by Mary Leo
I figured if I took charge of the ring I might be able to smoke out the killer. Either this was the absolute smartest idea I’d ever had, or the absolute dumbest. Whatever happened depended an awful lot on how Lisa and I lured the fly to the ointment. I felt both scared and empowered. Lisa, on the other hand, was all about the game, whatever it turned out to be.
The house was quiet except for a ticking cuckoo clock. My aunts had their own clock from Bisnonno Luigiano. He liked to spread his cuckoos around. Even Federico had a clock.
Lisa was nowhere around. She must have gotten up earlier and was probably back in my apartment, haunting my closet, figuring out today’s outfit.
As I sat up, my thoughts swung to Hetty. Did she kill Carla and make it appear that Dickey did it? If anybody had motive, she sure did, but the ring just didn’t figure into it. At least not the way the clues were stacking up now.
Dickey knew enough to give that ring to my mom for safe keeping. He knew of its significance, so much so that the first thing he did when he got out was to parade it around at the party, almost begging the killer to come and get it. Regrettably, the plan backfired and Dickey ended up being just another victim, something I was hoping to avoid.
As events were beginning to gel in my head, I stood up and headed off to the bathroom.
Of course that was the reason for the freedom party. Why my mom was so insistent on having it. She knew what Dickey was up to. He never wanted the land back. It was all about Carla’s killer. So why didn’t she tell me? Why did she have to keep everything a secret?
Because she knew absolutely I would have never agreed to such a treacherous game. And I would’ve been right.
But it was too late for I told you so.
And how the hell did her charm bracelet get tangled up under Dickey’s feet? I was still hoping the killer had put it there. But how did the killer get it? Did she lose it out in the yard and the killer accidentally stumbled on it? I liked that scenario. If the clasp was broken, it could have fallen off anywhere, even right in the killer’s path.
Once again, I needed to talk to my mom, but today was olive picking day for almost everyone in the family, and I had no choice but to join in. Dickey’s murder would have to wait. And unless I stumbled over his body in the orchard, or my mom was up in the same tree I was, I really needed to give my full attention to picking.
Ten minutes later I was on my way back to my apartment still wearing the vintage pink nightgown and robe. The ring was now hidden in the left pocket of the fuzzy robe.
The very first thing that caught my attention when I stepped on the front porch were the three turkey vultures that circled high above my head. I knew they were vultures by their unstable flight pattern. They tended to tilt from side to side while they flew, plus those unmistakable deep-red bald heads that only another vulture could love. These birds of prey had a keen sense of smell and a reputation for locating carrion even inside a building with open windows or in this case, a barn.
I didn’t know where Dickey’s body was hidden, but it was a good assumption that they did. And, soon, so would the entire Sonoma Sheriff’s department. A clue this obvious couldn’t be ignored.
Could it?
But I was on a mission this morning that even vultures couldn’t keep me from.
Olives.
I knew by now everyone was out in the orchard working hard to harvest the fruit. Timing was essential with olives, and Uncle Federico had hired a small crew of twenty or so men to do most of the work. Today was the last day to pick our Koroneiki olives at their peak and most of my family would be out there helping. Even my mom would spend time out in the grove. She hated to climb up on the ladders. She’d fallen off of one once. Nothing broke, but my mom didn’t like risks of any kind, and from then on she refused to climb up even one rung.
Now she used a long wooden pole with a sort of double clamp at the end to shake the olives free so they would fall in the catchnet. The pole ran off an air compressor and shook the limbs and the olives fell off. She could clear a tree in a quarter of the time it took the rest of us to pick, but Federico didn’t like the mechanical rake. He said it damaged the fruit and the tree, but my mom won’t be intimidated. Her harvest went into yellow bins and was pressed first along with olives that he’d purchase from other groves who harvested in the same manner. That way there was no time for the possibility of mold or rot to attack the olives. Mom had learned this technique that Federico despised while she was in the Basilicata region of Italy with my dad on our one and only trip as a family.
When I arrived in my apartment, there was a note on my front door from Lisa that she had gone home and would meet me at the ball that night. Her mom had stopped by to pick her up. Lisa probably felt a lot safer with her mom, and who wouldn’t? The woman was a tiger when it came to her cub.
I could only imagine how that went down. Her mom must have been in a complete meltdown when she saw the sling. I was glad I had slept through it.
As an afterthought on her note, she wrote, oh, by the way, Dickey’s finger is missing from the fridge. And might I suggest that you lock your door from now on. From the looks of things, the idiot-killer stopped by to search for the ring. Good thing we weren’t home when he/she came calling.
She signed it with a smiley face.
I opened my door to find my apartment in total chaos. The mattress was off the bed, the sheets had been ripped off, the closets were open and all my clothes and shoes were scattered on the floor, all the drawers in the kitchen had been emptied out, my fridge was open and the contents dumped, and what was the worst of all was that my mom’s espresso machine was in pieces on the table.
She would never forgive me or the dismantler.
Before I allowed myself to react, I immediately walked over, locked my door, not that it made a difference now, and phoned Lisa, only to get her voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. She didn’t like messages and rarely listened to them. My number on her missed calls list was all that was needed.
