Long Island Iced Tina

by Maria DiRico

  Mia rang the doorbell and Ravello opened the door. He was dressed in his version of off-the-clock: perfectly pressed gray trousers, a white polo shirt, and a black blazer. He took in Mia’s outfit. “Your grandmother drag you to a viewing?” Mia nodded. “Gugliemo’s shoes?”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  She followed her father through the first floor, past the nondescript furniture and leather reclining couch, all of which dated back to her childhood. The only new addition was a large flat-screen TV. “We need to update this place.”

  “Why? Everything still works. All I need is my recliner, a remote, and a working microwave.”

  Mia shook her head. “Spoken like a confirmed bachelor.”

  They exited through the kitchen backdoor to the freestanding garage. Mia waited while her father pulled his Lincoln into the alley—she knew from experience there was no room for her to get in the car, which was a tight fit in the decades-old garage—and got in on the passenger side. Ravello pulled onto 21st Avenue and headed toward the Boldano family home.

  Mia scribbled notes on a small pad in her purse while her father drove. “You wanna clue me in on what’s going on?” Ravello asked.

  “I’d rather wait and talk to you both at the same time.”

  Ravello acknowledged this and left Mia alone. A half hour later, they pulled up to a gated, white-columned home in Stony Harbor, a suburb on Long Island’s South Shore. Mia glanced up from her notes. She took in the tree-lined street, with its lovely Colonial and Tudor homes. Her thoughts drifted to Jamie and she had a revelation . Of course he wants to live in the suburbs. It’s where he grew up. It’s what he knows. Life was sending Mia and Jamie in different directions. He had a girlfriend he cared about and a plan for his life that was news to Mia. It was time to stop daydreaming about a future with him. Yes, they dated in high school, but the relationship flamed out. Mia had always chalked it off to teenage immaturity. Now she began to wonder if there was a deeper reason the two never moved beyond a brief romance.

  Ravello slid down his window and pressed a button on the security pad. After a short beep, he said, “Giant shrimp.” The gate swung open.

  “Giant shrimp? That’s the code?”

  “Donny Junior set it this time. He thinks it’s funny. You know, because shrimp means small, but giant means big.”

  “Yeah, they call it an oxymoron. And Donny fits the moron half of that word.”

  Ravello drove onto the property, parking in front of the main house. Aurora Boldano, Donny’s wife, waved from the front door. Aurora was in her late fifties. She was dressed simply in navy slacks and a light-blue, boat-necked top, and wore her dark hair, streaked with white, in a chignon bun. With her high cheekbones and aquiline nose, Aurora always reminded Mia of the elegant Italian women who browsed the upscale shops of Rome.

  Ravello and Mia met her halfway up the steps. She gave them each a warm embrace. “Ciao, amici. What a wonderful surprise—dear friends dropping in on a quiet summer night.” Aurora had come to America as a teenager and still bore a faint hint of an Italian accent.

  “I hope we’re not imposing, Mrs. B,” Mia said.

  Aurora, taller than Mia by half a foot, took Mia’s chin in her hand and gazed down at her with affection. “Bella, you’re like a daughter to us. A visit from you is always a joy and never an imposition.” She kissed Mia on both cheeks, then motioned to her and Ravello. “Vai. Donny’s waiting for you in his office.”

  Aurora, whose good taste was the envy of other Family wives, led them past the home’s perfectly appointed dining and living rooms to Donny’s office. The room was large and sumptuously paneled with burled cherry wood. The furniture and oriental rugs were all antique. Donny’s large desk filled one-half of the room. The other half was set up for casual meetings, with a sofa and two wingback chairs encircling a traditionally styled coffee table. Mia placed the cookie assortment she’d bought next to an even larger one the Boldanos had laid out. An espresso set sat next to it, filling the room with the scent of strong, fresh coffee. “Donny will be here in a minute,” Aurora said. “If you need anything, please let me know.”

