Lacey Luzzi: Sauced: A humorous, cozy mystery! (Lacey Luzzi Mafia Mysteries Book 4)

by Gina LaManna

  Meg narrowed her eyes. “You’re not mad?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I think it’s so incredibly freaking sweet. I didn’t believe it at first, but now…” I smiled. “I’m so happy.”

  “Wowzers,” Meg said, with a hesitant glance at Clay. “I didn’t expect this sort of reaction.”

  Clay shrugged. “I didn’t know what to expect. No offense, but sometimes girls’ emotions confuse me.”

  “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to learn all about our emotions,” I said, grabbing Meg’s arm. “Shall we go get the sauce? Tomorrow will be a very special day.”

  Meg’s eyes twinkled. “This is great! It’s gonna be so fun. I can’t wait. Let’s go, girlfriend.”

  “Hasta la vista, Clay,” I said, leading Meg out front. “Don’t worry, cousin. I’ll bring her back in one piece.”

  ** **

  The car ride to Stillwater buzzed with excited energy. Meg had ridden her bike over to my place, but since I wasn’t quite feeling the whole wind in my hair sort of vibe, we’d agreed to take my Lumina. Little it was not; in fact, it steered like a yacht the size of Florida and could do just as much damage. The thing was a rock on wheels, and despite its lack of prettiness – an Audi S8 had it beat by a million miles – it got the job done.

  I turned onto the road that supposedly led to Dave’s Special Sauce. “Let’s just drive by quick once more,” I said. “If there’s nothing there, we’ll go straight to Horatio’s grandmother’s place.”

  “What about my helmet?” Meg asked. She’d dressed for the occasion in her standard outfit: a camouflage vest with more pockets than there were states in America, a bandana around her forehead, and combat boots that laced up halfway to her knees. Judging by the bulk in her pockets, she’d probably moved the candy and snacks from our last trip over to this vest.

  “Let’s grab it after,” I said. “If we have time.”

  The goal was for Meg to forget about the helmet. If we could secure the sauce from our witchy friend, I’d be able to collect money from Carlos and buy Meg a new one. Preferably one without the mohawk, though it did suit her well.

  “I know you’re trying to distract me—” Meg started, as she fished around in her pocket. “Hey, look! I still got the candy from the other day.”

  I grinned to myself. Meg didn’t need my help with any sort of distraction.

  “If anything, this peanut brittle got harder from the other day.” She tried to take a bite, but it didn’t work. Her teeth clinked against the edge and I was worried she’d need to visit a dentist. As if to demonstrate its diamond-like strength, Meg tapped the sweet against my dashboard. “Whoops.”

  “Whoops is right,” I said, running my hand over the crater of a dent in the dashboard. “Jeesh. That peanut brittle is intense. This car has been banged up, shot at, and the victim of car bomb attempts, but this is the first dent it has seen in years.”

  “Gonna hold onto that,” Meg said, tucking the brittle back in her pockets. “Never know when it’ll come in handy. There, there, I got it tucked nice and safe in the pocket next to the licorice. The one that looks like real rope.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I’m keeping it,” she said firmly, a pout on her face.

  “No problem,” I said. We had bigger fish to fry. “Over to Mama Horatio’s?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Meg said. “But if she tries any voodoo crap, I’m busting out my peanut brittle on her ass.”

  “I thought you were psychic,” I said. “Any thoughts on what’ll happen?”

  Meg removed a hunk of rope, and I did a double take.

  “It’s just licorice,” she said, taking a bite. “My visions don’t work if my blood sugar’s low. I’ll munch on this and let you know if the mood strikes. My powers can be a bit finicky.”

  “Great,” I said. “You’ve got a long career as a seer ahead of you.”

  “I can see that,” Meg said. “Duh.”

  ** **

  “You’re back,” the tiny woman said, pulling the front door of her spooky little cottage open. If possible, more vines wound their way around the front walkway, more trees drooped eerily with hanging branches, and more creepiness oozed from the place.

  It didn’t help that the woman was dressed in a full black robe with her mane of frizzy black locks controlled only by a hairnet.

