“Nicholas Bartalotta.” Ruth-Ann folded her arms. “New York mobster and killer extraordinaire. I assume the other missing guest is his thug bodyguard. Great work, everyone.”
Oh, brother. Poor Nic was a suspect again.
nineteen
“Nicholas Bartalotta isn’t on our interview list, so he must have left the party before we started,” Spence said, reviewing his notes for the third time. “I’m checking on him and I’ve sent a car to his place.”
“Unbelievable.” Captain Sutter cringed. “Spence, how the hell did this happen?” Then she turned to Ruth-Ann. “We’ll follow this up, but I have to tell you, Nicholas has proven to be a rather upstanding person—at least around here. I know his past—”
“Upstanding? Are you kidding me?” Ruth-Ann’s face contorted. “He’s a thug and a murderer.”
Spence, never understanding the safety of silence, said, “Well, retired thug, I think.”
I’m not sure whose look castrated him fastest—Captain Sutter or Ruth-Ann’s. It’s a shame, really, because while Spence was out of line, he was not wrong.
Nicholas Bartalotta was an aged New Yorker who retired a few years ago to Winchester after a forty-year hiatus. Poor Nic, as he was dubbed by some New York newspaper years ago, has become something of a local legend—part retired gangster who filled hearts with fear and part celebrity who filled charity coffers with cash. Somewhere in there, he ran a couple local businesses, was restoring his family farmhouse—a Civil War historical site—and helped solve my murder.
Nicholas Bartalotta was a man of many talents—or perhaps, many personalities. Some of those you could even talk about without risk of retaliation. And, despite his former life, he was Winchester’s favorite, and only, mobster—retired or not.
“Retired?” Ruth-Ann shook her head. “Are you kidding me? He’s mob—plain and simple. He’s here and you arrest André? Detective, you need my help more than you know.”
“Slow down,” Bear said. “Let me check with Angela. She’ll know the score on Nic.” He didn’t wait for permission and left the room.
Ruth-Ann said, “He’s a friend of Professor Tucker?”
“Now, Ruth-Ann, let me—”
“No, Helen, don’t you think you should focus on Bartalotta? If he’s around, he’s involved.”
“Geez,” Spence said, snorting a laugh. “Everyone said the same thing last time and he was—” Ice and daggers stopped him. “Sorry, Cap.”
“Ruth-Ann, I know how to run an investigation,” Captain Sutter said. “So does my team. Thank you for your advice, but we’ll handle this. Is there anything else?”
Ruth-Ann stood and walked around the table. Without a word, she scooped up Spence’s investigative file and fanned through the pages. A few seconds later, she looked up.
“Yes, there is something. I don’t see where you finished canvassing the area—”
“Manpower, Ruth-Ann.” Captain Sutter took the case file from her. “This is Frederick County, not Washington DC. We have smaller budgets and only one crime scene team. We’ve called in assistance from Loudoun County, but it’ll be a while.”
“I can have the FBI—”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, thank you.” Captain Sutter threw a thumb over her shoulder for Spence to leave and stuffed the file in his hands. When he was through the doors, she stepped in close to Ruth-Ann. “Listen, Ruth-Ann, it’s just us gals now.”
“No,” I said, “I’m still here, but feel free to slug it out.”
Neither cared.
Captain Sutter went on. “Look, you asked for access because of André Cartier. I gave it to you. We’re done. There’s no federal case here. We can handle this and if we need your help, I’ll be sure to ask. But until then, you are just a guest.”
“All right, Helen,” Ruth-Ann looked down. When she looked back up at Captain Sutter, she painted a plastic smile on her face that fooled no one. “You’re right, of course. I trust you’ll still keep me informed. If Bartalotta is involved, this will be a federal matter. And I want him. We’ve been after him for years. And Helen, one call to the sheriff and you’re washing cars until retirement.”
“Yes, of course we’ll keep you informed. But Ruth-Ann, the sheriff’s up for reelection soon and I’m dating the town news-
paper’s editor.”
She was?
