by Becky Clark
I dragged a nearby chair, placing it four feet away from the Braid’s. Pointing with the shears I commanded, “Sit down.”
Lapaglia sat.
I began to get scared. This was too easy. As quickly as I could, I tied Lapaglia to the chair the same way I’d tied the Braid. Lapaglia still hadn’t looked at me, simply stared at the concrete.
“Now talk.” I gestured at Lapaglia’s chest with the shears.
He didn’t move.
The Braid started to speak but I pointed the shears at him and he shut up.
“Lapaglia.” He still didn’t respond so I gently poked him in the chest with the tip of the shears. He looked up at me. “This man just accused you of murdering Tiffany Isaac, who he says is his cousin. Don’t you have anything to say to that?”
“I didn’t do it.” He looked at the Braid with disbelief. “Tiff’s dead?”
The Braid glared at him.
“You have three seconds to tell me what’s going on. And then I’m calling the cops,” I said.
“I don’t know. I just talked to her the other day.”
“What did you talk about?” I asked.
“Nothing. She told me she’d seen the photos online from the Dark Dagger Awards.”
The same ones I’d seen. “What about them?”
He looked me directly in the eyes. “I’m not sure. She wasn’t making a lot of sense, talking fast and disjointed. Told me a story about sitting in a sushi bar with a friend years ago, when they were in college. They were procrastinating homework or something and talking about how nice it would be to trade places with two women sitting near them.”
The Braid made a noise in his throat. “She told me the same story,” he said, looking up at me. “She also told me that my name has been linked with Lapaglia’s, that I am the one accused of feeding him inside information about the family.”
“Whose family?” I asked.
“The family. The Zaminskys,” the Braid said.
“Who are they?”
Lapaglia answered. “A crime family. He works for them.”
“And you know this because ….?”
“Everyone knows this,” Lapaglia said.
I didn’t know it, but I kept that to myself. I asked the Braid, “Is this true?”
“Yes.”
“Are you feeding Lapaglia inside information?”
The Braid didn’t answer but shot me an angry look.
I looked from one to the other, becoming more and more exasperated with them. I wanted to call the police, but I wanted to know what was going on just the teensiest bit more. Besides, they were trussed up tight. I had plenty of time. I pointed my shears at one and then the other. “Remember when I went all spider monkey a little bit ago? Fair warning, I’m fixin’ to do it again if you don’t tell me what’s going on.” I opened and closed the shears. “In great detail.”
The Braid and Lapaglia glanced at each other, neither wanting to explain. Finally, the Braid spoke.
“Someone is setting me up to make it look like I am feeding stories to this hack so he can write his books.” He jerked his head at Lapaglia, who quickly glanced away. “The information is sensitive and not many people would know it. Unfortunately, I am one of them. Lapaglia will be accompanying me back to Jersey to tell them who has been spoon-feeding these stories to him to prove I was not involved. If he does not come with me, I will be forced to kill him to show he is nothing to me.”
I thought about this for a moment. “So, either way you’re in deep doo-doo. If your family thinks you’re the snitch, you’re a goner. If Lapaglia turns up dead, the Feds will think you did it and you’re a goner.” I mulled this over. “What’s your real name anyway?”
“Cesare Silvio.”
Lapaglia gasped. “Every email I got was signed The Silver Fox.”
I snapped my head toward the Braid. “You said you weren’t the one feeding him information.”
“I am not. Someone is setting me up.”
I thought about what Don and Ozzi had told me about the character “Taffeta” in Lapaglia’s books. “Was it Tiffany? Was she setting you up? She’s your cousin, part of your crime family too.”
“You do not know what you are talking about.”
“Educate me.”
“She is my cousin, yes, but we are not part of the Zaminsky family. I only work for them. Just because someone works for Walmart does not mean they are related to Sam Walton.”
“Then what did Tiffany have to do with any of this?” I asked him.
“Yeah … what?” Lapaglia asked. “She’s not really dead, is she?” His voice had a sad, resigned timbre to it.
