The Spia Family Presses On

by Mary Leo

  We nodded in unison.

  “Anyway, where is he? I mean, I know how much my honey-bear has looked forward to sleeping in. They don’t get to do that in prison, what with all the noise. Plus, the guards wake ‘em early for breakfast.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s getting close to lunchtime. He likes that meal and probably won’t want to miss it. You think he’s still sleeping?”

  We nodded again, like bobbing heads on a spring.

  “Well, I don’t want to wake him, but—” she paused, placing her bent index finger up to her glossy pink lips, tapping, as if she was thinking of something. It was the first time I noticed the rather large pink rock on her ring finger, no doubt an engagement ring from Dickey. An engagement ring that was worth more money than an ex-con should be able to put together in the short time he’d been a free man, but I was digressing.

  Jade’s blond hair was pulled up in a tight ponytail. Large silver hoops hung from her earlobes. “Maybe if you guys don’t mind, you can tell me where he is and I can surprise him. He might like that.”

  “Sure,” my mother agreed, and before I could stop her, she was standing. “I put all his things in one of my upstairs bedrooms.”

  Mom had me completely stymied. I couldn’t figure out what the woman was thinking. Either she had no clue that Dickey was actually dead, or she was simply playing some sort of elaborate game with Jade. Either way, from the look on Jade’s innocent face, Mom had her wrapped around her finger.

  Jade smiled and stood to follow my mom’s lead to the door.

  “He told me not to wake him, no matter what,” I blurted out for no other reason than to stall my mom’s departure.

  “Yeah,” Lisa said. “I heard him. He looked exhausted when he said it.”

  “Dead tired,” I added.

  Okay, I knew that was over the top, macabre even, but I was desperate to stall her. Not that stalling her had much benefit in the long run, but I was hoping something might pop into my head that could somehow resolve this situation.

  “That’s all right. I’m sure he won’t mind if I wake him,” Jade said, looking all vampy, running a hand down her full, round body. “He likes when I wake him up. I have my own special way of doing it, if you know what I mean,” she cooed as her voice trailed off.

  “I bet you do, but Mia’s right,” Lisa said. “He was really tired last night, what with all the family stuff going on. Plus, he drank a lot of wine.”

  “Yeah, a lot of wine. He’s probably going to have a mean hangover. It won’t be pleasant,” I added.

  But Jade couldn’t be stopped. She had reached my front door, had the door open and was on her way to find her “honey-bear.”

  “I’ve got just the thing for that,” she announced, all smiley faced. “Oral sex. It works every time. Something about their blood rushing down there that does it. It works for girls, too, but not as well. I never could figure that one out, but it sure does start your morning with a bang, ya know?”

  She snickered.

  That stopped me cold. In all my years of hangovers, and I’d had more than my share, I never thought about sex, much less oral sex as a cure. It was difficult enough just to open my eyes in the morning. If ever I drank again, which was looking more like a possibility, I’d have to try the oral sex cure.

  Leo had that category covered.

  My mother’s eyes fluttered about a hundred times. She turned a bright crimson, a sure sign she was desperately trying to gain composure and appear somewhat cool. Whenever someone other than Aunt Babe said anything even remotely sexual, Mom went into some kind of temporary meltdown. I didn’t exactly know why it never seemed to bother her when Aunt Babe started a sexual innuendo kick, but whenever anyone else did, she fell into an immediate tailspin.

  Happily, it only lasted a couple minutes, if that.

  “By the way, darling,” my mom said, speaking directly to me. “The clasp must have broken on my charm bracelet last night because I can’t find the darn thing anywhere. I really shouldn’t have worn it, but Dickey gave it to me for my birthday right before all the trouble started, and I knew he’d be tickled if he saw I was still wearing it. Which he was, but sometime during the night it must have fallen off. I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t seem to find it. Do you think you might try? I feel awful about losing it.”

  I walked over to my closet, and slipped it out of the pocket I’d shoved it into the previous night. “Is this it?” I asked holding the incriminating bracelet in the palm of my hand.

  “You found it!” Her face lit up. “But where, sweetheart?”

  “In the barn, under . . . something.”

  I saw the flash of recognition in her eyes. But as quickly as it appeared it vanished and a cool smile shadowed her eyes. I knew that smile. It was forever present whenever we both knew there was avoidance circling around us.

  “Thank you, dear. You have no idea what this means to me.”

  “Actually, I think I do.”

  We hugged briefly and she slipped out the door with Jade in tow. I suddenly had the sick feeling that my mom wasn’t completely innocent, but how much she knew, and how involved she may or may not be was now the burning question.

  I could hear her chatting up a storm with Jade about Dickey, the orchard and the benefits of olive oil. I wondered if like Goldilocks, Jade would have a rude awakening when she crawled in Dickey’s bed, or if my mom had already figured out an exit strategy. Either way, Jade was not going away until she found her “honey-bear.”

  I closed the door and Lisa said, “You realize you just handed over vital evidence? And don’t tell me your mom’s totally innocent of this. I saw that look she gave you. That woman knows something.”

  “Yeah, but what?”

