by Terri Thayer
Piper finally broke the silence. “He’s dead? The son of a bitch is dead? For how long?” Her voice trailed off, as if the effort of talking was more than she could handle.
Suzi went to her, smoothing her hair, murmuring.
“Who is this guy?” Mary Lou asked.
April was confused, too, but no one answered her question. Piper stared straight ahead. Rocky, Mitch and Tammy formed a tight knot.
A splash broke the reverie. In the nearby water hazard, a mallard dove, showing his tail feathers. When he righted himself, the sun glinted off his iridescent coat.
“What’s Frankie Imperiale got to do with you, Piper?” Rocky said, the driver in her hand finally still.
Piper’s response was lost in a strangled sob.
Suzi explained, “Frankie is Jesse’s father.”
CHAPTER 12
Piper glared at Suzi, who shook her head slowly. “I promised I would never tell and I never did,” she said. Piper’s cries grew more desperate.
Suzi hustled the now shaking Piper into their golf cart and took off.
April exchanged a glance with Mary Lou, who shrugged dramatically.
“That explains why none of us were invited to that wedding,” Mary Lou said.
Rocky put an arm around Tammy, who’d gone pale. “She invented a husband who never existed. And we all bought it.” Rocky’s tone was almost admiring.
Tammy said, “I can’t picture her with Frankie. I never remember even seeing them together.”
Mary Lou said, “You can never be sure why some people fall for each other. It looks like Piper always thought Frankie was coming back to her someday.”
Mitch was scowling. He didn’t look as attractive when he was mad. April preferred his smiling countenance. She wondered what his relationship to Frankie was. It was clear it had something to do with Rocky, but what?
He started for his cart, but April headed him off. She grabbed the keys out of his hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to my father. Frankie Imperiale was his apprentice. He needs to know he’s dead.”
She left him, his frown growing deeper.
Ed had found her in the woods almost to Mirabella. The partying kids were spreading, getting closer to the Castle. Ed was uneasy. April wanted to disappear into the crowds.
“April, please. Come back to the trailer. I need to wait for Yost. I promised him I would stay there until he got free.”
“No, Dad, let me go. I don’t want to go back to that place. You’re practically living there. Your crossword puzzle, your Far Side mug.” Her voice broke. Her Father’s Day present.
He drove her home instead. They sat at the kitchen table. April on one side of the banquette, Ed across from her. He reached for her hand, but she snatched it away.
He sighed heavily. “You’re right, bug. I have been spending my nights at the Castle job. And you’re right to suspect it’s not about work.”
To her surprise, she saw tears in his eyes. Ed could be a sentimental guy, crying at movies and at birthdays, but she saw real pain on his face. He looked past her into the kitchen, his eyes taking in the room as though for the first time. Or the last. April shivered and rubbed her arms.
Ed sniffed and turned back to her. Tears lingered in his eyes, and he wiped them away hard with the back of his hand.
“I’m struggling, sweetie. I love your mother, but—”
“I knew it. You’ve got a girlfriend,” April said, but she couldn’t sustain her anger. She only wanted him to end the affair. To come home. She wanted Ed to go back to living at home. Living with her.
Ed shook his head ponderously. His shoulders hunched, he looked more miserable than April had ever seen him. “No affair. I’ve been feeling not right for some time.”
April’s heart froze. She felt her hands get clammy. “Are you sick? Dying?” She tried to picture life without her father. Tears filled her eyes. He had a terrible disease and didn’t want to tell her.
He sat up straight. “God, no, honey. No. I’m fine. Really. Healthy as a horse.”
Her plea to him was a silent one.
His face contorted. “Honey, I’m gay.”
Ed told Bonnie as soon as she got home from work that he wanted to leave the marriage. Bonnie was angrier than April had ever seen her, but it was Ed April worried about. His sadness about breaking up the family seemed overwhelming. She stayed by his side, helping him set up a bed in the office over the garage, moving his clothes out of the master bedroom. And watching him until he fell asleep.
The next day, she snuck out, hiking back to the job trailer at midday to get her bike and his favorite mug. When she got there, she saw that the Castle had been completely boarded up.
April’s heart was thumping, her foot pounding the spongy accelerator into the floor of the cart. She seemed to be standing still, but she went around a curve and down a slight hill and was soon out of sight of Rocky and her golf cart.
She found the fork where she and Mitch had switched directions and putted over the bumpy trail.
As April approached the Castle site, a state policeman watched her approach. He put his palm up for her to stop. Beyond him, she could see stakes and string gridding the rubble. A man with thick rubber gloves was running a metal detector over the ground. A woman was squatted over a pile, picking through the sifted earth carefully.
“You can’t go any farther,” he told her. His trooper hat obscured his looks. She wasn’t sure if this was the same trooper she’d met yesterday.
“I just need to talk to my dad,” she said, pointing out Ed, who was standing on the far side, near the path that led up the embankment.
“Wait here,” the trooper said. He conferred with another trooper, who nodded his assent. She saluted her thanks before blushing with the inanity of the gesture. What an idiot.
“Leave the cart, and watch where you’re walking. Stay out of the site.”
