by Rosie Genova
“You called the police for a wine bottle?” Alyssa repeated. “What’s the big deal about that? Somebody probably threw it there instead of recycling it.” She shook her head. “Some people are so thoughtless.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that. I actually thought Pete might have had it the night he died.”
Alyssa blinked in confusion. “Who’s Pete? I don’t understand.”
“The homeless man they found in the carousel house,” I explained.
“You mean that disgusting old man who tried to crash the party?” She wrinkled her nose. “He died?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.”
“Well, I didn’t work Saturday or Sunday, so I was kind of out of the loop. And to tell you the truth, I’m so busy getting ready for school that I’ve barely had time to think about anything else.”
“Alyssa, did you by any chance see Pete leave that night?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Did you notice if he came back? Because Nando saw him a bit later, but I’m having trouble pinning down the time.”
She frowned. “I don’t know why you’re so interested in this, Victoria.”
I smiled. “Ah, it’s probably my overactive writer’s imagination at work, but I can’t help being curious. We couldn’t find you at one point and I just wondered if you’d seen Pete again.”
She lifted her shoulder and smiled brightly at me. “It was a busy night. I could have been anywhere. Listen, I have to get back out there, but in case I don’t get a chance to see you later on, I just wanted to say it’s been a pleasure, Victoria.” She held out her hand to me.
“Same here. Come see us next May, okay?”
“You bet! But in the meantime, we’ve got a party of four at the head of the line, so I hope Table Five is ready,” she called as she walked away, her blond ponytail swinging behind her, the picture of innocence. But are you as innocent as you look, Miss Alyssa? And do you know more than you’re willing to say?
* * *
By three thirty, the last of our guests had gone, and my grandmother called us to a meeting at the family table. She sat between my parents, her yellow pad in front of her, the page covered in notes. “First things first,” she said. “Is the lunch cleanup completed?”
“The linens are cleared off and bagged for the laundry, Mrs. R,” Lori said. “And Alyssa finished busing everything before she left.”
“And the dishes are all washed, senora,” Nando added.
Her face cracked in her closest approximation to a smile. “Thank you, Lori and Nando. We can always count on both of you.”
Certain that was intended for me, I kept back a sigh. “Coffee and drink stations are cleaned,” I said. “And the machines are unplugged and emptied of water.”
Nonna merely nodded and went on to the next item on her list. “Massi, have you canceled the food orders for the rest of the week?”
“No, but I pushed them back by a few days. I can always revise the menu if necessary. And if the power is back and I am needed . . .” He paused here for effect. “. . . I am willing to come in on Saturday.” Massi lifted his Roman nose in the air, looking around the table as if for applause for this sacrifice.
“Grazie, Chef,” my dad interjected. “What else, Ma?”
“Victoria, check the refrigerator for perishables,” Nonna said, still looking down at her yellow pad. “Once it’s emptied, Tim should clean it with bleach and prop the door open.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Now, please,” she said curtly, and I hopped up from the chair, knocking into Chef Massi, who took my arm to steady me and smiled.
“Va bene, cara,” he whispered. “All will be well eventually.”
“Thanks, Massi,” I whispered back, and relieved to be out from Nonna’s harsh glare, I headed to the kitchen, where Tim was crouched in front of the walk-in.
“I hear you’re on cleaning patrol,” I said. “What did you do wrong?”
“I exist. Hey, you okay?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
He put the sponge down and straightened up to face me, and yes, my heart did a tiny tarantella when I saw his concern. “Because I know what it cost you to call the cops yesterday,” he said. “And to have to face your crazy grandmother afterward.”
I smiled. “You’re the second person in two days to call her that. Flo was the first, right before she quit.”
“Flo quit?”
“Yup. Then she called me a narc.”
“Ouch,” he said, wincing in sympathy. “Sorry about that. Actually, I think Jason quit, too.”
“And today was Alyssa’s last day; she’s getting ready to go back to school.”
Tim shrugged. “But it doesn’t much matter now, does it? Without power, we can’t really stay open, so we don’t need the summer help. It was damn lucky your grandmother thought of having us refrigerate all our stuff—hardly anything went to waste.”
“So she’s crazy like a fox,” I said.
“Indeed she is, lass,” he said, and I didn’t even chide him for his bad Irish brogue. Because as I stood across from him in that kitchen, I was unaccountably happy. He was worried about me. Heck, he had empathized with me, and no matter what had happened between us, our friendship, at least, was intact. He says he’s changed, Vic, said a small, treacherous voice in my head. Maybe he has. Right. And even if he has changed, I replied to the insistent little voice, he has a girlfriend. And I have a sort-of boyfriend.
“Thanks, Tim.”
“For what, Vic?”
“For being there. I really appreciate it.”
He took a step closer and rested his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t want your gratitude. I want—”
The kitchen door swung open, and Tim dropped his hands.
In the doorway stood my mother looking startled, but also a little pleased to see us together. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I was looking for Victoria.”