The Braid scowled at him but answered me. “In her message she told me she was worried I was being set up for something and she did not want to see me get whacked.”
I had no reason to believe him. In Lapaglia’s book, Taffeta/Tiffany was a double-crosser. But if the Braid was telling the truth that she wasn’t in the mob, then maybe “Taffeta” was someone else.
I turned to Lapaglia. “Who was Taffeta in your books?”
“Taffeta.”
“Yes, Taffeta,” I said impatiently.
Lapaglia frowned at me. “Taffeta … in my books … is … Taffeta.” He spoke to me like I didn’t understand English.
“Who was she based on?”
“Nobody. She’s fictional.”
“Don’t play dumb, mister. You and I both know that fictional characters are often based on real people. Especially when they’re handed to you fully-formed on a silver platter.”
“Silver. You said it yourself. Ask the Silver Fox over there.”
I turned to the Braid. “So how would Tiffany know anything about the mob if she wasn’t in the mob?”
“I do not know.”
“Does she have friends in the Zaminsky mob?”
“I do not know, but I hope she does not. They are ruthless.”
“Unlike you, who spends his time feeding the hungry and building hospitals for the poor.”
“You do not have to be sarcastic.”
These men and this conversation were getting me all riled up again, and I still didn’t understand any of it. If Lapaglia wrote those books based on stories he was given, someone had a reason for wanting him to write those books and include those stories. If “Mohawk” from the books is the Braid, and the story line was that he had to make things right with the mob, and here is the Braid wanting Lapaglia to go back to New Jersey to makes things right with the mob, then who was “Taffeta”?
If Taffeta was Tiffany, then maybe the Braid simply wasn’t aware his cousin worked for the mob too. I’d seen enough gangster movies to know there were always plenty of secrets to go around.
But if it wasn’t Tiffany, then it had to be someone else in the Zaminsky crime family.
I turned to Lapaglia. “Tell me again where you got the inside dirt on those mob stories.”
“Emails signed The Silver Fox, like I said.” He jerked his head toward the Braid.
“See? It is faulty information like this that will get me whacked. I never sent you any emails,” the Braid said.
Lapaglia motioned to me to come closer to him. I squatted next to him, but warily, and only after making sure he was still tied tight. I also made sure he noticed I still held the garden shears.
“This is fishy,” he whispered. “He killed Tiff.”
“He says you killed her,” I whispered back.
“I loved her. Why would I kill her?” The silver clasp of his bolo tie caught the sun every time he moved.
“Stranger things have happened.”
“She never mentioned she had a cousin in the mob.”
“Why would she?”
“You’ve gotta believe me. I didn’t hurt Tiff.” His eyes filled as he stared at me. “Which scenario makes more sense … that a middle-aged author murdered someone in cold blood, or that a guy in the mob did? And notice how he never uses contractions when he speaks, like some Damon Runyon
character?”
“I was thinking more like Kim Darby in True Grit, but so what?” I whispered, trying to keep one eye on him and one on the Braid.
“None of the emails sounded like that.” He cut his eyes at the Braid.
“But would they? Do you talk exactly how you write in emails?” I mulled this over for a moment then nodded. Yes, people generally sounded like their emails. Unless they were trying to disguise it. “How long have you been getting mob stories from this Silver Fox?”
“Years,” he whispered. “At least ten.”
To me, that ruse didn’t seem sustainable over so long. Months, maybe, but ten years?
As if giving voice to my thoughts, Lapaglia mimicked the Braid. “I do not think that a mook such as this could have been behind such a plot.”
I shook out my legs and turned back to the Braid, speaking in my normal voice. “Let’s talk about Tiffany some more. Why would she have been murdered?”
He looked as sad as Lapaglia had. For a minute I felt sorry for him. Then I remembered Peter’s kidnapping, the hair-pulling, and the potential whacking.