  “Is that your witch’s outfit?” Meg asked, forgetting that we were guests. Or maybe she didn’t forget, and politeness just wasn’t in her wheelhouse at the moment.

  “Witches?” Anastasia muttered. “This is what I wear to brew the sauce you girls are looking for.”

  “Does it give you magic powers?” Meg asked as we stepped inside. The question earned her a firm elbow to the ribs. However, my elbow hit the peanut brittle, so my plan backfired and left me wincing with pain.

  “The robe prevents splatters on my clothes,” Anastasia said. “Silly girl. Have you never cooked a day in your life?”

  “Uh, yah,” Meg said, “I own a bar. I cook drinks every day, and I don’t wear witch’s robes.”

  “Probably because you don’t know where to buy them,” Anastasia said, showing us into the kitchen, where what could’ve been cauldrons bubbled on the stove. Whirling around, she crossed her spindly arms. “You’re just jealous, aren’t you?”

  “No, I am not,” Meg said vehemently. Then she leaned against the counter, took in the kitchen scene, and sighed. “Okay, fine. I’m a little jealous. Where do you get them? I bet Amazon has a great selection.”

  “We’re not here for robes,” I clarified. “We’re here because we’ve completed our end of the deal.”

  “You have?” Anastasia eyed us skeptically. “Tell me about the house on Sixty-sixth Street.”

  “Meg and I drove over there directly after leaving your house last week,” I began.

  “That’s actually false,” Meg chirped. “We stopped at the candy store first.”

  I gave her a glare, but I didn’t deny it.

  “What?” Meg shrugged. “Honesty is the best policy.”

  This from the woman keeping her love affair a secret from her best friend and her boyfriend’s cousin. I didn’t argue aloud, however. Just in my head.

  “Right,” I said. “But it was a brief stop at the candy store—”

  “She uses the term brief loosely,” Meg whispered, leaning towards Anastasia and bobbing her thumb towards me.

  “Just great,” I said through gritted teeth. “Perfect time to turn into an honesty machine.”

  “You never know when the mood will strike,” Meg said. “Just like magic. And gas, for that matter. They’re really very similar if you think about it; they’re both unpredictable and silent with the potential to be deadly.”

  “Anyway, we drove over to the house like you asked,” I continued, “and walked right up to the door. Then we knocked on it.” I was stalling now because I really regretted not asking the man’s name. That had, after all, been the most important point in the deal.

  “And?” Anastasia wasn’t fooled by my procrastination techniques. “What did you find?”

  “We found a man with, uh…he had long-ish hair and seemed relatively normal,” I said. “I think we might have spooked him, showing up unannounced like that.”

  “What else did you find out? Anything unusual?”

  “One thing,” I said, holding up a finger. “The most important thing. He said he’s actually from around here. Grew up in town. He was just moving over to a new house.”

  “Any idea why?” she pressed.

  I shrugged. “More space? He has a lot of land at that house on Sixty-sixth.”

  “Space for what?” Anastasia had slowly been stepping forward with each question.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He wouldn’t even give us his name, which is not that surprising since we were two strangers showing up and randomly knocking on his door.”

  “I told you my name,” Anastasia said. “And I let you in when you
did the same thing to me. He didn’t let you in?”

  “No,” Meg said. “But I peeked around him and saw a gun.”

  I wanted to give Meg a good shake. She wasn’t helping Anastasia feel good about the newcomer to her town. Despite it being strange that he’d blindly shoot at two women on his property, the truth of the matter was that we were the ones trespassing, and for all we knew, he had licenses for those guns. This was, after all, Minnesota. People did outdoor stuff like hunt and fish and ride lawnmowers in bikinis.

  “A gun?” Anastasia inhaled a deep breath. “Shame on him, keeping a gun like that in plain sight.”

  “Do you know this man?” I asked. Something about the way Anastasia had phrased the last question tricked off my Sugary Senses. We’d never told her his name, but she referred to him as if she knew him.

  “No, of course not,” she spluttered. “I’m just appalled. A man moves to beautiful, rural Stillwater and totes a gun around in plain sight. What if you two were children?”

  “We basically are,” Meg said. “But don’t worry, we didn’t touch the gun.”

