Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2)

by Lynn Bohart

  Montgomery squirmed, but suddenly groaned and slumped sideways, his head dropping forward.

  The kid reached out and pressed two fingers against the carotid artery, and then removed the syringe. Half a second later, he stripped off the blond wig he’d picked up at a cheap outlet store and jogged back to the van.

  As he opened the van door, he tossed the fake glasses under a car, jumped in and sped off. Half a block away, he rolled down his window and tossed the syringe into the street.

  Oh, those pesky druggies, he thought to himself with a smile. Always littering the streets with their drug paraphernalia.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Giorgio dragged himself home at 7:15 that night. He’d met with the captain and reported his suspicion that Alex Springer had been murdered because of something he knew about the Lisa Farmer case. Since Swan was due to take the rest of the week off, they’d spent the remainder of the afternoon writing up notes and attempting to run down leads on Cheryl Lincoln, Jimmy Finn’s girlfriend, and her brother, LeRoy. By the time he got home, Giorgio was starving.

  His nostrils flared at the smell of oregano, bell pepper and onions when he stepped through the front door. He didn’t know if it was spaghetti, ribs, or something else, but he didn’t care. He threw his jacket over Prince Albert’s helmet and headed for the kitchen.

  Raised voices greeted him when he passed the den. It was Tony and Marie, arguing over something. He made a quick left turn into the kitchen, choosing to let them sort out their differences by themselves.

  “You’re home late,” Angie said. “The kids have already eaten, but I waited for you. Do you have rehearsal tonight?”

  “No. The first read-through is scheduled for next week,” he said. “They’re still cleaning up after the fire.”

  As soon as he said it, he glanced nervously at his wife. It was the fire and the attack on Giorgio during the Mallery Olsen case that had sent him to the hospital, and caused Angie to fall down the stairs. When she lost the baby, it had been a dark time in their lives. The shadow hadn’t completely lifted for either one of them.

  “We’re working that cold case,” he said to change the subject. “And Swan leaves tomorrow to help his mom clean out her house.”

  Angie turned and gave him a frown. “That’s right. Didn’t you say Rocky might step in to help you?”

  “Yeah. He’s been going through orientation,” he said, opening the refrigerator.

  He pulled out a beer, popped the top and sat at the kitchen table. Angie leaned over and opened the oven, pulling out a pan topped with aluminum foil. Giorgio felt the sour taste of saliva flooding his mouth.

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Chicken cacciatore,” she replied.

  “Smells great,” he said.

  Just then, Grosvenor lumbered in and pushed his nose against Giorgio’s leg.

  “Hello, little guy,” he said, stroking the dog’s head. “Hey, listen Ange, I’ll work on those kiddie latches tonight. We’ll get everything done by this weekend.”

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said with a distinct drop in her energy level.

  She placed the pan of chicken on the tiled counter and turned to him, her mouth set in a straight line.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Elvira called today. She spoke to the state inspector, and she doesn’t think they’ll clear us for a license.”

  “What? Why not?”

  He lowered the can of beer to the table, forgetting the dog for the moment.

  “Two reasons,” she said with a disappointed sigh. “We have firearms in the house, and…”

  “But I keep them locked up,” he said, cutting her off. “No one can get to them.”

  “I know,” she said, coming to sit across from him. “But there can always be accidents. Then, there’s Grosvenor.”

  “What about Grosvenor?”

  He felt his blood pressure rising.

  “I had to divulge his history, and the fact that he’s been abused and been to dog therapy,” she said with a sigh. “According to Elvira, their attorney says we’re just a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  She took a deep breath, and Giorgio recognized the pending onslaught of tears. He reached out and grabbed her hand.

  “Hey, Ange. It’s okay. I’ll… I’ll talk to them about the guns. I’m a cop. I can work this out.”

  Her eyes fluttered up so that her gaze rested on him.

  “And what about Grosvenor?”

  He paused and looked down at the brown and white spotted dog who sat with his tail curled around his long body. He didn’t know what to say about Grosvenor. The dog was a part of the family now. How in the world could they get rid of him?

  “I was really counting on this, you know?” she said in a small voice. “We’re so close to having the house ready, too.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek, and she reached up and swept it away.

  “I’ll make it up to you, Ange,” Giorgio said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll… I’ll figure out something,” he said, lamely.

  He stopped because he didn’t know what else to say.

  “No, Joe. It’s okay,” she said, reaching out to wrap her fingers around his. “I appreciate all you’ve done, Joe. Really, I do. And I love the two kids we have – I love them to death. In fact, after what happened with Marie, maybe it’s just better that I focus on them. Really,” she said, tears glistening. “I’ll be okay.”

  He stared at her for a moment and then got up and crossed around the table, pulling her out of the chair. He drew her to him, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her auburn hair.

  “I’m sorry, Ange. I wanted this to be perfect for you.”

  “I know,” she whispered into his shoulder. “But we’ll be fine.” She patted his arm, as if she were comforting him. Then she pulled away, wiping the moisture from her face. “After all, having Grosvenor is like having another kid in the house anyway.” She smiled up at him. “I’ll be okay, Joe. Now, go wash up for dinner.” When he didn’t move, she pushed him away. “Go.”

