Miranda’s face—overly made-up, crowned by a stiff platinum-blonde coiffure—dominated the television screen as she yowled into the camera. “It’s been nine days since beloved advice columnist Peaches Gillespey was found murdered. Not just murdered, but bound, strangled, and left in an abandoned attic until her body had completely mummified, like something out of King Tut’s time!”
“Sorry to subject you to this, SB,” I said. “We’ll stand it as long as we can, okay?”
The look he gave me said he’d put up with Miranda for a few minutes, but there better be a Vienna sausage with his name on it when this horror was over.
“And are the Keystone Kops there in Crystal Harbor doing anything?” Miranda squawked. “Oh, they made an arrest, sure. Peaches’s son, Sean Moretti, is out on bail.”
This was accompanied by video of Sean exiting the courthouse after his bail hearing, during which the “lady judge” had reduced his bond from a million bucks to half that. He was grinning like he’d won the lottery, complete with celebratory fist pumps—not the best look when your mother has been murdered and you’re presumed guilty—while his attorney growled something into his ear and tried to pull him away from the cameras.
This was my first glimpse of the Amazing Carlos Levine, Esquire, and I must say, I was not disappointed. Evie had told me he was more than competent. She’d neglected to add he was a tasty treat for the eyes. Close to my age, lean and impeccably attired, with neatly trimmed dark hair and a serious, handsome face. Yum.
Miranda, meanwhile, continued to harangue her viewers. “Talk about lazy police work. ‘Let’s just arrest Mr. Obvious and call it a day.’ Now, don’t get me wrong. This Sean character is no prize. He’s done time for burglary, which is how he feeds his raging drug habit.”
Raging? He wasn’t an addict as far as I knew, just a lazy stoner with a larcenous bent.
“Guess why the cops arrested him,” Miranda went on. “This is priceless. They arrested this twenty-year-old kid for murder because someone heard him arguing with his mom. That’s it! That’s all they have on him!”
Well, it wasn’t all they had. Miranda must not have gotten the memo about the matchy-matchy rope found in Grandma Audrey’s basement. The rope that looked just like the kind used to bind Peaches to that chair in the attic, and which Sean had easy access to. Clearly, the padre’s source of classified information was more reliable than Miranda’s.
She had more to say on this subject. “You show me a kid that age who doesn’t fight with his—”
I clicked the remote and switched to The Romano Files, starring the combative Leonora Romano, an aspiring TV chef who’d settled for a quasi-news show in the same sensationalist mold as Ramrod News. The two programs aired on different channels in the same time slot and competed for viewers every weekday evening at six.
I knew Lee Romano, having had multiple run-ins with her during the past half year or so. Recently I’d heard that The Romano Files had begun edging out the long-running Ramrod News, which I considered a positive development. Not that I liked Lee, but I had a kind of grudging respect for her skills as an investigative journalist. I guess you could say she was the lesser of two evils.
Both Miranda and Lee had contacted me after the story broke, angling for exclusive insider info and begging for an on-air appearance by Crystal Harbor’s notorious Death Diva, who’d stumbled across Peaches Gillespey’s shriveled carcass while engaged in her gruesome line of work. Take my word for it, that’s definitely how they’d spin it.
Both ladies (yeah, I’m being generous) got to hear me utter the phrase “cold day in hell,” but they were nothing if not tenacious, so I knew I hadn’t heard the last from them.
“—and Peaches was a successful, self-made woman,” Lee was saying, “who knew what she wanted and went after it with laserlike intensity, becoming the most talked-about advice columnist of our time.”
Lee Romano was fifty but looked closer to my age, having recently morphed from doughy and dumpy to sleek and sexy, thanks to talented surgeons and an experienced image consultant. Like Miranda, Lee was a bottle blonde, but her shoulder-length tresses were a rich honey hue, styled to softly frame her face, in stark contrast to Miranda’s stiff white-blonde helmet.
