Death of an Italian Chef

by Lee Hollis

  “Chuckie’s father, Gio Caruso, had a successful local family-run Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. That is, until Chef Romeo opened his own restaurant right across the street and put him out of business.”

  “Everyone in the neighborhood loved our place. We were busy with a line out the door every night of the week. I grew up busing tables for my dad. He wanted me to take over some day when he retired. We got rated Brooklyn’s best pizza in New York magazine. Dad was on top of the world. He even got offers to go on the Food Network and the Cooking Channel and make his famous manicotti. But then Chef Romeo came along and ruined everything!”

  “You can’t blame him for opening a popular new restaurant. That’s just business.”

  “No, but what about the underhanded scare tactics he pulled? He started spreading vicious rumors about my father’s place, using fake social media accounts to invent incidents of food poisoning, writing one-star Yelp reviews, even joking in a YouTube video that people would be risking their lives if they ate at our restaurant. We honestly didn’t think people would believe his lies, but after a while, the rumors started to stick, and pretty soon business was way down and Dad was forced to raise the prices on the menu just to stay afloat, which caused his loyal customers, after so many years, to flock across the street to Chef Romeo’s. He eventually had to lay off staff that had been with him for decades, and then, finally, after almost forty years in business, he had to close the doors for good. It devastated him and he never recovered. Running that place was his life’s work and thanks to that smug, despicable jerk, my father was left with nothing. He sank into a deep depression and could never get himself out of it . . . until the day he died from a broken heart.”

  Revenge.

  This was all about a son’s revenge.

  “How did you find him all the way up here in Maine?” Hayley asked.

  “I followed him. It was common knowledge around the neighborhood that the Mob was after him for squelching on a loan. I knew the walls were closing in on him, and that he’d try and make a run for it, so I began staking him out. And one night I was parked right outside his town house when he packed up and got out of Dodge. I tailed him ten-and-a-half hours all the way up here to Maine. He never met me, didn’t know who I was, so it was easy to change my last name and pretend to be new in town. Vic hired me for his construction company, and then I just bided my time, waiting for the right opportunity.”

  “And poor Nurse Fredy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Hayley lamented.

  Chuckie grimaced, a hint of guilt on his face. “He walked in and saw everything: me injecting the toxin in the tube, your brother passed out on the floor. I had no choice. I had to take him with me at gunpoint.”

  “Where is he, Chuckie?” Hayley demanded to know. “Did you kill him?”

  A sinister smile crept across Chuckie’s face. “Not yet.”

  Hayley gasped, hopeful. “Fredy’s still alive?”

  Chuckie nodded. “I got him on ice, handcuffed to a pipe in the basement of the Seagull House. It’s empty, the owners are in New York, so he can’t bother anyone.”

  “How long were you planning to keep him down there?” Hayley gasped.

  “Not long. Vic’s scheduled to lay the foundation for the new swimming pool out back tomorrow, fill the whole thing with cement, so I’m going to make sure Fredy’s body is buried in that hole tonight. With all that hardened cement poured over his grave, there’s not much of a chance he’ll ever be found. I couldn’t do it earlier, it was too risky. What if Vic or one of the crew accidentally stumbled across the body?” Chuckie explained in a cold, detached tone.

  Hayley suddenly smelled smoke.

  Chuckie sniffed the air.

  He apparently smelled it too.

  “What is that?” Chuckie barked.

  “Something’s burning,” Hayley said.

  Tilly’s eyes popped open. “My cake!”

  Chuckie held her tighter, his gun still aimed at Hayley, as he growled in Tilly’s ear, “What?”

  “I forgot I have a cake in the oven!” Tilly wailed. “I need to take it out before it starts a fire and burns the whole house down!”

  Chuckie debated with himself about what to do.

  Hayley remained frozen in place, hands still up in the air.

  Finally, Chuckie released his grip on Tilly and shoved her toward Hayley. “Okay, both of you, in the kitchen, now!”

  He prodded them along with the gun in his hand until they were all standing in the kitchen as black smoke billowed out of the corners of the oven door.

  “Don’t just stand there! Take it out!” Chuckie commanded.

