A Crazy Little Thing Called Death

by Nancy Martin

  “So who is her son?”

  Lexie shook her head. “My lawyer friend won’t say. Whoever he is, he’s going to inherit Penny’s gigantic share of Devine Pharmaceuticals.”

  “You’re suggesting he—whoever he is—might have killed his mother to get it?”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “I know this is a crazy idea, Lex, but do you think…? That Crewe?”

  Lexie paled. “No!”

  “His father did have an affair with Penny. And Dilly Farquar told me that the child was born about forty years ago. Isn’t Crewe thirty-eight or thirty-nine?”

  “Crewe’s mother would never have raised another woman’s child.”

  “No? Not even if it saved face somehow?”

  “Crewe wouldn’t kill for a share of Devine Pharmaceuticals. He loves his work. He’s got plenty of money of his own.”

  “Plenty isn’t necessarily enough sometimes, Lex.”

  “It’s a crazy idea,” Lexie said. “He had nothing to do with Penny’s murder.”

  I almost told her about Crewe’s fight with Kell Huckabee, but I held my tongue. I needed to find out on my own if Crewe had any role in Kell’s disappearance.

  I fervently hoped Crewe was innocent. For Lexie’s sake most of all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was in the car with Reed and Aldo, fighting traffic again, when I finally reached Detective Bloom by phone.

  “I’ve been trying to contact you.” His voice was low and tense, as if he was being overheard. “You’re supposed to keep your cell phone turned on!”

  “I don’t have it with me.”

  “Then how are you—? Never mind. Where are you?”

  “Right now?” I looked out the window. “In a car, passing the art museum.”

  “Pull over at Logan Circle. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Ben—”

  He had hung up.

  Reed obliged me by pulling into a parking space in the looming shadow of the public library. In less than five minutes, a city police cruiser slid to a stop beside us, and Bloom bailed out of the passenger seat. He spoke to the cop behind the wheel, then slammed the door. The departing cop gave a friendly whoop-whoop with the cruiser’s siren.

  In one hand, Bloom carried a cup of coffee with a plastic lid. He sloshed a few drops as he opened the rear door of the town car.

  Aldo said, “I don’t like the looks of this.”

  Bloom got into the backseat with me. “Hey, kid,” he said to Reed. “Take a walk. You, too, fella. Or do I have to arrest you first?”

  Expressionless, Reed glanced at me in the rearview mirror. Aldo gave Bloom a steady stare.

  “I’ll be okay, Reed. Thank you, Aldo. Do you mind? I need to speak with the detective alone.”

  Reed sighed and got out of the town car. After a moment, Aldo did the same. The two of them stood on the sidewalk where they could see me through the window. Aldo pulled a cigar from his pocket and stuck it into his mouth.

  “Don’t mind them,” I said to Bloom. “They take their babysitting very seriously.”

  “Good.” One-handed, Bloom pulled a paper napkin from his pocket and mopped the spilled coffee from his raincoat.

  “You must have big news,” I said, “if the Philadelphia police are chauffeuring you around. Is it the autopsy?”

  “It’s a lot of things.”

  Normally, Bloom liked to pretend he was a cool, experienced cop who had his emotions under control. But not this afternoon. He stuffed the napkin in his pocket, then pulled out his cell phone. He checked the screen.

  “Should I brace myself?”

  He put away the cell phone and didn’t smile. “The hand wasn’t Penny Devine’s.”

  “It—?”

  He shook his head. “Not unless she shaved the hair on her arms and grew a Y chromosome.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The hand belonged to a man.”

  “A man? But—the nail polish! The wristwatch!”

  “The nails were fakes. The wristwatch could have been bought by anyone at a department store.”

  “The family claimed it belonged to Penny.”

  “Yes, they did. They also wanted to bury the hand as fast as possible. They fought us every step of the way on the autopsy. They must have known all along the hand wasn’t really hers.”

