by Linda Barlow
“And do you think Giuseppe was the intended victim, or were other people using the scaffolding?”
Annie had been wondering about that too. Giuseppe did have men helping him, but he was notorious for insisting on doing the lion’s share of the work himself. And because Giuseppe was the first to arrive and the last to leave, it was difficult to imagine that anybody else could have been the target.
She explained this and added, “I think the police are focusing on his nephew. Vico is already on the run from the law. He and Giuseppe were at each other’s throats—Giuseppe was so disappointed in the boy.”
“Just because two people are in conflict doesn’t mean one will murder the other,” Matt said with an edge to his voice.
“I didn’t say I suspected Vico, just that I got the impression the police do.”
He made a gesture that showed exactly what he thought of the police.
“On the other hand,” she said, “if the scaffolding was sabotaged in the manner the police described, it suggests that whoever did it is familiar with construction techniques. In other words, he would have known what to do.”
“So would anybody else who worked there,” Matt pointed out.
She nodded. Losing Giuseppe was bad enough, but the thought that the fiery young Vico might have killed him just made things worse. When she thought about Paolina, his pregnant girlfriend, she felt a kind of despair settle over her.
“If the boy and his uncle fought, and one of them killed the other, I should think it would be a crime of passion, not premeditated murder,” said Matthew. “Sabotaging the scaffolding is a devious, cold-blooded act. Is this kid likely to do it that way?”
“You’re right,” Annie said slowly. “No, I can’t imagine him doing it that way. If Vico killed, he’d do it in your face, with a gun or a knife.”
“Is there anybody else that you know of who might have wanted to murder the guy?”
“Maybe.” She told him about the threatening notes she’d received. “They appear to be aimed more at me than at any of the workmen, though.”
“Have you shown them to the police?”
She shook her head. “No. I probably should have mentioned them this morning, but I think I was in shock, not thinking straight.…”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get another chance. I’m sure the cops aren’t through with you yet.”
She sighed. “I’d better get back to the office. There will be all sorts of ramifications. The press is there, and OSHA will undoubtedly turn up demanding an investigation. It’s going to be messy.” She met his gaze uneasily. “You know what the press is like. Somebody will zoom in on the fact that there’s been a murder in the cathedral within a few days of your being elected chairman of the building committee, Matt.”
“I know,” he said grimly.
“I’m sorry. You’ll probably be in for more nastiness.”
“It’s not your fault. Murder seems to be dogging my footsteps lately. Like a curse.”
Chapter Eighteen
That afternoon in Sam’s office there was a tense meeting of everyone who was working, or had worked, on the cathedral project, including Sam, Darcy, Annie, a couple of Brody Associates structural engineers, Jack Fletcher, and Paul McEnerney, the general contractor.
Sam was more belligerent than Annie had ever seen him before. He’d told her briefly before the start of the meeting that the more he thought about what had happened to Giuseppe, the angrier he got. “Look, Paul,” he said now, “you assured me the site was safe. You also assured me that there wasn’t going to be any trouble. Now we’ve got a man down—murdered, for chrissake!—and the press is swarming all over the place like a cloud of locusts.”
“Take it easy, Sam,” McEnerney said. “Sit down. You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit. I’ve been answering questions from the cops and the press since six o’clock this morning. We’ve got tabloids declaring that the site is cursed and the Devil is determined to throw down the work of the Lord.”
“A real epic battle, huh?” McEnerney said. “Don’t worry, Sam. The Lord always wins these things.”
Sam shook his head. “Look, a man—a good man, an artist whose work is respected all over the world—was killed while working on my project. I want to know why. I want to know, for example, if this has anything to do with union/nonunion trouble.”
“You mean because Giuseppe was nonunion? I doubt it. The unions all know that we have to hire these guys for the esoteric work like fine marble carving and stained glass.”
McEnerney glanced at Fletcher and added, “My job superintendent here hasn’t noticed any union/nonunion troubles, right, Jack?”
“Right.”
Sam turned to Annie, “Do you agree with that, Annie? Have you seen any evidence of union-related conflict on site?”
She shook her head. “We have a lot of subcontractors on site. The workers all have different skills, and my impression has been that they respect each other. Giuseppe and his men kept pretty much to themselves, and I never witnessed any trouble.”
“Except from the nephew,” Fletcher put in. “Vico and his uncle were at each other’s throats.”
“So this kid is the prime suspect?” McEnerney asked.
“It’s beginning to look that way,” Annie said reluctantly. “But it’s really hard for me to imagine that Vico would murder his uncle.”
McEnerney shrugged. “Maybe he wanted money and his uncle refused to give it to him, they had a fight—who knows? People kill each other for all sorts of stupid reasons.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair, and Annie felt a rush of sympathy for him. This killing had taken a toll on everyone. Every time she thought of Giuseppe’s family, her heart seemed to squeeze in her chest.
“All I know is, the cops are tearing up the city looking for the kid,” he said. “And I hope to God they find him. Soon.”
Darcy spoke up for the first time: “Are there any other suspects? Any other reason why somebody might want Giuseppe Brindesi dead?”