“I do not know. She was a good person. She drove for the senior center. She volunteered at the food bank. She recorded books for the blind. She had a podcast!” he wailed.
I recalled Detective Ming telling me and Ozzi that Tiffany had been seen around Union Station before she’d been found dead. I turned toward Lapaglia. “Perhaps she was waiting for someone to get off the train.”
“Now you wait one second. You don’t think I—”
“Was she another of your girlfriends? Did you kill her because she double-crossed you somehow?”
“Double-crossed me how?”
I thought for a minute. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe she knew you were double-crossing the Braid here.”
“Again, how exactly would that work? Somebody was feeding me information about the Zaminsky family, so logically the info had to come from there.”
I was getting confused. “Maybe if Tiffany knew who was feeding you the info, and she confronted them, maybe they killed her?”
Lapaglia made a frustrated chuffing noise, but the Braid had a realization.
“If Tiffany found out that the information leaked to Lapaglia was being blamed on me, and if she knew who really leaked it, she would try to make it right. She would confront them.” He looked stricken. “It is my fault she is dead. She was trying to protect me. She knew who was behind those ‘Silver Fox’ emails to Lapaglia.”
“And it got her killed,” I added.
The Braid began fighting against his restraints as he shouted at Lapaglia. “If you had a better imagination and came up with stories of your own, none of this would have happened!” He tried bump-bump-bumping his chair closer to Lapaglia.
I moved toward him, waving the shears to remind him I still had them.
He took a deep breath and stopped moving around. “Again, Lapaglia. I ask you to confess. Do not make me break your kneecaps,” the Braid snarled.
“It doesn’t look like you’re in any position to break anybody’s anything.” I waved my hand at all the bungee cord.
The Braid and Lapaglia bantered back and forth about people I didn’t know and things I didn’t understand about the mob. While they accused, threatened, and cajoled, I kept an eye on them, but stepped away, set the shears on a table, and pulled out my phone. I very calmly explained to the 911 dispatcher that two men at the Lost Valley Resort might have information about a murder that occurred in Denver and they should send someone out right away. I added that one of them was also a dognapper.
The dispatcher seemed completely unfazed by our conversation—but that was her job. She said she’d send someone right out.
I was happy to wait for officers to take these two off my hands. Let them sort it all out.
But I still needed to know where the Braid stashed Peter. I interrupted their bickering. “Where are you hiding Peter?”
“Who’s Peter?” Lapaglia asked.
“The dog he kidnapped to force me to find you.” I glared at the Braid and he glared back. “Which I did, by the way.”
“He stole your dog?” He glared at the Braid too. “That’s low man, even for a mobster.”
“Pete’s not my dog.” I jabbed a finger in the Braid’s direction. “He stole a precious pet from an elderly couple. Peter is their only joy.”
“They will get over it.” The Braid broke eye contact and looked at his feet.
“Low, man.” Lapaglia slowly shook his head. “Low indeed.”
“Almost as low as you leaving me holding the debt and the PR mess from the event you ditched,” I snapped.
“Actually, I think stealing a dog is much, much lower.” Lapaglia turned to the Braid. “You should give that dog back.”
“You should give her money back.”
I scooped up the shears from where I’d left them on the table, then opened and closed them. The raspy, grating sound caused the Braid to flinch.
I could use his fear to get answers about Peter O’Drool.
Twenty-One
I raised the clippers, pretending to inspect them. “Sharp,” I said. I lovingly turned them over and over, purposely keeping them very near his face. I had absolutely no intention of using them. What was I gonna do, lop off his fingers? Impale him? The idea was laughable, but I didn’t want either of these two men to know that.
I also didn’t want either of them to see my hands begin to shake so I sidled around behind the Braid. He twisted his head to keep me in view, but he couldn’t. He snapped his head the other direction and his long silver braid hit my arm. I grabbed it near the base of his scalp. With my other hand I made the snip-snip of the shears near his ear, where he was sure to hear it.
“Do not even think about doing that,” he said.
