McKinnon reached for Matty Mutone’s folder and gave it a quick scan. “Doesn’t look as if this guy was ever really in the life, does it?”
“No,” Sigrid said, dismayed by the anger and sadness that suddenly enveloped her as she considered the ramifications of how this case connected to her father’s death. “When I read the records, there was nothing to show that Olds’s shooters were ever found or charged. Why?”
“We heard it was the Gambinos, but no names surfaced and back then, nobody looked very hard to find a killer’s killer.” McKinnon gave a weary sigh. “Benny Olds was a career criminal and one of the important bosses, Sigrid, but he didn’t put out a hit on your dad. Gianni Gold was just a bagman, one of many foot soldiers. He shouldn’t even have been carrying a gun, but it made him feel big and he popped off when Leif laughed at him. Disrespected him.”
“What about George Edwards?”
“Who?” he asked absently, paging through the don’s bulging folder, pausing at a report here, thumbing through old black-and-white pictures there.
“Mrs. DelVecchio’s attorney. He showed up at the house when we went to question her. She must have called him as soon as she heard that her godson’s body had been found.”
McKinnon shook his head. “Never heard of him. I think she cut all ties to Benny’s associates after he was killed. Her people came from northern Italy, so she wasn’t one of those Sicilian matriarchs.”
“No?” Sigrid thought about the woman’s regal air and expectation of deference.
He turned over a small three-by-five photo that had slipped down into one of the dividers.
“Benny always had an eye for blondes.”
Sigrid reached for the picture. “Is that Mrs. DelVecchio?”
Even with that dated hairdo, she had been a knockout. Her hair was just a little too blond, though, as if it had been helped along by a good hairdresser. Cuddled next to her handsome husband, she looked straight into the camera while he gazed down at her with an indulgent smile.
“Don’t suppose she still looks like that,” said McKinnon. “Did she get fat and matronly?”
“Actually, no. Thinner, if anything, and her hair’s white now. I guess they stayed married?”
“Good little Catholic girl? Oh yes. He had lots of women, but she must have turned a blind eye to them. Besides, they never lasted. Benny was old-school that way—kept the two parts of his life well separated. She was his wife, the mother of his daughter, and he kept her out of the criminal part of his life. Never let it touch them.”
“Except for the dirty money.”
“Most money is,” he said with a cynical smile.
There was a tap on his open door and a uniformed officer said, “Lieutenant? There’s a George Edwards downstairs to see you.”
“Really? Show him up to my office,” she said, and shrugged when McKinnon gave her a quizzical look. “We were supposed to meet at the DelVecchio house.”
“As long as I was coming into town, I thought we could clear the air before you speak to Sofia again,” said the attorney, settling heavily into the chair across from her, with his elbows on the wooden armrests.
Despite the acne scars and wary eyes, there was something appealing about his smile. He probably did very well with juries, Sigrid thought. “You don’t practice here in town?” she asked.
“Riverhead.”
“I’m surprised Mrs. DelVecchio wouldn’t want her lawyer nearer to hand.”
“Because of her husband’s reputation?” An amused smile spread across the attorney’s broad pockmarked face. “He died years ago, Lieutenant. Besides, my practice is mostly wills and trusts.”
“Yet you came running as soon as you heard Matty Mutone was dead.”
“Sofia’s his godmother and I’m her son-in-law. Of course I came.”
“You, but not her daughter?”
All amusement faded from the man’s face. “What exactly is it that you need to know about Matty?”
“What was his relationship to Mrs. DelVecchio?”
“It wasn’t much of a relationship these days. Orla said she told you how Sofia still saw that he had a good meal once a week?”
Sigrid nodded.