Sam’s eyes locked with hers. “None that I know of,” he said. He glanced at Paul McEnerney. “I certainly hope it doesn’t turn out in any way to be a job-related killing.”
“You worry too much, Sam,” McEnerney said.
Sam sighed heavily. “Somebody’s got to. By the way, the cops want to fingerprint everybody who works at the crime scene or was there during the last few weeks. Apparently they’re processing an area that’s full of prints, and if the killer’s are there, they want to find them.”
“All our fingerprints will be there, Sam,” Annie said.
“Of course they will. Doesn’t mean any of us is under suspicion. Just that they want to identify all the prints they can, and see what they have left.”
Doesn’t mean any of us is under suspicion.
Maybe not, Annie thought. But if Vico didn’t kill his uncle, who did?
*
That night Annie went as usual to the youth center to volunteer. It seemed odd to be so close to the cathedral and yet not able to enter the site. The police crime-scene tape was still in place.
For once, there was no one to counsel. The activity of the police so nearby was keeping them away, Barbara Rae speculated.
Annie didn’t stay long, since Barbara Rae was in the middle of preparing a eulogy to deliver at Giuseppe’s funeral.
Annie had left her car parked among the trailers in the construction lot adjacent to the cathedral. Two police cars were still there, and there were lights in the back of the cathedral and crime-scene tape around the east end. The west end, however, was dark and quiet. No police, no tape. All the activity was down by the altar.
So, Annie was startled to see a slight figure tiptoeing in the shadows near the west entrance. She caught a glimpse of long blond hair as the figure slipped into the west entrance of the construction site.
Paolina. Vico’s girlfriend.
What was she doing here? Looking for Barbara Rae? Sneaking inside to pr
ay for her missing lover and her unborn child? She must know, surely, that the cathedral had been closed down as a crime scene. She must know that Vico’s uncle was dead and that Vico was being sought for questioning in the murder.
What was she up to? Didn’t she know that there were police cars parked at the other end?
Annie hurried to the west entrance and followed Paolina inside. There was a pile of bricks by the opening to the area, and, in the dark, she stumbled on them.
“Damn,” she whispered. She felt in her purse for the pencil flashlight she always carried with her. She switched it on, noting from its dim light that it would soon need new batteries.
She felt a shiver of pure fear. As she had told Matt the other evening at his house, she had a lifelong fear of being shut up in dark places. She assumed that it had something to do with one of her experiences in those awful foster homes as a child, although she must have repressed the exact memory.
It wasn’t exactly claustrophobia, since she could ride in subways and elevators and fly in planes without feeling as if she had to tear at the walls. But if she was in an elevator and it stopped and the lights went out… she was sure that she would rapidly devolve into a candidate for the psychiatric ward.
“Take it easy, Annie,” she muttered. “There’s nothing small and confining about this place.”
She directed her light toward the extreme west end of the nave. For the moment, she didn’t see Paolina. Nor were there any lights in the front of the church near the altar. Maybe the police investigators had finished up their task and left.
Most of the inside walls of the building were lined with scaffolding, used by the men who were working on the walls, the electric connections, the masonry, and the windows. But Annie squinted down at the scaffolding that had failed. From a distance it looked much the same as usual, which surprised her. There wasn’t enough light in the cathedral for her to see the part of the structure that had fallen.
Poor Giuseppe! She imagined how it must have been to fall for endless seconds through the dark, knowing that when the falling stopped, so would your life. Falling through darkness. It was like a terrible dream.
She forced her mind away from that. Dammit, where was Paolina?
A bright movement at the corner of her eye alerted her. Paolina was in one of the side aisles, gliding silently toward the east end of the cathedral. With her long blond hair and her dark flowing dress she looked more like an apparition than a teenage girl.
Annie hurried after her. She was about six feet behind her when Paolina turned, her face white and scared.
“Shh, it’s all right, nobody’s going to hurt you,” Annie said. “What are you doing here?”
The girl shook her head wordlessly.
“If you’d like to pray, I’m sure Barbara Rae will pray with you, but this is a construction site, and it’s not safe. You can’t be in here, Paolina. Especially now. The police are here.”
Paolina gasped and looked around wildly.
“Paolina, do you know what happened to Vico’s uncle?”
The girl looked at her, and Annie wondered, for an instant, what was wrong with her. Was she on drugs? She seemed vague and confused, as if she was high on something. Dear heaven! She was pregnant. She damn well ought to know better!
But Paolina’s eyes cleared as she looked at Annie. “Yes, I know. He’s dead.”
“And Vico? If you know where he is, please tell him to come forward. The police are searching for him.”
“They’ve been searching for two weeks,” Paolina said disdainfully. “They won’t find him.”
“Yes, they will. The stakes have gone way up. Before, he was just another punk who sells drugs. Now he’s a suspect in his uncle’s murder.”
Paolina’s eyes widened. “He’s a suspect?”
“Exactly that. Vico and his uncle had some problems. The cops are afraid that—”
“No!” the girl cried. “Vico did not do it! The scaffolding broke apart and Giuseppe fell! Vico would never hurt anyone, especially his uncle.” Her tone was passionate and insistent. “I know they argued sometimes, but Vico loved him!”
