by Maria DiRico
Mia and Jamie both declined. “Do you know anything about the robbery at the Miller Art Collection?” Mia asked.
“I’m afraid not. That came after the biggest mistake of my life.”
Mia and Jamie finished their tea and the pilot offered them a tour of his garden, which Jamie instantly jumped on. Half off the large property was a riot of flowers emulating an English country garden. The other half was arranged in a graph of half a dozen vegetable beds. “The soil here is rocky but once you extricate the stones, it’s rich.”
“I can see that,” Jamie said with enthusiasm. “Your tomatoes are awesome.”
“Thank you. I’ll give you some to take with you.”
“Between them and Nonna’s potatoes, you’ve got dinner,” Mia joked to Jamie.
“Uh huh,” he said, distracted by the garden’s wonders. “Are you growing snap peas? I love them.”
By the time they left Hartley’s company, Mia and Jamie were weighed down with bags of the retired pilot’s homegrown produce. “You can drive,” Jamie said. “I want to take pictures of everything to send to Mads.”
Jamie focused on trying to photograph the vegetables as they bumped down the uneven dirt road onto the main road. “What did you think of Hartley?” Mia asked after a while.
“I think he’s got the life.”
Mia managed not to release an annoyed grunt, although she did roll her eyes. “I mean, as a suspect.”
“If I was trying to hide the fact that I killed someone, celebrating by offering champagne to strangers is a pretty odd move,” Jamie said. “This zucchini is huge. I need to use the panoramic setting on my phone.”
“It is strange. The champagne, not the zucchini, although that thing is scary-big. But Hartley could also be one of those people who thinks he had every right to knock someone off, isn’t sorry, but will wait until the police figure it out and come to him.”
Jamie snapped a burst of zucchini pictures. “Talk about a small sub-group of people.”
“Smuggling drugs, artwork . . . that Tina was a busy lady. I wonder if Ron knows exactly how busy she was. She came into their relationship with a lot of money for a former flight attendant. But I think he was too in love to ask questions. He’s kind of a face value guy in general. Ah!” Mia swerved as a squirrel darted across the car’s path.
“Whoa.” Jamie once again grabbed the dashboard. The tomatoes he was trying to photograph rolled into the car floor. “Careful.”
“There was a squirrel. I didn’t want to hit it.”
“I love animals, too. But safety first, Mia. Sometimes it’s either us—”
A chipmunk scurried into the middle of the road and froze. Mia swerved to the left of the tiny animal with a screech of tires. She felt herself losing control of the car and fought to regain it. She turned the wheel to the right, but over-corrected. The beater sedan flew into a ditch next to the side of the road, half in and half out of it, the wheels on the car’s left side spinning helplessly several feet of the ground. Jamie’s entire vegetable stash lay scattered at his feet.
“—or them.”
CHAPTER 15
“I’m so, so, so, sorry,” Mia repeated to Jamie while they sat on the curb outside a service station a few hours later, waiting for Jamie’s older brother, Donny Junior, to retrieve them. Jamie’s car had been towed and declared a total loss.
“For the millionth time, it’s okay. You’re a new driver. I stopped paying attention to take pictures of vegetables. This is on me.”
A brand-new black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows pulled up in front of them. The driver’s window lowered, and Donny Junior stuck his head out. “Howdy, idiots. Get in the car.”
Mia and Jamie exchanged a look. They picked up their bags of vegetables and climbed into the SUV, Jamie in the front, Mia in the back. “This car is ridiculous,” Jamie said to Donny. “You look like an airport limo driver.”
Donny Junior turned off the engine and folded his arms in front of his chest. “You want a ride back to Astoria or you wanna walk?”
Jamie slunk in his seat and muttered an apology. Mia felt terrible for him. “Thank you so much, Donny. This is all my fault. Jamie was being such a good friend, teaching me how to drive, coming all the way to Connecticut with me. I’ll pay for the car.”
Donny waved a hand to dismiss the offer and began to drive. “Don’t worry about it. The car was a junker we picked up at a repo lot. And hearing Dad say a few choice words about his favorite son for a change, I woulda paid you for that.”
