“Even me. Remember you sold me on you. I married you, didn’t I?”
“Then you divorced me.”
“You wanted me to.” I was getting tired of trying to get his full cooperation. One more comment from him, and I’d toss him out of the shop and call Grandfather Egret to come take over the afternoon’s selling. He’d done it before and very well at that. I wondered why I’d asked Jerry in the first place. Oh right. I did it to get him out of the way while my reliable help did the real work.
Jerry seemed to read my mind. “Let’s ask Grandfather Egret. He’ll be happy to be here this afternoon, and then I can come with you to the coast.”
Nappi stepped close to Jerry and scowled at him. “Look, buddy. This is the deal. You work here or you do nothing to help Eve because you’re not coming along with us. Hear me?”
“Yes, sir.” Jerry swallowed hard and stepped back.
“And another thing,” Nappi said, “don’t call her Evie. Don’t you get it by now? She hates that name. It makes her feel like a child.”
“Yes, sir.” Jerry took another step backward. “I’ll straighten the clothing rounds.” He began fidgeting with the displays, moving clothing from one to another.
“Jerry,” I said, “could you not redecorate and just sell?”
He nodded, and we left him standing in front of the cash register trying to look like someone who knew something about women’s clothing.
We piled into Nappi’s Escalade with Grandy in the passenger seat and me in the back. Once in Stuart, I directed Nappi south to the strip mall where the pawn shop was located. I walked in first, Grandy on my heels. I could practically feel her breath on my neck. Turning, I saw a big grin on her face.
“Could you try to look more businesslike and not as if you were in a toy store?” I suggested. She replaced the smile with another look, this one more like she’d swallowed something that tasted bad. It would have to do.
The owner scowled for a moment, but when he saw my sweet, chubby, and harmless-looking Grandy, he smiled. “I see you brought reinforcements. What is she going to do? Feed me cookies until I tell you about the guy?”
And then Nappi entered the shop. The smile disappeared from the owner’s face. “I know you,” he said.
Why was I not surprised the owner recognized him? Everyone who had occasion to dabble in the world of crime knew Nappi—if not personally, then by reputation. And I was certain this guy had done some dabbling.
“I know you, too. What name are you using today? Edward Borden, Eddie Brookfield, or perhaps Ed Sanford?”
I figured we might as well call him Ed, last name unimportant since it wouldn’t have been real anyway.
Ed spread his hands in supplication. “Name’s Ed Lawton. Look. I didn’t know she was friends with you,” he said, reaching under the counter.
“I wouldn’t pull out that shotgun, if I were you,” said Nappi. “You might accidentally shoot yourself with it. You know how accidents happen with firearms.” Nappi gave him one of his disarming, scary smiles.
“I could shoot you,” he said.
“You could, but then my mama here,” he gestured toward Grandy, “would be forced to pull out her automatic and shoot you. You know how hard it is to control those automatics. They’ve been known to go off by themselves. That would be a terrible accident and painful, if she misfired and you didn’t die. How about it, Mama?”
A brief look of surprise crossed Grandy’s face, but she quickly hid it with a nod and a silly grin like the one you would find on a lunatic’s face. She reached under her jacket as if checking her weapon.
“I can hit what I shoot at, but I can’t guarantee a clean kill,” she said.
Ed’s face turned green with terror.
“So how about it?” said Nappi. “The authorities should have made it clear to you how important this is.”
“Cops haven’t been here, so I thought the whole thing had kind of blown over.”
Nappi let out a bark of a laugh. “Just because the cops didn’t visit you doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about you. You know how it is. Cops get busy with other things.”
Ed spat his tobacco and gave Grandy a weak smile as he brought his hands back up from under the counter.
It was my turn now that Nappi had softened up the guy. “So how about a description of Mr. Smith. He been in here before to pawn stuff? And we’d appreciate a real address.”
“He’s been here before, but I don’t know his name or an address. I just take down what my customers give me.”
“Okay. What did he look like?”
The owner hesitated, and I got the feeling he knew more about the man than he was telling us. I was also certain the next thing out of his mouth would be a yet another lie.
“He was tall, heavy-set, and bald.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Grandy wandered the store, taking in the broken, dirty, and mostly useless merchandise. “I’d like to see the watch. Where is it?” she asked.
Ed-Eddie-Edward What’s-His-last-Name-Lawton gulped and looked at Nappi. “You’re not gonna like this. It’s gone.”
Chapter 9
Nappi slammed his hand on the countertop so hard I expected to see the glass shatter.
“Not my fault. He came in here this morning and bought the watch back. Said he wanted to give it as a gift.”
Lies, lies, lies. Did the guy sell anything else but fabrications here?
“I don’t think so. I think you called him and warned him the cops wanted to talk with him,” I said.
Nappi reached out for the owner, who jumped when he grabbed his shoulder. Obviously, he expected something more violent than the pat Nappi gave him.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to turn this whole thing over to the authorities then. You know what they’ll do, don’t you? They’ll come here and arrest you, close the shop, and you’ll spend time in jail for impeding a murder investigation. And you don’t like jail much, do you?”
“I’d rather do jail time than mess with the guy who pawned the watch,” said owner Ed.
