A shiver went down my spine as I thought about the mermaid that Amber had carved into the bathtub. It seemed like a long shot that it would be connected to a Lithuanian legend, but I was convinced that her drawing had some sort of significance to the case. On a hunch, I pulled my phone from my bag and googled Queen Jurate.
"It's getting late," Veronica announced, exchanging a look with Dirk.
"Right," he said, practically leaping to his feet. "Pleasure to meet you both."
Bradley stood up and shook Dirk's hand, and Veronica slid from the booth and gave Bradley a hug. "Night." She looked at me. "I'll talk to you tomorrow. After your appointment with Dr. Lessler?"
"Can't wait," I muttered, staring at the screen. I wasn't trying to be rude—well, okay, maybe a little after that dentist dig—it's just that I was surprised by the search results. The first link that came up was a Wikipedia entry about the myth of Jurate and Kastytis, and the second was an article in Forbes magazine titled "Mysteries of the Amber Room." It occurred to me that if Amber had done any research on the room at all, she might very well have come across the myth. What I didn't know was what that meant in terms of the crime scene.
Bradley slid back into the booth. "I don't know what you've gotten yourself into, but promise me that you're not thinking of looking for the Amber Room."
"Do I look like a treasure hunter to you?" I asked as I typed the phrase Goddess Jurate into my browser search field.
"I wouldn't put it past you," he muttered.
I turned and gave him a kiss on the lips. "You know me so well."
Bradley's eyes widened. "So, you are looking for the Amber Room?"
"Definitely not," I said tapping a link. "But if an international shipment of Nutella goes missing, I can't make you any promises."
He laughed and finished the last of his beer while I skimmed the first paragraph of "Jurate—the Baltic Goddess of the Sea." And I only had to read down to the second sentence to find what I was looking for—the mermaid queen was a "deity of healing."
I chewed my thumbnail as I thought about the bizarre assortment of items at the crime scene and the good luck charms and talismans that Carnie had seen Amber wearing.
Bradley nudged me with his shoulder. "Is everything okay, Franki?"
"Now that you're here, everything's great," I said as I wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my head on his chest. And I meant it, too.
There was just one problem I had to work out—whether Amber's death was a witchcraft killing or a ritualistic voodoo murder.
11
"What are you up to today, Francesca?" my mother asked way too brightly from the opposite end of the kitchen table.
I stared at her while I chewed the enormous spoonful of Cheerios I'd just shoveled into my mouth. She'd been sitting there watching me eat my breakfast for a good five minutes before she asked the question, so I figured she could wait for me to swallow. And besides, I knew that if I answered her with my mouth full, she'd chew me out.
I washed down the cereal with a sip of orange juice. "I have an eight o'clock appointment with a dentist about my tooth. And since he's involved in a homicide case I'm investigating—"
"You're going to a homicidal dentist?" she shrilled.
The spoon slipped from my hand and fell into the bowl. "Take it easy, Mom," I exclaimed. "He was the dentist of a stripper who was murdered."
She confiscated my napkin and mopped up a wayward Cheerio from the table. "You really should be more choosy when it comes to doctors, dear."
I fished my spoon from the chocolate milk. "Are you saying that he's a bad dentist because his client was murdered?"
"It's just so morbid," she replied, frowning at my wet fingers. "And you know what your nonna would say."
"Yeah, porta iella," I said, using the Italian phrase for it brings bad luck. "So, let's not tell her, all right?" The last thing I needed was a warning from my nonna about all the tragedies that were destined to befall me when things were already spectacularly craptastic.
"Fine with me." She sat back in her chair and resumed watching me eat.
Nonna entered the kitchen in her everyday wear—a basic black mourning dress accessorized with a cross.
"Buongiorno," she said, dropping her purse on the table with a thud that rocked some milk from my bowl.
"Morning, Nonna." I eyeballed her bag as I wiped up the spill before my mother could do it for me. My brothers and I had been wondering what she'd been carrying in that thing since we were kids, and I was beginning to think it was an anvil.