Jamie slumped down even further in his seat.
Donny put on a satellite radio station and spent the two-hour-thanks-to-traffic drive home singing along to eighties hits when he wasn’t yanking his little brother’s chain. “Dutch oven!” he yelled at one point after passing gas in the sealed-up vehicle.
“Real mature,” Mia muttered under her breath. The thirty-four-year-old, who was belting out “Livin’ on a Prayer,” didn’t hear her.
It was early evening by the time the Boldano brothers dropped Mia off in front of Belle View. “I think it’s best if I take a break from driving lessons for a while,” Mia said to Jamie as she exited the SUV.
“Maybe longer than a while,” was Jamie’s quick response. “We’ve got a great transit system in New York. And there are cabs, rideshares. Who says you even need to learn how to drive?”
“Yeah. Good point.”
Disheartened, Mia closed the car door. “See ya ‘round, Mia,” Donny Junior said. He fixed his brother with a smug smile. “I got instructions from Dad to bring you to him. He wants to have a ‘little talk’ with you.” He elbowed an unhappy Jamie in the ribs. “Your turn to get torn a new one, bruh.”
Mia heard Jamie groan as his brother chortled and peeled out of the parking lot. She pressed a number into her phone, using her free hand to pull open one side of the heavy glass double doors to the catering hall. The call went to voicemail, so Mia left a message for Donny Boldano Senior explaining exactly what happened, taking full responsibility for the accident, and hopefully exonerating Jamie.
As she headed to her office, Mia glanced into the Marina Ballroom, where the Women of Orsogna Club was scheduled for their monthly get-together. Her eyes widened. She froze for a second and then walked backward to making sure she wasn’t seeing things. An opera singer had been booked by the club as their entertainment. She was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Ravello, wearing a black plastic apron that covered him from neck to knees, presided over a long table covered with flowers. “When you’re starting out as a floral display artist, it’s best to choose a limited color palette,” he explained to the group of around thirty women, who were an attentive audience. “Either one or two colors.” He gestured to the array of flowers on the table. “For our lesson today, you’ve got a choice of using pink or white as your primary color. Green will be the secondary color for everyone. Each table is going to work together to create an arrangement that we’ll donate to the Astoria Senior Center.”
A woman held up her hand. “What we will use for vases?”
Ravello held up an empty industrial-sized mayonnaise jar. “We have five condiment jars that were destined for the recycling bin. Instead, they’ll be the perfect vessel for your creations. You can keep the labels on the jars to give your displays a countrified feeling or use this solvent to remove them for a more streamlined look.” He held up a spray bottle of adhesive remover that Mia assumed he dug out of the bowels of a Belle View supply closet. “Divide yourselves into five groups of six and then come pick out your flowers.”
The women chattered among themselves with enthusiasm as they gathered up armfuls of lilies, hydrangeas, carnations, snapdragons, and an assortment of greenery. Ravello saw Mia and came to her. “I pulled this one out of my kiester,” he said to her sotto voce.
“I’m impressed. You sound like a floral design expert. ‘Perfect vessel for your creations.’ Nice, Dad. But what the heck happened? Where’s the singer?”
“Laryngitis. Benjy tried to cover with his comedy act.”
“Oh, boy. That must’ve gone over well.”
“It could’ve been worse.”
“Compared to Cammie’s reaction to his act, that’s high praise.”
“But he’s only got about ten minutes of material. None of it great. Luckily, Lin called in some favors with her suppliers and got me all this.” Ravello motioned to buckets of flowers.
“Pays to have a girlfriend in the floral business.”
Ravello gave a vigorous nod. “How was your trip to Connecticut?”
“Informative.”
Mia relayed what she’d learned from Hugo Hartley. Ravello raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a man with a motive. But why now? If he was gonna get revenge, you think he would’ve done it years ago.”