  “If you weren’t my best friend, I’d start walking and never look back. Are you sure we can’t leave for Maui tonight?”

  “Not a good idea, especially since the killer thinks we have his precious ring. We may never make it to the airport.”

  “Scare me more, why don’t you,” Lisa said.

  “I think my family hid the body and the quest for the ring is something only one of them wants. A body has to be easier to find than a ring. If we find the body then the killer can’t blackmail us.”

  “Okay, we concentrate on finding the body.”

  But I still wasn’t sure. “But what do we do with it once we find it? How do we explain everything to Nick and not send everybody to prison, us included?”

  I poured myself another cup of tea.

  “I told you, I can take care of Nick.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. He’s all cop, and even you can’t change that.”

  “But it’ll be a lot of fun trying.”

  She beamed confidence.

  “Okay, so we’re back on the trail of a missing body.”

  “For now, that’s the plan,” she said.

  “Good, ‘cause that part about how nobody will miss one less mobster, I think Jade Batista just became Ms Nobody.”

  Thirty minutes later, dressed in hiking boots, jeans, and a long-sleeved, cream sweater, I was standing in my mother’s kitchen grilling Uncle Benny about the missing body. I hadn’t thrown in the part about the finger yet, or the missing ring bit. I guess I was saving that morsel of information for later when I was completely desperate. At the moment I was trying for somewhat optimistic, even with Jade’s appearance.

  Benny sat at the table, drinking coffee out of an oversized pink mug with red hearts. He wore his threadbare picking clothes, complete with a Panama straw hat that had seen better days. Lisa was in my shower, and Jade was off somewhere with Aunt Babe who was probably trying to convince her to help pick olives. Everyone was recruited when it came time to harvest: relatives, friends, several day laborers who were familiar with hand-harvesting olives, and of course, a neighbor or two who had their own personal harvest to tend to and would be in need of help in the coming weeks.

  We were currently picking our koroneiki olives in their young
, deep green stage. This usually took a couple weeks of harvesting. Federico would oversee the first crush. We didn’t like our fruit to sit more than twenty-four to forty-eight hours, mold could set in. We’d store the oil for blending later with other more mature olives, like the mission or pendolino, depending on the label he and Mom wanted. The high content of polyphenols not only produced a higher level of antioxidants, but it also made for a longer shelf life, not to mention that distinctive grassy flavor with a peppery finish.

  “Just tell me what you did with the body and I’ll take care of the rest,” I said, trying to sound as if I knew what “the rest” was going to be, because in truth, I didn’t have a clue.

  “I am telling you, I am just as puzzled as you are,” he said while chewing on his cigar.

  As it turned out, when Jade and my mom discovered that Dickey wasn’t in his room, and his SUV had gone missing Jade decided to wait for Dickey’s return.

  How long could this family keep up the hoax?

  “Oh, give it up. You expect me to believe you didn’t bury him somewhere? Like under the old olive tree next to the barn? That Jimmy and Ray didn’t help you?”

  “I swear on my father’s grave, I have no idea what happened to that body. I am glad it is gone, but I did not move it.”

  “Swearing on your father’s grave doesn’t work. The man tried to have your mother killed. You hate your father.”

  “That is beside the point, Mia. I do not denigrate the dead.”

  “I’d feel better if you swore on your mother’s grave.”

  His face went hard. “That, I cannot do. She was a saint, may she rest in peace.” He softened, made the sign of the cross and looked toward the ceiling or heaven in his case. “I make it a point never to use my dear mother when I am swearing. Swearing in front of my mother is not something I would ever have done.”

  “You’re not swearing, like in saying a dirty word, you’re taking an oath that you’re telling the truth. You, of all people know the difference.”

  He smirked. “You can take it or leave it. It does not matter a lick to me. I have olives to pick, and so do you.” He drank down more coffee.

  Mom’s kitchen still smelled sweet from all the cookies. Some of my favorites were piled on plates on her counter, covered in plastic wrap. A few of them were calling to me, but I didn’t want the distraction at the moment.

  “I don’t have time to pick today. There’s a killer loose on the ranch and I have to round him up.”

  I was suddenly feeling as though I were in a Clint Eastwood movie.

  “Do not joke about this. It can be dangerous for you.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  He shook his head. “It is a warning.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement, but in the meantime, what about that document I fetched for Mom yesterday? The one that turned all this land back over to Dickey if he was ever proven innocent of the murder of Carla DeCarlo? That document alone is motive enough to send the whole lot of you to prison for Dickey’s murder. I can’t believe you let her sign that.”

  He pulled out a fancy gold lighter and lit his cigar; puffing several times to get it going.

  “I do not know what you are talking about,” he said as smoke swirled around his head, the fragrance sweet and musky at the same time. My dad used to smoke that same cigar. I loved the smell, and it usually worked like a salve on me.

  But not today.

  “Oh please. Your name is on that document as one of the witnesses.” I thought I’d remind him just in case he overlooked that minor detail.

  He slid the long fat stogy out of his mouth, blew out a plume of smoke and said, “I think you are mistaken. I would have never agreed to anything like that.”

