Crumbled to Pieces

by Catherine Bruns

  Josie barked out a laugh. "I didn't know you still believed in fairy tales, Sal."

  What a mess. It didn't help matters that Nicoletta was also upstairs, and if someone—aka Josie—said the wrong thing, this might turn into a full-fledged battle. "Maybe you should wait in the back room."

  Her mouth fell open in surprise. "No way! She's going to walk all over you if I'm not here."

  I placed my hands on my hips. "Would you please give me a little credit? I'm not going to lie down on the floor and let her step on me, nor am I going to start a war. But I'd prefer that you don't put her face through the wall, okay?"

  Footsteps clattered on the stairs, and Allegra appeared, followed by my father. Her skinny frame was sickly looking and almost sticklike, especially when positioned next to my father's well rounded one. Dad was nibbling away at something that resembled a truffle—a new chocolate stain was visible on the Mets T-shirt stretched tightly over his protruding stomach. Allegra must have been feeding the enemy's father upstairs. Well, at least it wasn't another cookie.

  "Why you bother me?" Her eyes, black as coal, narrowed in on my face and then moved to take in Josie. "I have successful business to run and no time for likes of you."

  I shot Josie a glance in warning then took a step toward the elderly woman. "Allegra, I need to ask you about those cookies you're selling upstairs. Where did you get the recipes from?"

  She shrugged. "My daughter—she give. She excellent cook. She own bakery in Las Vegas."

  "How about we get her on the phone?" Josie suggested angrily. "Then we'll ask her to recite the recipe, ingredient by ingredient, for the jelly cookies?"

  "Jos, please." I turned back to Allegra. "Someone used our ovens without permission this morning. We also have a large number of fortune cookies missing from our back room. Do you know anything about it?"

  Allegra's bushy white eyebrows formed a thick caterpillar as she frowned. "So what? You have plenty, and I take. You give free one to customer, so why not give me too? I pay you rent."

  Apparently I wasn't getting through to the woman. "We give out a free one to each person," I explained patiently. "Not three dozen."

  "That's thirty dollars you owe us," Josie huffed.

  Allegra gave Josie an icy stare. "Don't mess with me, little hussy. I know your type well."

  Josie muttered a swear word under her breath and started toward the woman. Horrified, I held her back. "I can handle this. Why don't you go in the back room and finish frosting those fudgy delight cookies?"

  Before I could say anything further, Allegra stuck her hand into the front pocket of her dress and waved a fortune cookie at me. "My customers—they like these. I think I bake them too. I think I run you out of business. Your grandmama say you smart detective—that you solve many murders. I should have known she wrong. She make up lies so I think you smart. But you just some dumb lamb that I pull wool over eyes."

  Her sharp and vicious tongue rendered me speechless for a moment. I was glad when Josie stepped in to say what I couldn't.

  "Why, you miserable old sourpuss," Josie said bitterly. "You're not going to get away with this. Sal's sister is a lawyer. We'll toss your scrawny butt out into the street."

  Nicoletta appeared on the stairs and glared down at us. "You need to shut up. Customers can hear." She said something in Italian that sounded like "troublemakers," to which Allegra nodded her head vigorously.

  "Mrs. Gavelli, would you come down here, please?" This was what hurt me the most. Although Nicoletta and I didn't always have an ideal relationship, it pained me to think that she knew what Allegra had planned all along, and she'd actually helped the woman sell cookies and steal from me in the process.

  Her black Birkenstocks thunked on the stairs as she made her way over to us. Nicoletta gave me a deer in the headlights look, and suddenly I wondered if it was all part of an act. Her dark eyes peered out at me from underneath a green polka-dotted kerchief wrapped around her head. "What you want?"

  Josie interrupted. "How could you do this to Sal and me, Nicoletta? You're also hurting your own grandson in the process. He's practically engaged to Gianna, you know. How could you help this woman sell the same cookies we make down here and at a cheaper price to boot?"

  She scowled, the lines deepening further in her leathery-looking face. "I no help with nothing. That Allegra's idea. I only help make candy. What else she do is her own business."

