by Mary Leo
“A table would be fine, thanks,” I told her. She picked up a menu and I followed her to the table next to the front window. I could see my pickup parked curbside. Someone in a monster black Tundra was busy trying to parallel park in the tiny space behind my pickup and was having one hell of a time getting into the space. I just hoped he didn’t hit my bumper. I wasn’t in the mood to exchange info.
As soon as I pulled the wooden chair out to sit, my waiter appeared and I ordered. I didn’t need to look at a menu. When he left, I began reading the documents. I wanted to see if I could find anything that might indicate a problem for my mom. I didn’t understand her urgency to get the documents, and I was curious about what they said.
My food and drink arrived before I finished reading, and the Tundra had apparently given up and moved on when I glanced out the window again. I was grateful no damage was done. My plate of food smelled wonderful and I couldn’t wait to dig in.
For the moment, all was right with the world.
I took a big gulp of my margarita, and a bite of a perfect enchilada, the taste a complete delight.
Everything in the document seemed fine, except for the last page. It was signed by my cousin Dickey, my mom, Uncle Benny, and notarized by somebody named Peter Doyle.
I took another sip of margarita. I would have liked it better with a shot of Don Julio tequila or perhaps El Tesoro, but I told myself this was much more refreshing.
Yeah, right.
To summarize what I was reading, and if I was understanding the legalese correctly, it stated that in the event that Dickey Spia was cleared of the murder of Carla DeCarlo, the olive grove, any subsequent buildings and the business itself would revert back to him as the sole owner. I had to read that over several times before it sunk in.
Then as if my body reacted before my mind could take hold of this disturbing information, a tiny ripple of panic swept through me as my stomach roiled, and my chest began to tighten. If ever I needed a drink it was at that moment. I took a deep breath, pulled out some cash, stuck it under my essentially untouched plate of delectable looking fare and left the restaurant. I had to get home. Now! I had to know if this document was legal, and if it was, what did it mean for our company? For the family?
For me?
I raced home as fast as I could without getting a speeding ticket or causing some massive pileup. As I approached our olive orchard from the road, I could see that the family Spia was out in Mom’s front yard, apparently holding that meeting she had talked about.
Mom’s yard served as our usual meeting and party place. It was about half an acre wide, with a cluster of olive trees for shade that everyone was now standing or sitting under, drinking wine and participating in the animated conversation. Their attention abruptly turned to someone in the group. I couldn’t tell who, but arms moved about, hands sliced the air and gyrating body language told me they were in a tizzy. Most of the time everyone got along, but there were occasions when tempers flared and all hell broke loose.
I pulled my pickup in closer to the fence and hoped for calm, but from the looks of what was already going on, I couldn’t tell if the gestures were of the friendly variety or the “may you rot in hell” type.
Just about everyone who worked on our land was there, which was unusual for a Wednesday afternoon. Normally they’d be tending to their shops. Seeing them all together in the front yard in the middle of a work day was not particularly a good sign.
The friends and family who worked on the land considered it their personal small town. We even had our very own mayor, Uncle Ray, my mother’s honorary brother. In my naïveté, I used to refer to him as Godfather, until he put me straight one day and told me in no uncertain terms should the word Godfather ever be uttered in the same sentence with his name. Uncle Ray had done his time in a Federal pen for racketeering—he ran a highly profitable plumbing business in New York City with no real plumbers—but rumor had it racketeering was the least of his undertakings.
Mom had built a sort of one-street town on the land when she first took it over, hoping the charm and ambiance would attract more tourists to our olive products. Little did she know some of our more notorious relatives would want to take up residency and call it home.
Mom owned two rows of attached two-story buildings, which consisted of small storefronts on the first floor, and a few one bedroom apartments on the second floor. She collected rent for both, but the revenue from the businesses stayed with the shopkeepers. Each business boasted an Italian motif, and was run by various relatives, honorary relatives, adopted relatives, divorced relatives and a sprinkling of friends. It had been difficult to get all the permits to create an independent small town of sorts, but with Uncle Benny’s help she was able to eventually pull it off.