She nodded that she understood and jumped out of the cart. She skirted the yellow tape and walked to where her father stood, clicking his phone shut. She bussed his cheek. He gave her a half frown at her greeting.
“That was Vince,” he said. “Our clients watch entirely too much HGTV. They think all of our work should be done in two days.” He sighed. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at the mansion?”
Her news about Frankie was forgotten. April didn’t like her father’s grayish tone and the way his skin seemed to be sagging. “Did you eat at all today?” she asked.
Ed shrugged. “I don’t remember. Yes, yes, one of the staties went out and brought back hoagies. I had a half of an Italian sub.”
April looked for Yost. He was talking to several state policemen who were watching the technicians working inside the gridded area. They moved deliberately, like the astronauts in tapes she’d seen of men on the moon.
“Okay,” she said. Her response was drowned out as Yost raised his voice. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone seemed combative.
“Dad,” she began.
Ed interrupted, focused on the problems at hand.
“Friggin’ Yost,” her father said. Ed’s brow furrowed, the lines cutting across his forehead so deeply that April wanted to smooth them out. She knew he wouldn’t let her and so kept her fingers to herself.
“He’s trying to tell the staties what to do. Thinks he knows everything. He’s not even on duty. It’s his day off.”
“Dad, I heard they identified the body,” April said. “Frankie Imperiale.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Ed asked.
“It’s all over the club.”
“What were you doing at the club?” he asked, rubbing his face hard. He moved his hands over his cheeks again and again. Was it the identification or the fact that it was being talked about at the club that was bothering him? April couldn’t tell.
“Why weren’t you at Mirabella?” He looked more worried than he had a moment ago. April’s stomach flipped. “I was with
Mitch,” she said. At his renewed interest, she said, “Had you heard?”
“That it was Frankie? Yeah.” He shrugged. “Not that they fill me in,” he said, pointing at the police. “You think they’d tell a guy. I mean, this is my job site.”
April put a hand on his shoulder, trying to stop him from winding up into a full-blown whine. He sighed, blowing his lips out.
“Did you know him?”
“Frankie? The name’s familiar.”
“Dad, Frankie Imperiale used to work for you,” April said.
Ed’s lips pursed. “No, he didn’t. I don’t remember him,” he said.
“I found the payroll records from the Castle. He might have been an apprentice.”
“I’ve had a lot of apprentices over the years . . .” Ed said, trailing off, his eyes squinting as though he could see into the past.
April stuffed her hands in her back pockets. She looked to see if Yost was done yet. He had to be interested to know that the dead man worked for Ed.
Her fingers closed on the belt buckle in her pocket. She looked at her father, his face gray around the edges from the stress he was under. He needed a little relief.
She pulled out the buckle.
“Hey, Dad, check this out.” She opened her palm. “Look what I found in the woods,” she said, offering up the belt buckle. As she’d hoped, a large smile creased his face. These wrinkles were not as deep as the ones on his forehead. He didn’t smile often enough. When he did, April felt the joy in his heart. She smiled back, glad to have given him some happiness.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.
She pushed her hand closer. “Take it.”
He lifted it from her outstretched hand. “Well, I’ll be dipped in cow manure. I haven’t seen one of these in years.”
He held up the buckle and examined it. He ran his finger over the raised lettering on the embossed panel truck. “Where did you find this?”
“Out there.” She pointed into the trees. “Can you believe it? It must have been out in the woods for a long time.”
“How about that?” Ed said, wonder in his voice. “I’d forgotten all about these. Your mother had them made, for Christmas gifts for the men. I think there were only about twenty of them. Mine is long gone. Man, I wore that thing all the time.”
“I remember, especially the time you wore it to my Christmas band recital.” All the other fathers had been in suits, and Ed had shown up in his favorite jeans, proudly displaying his leather belt and large brass buckle.
They laughed. Ed said, “Those other parents were so stuck up. Just because their kids played violin.”
“Remember the cello player’s dad, always carting around her instrument?”
He laughed. “Of course, she wasn’t even five feet tall.”
“Still,” she said. “What was she going to do when she went off to college?”
“Yeah, a girl can’t remain a daddy’s girl forever,” Ed said wistfully. He thrust an arm around her. “I’m glad you’ve come back to me.”
April’s eyes filled. He pulled her in for a hug and kissed her hair. No one else kissed her hair. The feeling was sublime.
Ed’s smile turned down. “You say Frankie worked for me, huh? Yost is going to love that.”
April wondered if Frankie had a belt buckle like this. “He had to have died the night of the party. The next day the Castle was boarded up. I saw it. He had to have been in the Castle before it was boarded up.”
“I inspected the building that night before the party. No one was inside.”
“But the party?” April asked.
“Kids stayed outside. The doors and windows were all locked. I checked.”
Her father was underestimating the determination of partying kids. Frankie had gotten in. And died inside.
He was turning the buckle over his knuckles in the same way he used to make a quarter disappear when she was a kid. She was glad to see this had lightened his heart somewhat. Because her news about getting kicked out of Mirabella would crush him. She fought back tears.
Ed wasn’t listening to her. He was lost in reminiscing. “I wonder if any of the other men still have theirs. Lyle probably has his, still. He doesn’t throw anything out.”
