Lacey Luzzi: Seasoned: A humorous, cozy mystery! (Lacey Luzzi Mafia Mysteries Book 7)

by Gina LaManna

  “Top three?” Meg spluttered. “What happened to top ten?”

  “You may write as many as you want,” I said under my breath. “Everyone else gets three, Christmas isn’t about being greedy.”

  “Except for me?” Meg asked happily.

  “Except for you.” I smiled, digging in the large, mahogany desk placed in the far corner against the wall. There were a few receipts for supplies that may or may not be included in a bomb supply kit. They’d have to do for now. I began handing them out, along with pens stolen from every casino in America. “Here.”

  Marissa took a pen from the Bellagio and a receipt for gunpowder, and immediately set to scribbling on the back. Clarissa did the same with a writing utensil from Mystic Lake Casino and a slip of paper documenting the payment of a large sum of money. Vivian got the Aria and a receipt from Marinellos, while Meg took the largest receipt for herself, which I hoped had nothing to do with bombs, since it was from Costco. A Costco-sized bomb would be alarming.

  When I got to Clay, he received a receipt for extensive wires and gave me a death stare. “What is this?”

  “Just list three items,” I said through grinding teeth. “You too, Anthony. Please.”

  “Is this a joke?” Anthony asked, his voice low. “I was in the middle of an assignment. Please tell me how an almost thirty-something woman still writes gift lists for Santa.”

  “Not now!” I hissed. “And don’t let her hear you say the word T-H-I-R-T-Y,” I spelled out.

  “She can’t really believe these lists work, can she?” Clay asked.

  I sighed. “Just write down three little items. Please. Five minutes, ready…go.”

  My pleading tone must have done the trick, because Anthony and Clay both picked up pens and held their tongues.

  Which was a relief, because Meg had a complicated relationship with Santa Claus. As the years passed, I found myself working harder and harder to protect it. To keep one portion of my very un-innocent friend a bit naive.

  Throughout the course of her life, Meg had been a cop. She’d had a mother who lived with a revolving door on her bedroom when it came to men, and recently, Meg had purchased her own bar. The woman had seen things. But somehow, someway, she clung to an unrealistic belief in the magic of Santa. And I’d be damned if I let anyone spoil it on my watch.

  I scanned the room, noting everyone’s chin tucked as pens were bitten, Christmas wishes scribbled, and necks cricked in thought. I took up my own seat in front of the fireplace, pausing for the first time to examine the room in which I’d never before stepped foot.

  Beside the mahogany desk sat an antique lamp, the soft light casting a low glow around the room. Someone – Harold possibly – had turned the fireplace on high, which crackled and licked the inside of the grate, the scent of burning wood pleasant. My shoulders relaxed as I cuddled up in the oversized chair, tucking my legs beneath my body, glancing out the window as snow lightly drifted outside. Christmas was coming.

  A movement caught my eye. Anthony tilted his head a bit to the side as I glanced at him, a funny expression on his face. A thoughtful look, as if he couldn’t quite decide whether to smile or cry. But Anthony didn’t cry, so maybe it was gas or something, I didn’t know.

  I adjusted my sweater self-consciously, the oversized white thing very fuzzy and warm, paired with thermal leggings. I wasn’t a fan of cold weather, but I was a fan of the blankets and sweaters it allowed me to wrap myself in.

  I glanced down at my list, but I couldn’t concentrate.

  Looking up, I caught Anthony still watching me, his eyes soft, his mouth somewhere in between a smile and a contemplative frown. I offered up a smile of my own from across the room. His head tilted sideways, his expression surprised, as if he’d been lost in a daydream.

  His cappuccino colored eyes softened as he returned my smile, sharing in a private moment. His grin set off sparks on the inside, even after he turned back to his receipt for Carlos’s latest haircut.

  “Stop making gooey eyes and get to work,” Meg said. “These are due to the North Pole the day before Christmas. That doesn’t leave us a whole lot of time, given the post office might be backed up around the holidays.”

  I turned my attention to my own list – on the back of a receipt for an industrial-sized pack of toilet paper – and waited for inspiration. I couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted.

