A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5)

by Lois Winston

  “None. Looks like the killer either wiped the knife before discarding it, or he wore gloves.”

  “Do you have any leads yet on either case?”

  “You know better than to ask that, Mrs. Pollack.”

  I chuckled. “Someday you might slip and actually tell me something, Detective.”

  “Fat chance.” With that parting pronouncement he hung up.

  Zack had suggested that given the circumstances of Carmen’s death, her killer was probably a drug addict looking for cash or pills. How likely was it that such a perpetrator would wear gloves in order to avoid leaving fingerprints? It was equally unlikely that someone like that would have the presence of mind to wipe his prints from the murder weapon before ditching it. Especially since he hadn’t bothered to clean Carmen’s blood from the blade. Something didn’t add up. Hopefully, Spader had the same thoughts and just wasn’t sharing them with me.

  No sooner had I hung up from Spader, than Zack called. “I heard from Patricia.”

  “Already? Isn’t that a little odd?”

  “What’s odd is that there’s no record of a Lawrence Tuttnauer anywhere in the system. As far as the government is concerned, the man doesn’t exist and never has.”

  FIFTEEN

  “How can that be?”

  “Good question. The only thing that makes sense is if he’s in Witness Protection.”

  “Which makes no sense if ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini is his second cousin.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m sticking with my gambling theory and Benini is really his bookie, not his cousin.”

  “How do you explain there’s no record of Lawrence? No birth certificate. No social security. No tax returns. No passport. Nothing.”

  “He’s got to have a passport. He and Mama went to Paris on their honeymoon.”

  “Which means he used a counterfeit passport—an extremely good one in order to make it through airport security and customs without getting caught.”

  Fear skittered up and down my spine. Who was this man my mother married? “Maybe Lawrence is in Witness Protection for some reason not related to the mob. Suppose he witnessed a drug deal or a murder somewhere else in the country, and the feds gave him a new identity after he testified.”

  “Cynthia, too?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it? Especially if whatever he witnessed occurred while she was still a minor.”

  “I suppose. I’m going to call a few other people I know and see what they can dig up.”

  “Alphabet people?”

  “Just some people I know.”

  “Right. Before you hang up, I heard from Spader. The knife Alex found in the bushes is the weapon that killed Carmen.”

  *

  Naomi told everyone to leave work an hour early, so we’d make it home in time to hand out candy to the little costumed beggars anxiously ringing our doorbells and hoping for the ‘good stuff,’ rather than generic, cellophane-wrapped lollipops. I didn’t begrudge the younger neighborhood kids their yearly candy extortion. What transformed me into a curmudgeon were the teenagers who didn’t even bother to don costumes and the families from less affluent towns who drove their kids to Westfield to score better bounty.

  Westfield might have a reputation for being an upscale community, but not all of us worked on Wall Street or at high-power New York law firms. I could rattle off dozens of better uses for that twenty dollars I dropped on chocolate bars at ShopRite the other day.

  Even leaving work an hour early, I hit traffic on Rt. 78 and slowed to a fifteen-mile-an-hour crawl east of Warren. I turned on the news, hoping for a traffic report. Instead, I heard the ominous musical notes that signaled a breaking news story. The serious voice of a female reporter followed.

  “The body of Stevie ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini, a reputed, high-ranking member of the Gambino crime family, was discovered about an hour ago slumped behind the wheel of a late model black Escalade parked on a residential section of JFK Boulevard in Weehawken.”

  Startled, I wasn’t paying attention to traffic and didn’t realize the car in front of me had stopped. I slammed on the brakes, stopping inches from his back bumper. Brakes squealed behind me, followed by a series of irate horn blasts. I glanced in my rearview mirror in time to see the driver of one of those enormous macho pickup trucks shooting me the bird. Ignoring him, I reached for the radio knob and cranked up the volume.

  “Initial reports indicate Benini died of natural causes, but the medical examiner will perform an autopsy to determine cause of death.