“His mother was Benny’s cousin and she introduced him to Sofia. Matty was a sweet kid. Weak, but sweet. He and my wife used to be close till he got into drugs. He was like a brother to her when they were growing up. Then he started using. Sofia tried everything. Paid for rehab. We got him a part-time job and a place to live. She even let him drive her for a couple of years. We thought he’d finally kicked it for good, but back in December, he started using again and dived straight to the bottom. Became unreliable. At that point, Sofia pretty much washed her hands of him. She felt sorry for him but there’s been no real contact with him since—” He hesitated as if catching himself. “No contact since December, so I hope it won’t be necessary to bother her about this again.”
Sigrid handed him the key Tillie had found. “This was in one of his pockets. Did he have a car?”
“Not that I ever heard.”
“Would this key fit Mrs. DelVecchio’s car?”
“I doubt it. He handed those keys over to me when Sofia told me to fire him.”
“What about Miss Orlano?”
“Orla? What about her?”
“How did she feel about Matty?”
Edwards leaned back in the chair and tented his fingers as he considered her question. “She’s absolutely devoted to Sofia and she knows how much it hurt her when Matty started using again, so she’s not exactly mourning his death. Why?”
“I don’t have to spell it out for you, Mr. Edwards. I told you. Matty Mutone died from an overdose of a blood thinner.”
“Your medical examiner’s positive it wasn’t speed? What do they call it? Crystal meth?”
“He thinks Coumadin. So you can see why we need to question the people who provided his last meal.”
“Coumadin?” The attorney collapsed his tented fingers. “I know several people who take Coumadin for their heart. I doubt if it’s hard to come by.”
“Granted. All the same, there was Coumadin in the pasta Mrs. DelVecchio sent down to him.”
“But there were two men dead on that bench, right? And Orla said there were two takeout cartons. Who was the other guy? Where’d he get his food?”
“We haven’t identified him yet.” She handed Edwards a picture of the older dead man. “Recognize him?”
Edwards studied the second man’s face for a long moment. “Sorry. Never saw him before.”
“It’s too soon to know precisely what happened on that bench, but there’s a possibility that the men seemed to have shared their food.”
“Yeah?”
“If indeed it is poison and if it started out in the takeout Miss Orlano gave him and neither she nor Mrs. DelVecchio put it there, then maybe it was originally meant for one or both of those women. Did they order the fettuccine from the restaurant? Who delivered it? We’ll want to know who had access to it—visitors or workmen, maybe?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Edwards said.
“Nevertheless…”
He stood up and flexed his shoulders to shoot the cuffs of his white shirt. “Very well. I’ll meet you over at the house, but I’m asking you, Lieutenant. Please don’t upset my mother-in-law. She’s an old woman with a bad heart. She’s been through a lot and she’s not as strong as she looks.”
“We’ll make it as brief as we can,” Sigrid said.
CHAPTER
5
Coumadin?” Mrs. DelVecchio paused in thought, then finished wiping the ink from her fingertips and handed the cloth back to her companion as Detective Hentz stowed the prints of both women in a file folder. “Matty died from Coumadin?”
“It’s a blood thinner,” her son-in-law said helpfully.
“Yes, yes, I do know what it is, George.” Her tone was impatient. “My doctor prescribed it when I got my pacemaker, but it was so tedious to have
to keep going for the blood tests every five or six weeks. Now I take…” She snapped her fingers. “What is it I take, Orla?”
Miss Orlano dutifully supplied the name of a nationally advertised drug.
“That’s right. Now I only have to be tested twice a year.”
“How long ago did you stop using it?” Sigrid asked
The old woman frowned. “Six months ago?”
Her companion nodded.
“In December. I told my doctor I could no longer come to his office so often and he changed the prescription.”
“Do you still have some of it on hand?”
“Do we, Orla?”
Miss Orlano’s thick eyebrows drew together over the bridge of her nose like two fuzzy gray caterpillars in a staring match. “You did not tell me to throw the bottle away.”
“I didn’t tell you to keep it either,” snapped Mrs. DelVecchio. “Go get it, please.”
The woman turned and stumped her way laboriously through the archway to the stairs, where she seated herself in a chair lift that carried her up to the second floor.
