re making, I think I gained weight just smelling it.”
Evans smiled. He wiped his hands on a dish towel. “Flourless chocolate cake. That’s the recipe I wanted to try for the bar mitzvah. I already made one. Here.”
The chef cut a slice from a cake cooling on the counter, plated it, and handed it to Mia with a fork. She took a bite and swooned. “Marone. Delizioso. The Wittenbergs are gonna love it.” She cut off a larger forkful. “I talked to Teri Fuoco last night. She wanted me to tell you that she has the book. She said you’d know what she’s talking about.”
“Yeah. Her grandmother’s from Malta and Teri’s gonna lend me the journal where she wrote down all her recipes. Guadalupe and me are talking about putting together menus from countries whose cuisine we don’t get to try too often. She’d do appetizers and the main dishes. I’d do desserts and drinks. Maybe put it out to the community as a monthly event or something.”
“I love this,” Mia said, instantly warming to the idea. “We can partner with local merchants who sell stuff from those countries, like wine and crafts. They can publicize the dinners to their customers.”
“Great.” Evans tended toward the monosyllabic, but his enthusiastic expression spoke volumes.
But I did want to mention one thing.” Mia grew sober. “Be careful with Teri. She seems to have a crush on you—”
“No seems about it. It’s for realz.” Evans couldn’t help preening a bit.
“Even so. My take on her is that she’s a reporter first and a woman second. Which means that crush or not, her number one goal would be to wheedle dirt on us from you. We kind of have a truce but she’s still the enemy.”
“I know.” Evans cut another slice of cake and placed it on Mia’s plate. She didn’t stop him. “My plan is to make the crush work for us. You know, feed her the right dirt when we need to and wrong dirt when we need to. It’s like that saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Mia polished off her second slice of cake. “Wow, thanks. That’s some sneaky thinking right there, and I like it. But don’t get too close, if you know what I mean. When it comes to taking one for the team, there’s only so far you should have to go.”
“Noted, boss,” Evans said with a grin.
Mia hurried to her office before she succumbed to the urge for a third piece of Evans’s cake. Wary of her father’s hiring practices after the Benjy debacle, she listed the job opening on a handful of websites. That task accomplished, she tried another search for intel on Justine Cadeau, which led to yet another a dead end. She decamped for the Marina Ballroom to finish cleaning up the flower detritus left over from the previous night’s event.
She found her father in the ballroom corralling errant flowers into a bucket filled with water. “I did a general sweep of the place already,” he said. “Nothing left behind.”
“I’ll pull the tablecloths and napkins.” Mia began removing the yellow linens, placing them in a pile in the center of the room. “Which reminds me, I haven’t had a chance to share what I think is going on at Versailles.”
“Anything that might put it out of business?” Ravello didn’t bother to try hiding this under the guise of a joke.
“Could be.” She detailed her suspicions about the Quality Control van being used for illegal transport, once again editing out the part where the van tried to run her down. Ravello was less over-protective than the average Italian father, but he was still an Italian father. “I’m sure it ties in with the attack on Garvalos, and maybe even Tina’s murder. Although after my meeting with Hugo Hartley, I thought that might have more to do with the one-woman drug smuggling operation she had going.”
“There’s no such thing as a one-person drug operation,” Ravello said as he absent-mindedly arranged the leftover flowers. “If you’re a courier, there’s got to be someone at each end of the chain. A supplier and a buyer.”
Mia stopped what she was doing and stared at her father. “Do I want to know how you know this?”
“Figlia mia, please,” Ravello said, wounded. “I know because it’s simply common sense. The same protocol would apply to the movement of any goods. Take these tablecloths and napkins.” He motioned to the yellow mound. “Let’s say you wanted to smuggle them. You’d get them from a supplier, say, a corrupt company employee. You’d then sell them to a connection looking to buy black market linens, and list them as ‘lost’ or ‘damaged; replace’ on the inventory list. I’ll be honest, I know that part because back in the day, the Family had a couple of fingers in the linen supply business.”