  “In 2009 Benini was indicted, along with several others, on charges of racketeering and extortion. Shortly before the case went to trial, the DA was forced to drop all charges after their star witness disappeared, and several others scheduled to testify recanted their initial statements to investigators, claiming the detectives had used excessive force to coerce those statements from them.”

  The historical information parroted that of the documentary Zack and I had watched. The report ended without offering any further facts, and the station segued to a commercial break.

  Had ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini really died of natural causes? My Spidey senses told me otherwise. More importantly, did his death have anything to do with Lawrence? I sure as hell hoped not, but Lawrence had connections to ‘Jelly Bean,’ and he’d definitely lied about the nature of those ties.

  I fished my phone out of my purse and placed a call to Zack. When he answered, I dispensed with pleasantries and greeted him by asking, “Did you hear the news about ‘Jelly Bean’?”

  “Just now. Where are you?”

  “Stuck in traffic on my way home, but I’ve got to stop at the condo first.” I explained why. “Looks like the lovebirds are back to being all lovey-dovey.”

  “Good. Better for Flora that way. Get back here as soon as you can. On second thought, forget about the feline empress for now. I’ll go over there with you later tonight after all the doorbell ringing ends.”

  “No need. I only have to check to make sure she still has food and water. I’ll be in and out in under five minutes.”

  I hung up from Zack and decided to ditch the highway for the back roads, exiting at the next off ramp. Twenty minutes later I pulled up in front of the condo, keyed in the alarm code, and let myself into the apartment.

  Catherine the Great sat sunning herself in front of the French doors that led to the small back patio. She glanced my way, then turned her face back to the setting sun, having decided I wasn’t worth the effort of further exertion on her part, much less a royal greeting. After all, I was but a mere servant. I retrieved her pricey cat food from the fridge, adding some to her empty food bowl, and topped off her water dish.

  I was about to leave the apartment when the urge to snoop in Lawrence’s file cabinet drew me to the den. I quickly discovered the file cabinet was locked. A standard metal two-drawer unit, it contained a simple locking mechanism in one corner above the top drawer. Never having picked a lock in my life, I had no idea how long it would take or even if I’d succeed, but I knew I could find instructions on the Internet.

  I flipped up the lid of the laptop sitting on the desk and hit the power button. A minute later I frowned at the screen. Damn! The computer was password protected. However, now that I owned a brand new smart phone, I had another way of accessing the Internet. Less than a minute later I was watching a Youtube tutorial on lock picking.

  I grabbed two paper clips from the desk, and following the step-by-step directions on the video, bent them into the proper shapes. Kneeling in front of the file cabinet, I inserted the paper clips as instructed into the lock’s keyhole. After a minute or two of trial and error, the lock popped open.

  I first slid out the bottom file drawer, groaning when I discovered the contents—a large metal lock box. I removed the box and placed it on the desk. After settling onto the desk chair, I grabbed the paper clips and hoped beginner’s luck held for my second attempt at lock picking.

  The lock box pro
ved more difficult than the file cabinet, taking me fifteen minutes of fiddling with the paper clips before maneuvering them correctly into place to spring the lock. I raised the lid and gasped.

  I’d come in contact with some badass guns over the last year, but the one nestled inside the box out-badassed all of them by a mile—even if I had no idea what it was. This gun made Zack’s Mr. Sauer look like a toy. Alongside the gun sat a scope of some sort and what I believed might be a silencer since one end contained screw threads. A box of ammunition—labeled as hollow-point bullets—an envelope, and a large black velvet pouch with a drawstring rounded out the box’s contents.

  Not knowing whether or not the gun was loaded, I slid the envelope out from under it, taking care not to touch the gun. Inside the envelope I found five passports, all with Lawrence’s picture but issued in different names. Alvin Esposito. Claude LeBlanc. Donald Sarkasian. Franklin Quinn. Wilson Schmidt—Spanish, French, Armenian, Irish, German—Lawrence had covered a large segment of white male ethnicity. Was one of these names the real Lawrence Tuttnauer, or were they all aliases? I grabbed my cell phone and snapped photos of each passport. Then I returned the passports to the envelope and gingerly slid the envelope back under the gun.