“Tell me where Peter is.” I pulled his hair tighter and rested it inside the shears.
“Nev—”
“What’s going on here?” Alan Fraser, the owner of the resort came around the side of the outdoor kitchen and bellowed.
Startled, I snipped off the Braid’s braid.
I stared at it in my hand. It was like holding half a rat. I thought about my hair looped through the opening in the back of my baseball cap. The urge to touch my own ponytail was overwhelming, but my hands were full of shears and half a rat so I had to settle for shaking my head and feeling the comfort of my hair tickle my shoulders and back.
Archie Cruz, that smarmy news guy, pushed his way around Alan Fraser. I saw the 35mm camera around his neck and quickly hid the shank of hair behind my back.
Alan Fraser reached for Archie Cruz’ arm. He hissed, “You were supposed to stay out of sight!” But Archie Cruz kept coming.
Alan Fraser gaped at us, his face blotchy with anger. “I said, what’s going on here? I got a report of some kind of ruckus.”
Gone was the mild-mannered guy who brought me from the station earlier. He noticed the gardening shears in my hand. I could tell he wasn’t sure of what I’d done—or was about to do—but he knew he didn’t want whatever it was to happen.
“Hey,” Archie Cruz said, peering closer at the Braid tied up in the chair. “You’re that mob guy from the wanted posters. Cesare Silvio, right?” He moved closer and grasped what he could of the Braid’s hand pinned behind him. “Thrilled to meet you, sir.”
“Likewise.” The Braid gave a diminutive wiggle of his fingers.
“Thought your hair was longer.” He studied the Braid’s head, whose hair now fell in an uneven pageboy around his face.
Alan Fraser held out his hand for the shears and I placed them in his hand. “This is the last time I’m going to ask. What ... is going ... on?”
I stepped away from the Braid, hiding the braid behind me. “This man has attacked me on more than one occasion.”
“This woman has attacked me on more than one occasion. And she assaulted my hair!”
“It was an accident, but I’m not sorry. This man stole
a dog from an elderly couple.”
“I never!”
“You did, you liar. And this man—” I gestured at Lapaglia— “might have murdered a woman in Denver.”
“I did no such thing. And I demand you untie me.”
“Wait for the police,” I told Alan Fraser. “I already called them.”
“You did what?” Alan Fraser already had his phone out. He dialed, then after a moment spoke into it. “Hey, Michaelson. Did you just get a call from up here?” He listened for a bit, then said, “Tell them to turn around. It was just a misunderstanding. Everything here is fine.”
“No, it’s not!” I yelled toward the phone, but he’d already disconnected.
Alan Fraser knelt to untie the Braid’s feet. “This will not do,” he said to me. “I cannot have you tying up people on the patio of the Lost Valley Resort. That would be very bad for business.”
“Where would you like me to tie them up, then? These are bad guys!”
“I can’t have this kind of publicity.” Alan Fraser kicked the first loose bungee away from the Braid’s chair and worked on the bungee wrapped around his torso.
“I thought that’s why you called me, to get publicity,” Archie Cruz said.
Alan Fraser pulled the second bungee off and kicked it aside. “Yes, to show that the reclusive Rodolfo Lapaglia chooses Lost Valley Resort to write his books.” He shot Lapaglia a dirty look then tapped the Braid on the shoulder to indicate he should lean forward. “NOT to rendezvous with low-level mobsters.” He finished untying the Braid’s hands and rested a hand on his shoulder. “No offense ... Mr. Silvio, was it?”
“None taken.” The Braid rubbed his wrists as he stood.
“What about your very strict privacy policy?” I asked sarcastically.
I received no answer from Alan Fraser, just a silent blush running up the back of his neck.
“You can’t have it both ways,” I said. “You can’t claim to give your guests privacy, and then call the media up here to report on it.”
“And you can’t tie up my guests right on my patio!” Alan Fraser’s face was like an overripe tomato as he untied Lapaglia. It clashed with his hair.