by J. D. Griffo
Suddenly Jinx realized that the person who killed Teri Jo was probably inside the diner right now. In the past when they found a corpse, the murder had taken place hours before, but this time they saw Teri Jo stumble and fall to her death. Her wounds were fresh, her blood still alive with life as it rushed out of her body. Which meant her killer was most likely a few feet away.
“Nobody move!”
Jinx’s voice cut through the chatter and immediately the diner became silent. No one spoke, but everyone turned to face Jinx. Now that she had a captive audience, she needed to exert her authority.
“Where’s Veronica?”
A timid voice was heard from somewhere near the front of the diner. “I’m here.”
“I need you to lock the front door and don’t unlock it until the police arrive,” Jinx ordered.
“Smart thinking, lovey,” Alberta said.
She was beaming with pride that her granddaughter had taken such wise and decisive action, but thought it best to internalize her emotions so Jinx could maintain her power among the diner patrons.
“I’ve already called the police,” Veronica announced from her position at the front door. “And someone said an ambulance is on the way.”
“We won’t be needing an ambulance,” Jinx replied.
When Veronica heard the news she gasped and burst into tears. She stood alone against the glass door, one hand clutching her stomach, the other covering her mouth. She was the owner of Veronica’s Diner and Teri Jo’s boss, and at the moment she was in shock.
From within the crowd, Father Sal emerged and walked over to Veronica. When he reached her he put his arms around her, and the woman latched on to him as if his strength was the only thing keeping her vertical.
Alberta looked to where he had come from and saw that his thick, black-framed eyeglasses were on the counter and the red-and-black plaid jacket he’d bought for a recent trip to a ski lodge was draped over a stool. It clashed horribly with the tweed jacket the man who sat on the next stool was holding. Alberta vaguely recognized the man, but she knew she had seen him in town before because she remembered the black tinted glasses he was wearing; they reminded her of the glasses that are worn after a cataract operation. She was glad Father Sal was able to comfort Veronica. After a moment she realized he could also comfort Teri Jo.
“Helen,” Alberta whispered. “Father Sal is here. Should we ask him to administer last rites?”
Without answering her sister, Helen turned around and saw Sal with his arms around Veronica but looking in her direction. Alberta watched as Helen and Sal locked eyes, and she noticed Sal close his eyes and nod his head very slightly. It was clear that they were silently communicating with each other. Helen turned back around and without letting go of Teri Jo’s hand, she took out the rosary beads she always kept in her pocket. Instead of starting to pray, she made a bizarre request.
“I need some olive oil,” Helen said.
She didn’t shout, but her voice was filled with such purpose that three people ran into the kitchen. They didn’t need to, because Luis came out of the kitchen with a bottle of olive oil and handed it to Helen. Before leaving he genuflected and made the sign of the cross, tears falling from his eyes at the sight of Teri Jo lying motionless on the floor.
Helen pointed the bottle at Alberta, and she intuitively knew that Helen was asking her to unscrew the top, which she did. Holding her index finger at the top of the bottle, Helen quickly said a Hail Mary, then turned the bottle upside down so some oil spilled out. She placed the bottle to the side and got to work.
Teri Jo’s head was turned to the left so it was facing Helen, which meant Helen didn’t need to move Teri Jo’s body in order to make the sign of the cross on her forehead with the now-blessed olive oil. Up until that point, Alberta wasn’t sure what Helen was doing, but now, mesmerized, she watched her sister perform last rites on her friend. It was one of the most humbling moments Alberta had ever experienced. The rest of the patrons in the diner must have felt the same way because no one spoke, they were all watching Helen.
“‘Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit’,” Helen said. “ ‘May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.’ ”
Alberta remembered that at this point in the ceremony the person receiving the anointment had the opportunity to confess any sins or recite the act of contrition. Teri Jo wouldn’t have that chance. She would have to let Helen do all her talking for her.
Slowly and quietly, Helen began to speak the Lord’s Prayer. Although she started the prayer alone, by the time she had finished, everyone in the diner was speaking and praying along with her. It was the first time in decades that Alberta had seen her sister cry, and the sight of her older sister, someone Alberta considered to be a bastion of strength and fortitude, weep openly, broke Alberta’s heart. She fought the urge to reach out and hug Helen, because she knew her sister still had work to do.
Clearing her throat, Helen continued. “‘This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to His supper.’”
“Felici sono quelli che sono chiamati alla sua cena,” Alberta repeated in Italian.
And happy are those when the police finally arrive.
At six foot four inches tall and built like a recently retired halfback, Vinny D’Angelo usually created a certain buzz when he walked into a room. At least until everyone got over the shock of his physical appearance and realized underneath his chief-of-police exterior, he was nothing more than their old pal Vinny.
“Vinny! Thank God!” Alberta cried. “Get over here.”
“Where else do you think I’d go, Alfie?” he replied.
Alberta heard the high-pitched sound of his voice and was reminded that the rest of the town might consider him a gruff, professional cop, but to Alberta he would forever be the boy she babysat more than half a century ago when they both lived in Hoboken, New Jersey.
“What happened?” Vinny asked.