“But you’re messing with me, and you know that makes me mad,” said Nappi.
The guy pointed up at the corner. “That’s a camera recording everyone who comes in here. If you do anything to me, it’s all there for the cops to see.”
Oh, sweet Jesus. The guy had given away the store. Nappi and I looked at each other. We had the same thought.
“Let’s take a look at the footage on there. It probably records for twenty-four hours and then you can erase it if you like, but I’ll bet you haven’t done that yet today. Right?”
“Huh?” he said. Then he got it. The guy who pawned the watch and came to pick it up earlier today would be on that tape.
We shuffled through the store and into the backroom to view the tape. All the stuffing seemed to have been pulled right out of the owner. So defeated was he that he offered us coffee—as if I’d ever consider putting my lips to anything that came out of the store. He did have some leftover donuts that looked tasty, however.
The man on the tape—the only customer in the store this morning—was not tall and heavy, but small, barely five feet five and scrawny. He could have been the younger brother of the shop owner.
“You two related?” I asked him.
“Cousins,” he admitted.
“Family is important, even when it comes to murder,” I said sarcastically.
His line should have been, “My cousin wouldn’t kill anybody,” but he didn’t say it. I guess he knew his cousin was capable of murder, had probably done a couple in the past. And I was betting the cousin didn’t have a soft spot in his heart for family. But try as we might with threats of having the police shut him down or having Nappi and Grandy help him into the next world, Spitting Ed’s family loyalty won out. Or maybe it was simply fear for his life that made him mute. We got no name, no address, and no number.
We knew what the guy looked like, but we walked out of the store with
nothing else to go on. I thought Nappi could have been scarier, but I wasn’t about to suggest ways to torture information out of the guy, not to a crime boss. That’s their specialty and not mine.
When we got into the car, I called Frida to let her know what we’d uncovered.
“You took Nappi with you?” she said, irritation in her voice. “What the hell were you thinking? What did Nappi do to the guy?”
“Nothing. He just talked to him, patted him on the shoulder once, and we looked at a surveillance tape with the guy who pawned the watch on it.” I thought it was best to keep Nappi’s intimidating comment about my gun-toting grandmother to myself. It wasn’t a real threat anyway.
“You saw the guy?” she said, both joy and disbelief in her voice. “Tell you what I’m going to do. You sit tight in front of that shop and make certain he knows you’re there. I’ll be over in half an hour. I want to see that tape and have a talk with the owner. Damn. If I hadn’t been so tied up here with processing the evidence we found at the construction site, I would have been at that shop yesterday or this morning.”
I told Nappi what she said.
“Yeah, Eddie knows we’re still here. I just saw him peek through the door. I don’t think she’ll get much out of him, but it’s the cops’ show now, unless you think I should go back in there with Grandy.” He bent down and pulled an automatic pistol from under his seat.
“You know how to fire this?” he asked Grandy.
Her big blue eyes got bigger.
“Hey, Nappi. Forget it. Grandy isn’t going to threaten anyone with a gun.”
“Well, now, honey. If it would help Sammy, I …” she said.
“No!” I said. “Frida will take it from here.”
Nappi laughed. “Not necessary anyway.” He shoved the weapon back under the seat. I couldn’t tell if Grandy was relieved or disappointed she wouldn’t get another crack at owner Eddie.
“What do you mean?” I asked him, puzzled by his attitude.
“I recognized the guy on the tape.”
“You what?”
“I know him. Name’s Connie Russo. He does contract work for various mob folks. He’s the guy you hire when you think you need backup.”
“Do you know how to find him?” I asked. “Can we go there now?”
“I don’t know where he hangs out, but I can find out easily enough. I have friends who have friends who have contacts who, well, you know.”
“Could you call them now?” I asked, trying to hide my disappointment that we wouldn’t be able to find him right away.
“Patience, Eve. I’ll see what I can do.” He got out of the car, and I saw him put his cellphone to his ear and begin talking. He moved out of the sun and toward the rear of this side of the strip mall where a palm offered a bit of shade.
We rolled down the windows in Nappi’s car, but there wasn’t much breeze or shade in our parking place.
I had spotted a convenience store at the far end of the mall when we drove in, so I jumped out of the car and decided to take a walk down there to get us some cold sodas.
“Be back in a minute,” I said to Grandy.
“I think I’ll sit on the curb back there where there’s a bit of shade,” she said. “Get me a diet soda. I don’t care what kind.” She walked past Nappi and toward the store fronts beyond the pawn shop. One of them had an awning out front, and Grandy plunked down in its shade.
I turned the corner and walked past the stores making up the long arm of the backward L-shaped mall. The icy air inside the convenience store made me shiver for a minute when it hit my damp shirt, but it felt good to be out of the humidity and the piercing sunlight. I pulled three bottles of soda from the convenience store cooler and paid for them, then began my walk back to the corner. Before I turned it, someone grabbed my arm from behind and spun me around.
The guy with the pincer-like grip was shorter than I, and I recognized him at once. Our pawn shop owner had been busy while we stood guard in front of his business.
