by Joanne Pence
“It’s hot in there,” he complained.
“Kitchens often are,” she said. “Where is Butch, by the way?”
“He was wit’ his nephew last time I saw him,” Earl replied. “Up in the apartment.”
Just then, Connie walked in. The taxi dropped her off right in front of the restaurant.
“Thank goodness you’re safe.” Angie jumped to her feet. “I kept imagining things happening to you, and it being all my fault.”
“Not this time,” Connie said. Not exactly the ringing endorsement Angie had hoped for, but it would have to do.
“I saw Max,” Connie admitted, joining the others at the table.
“My God!” Angie cried. “Where is he? Did you call Paavo?” We’ve got to catch him.”
“I don’t think he did it,” she said. “I think he’s innocent. He had no reason to kill”—she almost said “to kill Veronica,” but realized that fact was still a secret—“to do it other than hatred, and he’s well over that.”
“Sid Fernandez wouldn’t have done anything before getting the diamonds,” Angie said. “So who did?” It all came back to Dennis, she thought. She didn’t want to say it here, though.
Earl and Vinnie must have read her mind, because they caught each other’s eyes and looked downcast. She wondered what they might know—what she was overlooking.
“Anyway, Max told me where Veronica may have hidden the money,” Connie said excitedly. “Remember the torn piece of paper we found in her room with all those numbers? Max said offshore accounts use codes—even longer ones than we found. Someone else must have the other half of the code. She must have been here, in the city, trying to get it. Now, we just have to figure out who has the rest of the code, get the money, give it back, and Max’s problems will be over.”
Just then, the smell of something burning reached them from the kitchen, followed by a loud thud.
Max had been seen at a skid-row hotel on Third Street. When Paavo and Yosh got there, the room he’d been given was empty. It looked like he wouldn’t be returning.
They were headed back to Yosh’s Ford when the walking split-pea-soup guy appeared. “Larry the Leprechaun at your service, Inspector Smith. I’m here to give you the keys to your dream car.” He pointed at a black Corvette parked across the street.
Paavo stopped and stared at the gorgeous car, then got into the Ford and locked the door.
“I’ve got to stop her,” he said to Yosh, a tremor in his voice. “I didn’t want to. I was hoping she’d get over it on her own.”
“You got to be careful not to hurt her feelings,” Yosh cautioned, salivating over the car. “Remember, your partner gets to ride with you.”
“This is too much.”
Yosh grinned at him. “You must have told her you used to like Miami Vice. Didn’t that guy drive a Corvette?”
“He sure did,” Paavo said wistfully as they drove off, leaving Larry the Leprechaun standing slack-jawed in front of the car.
In no time they’d gone three blocks to another hotel, one Squire had stayed at a couple of days before. He might have returned.
When they walked into the shabby and urine-stained lobby, they found themselves in the middle of a drug deal. The dealer burst past them, hitting Paavo hard and knocking him into Yosh, who also toppled over.
They were running down the block after the dealer when Mr. Green Jeans jumped in front of Paavo. “Mister, before I can get paid, I’ve got to give you the damned car!”
Paavo didn’t stop and the wayward elf flipped, head over heels, into a sidewalk trash receptacle.
Paavo and Yosh caught up to the dealer.
A paddy wagon was already on the scene before the little man came to. He stayed hidden until all the cops drove away.
Angie followed Earl and Vinnie as they ran into the kitchen. Black smoke made it hard to see. A strange white glob, like a temple of dough, jutted high over the kettle, listing to one side. The top of the temple had been broken off and lay splattered across the stovetop, part of it being barbecued by the flame from the burner. At the same time, smoke and the sharp smell of burning noodles were billowing up from the inside of the kettle.
“Turn the gas off!” Angie yelled.
Vinnie did so, then he and Earl each grabbed a potholder and one handle of the kettle. They lifted it off the stove and into the sink.
“What is it?” Angie asked curiously, looking at the peculiar lump.
