by Elaine Macko
Delilah Sanjari lived in a tiny apartment above a bicycle shop a couple blocks off of Main Street in the center of Indian Cove. I knew this because Shirley had told me, and I was now standing on the sidewalk in front of said bike shop trying to figure out how to get up to the apartment.
“Can I help you? Oh, Alex, is that you?” Mr. Annunzio, the owner of the shop, asked me.
“Hi, Mr. Annunzio. I was just wondering how to get upstairs to the apartment.” I looked up, shielding my eyes from the bright sun.
“There’s a staircase around back. Do you know Delilah or are you looking for yourself?”
I shook my head and laughed. “No, I’m not looking for myself.” I felt like adding that my husband might be in the need of a new place soon if he didn’t stop arresting my family members, but this town loved a good rumor, and I didn’t feel like having my private business spread all over Indian Cove like a wildfire. “I was just over at Victor Sanjari’s house talking with his mother.”
“How is Ruth doing?” Mr. Annunzio asked with a caring tone.
“Not so good. She pa—she fell asleep on the sofa, so I covered her and left.” I figured Mrs. Sanjari had enough troubles without making her the object of gossip.
Mr. Annunzio had been a fixture in this town tuning up bikes since I was a kid. He could fix anything, and I had purchased several bikes from him over the years. He even refurbished Sam’s old bike, which she then gave to Kendall for her birthday. But the man loved gossip.
We moved under the big blue awning that helped shade the front of the shop from the sun.
“You on the case, Alex? We all heard about your sister being taken to jail. I guess this one’s real personal for you. Well, don’t you worry. Sam wouldn’t hurt a fly. And those crazy police will figure that out soon enough.”
Wildfire. I did a mental eye roll. So it was all over town already. Well, rumors and gossip could work both ways, and maybe I could find something out from dear, sweet Mr. Annunzio.
“So Victor and his sister were close?” I asked.
Mr. Annunzio raised his bushy eyebrows. “Close? Uh-uh. They fought like cats and dogs.”
“Really?” I asked with mock surprise. “What did they fight about?”
“Anything and everything. Mostly money. Same as most people. He had it and she wanted it. He’s been paying for this apartment for her now for a couple years. She’d be out on the street if he didn’t. She cleans my shop for me and I give her a bit of pocket money. If you ask me,” Mr. Annunzio said as he leaned closer to me, “I think Victor was planning on cutting her off.” He gave me a knowing nod.
“You don’t say.”
“I heard them fighting on Monday evening. Maybe it was Tuesday. Yeah, Tuesday, cuz that’s the night I stay open late. Lot of people ride bikes in the summer, so I stay open to make it easier for them to bring their bikes in for tune-ups or new tires after work. Angela brings me my dinner to the shop,” he said referring to his wife of some fifty years. “Tuesday is pasta fazool night, and Angela brought it over with a loaf of bread. We were sitting in the back eating and I heard Victor and Delilah going at it.”
“What were they saying? Could you hear the actual words?”
“Oh yeah. Like we were watching TV. He told her that she better take Ruth back in with her or he was going to stop paying for the apartment.”
“So Ruth used to live here, too?”
“Yeah. It’s small. Me and the wife lived over the shop for years, but my Angela always wanted a garden, so I bought her a little house. In the summer we have a salad every night with the stuff she grows.”
Even in the shade of the awning, it was getting pretty hot standing out on that sidewalk so we moved into the air-conditioned comfort of the bike shop.
“I take it Delilah didn’t want to take her mother back.”
“Mio Dio! It’s a small apartment. A tiny bedroom and bath. A living space with a hot plate. I put in a microwave when I re-did the kitchenette and a small refrigerator. It’s good for one person or a young couple in love, but I don’t want the two of them up there together. Ruth with her drinking and gambling. It was a crazy house.”
“Why did Victor want his sister to take Ruth back in?”