  He took her face in both hand and gave her a kiss. Just then, the phone rang. He touched his nose to hers, and left the kitchen to pick it up in the hallway.

  “Hello,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Hello,” he said again when no one answered.

  Still nothing.

  He looked suspiciously at the phone as a chill rippled across his shoulders.

  He replaced the receiver and crossed the hallway to the den, where he found Tony and Marie wrestling on the floor. The argument had apparently been resolved, and the raised voices had been replaced with squeals of laughter. Grosvenor had followed him out of the kitchen and suddenly the three of them were fighting for control of a squeaker toy.

  “Hey, it’s a school night,” he half-bellowed, stopping the action on the floor. “What about homework?”

  “All done,” Tony said, looking up from where Grosvenor’s rear paw was stuck in his face. “I only had my diorama to finish.”

  “And I got most of mine done at school,” Marie chimed in, rolling away from the dog.

  Marie was a miniature version of her mother. She had honey-colored skin, and big, round eyes. Tony was a few inches shorter, with the same smooth skin, but shared his father’s brooding, dark brown eyes.

  Giorgio stood for a moment, watching them as if he didn’t believe them. Then he grunted,

  “You okay, Marie?”

  She glanced up. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I’m fine, Dad.”

  He nodded. “Okay, as is everyone.”

  The children smiled and re-engaged with the dog, and before long, the three of them were rolling on the floor. Giorgio shook his head.

  “How could anyone think you wouldn’t be good with kids,” he murmured to himself, watching how gentle Grosvenor was with them.

  Then he went down the hallway to the guest bathroom to wash his hands.

  ÷

  It was eight
-thirty and the entire family was in the den watching TV when the phone rang.

  This time Angie went into the hallway to answer it and came back to get Giorgio.

  “Joe, it’s for you. I don’t know who it is.”

  He lifted himself out of his big leather chair, displacing Grosvenor, who had draped his snout over his foot, and went into the hallway. When he took the phone and said hello, a hushed voice greeted him.

  “I know something about the murder of that young girl,” the voice said. “We need to meet.”

  “Who is this?” Giorgio asked, remembering the earlier call.

  “Look, I’m taking a chance here. Let’s meet, and I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll be at the Prairie Diner in Arcadia in half an hour. Just get a table. I know who you are.”

  The line went dead.

  Giorgio told Angie he had to go out, grabbed his weapon and badge and headed out to the car. As he backed out of the driveway, he noticed a dark Jeep Wrangler parked across the street. The flare of a cigarette inside signaled that someone was behind the wheel.

  Giorgio drove down Sunnyside, glancing in his rearview mirror. His cop’s intuition made him wonder why someone was sitting in the car in the dark. As he watched, the car’s headlights flashed on and the car pulled away from the curb going the opposite direction. Giorgio relaxed.

  It was nine o’clock when he parked across the street from the Prairie Diner in Arcadia. Huntington Drive was a main thoroughfare through many of the towns in the valley, so the street was busy, even this late.

  The diner was small and sat between an antique store and a pawn shop. It had only a small front window that was almost completely obscured by curtains and a big flashing neon sign, depicting a green buckboard that kept flashing on and off.

  It was December, so the night was cool, and yet the sidewalks were peppered with people. Several store windows were outlined in red and green holiday lights.

  Giorgio got out of the car and crossed the street, looking up one side and down the other out of habit. He mentally took note of the cars parked along the curb and people loitering in doorways and on the street corner, just in case he had to remember details later on.

  He pulled open the door to the café and was greeted with a darkened interior and the smell of hot oil. The order counter stretched across the back. Beyond that, a short order cook was busy moving back and forth filling orders and flipping something on a hot grill. A young waitress approached the counter and pulled off two plates filled with food. She turned and delivered them to a table in the corner.

  The tables were covered with green plastic tablecloths, accented with cheap white vases that were filled with red silk Poinsettias. The place was half full of patrons engaged in conversation and consuming their meals.

  Giorgio glanced around, looking for a table with a single man who might be watching for him. But there was none, so he took the first table to his right and sat facing the door. A moment later, the young girl came to take his order. He asked for a soda and some fries and she left.

  The door opened and four kids came in laughing and texting on their cell phones. They took one of the tables in the center of the room. The door opened again, and a man in his forties entered. Giorgio came alert as the man glanced at him, but then headed for the counter.

  Giorgio’s waitress returned with his order. He was just about to squirt some ketchup onto his plate, when a second man suddenly appeared in the seat across from him.

  “Thanks for coming,” the man said.

  Giorgio stopped, the ketchup bottle held mid-air.

  The man was probably in his mid-to late fifties and built square, like a football player, but without the muscle. He had sandy blond hair, a full face and a receding hairline that gave him a broad forehead. And he had on an apron.

  “Are you the cook?” Giorgio asked.

  “No. My name’s Monty,” he said, nervously. “I own this place. But I help out in the kitchen when it’s busy.”

  Giorgio glanced down and finished squirting the ketchup onto his plate and then put the bottle back onto the table. He picked up a fry, dipped it into the rich red sauce and popped it into his mouth.