Edwards watched her go. “I thought you were going to get someone to help out,” he said.
“Do you think I haven’t tried? She fights me at every turn.”
Edwards shook his head. “I’ll ask Laura to reason with her.”
“If she wouldn’t listen to Aria, she certainly won’t listen to Laura.”
“Who else lives here besides you and Miss Orlano?” asked Sigrid.
“We’ve tried to keep live-in help,” Edwards answered, “but you see the situation. The best we can do is a weekly cleaning service.”
Mrs. DelVecchio gave a wintry smile. “Poor George. Always having to deal with stubborn women. Yes, Lieutenant. There’s only Orla and me in this big house now.”
“And Sal,” her son-in-law reminded her.
“And Sal,” she agreed.
Sigrid looked up from her notes. “Who’s Sal?”
“My Alberich,” said Mrs. DelVecchio. “He lives downstairs in the basement apartment. He shovels the snow, tidies the back garden, keeps the cars running, and does all the heavy lifting Orla can no longer manage, which is why she thinks we can do without someone else underfoot all day.” She cast a jaundiced eye at her son-in-law. “He’s also supposed to be our bodyguard.”
Through the open doors to the central hall, they saw Miss Orlano descend in the electric chair lift, then shuffle back to them, carrying a small orange plastic bottle.
Mrs. DelVecchio held out her hand, but the other woman shook her head.
“The bottle’s not there. You must have thrown it away. This is your new stuff.”
“Where was the old bottle kept?” asked Sigrid.
“In the medicine chest in my bathroom, of course.”
“When did you last see it?”
With a graceful shrug of her thin shoulders, Mrs. DelVecchio said, “Probably the day I took my last dose of it back in December. I thought I put the bottle up on the top shelf when I started taking the new medicine, but I must have thrown it away.”
“Let’s go back to Tuesday night and your fettuccine,” said Sigrid. “Did someone bring it to you or—?”
“Sal,” said Miss Orlano. “I called downstairs and he went around for it.”
“Did he eat any of it?”
“Certainly not.” Mrs. DelVecchio looked offended at the idea of sharing a dish with a handyman.
“So only the three of you touched the fettuccine box?”
“Only Sal and me,” said the housekeeper. “He met me in the kitchen and left the box on the table. I fixed our plates and carried them into the dining room.”
Of course, thought Sigrid, her face expressionless. No serving herself from a plebian takeout box in the kitchen for Mrs. DelVecchio.
A sense of fairness reminded her that her proper Southern grandmother would never allow a takeout box on her own table either and she abruptly realized that she was letting her father’s death color her objectivity.
She took a deep breath and kept her voice civil. “Does this mean your bodyguard has access to the house and can come and go as he wishes?”
“There are steps from the back of his apartment up to the kitchen,” Miss Orlano said.
Mrs. DelVecchio’s lips curved in a wry smile. “A bodyguard is useless if he can’t get to you quickly when you need him, Lieutenant.”
“May we assume that there are back stairs from the kitchen to the second floor?”
“You may, but Sal never goes beyond the kitchen unless he’s asked to do something. If you’re suggesting he went upstairs and rummaged through my medicine cabinet for pills to put in our food, no.”
George Edwards stirred in his chair.
“Yes, George, I know it didn’t get into the food by itself, but Sal?”
“It really is very unlikely, Lieutenant Harald,” he said.
Sigrid turned back to the housekeeper. “And when you finished eating?”
“I sent her down to that bench with what we hadn’t touched,” said Mrs. DelVecchio.
“Please let Miss Orlano tell us.”
“I did tell you,” the other woman said. “Nobody was there, so I left the box on the bench and came back here.”
“We’ll need one of your current pills for elimination purposes.”
Mrs. DelVecchio started to object, then wearily motioned to Miss Orlano, who gave the bottle to Hentz, who tipped a pill into an evidence bag as Sigrid closed her notebook.
