by Christa Wick
I suppressed a laugh, both at momma's refusal to say so much as hell and the way she said "The Times" like it was the almighty New York Times or something.
"They used to run your father's sermons on Mondays, you remember?"
"That they did." I took a sip of coffee, hoping this was one of the mornings momma remembered that the good reverend had passed away ten years ago. It was heartbreaking on the days she didn't and had to be reminded. All the grief was fresh, as if she'd just found out he was dead for the very first time. In a way, that was exactly how it worked.
"Now they just talk about killers and liquor stores and I don't understand half of what they're saying!" She jabbed a frail finger at the front page of the community section until something caught her eye. "Didn't you used to know a boy named Serrano?"
I coughed, spraying some of the coffee I'd been swallowing. Some came out from my nose, stinging so sharply my eyes teared up. "A long time ago, momma."
"Daniel, was that it?"
I didn't correct her, just reached my hand out for the paper. Momma wasn't ready to let it go.
"Yes, Daniel. That was it. A nice Italian boy. Not this fellow, then."
Nerves snapping like bacon in a frying pan, I pinched an edge of the paper. "Can I have it?"
"Of course, dear." Relinquishing the paper, she arched her head to one side and gazed through the window at the morning summer sky. "Such a beautiful day already. I think I'll go to the boathouse."
Not listening, I skimmed through the article detailing a cabbie's story about how he had picked up Dante Serrano, father of the accused murderer Alexander Serrano, at the Jackson House and driven him around on a night filled with liquor stores and cemeteries. The store clerk at Bishop’s confirmed a man looking like Serrano had bought a bottle of MD 20/20 and the valet at the hotel confirmed that Serrano, whom he knew by sight, had been dropped off by an "unidentified woman." The reporter ended with a query to readers of just why Dante Serrano had visited the cemetery -- was he visiting a grave, and whose grave, after hours, or could the cemetery possibly contain evidence linked to the death of his foreman?
"Idiot!" The word shot out of my mouth and I froze.
Momma looked at me with big, startled eyes. "You don't think it's a good idea?"
"Sorry, momma." I shook the paper. "It's just like you said, the paper's gone to h-e-double-l. What were you talking about?"
"They don't even cover the cotillions anymore." Momma gave a righteous nod about the state of the Masonville Times before repeating herself. "I said I might go to the boathouse this afternoon."
I paused, searching for just the right thing to say. I could say nothing. Chances were momma would forget her plans. Instead, I opted for half the truth, knowing it did no good to ignore her memory lapses. "We don't own the boathouse anymore."
"Silly," she laughed. "Just because you haven't been out there in a while--"
"We sold it ten years ago..." I let the idea sink in, hoping she wouldn't remember that it had been sold through the estate agent after daddy's death. I stood and crossed the kitchen. I removed a lock box from a drawer, opened it and then opened each of the narrow prescription bottles inside to shake out a pill.
Returning to the table, I sat alongside momma and put the pills on the table.
"I've taken my medicine this morning." She pushed the pills back towards me.
I held the key to the lock box up. "You know Ivy and I are the only ones with a key. And Ivy's not here yet."
Momma put the first pill in her mouth and swallowed it with a sip of orange juice. "Ivy? Is she that maid you hired?"
I pressed my lips together a few seconds before answering. "Please don't call her a maid, momma. She's a health professional."
As she had so many days since Ivy's hiring, momma reached out and put her hand on my arm. Her eyes were big again and her lips trembled as she asked, "Are you sick, Ladybug?"
"I...no, momma." I looked down at my watch, hoping Ivy would be on time like she always was. I still needed to get my dry cleaning on the way to the court house.
When I heard Ivy's truck in the drive, I almost whooped with relief. The feeling was quickly flooded by guilt. If I hadn't been so intent on staying away from Masonville, with its reminders of Dante, I would have made more trips back home, would have noticed the symptoms far earlier. It wasn't momma's fault the past was sometimes a blur. I had been a shitty daughter in that respect.