  Anastasia ignored Meg, a small miracle.

  “I need you to go back there,” Anastasia said. “I need you to do one more thing.”

  “That’s not part of the deal,” I said. “I fulfilled our end of the bargain, now you fulfill yours.”

  “You didn’t quite fulfill your end, now did you?” Anastasia raised an eyebrow, and I realized that she was referring to the fact that we hadn’t figured out his name.

  “We told you what we saw and what we found out. That should be enough whether or not we asked his name,” I said. “It’s just a few jars of sauce, anyway.”

  “I don’t owe you anything, girl,” Anastasia said. “Just because my grandson gave you my phone number doesn’t mean I have to make a vat of sauce for you.”

  “Is all of that for us?” Meg asked, sticking her finger dangerously close to one of the pots.

  Anastasia whacked at her hand with a ladle before returning her attention to the boiling cauldron and stirring. I had to admit, it smelled wonderful.

  “It could be,” Anastasia said, with a sideways glance at me. “It depends if you’ll do what I ask.”

  “We don’t know what you’re asking,” I said with a sigh.

  “I’m asking you to go back to the house on Sixty-sixth. Take a phone, a camera, or whatever. Get a picture of the gun.”

  “No,” I said. “No way. My life is not worth a few cauldrons of sauce.”

  “You’re telling me that Carlos will be okay if you show up to the family barbecue with no sauce and no report on the bomb?” she asked.

  I gasped. “How do you know about Carlos?”

  She shrugged. “Business.”

  “But you’re not – you can’t…” I started and stopped. How to say that business with Carlos was rarely legal?

  “I know who I’m working with,” she said. “Now, I’m asking you one simple favor. I’m sure Carlos won’t mind. Then, I’ll send you home with some of this sauce he loves. More sauce than he can eat in a year.” Anastasia smiled. “Don’t worry, you can freeze it.”

  “Thank goodness for small miracles,” Meg said. “That’s a lot of sauce, and we wouldn’t want it to go to waste. But I think you underestimate the Luzzi Family,” she hissed into Anastasia’s ear. “Their metabolism runs at the speed of magic. I’ve never seen such skinny people put it away so fast.”

  “I can hear you,” I said. “And I’m still incredibly confused. You know Carlos? Did you know who we were when we showed up on your doorstep?”

  “I’m sure Carlos will fill you in on all the necessary details. I’m not silly enough to overstep my bounds where that man is concerned,” she said. “So I’m not telling you anything else. All I will say is that the sauce will be done in an hour and not a second sooner, so you have time to kill, regardless.”

  I hesitated. Whether or not the woman knew Carlos, I wanted the sauce. Did I need it? No. But I wanted it. Plus, I had no desire to show up empty-handed to my first Family barbecue. Another thought popped into my head: what if the whole “task” to find Dave’s sauce was a decoy to see if I could locate Anastasia? My mind spun with possibilities, but despite all my thinking power, nothing was connecting at the moment.

  Looking around, I spotted a stool that looked specially made to seat a leprechaun. I moseyed over to it and attempted to make myself comfortable. It was an impossible hope; my knees knocked against my chin and it was incredibly difficult to look important when I was the shortest one in the room.

  “Why do you need a picture?” I asked.

  “Proof,” Anastasia responded. “Obviously.”

  “Proof for what?”

  “Didn’t working for Carlos teach you not to be nosy?” she asked, stirring the sauce. A bubble popped and splattered a reddish liquid on the stove.

  My stomach betrayed me, growling loudly. “I’m good at my job because I’m nosy.”

  “And you’re hungry,” she said. “How about I feed you a quick meal and send you on your way? A quick photo, that’s all. Of something illegal.”

  “Owning a gun isn’t illegal,” I said.

  “It is if you don’t have a permit for the thing,” she pointed out, aiming the spatula in my direction like a weapon.

  “True,” I said, eyeing her utensil with newfound interest. I could outrun a ninety-year-old woman with a spatula, I was pretty sure. Not positive, but pretty dang sure.

  “Tell me why you care,” I pressed, “and I’ll consider it. I’m sure Carlos would prefer I come back alive and sauceless, rather than dead and sauced any day.”

