“Do you think she’d go to Saracone’s funeral?” Mary had seen the notice in the paper. The funeral was tomorrow, but it was private.
“I dunno.”
“So you have no idea when you’ll see her again?”
“None.”
Mary tensed. “You’re assuming so much, Bill. Something bad could have happened to her. It’s at least possible, even if she’s seeing someone else. She’s an attractive girl and she’s missing.”
“She’s not missing.” Bill laughed ruefully. “She’s with him.”
“But you don’t know that for sure! I’m worried about her, and I don’t even know her.” Mary couldn’t help but freak. Some people never got emotional, and she woke up emotional.
“Bill, I didn’t tell you this before, but when I went to Saracone’s the other night, I accused him of killing a client of mine, and they did this to my cheek.” She pointed at her badge of honor, and Bill’s eyes flared, but only briefly. “Keisha was there for the whole thing. She heard what I said, saw me get hit. Her being missing, it may be related to that, and not just her being with another guy. You read the article in the paper today, so you know that this Saracone guy is a killer.”
“Saracone is dead.”
Uh, right. Still. “But something else may be going on. Ask yourself, why would she call me, anyway? Her call to me sounded worried. I saved the message, you wanna hear it?” Bill nodded, so Mary opened her purse, got her cell phone, and played him the message on repeat, then saved it again. His eyelid twitched just the slightest behind his glasses when he heard Keisha’s voice. Mary watched him and softened her tone. “Doesn’t she sound worried to you?”
“A little.”
“I think we should call the police.”
“Call the cops? No way! I’m not going to.” Bill waved her off. “I don’t want any part of that. I’d embarrass myself.”
“You said you love the girl. Why take a chance? You think you can’t lose someone you love?” Mary heard the words escape her lips, then realized why.
“Let me think about it.” Bill bit into his soft lower lip, but Mary couldn’t take it any more. She reached into her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and plugged in the number.
“Detective Gomez, please. I’m a friend of his, and it’s personal.”
“Gomez,” he said, when he picked up.
“Detective, it’s Mary DiNunzio. That nurse I told you about is missing. Keisha Grace, the one who witnessed my discussion with Saracone. She called me on my—”
“DiNunzio, you told the desk it was personal.”
“It is. To me. My face hurts. And that’s not a straight line.”
“I’m not laughin.’ Not after that stunt you pulled.”
“What stunt?”
“With the paper, with that reporter. Got my name in ink, and yours, too. You fed him that story while the case was under investigation.”
Mary’s mouth fell open. “No, I didn’t. I talked to him last week and he ran with it on his own.”
“Sure he did. He had details only you could give him. He talked to your uncle, for Christ’s sake! You think you’re a smart-ass, breaking into a crime scene, stealing evidence. You don’t respect the process, and I don’t appreciate it.”
“I do respect the process. I didn’t leak anything, I swear.”
“Try livin’ in Mexico, honey, like my brother. The cops there don’t bother to do any investigating, they just beat a confession out of you.” Gomez’s tone had an unhappy finality to it. “I’m working this case, I’m all over this case, and I don’t need you or any other lawyer — including Ms. Rosato — talkin’ to the papers and makin’ me, my sergeant, and the department look bad.”
“Wait, hear me out. I thought you leaked it.”
“Bullshit!”
“Listen, set our stuff aside for a minute, I’m calling because of this nurse, Keisha Grace.” Mary tried to modulate her voice. “She’s missing. She hasn’t been home since Wednesday. She saw my fight with Saracone. She heard me accuse him. Yesterday, she called me on my cell, trying to reach me. It’s too coincidental that she disappears right now.”
“So tell her family to file a missing person report. This is Homicide, not baby-sitting.”
“Her family doesn’t live here.”
“So how do you know she’s missing?”
“Her boyfriend told me, I’m here with him now.”
“Then put him on. I’m done talking to you.”
Mary handed the phone over, but not before she covered the receiver with her hand. “Back me up, please.”
Bill nodded and put the phone to his ear. “That’s right, Wednesday morning. She worked for the Saracone family for two months.”