Alberta gestured to Teri Jo’s body, the knife standing at attention in the center of her back, surrounded by blood, and replied, “I think it’s rather obvious.”
One by one the women kneeling around Teri Jo rose. Vinny extended his hand to Helen and she gratefully took it. When Vinny felt the olive oil on Helen’s fingers and saw the open bottle on the floor, he knew immediately what she had done.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Helen nodded, and along with Joyce retreated back to the booth they were sitting in when all the pandemonium let loose.
Tambra Mitchell, Vinny’s lead detective, started to put black tape around Teri Jo’s body. This would reinforce the fact that no one should come close to the corpse and also preserve the outline of the body when it was finally taken to the morgue. Jinx stepped out of the way and walked away from the booths to join Vinny and Alberta.
“Tell me what happened,” Vinny ordered.
“We really don’t know, Vin,” Alberta said. “One minute Teri Jo was serving us eggs Benedict, and the next she was falling to the floor with a knife in her back.”
Breathing deeply through his nose, Vinny surveyed the room and noticed where Helen and Joyce were sitting. “Were you in that booth?”
“Yes,” Jinx replied. “But we didn’t see anything.”
“Nothing?” Vinny questioned. “The dead body is a few feet away from where you were eating.”
“I know,” Alberta agreed. “But the diner was extremely busy, so Teri Jo was doing a lot of running around, and we were so engrossed in our own conversation we didn’t notice much.”
“Someone must have seen something,” Vinny said.
“Well, we did see Teri Jo moments before she died,” Jinx said.
“What did you see?” Vinny demanded.
“We were getting ready to leave and Aunt Helen was about to ask her for the check, when Teri Jo started walking toward our table and suddenly fell to the floor,�
�� Jinx explained. “By the time we got to her side she was dead.”
Eyeing the front door, Vinny suddenly grew pale. “No one ran out of the diner? Or left just as you saw Teri Jo fall?”
Alberta and Jinx looked at each other and color drained from their faces as well. Whoever killed Teri Jo had to have done so in the diner. She hadn’t left, so that meant the murder, literally, had to be an inside job. But if it was an inside job, that also meant the murderer could have escaped during the commotion created when they found Teri Jo’s dead body, simply by leaving through the front door. No one would have noticed anyone leaving because everyone was looking at the dead body and away from the door.
“You really don’t want us to answer that question, do you, Vin?” Alberta asked. “Because the answer is, we have no idea.”
Shrugging his shoulders, Vinny sighed. “You’re right, I didn’t want you to answer that question.”
“Chief? What do you want me to do with the customers?”
Instead of turning to face Tambra, who had asked the question, Vinny turned to look around the room at the faces of the customers. He recognized every single one of them. They were all townies, longtime residents of Tranquility, people who had never seen the inside of a jail cell, let alone a courtroom. How could one of these people be a cold-blooded killer brazen enough to commit murder in a crowded diner during the day? Only one way to find out.
“Line them up for questioning and call in for reinforcements,” he instructed.
“Will do,” Tambra said.
“Jinx,” Vinny said. “Do you think you and Joyce could help Tambra corral everyone so they can be questioned until some other officers get here?”
“We can,” Jinx replied. “But please note that at some point I will call in a favor.”
Shaking his head, he looked at Alberta and said, “I see the apple hasn’t fallen very far with this one.”
“I was nothing like that when I was her age, and you know it,” Alberta replied.
Before they could continue their reminiscing, they were reminded of what they were doing at the diner in the first place. By the diner’s owner.
“Vinny, whatever you need, please know that you have my full cooperation.”
Veronica had stopped crying, but she looked like she could start again at any moment. Alberta didn’t know the woman very well, since she didn’t frequent the diner nearly as much as Helen and Jinx did. Since Joyce had lived in Tranquility for many years, she had known Veronica the longest even though she normally ate at fancier restaurants when she did eat out. This really was the first time Alberta had been in Veronica’s presence when she wasn’t placing an order. She thought it best to make the most of it and observe the woman’s every move.
Unfortunately, thus far the only thing she’d seen Veronica do was cry and try not to cry. Which made perfect sense when one of her employees had just been murdered in the establishment that she owned. Why then was Alberta’s sixth sense tingling? Maybe it was because she had learned not to trust anyone. Even the dead.
“Thank you, Veronica,” Vinny said. “For now, please don’t move anything or clean up. We need to wait for forensics to get here and for the ambulance to take the body away.”
“This is just terrible, Vinny,” Veronica blurted. “Who would want to kill Teri Jo? Everybody loved her.”
Everyone may have loved her, but someone killed her, and the aftermath of that had to be dealt with. Looking past Veronica, Vinny saw that the medical examiner and an ambulance had arrived and he knew that it was going to be difficult for Veronica and many of the others to watch them work on Teri Jo’s body.
“I think you should go to the other side of the diner with Tambra and help her keep the folks in line so they can be questioned,” Vinny suggested.
“Whatever you think is best,” Veronica said. “You have to find out who did this, Vinny, and bring him to justice.”