  “Was that you who called earlier and hung up?”

  The man’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. Sorry. I just…this is hard.”

  “Okay,” Giorgio said, swallowing. “Why am I here?”

  Monty’s eyes darted across the room, as if he thought someone might be listening.

  “Look, I heard on the news that you found that girl up at the monastery. The word is that it’s Lisa Farmer.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  The man began wringing his hands.

  “I was just a kid back in 1967, just ten years old. But my dad worked at the high school. He was one of the janitors. I heard him one night. He took a phone call from someone. I don’t know who it was, but it made my dad really nervous.”

  “Whoa, slow down. He took a phone call. When?”

  “I think it was a couple of nights after the girl went missing. I don’t remember exactly. I was pretty young. But her disappearance was a big deal back then. Nobody ever just up and disappeared,” he said to make a point. “Anyway, my dad didn’t know I was there. Our phone was in the kitchen and I was in the hallway. I remember him getting pretty upset. It sounded like someone asked him to do something he didn’t want to do, and he was trying to get out of it. He kept saying, ‘I can’t do that. You can’t ask me to do that. I could lose my job, go to jail.”

  “And you don’t know what he was talking about?”

  “No.” The man paused, wringing his hands again. He sighed. “Except that my dad was the one who ran the locker check the next day at the high school. He’s the one who found the girl’s underwear in that kid’s locker.”

  When he said this, his shoulders slumped as if he had carried years of suspicion, and perhaps disappointment about his own father. It had also seeped into the tone of his voice, which had almost no breath behind it. This was a guy who had grown up suspecting his dad of something immoral, if not illegal.

  “And you think your dad may have had something to do with that?”

  He began to squeeze his hands together as if he were squeezing water out of a dish cloth.

  “I don’t know. I asked him about it once, when I was older. We’d heard that the kid who got arrested hung himself in prison. My dad got very angry and said never to mention it again. He was drinking pretty heavily by that time, so I let it go.”

  “Is your dad still alive?”

  “Yeah, but my mom finally left him when I went off to college. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  “Had he always been a big drinker?”

  “No. Not at all. He didn’t really start drinking until Jimmy Finn went on trial for Lisa Farmer’s murder. He was called to testify, you know? Because he found the stuff in Jimmy’s locker.”

  “Did your dad ever talk about the trial?”

  “Only once. He was pretty drunk at the time. It was the day we found out that Jimmy would be going to prison. They tried him as an adult because he was almost eighteen. Anyway, my dad kept saying over and over again, ‘That kid’s in prison because of me.”

  Giorgio shrugged. “He could have meant that Jimmy went to prison because he’d found what was hidden in the locker. Maybe he felt responsible.”

  Monty shook his head. “I don’t think so. He said it like he was guilty of something – like he’d done something wrong.”

  “And you have no idea who called your father that night?”

  “No.”

  “Have you spoken to your father lately?”

  His entire body seemed to deflate. “No. My dad changed after that. Like I said, he started drinking pretty heavily and hanging out at bars a lot. He stopped coaching my Little League team and would nag my mom about the littlest things. It was like something was eating his insides, but he’d never say what it was.” Monty looked up at Giorgio, disappointment etched in the
lines on his face. “He was never the same.”

  “Okay,” Giorgio said, pushing his plate away. “We’ll follow up. Here,” he said handing his card to the man. “I’ll need to know your dad’s full name and where he lives now.”

  Monty took the card and held it between both hands. “I’ve lived with this my whole life, you know? – wondering if somehow my dad had anything to do with that girl’s death.” He lifted his eyes to meet Giorgio’s. “God, I hope I’m wrong. And I hope he won’t hate me for telling you this.”

  “We won’t know until I talk to him. I need his name and where I can find him,” Giorgio repeated.

  The restaurant owner sighed as if he still wasn’t sure he should rat out his old man.

  “Carson Montgomery. He’s in the Cascade Nursing home up in Seattle.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Giorgio returned home after his meeting with Monty Montgomery, his mind racing. Questions now loomed as to whether or not young Jimmy Finn had, in fact, put those things belonging to Lisa Farmer into his locker. And if he hadn’t, who had? Those questions kept him from falling asleep until long after midnight.

  The clink that rattled the windowpane hours later woke him with a start, pulling him out of a deep sleep. His eyes opened to a dark room. A brisk breeze rustled the elm tree next to the window.

  He glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed. It was 3:00 a.m. When a second ping hit the window, he pulled himself out from under the covers and stood up, careful not to wake Angie. He moved quietly to the window and pushed the curtain aside, thinking it sounded as if someone had thrown a couple of pebbles at the house. Since Marie was way too young to have a suitor, he was more than a little curious as to what it might be.

  Outside, the floodlight mounted to the detached garage spilled a pool of light across the driveway, and street lights lit the front half of the driveway.

  Giorgio’s eyes scanned the area outside the window, wondering who or what had caused the noise. It was hard not to consider the ghost of Christian Maynard, but there was nothing there, except the roll of fencing waiting to be turned into Grosvenor’s dog yard.