by Luna Joya
“Alcohol.”
“Level?”
“Point one-five percent.”
Delia looked at Ruby. “Her blood alcohol level could’ve been on the rise. More likely descending. Forensic blood alcohol contents get tricky.”
Ruby nodded. “Descending given the estimated time of death.” Her fingers moved over the glass like she was doing math in her head. “It could’ve been higher than point thirty percent when she died. Girl would’ve have been barely functioning if she’d been that drunk.”
“The chauffeur said she was sober when he left her,” Cami corrected.
“We don’t know what else she had to drink after he drove away.” Ruby pushed back from the table. “Any food in her system?”
“Partially undigested peas and green beans.”
“Peas and carrots,” Sam said. That’s what he’d read.
She tipped her head. “Misinformation again spread all over the internet, recordings, even books. The coroner specifically said peas and green beans.”
Sam was impressed. Maybe he’d recruit her as part of the family research team for screenwriting.
“Any physical signs of abuse? Injury?” Delia asked.
“She had a loose false tooth in the front, blood on her face around her nose and mouth, and police found blood drops on the running board of the car,” Cami said. “No one knows how much for sure because Price wiped some away.”
He’d definitely ask her to be part of the family research crew. He grinned. There was nothing like finding a hot smart woman.
“What signs of carbon monoxide poisoning did they find?” Ruby wanted to know.
“Sunny was dead,” Mina snapped. “How much more of a sign do you need?”
“Cut that out if you want help from this little Scooby Doo gang,” her oldest sister told her.
“She had a red face.” Cami paused, appeared to scroll through her mental feed. “The coroners said it was consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Also consistent with cyanide poisoning,” Ruby said, reaching for the water pitcher.
Wow. Sam needed to hang out with these women more often. Maybe he’d need to consult with all the sisters for Joe’s next project.
“All right,” Delia interrupted. “Let’s not go all Soviet spy theory. Stick with the most obvious reason. She was found dead in her car in a closed garage which strongly suggests carbon monoxide poisoning. They tested her blood, right?”
“Yes.” Cami traced her finger along the edge of her glass.
“They found carbon monoxide present in the blood?”
“Yes.”
“So was it suicide?”
“Absolutely not,” Mina argued.
“Did you see that in a slip? Because I’m not the one jumping to conclusions here. You asked for our help.” Delia’s voice snapped like a cold wind through the warm afternoon air.
Mina didn’t answer.
Cami added. “Sol bought Christmas presents, planned a New Year’s party, and had contracted new work projects. That doesn’t sound suicidal.”
“So maybe it was an accident like the coroner said,” Delia reasoned.
“Maybe,” Cami conceded, reaching down to calm Bogart. Sam wondered if she’d realized she’d even done it as she sorted through facts. “It’d have been chilly out. It was windy. Sunny could’ve been waiting out the cold and turned the car on for warmth. But if it wasn’t suicide or accident, then how did the drops of blood that tested positive for carbon monoxide get outside the car door?”
“Someone would’ve had to push Sunny back in the car,” Mina whispered. “While she was dying. What about Artie the Hat?” Mina rubbed goosebumps from her arms. “The guy I saw from the Brown Derby?”
Sam shook his head. “I’ve put feelers out for leads on Arturo Davino’s family, but no one is calling me back. I didn’t push because it’s been a crazy busy week at the restaurant.”
Delia’s head snapped up. “Davino?”
While the three of them explained who Artie the Hat was, Delia took her phone off the table. The woman was never more than six inches away from it. She touched the screen a few times and held it to her ear.
“Tony, it’s Donovan. No, your guy’s going down on the case. I hope he paid you well. Sure, we’ll do dinner together sometime after the trial. Listen, you know anything about Artie the Hat?” She held the phone away from her ear. “Yeah? My sister and her guy would like to talk with you about your favorite subject when you’ve got time. You okay with them bringing their dog? They can be there in an hour. Thanks.”
Delia hung up without saying goodbye and stared at Cami and Sam. “Hope you two like sailing.”