“It looks like it’s alive,” Connie said. “Like brains, squiggly things all mooshed together.”
“We ain’t never had not’in’ like dat on our menu before,” Earl said.
“What’s wrong with you people?” Vinnie cried. “It’s fettucini. Why did it stick together?”
“All you have to do to cook pasta is boil it,” Angie said, disgusted. “For eight or nine minutes.”
“Oh. So, maybe I overcooked it a little. Is that a crime?” Vinnie asked.
“What’s a crime is your cookin’ anyt’ing. We gotta get Butch back to work!” Earl cried. He spun around to open some doors and vent the room, and yelled.
Dennis stepped out from the far wall. He had a gun.
“What’re you doing?” Vinnie asked, his eyes wide on Dennis’s gun. “Whatsa matter with you?”
“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” he said. “You forced me to do this.”
“You’re da one who’s made Butch miserable,” Earl scolded. “Why’d you wanna do dat to your own uncle? He was good to you. Didn’t even tell da cops what a jerk you are!”
“Will you guys just shut up?” Dennis yelled. Angry tears glistened in his eyes. “I didn’t do anything. Don’t you get it yet? It was Veronica. She ruined everything. My football career, my plans for a sports bar, my life. All I needed was some of her damned money. My share, plus a little more to borrow, to get me out of debt and back on my feet. Do you know how expensive it is to live like a football star? To live the way everyone expects? And now my contract isn’t being renewed. All my dreams, everything I’ve ever worked for, it’s all finished. Give me the code, Angie.”
“Where’s Butch?” Vinnie asked, as the four of them slowly eased backward.
“He’s upstairs in the apartment. I came down the back way and was going to cut through the restaurant to leave when I heard you talking. I need that code, then I’ll get out of here.” His voice was desperate.
“You have the other half of the paper?” Angie asked from behind Earl. “Why?”
“I…I saw her working in Max’s office and we started talking. I knew a bit about the offshore accounts. We set one up for me—just to see if it’d work. I had no idea she’d go so far…
“In the end, I couldn’t say anything about her because if word got out that I’d taught her anything, even though I was innocent, my career would be over. But also, if she said anything to the authorities about me, I’d tell where the money was. So she kept quiet, and so did I. Then, she came back here, expecting I’d give her my part of the code. She wanted nearly all the money, saying it was payment for the three years she did. But I needed it! I needed it more than she did!”
“You didn’t ask how we got the code,” Angie said quietly. “That must mean you know Veronica’s dead.”
He froze, searching Angie’s face to see if this was another sick joke. “She’s dead?” he whispered.
They said nothing, and the truth hit him hard. His whole body went limp, the hand holding the gun dropped to his side. “She can’t be. Not Veronica. How? What happened to her?”
“Someone shot her,” Angie said, studying him.
He shook his head. “Who did it?” His voice was thick with emotion.
“We don’t know,” Angie said.
“El Toro,” Dennis whispered. “That bastard! I warned her!” Tears glistened in his eyes.
“He killed his partner, Julius Rodriguez, thinking Julius and Veronica scammed him out of the diamonds,” Connie said. “But he didn’t kill her—he wanted the diamonds to
o much to kill her before retrieving them.”
“Then who?” Dennis demanded. His face drawn, he seemed genuinely heartbroken over Veronica’s death.
“You knew Veronica,” Angie cried. “Who else did she con? That’s the murderer!”
“But that means it’s someone who didn’t take the money or the diamonds,” Dennis said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does,” Angie said slowly, testing the theory, “if she was killed out of passion. Because of betrayal, not for wealth. Look at the reactions she’s caused in you and Max. She knew how to wrap men around her finger—she acted on pure gut emotion, and the reaction she solicited was the same.”
“You’re right,” Connie said. “What men did she know? Who was close to her?”
Angie tried to think of every man Paavo had ever mentioned who knew Veronica. Max…Dennis…Fernandez…Julius…Butch…
“Oh, my God!” Angie said. “I know who it is. I’ve got to call Paavo. He might be in danger!”