“Peaches was no pushover,” Lee continued. “This was a woman with a survivor’s mind-set. She’d have put up a fight, believe you me. Her killer would have walked away bruised and scratched, at the very least. Probably walking funny, too, if you catch my drift. Did the police even bother to look into that? To find out whether anyone in the victim’s circle of acquaintances looked like they’d been in a fight around the time she was killed?”
I must admit, that thought hadn’t occurred to me. It was a valid point. If Peaches’s murderer had succeeded in getting her to drink the soda laced with Zenaproche, she would have been easier to handle, meaning easier to kill. However, the drug was not found in her system. Without the assistance of a sedative, I assumed it would have taken a strong person—someone stronger than Peaches, in any event—to subdue her and tie her to that chair.
There I went again, making assumptions. Stop it, Jane!
Without warning, another possibility walloped me in the solar plexus. Maybe Peaches hadn’t been killed by someone stronger. Maybe she’d been killed by two someones of average strength, whose combined efforts overpowered her. My mind began playing with potential suspects as if they were puzzle pieces, sliding them around and pairing them up.
So absorbed was I by this mental exercise that when the doorbell rang, I yelped and clutched my chest. Sexy Beast launched himself off the sofa and sprinted out of the family room, through the adjacent living room, and into the foyer so he could give the big double doors what-for, defending his territory and his alpha female with his imposing seven-pound bulk.
I followed him and opened the doors to find Dom standing on the front porch, holding a crystal vase crammed with tulips, my favorite flower. They were in my favorite tulip colors, too: cream, pale pink, peach, and butter yellow.
“Thank you, Dom. These are gorgeous.” I accepted the vase as he entered the foyer, a space far too grand for the likes of my self-effacing pet and me, with its two-story ceiling, macassar ebony floors, and curving staircase. “What’s the occasion?”
“Do I need an occasion?” He kissed me on the cheek. He smelled good. Dom always smelled good.
History had taught me that my ex did not, in fact, need an occasion. Very simply, an offering of tulips from Dom signaled that he was in courtship mode.
SB, never one to forget his self-imposed position at the bottom of the pack, groveled before our visitor, tail tucked, awaiting whatever crumbs of affection Dom might deign to bestow. This embarrassing display was rewarded, as always, with hugs and warm praise for my needy little pet.
As we took the two steps down from the elegant living room to the user-friendly family room, Dom’s gaze zeroed in on the TV, where Lee Romano was still yammering about the murder and police incompetence. He asked, “Why would you willingly subject yourself to this garbage?”
I set the vase on the coffee table and picked up the remote. “Adios, Lee.” The television went blessedly silent. “Have a seat, Dom. Beer? Something harder?”
“Nothing for me, thanks.” He arranged pillows in one corner of the sofa and relaxed back against them. Pinning me with what can only be called a come-hither look, he beckoned me to sit on his lap.
Sexy Beast obediently answered the summons, leaping onto Dom and tucking himself against him. To his credit, Dom just laughed and gave the selfish critter more love, while I chose a spot on the sofa that was neither suggestively close nor insultingly far from my ex. At least I hoped I wasn’t sending either of those messages.
With a final affectionate pat, he started to lift SB off his lap.
“No,” I said, “let him be. He hasn’t seen you in a while.”
“He saw me just a few days ago.” He studied me for a few moments, then said, “You heard.”
>
“If you mean do I know that you and Bonnie broke up,” I said, “then yes, I found out this morning.”
“Who told you?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You know how news travels in this town.”
“So then, you also know Bonnie has someone else,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Dom. That’s rough. Has she been seeing him long?”
“She and Clay have known each other for years, platonically,” he said. “It’s the old story. They didn’t plan on falling in love, their feelings crept up on them, et cetera, et cetera. If Bonnie’s to be believed, they didn’t get serious until after she broke it off with me.”
Which was his polite way of saying his fiancée had refrained from sleeping with Clay while she was engaged to Dom. If anything, such self-control, while admirable, probably heightened her attraction to her new fella. Nothing stirs the blood, after all, like lusting in your heart.