  “Lacey, your pen isn’t moving,” Meg said.

  “I’m thinking,” I said. I didn’t mention that I wasn’t thinking about my presents. I’d never tell Meg I didn’t even like Christmas presents. Meg might adore Santa, but I had a tricky relationship with the man for entirely different reasons.

  Christmas had always been a bittersweet time for the two of us growing up. Meg’s mom could hardly keep her daughter’s name straight, let alone the days of the week – so for her, the Christmas season blended in with any other time of the year.

  My mother had been different. She loved Christmas with a passion, but that love didn’t allow her to buy us presents. Cash allowed her to buy us presents, and cash didn’t grow on trees. My mom had always picked up extra shifts around the holidays in order to make our Christmas special. I remember crying, crying, crying as she’d leave for fourteen-hour days, telling her I didn’t want presents, that I hated Santa because she had to pay him for our gifts. I remember telling her that I wished Santa would disappear forever, because that meant she’d spend more time with us.

  And years later, I wish that were true more than ever. I can buy my own presents now, but I can’t buy time with her back. So the holidays, as special as my mother made them, had also been a lonely time. But luckily, I’d had Meg. And Meg had believed in Santa since we were five.

  “I think I want a Balloonicorn,” Meg said. “But I can’t have just one. Maybe ten of them? I like the name Alicia. And maybe Paige. How about Barb? Barb the Balloonicorn? That has a nice ring to it.”

  “They’re not like Pringles,” Vivian said. “You can too have just one Balloonicorn. What if you got a Balloonicorn and Pringles?”

  Meg nodded, her face contorted with concentration. “Yep, I see your point.”

  Her fascination with Old St. Nick had started when we turned five. Our teacher had been talking about Santa and presents and the Christmas holiday season when Meg leaned over and asked who the hell this Santa was everyone had been talking about. I laughed, thinking she was kidding. But when I told my mom, she didn’t think it was so funny.

  That year, Meg ran into our tiny apartment, shrieking about presents appearing under her spindly little Christmas tree. All of them had a return address of The North Pole and were signed With love, from Santa.

  Meg’s mom hadn’t spent the night at home, which meant one thing – Santa was real, no doubt about it.

  I suspected over the years that Meg would figure out where the presents were coming from – heck, I’d figured it out by the time I was nine and I thought I was a late bloomer. But Meg, somehow, someway, harbored a stoic belief in the fat red guy who supposedly slipped down chimneys. When my mother passed away a few years before, I continued the tradition, just in case, and that only seemed to cement Meg’s belief in Santa.

  “This is stupid,” Marissa said. “I told you, I already wrote a list in school.”

  “Write down three things,” I growled. “It’s not that hard.”

  “Okay, okay, fine. Time’s up.” Meg looked at her watch. “Lacey will collect your papers, stamp them, and get them up to Santa Claus in time for a Christmas delivery. Thanks for meeting, folks. Nora has cookies baking in the kitchen, so go eat them at your own risk.”

  Marissa and Clarissa wrinkled their noses.

  Vivian stood up with a frown. “You think I need a dental bill in addition to Christmas present bills? Holidays are expensive enough, for crying out loud.”

  “I’m sure she also has wine,” I said.

  “Count me in,” Vivian said, disappearing.

&nb
sp; “And ice cream…from the store,” I said. “Plus, there’s always the special stuff in the special fridge.”

  Marissa and Clarissa took off in a race for the gelato stashed in Nora’s secret fridge out in the garage. It wasn’t much of a secret, since everyone knew about it, but something about sneaking gelato made it feel like the calories didn’t count. So we all continued pretending it was our dirty little secret.

  “Wait a sec before you two leave,” I said, waving a hand at Clay and Anthony from my seat by the fire. It was far too comfy to move. “Do we have any updates on the other thing?”

  “If by other thing, you mean the disappearance of Jackson Cole, then no.” Clay shook his head, looking at Anthony. “We’ve checked everywhere.”

  I sighed. “Where could he have gone? And why would he have left?”