“How wonderful for you. Remember, Captain, we feds decide what we’re interested in and what we’re not interested in.” Ruth-Ann sauntered to the door. “And I choose interested.”
twenty
It was four thirty in the morning when the last of the guests and catering staff were checked off Bear’s list and released. Bear, too, took an instant dislike to the catering manager, Petya, so they released him last. As Petya’s catering van pulled away from the rear of the mansion, Bear went room-to-room checking, double-checking, and triple-checking every bit of cop work he could think of.
There was nothing more to do tonight.
“Spence, what’s the word on Poor Nic?” Bear said, walking into the kitchen where Spence was draining another cup of coffee.
“Jeez.” Spence spilled coffee all over his shirt. “You scared the crap out of me, Bear.”
“And what about this Kravitz guy and Jorge-whoever?”
“Bartalotta ain’t home and there’s no word on Kravitz yet. Our boys are sitting on both places.”
“He isn’t home? At this hour of the morning?”
“Nope.”
“Bullshit, you tell our people to—”
“Bear?” Angel walked in. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s almost five a.m. and Bartalotta isn’t at home.” He gave her a quick summary of his argument with Ruth-Ann. “Are you sure Nic was even here last night? I don’t recall seeing him.”
“Yes, and he donated a very sizable check,” she said. “Twenty-five thousand dollars, I think.”
“Wow.” Bear poured two coffees from a large pot on the stove and handed one to Angel. “Do you remember him leaving?”
Angel thought a moment. “No, but he must have. I don’t even recall seeing him after the evening got underway. But then, I was busy and didn’t have much time to speak with you or—”
Bear rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know—him.”
“Him” would be me. “Your loss, Angel. No worries, I’m making new friends, dear. You can throw fancy parties and make new friends if you like. But so can I. In fact, I already have.”
“I was going to say André,” she snapped. “But him either.”
Spence stood up. “I’m going to check the guys again.” He said, and walked off.
“Angela, you should go home,” Bear said, “We’re not through here, but no need for you to hang around.” He left in Spence’s wake.
I watched him go. “He just won’t give in about me, will he?”
“No, and he won’t talk about it either.”
“He knows I’m here, and he can hear me sometimes, too.”
“Yes, he can. I’m sure of it.” Angel laughed. “Ever since the day—that was a lot for him. Give him time, Tuck. Give him more time.”
“The day,” as Angel referred to it, was when Ernie Stuart got justice. After killing me, some of Ernie’s victims came back and helped catch him. In the end, at Kelly’s Dig where he started his decades of killing with Caroline and Amy, they came back and scared him to death. He died of a massive heart attack. We were all there—Angel, Bear, and even Spence and Clemens. Something happened out at Kelly’s Dig. Something no one ever spoke about afterward. Not Bear for certain. You see, there’s something about admitting you’re seeing ghosts that always makes the room go a little icy. Everyone on “that day” saw me. No one could bring themselves to admit it.
But Bear’s coming around. He doesn’t have a choice. I’m not easy to ignore.
“I guess I’ll leave, Tuck,” she said, yawning. “I’ll look for you later.”
“Sure, go. I’ll be
home soon.” Something tickled my ears like the jingle of a far-away bell. That was my spirit-radar telling me something was afoot. “Or maybe not.”
Fats Waller played It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie and I turned. Sassy stood in the kitchen doorway and walked off toward the hall stairs. She beckoned me with a whistle, and being a former red-blooded, all-American male, I obeyed. “I’ll see you at home. Don’t wait up.”
I walked into the hall as Angel headed for the front door.
Sassy was waiting on the stairs. “Hey, Tuckie, don’t be going nowheres yet. I gotta show you something. It’s just the cat’s pajamas.”
Huh? “Sassy, you’re gonna get me in big trouble. What do you want?”
“Come on, Tuckie.” She winked and strutted up the stairs. “You’ll see. Shake a leg.”
I did.
On the third floor, she led me to the mansion’s west wing and a bedroom at the end of the hall. There, she flung herself on the huge canopy bed and laughed like a schoolgirl.