I put my arms around momma and gave her a gentle good-bye hug. "Finish the pills, mama. And Ivy's here, so please don't call her a maid, okay?"
She dutifully swallowed the rest of the pills, quietly mumbling something about the boathouse as Ivy came in the side door and I escaped to my car.
***
My cell phone rang as I left the dry cleaners, one wrist bent from supporting the weight of half a dozen dress suits and shirts. Dropping my keys, I fished the phone from my pocket and looked at the display.
Number blocked.
"Would someone tell me how the hell they do that?" Trying to shift the weight to my other hand without dropping the phone, I caught an old man looking at me on his way into the cleaners. I smiled what I hoped was a friendly smile. "Not you, sir. Those blocked numbers."
Saying nothing, he looked down at my keys on the asphalt and then at my full hands before he went inside.
"Yeah, well, you probably would have thrown your back out," I mumbled. The phone stopped ringing. I shoved the tip between my lips before I bent sideways, one hand reaching for the keys as the other tried to hold the dry cleaning up off the ground.
I scooped the keys up, but lost my balance. The bottom of the dry cleaning brushed against something describable only as "eau de parking lot" and I swore around the edges of my cell phone.
The old man had just left the cleaners with a single suit in hand. "Did you just order me to sit, young lady?"
I stared at him a second, then felt my eyes bug wide as realization sank in. I shook my head. Not waiting to find out if he believed me or not, I opened the car door, tossed my keys on the seat and took the phone out of my mouth. Avoiding the old man's gaze, I popped the lock on the back door and hung the dry cleaning inside. Then I jump in the driver's seat, jammed the key in the ignition and got the hell out of the parking lot before granddad figured out what I had actually said and reported me for public obscenity.
I was just starting to relax when the phone rang again. I looked down, saw the same message and growled. I needed an answering service or a receptionist, but I couldn't afford either with the business so new and having Ivy on payroll.
I answered with a curt, "Olivia Miller."
"I need to talk to you."
It was a woman. While the voice was unfamiliar, the tone indicated she knew me.
"Who is this?"
"I need to talk to you this morning, in private."
I offered a quick grunt into the phone while I thought. It wasn't Claire and the voice was far too mature sounding for any likelihood of it being Vivian.
"This is private," I said at last.
"In my home."
The last words sounded lightly accented but I still couldn't place the woman, or even the accent. "Look, you have to tell me who you are. How else am I going to know where you live?"
The woman started to give her house address.
"Hell, no!" I glanced at the phone's display, ready to hit the "end call" icon. "Do you really think I'm going to come by some address when I don't know who you are?"
The silence on the other end stretched until I was certain the woman had hung up. When she did finally speak again, I wished to hell I had ended the call.
"Gabriella Serrano."
Dante's mother. The woman I had called every night for two weeks after Dante had mysteriously run out on me. The woman who had listened to my tearful voice on the phone and had coldly told me, "Move on -- he has."
Nothing on earth would bring me to Gabriella Serrano's doorstep.
Not a tornad
o.
Not a giant asteroid hurtling towards earth bringing the Apocalypse and all its angels.
Not--
"It's about Alex."
Gabriella's voice broke for maybe half a second and then she proceeded to calmly repeat her address and hang up.
Chapter Six
There was tea in the small sitting room just off the front door. Service for two, pale bone china with delicate pink roses on it. Circles and rectangles of heavy linen doilies covered the tables and the back of the chairs. While the home was modest, it was a far cry from the trailer parks and weekly rentals Gabriella had raised her sons in.
Only the china and doilies, most of them tatted by Gabriella, were carryovers from those days.
Refusing to sit, I stood behind the chair opposite Gabriella and watched the woman pour a cup of tea. Her hair retained much of its black coloring, with a mix of both thick and fine strands of gun metal gray.
"You're sure you won't have tea?"
"I am on my way to the bond hearing, and if you don't start talking, I'm out of here."