He looked up and smiled at April. “It was the last Christmas we worked on the Castle. Your mother found some guy who worked in metal and had them made up. Had to be ridiculously expensive. I didn’t really have the money, but that job had been such a bear, I wanted to thank the men for working hard.”
He gestured toward the Castle rubble and shook his head. “Man, I sweated over that job. The stone for the fireplace never arrived, and then when it did it was stolen off the loading dock at the train depot. We had to wait for another shipment. I never had a job like that before or since. Stuff went missing, shipments were lost in transit. And Winchester changed his mind every two minutes. What a mess.”
The state troopers wrapped up their work for the day and headed for the white van. Yost made his way over to where she and Ed were standing.
“Ms. Buchert,” he said, nodding to her.
“I heard there is a tentative identification,” she began.
Yost remained stony faced. “You did? Where?”
“At the club,” April said. “The dentist’s wife.”
An annoyed expression flitted across Yost’s face. “We’re waiting on official confirmation.”
“That it’s Frankie Imperiale?” April asked.
“I wish I could place him,” Ed said, his eyes unfocused, looking into the past.
Yost moved in on her father, planting himself in front of Ed. “You don’t remember Frankie?” Officer Yost asked, widening his stance and holding his hands on his belt.
“Not really,” Ed said. He didn’t notice Yost’s attitude had changed. “But then, good carpenters follow the work. Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Harrisburg, Binghamton. They go where the jobs are.”
Yost smirked. He obviously thought Ed was lying. “I can’t believe you’ve forgotten this guy,” Yost said. “Cocky son of a gun. He worked on the Castle job. I was looking at him as the ringleader of the druggies that summer. And he worked for you.”
Ed shrugged. “If you say so.” He looked at Yost and attempted a joke. “They say the mind is the first thing to go.”
April could see Yost getting angry. He thought Ed was making fun of him. She tried to step in.
“Officer Yost?” April said. “I told you before, my father was with me that night. All night, and all the next day.”
Her words didn’t seem to register. Yost was watching her father’s fingers. He snatched the buckle out of Ed’s grasp.
“What do you have there?” he asked.
Ed smiled and said, “How do you like that? April found this for me, in the woods.”
“When did you find this?” His voice sounded official and he looked at her suspiciously.
“About an hour ago,” she answered slowly.
“Ever dawn on you that this might be part of the crime scene?” he asked sarcastically.
April protested, “It was well away from the Castle.”
Yost frowned.
“What’s the crime anyway?” April asked. “For all we know, Frankie could have died of a drug overdose or exposure.”
Yost smirked. “That wouldn’t explain the bullet fragment we found.”
April’s skin went cold. Ed’s head was hanging low, one hand washing the other over and over. She grabbed his wrist to make him stop. He squeezed her hand but didn’t look up.
Yost turned the buckle over. His eyes widened. He slipped his pen through the metal loops that fastened the buckle to the belt, and held it high, looking at all sides. His gaze lingered on the back of the buckle. April moved closer so she could see what he saw. There were scratches on the back.
“Well, how do you like that?” Yost said. “This buckle is personalized.”
He held it out for them to see. April crowded in. She could see a word
etched into the back of the buckle. No, not a word. Initials.
A messy job, but someone had scratched his initials into the metal.
F.I. Frankie Imperiale.
“Ed Buchert, you’re under arrest,” Yost said.
“He couldn’t have killed anyone,” April said, her voice near panic. “He was with me.”
Yost sneered. “So I should take the word of a woman who’s already told me she’d do anything to save her father? I don’t think so.”
“You’re coming with me, Ed. Ms. Buchert, you might want to call Vince and tell him his partner is with me.”
CHAPTER 13
“Go on home, sweetie,” Vince said, rubbing her shoulders as he stood behind her. “It’s late. Yost can hold him for hours.”
“And he will,” April replied.
Vince agreed. “There’s no point in both of us being here.”
It was nearly six o’clock. Vince and April stood outside the police station on Main Street. She stretched, her back tight from tension.
Vince wiped the sweat from his forehead. The small building had no windows and an old air conditioner that couldn’t keep up with the day’s heat. Ed had to be so uncomfortable in there.
He lowered his voice. “Please, April, your father really doesn’t want you to see him now.”
She could hear the worry in his tone. “You’ve been talking to a lawyer, right?”
Vince sighed. “Your dad doesn’t want one right now. He wants to talk to the state police and get this cleared up.”
“What about the bullet?” April asked. “Aren’t you concerned about that? That has me a little freaked out. It means Frankie was definitely murdered.”
Vince shrugged. “Unless they find a bone with a bullet hole in it, it’s just Yost blowing smoke. There’s nothing to connect it to the body.”
April wasn’t as sure. She needed to find the evidence that would give Yost someone else to focus on.
She hugged Vince. He held her tight. She stayed in the circle of his arms. The vision of her father being led down the hall in handcuffs was not one she’d forget for a while.
Vince pulled back and, holding her by her upper arms, looked into her eyes. “Listen, we both know he’s innocent. This will sort itself out.”