Not that I know what it’s like to lust in your heart, but I’ve, you know, been told.
“Anyway,” he said, “it’s over between Bonnie and me.”
“Not to be insensitive, Dom,” I said, “but I’ve heard that before.”
“I know you have, Janey, and I don’t blame you for being skeptical. But believe me, it’s over. Even if Bonnie calls it quits with Clay, it’ll make no difference. We’re done.”
“I heard something else,” I said. “I heard that Bonnie thinks you’re hung up on me. That she wouldn’t have gotten involved with Clay if she thought you were over me.”
Dom was silent for long moments. Finally he said, “Didn’t you ever wonder why Bonnie and I never set a wedding date?”
Only all the time. “It’s none of my business,” I said.
His knowing expression reminded me he could still read my mind.
“Okay, for what it’s worth, Dom,” I said, “all of Crystal Harbor has been wondering why you guys didn’t set a date. All anyone could figure is that one of you had cold feet. And honestly? I don’t think it was Bonnie.”
I recalled seeing her in the local bookstore a few months earlier, checking out the wedding-planning section. This was going to be Dom’s fourth marriage, but her first, and she’d been as excited as any prospective bride.
“I wouldn’t call it cold feet,” he said. “I mean, I’ve tied the knot a few times. It’s not like I was nervous or anything. It just... didn’t feel right with Bonnie.”
“It felt different than with the others? With Lana and Meryl?” I asked, naming Mrs. Faso Numbers Two and Three.
“That’s just it,” he said. “It felt the same as it did with them. It felt wrong. I didn’t realize the feeling for what it was back then, when I was preparing to marry Lana, and then Meryl. I was too, I don’t know, too impatient, too wrapped up in the newness of the relationship. Too in love with love, I guess.”
Too desperate to find someone to spend his life with, more likely. Dom Faso never could stand to be alone for long. “Well, better late than never,” I said. “I mean, at least now you know how it’s not supposed to feel.”
“I know how it’s supposed to feel, too.” His words were so raw, so heartfelt, there was no denying their sincerity. “It’s supposed to feel like it did with you and me. It was right back then, we were right back then, and we blew it. I blew it.”
“We were so young,” I said, “so inexperienced. It was all so new. You can’t look back at how we were then and say, that’s how it’s supposed to feel now. Mature love doesn’t feel like that.”
“Speak for yourself.” Dom straightened, much to SB’s annoyance, and reached over to squeeze my hand. “I feel it now, the same as I did then. The bone-deep need to spend the rest of my life with you. The certainty that it’s meant to be. You feel it, too. Or you would if you’d just let yourself. I love you, Janey.”
Hot tears scalded my eyes. I had to look away, had to fight to keep them from falling. For eighteen years I’d fantasized about hearing my ex-husband utter those words again.
When I could speak, I said, “You’re... You’re reeling from the breakup with Bonnie. You’re confused.”
“Don’t.” He seized me and pulled me onto his lap, causing SB to grumble something about fickle alpha males and stalk to the other end of the sofa. Dom held me tight to keep me from bolting. “Don’t minimize my feelings. I’ve never been less confused.”
I offered a watery chuckle. “I’m glad one of us knows what’s going on.”
“Marry me, Janey,” he said. “Marry me and make babies with me. It’s not too late to do it right.”
Babies. The very thought made my aging ovaries grab their little walkers and dance a jig.
“I don’t expect an immediate answer,” he said. “Take your time, take as long as you need. I’ll be waiting. And this time I really will wait. You have my word.”
It was a reference to the previous summer when newly unattached Dom had promised me several weeks to give him an answer and then turned around and gotten re-engaged to Bonnie days later.
Something told me he intended to bring the same dogged determination and single-minded focus to wooing me that he’d brought to building the Janey’s Place health-food empire. If so, I was in for quite a siege. I’d be lying if I claimed I didn’t find the prospect immensely flattering.