  Tilly, flustered and terrified, grabbed her oven mitts and yanked open the oven door. The entire kitchen quickly filled with thick, choking black smoke. Tilly coughed and gagged as she picked up the burning cake tin with her mitts. Chuckie grabbed a dishrag off the counter to cover his face.

  Hayley snatched another towel to protect her hands and reached out for the tin. “Here, Tilly, I’ll put it in the sink and run some cold water over it!”

  Tilly handed the smoking tin to Hayley, who then glanced out the kitchen window. “Dr. Cormack just pulled into the driveway!”

  “What?” Tilly gasped.

  Distracted, Chuckie lowered the rag from his face and spun around to peer out the window.

  And that’s when Hayley shoved the black, burned, smoking cake right into Chuckie’s face.

  He howled in pain, dropping the gun, which clattered to the floor as he frantically tried wiping his face clean with the rag. There were splotches of red on his cheeks and forehead.

  Hayley bent down and scooped up the gun. When Chuckie finally managed to open his eyes again, he saw Hayley gripping the gun, holding him at bay, now firmly in control of the situation.

  “Tilly, call 911,” Hayley ordered.

  Tilly marched over to her landline phone hanging on the kitchen wall, picked up the receiver, and in an almost trancelike state, punched the numbers. She waited. “Yes, I would like to report a break-in . . . and a murder. Am I forgetting anything, Hayley?”

  “That’s enough to start with,” she said.

  Hayley was confident that this time, Sergeant Herrold would have no choice but to take her seriously.

  She had all the evidence she needed.

  Not to mention a confession from the killer.

  She was finally going to get justice for Chef Romeo.

  Chapter 36

  When Hayley looked out the window to see the police cruiser pull up and Sergeant Herrold get out, she was surprised not to see Officers Donnie and Earl chasing after her like a pair of devoted beagles.

  She was alone.

  Chuckie was slumped over on the couch, gingerly touching the red welts on his face. Hayley had allowed him to wash the chunks of burned cake off his face in the kitchen sink, before parking him in the living room and keeping his gun trained squarely on him to discourage him from making some kind of sudden move to try and regain control of the situation.

  When the doorbell rang, Hayley instructed Tilly, who was a nervous wreck at this point, to let the sergeant in. Tilly scampered to the front door to open it, greeting the sergeant, who brusquely swept past her and into the living room where Hayley was holding Chuckie at bay.

  “What happened?” Herrold asked.

  Hayley quickly brought the sergeant up to speed by recounting the details of Chuckie’s real identity and motive for killing Chef Romeo, aka Luca, stemming from the events that transpired back in Brooklyn.

  Herrold listened curiously at first, then intently, a troubled look on her face, and Hayley believed that she was finally making some headway with the usually intractable and ornery sergeant. When she was finished, Herrold slowly turned around to confront Chuckie on the couch.

  “Is this true?”

  Chuckie, who for some inexplicable reason had a strange, crooked smile on his face—odd for a man about to be arrested for murder—nodded
and grunted, “Every word.”

  “Okay, then, Hayley, I guess your suspicions were right all along,” Herrold said calmly, before reaching out a hand toward her. “Good job. Why don’t you let me take over from here?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Hayley sighed, handing the sergeant the gun she was holding, relieved that she no longer had to brandish a deadly weapon.

  Herrold addressed Chuckie on the couch. “Stand up.”

  He did as he was instructed.

  The sergeant stared at him for a long time.

  Then slowly, eerily, Sergeant Vanessa Herrold broke out into a wide smile.

  Chuckie smiled back at her.

  And Hayley suddenly realized that she had made a colossal error.

  Poor Tilly was still in the dark.

  Sergeant Herrold turned the gun on Hayley and Tilly, as Chuckie walked over and joined her.

  Tilly, utterly confused, sputtered, “I—I don’t understand what’s happening. Why isn’t she arresting him?”

  “Because I am guessing they know each other, quite well in fact,” Hayley groaned, wanting to kick herself, just now noticing the clear physical resemblance. “They’re siblings. Brother and sister.”