Mary started nodding encouragement.
“It isn’t that unusual for her. I mean, she does disappear from time to time.”
Mary stopped nodding encouragement.
“Last week, for two days. Week before that, one day, and the week before that, too.”
Mary kicked his big foot in the flip-flops.
“No, she never said anything like that to me. She didn’t tell me much about the Saracones or about any of her jobs.”
Mary gave Bill a shove, and he almost fell over.
“Nothing,” he answered. “No, I don’t think she ever felt threatened or anything.”
No! Mary grabbed the phone. “Detective Gomez,” she said into the receiver, but his only response was a very pissed-off click as he hung up.
It was dark and pouring when Mary left the apartment building, so she pulled the White People Hat out of her pocket and put it back on. She hurried back down the street in the downpour, over the gingko berries and through dirty puddles formed by the cracked sidewalks. Water drenched her sneakers, and hard rain pelted parked cars, sidewalks, and her hat so hard it was like a dull roar, obliterating all other sounds.
Mary broke into a light run, keeping her head down against the slant of the drops. The front of her pants got soaked, and her sneakers were waterlogged by the time she turned the corner onto the cross street.
Which was when she became aware of a dark sedan, turning left onto the cross street, a few lengths behind her.
Thirty-Two
It was a black Town Car, behind her. Mary wouldn’t have noticed it but for one thing. The windshield wipers weren’t on, despite the downpour. She picked up the pace, using the absurd brim of the hat to sneak a look backward. Was the car following her? Was she being paranoid? Still. It was pouring rain. Who would drive with no wipers? It was a late-model car, the wipers had to be working.
Then she realized. The only reason to drive without windshield wipers in a rainstorm was if you wanted to hide your face. And Chico would have known Keisha’s address. Or maybe he had followed her there, and she just hadn’t seen him from the bus window. Was it him?
Mary broke into a light run, but she wasn’t afraid. Not completely. Not her. That would have been the old Mary. This was Cowgirl Mary. She ran to the corner where the bus stop was, but she had to see if the Town Car was following her. She took a right on Chestnut and kept running. She ran past a closed dry cleaner but kept her eye on the left side of the street.
The Town Car turned onto Chestnut, taking a right at a distance. Its wipers still weren’t on. She couldn’t see the driver atall. It could have been Chico. He would have ditched the Escalade. She wondered fleetingly if he had a gun and burst forward, panicky. She kept her pace, panting from fatigue and nerves. Only a few other cars were on the street, a green Jetta and a red Saturn. She jogged to the end of the block, and when she reached the corner, turned right, keeping up the pace. Her hat brim flopped with each step and doused her face with cold water. She held her breath until she reached the middle of the block.
The cross street was darker than Chestnut, and she felt suddenly panicky. Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea. In the next second the Town Car turned onto the cross street. Its panel of bright headlights switched to the high beams.
Light flooded the narrow street, illuminating parked cars, trash cans at the curb, and wet trees and sidewalk. It couldn’t have been a normal driver. If a normal driver wanted to see better in this weather, he’d turn on the wipers. Unless he didn’t want to be seen. It had to be Chico.
Oh, no. No one was on the sidewalk. There was no traffic on the cross street. He would have a good shot if he shot her here. There was no shop to duck into or anyone to witness what happened. Except.
Mary reached into her pocket for her cell phone and tried to open it on the run, but a sudden rush of cold rainwater from her sleeve made her drop it. She barely heard it clatter to the sidewalk in the downpour and she couldn’t see it in the dark. She didn’t have time to stop and look for it. She left the phone and kept running. Her lungs felt like they were going to burst. Her thighs ached in the soggy jeans. She ran until she couldn’t anymore. She was sick of running. She had to end this. Now.
She turned around suddenly and ran straight for the car. The car kept coming. She intercepted it in three strides, grabbed the passenger’s side door, and flung it open. She was about to start screaming when somebody else did.
“Help, police!” Mary screamed back, before the scene registered. The driver wasn’t Chico Escalade, but a very old woman with curly gray hair and eyeglasses as thick as her mother’s.