A flashlight snapped on in the apse of the cathedral and they heard a man’s voice call out to another. The anguish in the teenager’s eyes changed to panic. She pushed past Annie and fled along the north wall of the cathedral.
Annie rushed after her, retracing her steps toward the door they had both used to enter the construction site.
“Hey, where d’you think you’re going?” a man exclaimed as Annie careened into him in the darkness. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. As she whirled to face him, he quickly let her go. “Annie?” he said.
It was Jack Fletcher.
“Please, let me pass. There was a girl in here—she said something important.”
“I didn’t see a girl,” Fletcher said. “I’ve seen a lot of cops hanging around, but no one else.”
“Jack, I was just talking to her, dammit. She slipped past me and got away.”
“Do you know who she was?”
“Yes, of course. Her name is Paolina. She’s Vico’s girlfriend. She says he didn’t do it.”
“Well, of course that’s what she says.”
“I know, I know, but it was more than just a lover’s denial, Jack.” What was it Paolina had said? “Vico did not do it! The scaffolding broke apart and Giuseppe fell!” It sounded as if Paolina had actually seen it happen. As if she had been right here in the cathedral at the time. “I think, from what she said, that she may have been a witness to Giuseppe’s death. Perhaps she and Vico were both witnesses.”
“Yeah, like she witnessed him doing it,” Fletcher said.
Annie shook her head. Of course he wouldn’t believe her. Neither, she was sure, would anybody else.
But Paolina had sounded so sincere and so passionate.
“What was she doing in here anyway?” Fletcher asked.
“I don’t know.” She looked at him. “What are you doing here? Isn’t the site still off limits to all of us?”
“To hell with that,” Fletcher said. “It’s my construction site, and I damn well want to know exactly what happened here last night.”
“Yes, well, so do I.”
“We’re well away from the crime-scene tape,” he added. “It’s not like we’re tromping through the evidence.”
Somebody shouted at them, and flashlights were beamed their way. “Even so, I think we’re about to be nailed in our own building,” Annie said with a sigh.
“You’ll have to tell the cops about the girl,” Fletcher said.
“Mmm.” Annie was already wishing that she hadn’t told Fletcher.
Had Paolina been here last night?
Had she witnessed Giuseppe’s death?
After the police grilled them and finally let them go, Fletcher walked Annie back outside to her car. She was clearly preoccupied, and she didn’t seem to notice how close beside her he was walking, or even that he took her arm once to help her around a pothole in the razed lot they all used as a parking area.
“It’s late,” he said in as gentlemanly a manner as he could muster. “Would you like me to follow you home, make sure you get there okay?”
She blinked at him, obviously puzzled by the question. “Thanks, but that’s not necessary.”
“I guess you’re pretty brave, huh?” he said.
“What do you mean, brave? Why am I brave?”
“Well, here you are at a construction site in the middle of the night… just after someone’s been murdered. That takes guts, I think.”
“Does it? You’re here,” she pointed out.
“Hey, I’m a guy.”
She gave him a freezing look. “I guess that explains it.”
Stupid idiot! he raged at himself.
She frowned but said nothing more about it. A second or two later, she started up her car. “See you tomorrow, Fletcher,” she said, and pulled away.
Fuck. Fletcher got into his car. He
thought about following Annie home anyhow but decided not to risk it. One mistake per night was enough.
He wondered about the girl in the cathedral. Paolina. Vico’s girlfriend. He’d seen her hanging out at the site when the kid was on the job. Blond girl—a real looker, all right.
Annie had not mentioned her to the police. Why had the girl been hanging around the cathedral? And what was Annie trying to hide? Could she be trying to protect Vico?
God, he’d love to get something on Annie. He needed some way to get her under his thumb.
Fletcher picked up the cellular phone in his car. He was proud of that phone. Made him feel like a big shot to be talking on the phone while waiting for a red light to change.
He dialed Sam Brody’s private number. It was late, but what the hell. There’d been a murder on the site, for chrissake. Anyhow, Brody liked him to check in on a regular basis. Sometimes he felt like he was working more for Brody than for McEnerney Construction. Especially since McEnerney was such a prick.
“Mr. Brody, you know that kid—Giuseppe Brindesi’s nephew? The one the cops are after?”
“What about him, Jack?”
“He had this girlfriend. Blond chick. Very good-looking. When the kid was there she used to hang around sometimes, encouraging him. You remember her?”
“Sorry. I don’t know anything about her. Why?”
“I was wondering if you had any idea how to find her. An address? A phone?”
“First I’ve heard of her, Jack.”
“Well, she was lurking in the cathedral tonight. Annie seems to think the girl might know where Vico is. She could even be some kind of witness. Annie thinks she and her boyfriend may have been around when Giuseppe got frosted.”
There was silence on Brody’s end for a couple of moments. Then: “Annie?”
Fletcher pulled it in a couple of notches. “The Jefferson babe.”
“I’d hate to see her reaction if she heard you calling her a ‘babe,’ Jack. Women are very sensitive to that sort of thing nowadays.”
“Sorry,” Fletcher mumbled, clenching his fists.