  Tilly gasped, stunned. “What?”

  “Chuckie didn’t follow Chef Romeo all the way to Bar Harbor to stalk him and kill him on his own. He had his sister helping him,” Hayley explained.

  It had all been meticulously documented in Bruce’s research he had sent to her from Brooklyn. Chef Romeo’s rival, who he drove out of business, had left behind two adult children after committing suicide. A son and a daughter. And in their sick, twisted minds, justice had finally been done in their father’s name.

  “Actually, she devised the whole plan to take out Chef Romeo at the hospital while he was recovering from his heart attack,” Chuckie offered. “I just carried it out.”

  “Rather sloppily, I might add,” Herrold snapped, shaking her head, still a bit peeved. “Now we have a big mess to clean up.”

  “It all makes sense now why you refused to take Randy’s story seriously, about what he saw that night, why you kept dismissing me as a nuisance. You were protecting Chuckie. You didn’t want the trail of clues leading back to your brother,” Hayley said as Tilly squeezed her hand, on the verge of fainting away from fright.

  “B-but your name is Herrold,” Tilly managed to squeak out.

  “That’s my married name, from a brief, ill-fated marriage in Manchester, New Hampshire. I think when this is all over, I’ll probably go back to my maiden name, Caruso. Vanessa Caruso, what do you think?”

  “I think you are not going to get away with this,” Hayley said defiantly.

  Sergeant Herrold raised the gun in a threatening manner, almost as if she had decided to shoot Hayley right here on the spot. “You have been a constant thorn in my side from the moment I got here, with your poking and prodding and endless questions and theories, playing the infinitely annoying role of plucky heroine out for justice. I don’t know how your brother-in-law can stand it. But fortunately, he’s not around to save your butt this time. I’ll be doing this town a huge favor.”

  “But everyone loves Hayley!” Tilly choked out.

  “You don’t have to defend my honor, Tilly. She doesn’t care,” Hayley said softly.

  The radio attached to Herrold’s belt crackled to life and they could hear Officer Donnie’s somewhat distorted voice. “Sergeant Herrold, are you there?”

  Herrold handed the gun to her brother. “Keep an eye on them.”

  She stepped into the hallway and spoke into her walkie-talkie radio. “Yes, Donnie, what is it?”

  “I responded to the shoplifting call at the Big Apple. It was a twelve-year-old, Tommy Eaton. He tried pocketing a pack of bubble gum and some Twizzlers. Ed Levitt, the manager, didn’t want to press charges, just shake him up a little; you know, scare him straight by calling the cops on him, so I just gave him a stern warning and sent him home.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you back at the station,” Herrold said.

  “Where are you?” Donnie asked.

  “I had to answer a call, which turned out to be a false alarm. An old lady thought she saw a prowler outside her kitchen window, but it turned out to be her gardener. She forgot it was Thursday.”

  They could hear Donnie chuckle over the radio.

  Hayley wanted to scream for help, but knew Chuckie would happily pull the trigger if she made the slightest sound.

  “I’m going to run a personal errand, so I will be out for another hour or so,” Herrold said into the radio.

  There was a pause before Donnie spoke again.

  “Is Earl with you?”

  “That’s a negative,” Herrold said.

  “Because he left shortly after you did and I haven’t seen him since, and normally you and I are partners on patrol, so I don’t understand why he would think he could just take my place whenever he felt like it when we get more than one call—”

  Herrold threw her head back in frustration, then spoke firmly into the walkie-talkie. “Earl is not with me, Donnie. I promise you. Over and out!” She turned off the radio. “God, he is so jealous! Like I would ever!”

  “We going to run that personal errand now, sis?” Chuckie asked, giving her a wink.

  Herrold then crossed to the window and peered out. “No one seems to be out and about in the neighborhood, so now might be a good time for us to leave. We wouldn’t want to give anyone the false impression that you two have been arrested.”

  “Where are you taking us?” Tilly cried.

  “Like I said, my brother and I have a little mess to clean up,” Herrold said ominously, a wicked smile on her face as Chuckie prodded Hayley and Tilly out the door with the gun.