  “Could the hand belong to Kell Huckabee? The missing gardener?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Hang on. There’s more. The hand had been frozen. We’re sending away blood and tissue samples for more information. But get this: There was a gunshot wound, too. Bird shot passed clean through the palm of the hand.”

  I had seen how mottled and disturbed the flesh looked. I realized now that some of the discoloration could have been small wounds. “Could such small puncture wounds in the hand have been the cause of death?”

  “No. It was a defensive wound—through the palm. Makes me think the victim could have been shot several more times in other places, too. Hard to know exactly what the cause of death is until we get our hands on—well, more of the body.”

  I sat back in the leather seat, trying to make sense of what he’d just told me.

  He drank a little coffee. “You seem surprised.”

  “I’m stunned. Aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I wondered, that’s all. That maybe you knew some of this already.”

  “Why would I? What’s going on, Ben?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve been helpful on this case, I’ll admit. But the other family stuff is beginning to bug the hell out of me. It makes me think you’re lying about a lot of things.”

  “About the Devines? I have no family loyalty to—”

  “What about Abruzzo?”

  “What?” I couldn’t make the mental turnabout fast enough. “Are we back to that? Michael has nothing to do with Penny’s—with the disappearance of whoever we found at the polo field. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Forget the polo field for a minute. I want to hear what you know about Mick.”

  “All right,” I snapped, exasperated. “I’ve been leaving messages for you all day. I was going to tell you everything first thing this morning, but you didn’t answer your phone. Look, I know we should have called someone first, but it was a hunch, that’s all. An impulse. So we were walking in tall grass where we didn’t have any business, and he didn’t see the trap. It was dark, and—well, it snapped shut and broke his leg. The doctors at the hospital say—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I finally noticed Bloom’s blank expression. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He said, “The hit.”

  I forgot about tigers and Michael’s broken leg. “The what?”

  “There’s a contract out on his life.”

  I felt my whole body turn cold. “A contract? On Michael’s life?”

  He scowled, disbelieving. “You don’t know about it?”

  I could hardly catch my breath. “Tell me. What’s going on?”

  “The Pescara kid. His family figures Abruzzo killed him, so they’ve taken out a contract. They want Mick dead.”

  I couldn’t absorb what he was saying. “The Pescaras want to kill Michael?”

  “That’s the word on the street. That’s why you were kidnapped the other day.”

  “I wasn’t—wait a minute.” My hands were suddenly shaking so badly that I jammed them between my knees. “Tell me everything, from the beginning.”

  Bloom scanned my face, looking for clues to a mystery I still didn’t understand. As if speaking to a soon-to-be hysterical woman, he said carefully, “The Pescara branch of the Abruzzo family thinks Mick kidnapped the kid and executed him to squeeze loose a confession in last winter’s cop killing. Only the kid was innocent—so the Pescaras claim—and he didn’t deserve to die. So they’ve hired a couple of wiseguys to kill Mick. It’s payback. They opened fire on him the other day and misse
d. He went into protection mode, so they wanted to snatch you to bring him out into the open again. Only you fought off the goons.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Now I understood why Aldo was with me night and day, and why Reed was under orders to keep me in plain sight every minute. And it explained why every member of Michael’s usual posse was standing guard at his bedside in the hospital.

  But I still asked, “Are you sure about this?”

  Bloom shrugged. “It’s big news among all the regular snitches—here in the city as well as my neighborhood, and believe me, we don’t get the top secrets up there, so this news is out big-time. Mick’s a marked man. The Pescaras want to take over Big Frankie’s operation, and Mick is the only obstacle in their way. By killing him, they get the business, plus their revenge.”

  I felt as if I might choke. I needed fresh air. I opened the car door and got out onto the sidewalk. “Reed,” I said. “Aldo!”

  They materialized beside me, and Reed gripped my arm. “You okay?”

  “Is it true? Somebody’s trying to kill Michael?”