  Just when I thought nothing could shock me further, I opened the velvet pouch and blinked, not believing what twinkled back at me—four or five-dozen very large, exceedingly brilliant diamonds. I poured several into the palm of my hand, estimating each at three carats or larger. To my untrained eye, the diamonds appeared pretty darned flawless. I weighed the pouch in my hand, wondering how many millions of dollars I held. A couple of these babies would wipe out my Karl-induced debt, restore my bank accounts, and set my kids and me up for life.

  For a nanosecond I wondered if Lawrence would miss a few diamonds among his cache. Then the moment fled, and I was left alone with my conscience. I poured the diamonds back into the pouch and placed the pouch inside the lock box.

  Only then did I realize the flaw in my plan. I didn’t have the key to relock the box. I grabbed my phone and searched for an answer on the Internet. Apparently, no one cared about alternate ways to relock a lock because I didn’t find a single site that offered any help. I’d just have to hope Lawrence wouldn’t notice the box was already unlocked the next time he went to open it.

  Once I returned the lock box to the bottom drawer of the file cabinet, I pulled open the top drawer, which held thirty-five to forty file folders, each labeled with a long series of letters and numbers. I pulled out the first file and opened it to find a series of statements for a bank located in the Cayman Islands. The account belonged to Continental Machine Works, Inc. I snapped a photo of the top statement and returned the folder to the file.

  The next folder I withdrew contained statements from another bank, this one located in Bermuda, and for another company, American Industries, Inc. I snapped a photo of that account’s most recent statement. I quickly realized that each file contained bank statements from different banks in various countries and all under different company names.

  As I stared at the folders lined up in the file, the truth stared back at me. Lawrence had never owned a commercial laundry; Lawrence laundered money for the mob.

  My hands shook as I closed the open folder and slipped it back into the file drawer. I’d had enough run-ins with the Mafia to last me a lifetime. All I wanted to do was hightail it out of the condo and forget what I’d discovered. But how could I when I’d just learned my mother had married into the mob?

  At that moment, though, I faced a more pressing dilemma as I heard the front door of the condo open. The alarm began to beep, and Mama called out, “Anastasia? Are you here, dear?”

  SIXTEEN

  What the hell were they doing home?

  I couldn’t let Lawrence catch me red-handed at his desk. I quickly closed the file drawer, realizing I had about fifteen seconds to come up with a plausible explanation as to why I was in the room. Luckily the file cabinet lock was the kind that locked by depressing the mechanism flush with the cabinet.

  As soon as I’d clicked the lock into place, I stepped away from the desk and tossed my phone under the sofa. Then I flipped one of the cushions and dropped to my knees just as Mama and Lawrence entered the den.

  “What in the world—?” asked Mama.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” asked Lawrence.

  I stood, placed my hands on my lower back and stretched. “I can’t find my phone. I thought maybe I dropped it here last night.”

  Mama’s brows knit together. “But I spoke on the phone with you this morning, dear.”

  “I called you from my office phone. Anyway, I’ve searched all over—home, office. I even stopped at the diner we went to last night. This is the only other place I could think to look.”

  Lawrence whipped out his cell phone. “What’s the number?”

  I rattled off my cell number. A moment later the air filled with the sounds of an orchestral version of “I Am Woman,” the music I’d chosen as my new ring-tone. Lawrence bent down and fished the phone out from under the sofa and handed it to me.

  I shook my head and faked an exaggerated sigh of relief as I slipped the phone into my purse while I avoided looking directly at him. “What a relief! This phone isn’t even a week old, and it cost me a fortune.”