Chapter Twenty
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us, Mr. Davino.” Cami took the hand the man offered to board the massive sailboat. Sam carried Bogart aboard, wrapped in an obligatory life vest similar to the ones they all wore.
“Call me Tony, please.” The silver-haired man gestured to a bench. “No rough waters expected today, and no racing for us either. We’re merely observing a youth team out practicing for the upcoming regatta.” He pointed to a sleek, small boat cutting through the waves. “I sponsor the Fortune’s Foxtrot. We call it the Foxtrot for short. You could say seafaring and risky adventures are in my blood.”
She watched with Tony as the five young men on the other vessel worked together to maneuver the bow through the water. “Your sister probably told you I work as a defense counsel. Most of those boys weren’t cut from the same privileged cloth as the other kids hanging out in the yacht club. I give them purpose. They win me trophies and championship cups.” He winked at her. “Now, what can I help you with?”
She decided to take the direct approach. Certainly it’d be expected if he’d worked with Delia. But how to ask a man if his father had been a mobster, possibly responsible for the death of Sunny Sol? “Mr. Davino…”
“Tony.” He tugged on a pair of aviator sunglasses.
“Tony.” She cleared her throat and tucked her blowing curls behind her ears, blaming the breeze for her nervous tics. “We read an entry in Leslie Sol’s journal suggesting her daughter Sunny Sol spent her last day with someone affiliated with the Davino family. She also wrote your family assured her Sunny was returned safely to the address where she was found dead the next day.” She almost had to yell to be heard above the water and wind. Unfortunately, the volume of every noise except her voice receded when she mentioned Sunny’s death.
Tony smirked. The lines around his mouth suggested it was an expression he wore often. “So the old biddy paid attention to the letters my old man sent her. Uncle Joey drove him crazy ’til Pops wrote her. Or maybe she meant the one I mailed to her later as a punk orphan kid, trying to reach out to a mother with no surviving children.” He squawked commands over a radio, and the other boat shot through the water with a full sail. “She never did ask any questions. Figure she got scared off by all the media attention.”
“Your father was Artie the Hat?” Sam asked. “The bootlegger and illegal gambling criminal?”
“Alleged criminal. We prefer entrepreneur.” Tony walked the boat with steady sea legs, monitoring the proficient sailors who operated it. He never interrupted or intervened, yet they seemed to read his body language. He folded his arms in the lightweight windbreaker.
“I could’ve gone back to the family name of Sabato after Pops got poisoned, but I figured why bother. Oh, and Pops didn’t kill Sunny Sol. I don’t know who did. But it wasn’t him. And he didn’t order it.”
Cami couldn’t hide the disappointment. They’d come out here for nothing more than a blanket denial and dismissal? Her face scrunched up against the sun and spray. “Can you tell us anything more about her last day?”
“You a reporter? Or you making a movie?” He stared at Sam. “Is he? Because I gotta say I don’t owe Donovan that big of a favor.”
“No, Mr. Dav…” She caught herself before she blurted the rest of his name. “Tony
.” She glanced over the water. It seemed fitting she’d admit to someone, anyone, why she felt compelled to find the answer to Sunny’s death out here on the ocean. “Sunny Sol attracted bad men. Violent men. She loved men who probably couldn’t give her the same in return. I guess what I want to know.” She took a deep breath and pushed ahead. “I need to know what happened to her. And how could it not have happened.” She swallowed the last word. “How a woman could’ve undone those choices.”
Tony’s eyes narrowed, and he studied her face. Hard. He jerked his head in Sam’s direction. “He one of those choices?” His tone sounded like he’d fit Sam with some cement galoshes out this far from shore. Maybe Tony had inherited more than a love of the sea from his father.
“No,” she admitted. “I’m hoping he’s the answer to choices I’ve made.”
Tony lapped the deck again. His eyes stayed trained on Foxtrot. His young apprentices were excellent sailors. The wind kicked up, and they’d taken advantage of the change.
Tony sat next to her, kicking one ankle over the opposite knee. “Pops wanted to open a gaming room upstairs at Sunny’s café. A few guys in the business did. But in December 1933, Paul Price sold the rights to Alan Knapp because Coral Elton owed a gambling debt to the Cosmo Club, Knapp’s gaming hall over in Glendale. Knapp also bought The Frontero in 1938 not long before it went bankrupt.”