“Well, you found me,” I said, wondering why I felt guilty. “What’s up, Mom?”
“Honey, could I speak with you for a moment? C’mon out to the dining room.” She motioned me to follow, and we sat at a corner table, far from where the staff was still engaged in an animated discussion.
The minute we sat down, I tried to ease my mother’s fears. “Being closed for a couple of days won’t kill us, Mom.”
“Honey, you know as well as I do that we can’t lose our Labor Day business.” She glanced at my grandmother, who was still presiding over the staff meeting. “We’re already a little behind this year.”
“I know,” I said, patting her hand. “Because of that mess in the spring. What does the town say about the power situation? It’s been almost three days.”
“Your brother tells me the utility company is working around the clock. They’re saying we’ll have power back in time for the holiday weekend, but I’m not sure we can count on it. Is it a problem for you at the cottage, hon?”
“Not much. I’ve got a gas stove and hot water heater. At night, I read with a flashlight. Anyway, I’ve barely been there with all the work to do here.”
She looked around the dining room nervously. “Not for much longer. And even if the power comes back on for Friday, we’ll be losing three days of business in the meantime. And it’s not just us, but the staff, Lori and Nando especially. They have families.”
“They’ll be okay, Mom. They know our work is seasonal, and they plan for that. But I know what’s really bothering you. You’re worried about Daddy because of that bottle.” She blinked and nodded, her large dark eyes suddenly brimming, and I grabbed her hand. “Danny said it’s not likely to go anywhere. I feel ridiculous for even calling.”
“But what if you were right?” she asked in a whisper.
“What if somebody gave Pete that bottle deliberately?”
“I think that’s possible, Mom.” I didn’t want to share my theory of Pete “knowing things” about people as a motive. “But it wasn’t Daddy.”
“Of course it wasn’t!” She leaned closer. “But his fingerprints will be all over it.”
“But you’d expect them to be, right? It’s from his own wine cellar. And anyway, that bottle was out in the rain. I can’t imagine them getting even one clean print off that bottle.” Partially because of that handy napkin. But I didn’t know this for sure. So, Bernardo, I thought, calling upon my fictional sleuth, what’s your take on this—does rain wash away fingerprints? Not for the first time, I wished my nattily dressed detective would materialize with his special notebook and fountain pen to help me figure out just what the heck was going on.
“I know your father thinks Pete stole that bottle,” my mom was saying. “But I don’t see how he could have. Your grandmother and I accounted for every bottle out on that bar; we knew how much went out and how much came back in.” She let out a sigh. “It had to have come from the basement.”
“I agree,” I said, lowering my voice. “Because I just remembered something. I was chatting with Dad down there on Saturday afternoon. He was messing with the bottles and said something about going through more of his homemade wine than he thought.”
My mom looked at me with desperation in her eyes. “Honey, do you think that Pete could have somehow gotten into the basement?”
“Maybe. But it was locked from the outside when I checked it yesterday.” Unless someone deliberately left it unlocked that night. But that was a thought I chose not to share.
“What about through the restaurant?” she asked.
“It’s possible, I guess. At some point, Nando saw Pete holding two bags, one that had food in it and another one that looked heavy. When I saw him leave—or at least when I thought he was leaving—he rounded the corner, and I assumed he passed the restaurant. But I guess he could have gone back inside through the front doors.”
“He could have,” she said, her curls shaking as she nodded. “The front door was unlocked so guests could go inside to use the restrooms.”
“Of course; I should have thought of that. But we were all in and out of the dining room and kitchen. I still think one of us would have seen him inside, don’t you?” Or smelled him, I thought.
She rested her forehead in her hand and groaned. “Who knows? This just gets worse and worse.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “I know this doesn’t look good for the restaurant, but there other possibilities. There are still no autopsy results, Mom. Whether or not someone here deliberately gave him wine, or whether he stole it, he still might have fallen and hit his head and drowned. His death might simply be the accident everyone assumes it is.”
My mother lowered her voice and gripped my wrist. “But you don’t think so, do you? You think somebody wanted poor Pete to drink himself to death on Friday night.” She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. “Honey,” she said, “do you think you can . . . look into this? Can you please find out what happened to Pete Petrocelli?”
It wasn’t like my mother to ask such a thing of me; in fact, she’d begged me not to get involved with the last two murders. But a half hour later, as I packed my computer, the library books, and a few other electronics into the backseat of my blue Honda, I realized how desperate she was to know the truth. And despite the mayor’s warning to me, so was I. To find out, I was planning to do something that could backfire on me, but I was willing to risk it. I didn’t have any other choice.
Chapter Thirteen
By late Monday afternoon, the weekenders were mostly gone, so it was a quiet ride across town to my brother’s house. I’d already called, so I knew he and Sofia were home. I told him I needed to charge my electronics, which was partially true. But I had another reason for coming.
Danny answered the door wearing shorts and flip-flops and holding a beer. “It’s always such a relief to see you in normal clothes as opposed to your uniform,” I said as I gave him a hug. I stepped back and looked into his face. “Are you mad at me?”