Nonna pursed her lips and patted the cushion of one of the Bordeaux-and-gold Dauphine chairs, which was the same height as her. "So, this-a Glenda…"
My body tensed, and I shoved a bite of cereal into my mouth as I waited for the other anvil to drop.
"…she has-a good-a taste."
I inhaled in surprise, and a couple of Cheerios flew down my windpipe, causing me to start coughing up a lung.
My mother sprung into action, slapping me repeatedly on the back. "This wouldn't happen if you'd chew each bite thirty times like I taught you."
Impervious to my pulmonary plight, my nonna continued to survey the apartment. "It look-a like the noble palazzi of-a Sicilia in here."
I made a mental note to scratch all Sicilian palaces off my future travel itineraries—that is, if I lived to take another trip.
My mother suddenly stopped slapping. "By the way, when are we going to meet Glenda?"
"She's…" I wheezed. "…working a lot." I coughed.
"That reminds me," she continued, "I noticed that Bradley didn't stop by last night." She shot me a probing look. "Nothing has happened between the two of you, has it?"
"No, I saw him last night." As soon as I'd said the words, I wanted to smack myself upside the head with my nonna's purse.
"Mah!" Nonna jutted out her lower lip.
When my nonna uttered the Italian sound of doubt, I knew the situation was dire. "Bradley had just flown in from New York, Nonna, so I told him to go home and get some rest. He'll come over tonight."
She tapped her finger on my chest. "If he no wanna see your mamma, he's-a no gonna marry you."
I knew that I needed to do something drastic to defend Bradley, otherwise he was going to get a ruthless reception when he stopped by. So I marched into my bedroom and pulled the ruby and diamond necklace from my jewelry box. Then I returned to the kitchen and dangled it in front of my nonna's face. "Would a man who isn't going to marry me give me this?"
"Eh, sì," she replied with a combination shoulder shrug and hand flip.
I put my hands on my hips, bracing myself for the speech to come. "How do you figure?"
She crossed her arms and raised her chin like Mussolini standing on his balcony. "Because it's-a not a ring. And as-a the saying go, 'why buy-a the goat when you can have-a the milk for free'?"
"It's a cow, Nonna. A cow," I stressed as I returned to my seat at the table. It might seem pointless to insist when neither animal painted me in an attractive light, but I didn't want to be compared to a goat because they had beards—like so many women in my family.
"A cow, a goat, an ippopotamo." She waved me away. "It-a no make-a the difference."
"It-a make-a the difference to me," I proclaimed, especially now that she'd thrown a hippopotamus into the mix. "Why can't you understand that Bradley and I don't want to rush into something as serious as marriage?"
"Rush-a?" she cried, throwing her arms in the air. "If-a two years is a rush-a, I'd-a hate to see you take it-a slow."
"She's got a point, Francesca," my mother said, cradling her purse like the grandchild I hadn't given her as she stared sadly at her lap.
Nonna clasped her hands in a pleading gesture. "Listen to your nonna, Franki. Take-a the lemon." She reached into the fridge and pulled out a plastic bag full of the yellow fruit. "And look-a! Your mamma she buy extra for la tavola. She make it-a so easy."
I stood up and practically threw my cereal bow
l into the sink. "Aren't you two supposed to be cooking for the poor?"
My mother let out a stoic sigh. "We're going to bake bread at Santina Messina's house. But first we need to start loading up some groceries we bought last night and take them to the church."
Desperate to get them out of the house, I said, "I'll take care of that. A guy I work with is collecting food for the event, so I can bring it to the office and have him deliver it for you."
A flicker of interest flashed in my nonna's eyes at the mention of a male. "Who is-a this-a guy-a?"
I leaned against the kitchen counter. "Don't even go there, Nonna. David's a college student, so he's too young for me."
My mother looked at her watch and rose to her feet. "Carmela, we need to get going. I told Santina that we'd be there by seven."
"If-a you want an older man, Santina's son-a Bruno is a catch-a," my nonna said as she retrieved her purse from the table.