She leaned closer. “The club where Sunny went to her last party.”
Tony nodded and wiped the spray from his glasses with the bottom of his shirt. “My Pops sent a note to Sunny at The Front, letting her know she’d been sold out. She never wanted gaming in her place. She planned to keep it reputable.”
He stopped briefly to check on the other crew. They’d picked up speed. “Alan meant trouble for Sunny. More than he’d be worth. Because the local mafia planned to run all of Los Angeles when it came to gambling. Knapp had already cut into the business. Sunny’s place would’ve attracted enforcers with the addition.”
“No more reputable restaurant,” she guessed.
“Not with Alan in charge.” Tony’s ankle bounced where it dangled. The wind had popped again, and the waves were getting choppy. “Pops ambushed Sunny on the stairs to her place after her chauffeur dropped her off from the party. Not to hurt her. Just to reason with her. Paul Price had already locked the apartment up tight, the little prick. Pops brought her to the boat to think it over and sleep off the mad. The next day he offered her a driver to take her out for errands and return her to her restaurant. End of story.” He walked away.
Water splashed over the bow. Sam tugged Bogart closer. “Damn, the chop picked up fast. This would be shit surfing weather.”
A tingle shot down her spine. She touched her amulet. Nothing. She tapped into Bogart. No anxiety there. The dog had been on the water enough to ride out a change. Yet the prickle slid along the slickness of her skin as sure as the sea spray. She closed her eyes and dared to send out a thread of connection to her elemental magic. There. In the distance, she could sense the dread.
Screams ripped her from the link.
“The Foxtrot,” Sam urged. “She’s in trouble.”
Cami scanned the horizon. A sail had fallen. The boat listed dangerously to one side, throwing a young crewman to the edge. She jumped to her feet and rushed starboard alongside Tony, who barked futile orders into the radio. The roar of the ocean and static was the only response. Tony clung to the rail with a white-knuckled grip. The Foxtrot teetered perilously close to capsizing.
Cami clasped the same railing beside the hand of this man who’d taken a chance on some kids, who had shared his family history, who loved the sea. She met his terrified gaze for a moment before reaching for the gift she’d been born to wield. She didn’t need to touch the water to connect. She would become part of it. She burrowed deeper than she had since the element had urged her to drown Neil. Or had she wanted it, and the ocean listened?
Still. She breathed in. Easy. The waves calmed. May you harm none. The shouts sounded like distant, faraway voices echoing through a tunnel. She pushed with her magic. A gentle force. Only enough to cradle the Foxtrot. She blew through pursed lips, shaking with the effort of holding back the tide inside her.
The vessel righted. The sail still hung to one side, but the crew scrambled to fix the failed equipment. When the Foxtrot floated safely on the water and the crew radioed an all-clear, Tony told everyone to head in.
He glanced down at her, his expression unreadable behind the aviators he slid back on. “I’m thinking about getting a new boat.” His voice was soft, respectful. “Maybe I could call it Golden Eyes.” Cami blinked away from him. “Or maybe Sea Witch.”
“I will deny anything you may have imagined.” She straightened her spine. “What if you tell me the rest of the story you know about Sunny, and we call it a truce we don’t talk about again?”
She waited, hoping she’d been able to bluff this man into believing she was every bit as tough as Delia, even though her fists hid trembling fingers and her legs were about to give way from something other than the sea. Tony stared off at the Foxtrot until the crew waved. The pride and fearlessness of youth might turn this into a happy adventure those boys could joke about later.
Tony bowed his head. “Deal.”
She walked on unsteady legs to Sam, who took one look at her magic-filled eyes and pulled her into his lap. When they’d docked and Tony had checked on the Foxtrot and her crew, he brought a blanket to wrap around her shoulders.
“I can’t prove this. It’s all hearsay, so I’d appreciate it if you keep it close. Consider it my family’s gift to yours.” Tony cut a look at Sam. “What did you say your name was, boyfriend?”