“Okay, baby, take a look around.”
Baby? If Angel heard this, I’d really be dead. “Come on, Sassy, just tell me. No more fooling around.”
“Nope. You gotta play, Tuckie. Look around.”
The room was furnished with a few antiques like every other room in the house. There was a small bureau near the windows, nightstands on either side of the bed, and a built-in armoire taking up a third of the wall opposite the bed. Nothing gave off any bells and whistles—just another room in a mega-million-bucks mansion. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
“What am I looking for?”
She laughed again. “Silly, in there.” She pointed to the armoire. “Inside, Tuckie. Look inside.”
“Sassy, Vincent’s gonna re-kill both of us. I don’t think he’ll—”
“Tuckie, let me worry about Vincent. He’s busy with other stuff.” She jumped up and went to the armoire. “Here, silly, I’ll show you.”
She opened the double-doors revealing an empty cabinet except for a few old hangers and cobwebs. Then she pulled on one of the garment hooks on the side panel. A rear panel opened and revealed a narrow staircase leading up to the attic.
“Hey, how come you can do stuff so easy?” I said. “Open and close things, I mean. I need electricity to help me out.”
“I been around longer, that’s all. Just pay attention.” She went inside and poked her head out. “Come on.”
“What’s this, Sassy?” I don’t generally need to open doors and climb stairs if I don’t wish to. But despite the television and movie spin, being a ghost does not make you omnipotent. If you don’t know where something is, you can’t poof to it. Likewise, if you don’t know there’s a secret room beyond the secret passage door, you can’t very well poof to it either.
“Why didn’t you just tell me, Sassy?”
She grabbed my hand with schoolgirl enthusiasm. “Come see, Tuckie. You’ll be glad. It’s one of our old getaways. Coppers could never find me.”
“No? I cannot wait to find out why they were looking for you, Sassy.”
She nudged me toward the hidden stairs. “Silly, I was a good girl. Honest.”
“I believe you.” I didn’t, but it made her smile.
“You do?” She threw her arm around my shoulder and pushed me up the stairs. “Swell, ’cause Vincent never does. He says he knows I’m lying ’cause my lips move.”
twenty-one
“Sassy, what is this place?”
She stood at the top step and waved her hand around like a conductor leading her orchestra. “In the old days we’d hide our boys up here. Ya know, when the coppers came lookin’. Vincent’s place is great for hidin’. Dicks never got wise.”
The room was windowless and I guessed we were somewhere in the rear, northwest corner of the mansion. The entire room was little more than ten feet square with a rickety wooden table tucked into the corner opposite the stairs. On it were several gadgets which lighted up and buzzed as we approached them.
“What’s all this stuff, Sassy?”
“I dunno. Why do you think I brought you here, Tuckie? I dunno nothin’ about it all. I figured you would. All this junk is from your time, not mine.”
A small notebook computer sat on the corner of the table and it was on but the screen was dark. Beside it was a small gray plastic device similar to a television remote control. It had one button in the center and five little multicolored lights at the top. Below the lights was a scale ranging from green to red with markings annotating each color. When I reached for the device, the lights flickered and cycled up and down the light scale, whining and chirping.
“What the heck is this thing?”
“Dunno, Tuckie, but it don’t like you, does it? It lit up on me earlier.” She pointed to the computer. “What’s this thing?”
“It’s a computer.” I touched the notebook’s keyboard and it surged energy into my fingertips, sending a jittery flutter through me like I’d just mainlined caffeine. Seconds later, the computer screen turned on.
“A what?”
“A computer, Sassy. It stores information and you can type stuff and go on the internet.”
She looked at me like I was an alien trying to make contact. “The inter-what?” This beauty had some catching up to do. “You know libraries, right?”
“Sure, don’t everybody?” She folded her arms. “I ain’t dumb, you know.”
“No, of course not. Well, think of this as a machine with connections all over the world inside. And it can go around the world over the telephone lines and read stuff and talk to people.” I didn’t try to explain the internet, cell phones, or chat rooms. Her twisted face told me I’d reached her limit. “It connects the entire world.”