“Way to make the rentals for the Women’s Club of Orsogna sound sketchy.” Mia yanked a tablecloth and sent it flying onto the pile. “But you’re right. That’s why I know something’s going on at Versailles, I don’t care if Pete keeps dismissing it. Too much laundry funny business.” She faced her father. “None of it related to us or the Family, corretto?’
“Corretto.” Ravello put one hand on his heart and held up the other. “I swear.”
“Va bene. Alright then.” Mia resumed gathering linens to be cleaned. “Given what you just laid out, that adds two more suspects to the list, the drug supplier and buyer. Ron said he and Tina went back and forth to Greece a lot. Maybe she took up her old sideline and brought Garvalos and his chef, Sandeep, into it to help smuggle the drugs, which would explain the Versailles connection.”
“Possible, but I doubt it,” Ravello said. “Remember, she was running that scam before 9/11. Much, much harder to transport anything internationally now, even if you work for an airline. Remember the flight attendant who got busted a couple of years ago for trying to smuggle cocaine in her carry-on luggage?”
Mia nodded. “If they’re not smuggling drugs, they could be moving stolen artwork, at least domestically. Which brings us back to Cow and Woman.”
“Dumb name for an ugly painting.”
“But one worth a ton o’ money. I can’t prove it, but it’s obvious Justine Cadeau crashed the shower to drop off that painting and send a message to Tina. And now she’s dead. Tina didn’t know her. I could tell that. Justine was a lot younger, like about my age. But there has to be some connection between them. They’re both dead under what the police would call mysterious circumstances.”
“Any updates on what happened to this Justine in Switzerland? Like, how she died?”
“Internet radio silence. It’s aggravating.”
“Our city does have a pretty crack police department, sweetheart. I should know. They nailed me enough times.”
“I get it, I should leave the detective work to NYPD. But I can’t. I’m too close to this.”
Ravello eyed his daughter with affection, but also concern. “Y
ou need more to do than work here and go home.”
Mia dumped the last armful of linens on the pile. “You too with the you need a boyfriend?”
“Did I say that? I did not. But you need something else in your life. What that might be is up to you.” Ravello added the last flower to his impromptu arrangement. “Although a few dates and maybe even a relationship wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”
Mia released an exasperated exclamation and marched out of the ballroom to her office. She slammed the door shut. Her cell rang. “What?” she snapped into the phone.
The caller was Teri. “Hello to you, too. I was gonna give you some fresh intel on Justine Cadeau but forget it.”
“No, wait! I’m sorry.” Mia rubbed the bridge of her nose. Needing to vent, she blurted, “I’m not having a great day. Everyone’s pressuring me to date and I’m sick of it.”
“Hah! Been there. I tried to get my mother off my back by telling her I was gay. You know what she said? So, bring home a woman. I was like, seriously? Now you’re suddenly politically correct?” Mia had to laugh at this. “Just keep doing you. When they get that you’re happy with the life you’re living and don’t need a boyfriend or husband to define you, they’ll back off. Or maybe not. They’re Italian.”
“Thanks. I hate to admit it, but that’s good advice. And I’m glad to know I’m not alone.”
“Hey, look at us. We had a conversation like we’re friends.”
Mia stiffened. She did a one-eighty back to professional mode. “You called with news about Justine. What is it?”
“Right, that. She died in a single-driver car accident. Went flying off the road somewhere in the Swiss Alps.”
Mia pondered this development. “Interesting. Do the police think she was run off the road?”
“No one’s sharing any theories. I’m waiting to get some pix of the crash site. When I do, I’ll email them to you.”
“That would be fantastic. And Teri—thank you.”
“No worries.”
Mia was about to end the call when she remembered her conversation with Evans. “Oh, I almost forgot. I gave Evans your message.”