“Exactly. Unless something came up that we don’t know about yet. I’ll clue Pete in on what we found out. He can do some digging into Hartley’s recent activities, if I can get him to stop looking for ways to pin Tina’s murder on Ron.” Mia’s stomach growled. She hadn’t had anything to eat since the pastries at the retired pilot’s house. “I’m starving. I’m gonna go to the kitchen and scrounge around for leftovers.”
“Si, figlia mia. I better get back to the ladies. They went through a lotta wine tonight.” Ravello cast a critical eye at a lopsided arrangement being futzed with by a nearby group of giggling women who were clearly inebriated. He plastered on a smile. “Bellissima, ladies. Let me make a few small adjustments.”
Ravello left to salvage the arrangement and Mia made her way to the catering hall kitchen. She found an unhappy Guadalupe wiping down the prep station. “Uh oh,” Mia said. “The look on your face is the kind of look I’m guessing you had after an IED went off back in Iraq.”
“I would’ve welcomed a homemade bomb tonight,” the former Army cook grumbled.
“Whatever went wrong, the ladies seem okay now.” Mia opened the refrigerator to hunt for leftovers. She pulled out a container filled with a meat sauce and sniffed it. “Why does this smell like taco meat?”
“Because that’s what it is.”
“I thought the Orsogna ladies always ordered Italian food.”
“They do and they did. But it’s hard to make lasagna without lasagna noodles.” Guadalupe glowered in the direction of Cammie and Benjy’s office.
Mia, appetite gone, put the container back in the refrigerator. “They weren’t ordered? That’s a rhetorical question. Of course they weren’t. If they had been, I’d be eating leftover lasagna right now.” She sighed. “The time has come, Lupe. The time has come.”
Guadalupe brightened. “You gonna give the kid the ax? Can I be there?”
“No, you cannot,” Mia said, her tone reproachful. “Annoying as Benjy is, there’s no pleasure in this. And we better pray it doesn’t tick off his grandfather.”
“If you want my opinion, Grandpa knows exactly what that kid’s about. That’s why he palmed him off on us.”
“Is Benjy still here?”
“Far as I know. I was all set to yell at him after he did that act of his for the Italian ladies, but he said he needed to make some notes about his performance while they were fresh in his head.” Guadalupe brandished a metal spatula. “I’ll tell ya what I’d like to get fresh in his head.”
Mia made a settle-down motion with her hands. “Take a breather. I’ll handle this.”
She left the kitchen to find Benjy, checking out the Marina Ballroom on her way. Ravello was engrossed in creating his own flower arrangement, so rather than run what she was about to do by him, she decided to act now and explain later. This was a sure case of the old saying that it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
Mia heard typing coming from Cammie’s office. She rapped on the door to alert Benjy, then opened it. He lifted a hand from the keyboard to wave hello. “I came up with a tagline for my act. ‘Comedy you can’t refuse.’ Like the line from The Godfather movies. It never gets old.”
“It’s old, Benjy. Like, almost fifty years old. Although we have been known to use it here at Belle View ourselves.” Mia no longer had the patience to be polite. “This job isn’t working out. I’m gonna have to let you go.”
Benjy pushed away from the desk and hung his head. “I know. Thanks for letting me stay this long.”
Mia’s annoyance evaporated. She felt sorry for Benjy who, despite his desire to become a comedian, struck her as a lost soul. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“You tried,” he said. “I appreciate that. I tried, too. But . . .” he gave a small shrug and didn’t bother finishing the sentence. “If it helps, I’ll tell Nonno you didn’t fire me, I quit.”
“That would help,” Mia said, relieved.
Benjy opened a desk drawer and retrieved a notebook and some odds and ends. He pulled his backpack out from under the desk and began packing up. “I wish I could figure out what I wanna do with my life. Nobody but me thinks I should be in comedy.”
“From what I’ve read, it takes years to put together a good act,” Mia said. “If you’re passionate about doing that, give it time. But whatever support job you get, make sure you like it more than this one.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Benjy zipped his backpack shut and stood up. A scrap of paper fell from the desk and Mia retrieved it. What she saw surprised her. Benjy had doodled a cartoon strip of mobbed-up jungle animals. The bubble over a mobbed-up lion read, “I’m not lion to you.” He was saying this to a pretty tiger who was rolling her eyes and closely resembled Mia. Benjy looked stricken. “You’re not supposed to see that.”