“The world?” She rolled her eyes. “Sure, sure, whatever you say. What about the other thing?”
The remote device continued to flicker and flash and chirp.
“I have no idea.”
The computer’s screen was alive and it was divided into four grids. Three of the grids were fuzzy and unfocused, but the fourth was clear and showed a black and white video stream from the downstairs hallway. At the front door, I could see Bear and Angel talking.
“Holy crap, Sassy.” I tapped at the keyboard and tried to find the controls to focus the other three closed circuit cameras. “I have to get Bear. Someone’s been watching us the entire evening.”
“Yeah?” Sassy jammed her hands on her curvy hips and puckered up a cat-call whistle. “Tuckie, what’s this stuff gotta do with anything?”
I tugged her along down the stairs. “You better get back to Vincent, Sassy. I don’t want you getting into trouble. He doesn’t like me much.”
“I do, Tuckie. I like you a lot.” Outside the armoire, she turned around. “What’s all the junk up there mean? Is it important?”
“Very. It means whoever was up there might be a witness to Stephanos Grecco’s murder.”
“Oh, is that all? I been a witness lots of times—but I ain’t no rat.”
twenty-two
“It’s for ghost hunting,” Spence said, picking up the gray plastic remote device. Spence had arrived moments ago with Bear and was surveying the devices Sassy had shown me. “You know, for paranormal investigations. This is an EMF meter.”
Earlier, after leaving the attic room, Sassy disappeared to wher- ever she disappeared to and I sought out Angel. I told her what I’d found and showed her the way to the attic entrance through the armoire. She in turn relayed it all to Bear. Before he and Spence climbed to the attic, he sent Angel home for some sleep. She only argued ten minutes before agreeing and leaving them to their treasure hunt.
“Ghost hunting? Are you kidding me?” Bear’s eyes lit up. “What the heck is an E and F thing?”
Spence waved the gray remote device around. “EMF stands for electromagnetic fields.” He pressed the center button and the device’s line of five multicolored lights flickered for a moment. “If it comes into contact with any
electromagnetic fields, the lights flash and it buzzes. Each one is a field frequency—”
“Whoa, Spence.” Bear held up his hands. “Why do you know so much about ghost-hunting gizmos?”
Spence moved the EMF meter around the attic in an arc, watching the lights. When he turned and pointed it in my direction, all five lights went apoplectic. He looked up at Bear with eyes wide and his voice a little shaken. “Bear, there’s something here.”
I walked toward Spence and his EMF device glowed and flickered and chirped like a ravenous bird—Spence backed up two steps
as his face paled. When I retreated, the lights slowed and stopped chattering. When only one light remained on, Spence’s face went from pale white to a not-so-pale white and he breathed for the first time in minutes.
Bear just stood staring at the device. His mouth was clamped tight but he forced out, “Holy shit, Spence. Are you telling me this thing says a ghost is in here with us?”
Spence just nodded and backed up another step.
“Terrific.” Bear glanced in freeze-frame glimpses around the room. “Just terrific.”
I walked in the device’s path again and sent its lights and Spence’s heart racing. “Oh, this is fun.”
“And you know this how?” Bear asked, grabbing the EMF meter from him and turning it off. He shuddered a little. “You moonlighting on me?”
“I watch all the ghost shows on television. There’s a lot of them.” Spence seemed happy the meter had gone dark in Bear’s hand. “You wouldn’t believe how popular ghost hunting is. Some of these guys travel all over the country—even the world—doing this stuff. Do you know how many celebrities have hauntings? Even the White House—”
“Yeah, right.” Bear pointed to the computer. “And they use this crap to find ghosts? What’s all this stuff do?”
“Somewhere around here, we should find the IR. IR is infrared, Bear; cameras and imaging gear. I bet they have cameras and recorders hidden all over this house. We’ll have to search all over again.”
“Why would they have it here?” Bear asked, looking down at the computer screen. “Explain it to me. I don’t watch television.”
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