“I guess Eddie called you. Did he tell you the cops were on their way?” I managed to say while the cousin wrestled me down the sidewalk.
“Keep your face shut. I got some questions for you, girlie.” He pulled me back down the row of store fronts toward the convenience store. An old, battered SUV, rusty orange in color, was parked there. He pushed me toward the passenger’s side.
“Git in there.”
“No.” I tried to pull away from him as he opened the door.
“No? We ain’t having an argument here. You do as I say or—”
“Or what?” said a voice from behind him. Frida had pulled up in her cruiser and seen the guy trying to put me in the car.
The guy Nappi had ID’d as Connie Russo let go of me and struggled out of Frida’s grasp. One look at the police insignia on her car sent him running, bolting for the back of the strip mall and the overgrown area there. Frida and I took after him. We had the advantage on him. He was short and—although his stringy body indicated he could have been a sprinter—smelled of cigarettes. From the heavy odor, I guessed he didn’t have the lungs for a long run. Frida and I, both long-legged, gained on him. He’d almost made it to the road that cut in back of the strip mall when a car pulled up and braked abruptly.
“Get in,” said the driver of the vehicle.
Our runaway jumped in, and the car drove off.
“Who the hell was that?” asked Frida.
I mentally hit myself on the forehead for stupidity. “That was Ed, the owner of the pawnshop. I think he made a call to our escapee warning him that we were on his tail, so the guy came here thinking he’d use me to get information on what was going on. You foiled that plan, but how stupid of us to watch the front of the shop and not realize the owner parked his car around back.”
“I don’t get it. Why should the pawn shop owner care? Why get involved?” asked Frida.
“They’re family.”
“You mean family or ‘Family’?” she asked, putting air quotes around the second family.
“They’re related.”
“Our suspect has bolted, but I might persuade the owner to talk. The guy won’t want to lose his shop.”
“You think he’ll come back to his shop?”
“Sure. He might even turn himself in with a lawyer in tow claiming he was only protecting a customer being harassed by mob members. You brought Nappi into this, remember?”
Damn. And Grandy had played along with Nappi’s threat. My Grandy, a mobster’s hit woman.
Frida and I walked around the corner to where Grandy and Nappi stood beside his car. I hadn’t confided in Frida that Nappi knew the guy who accosted me because it might not be something he wanted made public, especially to the police.
“I want all of you to clear out of here,” said Frida. “This is police business.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Sit on this place and hope the owner will return, maybe tonight.” Frida gave a sigh of resignation. “I hate surveillance work—it’s the kind of job I like to farm out to a PI—but I’ve got no choice but to do it myself. Next to the information I have on the stolen bones, this is the best lead I can follow.”
I was curious to find out where the evidence at the construction site was leading her, so I asked, assuming she wouldn’t share. I was right. She shrugged and smiled. As she walked off toward her police cruiser, she stopped and turned. “Um, could I have a minute, Eve?”
I hopped out of Nappi’s car and followed her out of earshot of Nappi and Grandy.
“What’s up?”
“Do you know anything about Danny Cypress—you know, the attorney for the construction company?”
What now? Was Frida the latest in a long line of friends and family who could read my mind?
“Why?”
“I thought perhaps the Egrets, being Miccosukee also, might have said something about the Cypress family.”
“Funny you should ask, because Danny has an eye for th
e ladies, specifically this lady. I have a dinner engagement with him tonight.”
Frida eyes brightened with surprise and eagerness. “So what does Sammy say about this? Or didn’t you tell him?”
“I told him. He knows I’m only doing it to pump Cypress for any information he may have about the construction area and the body there.”
“You know Cypress is probably doing the same with you.”
“Are you saying he wasn’t swept away by my charm and beauty?”
Frida snorted, and I laughed, but then she sobered. “I can’t encourage you to snoop into his affairs or that of the construction company, but ….”
“But you’d be happy to hear what I find out.”
“If the company and their lawyer is involved in the body’s disappearance, this could be dangerous for you, Eve.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got backup. Sammy will be following us in his truck, and although Jerry doesn’t know it yet, he’ll be sitting in the restaurant at a nearby table just to make certain I’m not hustled out a rear door.”
“Good plan. You saw what can happen today unless you have someone close enough for a quick rescue.”
“I didn’t thank you for that, Frida.”
She waved off my thanks. “It’s my job.”
“Something on your mind, Eve? You’re unusually quiet.” asked Nappi on our way back to Sabal Bay.
“Just thinking about what to wear tonight.”
“I didn’t know you and Sammy had plans,” said Grandy.
“Oh, we ….” Oops, I should keep my dinner engagement quiet, or I might have more than the two tails I’d planned on. Knowing how Grandy and Nappi worried about my schemes and capers, the trip to the restaurant might look more like a convoy of cars.
“I’m going to meet him at his place, and then we’ll decide what we’re going to do,” I said quickly, hoping that story would satisfy any curiosity about my evening.
“Well,” Grandy said, “take a wrap of some kind. The wind’s coming up, and I think we’re in for some weather.” She turned in her seat to face Nappi. “Do you think I really could handle an automatic weapon?”
He nodded. “With training.”
Old Bones Never Die Page 9