Then I sat right down on the floor and wailed, sounding very much like Zia Yolanda.
Two hours later, after I cleaned up as best I could—I was determined not to let the intruder get to me—I was out in the orchard, clad in jeans, a long sleeved sweater, a black hoodie, and hiking boots—the only shoes that weren’t touched—ready to do my share with the harvest.
The sacred ring was hanging from a silver chain around my neck, safely tucked under my clothing.
Okay, I admit this was strange behavior considering my apartment had just been trashed, but my self preservation was at risk of crumbling if I allowed myself to wallow in self pity, so off I went to pick olives and show the killer my True Grit, thank you very much, John Wayne.
“Start over on that row of trees,” Federico ordered when he saw me drive up in my pickup. I followed his directions, parking behind his brown Nissan pickup, along a row of countless bright red olive bins that lined the dirt road. I killed the engine and jumped out, totally psyched to pick as many olives as possible. It took a ton of milled olives to produce fifty gallons of oil. That was a lot of olives and after all, this was what Spia’s Olive Press was all about.
In the past few years we’ve had bumper crops with no frostbite or bug infestations, thanks to Federico. He pampered the trees and the crop as if they were his own children.
It had already been a wearisome day, to say the least, and I could still see those nasty vultures circling overhead. I would have laughed if I didn’t think the whole thing was ludicrous. After all, it was barely ten in the morning, plenty of time for my day to get even worse. But I refused to dwell on what else could possibly happen.
I would give my complete focus to the olives, joining Maryann and Uncle Benny as they moved from one tree to the next. I would concentrate on the task at hand.
But what about Dickey, a little voice echoed in my ear. What about the ring? And your trashed apartment?
“Over here,” Maryann yelled while standing on a ladder th
at leaned on a branch of one of the trees that produced Coratina olives, creating an oil that had a fruity fragrance, but a slightly bitter, spicy flavor. I forced myself to think of a tasty arugula salad with goat cheese and red onions that begged for our Italian blend oils. How these trees were to Italy like our Mission olive trees were to California. How Uncle Federico had imported them less than five years ago to add the oil to our Italian blends, and how well they had grown in our rich soil.
Incredibly, I was feeling better. Feeling one with the olives. With nature. With my bucket. My olive rake.
With my very own vertical wooden ladder, always at the ready, which I always kept in the back of my truck this time of year. I slid it out and was thinking of setting it up under Maryann’s tree when the vision of the endless sea of bright orange catchnets attracted my attention. The entire area was covered in a blanket of orange. They’d been put down in the last few weeks to trap the fallen olives. It had taken six men three weeks to put them down.
The refection off the nets caused the silvery trees to glow orange in the warm sunshine giving off a fun Sesame Street effect. As if Miss Piggy and Big Bird lived in our orchard and children would be hanging out of the trees playing hide and seek. At least that was the thought that always came to mind whenever I saw the catchnets.
Today was no exception. The bright orange always made me happy, and I was really trying not to let anything get in the way of that feeling.
As I walked over to Maryann, who was now waiting for me, I reflected on the hard truth that I now carried a house key in my hip pocket, something I hadn’t done for the entire two years I’d lived on the property. Something I had grown accustomed to. It was like living in a safe, small town and I liked it. Liked the fact that I never had to worry about break-ins or crazed killers. Too bad it had been a big fat lie. A false sense of security. The crazed killer was living in my very own house. Well not exactly in my own house, but close enough to walk in whenever he or she felt the need.
Of course, it had taken me almost a half-hour to locate an actual key; my mom had it hanging on a hook in her kitchen cupboard, along with every other key she owned, but who squabbles over such minor inconveniences when the entire ship was sinking. And for all intents and purposes, this ship was taking on water at an alarming rate.
But I was there to pick olives, and to be happy with the sight of our orange catchnets and not to ponder un-recovered gangsters. One of whom was probably the same dude who killed Dickey, chopped off his finger, threatened me, tried to run us off the road and trashed my apartment looking for the ring.
But it was all in the family.
The family that kills together . . .
“How’s it going?” I asked Maryann once I arrived under her tree.
“Great,” she said. “It’s going to be a good harvest.”
The catchnet was littered with olives, and dozens of red bins, filled with olives, were stacked on the side of the road waiting to be picked up.
I leaned my ladder up against a sturdy looking tree limb on the next tree over, knocking the branch a couple times with my ladder to make sure I didn’t hear any cracking sounds, a sure sign the limb wasn’t strong enough to hold me.
“Mia?” a voice called behind me. I turned, and there jogging toward me was Adonis, or Giuseppe, if I wanted to use his formal name. I preferred Adonis. It had that ethereal quality that I so needed at the moment. Thinking he was just another Wise Guy in my sea of Wise Guys was simply too disheartening.
So yes, it was weird that he was calling me by my name and was jogging toward me—my own personal fantasy coming to life—but in this family nothing surprised me anymore.