  Allegra gave me a cool, superior smile. "Tell your husband my faucet—it broke again. He need to get under the sink." She licked her lips. "I like when he do that."

  "What's she talking about?" Josie whispered.

  "Nothing." I'd told Mike that I wouldn't reveal what Allegra had done to him last night, and I fully intended to keep my promise. There must have been steam pouring out of my ears, and I struggled to control my temper. If poor Mike knew what was happening, he would want to die.

  I'd had the misfortune of meeting several rotten individuals during the course of my life. Still, I liked to believe the majority of people on this earth were good at heart. But it had quickly become apparent to me that Allegra Fiato's was carved out of stone.

  I exhaled sharply and turned to Allegra. "I will give you a complete refund of your rent money, but in return I want you to vacate the building as soon as possible." I'd text Gianna and ask her to recommend an attorney for me to consult with.

  "Witch!" Allegra cried. "You cannot do that. I no leave."

  "Forget about that, Sal." Josie gave Allegra a small push toward the door. "Satan can leave now and take her partner in crime with her." She glared at Nicoletta.

  Oh, Josie, don't touch her! The woman was a lawsuit waiting to happen.

  "You be sorry you mess with us!" Nicoletta exploded and then turned to me. "I knew you no good ever since you drag my Johnny into that garage."

  "Wow." My father leaned forward excitedly from his seat at the table. "This is better than binge-watching Forensic Files."

  I stared at him in disbelief. "Please, Dad."

  "Sorry, I couldn't help myself." He grinned at me sheepishly then popped another cookie into his mouth.

  Allegra spat on the floor and swore, then shook her finger in my face. "Oh, you gonna be sorry. I make you very sorry." She started toward the stairs, but Josie blocked her exit. "What you think you do, tramp?"

  "Get out of here now," Josie hissed, her arms spread out on either side. "Get in your car and drive away. Far away."

  Allegra said something in Italian that sounded like a swear word—or several. "I go get police. You not do this to me." She pushed my front door open with such a vengeance I half expected it to fly off the hinges.

  Nicoletta slapped Josie's hand away. "I need to go upstairs and see about customers. Look what you do. You make Allegra so mad now I have to take care of everything. She so angry maybe she never come back."

  "Oh, she'll be back," Josie muttered. "I'm positive of that. She's a sure thing, like death or six feet of snow in Buffalo during the winter."

  An ear-piercing thud sounded from outside. Josie and I exchanged mystified glances while Mrs. Gavelli hurried back upstairs.

  "Is that Mr. Barton working on his roof again? I thought he said yesterday that he was all done." Josie cocked her head in the direction of the street.

  My father went to the front door, pushed it open, and then peered out into the road. "Oh boy. You'd better call 9-1-1, Sal." He popped another jelly cookie into his mouth.

  An uneasy tingle crept down my spine. "Why? What's wrong?" I didn't wait for him to answer and went to stand next to him. Then I gasped out loud.

  Allegra was lying on the side of the road, facedown, the breezy summer wind blowing through the skirt of her cotton housedress. Even from this distance, I could tell that both her legs were broken and her body was lifeless and still. Josie and I both shrieked and ran toward her.

  "Oh God," I whispered as we reached Allegra's side, my heart hammering against the wall of my chest.

  "Is
she breathing?" Josie asked anxiously.

  I bent over Allegra and gently turned her face to the side, staring down at it. Dark eyes were wide open and stared blankly into space. Abrasions covered her bare arms, and her face was a mess of scratches from the fall.

  "Allegra?" I spoke softly and held her hand between mine. "Allegra, can you hear me?"

  There was no response. The elderly woman's face was as white as powdered sugar. I reached down to take her pulse.

  "Sal," Josie said grimly as we sat together on the side of the dusty road. "She's not—"

  With a sigh, I released Allegra's hand. "Yes. She's dead."

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Murderer," Nicoletta growled at Josie and me as dribbles of spittle collected in the corners of her mouth. "You kill my friend out of spite. You no get away with this, I tell you!"

  "Stop it, pazza," Grandma Rosa scolded. "It was an accident. They had nothing to do with Allegra's death."

