by Fiona Grace
She wanted to call Teddy and speak to him about it, but his relationship with their dad had been fraught. And it wasn’t worth talking to Hannah, because she always put up one of her big emotion-blocking brick walls when it came to matters involving their father.
Ali would have to look for support closer to home.
Nate had told her she could always talk to him, but since her mood had been up and down like a yo-yo recently, she would prefer not to risk leaving an unstable-woman impression on him. Delaney, of course, would be a wonderful counselor, but it would take more than a cup of chamomile tea and some left-handed coloring to deal with this level of pain.
“I need an emotional support animal,” Ali muttered to herself.
That’s when she was hit by sudden inspiration. Scruff! Where was that pooch when she needed him?
She headed out of the store, flipping the “closed” sign over on her way, even though no one cared where she was, and locked the door behind her.
“Scruff,” she called softly, peeping around the trash cans on the sidewalk for the friendly fur ball. “Where’ve you got to, scamp?”
The dog was always hanging around in the streets waiting for food, yet when she needed him, he was nowhere to be found.
She wandered under the hot California sun, calling Scruff’s name softly as she went. She should’ve brought a pastry with her. She bet he’d come running the second he smelled food.
Speaking of smelling food, a gorgeous aroma was wafting along the boardwalk toward her—freshly baked dough and Italian herbs. She sniffed the air. Her stomach growled as the smell of delicious pizza filled her nostrils and overwhelmed her senses, and she realized she hadn’t stopped to eat yet today. She had no choice but to follow her nose.
She drew up outside a pizzeria she’d never been in and was about to march straight in through the glass door and order a fresh margherita, when she paused. Standing in the middle of the joint was a group of shady-looking men. It wasn’t just their slicked-back hair, suits, and chunky gold jewelry that made Ali hesitant, but the way they held themselves, the way they were bundled together, like they were conspiring. The decor of the pizzeria didn’t help matters, either; it was fifties inspired with big red booths providing a distinctly mob-like setting.
Ali began to slowly back away.
Just then, she heard a bark from behind her. She turned around. Scruff was sitting on the sidewalk, wagging his tail across the slabs, panting happily.
“There you are,” Ali said. “I’ve been looking for you. I need a therapy session. How does one jumbo bone sound in exchange for me off-loading all my woes?”
Scruff barked as if accepting her terms.
Ali was about to head off back down the sidewalk when the sound of a store bell tinkling behind her made her halt.
“You’re the baker,” a voice said from behind her.
Ali flinched. Slowly, she turned back around.
The glass door of the pizzeria was now open, and standing in the doorway, staring at her with menacing expressions, were three suited men.
Ali gulped.
As her gaze roved from one pair of mean dark eyes to the next, she caught a flash of light above their head and peered up. A flashing sign above the door said: Fat Tony’s.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Standing before Ali was a short guy, with an oblong face. He slowly looked her up and down.
Is this Fat Tony? Ali thought. The pizzeria property mogul?
“You are the woman from the new bakery, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” Ali squeaked.
She tried to inch back but there was a fire hydrant blocking her path.
“We’ve been looking for you,” a second man said. This one was tall and lanky, with jet black hair gelled back.
“You have?” Ali replied, her voice barely there. “Because of my coffee discount for local business owners?”
The men exchanged smirks.
“No, actually,” the oblong-faced man said. “We wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?” Ali repeated. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. “What for?”
“For solving Preston’s murder. It was thanks to you that Pete got arrested, wasn’t it?”
“I—I guess.”
“Well, Fat Tony’s thrilled,” the man with jet black hair said. “The cops were going to pin it on him, since he’d just opened up a new place for Giuseppe, and Preston was in there harassing him. But thanks to you, the real perp’s been caught.” He clapped his hands together as if wiping dirt from them. “Poof. The problem disappeared.”
Ali was stunned. It felt like a shockwave through her. Fat Tony had recently opened a new pizzeria? And Preston had been in there hassling the owner?
The way he emphasized real seemed to suggest to her that they knew exactly who the real perp was, and that it wasn’t Pete at all.
“Tony—Tony opened a new store?” she asked.
“That’s right, lady. What’s wrong? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Can you tell me where it is?” Ali said, maneuvering clumsily around the fire hydrant as she backed away from the store.
“Other end of the boardwalk.”
“Thanks, It’s been a pleasure,” she said, spinning on her heel and hurrying away.
Scruff followed alongside her and the sound of the men’s cackles seemed to follow her the whole way along the sidewalk in pursuit of Fat Tony’s new pizzeria.
*
Ali’s heart was pounding as she hurried along the boardwalk. That was the second time she’d heard Fat Tony’s name in relation to Preston, and what the mobster-looking men had told her back at the pizzeria was making her extremely suspicious.
This was so much bigger than she’d anticipated. Getting mixed up with the mob was a very bad idea. But what choice did she have?
She marched along the boardwalk as fast as she could. Fast enough to give Irene and the neon power walkers a run for their money. The heat bore down on her, but Ali was determined to find this new pizzeria.
Nate had missed the place out of his list of new establishments that had recently opened, so she’d never been inside to speak to the owner or test their alibi. If Preston launched a scathing attack on this Giuseppe guy like the one he’d launched on Ali, perhaps he’d messed with the wrong guy. Of course Fat Tony would be thrilled that she’d gotten a man jailed for it, because it let them off the hook.