The orchard or farm, as we sometimes referred to it, served as a means for everyone to pursue more legitimate goals, not that anyone’s past was ever mentioned. It was a way to stay connected with each other and avoid having to find a new identity in the outside world.
I made sure there was no skimming, money laundering or racketeering. Once a month I went over their books, and if I found anything that didn’t quite add up or if somebody began pulling money out of their freezer, the family would band together and kick him or her out, which we’ve had to do on one or two occasions.
There was a time when the Feds would tap our phones and hide in parked vans and watch the place, but that stopped years ago when Mom walked right out to a parked van and began pitching the benefits of olive oil. The pitch that put it over the top for us was the day she mixed a cup of olive oil with four tablespoons of baking soda and taught them how to polish their guns with the concoction. Not long after that the vans disappeared, along with those pesky clicking sounds on our business phones.
As I pulled into the main driveway with the arching metal “Spia’s Olive Press” sign, I saw that we were closed for the day. A heavy chain hung across the entrance. I backed up and made a U-turn and headed for the private service road that led to the back of my mother’s Victorian, and would eventually end at the old stone barn.
The last time my family had closed the shops and olive oil tasting room early, my great-grandfather, Bisnonno Luigiano, who was ninety-six at the time and barely able to sit up in a chair, had drifted off to heaven during a Fourth of July celebration. And even then we only closed for a few hours while the paramedics were there. My family did not like to lose revenue, no matter what went on. So for them to close their shops in the afternoon meant that Dickey’s freedom party was bigger than death.
THREE
My Cousin Dickey
Making my way up the service road, I knew no one could see my entrance. The road was blocked by trees and a four-foot-high lava stone wall—the same lava stone that had been used to build Jack London’s “Wolf House” back in nineteen-eleven.
As I pulled the truck into the private parking lot between Mom’s backyard and the stone barn, the usual set of late model cars were lined up along the fence, along with my mom’s new white Mercedes C350. There were also several current model cars lined up in a row that I didn’t recognize: a black Mercedes E class, a black Tundra, two black Cadillacs, a black BMW SUV and a black BMW Roadster. My family had a thing for black cars.
I didn’t recognize any of them, but I assumed they belonged to my relatives from San Francisco. Most everybody tended to get new cars every year, something my father liked to do to keep his enemies guessing, he would say. It seemed that these relatives had no shortage of enemies.
I grabbed Mom’s paperwork, slid out of the front seat, slammed the door behind me and just as I walked up the steps to Mom’s back porch, Aunt Hetty came charging out from the screen door. As soon as she saw me she pulled in a breath, let out a little “yeow” and grabbed the front of her white cotton blouse, which was half unbuttoned, a strange phenomenon for my overly modest aunt. “Holy buckets! You scared the bejesus out of me. Don’t you know better than to sneak up on a person?”
/> Aunt Hetty had a hearing problem she wouldn’t admit to which caused her to be a little edgy. She thought everyone snuck up on her.
“Sorry. Is my mom in there? I’ve got something for her.”
She spun around, buttoned her blouse, pulled her skirt around so that the seams went down her hips, straightened her frazzled hair, smeared on some lipstick from a blue tube she always kept in her pocket, then turned to face me, grinning. That alone told me something was up. Aunt Hetty never grinned.
She and Aunt Babe were half-sisters, and sadly looked nothing alike. Babe had all the good looks in the family, while Hetty had nothing but a talent for baking. Her graying short hair stood out in little tufts around her heavily creased face, and because of her tendency to wear bright red lipstick that extended above her lip line, she always reminded me of an aging clown.
Unfortunately, Hetty took life seriously so the clown part was only in my imagination.
“She might be, but I didn’t see her. I’m too busy delivering cookies for the party. But I saw her go into the barn earlier. Or did I see her go into the barn this morning? I can’t remember. Don’t ask me these questions when I have so much on my mind. I don’t have time for them.”