  Aurora left, pulling the door shut behind her. Not even a minute later, the door opened, and Donny Boldano Senior came in. He was a few years older and a few inches shorter than his wife, but Donny owned any room he walked into with his confident, commanding presence. “Ciao, miei amici,” he said, accompanying the greeting with kisses on the cheeks of both his visitors. He sat in a large armchair facing the couch, where Ravello and Mia each took a seat. The three made small talk while Donny distributed demitasse cups of espresso and helped himself to cookies from the Carinas’ offering. He bit down on a chewy pignolo, a popular southern Italian cookie made with almond paste and dotted with pine nuts. Donny smiled. “La Guli?”

  “Ma certo,” Ravello said. “Of course.”

  Donny held up the half-eaten cookie. “This is when I miss the old neighborhood.” He finished it and clapped his hands to remove crumbs. “So, Mia. You called the meeting. Talk to us.”

  Mia pulled her notes out of the front pants pocket where she’d stuffed them. “This is about the Miller Art Collection heist.”

  Donny stiffened. “We had nothing to do with that.”

  “Oh, I know,” Mia, eager to mollify him, said. “But I think I know how the thieves pulled it off. I wanted to run my idea by people who are in a position to tell me if I’m on to something or not.”

  “Because of our past experience,” her father said, getting it but also making sure to emphasize the word past.

  Mia glanced at her notes, then spoke to the men. “There was someone on the inside for sure. Who, I don’t know, but someone who had a connection to Tina Karras. Tina was a flight attendant. This was right before 9/11, when everyone was way more loosey-goosey about security. Dad, remember that teen tour I took of Europe the summer before my senior year in high school? I brought home a carving knife I bought in Germany as a present for Nonna in my carry-on bag.”

  “I know that knife,” Ravello said. “Your grandmother loves it.”

  “It was molto different in those days,” Donny mused. “Sometimes I’d forget I had a pistol in my jacket pocket, or a knife tucked away in one of my socks. Nobody paid no never mind then. If an airport cop happened to notice the bulge in my jacket, I’d just get a scolding.” He spoke with a sense of nostalgia.

  “So,” Mia continued, “you have a flight attendant who flew trans-Atlantic flights twenty years ago. You have stolen paintings. I was at a viewing tonight with my Nonna—”

  “Did she get the shoes to Gugliemo?” Donny asked.

  “You know about that?” Mia asked, astonished.

  Her father nudged her. “Mia, it’s Donny’s business to know things. Don’t insult him.”

  “Mi dispiace, sir,” Mia said, apologetic.

  Donny waved a hand. “Fa niente. It’s nothing. Go on.”

  “Dropping the shoes inside the casket got me thinking. What if the robbers smuggled the artwork to Europe in a coffin that was in a plane’s cargo area on a flight Tina worked? I did a little research. Collecting art is a big thing with Eastern European oligarchs. And it’s way easier for them to buy on the black market over there than here.”

  Ravello and Donny considered this. Ravello spoke first. “You said that O’Dwyer guy only got the artwork as far as the beach, where it was transferred to men in masks. They could have loaded it into a coffin and driven it to JFK.”

  “And who says it was just men in masks?” Donny said. “Maybe one of them was this Tina broad.”

  “Good point,” Ravello said. “They get to JFK, this Tina changes into her stewardess outfit—”

  “Flight attendant, Dad. Stewardess is a dated word.”

  “Whatever. She changes, pretends that the family of the ‘loved one’ in the coffin has asked her to oversee delivery. She gets on the flight and as soon as it lands, she makes sure the artwork gets to the fence on the other side of the p
ond.”

  “It’s a good plan,” Donny said. “A very good plan.”

  “A great one,” Ravello seconded.

  The mobsters looked at each other. Mia caught the gleam in their eyes. “No, no,” she cried out, waving her hands in front of their faces to snap them out of it. “Don’t even think it, Goodfellas. It’s a new world, remember? Security everywhere. So, so much security.”

  This brought the men out of their reverie. “Right. Fu—” Donny, who was old-fashioned enough not curse in the presence of ladies, caught himself. “Fu-lippin’ security everywhere. You can’t ring a doorbell without your face ending up on the news. Back to you, Mia. I think your father and I would agree that the plot you laid out makes a lot of sense. If anyone should know, it’s guys like us.”