“Don’t hurt me, please! Please, please God!” The old woman grabbed her purse from the seat and thrust it at Mary in terror. “Please, take it! Just don’t hurt me!”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Mary flipped up the brim of her hat, dumping rainwater onto her shoulders and the car’s black leather upholstery. Her chest was heaving, she was out of breath. “I’m really, really sorry. Your wipers aren’t on, do you know that?”
“My wipers aren’t on?” The old woman looked at the windshield wet with rain, then looked back at Mary. “Goodness! I thought they were! No wonder I couldn’t see anything! Please don’t give me a ticket!”
“Okay, I won’t give you a ticket, if you make me a promise.”
“I will! What is it?”
“Promise me that the next time you drive in the rain, you’ll double-check and make sure your wipers are on.”
“I promise, Officer!”
Mary saluted her from the wet brim of her rain hat. “Atta girl!” she said, and went off to find her cell phone.
It was going to be a long night, and even so, she knew it would be nothing compared to tomorrow.
Thirty-Three
By Monday morning, the sun was struggling to burn off the Philadelphia humidity, a task even a fiery planet couldn’t accomplish. The weather hardly mattered to Mary, who was back at work. Not at the office, but outside the Saracone mansion in bucolic Birchrunville. The newspaper had said that his funeral was this morning, so Mary knew that the Saracones and even Chico The SUV would be out of the house. Burglars read funeral notices to see when a house would be empty, so why couldn’t lawyers?
Mary scoped out the scene. The street was even more splendid in the daytime, with a dappled sun peeking through lushly overgrown oaks, their leaves dripping residual rainwater onto the grayed asphalt. The country-road quiet was disrupted only by a series of trucks making their way through the Saracones’ front gate. In the short time Mary had been sitting here, two white gourmet-catering trucks had passed, three florists’ trucks in elegant pastel shades, and a big blue Taylor Rental truck, its open back revealing stacks of extra chairs, of fancy white wood. Mary could have guessed as much. Even bad Italian-Catholics had guests to the house after a funeral.
She opened the car door, climbed out, and walked toward the house with purpose. If the Saracones were hiding something, even after the old man’s death, then she wanted to know what it was, and she couldn’t think of a better place to start than at his house. The electric gates were held wide open, which made sense. There were so many deliveries that they couldn’t be bothered to keep buzzing everyone in, and they weren’t worried about security with so many people in the house. She walked down the street, her pumps clacking on the asphalt, which reminded her that her navy blue suit limited whatever role she’d play this morning. She was dressed for work, not the white-shirt-and-black-pants that caterers wore or the jeans-and-T-shirt of a florist. She looked like a lawyer. Uh-oh.
Mary shrugged it off as she strode with authority through the open gates, down the Belgian-block driveway, and toward the front door. A young gardener hurriedly mulching a bed of hosta near the doorway looked up as she passed, but her manner telegraphed I-belong-here, minion and he looked away. This could work. She hit the front step and rang the doorbell, her thoughts racing.
An older woman wearing an old-fashioned black-and-white maid outfit, a flat, steely bun, and a polite if puzzled expression answered the door. “Hello, who are?” she asked, with a Hispanic accent. Behind her rushed a young girl with a huge spray of calla lilies, and going the opposite direction hurried a caterer with a crystal bowl of egg-glazed rolls. Florists. Catered food. Fancy white chairs. It was like those weddings on the Discovery Channel.
Eureka! “Pleased to meet you.” Mary shook the maid’s hand. “I’m the funeral planner.”
“Funeral planner?” The maid frowned. “What is funeral planner? I never heard.”
“You know, just like a wedding planner, I’m a funeral planner! I coordinate the flowers, the food, the linens!” Mary stepped inside the entrance hall, edging the door aside and gesturing grandly at the activity. “This is all happening because of me. One doesn’t leave funeral planning to amateurs! I planned it with Melania.”
“Melania? She no say.”