“Who knows? The whole family was a bit crazy. Except for Jenna, God rest her soul,” Mr. Annunzio said while he made the sign of the cross. “Such a beautiful girl.”
“Did anything get resolved? Is Ruth moving back in?”
Mr. Annunzio picked up a tool and walked over to a bike attached to a stand. “I hope not. I heard Victor going down the back steps and then Delilah stormed halfway down and said no way was she taking her mother back, and Victor shouted that oh, yes, she was. And then Delilah said—”
Mr. Annunzio’s face took on a look of pure shock.
“What did Delilah say, Mr. Annunzio?”
He stopped working on the bike and looked at me. “Delilah said, and as God is my witness these are her exact words. She said, ‘I’ll kill you first, Victor, before I take that drunk back. I’ll kill you first.’”
Chapter 26
Okay, so we all say stuff like that in the heat of the moment. Problem was, the man actually turned up dead shortly after his sister said she would rather kill him than take her mother in. Why the police hadn’t already spoken to Mr. Annunzio, I didn’t know. Actually, I did. They had my sister as public enemy number one, and when that didn’t pan out they turned to my brother-in-law, so what did they care? I should have called John right then and there, but I had a feeling he would know soon enough. Mr. Annunzio was on the phone to his wife before I had even crossed the shop to the front door. Wildfire.
The suspects were piling up, but I still wanted to talk with Mr. Hachmeister again. Ever since Suzette dropped that little bomb that Gary was in love with Jenna, plus the fact that he seemed to have some shady dealings with Victor, I felt Gary should have a place of honor at the top of my suspect list. But I didn’t feel like driving to Fairfield and then back, and then back out that way again tonight when we met our friends for dinner. And I didn’t want to go back to my office in case my sister drilled me on information regarding Michael. I didn’t think I could lie to her, and I was loath to tell her about the other woman until Shirley had something more concrete. So instead I headed over to the Wickersham home for another chat with Maddi.
“Oh, good. You got my message,” Maddi said by way of greeting when she answered the door.
“What message?”
“I called your office. They said you were out, but that they would give you my message. So why are you here then?”
I followed Maddi into the kitchen wondering why I couldn’t have hair like hers. We both wore it cut very short, but where I had thin, fine, crappy hair, Maddi had the hair of shampoo ads. It was short, but thick and spiky and obviously did exactly what she wanted it to. Plus, she had those piercing blue eyes and she knew how to use makeup to give her the smoky eye look I loved, but didn’t have a clue how to achieve. She really was a stunning woman.
She took a glass from the cabinet and poured me an iced tea without even asking.
“Thank you. I needed this. Where are the girls?” I asked as I glanced out the window to the pool.
“A friend is having a pool party and then a barbeque.”
“Well, the reason I wanted to speak with you again, is that I talked to Ruth this morning and—”
“Forget about Ruth. She’s a loon. Grab your glass and follow me.”
“Okay.” I followed Maddi down the hall to the staircase.
“Come on up. I want to show you something in Moshi’s room.”
At the top of the stairs we turned right. To the left was what looked like a master bedroom. To the right were the rooms for the girls.
“We’re lucky that we had an extra room. I was going to turn it into a craft room, but I can do that in the cellar. We use that for the girls. There’s a TV down there and games, but my husband said he would wall off a small area for my craf
t room. It works. Here we go.”
We entered a bedroom with a canopy bed. The walls were a pale pink and the bedding was done in a pink and white stripe. There was a dresser and a desk in white.
“Moshi loves pink. The room was already painted, so we just brought her stuff over and set it up for her. I felt she would do better if she had all her things around her. Hal and his brother went and got it all last night and I put it all together this morning.”
“It looks lovely.” It was a nice room, but I wasn’t sure why Maddi felt she had to show it to me. Maybe she just wanted me to know that Moshi was being well cared for.
“Come here. This is what I wanted to show you.” Maddi put her iced tea on the window sill and moved over to what looked like an antique toy box and sat on the floor. “You can put your glass on the dresser. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt it.”