Gabriella took a slow sip of her tea, placed the cup on the table and dabbed a linen napkin against her lips. "You used to be more patient."
I almost noted that my patience had only been because I wanted her to like me. Instead, I stopped short and answered Gabriella with more silence. When I could see that Gabriella couldn’t bring herself to start whatever conversation was supposedly so critical, I headed for the front door.
"I thought you were smart, too. At least Dante always said you were."
Fingering my car keys, I glared back over my shoulder. Gabriella’s hands were resting one over the other on her lap and she was staring intently down at them.
"If you won’t say anything--"
"You have eyes."
"I don’t have time for games," I started but my gaze involuntarily began to scan the room. "The bond hearing is in…"
My gaze landing on a row of silver-framed family pictures hanging on the wall, I froze. There was one of Gabriella and both of her sons. I searched my memory for the brother’s name.
Carlos?
I shook my head. It wasn’t Carlos…Carl?
Right, Carl. But they called him Tony most of the time, or Tonio when Gabriella was particularly pleased with him. Not that there’d been much to be pleased with. As far as I could remember, he had been all about fast cars, pretty girls and the occasional fist fight.
I stepped closer to the pictures, studying the progression from childhood to manhood. Behind me, Gabriella finally broke her silence.
"You need to settle this fast. The papers…"
My bag fell to the floor, my keys clattering alongside it. Blood drained from my head. I took an unsteady step away from the wall and towards the empty chair.
"The papers are going to dig and dig until they find out. Alex can’t know." The woman’s voice took on a pleading tone before turning cold and imperial. "You have to make sure he doesn’t find out…"
"That he’s not Dante’s," I finished as I recognized the clear imprint of Carl on Alex’s features. I turned, eyes burning as I looked at Gabriella and repeated. "He’s not Dante’s."
Gabriella pointed an angry finger at me. "Don't you dare say that boy isn't Dante's!"
"He's Carl's." Confirmation and heartache flared in Gabriella's gaze. "I called you...for two weeks, I--"
"My-son-was-dead!" Gabriella slammed her hand down on the coffee table, the pale china rattling from the force. "You think I cared about some little uptown princess who would have ruined everything?"
I stared at her, uncomprehending. "What do you mean?"
Gabriella glared at me, her gaze suddenly red-rimmed. "One teardrop from his beloved Olivia and Dante wouldn't have gone through with it."
I shook my head. I had cried a hell of a lot more than a single tear during those first few months. "Gone through with what?" I asked softly.
"Marrying that little bitch, Nicole." Gabriella had regained her composure. She busied herself with straightening the doilies and teacups on the coffee table. "She always liked Dante more. You could see it when she was around him. After Carl's...accident..." Gabriella's voice broke again, but only for an instant. She was too tough to let a virtual stranger see any sign of weakness. "After his accident, she said she was going to abort the baby if Dante didn't marry her immediately."
I finally took a seat, sinking into the chair. My face and hands felt numb. My chest started burning and I realized I was holding my breath.
"Two weeks," I started, thinking how Nicole's demands would have been pointless if the wreck had been two weeks later.
Misunderstanding, Gabriella corrected me. "Ten days. I had to sit on him ten days while we got the blood tests and papers. Father Michael and me." She jabbed her finger in the air. "We made sure that baby was born, that my grandson was raised by family that loved him."
"You told me Dante had moved on." I had started breathing again but my brain remained numb from shock.
Gabriella shook her head. "He never moved on." She folded her arms across her chest. "But I'm not sorry. Don't you ever think I'm sorry about what I had to do."
"He could have told me--"
"What, when the baby was born?" Gabriella laughed scornfully. "Nicole made sure he knew what would happen if he tried to divorce her--"
I leaned forward, felt righteous anger blaze across my cheeks. "But he did divorce her!"
"Only after he'd sold every last thing he had to pay that woman off so she'd give him custody of Alex. And he kept paying her until the boy was fourteen and had a legal choice." Gabriella lifted her chin and glared down her nose at me. "You'd gone and gotten engaged to that Dumont fellow during the divorce."