  The boy released me and backed up a pace, then realized his mistake and grabbed me again. I felt the sidewalk shift beneath my feet. Reed pulled me over to a park bench near a flower bed.

  I sat down on the bench. “Tell me the truth, Aldo.”

  The big man shook his head. “This is nothing I’m supposed to talk about.”

  “But you knew? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “That’s not my job.”

  “His car accident wasn’t an accident at all, was it? Someone tried to shoot him that day.”

  Aldo didn’t answer, but his face told me the truth.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Not for me to say.”

  Bloom had followed me out of the car, and he came over to the bench. He threw his coffee cup in the direction of an overflowing trash can. “Somebody tried to shoot him Saturday morning in a parking lot. Bullet hit a passing car, which just happened to be a state trooper, who’s been telling everybody he saved the life of Big Frankie Abruzzo’s son just by—”

  “Stop it,” I said. “Don’t try to be funny about this.”

  Bloom put his hands into the pockets of his dark raincoat. “Sorry.”

  I tried to massage some logical thoughts into my head. “The hand we found. Does it have any connection to the—the hit on Michael?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “He came to the polo field after the attempt on his life, just to make sure I hadn’t heard about it somehow. After someone tried to kill him? Saturday morning?”

  Bloom nodded. “Broad daylight. In the parking lot of a diner. Pretty bold, if you ask me.”

  I checked my watch. “Reed? I’d like to go now.”

  “Wait a minute.” Bloom blocked my way back to the car.

  “I need to see him.”

  “This hit,” said Bloom. “It’s serious, Nora. You’re in danger now.”

  “And you’re going to protect me, is that it?”

  “I can. You shouldn’t be with him, Nora. Every day he’s in your house, you get dragged deeper into his business. Unless somebody can stop him.”

  “And that’s you?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Unless you warn him about me.”

  I cut around him, heading for the car. “He already knows about you, Detective.”

  Aldo put his arm out to bar Bloom from following me.

  Bloom called, “Take care of yourself, Nora.”

  A minute later, the three of us were on our way to the hospital. The traffic was terrible, so the trip took more than an hour. I didn’t speak. Now and then Aldo gave me a look, and Reed glanced into the rearview mirror.

  More of Michael’s posse loitered around the parking lot, the lobby and the hallways. I didn’t recognize most of their faces, but I knew who they were—men connected to the Abruzzo family. Today they had been called upon to keep Michael safe.

  I bulldozed my way past the young man standing outside his room and pushed through the door so fast that the two men inside jumped up from their chairs as if I’d fired a rocket through the window. Delmar dropped his crossword puzzle.

  Only Michael seemed unperturbed by my entrance. He was sitting up against a stack of pillows, cell phone to his ear. He glanced up and saw my face. “Donnie,” he said into the phone, “I’ll have to call you back.”

  I took the phone from his hand and punched the off button.

  “Hey,” he said easily. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “I feel like giving you a sore eye right now.” I dropped his phone into the trash can beside the bed and threw my handbag into the nearest empty chair. “Gentlemen, step outside.”

  “Fellas,” Michael said, “take a coffee break.”

  The two thugs hustled out faster than Kentucky Derby contestants.

  The room looked like a fraternity house after a weekend bender. Two pizza boxes lay on the floor. Open sections of newspapers had been abandoned on every horizontal surface along with Styrofoam cups, a book of crossword puzzles and a vase of flowers the size of a Christmas tree. The television muttered the evening news. I reached up and slapped the TV off.

  “Who told you?” Michael asked.

  “Ben Bloom, as a matter of fact.”

  “I have a broken leg,” he said. “Doesn’t that buy me a little mercy?”

  “Two broken legs won’t get you off the hook for this, Michael. Somebody’s trying to kill you! When were you going to mention that to me?”

  “I didn’t want to upset—”

  “Well, I’m plenty upset now, buster!”