Chapter 32
While Yosh went back to the flophouse to check on Max’s whereabouts, Paavo headed in the opposite direction across town. In lavish Sea Cliff, he walked up to the door of Pagozzi’s home, rang the bell, and knocked, but there was no answer.
He stepped out of the front entry to see if he could get to the back door, or if there was any sign of movement in the house, when he saw a figure in jeans and a brown jacket dart from behind a hedge to scramble over a wooden gate to the side yard.
Paavo sprinted after him. The backyard was small, as is typical of even the most luxurious city homes, and the runner realized he had no escape there. One yard backed up to another, and another after that.
He raised his hands and turned around.
“We meet at last.” Paavo’s gun was drawn.
“You must be Angie’s fiancé,” Max said. “She talks about you incessantly.”
“She does the same about you,” Paavo replied, “trying to convince me I was wrong about your guilt, or trying to convince Connie that she was wrong about your innocence.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong here,” Max said. “Except that I didn’t want to be seen.”
“Why not?”
“I came here to confront Dennis. I was convinced, for a while, after you learned he and Veronica had been married, that he was an accomplice of hers. That he worked with her to swindle my clients and ruin me. That the two laughed together over it. But as I stood here and waited for him to open the door, I realized I no longer cared.”
Paavo studied the man, taking in the measure of him, of the truth behind his words. “Explain.”
“It wasn’t worth it. What I did to my life—waiting for three years for Veronica to get out so I could confront her—was pure, self-indulgent idiocy. Her and Pagozzi—to hell with them both. I want no part of either of them. So when I saw you pull up, I ran. It was foolish, not criminal.”
“A pretty speech, but you could have been running for another reason.” He paused. “Veronica Maple is dead, and you killed her.”
A panoply of emotions flickered across Max’s face—surprise, horror, relief, and regret. “No,” he whispered, and then paused. “She was so very full of life…her mind always racing with ideas, big, exciting ideas.” His lips tightened and his voice turned thick. “She could have done so much.”
Yet another man Maple had double-crossed, and who seemed to love her. “If you didn’t kill her, Squire, who did?”
Paavo’s question snapped him out of his reverie. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Dennis Pagozzi?”
“Dennis is no killer. And neither am I. The guys Ronnie was involved with, in the jewelry heist—they were killers. But I find it hard to imagine they did it.”
Paavo eyed Squire a long moment, then holstered his gun. “They’re pros,” he said. “It wasn’t a pro hit, and they wouldn’t have killed her until after getting the diamonds.”
Max lowered his arms, then shut his eyes a moment in relief at being believed. “So,” he said, when he was able to speak again, “the question is, who did it? There’s got to be someone…someone else she conned into helping her. That’s what she was best at—a real-life femme fatale, like the rotten women in the film noir of the nineteen-thirties and-forties. I’ve never encountered anyone like her before, and hope I never do again.”
“Someone else she conned…” Paavo murmured, and suddenly he realized the suspicions he’d harbored for some time about her murderer were correct. He knew the identify. “You’re right. We’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle. We’ve been looking at money and diamonds. But greed isn’t always the motive for all that’s bad in the world. Sometimes it happens for the most unlikely reason—like love.”
“Love?” Max scoffed, but then his expression turned thoughtful and he nodded. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. The pursuit of love can make men do all kinds of things quite out of character.”
Paavo opened the side gate—it unlocked from the inside—and stepped out onto the sidewalk with Max. “It can cause them to change,”—he gave Max a hard stare—“cause them to rise above the trouble or injustice society throws at them. Or, other times, with other people, it can cause them to simply go bad.”
Max said nothing.
“Give it some thought.” Paavo turned away.
Just then, the leprechaun drove up in the black Corvette, stopped in the middle of the street, opened the car door, and started to get out.
Paavo pushed aside one flap of his jacket so his gun was visible. The Jolly Green Pipsqueak popped back into the car and drove off in a rush.