  “Well, besides the fact that you creeped in through his window, then ran away screaming with an injured ankle when he came outside, and then you leapt straight into a pervy van and zoomed away…” Meg said. “No offense, Clay, but it is a suspicious vehicle, and it looks strange flyin’ off curbs. All in all, that’s some freaky stuff, if you step on his shoes.”

  “Why is Lacey stepping on his shoes?” Clay asked. “What do his shoes have to do with any of this?”

  “She means step into his shoes, see it from his point of view, whatever,” I said. “But maybe it’s for the best that he’s gone.”

  “I thought you wanted to meet him.” Meg crossed her arms. “Don’t you? We’ve talked about this for weeks.”

  “Yes, but now that I know his whole ‘career’ thing…” I trailed off. “It might be better that we don’t get the chance to meet.”

  After Halloween, I’d run down a lead with Meg, Clay, and Anthony regarding the man thought to be my father. His name was Jackson Cole, which we’d discovered via a school pin in my mom’s “Save Box” of sentimental items. When I’d shown up at his house to ask him a few questions about my mom, things had turned a bit strange. Especially when I’d seen photos of Anthony on a whiteboard inside his office.

  “If it makes you feel better, I think this proves there’s an even higher chance he’s your father than I thought,” Clay said with a shrug. “There’s inexplicable similarities to you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I crossed my arms. “What similarities?”

  “He disappears randomly, is involved with criminals, and has pictures of Anthony up on his wall.” Clay shrugged. “Uncanny, or what?”

  “I don’t have pictures of Anthony on my wall,” I mumbled, at Anthony’s curious stare. “I’m not a creep. And I’m not involved with criminals.” I glanced around the room. “Well, not all the time.”

  In the weeks following the “Jackson Cole Incident” as we referred to it, the Luzzi clan had retreated to our safe little fortress and scouted the man using Clay’s fast fingers and penchant for breaking into the cybersphere.

  And after weeks of stalking, we finally had a better idea why Anthony’s photos might be tacked up on Jackson Cole’s whiteboard. And this is where things had gotten tricky. See, for a girl who made her living walking a shady line between legal and…well, not legal…Jackson Cole was a scary man.

  Because what’s the most frightening profession to a mobsterista?

  An FBI agent.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Why so serious, kiddos?” My grandmother burst into the den, balancing a tray of cookies on one arm, and a huge pot of coffee on the other. “I’ve got treats!”

  “Yippee,” Clay said, his voice so weak I could hardly hear it. “What do you have there, chocolate biscotti?”

  Nora frowned at the black rocks on the cookie tray. “They’re sugar cookies! Though now that you mention it, they do look a bit dark. Maybe I should have frosted them after I took them out of the oven.”

  “That would explain the fire alarm this morning,” Meg said. “I heard it while I was re-wrapping those gifts under the tree.”

  “Re-wrapping?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “A girl’s gotta peek.” Meg shrugged.

  Nora set the tray down in the middle of the room, waving a dismissive hand. “Don’t be silly, that was a faulty alarm. Everyone knows you have to change the battery every two hours, else it starts beeping.”

  “I just take the batteries out,” Meg said.

  “I do that too,” Nora whispered. “But the gnomes put them back in.”

  “The gnomes?” It was Clay’s turn to lean forward. “What gnomes?”

  “The gnomes,” Nora whispered again. “Keep quiet, they don’t like to be discussed in public.”

  “What are they?” Clay asked.

  “They’re these little creatures that roam the estate, I’m pretty sure. They’re the ones responsible for me losin’ my keys, or misplacing my purse. But sometimes they help out, in the case of the smoke detector.”

  I glanced over at Anthony, wondering if he might be one of the little gnomes watching out for Nora. I didn’t dare ask, based upon the closed state of his eyes.

  “Anyway, children. Eat up. I also brought bows.” Nora did a curtsy right in the middle of the room, showing off her “packaging.” She’d wrapped her body in so many ugly sweaters she might as well have worn a beanbag chair and just rolled around the hallways. On top of her head was a gift bow so floppy it dangled over her eyes, and on her arms, she had enough blinking bulbs that I worried she’d short a fuse. “And stop being so serious! It’s Christmas!”