  “That’s why I came to you. Also, because I could use some help. Mr. B, I know you have . . . connections . . . at JFK. This all happened twenty years ago, but can you find out what flight or flights Tina flew the day after the heist? And maybe how Castor Garvalos was involved? Because I know he was. What about his chef, Sandeep, who I saw transferring laundry bins to the fake linen service van?”

  “Linens?”

  “Yup. Linens.” Mia wasn’t surprised that Donny sparked to the Mob buzzword. As Ravello had mentioned while they were breaking down the Women of Orsogna event, Families often utilized linen service businesses for both legitimate and illegitimate gain, with the occasional capo jailed on a racketeering or extortion charge related to operations. She steered the conversation back on track. “And what was Justine Cadeau’s part in this whole thing? She’s the art dealer who showed up at Nicole’s shower and I’m sure dropped off the painting that freaked out Tina. Justine died in a suspicious car crash in Switzerland a couple of days ago. She was closer to my age, which means she would’ve been a kid when the heist took place. So why was she involved now?”

  “And what was she doing in Switzerland?” Ravello said.

  “Exactly,” Donny said. “And who was the brains behind the whole operation?”

  Ravello gleefully slapped his thighs. “This is fun. We get to solve a crime instead of committing one for a change.”

  “And earn points with NYPD,” Mia said. “You can share any inside info you dig up with them that could help ID suspects. And offer the whole story to Pete Dianopolis as the ‘ripped from the headlines’ plot of his next Steve Stianopolis mystery.”

  Donny got up and crossed the room. He pressed on a burled wood panel. It slowly opened, revealing a full wet bar. He took a bottle of expensive whiskey off a shelf and poured shots into three shot glasses. He handed one to Ravello and another to Mia. “A toast to America’s newest crime solvers. Salute!”

  “Salute!” Ravello and Mia chorused. The three downed the shots.

  Mia placed her empty glass in the bar’s small sink. “Thanks so much for jumping on board with this,” Mia said. “My task will be attending an installation opening tomorrow night at the Miller Art Collection. This girl Larkin who runs the place thinks I’m coming to see how the space works as an event venue. Which, to be honest, isn’t a bad idea. But I’ll really be there to learn whatever I can about the robbery, the Miller-Spaulding family, and their employees.”

  “Except,” Donny said. “There’s no way you’re going alone.”

  “But Mister B—”

  The Mob boss held up his hand. “No argument. I’m sending Jamie with you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Larkin Miller-Spaulding had messaged Mia that the dress code for the exhibition opening was “dressy casual,” which Mia considered an oxymoron on a par with Donny Boldano’s annoying “giant shrimp” gate code. But she knew exactly what to wear. She left work early to pick up her unassuming black dress from the cleaner. It would allow her to fit in with the hip art crowd—as well as she could with her heavy Queens accent—but also disappear into the woodwork if she wandered off to do some snooping.

  Jamie texted that he had arrived. Mia put a hand on the wall to balance herself as she navigated the stairs and then the steps in her four-inch, black platform heels, an impulse buy she didn’t regret except at times like these.

  “You look nice,” Jamie said, opening the passenger door of his Prius for her.

  “You, too.” He was clad in a black leather jacket over a tan tee shirt and jeans, and his brown hair, usually wayward, had been tamed with product. “You like my hair? Madison jujj-ed it for me.”

  “She did a good job,” Mia hated to admit.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Jamie asked as he drove toward Millville.

  “I need to look like I’m scoping the place out as an event venue. This’ll give me an excuse to explore the whole property looking for the best ‘party sites.’ I’ll talk to guests and people working the event, and check out the catering prep area, the staff, the food displays, the whole nine yards. But I’ll really be hunting for clues about whatever took place during the heist and whatever might be going on now. Because something is. A missing painting doesn’t suddenly reappear, and two people don’t die for no reason.”

  “No, they do not. What am I supposed to do besides keep an eye on you?”

  “Your cover is that you’re my boyfriend and you’re there as a favor to me. You’re bored by the whole thing, which is why you’re gonna spend your time floating around looking like you wish you were somewhere else.”