I knew Bruno, and a catch he was not. In fact, the guy was as big a lemon as they came. He was a forty-one-year-old food stand manager who still lived at home with his mother. Not only that, when my nonna tried to fix me up with him a couple of years ago, he'd happily suggested that I cheat on Bradley with him. In other words, he wasn't exactly the kind of guy who swept a woman off her feet—unless you counted the fact that his reckless driving put his mother in a wheelchair.
"I hear Bruno's still single," my mother added in a singsong voice.
"I'm quite sure he is," I grumbled. "Anyway, if you guys don't mind," I began, pushing both of them into the living room, "I need to get ready for my appointment."
"Well, who's stopping you, Francesca?" my mother exclaimed in an exasperated tone as though I'd been stressing her out for the past hour. "Now, we'll be at Santina's until dinnertime," she said, pulling her keys from her bag. "We hope to see you then so we can have a nice meal together."
If dinner went anything like breakfast, I'd rather go on a hunger strike. And that was saying a lot coming from me.
My mother opened the front door, and I remembered my encounter with the masked man the morning before.
"Wait, Mom," I said, putting a hand on her arm. "You and Nonna be careful out there."
She closed the door and narrowed her eyes like Superman activating his X-ray vision. "What in the world would prompt you to say something like that?"
"Don't get all freaked out or anything," I began, "but someone's been following me."
Nonna's eyes lit up like a prayer candle. "Un spasimante?"
I sighed and looked at the ceiling. "No, not an admirer. In the United States, men who follow women are called stalkers."
"The bastard had better not mess with my daughter," my mother growled to herself as she stared at the floor.
I felt sorry for the masked man if my mom ever caught him. When you messed with her kids, she exhibited another one of Superman's powers—heat vision, i.e., the ability to shoot red-hot beams from her eyes.
"Have you called the police?" she asked, her voice dangerously low.
I nodded.
She put her hands on her hips. "What does Bradley think of all this?"
I glanced around the room, sensing that this was some kind of trap. "He doesn't know?"
"Francesca, honestly!" My mother threw open the door. "You're never going to have a meaningful relationship with a man if you don't confide in him."
Aaaand, I was right.
Nonna tilted her head back to look up at me. "You take-a the lemon. Or you start-a getting some cats."
"Don't waste your breath, Carmela," my mother huffed. "She's not going to listen to us." She motioned for my nonna to exit and then turned to me with a forced smile. "You have a nice day, dear."
After she'd closed the door behind her, I stormed off to my bathroom to get ready. I had no idea how my having a stalker had turned into an indictment of my ability to have a relationship, but I shouldn't have been surprised. With my family, sooner or later every conversation turned to my zitellahood.
The thing that bothered me most was actually my mom's comment about me not confiding in men. I'd been keeping a lot from Bradley lately—my suspicions about Amber's killer, the business with Ruth and my reputation at the bank, and the fact that I had a masked maniac following me around town. Did this mean Veronica was right when she said that I didn't trust Bradley? Or worse, did it mean my mother was right when she implied that our relationship was doomed to fail?
As I picked up a bar of lemon verbena soap, my mind drifted to the St. Joseph's Day lemons. Then I splashed cold water on my face and scrubbed my cheeks hard.
"Give it to me straight, Dr. Lessler," I said, looking up at the forty-something dentist from my reclining position in the dental chair. "How bad is it?"
He pulled the mask from his face, and his full lips constricted as though he was struggling to suppress a smile. "The pain you've been feeling is because of a crack in tooth 30," he explained, pointing with a sickle probe to my lower right first molar on the X-ray image, "and you also have a cavity in tooth 31."
My stomach spasmed like it had been hit by my nonna's purse. It figured that the bum tooth would be number thirty, and I could only surmise that the cavity in thirty-one was a sign of things to come. "How could I crack my tooth?"
Dr. Lessler handed the probe to a petite blonde hygienist. "Well, unless you got hit in the mouth, the usual culprits are grinding or clenching your teeth, or chewing hard things like ice, hard candy, or nuts."