Paavo got into his city issue Chevy and picked up his cell phone to give a call to the Fresno PD.
As he drove, in the distance, he could just make out what might have become his very own gorgeous black sports car. He couldn’t stop a heartfelt sigh.
Sometimes love did turn a man’s life upside down.
“I think I get it, too,” Dennis said, putting the gun in his jacket pocket.
“Well, I don’t,” Connie said. “All I understand is, it isn’t Max.”
“Tell her,” Angie said.
He wiped his eyes. “I didn’t think I’d be crying to hear Veronica was dead. I thought I’d celebrate such news. She nearly ruined my life. Did I tell you that? All…all because she loved me, and she just wasn’t enough. I guess that means, in a way, I ruined her life even more.”
The others said nothing as he tried to compose himself.
“I remember her telling me things, like how she was able to convince her parole officer that she was putting off her release until his day off ‘to avoid suspicion.’ Can you imagine? She’d told him about the money she’d hidden, and he thought the two were going to go away together, leave the country, and live off of it the rest of their lives. She used him the whole time she was in stir, getting him to move her to more malleable cellmates, to get her simple jobs—heck, the last six months she worked in the prison library, where he’d ‘visit’ her in the stacks. She had the jerk wrapped around her little finger. He thought she loved him,” Dennis started to laugh, even as he cried because she was dead.
“God, Veronica thought she was such a genius, and she ends up killed by someone who was just plain stupid!” Dennis’s sobs and laughter grew louder. “Is that funny, or what?”
A gunshot sounded, and in the shocked silence that followed, Dennis fell to the ground.
Then the lights went out.
Max watched Paavo get in his car and head after the leprechaun in the Corvette. He shook his head and smiled. Connie had told him about Angie’s little surprises for Paavo. This one was a bit over the top.
Max breathed deeply, filling his lungs with fresh sea air.
He was free now. Free for the first time in three years. Free of the sickness he thought of as love; free of hatred; revenge; and now, free of the need to hide from the police.
When he was ready, he would go back to Wings and apologize to E
arl, Vinnie, and Butch. Even to Angie, who, in the way she helped Connie, had shown him what true friendship was all about. And to Connie. Especially to Connie.
Puffy white cumulus clouds floated in a crystal blue sky. His heart swelled, and he started walking. As he went, his shuffling step turned springy, and soon, he began to whistle.
He’d take his time going to Wings. No need to hurry anymore.
Angie knew the layout of the restaurant like the back of her hand. As soon as she saw Vinnie hit the lights, she grabbed Connie’s arm and led her to the stairway down to the basement storeroom, Earl and Vinnie right behind them.
They shut and locked the storeroom door, then switched on the light, while Angie frantically called nine-one-one on her cell phone.
Someone banged against the door. Earl and Vinnie lunged at it, trying to hold it shut.
Another thud jarred the door, and the lock sprang open, pushing the two small men back.
Connie screamed, and all of them leaped behind the crates of fireworks.
A stocky bald-headed man carrying a gun entered the room.
“Get up. Put your hands up!” he yelled.
“First tell us,” Angie called, cowering ever lower behind the crate as she did so, hoping to throw him off kilter and buy time. “Are you the stupid parole officer?”
“Come out of there, Veronica. I won’t hurt you. Not this time.” He inched closer to the crates while Angie and the others frantically tried to find something, anything, to use to protect themselves.
“Please, Veronica. Talk to me. Tell me you’re alive,” he said.
“Stop! She’s scared of you,” Angie hollered. “Leave her alone!”
He froze. “Scared? Of me? Veronica, how can you be scared after all I did for you? After the way I loved you and helped make life easy for you in prison?” His voice choked. “I gave up everything for you. My wife. My job. My home.” Tears coursed down his cheeks.
Angie nodded vigorously at Connie, trying to get her to answer him.
“Tell me I was wrong about you,” Lexington pleaded. “Tell me you still love me.”