I recognized the look in his eyes. He was getting ready to kiss me. If I let him, it would be a signal, one I didn’t know whether I was prepared to send at this juncture.
Then again, I had no doubt that kiss would be amazing.
Then again, there was something to be said for not making it too easy for him.
Then again, there was Martin, standing right next to us.
“What the hell!” Dom blurted.
“Are you two crazy kids up for some Buffalo chicken pizza?” The padre plopped down on the sofa. “Good thing I got a whole pie. Plenty for everybody.”
Sexy Beast greeted him enthusiastically. Even he had failed to hear Martin pick the lock on my back door and slip silently into my house—with a pizza. Not just any pizza, but my all-time favorite kind of pizza. The aroma drifted in from the kitchen, teasing my nostrils and making my stomach whine. Meanwhile I resisted the urge to spring guiltily off my ex-husband’s lap.
Dom looked mad enough to punch something—the something in question being the padre’s handsome face. Instead he turned to me and muttered, “I’m going to buy you the most sophisticated, cutting-edge security system available.”
“I have it. It doesn’t stop him. You want some pizza?” I peeled his arms from around me and rose as gracefully as I could manage.
“No, I don’t want any damn pizza.” He got to his feet and confronted the interloper. “Get out, McAuliffe.”
I said, “Dom—”
“If you’re not gone in thirty seconds,” Dom said, “I’m calling the cops. It’s called breaking and entering. That’s a felony, my friend.”
“Nah,” Martin said, “it’s a misdemeanor. It’s only a felony if I make off with, say—” he bench-pressed Sexy Beast, who yipped happily “—this expensive purebred animal.”
“It’s a crime either way.” Dom produced his phone and started to tap in 911. “You’ve broken into this house for the last time.”
I snatched the phone away from him and pressed the red End button. “Knock it off, Dom.”
“But—”
“This is my house, remember?” I said. “I get to say who’s here legally and who’s not.”
“He broke in,” Dom said, not unreasonably. “With lock picks.”
“How do you know she didn’t give me a key?” Martin asked, with a mischievous smile.
I wheeled on him. “You are not helping.”
“You gave him a key?” Dom said.
“No, but you know what? If I decide to give him a key, that will be my business. I’m going to eat that pizza.” I stomped out of the family room, with SB close on my heels. “You two idiots can go hungry.”
M
y ex decided to make some kind of grand statement by storming out of the house. Martin joined me in the breakfast room, where I’d flipped back the lid on the pizza box and stood admiring the cheesy, chickeny deliciousness within.
I grabbed a slice and started to chow down while he set out a couple of plates. Not only had the padre brought me my favorite kind of pizza, he’d procured it from my favorite little mom-and-pop pizza joint. I mean, Dom’s offering of my favorite flower was nice and all, but you can’t eat tulips. Well, maybe you can, but they sure as heck didn’t taste like this.
“Beer?” he asked.
“Soda.”
He poured me a glass of orange soda and popped the cap on a bottle of beer, whereupon we settled in at the round breakfast table and inhaled our first slice before uttering another word. I mean, priorities.
I cut off a few small pieces—avoiding the spicy Buffalo sauce—and deposited them in Sexy Beast’s bowl. He made fast work of the treat and begged for more. My singsongy “All gone” let him know that that was all he could expect for now and he’d have to content himself with kibble. He didn’t like it, but he knew the drill, and was soon snoring in his bucket bed.
The padre took a breather, and a long pull of his beer. “He’s not going to give up, you know.”
“I know.” I didn’t need to bring him up to speed on the Dom-Bonnie front. He probably knew about the breakup before they did.
He affected a casual tone, which didn’t fool me for an instant. “You told me you’re over him.”
He was referring to our conversation in the Historical Society’s attic, before we got sidetracked by the creepily preserved mortal remains of Gertrude “Peaches” Gillespey.
“I am over him.” I detached another slice from the pie.
Preserving Peaches Page 23