  I stared at him for a moment then decided to get the paperwork. I went to my mom’s room, walked in past her bed to the jewelry armoire and opened the drawer, which triggered the music as I grabbed the paperwork, then I shut the drawer, the music thankfully stopped and I turned to walk back out, but stopped at the sight of black men’s pants dangling from the hook behind Mom’s door. Pants that had tobacco stuck to the pocket.

  Benny’s pants.

  When I caught the brown men’s slippers sticking out from under the bed I cringed.

  Mom was sleeping with Uncle Benny? How long had that been going on that he was comfortable enough to bring over his own slippers?

  I didn’t want to think about it. This was all getting way too weird. How could I have not noticed the two of them had a thing for each other? I mean, I knew Mom had an unusual fascination with Benny, but this was more than just a fascination. Slippers bordered on commitment. Even Leo had never kept his slippers under my bed. Hell, I didn’t actually know if Leo owned a pair of slippers, probably one of our many commitment issues.

  I walked back into the kitchen, just as Uncle Benny was up pouring himself another cup of coffee from the glass decanter on the counter. A large round crystal ashtray sitting on the table held his burning cigar. He slowly added cream and sugar to his pink cup.

  “Here,” I tossed the papers on the table. “The last page might refresh your memory.”

  He walked back to the table, sat down on his chair, flipped through the document, read the last page and slid the document toward me. “Like I said, I do not know what you are talking about.”

  He blew on his coffee and slurped up a drink.

  I picked up the papers going directly for the incriminating page, but it wasn’t there. I flipped through the rest of the pages, nothing.

  It simply disappeared.

  Of course it did.

  “I should have known better. You took it, didn’t you?” He merely stared at me. “There will be copies of it, you know. The courthouse will have one.”

  “You can check, but if it never existed, then it will not be there, will it?”

  “What about the notary, Peter Doyle? He’ll have a copy.”

  He turned to me. His black hair greased straight back, face smooth from a recent shave, but heavily lined from years of criminal stress. These older Made Men had the same set of lined foreheads, and deep creases cutting along the sides of their nose to their mouths. Their notorious lives showed on their faces, just as my years of binge drinking and smoking still lingered around my eyes and mouth. Those tell-tale lines, always visible, like stigmata, and there was absolutely nothing any of us could do about it.

  I took in a deep breath and realized he smelled of my mother’s cherry-blossom shower gel.

  “This is a matter of little importance, Mia,” he said with a forced smile while peering over the top of his glasses. “You were mistaken. The document never existed.”

  There comes a time when a person has to take a step back from the notes to hear the melody. Poetic, but you get the picture.

  I couldn’t get anywhere with Uncle Benny, but then Uncle Benny was a lawyer. If anyone knew how to make documents and bodies disappear, he did. It was like questioning a priest about something that was said in a confessional.

  Impossible.

  Benny knew the importance of keeping secrets, and I sure wasn’t the person who could penetrate that code of silence therefore I decided to take on a new course of action.

  I left my mom’s house and headed back to my apartment to report to Lisa, but found her dressed in my clothes cleaning out her car for any leftover oil residue. I gave her a quick rundown of what happened with Benny and the missing document, then I headed off to do some investigative work.

  Not that I knew the first thing about investigative work, but I’d seen enough TV shows to be able to fake it. Of course, my family was more into the Jack Bauer method of interrogation, but I didn’t think I had the stomach for it, so I’d stick to the more direct tactics of some of the CSI heroes. One of my interrogations had to be with Aunt Hetty. I wanted to know what she meant when she said “she was done with the devil.” And why were her eyes moist when she turned away from Dickey? I could only hope she would be more forthcoming tha
n Uncle Benny.

  But first I needed to check out the soil near the old olive tree next to the barn. I mean, after all, this family might very well have buried Dickey under that tree just like Ray suggested. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past them.

  I came upon the old gnarled tree with mixed feelings. On the one hand, if I found evidence that Dickey was buried there, what would I do? Would I actually call the police? What if someone had set up my mom again? Would I have to unearth the body to check it out first and then bury him again?

  Way too much effort.

  Fortunately, on closer inspection the earth around the tree was packed solid. Tall grass and weeds lined the ground, providing absolutely no evidence of any activity near this hundred-year-old specimen. I was glad for that. It would have been almost sacrilegious to bury a murdered mob boss under this tree.

  This olive tree, with its ripening mission olives, dated back to the time the Mission San Francisco Solano was built on First and Spain Streets in the village of Sonoma in the eighteen twenties. The Mission was the last one in the chain of California Missions. The first one was down in San Diego. Every time I passed this old olive tree I thought of its history. Father Jose Altimira was responsible for the construction of the final mission, which had a sordid past. If I had my history straight, at one point the buildings were sold to a man named Schocken, who built a saloon in front of the chapel. Eventually, the place was restored with the help of the Women’s Club and became a state park in nineteen twenty-seven.

  I had no idea how this tree ended up here, so far away from the Mission, or why, but for me it was as if the tree stood as a symbol for more than a hundred years, just waiting for somebody to get a clue and cultivate the land around it into an olive grove.

  Unfortunately for this magnificent tree, with its twisted limbs and silvery leaves, it was my family.