Sam hadn’t given a name. She sent him a silent plea. “Corraza. Sam Corraza.”
“And what is it you do for work, Corraza?” Tony rolled Sam’s name around on his lips as though sampling it. “Something good enough to get you a Donovan girlfriend?” She smiled at the implication.
“I own a restaurant in Pacific Palisades. Feel free to stop by sometime.”
“Huh.” Tony sat down heavy. “Uncle Joey’s youngest stepsister married a Corraza. She sent him a letter to say her boy opened a restaurant out here. A nice beachfront place. Of course, he’d be at least my age by now.” He waved a hand and moved to sit across from them. “Must be a common last name.”
Sam paled. “Is it?”
She reached for Sam at the crack in his voice, but he took her hand and tucked it against his chest. He gave a subtle shake of his head before Tony might look back at them.
Tony rested his elbows on his knees. “Pops took Sunny in her car down to the dock before dawn Sunday morning. Pops wouldn’t have hurt her. It wouldn’t have been any benefit to business. He wanted her to trust him so he could make a move on her place. She was angry with Paul Price, with his old lady, and maybe with Pops. But she slept on his boat. When she woke up, Pops offered her food, but she only picked at the veggies. She was on a diet, she told him.”
“Peas and green beans. She’d only eat the green vegetables,” she guessed.
“You got it.” He lifted his hand. “Pops might’ve offered her a diet pill for a little pep and to help with the weight loss. You know how hard the studios were those days on their ‘property,’ right?”
“Yes.” She leaned against Sam, filling the void left by the sudden, substantial magic she’d used with the comfort of his touch.
“Uncle Joey wasn’t my blood though he loved me and looked after me when Pops died. He was out here in ’33 because his family had run into some trouble back east. Mafia kind of trouble. On Sunny’s last day, about eight in the morning, Pops told Uncle Joey to go out with Sunny and keep an eye on her.”
“Did he?” Sam asked, pulling her even more tightly against him.
Tony chuckled bitterly. “Uncle Joey said until he died how Sunny had been the most beautiful woman in the world, like she was an angel come to Earth. He relived his couple of hours with her
down to the smallest detail throughout his life.”
Tony offered her a bottle of water. When she politely declined, he popped the top for himself. “He said they bonded over being east coast transplants who’d had losses in their family. Sunny drove them all over the city in her flashy convertible wearing the same sparkling silver evening dress.”
“They went to a Christmas tree lot. Sunny ordered a tree painted silver, and he teased her for being so gaudy.” Tony huffed a laugh. “They were headed for a party when she stopped at a drug store to use the phone. Uncle Joey relieved a closed liquor shop of a bottle of gin for her hostess gift. By the time she got back in the car, she was shaking and said she had to get to Casa Oceana. She nearly drank the whole bottle before they roared up to the garage about 10:30 Sunday morning.”
She bit her lip. So many details of his narrative corroborated information leaked from witness statements.
Tony smiled, a faraway look on his face. “Uncle Joey said Sunny kissed him. Told me she tasted like Christmas morning.”
She grabbed Sam’s arm, sadness washing over her.
Tony glanced down at the drink in his hand, swirling the remains. “Uncle Joey waited down at the café, but she didn’t come. He figured she’d changed her mind.” He took a long last drink before tossing the bottle. “Joey always did feel guilty about Sunny’s death. Wondered if he could’ve changed it.”
She locked gazes with him and lay her head against Sam’s chest. While the weariness of tapping her powers subsided slowly at his touch, the heaviness of the possibility Sunny had been a heartbeat from happiness crashed into Cami. She’d expected to uncover consequences of bad romance. Not an unhappy ending to a new one.
They’d reached the end of a promising lead. She shifted against Sam, remembering the sparkling silver dress Joey had described–the same shimmering fabric as the piece Cami had stolen from Leslie Sol’s possessions.
Chapter Twenty-One
“If Joey left Sunny walking into Paul and Coral’s mansion in broad daylight, there goes the accidental ‘trying to stay warm on a cold night’ death theory. We don’t believe she committed suicide based upon our research. So who killed her?” Cami snapped earrings into her lobes.