  “Oh, so I’m playing myself.”

  “Hah. Funny stuff. If Benjy was still doing a live act, I’d tell you to pass that on to him. But what you really need to do is suss out the Collection’s security system.”

  “And keep an eye on you.”

  “Yeah, you said that.” Jamie’s over-protectiveness bordered on macho, annoying Mia. “I’m a city girl with a mobster father. I was trained to trust nobody and have eyes in the back of my head. I can take care of myself. I’m not some suburban fainting flower like—” Mia stopped herself.

  “Like Madison.” Jamie said this with a frown and pursed lips.

  Mia felt terrible. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Oh, please. You were about to.”

  The two fell into an awkward silence. “I’m sorry,” Mia finally said.

  “She’s a good person, Mia. You need to get to know her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Wow. Try to control your enthusiasm.”

  “I’m being terrible, I know. It’s just . . .” Mia decided that Jamie deserved honesty. She took a deep breath and dove in. “When I came home and before I knew you had a girlfriend . . . I felt like there was something between us. Like . . . a sexual energy. On both our parts.”

  “There was.” Jamie paused. “I almost broke up with Madison.”

  “You did?” Mia tried not to sound pleased.

  Jamie nodded. “But something stopped me. I’ve given this a ton of thought over the last few months. I’ve seen how your passion and drive have turned around Belle View. And I started thinking . . . what would our future look like? If we could live our dream lives, what would mine be? What would be yours? What I finally came to is . . . it feels like we have very different goals.”

  Mia took this in. The truth might hurt—but it was now impossible to deny. Mia had fantasized about a relationship with Jamie because it was safe. With their unique shared history as Family offspring, the two were comfort food for each other, and Mia had made herself believe this was enough to base a romance on because it was easier and less painful than dating outside the box. But the reality was that Jamie had more in common with Madison than Mia. And he had just articulated a feeling Mia sensed herself but resisted accepting. “I want to grow a business,” she said. “You want to grow tomatoes.”

  Jamie couldn’t help laughing at this, which broke the tension. “And zucchini and cucumbers and beans and lettuce.”

  “Hey, maybe you can be one of Belle View’s suppliers. If I throw in the words ‘locally sourced’ to a client, it instantly ups the price of a package.”

  This ea
rned another laugh from Jamie. “I do love you, Meems.”

  “I love you, too.”

  They fell silent again, but instead of being awkward, it was a silence borne of a lifelong friendship. After a few minutes, Jamie peered at the sign above the expressway. “Shoot, our exit’s the next one. I almost missed it.”

  They exited the expressway and followed the route to the Miller compound. The entire place glowed like the world’s classiest amusement park. Huge oak trees lining both sides of the road to the mansion and Collection were threaded with tiny fairy lights. The estate home twinkled and sparkled, almost blindingly so, as they drew closer. Music and a murmur of voices filled the air with a sort of party white noise. Knots of well-dressed event attendees clustered outside the art collection, continuing their conversations and taking champagne glasses from trays while ignoring the waiters who served them.

  “They have valet parking,” Jamie said.

  “Not for us,” Mia said. She pointed in the opposite direction. “Park in the space over there, the one closer to the road. If we need to get out of here fast, we don’t want some valet searching through a box of keys and fobs to find yours.”

  “Noted.”

  Jamie started to make a left-hand turn but stopped to let a dark van go by. Mia caught the profile of the van driver’s face and clutched Jamie’s arm. “You’re not gonna believe this, but I swear that van driver was Liam O’Dwyer. He’s the guy who went to jail for the art heist.”

  “You’re kidding.” Jamie turned to check out the van, but it had disappeared. “That’s interesting.”

  “Yeah, a little. What is he doing here? We have to find out.”

  “Put it on the list.”

  Jamie parked in the secluded spot Mia had noticed. They got out of the car and walked toward the party. Jamie gaped at the Miller-Spaulding mansion. “Wow. This place is . . . I don’t even know what to say.”

  “A stunning piece of architecture? A gross example of too much disposable income?”

  “Yes.”