  The phone actually hadn’t cost me a penny, thanks to Zack’s generosity, but Lawrence would never know that. I added an ironic chuckle. “Always the last place you look, right?”

  Then I turned to Mama. “What are you doing home? I thought you were planning to spend the night out on Long Island.”

  “Some maniac ran a stop sign and plowed into us,” she said.

  My jaw dropped, and my stomach plummeted as I swept my gaze up and down Mama for signs of injury. No casts. No bruises. No swelling. No bandages. “Were you hurt?”

  Lawrence answered for her. “We’re both more shaken up than anything.”

  Mama placed her hands, one on top of the other, over her neckline and shuddered. “I swear my life flashed before me. I really and truly thought we would die.”

  “But you’re both okay? Did you hit your heads?” I stood nose-to-nose with Mama, checking for dilated pupils.

  “We’re both fine,” he said. “The hospital ran scans before they allowed us to leave.”

  “You were able to drive home?”

  He nodded. “Luckily, the jerk only clipped the rear end of our car.”

  “Only?” Mama’s voice climbed two octaves. “You make it sound like he just tapped our bumper.” She turned to me. “The impact spun us around, and pushed us onto a sidewalk crowded with pedestrians. Somehow Lawrence managed to keep us from hitting a traffic light pole and several people walking down the street at the time.”

  She removed one hand from her neck, placed it on his forearm, and graced him with a worshipful smiled. “He not only saved our lives but the lives of all those other people.”

  I turned to Lawrence. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Mama.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m going to soak in a hot tub,” said Mama. “I may not have any injuries, but I feel like I was run over by a freight train.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a gentle hug. “I’m glad nothing worse happened. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I grabbed my purse, waved goodbye to Lawrence, and left the condo. I was about to step into my car when someone grabbed my arm and spun me around.

  “Want to tell me what you were really doing in the den?” asked Lawrence. He held out his hand to show me the two bent paperclips I’d forgotten on his desk.

  Lying is definitely not my forte; I have a hard time looking someone in the eye and keeping a straight face. However, a little voice at the back of my brain told me my life might depend on whether or not I could pull off an Oscar-worthy performance at that moment.

  I knit my brows together and stared at the missha
pen bits of metal in Lawrence’s hand, poking them with my index finger. “What in the world are those?” I asked.

  “You tell me.”

  I raised my head, looked him straight in the eyes, and shrugged. “I have no idea.” I ducked into my Jetta, locked the door, and started the engine, but before I drove away, I rolled down the window. “Have you heard the news?” I asked.

  “What news?”

  “‘Stevie “Jelly Bean” Benini is dead.”

  His face showed no emotion. “How?”

  “He was found slumped over his steering wheel. No obvious signs of foul play, but an autopsy is scheduled to determine cause of death.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t look surprised.”

  “The man had a heart condition and smoked three packs a day. I told him nicotine would kill him sooner than any of his former associates.”

  I wondered, considering I’d once heard there were methods of murder that simulated the appearance of a fatal heart attack or actually caused one. But Lawrence couldn’t have killed ‘Jelly Bean,’ not if he and Mama were on Long Island when ‘Jelly Bean’ died in Weehauken, New Jersey.

  As I drove away from the condo, I hazarded a glance in the rearview mirror. Lawrence stood in the parking space I’d vacated, hands on hips, a scowl on his face, watching me drive away. An involuntary shudder coursed through my body.

  *

  My phone rang as I turned off the road leading from the condo and onto South Avenue. “Where are you?” asked Zack.

  “Five minutes away.”

  “Where you stuck in traffic most of this time?”

  “No, I ran into a slight problem.”

  “Define slight problem.”

  “I’ll explain when I get home.”

  “Am I going to like the explanation?”

  Doubtful but I didn’t tell him that. An image of Zack as an angry cartoon character danced before my eyes. Red-faced with steam shooting out the top of his head, the animated Zack stamped his feet and pounded his fists in the air. “We’ll talk when I get home.” I hung up before he had a chance to say more.