“How could you even ask me that? C’mon.” He opened the door and let me go ahead of him into the living room. “You can plug your stuff in right there,” he said, pointing to a power strip on the floor.
I took my computer and phone from my bag and plugged them in. “Would you have done what I did? Even though you think it isn’t significant?” I asked over my shoulder.
“You mean call in the troops if I found that bottle? Probably.” He rubbed a hand over his chin and flashed a grin at me. “I wouldn’t have wanted to take a chance. Now, if our grandmother had found it—”
“She’d have tossed it into our Dumpster.”
“Not ours,” Danny said, “but the one next door. On second thought, she’d have chucked it into the ocean.”
We were both laughing when Sofia emerged from the kitchen with a tray. “C’mon,” she said, “let’s go into the family room and then you can tell me what’s so funny.”
“Our grandmother,” I said as I settled down on the couch while Danny and Sofia sat on a love seat across from me.
Sofia handed me a glass of white wine. “Funny as in amusing?”
“You could say that,” Danny said. “We were talking about what she woulda done if she’d found that bottle.”
“Dug a pit and buried it,” Sofia said. “And then spread lime over the spot.”
“It’s not a body, Sofe.” I took a sip of wine, grateful for its small kick at the end of a long day. I held up the glass. “Thank you for this; I needed it today. Things have been a little . . . awkward at the restaurant.”
She nodded. “Your brother filled me in. But think about this, Vic—any one of those guests might have left a bottle out there. If I was a defense lawyer, that’s the angle I would play.”
Danny took a swig of beer and shook his head. “You’re assuming somebody needs defending, babe. And I just don’t think that’s the case here.”
“But, Dan, don’t you think the napkin is damning?” I asked.
“Could be. But so far there’s no proof Pete was in that alley. Yes, the bottle and the napkin are from the restaurant, but that night there was a big party of what, forty, fifty people? Like Sofia said, anybody could have thrown that stuff out there.”
“But who would throw a cloth napkin away?” I persisted.
“A lazy person,” Sofia said, “or a careless one. Remember how quick everybody had to get inside, Vic. You’ve got a guest with an empty bottle and a dirty napkin who’s in a hurry to get out of the weather, so he just pitches the stuff.”
“But think about it, guys—that person would need to walk to the other side of the property to put the stuff in that alley. Why not just dump it in the garden? And there weren’t bottles out on the tables; Dad was pouring glasses at the bar.”
Danny shrugged. “Doesn’t mean somebody might not have taken a bottle off the bar.”
“Mom said that she and Nonna had accounted for all the bottles that went out and how many came back.” I shook my head. “No, I think that bottle came from the basement.” I looked my brother in the eye. “And I think somebody deliberately gave it to Pete, maybe with the promise of more where that came from.”
“You might be right, sis,” Danny said, “but unless there’s clear forensic evidence linking Pete to that alley, or another person to Pete, none of this is solid. I still think we’re looking at an accidental death, plain and simple.”
“Dan,” I said, “I’m assuming the police combed that alley. Might I also assume they haven’t found anything else from the restaurant—say a food container—or you’d be more worried?”
“You can assume anything you want, Vic,” Danny said with a grin. “But I won’t corroborate it.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. You can’t talk. Not even about the autopsy results, I guess?” I asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of my tone.
“We’re still waiting on those,” he said.
“I’m betting his blood alcohol levels were through the roof,” I said.
“But they might be anyway, right? The man liked his vino.” Danny raised his beer bottle in a toast. “Me, I prefer hops to the grape.”
I studied my brother’s relaxed expression. “You’re really not too concerned about this, are you? I mean, that Pete died after leaving the restaurant. You’d be much more serious and grim.”
“How could you tell?” Sofia said, punching her husband lightly in the arm.
“That’s cute, babe,” he said.
“Seriously, hon,” Sofia said, “I’m with you on the wine bottle, but for me there’s a larger question: What was Pete doing in the carousel house in the first place?”
“Shelter—what else?”
“But that’s problematic for a couple of reasons,” Sofia said. “One, there were probably other places he could have sheltered much closer to the restaurant.”
“Like the alley,” I added.
“Two,” Sofia continued, “once the weather got threatening, they would have closed the rides pier, right? So how’d he get in there?”
“That is something OPPD will follow up on if there is any reason to think there’s foul play behind Pete’s death,” Danny said, adopting his professional tone. “I mean, c’mon, why kill Pete? Not for money, that’s for damn sure.”
“What if it was to keep him quiet?” I asked. “What if he knew something that could hurt someone?”
“Maybe,” Danny conceded. “But what would give you that idea?”
“Pete himself,” I said. “Back in early August, he told me he ‘knew things,’ but I didn’t take it seriously.”
“’Cause the guy’s a drunk, sis.” He looked from his wife back to me. “Please don’t tell me you two are getting ideas again.”