“Where can we find Mr. Alberich? We’ll want his fingerprints, too.”
Miss Orlano looked puzzled. “Who?”
“Your bodyguard.”
Mrs. DelVecchio’s laugh held patronizing scorn. “Sal? His name is Salvador. Pete Salvador.”
Sigrid glanced at Hentz, who studiously avoided her eyes and seemed intent on putting away his own notes.
“George will go with you,” said Mrs. DelVecchio.
It was a dismissal. And despite Sigrid’s attempt at professional objectivity, it felt rather like entitled royalty directing the end of an audience with the peasants.
“We’ll have lunch now, Orla,” said Mrs. DelVecchio when they were alone. “Is there enough minestrone for George, too?”
“I can stretch it with a salad,” replied her companion. “I’ll get Sal to give us some herbs.”
She tried not to seem stiff-jointed as she hoisted herself out of the chair and made for the kitchen. There, she took the leftover soup from the refrigerator and put the pot on the stove over a low flame, then opened the glass door and stepped out onto the back deck. Sal knelt on a bright green rubber pad to weed a border of trailing thyme.
“Yeah?” he said when she called to him in a low voice.
“We need parsley and thyme and some of those green onion tops,” she told him. “And the police are coming to ask you questions about Matty.”
“Me? Why?”
“They’ll ask you when you saw him last and what he said.”
“So?”
“You haven’t seen him in over a week. That’s what you tell them.”
“But—”
“Unless you want me to tell our signora about how you—?”
He made a short chopping gesture with the side of his hand. “Basta! I did not see him, okay?”
“Bene.” She scowled as the side door to the garage opened and hurried back inside before the soup burned.
Outside, while Sigrid and Hentz waited on the sidewalk, George Edwards walked down the basement steps to the door under the front stoop. When no one answered the bell, he led them to a narrow door beside garage doors that closed off what was probably once an open alley between 409 and 411.
“I think it began life as a stable,” Edwards said as he unlocked the door and gestured them into a space that held two cars end to end. The first was a late-model Toyota sedan. At the far end, a heavy canvas tarp covered a longer, bigger automobile and Hentz lifted a corner to reveal a gleaming chrome gri
ll.
“Is that an Oldsmobile from the fifties?”
“Nineteen fifty-four,” Edwards said over his shoulder. “It was my father-in-law’s. A real classic, I’m told.”
“Still run?”
“Oh yes. Sal drives the girls through Central Park a few times a year.”
“So Benny Olds really did have a thing for Oldsmobiles,” Hentz said.
“That’s what they say. Before my time. I never met him.”
At the rear of the garage was a workbench with tools neatly hung on a pegboard. On either side of the workbench were open shelves. The left section held bottles and cans for car maintenance: motor oil, brake fluid, and windshield washer. The right side seemed devoted to gardening supplies—insecticides and fertilizers. A small electric tiller was tucked under the workbench beside a push mower.
Edwards opened a side door and they stepped into a surprisingly deep formal garden that reminded Sigrid of British travelogues. A wide curved bed of colorful perennials bloomed along the back and side walls, a clipped boxwood hedge rimmed the back deck, and a tree covered with white blossoms shaded one corner of the deck. The center of the garden had been paved with closely fitted flagstones that held a teak garden bench and an artful koi pond with pink water lilies.
Across the garden, a skinny man with stooped shoulders seemed to be in a spirited conversation with Miss Orlano, who had come out onto the rear deck. He wore green coveralls and could not have been more than an inch or two over five feet. As soon as the housekeeper saw them, she went back inside, but the man’s wrinkled face broke into a smile and he moved briskly toward them, waving his trowel in greeting as he crossed the flagstones and skirted the koi pond. “Hey, Mr. George.”
His face was creased with wrinkles and tanned from the sun and his shaggy hair was more white than brown. “Damn shame about Matty, huh?”
“Yeah, pretty bad, Sal. I guess Orla told you the police are looking into his death. They want to ask you some questions.”
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