Although I'd definitely had occasion to clench my teeth lately, I blamed the salty snacks I'd been eating since giving up sweets for Lent. Desserts wouldn't have done me this way. "So, what's the plan?"
He leaned back in his stool and crossed his muscular arms across his purple and gold Louisiana State University–themed scrubs. "I can fill the cavity today, but you're going to need a crown on that cracked tooth."
As soon as he said "crown," Carnie popped into my head—and I quickly kicked her out.
"My assistant could probably work you in for a temporary crown later this week," he continued, "but you'll have to come back when we get the permanent crown from the lab."
I laid my head back on the chair and sighed. Three dental appointments in two weeks were a clear manifestation of the curse, as were my rotting and breaking teeth. "I guess the filling involves a shot, huh?"
"Don't worry." He smiled, revealing two perfect rows of teeth. "I administer a topical numbing gel first."
That was a small consolation. But I didn't have time to stress because I had a more pressing concern—getting in a few questions about Amber before the lidocaine shot. "So, I mentioned before that I'm a PI."
"Mm-hm," he said distractedly as he took a Q-tip from the hygienist.
"I'm actually working a case involving one of your clients." I watched his face for a reaction. "Amber Brown?"
If he was surprised by my announcement, he didn't show it.
"Dana," he began, turning to the hygienist, "can you give us a minute, please?"
"Of course." She hurried from the room.
"I heard what happened to Amber on the news," he said, turning to lay the Q-tip on the tray next to my chair. "It's tragic to see a life cut short so young, especially when she was getting ready to start over."
I pushed myself onto my elbows. "What do you mean 'start over'?"
"She came in last Friday, the day before she died." His bright blue eyes looked into mine. "Anyway, she said that she was planning to get an associate degree in dental hygiene."
I couldn't help but wonder whether her decision had been inspired by VIP Room visits from The Tooth Fairy. "Any idea how she was going to finance it?"
"That I don't know."
It occurred to me that Amber could've been intending to sell Carnie's necklace on the black market to cover the costs of college. On the other hand, her mom could've offered to fund her degree. "Did she ever mention a mother?"
"Not that I remember." He crossed his legs at the ankle. "But I see
a lot of patients, so it's hard to keep track."
"Right," I said, glancing at my dental bib. "What was her demeanor like that last visit?"
He rubbed his chin with his thumb and index finger. "She seemed excited. You know, about going to school."
From the way Dr. Lessler spoke, it was starting to sound like Amber had been in a good place when she died. "Had she been a patient of yours for long?"
He nodded. "A couple of years give or take a few months."
I realized that he would have known Amber both while she was dancing and after she'd quit the business. "Did you notice a change in her during that time?"
"Yeah." He locked his hands behind his head. "It really seemed like she was cleaning up her act."
His comment reminded me of Amber's plan to go clean. "How so?"
"She used to wear some pretty risqué outfits in here," he replied with a knowing look. "But she'd toned down the dress lately, even if it was a little dark."
"Dark?" I repeated. "Like, Goth?"
"No, but the last time I saw her she was all in black, even her nail polish." He paused. "And she was wearing this strange charm."
"A pentagram?"
He shook his head. "It was silver—a diamond shape with a ball in the middle on top of an upside-down triangle. Between the two shapes there were scrolls on either side."
Dana returned to the room. "Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Lessler, but we've got quite a few patients in the waiting room."
"Back to work," he said, picking up the Q-tip. "Open, please."
I lay back on the chair. While he dabbed anesthetic on my gums, I tried to think of any questions that couldn't wait until my next appointment.
He discarded the Q-tip, and Dana handed him a syringe containing the local anesthetic. "You'll feel a slight pinch, and then your jaw and lips will start to go numb."
I nodded and opened my mouth. There was a small sting, and then a warmth spread through my jaw.
He removed a latex glove. "While we wait for the anesthetic to take effect, I'm going to pop out and see another patient."
"Before you go," I began, already noting a tingling in my lips, "why did you think Amber's charm was a symbol and not just some random design?"
Franki Amato Mysteries Box Set Page 65