  The street was empty. No one could be seen in their yards. There wasn’t even a loose dog sniffing around any bushes. Chuckie hurriedly stuffed the two women in the back of the cruiser and slammed the door shut, jumping in the front passenger seat as Herrold got behind the wheel and they sped away.

  Hayley and Tilly were trapped. There was a combination of steel mesh and bulletproof glass separating them from their captors. No latch on the doors to try to wrench open and escape. Nothing to use as a weapon. Their situation was bleak.

  Tilly sobbed softly, the cold, hard reality of their predicament slowly sinking in as they were whisked away toward the entrance to Acadia National Park, where Hayley suspected they would be shot and buried deep inside the forest and quite possibly never to be found.

  Chapter 37

  The radio up front in the cruiser crackled again and Donnie’s voice came through, his tone now more agitated. “Sergeant Herrold, I’m back at the station. What’s your ETA?”

  Hayley could see Herrold shaking her head, even more irritated, as she snatched up the radio and spoke into it. “I don’t know, Donnie, and I’m getting really tired of having to report my whereabouts to you every five minutes!”

  There was silence except for some radio static before Donnie spoke again. “It’s just that there’s no sign of Earl yet. Can’t imagine where he could’ve gone, but I’m free to come meet you, if you’ll give me your location.”

  It didn’t take a deductive mind to pick up on the fact that Donnie feared Earl might be with his beloved sergeant at this very moment, the two of them sneaking behind poor Donnie’s back.

  Herrold took a deep breath to calm herself before speaking into the radio again. “Look, Donnie, I don’t need a babysitter, so will you please stop hounding me?”

  Chuckie jolted up in his seat. “Uh-oh. Trouble ahead.”

  A park ranger truck was approaching from the opposite direction. At the sight of the police cruiser on a park road, outside its jurisdiction, the ranger flashed his green lights for the cruiser to slow down so he could talk to them.

  Donnie’s voice on the radio was suddenly more tense. “Who was that? Was that Earl? I heard a man’s voice!”

  “I have to go, Donnie. Stop bugging me! You�
��re worse than my ex-husband! Now I told you, I’ll come back to the station when I’m done with my errand!” Herrold snapped.

  She shut off the radio as Chuckie turned around and waved the gun threateningly at Hayley and Tilly in the back. “Not a peep from either of you, you hear me?”

  They both nodded.

  Tilly covered her mouth with her hand to muffle her crying.

  The park ranger truck rolled to a stop next to Herrold’s window, which she rolled down before instantly adopting a calm, friendly demeanor. “Howdy.”

  “Ma’am,” the ranger said, tipping his hat. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, we got a call from some tourists that a couple of kids were setting off firecrackers in the park. We picked them up and are transporting them back to the station now so we can call their parents.”

  Hayley could see the ranger glance toward the backseat windows, but they were tinted so he could not see who was in there, and there was no reason for him to doubt what the sergeant was telling him.

  He shook his head. “Kids . . .”

  “It could have been a lot more serious. They could have started a fire. Sorry I didn’t call ahead, but we were already near the area and decided to take care of it.”

  Hayley could see the ranger eyeing Chuckie in the passenger seat curiously; no uniform, obviously a civilian, but it didn’t spark enough concern for him to ask any further questions.

  “No worries, I appreciate you handling it. You have a great day,” the ranger said, smiling.

  “Likewise,” Herrold said, quickly rolling the window back up and speeding off.

  Hayley cranked her head around to see the park ranger truck disappearing around a bend, along with any hope she had of him coming to their rescue.

  They drove another six or seven miles.

  Hayley flung a protective arm around Tilly, who had long abandoned trying to keep up a brave face, and was constantly wiping the tears off her face with her shirtsleeve.

  Finally, the cruiser pulled over to the side of the road next to a park trail. Hayley knew this trail. There was hardly ever any foot traffic and it stretched through the woods for miles past a pond and a marsh. Plenty of ideal places to bury a body or two. A sense of dread was growing inside her. Their options at this point were severely limited. She had no clue how she was going to get herself and Tilly out of this one.