“Yes, don’t you recall? I’m here to see that everything is in order, for the memorial luncheon! Giovanni would be so proud!” Mary snapped her fingers at another florist, passing with a huge bouquet of pink gladiola. “Stop right there! Those go in the living room, behind you!” She referred to the layout of the house to bolster her feeble credibility in a job no one had heard of, because it didn’t exist. “And put them right by the fireplace, with the stone mantel. On that mahogany end table, like Melania wants!”
“Oh, sorry!” the young florist said, then turned around, but the maid was following Mary like a hound dog. It wasn’t going to be that easy.
“What you say your name is?”
“Rikki Broughley.” Well, it had worked before. “Didn’t Melania mention me? No?” Mary didn’t wait for the answer. “We’ve been working together, I guess she wanted to keep it to herself. Some people feel that it’s unseemly, planning for the death of a loved one, but we must be realistic, mustn’t we? Poor Giovanni, she loved him so. She must have cried her pretty blue eyes out. I was with her the night before he died, you know. She was a wreck, even in that great white blouse! And she still found time to work out!”
The maid listened, her head cocked.
“And Justin, he will be so upset, too. All those investments to look out for, all on his own now. Buy, sell! Sell, buy!” Mary was running out of inside information. “How’s Justin holding up?”
“He fine.”
“And Chico? He’ll be strong for everyone. He’s a rock, isn’t he?”
“Fine, too.” Finally, the maid seemed to relax a little. “I no like Chico,” she whispered, leaning over. “He mean.”
You’re telling me. “Now, dear, everyone has their good points!” Mary said lightly. The key to good funeral planning was saying everything lightly. She was getting the hang of it.
“Not Chico. No good point.” The maid shook her head. “He plain mean.”
“Okay, well, gotta go! Gotta get everything in place before they return!” Mary grabbed the sleeve of a caterer’s helper bearing a mounded tray of crudités with dill dressing, then plucked a bright carrot from the bowl and bit it with a loud crunch. “Perfect!” she announced and shooed the caterer into the dining room before she turned back to the maid. “Will you make sure they don’t start the coffee yet, in the kitchen? I don’t want it to burn! And c
ome to me if they give you an ounce of trouble!”
“Okay, sure,” the maid said, turning back toward the kitchen.
Mary hustled into the living room, where florists were setting tasteful flower arrangements on the various side tables that had seemed so vacant before. She made only the corrections that would be obvious to anyone with a law degree. She moved a vase of calla lilies to the right, and her gaze fell on a closed door, off to the right. If the bedrooms were upstairs, what could that be? Maybe a den or a home office? That could be helpful. She edged toward the paneled door, and after a florist had plunked down the last gladiola and left the living room, she opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it behind her.
Mary found herself in a large den, lined with light-pine magazine racks, displaying rack after rack of fashion magazines. Cosmo, People, W, Vogue, Vanity Fair, even an array of British magazines like Hello! and Tattler. A flowery print sofa and two soft chairs in one corner clustered around a decidedly non-funereal display of white daisies. An array of silver-framed photographs adorned a large, whitewashed desk of ersatz antique pine. It was clearly a girl home office and of someone who didn’t work. Melania. Not helpful. But it suggested there was a boy office, too. Giovanni’s.
Mary cracked the door, peeked out to make sure the coast was clear, and slipped back into the living room. Just then another deliveryman entered the room with a huge vase of red roses, and she put up a hand. “Stop! Take that arrangement right back to the dining room!” she began to say, then caught herself. “No, wait! Come with me!” She stalled a moment, eyeing the living room for another paneled door. On the other side. There!
“This way!” Mary strode to the paneled door and opened it, ushering the florist inside, as she looked quickly around. Dark blue walls, navy leather couches and chairs, and the faint odor of cigars clinging to navy-striped curtains. It was a home office, apparently Saracone’s. Mahogany bookshelves held a few books, various photos, and a black custom entertainment center and television, directly across from a matching mahogany desk. She itched to get at that desk. Why would Saracone have paid so much to Frank in legal fees? There had to be legal files somewhere, or an explanation.