Aunt Babe and Aunt Hetty, who weren’t actually my aunts—more like married-into-the-family-because-of-Cousin-Dickey—who actually was a cousin, owned and operated the pastry shop on the property: Dolci Piccoli, Little Sweets. They also shared a small California bungalow on the opposite side of the main driveway and were part owners of the orchard along with me and Federico, who also lived on the land in a one-bedroom house. Mom owned the lion’s share, or at least I thought she did. Now, after reading that document, there was no telling what would happen.
“Do you want some help?” I knew it was going to take a lot of cookies to satisfy this crowd.
“No thanks,” she said, and gently squeezed my arm with affection. I was momentarily put off. This simple act of warmth was something Aunt Hetty rarely did. Aunt Babe called her a “cold fish” because Hetty never offered a hug to anyone, and whenever she received one, her arms would be glued to her sides. “You’re such a sweetheart.”
Sweetheart?
I wondered if the woman had been drinking, not that she ever did. Hetty was a dry state all the way. A role model if there ever was one. Then it dawned on me. “You’re worried about Babe being around Dickey again, aren’t you?”
“Huh?”
I was sure she was playing the dumb card for my benefit. Or she simply couldn’t hear me.
I raised my voice and enunciated my words. “I said, YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT DICKEY AND BABE, RIGHT?”
“Don’t shout Mia, it hurts my ears.”
“Sorry.” She categorically ignored my question, which I let pass thinking perhaps she was preoccupied with her baking.
“I have to get back,” she suddenly announced after an awkward moment of silence. “Babe has two more trays of biscotti to take out of the oven and she won’t be able to handle them on her own. I’ll have to do the slicing before they cool, then get them back into the oven. I don’t have time to chat right now. The relatives are restless.”
Then she hugged me, and it was so shocking my arms never left my sides. As she pulled away she said, “When someone hugs you, Mia, you should hug them back.”
I wanted to say something like, what do you mean? You never hug back. Or, what’s going on with you today? Why are you so friendly? But before I could get the words formulated she turned and walked off toward her pastry shop.
You could have knocked me over with a twig.
I walked into Mom’s kitchen and called out her name, but didn’t get a response. Trays of amaretto, wedding and anisette cookies, cream puffs, torrone—a chewy flavored nougat and hazelnut candy that I absolutely loved—braided egg breads and several varieties of cannoli were piled high on every flat surface. The tiny country kitchen smelled like a bakery, only sweeter. I snitched two slices of orange-flavored torrone, took a delicious bite—Aunt Babe made the best torrone in the world—and made my way into Mom’s dining room through the arched open doorway.
I called out for my mom again.
Still no answer.
I could hear my relatives out in the front yard arguing and laughing, normal behavior for that group. Accordion music rose above the din, which meant Cousin Maryann was in good spirits. Maryann and her traveling accordion never missed a family gathering, no matter what the event. She even played at my mother’s bedside during my delivery, which could account for my abnormal fondness for accordion music. I even took lessons when I was ten, but then realized that playing an accordion was just about the geekiest thing I could do, so I gave it up, but only after I learned to play and sing e’ Gumbad e all the way through, with all the musical instrument sound effects, I might add.
I still harbored a longing to pull out my old accordion whenever Maryann came around. Problem was, if I did, she would never let up and I’d be the one accompanying her at these events instead of Jimmy. I could hear him out there picking on his mandolin. He owned and ran a tavern in North Beach called Labella. If I had our lineage correct (there were so many honorary family members that it was hard to keep up), he was Maryann’s younger brother, both somehow related to me on my father’s side of the family.
My mom’s house was silent except for the ticking of the cuckoo clock she had inherited from Bisnonno Luigiano, which would drive me crazy in my drinking days when I was nursing a particularly bad hangover. Especially when that damn bird popped out to announce the time, boring a hole right through the middle of my skull. My great-grandfather was a masochist and a sadist, I was sure of it.