  The four of us stood next to the front bay window of my bakery and watched as Allegra's body was loaded into the coroner's van. After recovering from the initial shock, my first call had been to 9-1-1, and then I had notified my grandmother. She and Nicoletta had been friends ever since Grandma Rosa came to live with my parents. That was 27 years ago, after my grandfather died. Grandma Rosa had gotten to know Allegra well through her friendship with Nicoletta these past few months. I remembered her telling me a few weeks back that Allegra and her husband Felipo had lived in New Jersey before returning to Sicily several years ago.

  Grandma Rosa had arrived at my home to live with us shortly after Gianna was born. She was a fabulous cook but an even better person. She gave sound advice, never judged, and made the world's best ricotta cheesecake. For some reason, I secretly suspected she was not a big fan of Allegra's, but my grandmother never said a cross word about anyone and didn't have a mean bone in her body.

  "You no call me crazy," Nicoletta huffed. "Your granddaughter—she jealous of Allegra's business. They fight—I see with my own two eyes! Allegra run outside, and car mow her down."

  "It wasn't like that at all," I protested as we continued to stare out the window. A crowd of interested spectators watched curiously as the vehicle carrying Allegra's body got ready to depart. Two police cars with flashing lights were stationed at the curb in addition to a van that bore the name of a local television station. I stifled a groan. More bad publicity that I didn't need for my bakery.

  A very good-looking cop with dirty blond hair was chatting earnestly with an EMT. After the medic got in his van and drove off, the cop said something to another officer and then started walking toward the bakery. Our eyes met and held. He shook his head at me in apparent disbelief.

  Great. Now I was really in trouble.

  Josie saw our exchange and nudged me in the ribs. "Get ready for your lecture."

  Brian Jenkins was a Colwestern police officer whom I'd met two years earlier, after returning to my hometown in the Buffalo region when I'd divorced Colin Brown. He had been the first cop to arrive at the bakery for a homicide investigation when Amanda, my former high school nemesis and Colin's mistress, had dropped dead on my front porch.

  Brian and I had become fast friends, and he'd made it clear from the beginning that he wanted to be something more as well. Even though Mike and I had been apart for ten years back then, I hadn't stopped loving him, and we'd resumed dating as if we'd never been apart. A few months after I returned home, we moved in together and Mike began proposing to me. The scars from Colin's infidelity and verbal abuse had been fresh and raw in my mind, so it had been difficult to commit at first. After almost losing my life in a confrontation with Colin's killer, I'd decided we'd wasted enough time and accepted Mike's proposal.

  Although Brian had been upset about my decision, he had fully recovered and was currently dating another high school classmate of mine, Ally Tetrault. They'd been together for about a year. She was a nurse at Colwestern Hospital, and from what I'd seen, they were very happy together.

  The bells on my front door jingled as Brian entered, his green eyes shining in the bright sunlight that filtered through the window. He placed his hands on his slim hips and scowled at me, Greek god-like face stern. "Again, Sally? This is starting to feel like some type of conspiracy toward me."

  "But I had nothing to do with it," I protested. "She was killed by a hit-and-run driver."

  "It all your fault!" Nicoletta shrieked. She grabbed Brian by the sleeve of his dark blue uniform shirt. "My friend run into the road after these two hussies upset her." She shook her finger menacingly at Josie. "This one a bad lot—you can tell by her red hair. Demon."

  Josie glared at the woman. "Now hang on a second, old lady. Your so-called friend was stealing my recipes and selling the cookies upstairs. She had no business—"

  "Who you call 'old lady'?" Nicoletta shouted and shoved Josie backward.

  "Game on!" Josie stretched her hands out in front of her, as if she was going for Nicoletta's throat. I stepped in front of my friend, half-afraid she might sucker-punch the elderly woman in the jaw.

  "All right, ladies," Brian said wearily. "Let's try to stay calm here." He smiled politely and tipped his hat at Nicoletta. "Would you mind letting me talk to Sally alone for a minute?"

  Nicoletta gave a loud harrumph. "You better take them to jail, that all I know. Come, Rosa. I need speak to you." She shot us all a surly look and then started up the stairs, her heavy black shoes pounding away on the wooden boards.