  “Nora—”

  “Bloom is delighted, by the way. He’s hoping to make points with his superiors, so if you can manage to get yourself murdered when he’s on duty, you’d be doing him a big favor.”

  “I’m sorry,” Michael said. “What do you want me to do? Tell you every time some knucklehead wants to punch my lights out?”

  I exploded. “You mean this happens often? It’s a typical week in Mafia Land?”

  “Jesus. No, this is a—will you stop pacing? I’m pumped full of so much painkiller that I’m already dizzy.”

  “Good!”

  “Nora—”

  “I can’t help it. I’m angry. Somebody shot at you! What about the porch fire? Did Libby really start it? Or do I have criminals creeping around my backyard, flicking their Bics at my home?”

  “I don’t know about the fire yet. We’re working on it. But it’s likely the Pescaras were responsible.”

  “And your car accident? That wasn’t an accident at all, was it? Tell me the truth!”

  He shook his head. “A guy ran me off the road. When I got out of the car, he took a shot at me.”

  I sat down hard on the chair beside his bed. “Oh, my God.”

  “The fall in your house, though.” He frowned. “That one has me puzzled. I don’t know how anybody got inside to put a toy truck on the stairs.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening. When exactly did my life start including gangland murders?

  “It’s not a murder.”

  “Not yet!”

  “Hey, we’ve got the situation under control.”

  “So everywhere you and I go now, we need bodyguards? You call that under control?”

  “Yes. And I don’t want to hear arguments, either. Trying to snatch you was outside the rules of engagement. Which means somebody’s not playing fair.”

  “Do you hear yourself? This isn’t a game, Michael!”

  “Sweetheart, don’t be scared.” He reached for my hand.

  “What about the next time?” I got up from the chair and moved out of range.

  “There won’t be a next time. We’re taking steps.”

  “Taking steps? What does that mean? More retaliation? Somebody tries to—to rub you out, so you’re going to rub him out instead?”

  Michael laughed.

  “Don’t make fun of me!” I cried. “I
’m frightened!”

  He sobered fast. “I know. I’m sorry. But look, I wouldn’t be marrying you if I thought you were truly in danger. Everybody knows you’re out of bounds.”

  “Obviously not everybody. Those two hulks who grabbed me—”

  “That won’t happen again. I’ll make that very clear. Please, Nora, take a deep breath.”

  I did. And held it. I looked at the diamond on my left hand.

  “What are you thinking?”

  I said, “I’m rethinking my options.”

  He smiled. “What can I do to make the case for marrying me?”

  I went over to the bed again and took his hand. “I’m afraid for your safety.”

  “Hey, the worst thing that happened to me this week had nothing to do with the Pescaras and everything to do with walking around in the woods with you.”

  I finally took an inventory of the patient and realized he had only one IV tube in his arm. Gone was the heart monitor. Someone must have brought him a clean shirt, because he was wearing a faded T-shirt that advertised the fishing shop he owned. He had propped up his good leg in the bed, which gave him the appearance of more vitality than a man in his condition ought to have. I glanced down the length of his left leg, covered by the sheet.

  “How is it?” I asked.

  “It looks like I got caught in a steel trap. But it’ll heal. They’re giving me antibiotics by the gallon.”

  “And the broken bone?”

  He sketched a waffling motion with one hand. “They showed me the before-and-after X-rays. It’s ugly. But I’ll walk. They had me up on crutches this afternoon between the soap operas. You ever watch those things? Man, that’s some sexy television.”

  It was my turn to apologize. “I’m sorry you’re hurt. It’s all my fault.”

  “It’s my own fault. I should have stayed out of the weeds. Stayed in the car.” He squeezed my hand. “But you could help me feel better.”

  I allowed him to pull me until I perched carefully on the side of the bed farthest from his broken leg. “You must be on the road to recovery if you think soap operas are sexy.”

  He kissed my forehead. Then my cheek. Then I turned my head and kissed him on the mouth, which turned into something longer and more potent that warmed my cold thoughts.