The morning sun glistened off his shiny hair, which was loose now, and strands curled around his face and down his neck. His white T-shirt clung to that incredible chest, and his muscled arms appeared to have enough strength to pick up several of our olive bins with one of those luscious arms tied behind his back. The vision was sufficient to make me want to run right for him and tell him to take me away from all of this madness.
Oh wait, Adonis was part of the problem. He was a suspect even though he said he didn’t whack Dickey. There was absolutely no evidence that I should believe this imported dude.
Pity, we could have had so much fun.
Adonis slowed as he came closer. I quickly pulled on my heavy gloves wanting it to appear as if I’d been working all morning. Why I wanted him to think this, I didn’t actually know, but I decided to go with it.
“Hi,” I said.
“Buon giorno. Sono Giuseppe Nardi,” he said with a little bow.
“Buon giorno,” I said in my best Italian. “Somehow I didn’t think I’d be seeing you this morning.”
“Ah, but I can no go home. Maybe I stay. Make my home, you know?” His eyes were the color of a Farga olive from Spain. A light green color when harvested early, but a sweeter oil when left on the tree to turn a dark purple which made the oil sweet and light with hints of almond. I wondered if he tasted like almonds.
Wait. Did he just say he was making this his home?
“Excuse me? But what did you just say?”
“That it is good to see you again.” He smiled and the earth moved. All right, maybe the earth didn’t move, but it should have. The man was a sexy menace to my otherwise unstable world.
“No. I mean about making this your home. Are you staying somewhere in Sonoma?”
“Yes. I stay in your mama’s house. She got a nice house, your mamma. Many rooms.”
This was not a good idea. This man, no matter how much I wanted him, was an active member of the mob and we didn’t allow active members to live on our land. It was the only thing that kept us from FBI scrutiny, and we had all agreed to this when we first settled here eight years ago. No way was Adonis— regardless of his spectacular smile or his Farga eyes or those incredible arms—going to change that. My mom was like a kid who took in stray animals, only these were stray thugs.
Possibly not the best idea.
“You could have one of the apartments over the shops. Two of them are available right now, but the apartment comes with certain restrictions. Uncle Ray will have to fill you in with the details. You may not like our rules,” I told him.
And there it went. My entire ship had just plummeted to the ocean floor pulling me down with it. I had asked an active mobster to give up his toughness and join the recovering “family.”
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
It was as though I had no control over my words, my thoughts or even my actions. It was almost as if I was drinking again, but I was stone sober. Not a good sign for my future.
“Ah, I go see Ray. This is good. Grazie.”
Deep inside, I knew how wrong this was, but I couldn’t help myself. The guy had some kind of magnetism that turned me into his slave. I grinned my approval.
Now that I had his attention, I thought I might as well ask a few questions. “By the way, last night, you said you had asked Dickey for something. What was that something that he refused to give you?”
“Why you want to think of such things? It is a beautiful day, yes?”
“Yes. It’s a beautiful day, but I was just wondering, that’s all.”
He threw me a wicked smile. “That is why I stay. I can not go back to my country without this thing. If I do—” He ran his index finger across his neck and made a slicing sound. “But maybe you know something you maybe want to tell me.”
“About Dickey?”
“Yes, about the something?”
“The something?”
“Yes.”
“No. Not a thing . . . about the something.”
I moved and the ring tickled my cleavage. It gave me a shiver. “I have work to do,” I told him.
“Ah, yes. The olives. I will help with this tree.”
He pulled on the gloves that were stuck in his belt behind his back. “I go up the ladder and pick. It is better this way.”
“No, thanks,”
I said and grabbed hold of both sides of the ladder and carefully climbed to get up into the tree. I liked to pick up high. The olives were a little riper on the top of the tree and came off the branches easier. Plus, I could smell the olives from up there.
Call me strange, but I loved picking olives. I always felt at peace up in an olive tree. Some of my best memories of my dad were in Italy during a harvest. We had spent the entire day together picking olives, him training me on what a ripe olive looked like as opposed to a rotten one, or an overripe one. How to use a rake. How to secure my ladder in the tree. How to let go and trust the limb to support me.
That one day had begun my love for olives and olive oil.
“It is a big orchard. Many trees,” Adonis said.
I carefully raked the thin branch clean, the olives gently falling into my bucket then I turned slightly to get a look at Adonis, who stood off to my right.
That’s when I heard it, a hint of a crack, almost a whisper, and as if in slow motion, the rung broke under my feet and I grabbed for the tree, but I couldn’t quite hold onto it. My gloves were too cumbersome. I felt myself slipping out of the tree and with one more, sharp crack, I suddenly plopped right into Giuseppe’s open arms. Then we both toppled to the ground. Me lying prone on top of him.
For a moment, neither of us said anything. I was simply trying to catch my breath and understand what had just happened.
Then he spoke in Italian, “Dear God, are you all right?” And he began running his hands over my body. A pleasant sensation if I hadn’t just nearly died.
I pushed him away. “I think I’m okay.”
Funny how I suddenly could understand him. I guess my Italian significantly improved when death, or broken bones were imminent.
He switched to English. “Don’t move. I get the help.”
“Everything okay over there?” Maryann yelled from the next tree.