He reached for the paper, but Mia held on to it. “Did you draw this?”
Benjy blushed. “Yes,” he said, mortified.
“Did you draw a lot of them?” Benjy, unable to look Mia in the eye, cast a glance downward and nodded. “Benjy, this is adorable. And funny.”
Benjy lifted his head. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. Can I see some others?”
“Sure.”
Benjy unzipped his backpack and pulled out a notebook. He handed it to Mia, who thumbed through it. The book was filled with cartoon strips featuring the same anthropomorphic cast of animal characters. Lines that were groaners in Benjy’s act were endearing coming from a goombah hippo or a gazelle drawn like something out of The Real Wives of the Serengeti Plain. “Benjy, you have a talent for this. I know someone who might be interested in your work. Would you be cool with me checking it out?”
“Seriously? Uh, yeah.”
The twentysomething’s normally hangdog expression disappeared, replaced by a beaming grin. It was the first time Mia had seen him radiate anything besides misery and boredom. She photographed several strips with her phone and forwarded them to Teri Fuoco with this message: How would you like to buy a cartoon strip for the Tri Trib that’s drawn by Benjy Tutera of the Tutera Family?
The response was an instant YES!!!!!!!
She showed this to Benjy. “Here’s the response.”
The budding cartoonist beamed. “Best. News. Ever.”
“I’ll forward Teri’s contact info.”
“I’ll call her first thing in the morning.” Benjy grabbed one of Mia’s hands and shook it vigorously with both of his. “Thanks, man. You’re awesome. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Mia said. “Although I wouldn’t mind a signed copy of your first published cartoon.”
“Wait until I tell Nonno. He’ll be so happy he may cry.”
Mia thought of Vito Tutera’s fruitless attempts to launch his grandson. “I’ll bet he does.”
She followed Benjy as he bounded out of the office into the foyer, almost colliding with Ravello, who was carrying a giant floral arrangement. “Bye, Mr. Carina. Thanks for letting me work here and good luck.”
Benjy practically skipped through Belle View’s front doors. Ravello placed the arrangement on the foyer’s gilded console table. “I’m guessing there’s a story here but I
’m tired, he looked happy, so let’s save it for tomorrow.”
“Let’s just say I averted an inter-Family war and found Benjy a possible career. I’ll help you clean up the ballroom.”
“Nothing there that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“That also goes for the hunt for Benjy’s replacement. No more ‘connections.’ We’ll go the usual route and post to employment websites.”
“Si, bella.” Ravello motioned to the door. “Allora, andiamo. I’ll drive you home.”
The two started toward the parking lot. Mia’s cell phone rang. She saw the caller was Teri Fuoco. Usually she declined the pesky reporter’s calls but since Teri had just done her a favor, Mia answered, albeit grudgingly. “Thanks for giving Benjy Tutera a shot. What’s up?”
“I’m calling you with thanks. Tutera’s cartoons are genuinely adorbs and his being connected on top of that’ll make me a hero with my publisher.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mia went to sign off but heard Teri yelling, “Don’t hang up, I have news.” She held the phone back up to her ear. “News? Like, what?”
“I’m repaying you for the Tutera get with a little intel I pulled out of my law enforcement sources. You know that art dealer who was at your friend’s shower? Justine Cadeau?”
“Yeah? Did the police find her?”
“You could say that. She just turned up dead. In Switzerland.”
CHAPTER 16
“Dead?” Mia repeated, stunned. “How? What happened? Do you know anything else?” Ravello tugged at Mia’s sleeve. “What? Who’s dead? What’s going on?”
Mia motioned for her father to be quiet. She listened to Teri, who said, “That’s all I know. Since it’s on international soil and may or may not be crime-related, Interpol’s involved, and they are super tight-lipped.”