  My grandmother gave me a wan smile of encouragement as she started to follow Nicoletta. "I will be with the crazy one if you need me, cara mia." She squeezed my hand. "Do not worry. I shall try to talk some sense in her."

  "Rosa!" Mrs. Gavelli jumped on the stairs like a two-year-old, and for a moment, I was afraid she might topple over. "I need you!"

  Grandma Rosa sighed wearily as she climbed the staircase. "That woman—she tries my patience some days. All right, every day."

  Brian watched her depart then slumped down into the chair she had vacated. "Sally, I'm convinced you are disaster prone. I've lost track of how many homicides you've been involved in."

  To be honest, so had I. "Jeez, Brian, you act like I go around looking for dead bodies."

  He stared at me thoughtfully. "I'm starting to wonder. Tell me what happened right before Mrs. Fiato got run over."

  "Look," Josie said miserably, "I feel terrible about this, Brian, really I do. When Allegra came down the stairs, I picked a fight with her. I was so angry that I wasn't thinking straight."

  Brian's mouth twitched slightly at the corners. "Was she really operating another bakery upstairs?"

  "We were told it was a candy store." Defensiveness crept into my tone, and I realized how this must have sounded to him—like I was some type of an imbecile who didn't even know what was going on underneath my own roof. "She stole some of Josie's recipes plus a few trays of fortune cookies without asking. Allegra even used our ovens to do her baking. It was the first day she'd been open, so we definitely would have found out before long. My father went upstairs to check the place out and told us what was going on."

  "I think she wanted us to find out," Josie said bitterly. "Maybe she hoped we'd start a fight, try to kick her out, and then she could sue us. Like that old movie with Michael Keaton where he was the psycho tenant."

  "Pacific Heights." At least Josie hadn't beaten our tenant up, like in the movie, but given more time, she might have tried. "Brian, I'm so sorry she's dead, but give us a break here. This shouldn't be put on our heads. I was charging her a very fair rent because she was Mrs. Gavelli's friend. I would have even let her use the ovens if she'd only asked me first."

  "Well, I wouldn't have," Josie declared.

  I groaned in response. "You're not helping. But it does feel like Allegra was biting the hand that fed her."

  "She would have bitten your head off if she could," Josie added. "The woman was nuts, but I never thought she'd be so upset that she'd run
out in front of a moving vehicle."

  Brian removed a small notepad from the breast pocket of his uniform. "Did either one of you see what happened? We're trying to find an eyewitness but haven't had any luck yet."

  Josie and I both shook our heads.

  "We were talking and not watching the street. All of a sudden, we heard a loud thud," I said. "My father went to the front door and spotted Allegra lying on the side of the road. I called 9-1-1 right away."

  Brian looked around the shop. "By the way, where is your father? I thought I saw him when I first arrived."

  This was embarrassing. "He…uh…went to hang out at the morgue."

  Brian cocked a fine blond eyebrow at me. "Excuse me?"

  Go ahead and say it, Sal. "He was kind of hoping he could see the autopsy performed on Allegra's body."

  "What the hell," Brian sputtered. "Sally, they'll never allow your father in there! Isn't it about time he gave up this weird hobby of his?"

  "It's not a hobby," Josie insisted. "It's an obsession. He's almost done writing his book about it too."

  "Does he actually think it will sell?" Disbelief registered in Brian's eyes.

  He did indeed. "Dad's cautiously optimistic," I said. "He wants to see an autopsy performed so he can do a future blog about it."

  Brian stared at me as though I had two heads. "Okay, this is too much for me to absorb right now. Can we get back to the hit-and-run incident?"

  "By all means." I was relieved to let the topic drop. My father had gone from planning his own funeral to driving a hearse, studying to become an undertaker, and currently running his own blog where he called himself "Father Death." To everyone's surprise, it was making money from funeral homes that paid to advertise there. Gianna had confided to me that she'd prayed the book would stay unpublished for a long time, perhaps forever.

  "So all you two heard was a thud? No tires squealing?"

  Josie and I looked at one another. "Not me. How about you?" I asked.

  She frowned and shook her head. "Nothing like that. Just a thud."