I took a quick sip and put the glass down, then sat next to Maddi on the floor.
“Okay, so this was my sister’s toy box when she was little. It belonged to my mother. I have one as well and it’s in my daughter Maureen’s room. We call her MoMo. Anyway. The cool thing about these toy boxes is that they have a secret drawer. My mother never told us. We had to figure it out. And when we did, we found a little note she had written to us inside saying it was our very own place to store our secret treasures.”
“That’s cool.”
“It is. So this morning while I was getting the room ready for Moshi, I checked to see if she had found the secret drawer and put anything in it.”
“And was there something inside?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, but it’s not Moshi’s. It’s stuff that my sister hid.”
“Really? Like what?” I could feel the excitement tingling all over me.
Maddi opened the lid on the toy box. Inside were a few stuffed animals, books, a couple of games, a toy princess crown, and other odds and ends. Maddi pushed some stuff aside, lifted the felt lining on the bottom, and pressed something.
“Watch out. Don’t let it hit your legs.”
A drawer popped out from the bottom. Just a bit of it was exposed. Maddi reached down and slowly slid it all the way open.
I looked down and then looked at Maddi.
“Oh my gosh!” I said.
Maddi looked at me and smiled. “Uh-huh.”
Chapter 27
I got up on my knees, pulling my cotton skirt down where it had crept up my legs. “Holy cow, how much money do you think is in there?”
“Twenty thousand, three-hundred dollars. Exactly. I counted it four times,” Maddi said.
“Where’d it come from?” I asked.
“I have no idea, but I doubt it’s allowance that Moshi’s been squirreling away.”
“So you think it belonged to Jenna?”
“It had to have.”
“Maybe it’s been in there for a long time. Maybe it belonged to your mother?”
Maddi shook her head quickly. “No. Most of the bills are new. Besides, Jenna found the secret drawer a long time ago. It was Jenna’s. I’m sure of it. She was planning on leaving Victor. That’s why she wanted the summer job at my husband’s company, and that’s why she was hiding money. She was going to leave him. She must have been saving this for a while. She and Victor had separate bank accounts. He paid all the bills and she used her money for vacations, retirement account, stuff she wanted for the house, things for Moshi. She must have been putting some aside each month. Plus, Victor gave her money every month for groceries. Always cash. The guy always had a wad of bills on him. I’ll bet she took some of that money and stashed it away in here. She always shopped at the discount grocery store, but she didn’t let Vic know that. He was all about show.”
I sat back down. “Whew. That’s a lot of money.”
“Knowing my sister, she probably wanted a down payment on a little house or condo.” Maddi suddenly put her face in her hands and started to cry. “She could have asked us for the money. We would have helped her buy a house. Maybe if she did that, she wouldn’t have been off with Victor and he wouldn’t have killed her. Why didn’t she just ask us? We were so close.”
I reached over and gave Maddi a hug. I saw a box of tissues on the desk and got up and went to grab a few.
“Here you go.”
Maddi looked up at me and smiled through the tears. “Thanks.”
I sat back down and drew my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “Do you think Victor found the drawer, saw the money, and arranged to kill her?”
“He must have. Jenna said that the trip to Maine was kind of sudden. It wasn’t like they had been planning it for some time or anything. They never even talked about it. He just came home one night and said hey let’s go up to Maine next week. He had it all planned. He booked the place where they stayed. Everything. Probably searched the Internet for someplace nice and secluded.”
“Maddi, are you the executor of your sister’s estate?”
“I am. Jenna didn’t want Moshi to be with Ruth or Delilah if anything ever happened to her and Victor. She was good about having plans in place. Of course, I never thought I’d be taking over now. I figured by time Jenna and Victor died, Moshi would be old enough and everything would pass to her directly. That’s how Jenna had it. If Moshi was twenty-five when her parents died, she would be the executor outright. But now I’ll have to step in. We’ll sell the house and all the proceeds from that and the insurance money will remain in trust for Moshi’s education, and then she’ll get the rest later. Jenna wanted her to use some for travel, too. My husband and I have plans in place already for our girls’ education, and of course we would want to do the same for Moshi, so knowing that she’s taken care of is a relief.”