  “Sauced,” Meg snorted. “Good one.”

  Anastasia straightened her long black robes which, after watching the bubbling mess on the stove, I now understood. Lifting her nose, she spoke. “I don’t believe you saw a gun at all.”

  “Of course we did,” I said. “We were both there.”

  “And you could both be lying,” she said evenly. “No proof.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Help us out.”

  “Help me, help you,” she said. “I’m asking for a photo.”

  Meg tugged on my arm. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  I barely had time to nod before she started jabbering away. “Lace, listen. I left my helmet there. We were gonna stop back anyway. Let’s just go now and—”

  “Meg, Meg!” I’d been saying her name repeatedly. “You do know that when you ask to talk to someone for a second, usually that means you whisper. Or step outside the room.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “I didn’t think we had time for that.”

  I glanced at Anastasia. “Apparently we have an hour to kill.”

  Anastasia whistled a tune as if she wasn’t listening, but the way her eyes darted and her head tilted towards the conversation, it was easy to see she was hanging onto every word.

  “Fine, this way,” Meg said, dragging me into the living room. One of the two black cats hissed at me.

  “Here, chubby,” Meg said soothingly. The cat marched right over to Meg and submitted its little body for a full petting.

  I pretended it didn’t bother me.

  “It’s okay. Don’t feel bad,” Meg said, cradling the kitty. “Your own cat doesn’t even like you. How can you expect someone else’s to warm up to you? You must not have good cat juju. Me? I got the powers of kitty cuddles.”

  “Thank god I don’t,” I muttered, not meaning it. I wanted the cat to like me, too. It was my birthday, for crying out loud.

  “Listen,” Meg said. “We came all the way out here. You failed big time with the bomb thing – no offense – so let’s get you that sauce. I know it means a lot to you.”

  “But I don’t want to risk my life,” I said. “Or yours. Especially yours. I could just meander on over there and sneak in, but I’d feel incredibly bad putting you into a dangerous situation.”

  “Girl, you’re so hazardous it’s a danger just being
your best friend,” Meg said with a shrug. “That’s why you need someone sturdy like me. You think a wisp of a woman like Kate Moss could be your best friend? I don’t think so. She’d sail away in the wind, first time danger got near.”

  I smiled. “You do make a good best friend.”

  “Damn straight,” Meg said. “So let’s both put ourselves in danger. Look at it this way. We’re not stupid. Plus, I really want my helmet. It was specially made for me ‘cause my head was too big for all the normal sizes.”

  “Wow,” I said admiring her noggin. “I never noticed how large your head is.”

  “Lots of brains,” Meg said.

  “Mmm,” I murmured. “Yes.”

  “And lots of padding, also. ‘Cause my head’s so big I gotta fill it with extra calories. Bread, candy, peanut brittle – sauce.” She smiled. “We’ll go there and drive by. If he’s home, we’ll just grab the helmet and take off. We’re out of there the second something smells wrong.”

  “Meg, your sense of smell has led us astray more than once,” I said. “In fact, I think the fumes from the sauce are getting into your rather sizeable head.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed. “But still. If it’s dangerous, we’ll peace out, no problem. Maybe he’s not home. If so, we truck it on foot ‘til we see the shack and take a photo. I know Anastasia said she wanted a picture of the gun, but the shack is suspicious enough. If she’s looking for some proof we saw something weird, that’ll do it.”

  “If she agrees to accept a picture of the shack as part of the deal, I’ll agree,” I said. “I’m not breaking into any shack or any house. We’ll go and get your helmet, snap a quick photo of the cabin, and leave.”

  “Exactly,” Meg said. Turning to the kitty, she cooed, “Don’t worry, my friend, it won’t take us long. No, Auntie Lacey won’t hurt you…go on, say hi.”

  The cat clearly wanted to do anything but say hi to me, and instead he bared his claws in a get lost sort of way. I got lost into the kitchen.

  “Anastasia, I have a deal,” I said. “I’m not risking anything for the sauce. Meg and I will ride over to the house and snap a picture of the man’s shack.”

  “The shack?” she asked, her wrinkled face bunched up in surprise.