  The gang politely waved to Nora as she strode out of the room, all of us chipping in for a round of Silent Night at her insistence. As we sang the final chord as out of tune as a garbage truck, she finally shut the door.

  Clay leaned forward, picked up a cookie, and tossed it in the fireplace.

  Nothin’.

  He then reached for the coffee pot and overturned a mug from the tray. He tilted the pot, but nothing came out. “She said there’s coffee in here, right?”

  I shrugged. “She also called those coals sugar cookies.”

  As I finished speaking, a pile of sludge as thick as quicksand plopped into Clay’s mug.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Well, since we won’t be eating, let’s get back to business. What are the next steps to finding Jackson Cole? I’ve cruised by the house once a day. No luck.”

  “The computers are exhausted,” Clay snapped. “I can’t magic information from nowhere, we’re doing the best we can. I have a few alarms in place if he uses his regular credit card and such, but that’s about all I can do right now. It’s been weeks, I’ve looked.”

  “And you’re sure there’s nothing left you haven’t checked?” I asked.

  “I’m looking!” Clay snapped, and I backed way up. “I will keep you posted.”

  All we’d found out about Jackson Cole, besides his career, was that he’d retired recently. We’d asked his neighbors for their vibes on the man, but they said Mr. Cole kept to himself for the most part, though he wasn’t home a lot. Business trips, they said. But not one of them seemed to know what he did for a career; Jackson Cole apparently kept his law enforcement status quiet.

  Judging by the lack of activity at his house over the last month and a half, he must have left for one of his trips November 1st, just after we stumbled away from his house, still high on Halloween candy. Whether our presence and his disappearance were related, it was impossible to tell. Clay’d gleaned as much information from the computer systems as possible, but one thing he couldn’t figure out was where Jackson Cole had gone. Or exactly why there were pictures of Anthony on the whiteboard in his office.

  “Anthony, any ideas why this dude had a man-crush on you?” Meg asked, sizing him up. “I mean, all those photos on his little chalkboard, I get it. The muscles, that tush…mmm. I spend a lot of time looking at them, too.”

  Anthony had put up with enough today, and at the rate his face was turning red, I doubted he’d put up with a whole lot more.

  “Meg,” I said. “Not now. We’ve already go
ne over this a million times.”

  “Would it really be that surprising to see any of our faces up on that board?” Clay asked. “I mean, we all have close ties with Carlos. There could be any number of reasons Jackson was looking into Anthony. We can’t say for sure, not yet. But I don’t think it’s through the FBI, because I can get into their databases. There’s no information there.”

  “You think it’s an outside project?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Clay said. “But I can’t say for sure.”

  “Hmm.” I rested my chin on my knee. “Well, I suppose we’re going in circles at this point. Let’s call it a day for now. Guys, you’ve done great work. I really appreciate it.”

  “Not enough great work,” Clay muttered. “Or else we’d have some answers.”

  “Hey, stop it.” I pulled myself up from the chair, but was interrupted by a pop from the fireplace. “Exploding cookies. That’s a new one.”

  “That’s a new meaning for Pop Rocks,” Meg said, pointing at the fire. “We could make a boatload if we scooped that sucker up.”

  I laughed, the tension in the room broken. I leaned against the wall next to the fireplace, the heat licking up the side of my body and warming my skin. The music, the blinking Christmas lights, the tinsel and the wreaths…all of it gave the room a toasty feeling despite the downpour of snow outside.

  “Listen, troops. You’ve all done good work. We’ve been trying to get in touch with this guy since Halloween, which is almost two months now.” I shrugged. “We can’t have a hundred percent success rate all the time. Let’s give it a rest until after Christmas. What do you think?”

  Clay shrugged. He didn’t look happy.

  “There’s only a few days until Christmas, and we’re at a dead end for now, let’s face it.” I shrugged. “Clay, you have a zillion alerts set up on all his known credit cards, his email, etc. We can’t do anything more, and talking about it only makes us argue in circles.”

  “Or squares,” Meg said. “Sometimes things get pointy up in here.”

  “Or triangles,” Clay added. “Maybe a rhombus or two.”