Long ago Vinny had learned not to offer false hope, just a mere nod of the head. It always reassured the person on the receiving end and made them feel as if the murder would be solved in record time. Alberta was not so gullible.
“You don’t think you’re going to find who did this, do you?” she asked.
“First I have to figure out why someone would want to kill Teri Jo,” Vinny replied. “She hasn’t lived in Tranquility her whole life, but ever since she moved here she’s been a model citizen.”
“Helen mentioned that Teri Jo had a difficult past,” Alberta offered. “Maybe some of that difficulty followed her here.”
Vinny raised his eyebrows at the news. “I didn’t know that, but I’ll look into it. Right now, I have to get to work.”
As Vinny greeted the medical examiner, Alberta joined Helen, who was still sitting at the booth. The moment Alberta sat down across from her, Helen said, “We have to find out who did this horrible thing, Berta. It’ll be our most important case.”
Alberta didn’t answer immediately, having been thrown off-kilter by the conviction in Helen’s voice, but Helen wasn’t taking silence as an answer. “Promise me.”
Unlike Vinny, Alberta wasn’t going to get away with simply nodding her head. “Yes, I promise,” Alberta replied. “We will find out who killed Teri Jo.”
An hour later, after they had been interviewed by the police and reinforcements had come to help out Tambra with interviewing the rest of the patrons, the four women gathered their things so they could finally leave. As they were walking to the door, Helen turned back toward the table.
“Where’s she going?” Joyce asked.
“She must’ve forgotten something,” Alberta said.
She had forgotten something very important indeed. It was the box that Teri Jo had asked her to deliver because she was going to be too busy the rest of the day. Technically, that was no longer the case, but Helen had made a promise and she planned on keeping it.
Her pocketbook hanging from one arm and the box tucked underneath the other, Helen didn’t stop, but kept walking to the front door. “C’mon, ladies, let’s get out of here before one of these cops gets a brain and stops us.”
No one had to speak, but they all knew it was official. The Ferrara Family Detective Agency had found its next case.
CHAPTER 3
Attenti alle aringhe rosse.
Later on that evening, the Ferrara Family Detective
Agency would officially face their first roadblock.
“It’s closed,” Alberta said.
“The front door is wrapped up in pretty yellow police tape,” Jinx added. “With very clear instructions not to enter.”
“Do you think Vinny had them put that up specifically for us?” Alberta asked.
“No, Gram, I think it’s standard practice,” Jinx replied. “It was wishful thinking on our part that we’d be able to scout out the diner for clues after hours.”
“Che peccato,” Alberta said.
“It is a sin,” Jinx translated. “The diner looks so sad all closed up and dark, it’s lost all its charm.”
Under the tutelage of its namesake owner, Veronica Andrews, Veronica’s Diner had been a staple in Tranquility for the past decade. It was centrally located, open for business almost twenty-four hours a day, and while it was known for its delicious breakfast offerings, the rest of the menu earned high praise from townies and visitors alike. But what made Veronica’s Diner an attractive attraction was the building itself.
Built in 1955, the architecture was classic and a relic from another time period, so it easily stood out among a sea of more modern buildings. Rectangular in shape with rounded corners, the front door was made of glass, and a series of large windows flanked either side. Just below the windows to the foundation were rows of silver paneling, the original aluminum updated at some point during the diner’s life to a more durable material. The main body of the building was painted bright white, and at one point there was neon piping all around the roof, but that too was lost to history, and now it was simply painted fire-engi
ne red with a cotton-candy-blue stripe going through the center. The red, white, and blue décor screamed, in a not so subtle way, that this was an all-American establishment.
Standing proudly atop the one-story structure was the name of the diner in a vintage font that immediately transported the viewer to a past filled with soda jerks and waitresses on roller skates. VERONICA’S was written out in in blue script and DINER was printed in red, both in neon, and the i’s in both words were dotted with a starburst to create an undeniable visual appeal. The interior was just as charming.
All throughout the diner the floor was a black-and-white checkerboard that if looked at for too long could produce a dizzying effect. The color of the booths and the bar stools alternated between orange and teal, but were all made of the same vinyl. The tabletops were lined in aluminum and were the same color scheme as the seats, though some were a more neutral white or gray, once again the product of having been refurbished over the course of several decades.
A long bar led to the kitchen, a front dining area, and rows of booths all along the sides. The interior design was accented in chrome and bright colors along with black-and-white photos hanging on the walls that depicted life from the 1950s. The cumulative effect inside and out was upbeat, hopeful, and safe. In just one morning it was all ruined.
“Like you said, Gram, che peccato,” Jinx repeated. “We should’ve known the place would be hermetically sealed, now that it’s a crime scene. I mean, this isn’t our first time at the rodeo.”
“Since it isn’t our first time, I have a backup plan,” Alberta announced.
“You do?”
“Of course I do,” Alberta replied. “What grandma-turned-amateur-detective doesn’t have a backup plan?”
Jinx couldn’t help but laugh. A year ago her grandmother didn’t know a thing about crime solving, and now she was acting like Miss Marple’s Sicilian cousin. “Would you like to share this backup plan with your partner?”