She smirked and I wanted to run my nails down her face.
"Guess we know who really did move on!"
Closing my eyes, I counted to twenty before opening them and looking at Gabriella. It wasn't true. I had never moved on. I had foolishly accepted Peter's proposal to make my father happy, only to realize that marrying Peter would make us both miserable. Each man that had passed through my life since then, only than a handful, had been equally spared.
The admission hit me hard -- I had never broken free of loving Dante.
Looking at the hard line of Gabriella's mouth, I knew the truth wouldn't matter to her. I stood and retrieved my bag and keys.
"That visit to the cemetery last night…"
Her breath hitched, but she didn't answer. I knew all the same. Carl was buried there, the MD 20/20 probably poured out on his grave. Pausing at the doorway, I met Gabriella's gaze one last time. "Do you have any information that will actually help me solve this case?"
She gave a resigned shake of her head. "Just get it done. Fast."
Chapter Seven
Back in my car, I opened a browser window on my phone and did a search for "Nicole Serrano." None of the hits looked good. I blindly punched in alternate search terms as I drove to the court house. Still coming up empty, I switched to a blog search to see if any local independent news outlet had done my homework for me.
Serrano+Alexander+Mother+Nicole+Murder
"Sweet Jesus!" I hit the first search result to find the personal blog of Mrs. Nicole Aster -- wannabe cast member of the Hottest Housewives of Miami and mother of the accused.
I enlarged her picture to find a woman close to my own age who would be best described as several plastic surgeons' worth of pretty with a large side serving of slu--
The phone flew from my hand as something clipped my left rear fender. The back end skidded a hard right and my sedan bounced up onto the curb. Hearing the squeal of brakes, I braced for a second impact, my eyes darting to the side and rear view mirrors for the source of the first hit.
The second impact never came. The only other car on the street was a Ford, almost as old as me and riddled with rust. A kid just old enough to drive got out of the driver's seat.
I turned to look directly at him.
<
br /> Big mistake. Pain radiated from my neck and shoulders at the sudden motion. Slowly, I turned at the waist and rolled down my window. The kid's gaze was impossibly large in an oh, shit, dad's gonna kill me kind of way.
"Are you okay?" I called.
He looked ready to cry or bolt, or both.
"I don't have any insurance!" he blurted.
With all the rust and the car's age, that was a given. I rolled my eyes and repeated the question.
"Yeah, I'm okay."
I looked back at the kid's car. It was practically a tank despite all the rust. "Good. Get in your car and get the hell out of here."
"Don't we have to call the cops?" He looked like that was the last thing he wanted to do.
"Cops, insurance agents, my attorney..."
That was all the prompting the kid needed. He hopped back in his car and sped away. Already in danger of being late, I didn't waste a second trying to compose myself, but eased my way out of the car and inspected the rear bumper. The damage looked to be just a few dollars shy of my deductible.
Wincing from the pain in my shoulder, I crawled back into the front seat, found my phone and shut it off before pulling the car back onto the street.
I made it to Alex's arraignment a few minutes before the bailiff brought him in. He had a black eye and a split lip. Dante caught sight of Alex. I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat.
"Stay calm," I pleaded quietly. "He doesn't need you throwing a fit in front of Judge Enders."
His hands had curled into fists. I placed my hand over them hoping it would calm him. "This isn't optional."
Dante shook his head but said nothing. His hands clenched madly beneath mine and I gave a little squeeze at the same time I smoothed my palm along his shoulder. He caught my gaze for a second, a question flaring in his eyes.
My heart stopped. Had he found out about my conversation with Gabriella? I forced a relaxed smile, doubtful that she had said anything to him. It wasn't the kind of information Gabriella was likely to divulge. I'd never gotten the impression she liked me. She wanted her grandson saved from jail and her son saved from some (not so) little "uptown princess."