I checked my mom’s bedroom on the first floor, a romantic shabby-chic haven of pastels and excessive lace, but she wasn’t there. Her jewelry armoire caught my attention and I decided to leave the paperwork from the bank in the top drawer instead of out in the open on her small desk. I figured she wouldn’t want me to hand them to her in front of any of our more notorious guests.
As soon as I slid open the top drawer Torno Sorrento began to play, my mom’s favorite Italian song, especially when performed by Pavarotti. I shoved the stack inside on top of mom’s antique handgun, and closed the drawer tight, glad to be rid of the responsibility. Dickey’s ring was still tucked inside my pocket. With the amount of tension she had going on that morning, she probably would want to hand it over as soon as possible.
I left the room and ran up the polished wooden steps to the second floor, sliding my hand along the white railing as I went. I scoped out each room. All I found were various open suitcases and clothes scattered across the beds, but no Mom. One of the bedrooms had a small balcony, but the French doors were closed so I figured she wouldn’t be out there. A black suitcase lay open on the rumpled bed, and I couldn’t help noticing the brightly colored clothes inside. All neatly folded with the price tags still attached.
Giving up my house search, I thought it might be time to join my family out on the front lawn, but just as that damn cuckoo chirped its time, a shadow moved on the creamy walls in the hallway. The combination of the two sent a shock wave through my body and I grabbed onto the wooden railing to make a speedy retreat, but then thought better of it. I was teetering on the edge, and if I took even one step forward I would end up on the landing in a heap of splintered bones.
“You gotta be my little cousin Mia,” a deep male voice bellowed as the shadow turned into a rather short, slim, fifty-something man wearing a tailored brown suit, a dark gold shirt, and spit-shined brown shoes. He was hand combing his hair back from his face, wiped his face with a white hanky, shoved it into his pants pocket while straightening his suit coat as if he had just put it on, his shoulders adjusting to the confines of the jacket in typical male fashion. “I’d recognize you anywhere. Had your picture up on the wall. Of course, you was younger in the picture, but you still got them pretty almond eyes.” He stopped. “Hey, I didn’t mean to scare ya. I was out on the balcony admiring
all them olive trees. This place is bigger than I remember, and them trees all got taller.”
He came in close to give me a kiss. I let him. He kissed both my cheeks and I instantly knew I was face to face with the man of the hour. He smelled clean, with the hint of red wine on his breath.
“Cousin Dickey,” I said, throwing him a smile. After all, I didn’t want to seem inhospitable. There was no telling what he would do if I was disrespectful. Respect was the linchpin in a family like this. If you crossed that line, things could get ugly real fast.
“In the flesh.” He gave me a toothy grin, and I could feel the tension building between my shoulders.
I’d never met someone who seemed so proud to be who they were. He oozed self-confidence, and even though he must have weighed less than my mom, was no more than five-foot-four inches tall, had a ravaged face, gray silky hair combed straight back with the help of some kind of oil—olive oil, no doubt—and sported a classic Roman nose. The man had an infectious smile, and piercing blue eyes.
I now realized that it was Pinot Noir that permeated the air. Releasing my death grip on the railing, I took a step toward him.
“It’s been a long time,” I said, wishing the time was even longer, like perhaps not in this lifetime.
“Eight years, two months, three days, and seven hours, but hey, who’s counting.”
Then he laughed, a great big deep laugh, and he tapped my arm like I was supposed to laugh with him.
I knew enough about my family to join in when one of these aging Made Men thought something was funny. “You’ve got me there,” I answered, chuckling, nodding my head, and so wishing I was out on the front lawn with the rest of my family, taking accordion lessons from Maryann. For the first time ever, while I stood a little too close to Dickey, accordion lessons didn’t seem like such a bad idea, and even though he seemed genuine enough, I couldn’t get murderer out of my head.