It didn’t sound to me like Maddi killed Victor to get her hands on the money, but that didn’t mean she didn’t kill him for other reasons, and she seemed to have a really good one. If I thought someone killed my sister, well, I didn’t want to even think about that.
“There’s more,” Maddi said, bringing me out of my musings.
“More?”
“Yeah. Hold on. There was something else in the secret drawer.”
Maddi got up and walked down the hall. I got up and finished the rest of my tea while I looked out onto the lush front lawn from Moshi’s bedroom window. Maddi came back a minute later with a small, leather-bound book in her hands.
“This was in the drawer with the money. As far as I’m concerned it proves Victor killed my sister.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a diary.”
“Did she write that she was afraid of Victor? Did she say she thought he wanted to kill her?” I asked.
“No. Not exactly. Here, take a look at the page I marked.”
I took the book and opened it to a place where Maddi had stuck a Post-it. I read the page and then I read it again. “Did you know about this?” I asked. “Did your sister ever tell you any of this?”
A few tears escaped down Maddi’s cheek. “Never. She didn’t confide any of this to me. I had no idea my sister was having an affair.”
Chapter 28
I felt as if I was in a parallel universe. It seemed both Maddi and I had sisters who kept secrets. I sat back down on the floor and looked through the little leather book while Maddi went downstairs and refilled our glasses. It was obvious that Jenna was besotted with someone but she never actually wrote his name down. From what I read, they had taken to meeting a couple of towns over in either direction. The assignations took place every couple of weeks, mostly on a Saturday afternoon, but sometimes on a week night. Was her lover married? Was their affair simply a change of scenery, or was it something more serious?
“And you really had no idea,” I asked Maddi when she returned with a tray holding the iced teas and a large bowl of popcorn with plenty of butter.
She gave me a sad shrug. “Nope. Never. My sister had a full-time job and then she was with Moshi. Plus, she was married and Vic liked dinner on the table e
very evening at a certain time, so I didn’t always see her a lot, but we talked on the phone and emailed. But still. I should have seen it, right? We were close and we told each other a lot, but knowing my sister, she probably felt ashamed. She was a really good person.” Maddi’s words sounded almost like a plea.
“Hey, no judgment on my part. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors, like my grandmother always tells me. I’m not here to disparage your sister’s name. The truth is, I started this investigation to clear my own sister’s name, to find out who did Victor Sanjari in, but now I feel like I owe Jenna the truth too, to find out what really happened to her.” Plus there was that pesky little problem with the police now turning their sights on my brother-in-law.
“Thanks.” Maddi nodded.
I flicked through the pages again. There was no mention of a name in the little leather book other than Mr. Big, which Maddi explained was a reference to the TV show, Sex and the City. Jenna had been a fan and I was well acquainted with the show myself. So, was Mr. Big so named because he was tall? Or did it refer to another attribute the man might have? If that were the case, I would imagine I might have a very difficult time finding him. A tall man would be easier, and I already had one in mind.
Maddi and I finished our tea and the popcorn in no time and then returned to the kitchen. I left her then, promising to keep her up to date with whatever I found out, which I sincerely hoped would not lead back to her. I could understand her wanting Victor dead, because it looked more and more to me like the man did indeed push his wife off a cliff in Maine, but for the sake of Moshi and Maddi’s three little girls, I really, really wanted Victor Sanjari’s killer to be someone else—as long as that someone else was not my brother-in-law.
Chapter 29
Despite my desire not to drive to Fairfield, I found myself on the turnpike headed in that direction. Traffic was heavy, but it would only take about thirty-five minutes to get to the offices of Connecticut Custom Homes.