Scruff panted as he ran alongside her. He seemed to be enjoying all this excitement, and was completely oblivious to the terrible danger Ali had now suddenly found herself in.
Oh, to be a dog, she thought, desperately.
Suddenly, she saw it. Giuseppe’s. Beneath the sign was the tagline: Fat Tony’s Thin Cousin.
It had the exact same decorative style as the pizzeria Ali had just left. The boardwalk was literally flanked either side by Fat Tony.
She noticed inside, this joint had another bunch of shady-looking mob guys. It was like Groundhog Day. These guys looked far more menacing than the other ones.
Sitting at the table was an enormous man, and through the window, Ali caught sight of a letter tattooed across each of his fingers. T-O-N-Y.
It was him. It was Fat Tony himself.
Ali gasped and moved back from the window, discreetly watching the people inside. Fat Tony appeared to be talking on a cell phone.
Then suddenly, he turned his head to the window and his eyes locked on her.
Ali’s heart went into her throat. She wanted to run, but fear had frozen her to the spot. She stood there helpless as Fat Tony stood from the table, waddled to the door, and pulled it open.
“My boys just called,” he said, stepping out. “They told me to expect a visit from you.”
Ali trembled as Fat Tony walked toward her, his hands outstretched.
All she could do was close her eyes. She squeezed them tight, not wanting to look into the eyes of her murderer as he suffocated her life out of her.
&nbs
p; She felt Fat Tony’s warm hands on her cheeks and flinched with terror. But rather than snapping her neck in his meaty hands, he kissed both her cheeks.
“Come in!” he exclaimed jovially, in the thickest Italian-American accent Ali had ever heard. “You get free pizza for life!”
He released her from his grasp.
Ali staggered back, astonished, and blinked at the enormous gangster in front of her.
“I’m sorry, wh—what?” she stammered.
Fat Tony’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “You got the police off my back, right? So come in. Let’s eat. Celebrate.”
He slung an arm around her and cajoled her toward the store. Ali’s feet seemed to stagger beneath her. She had no choice but to be led inside.
Ali wasn’t sure if this was the bravest thing she’d ever done in her life, or the stupidest, but she followed Fat Tony inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Giuseppe, Fat Tony’s thin cousin, dumped a margherita pizza on the table in front of Ali. It wafted its steamy scents of basil into her nostrils. She stared down at it, too scared to even take a bite despite how hungry she was and how delicious it looked. Fat Tony and his gang may well be behaving toward her with hospitality, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t poisoned the pizza or something.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Fat Tony asked, sinking his large body into the seat opposite her.
Ali swallowed hard, feeling pinned by his gaze. She felt like she was in the weirdest job interview. One where you weren’t just discussing your salary expectations, but whether you’d be allowed to walk out the door alive…
“I—already had lunch,” she lied. “Maybe you could put it in a doggy bag for me, and I’ll have it later?”
Fat Tony blinked at her. Then his face cracked with amusement and he let out a huge belly laugh.
“Did you hear that, boys? She wants a doggy bag!”
The wall of mobsters standing shoulder to shoulder behind him chuckled on cue. But not a single one of them smiled.
Ali’s nerves spiked.
“Mind if I eat while we talk?” Fat Tony said.
“Be my guest,” Ali replied.
She watched as Fat Tony took a huge slice of glistening pizza and began to munch. It really did look like exceptionally good pizza. If the restaurant was a front for some shady criminal operation, they’d done an excellent job of covering it up.
“What do you think of my new pizzeria?” Fat Tony asked her, his mouth full. He gestured with his arms.
“It’s great,” Ali replied immediately, without even glancing around. She knew what Fat Tony wanted to hear, and since she wanted to walk out of here alive, she readily obliged.
“We opened the same day as your bakery,” Fat Tony continued. “You see, my cousin needed some help getting back on his feet after a… little mishap. Family is family. So I leased him this place.”
Ali’s gaze briefly flicked to Giuseppe. He was standing blank-faced behind Fat Tony, a telltale twitch beneath his left eye that told Ali he was holding back. She didn’t even want to imagine what his so-called “little mishap” had entailed, but guessed it wasn’t anything legal.
“That’s nice of you,” Ali squeaked, shifting in her chair.
“I’m a nice guy,” Fat Tony replied, flashing her a smile that looked far more sinister than nice. Grease shimmered on his lips.
Ali looked down at the blobs of margherita on her pizza, trying to focus on anything but that mean face scrutinizing her.
“It’s a lovely bit of coast to own property on,” he continued, racing through yet another slice of pizza. “I’ve got about a dozen buildings in my portfolio now. One day, I’ll own the whole boardwalk. Then the pier. Then the town.”
Ali silently prayed that day would never actually come. The thought of Fat Tony being her landlord instead of blustering Kerrigan O’Neal filled her with dread.
A void of silence surrounded them, filled only with the sound of Fat Tony chewing on his pizza crusts. The whole while he ate, he stared at Ali emotionlessly. Ali felt like he might swallow her up at any moment.
“So?” Fat Tony said at last, grabbing his last slice of pizza and using it to gesture at Ali. “When are you going to ask the question?”
Grease splattered onto the tabletop. Ali flinched. Her heart began pounding.
“The question?” she asked, nervously.
Fat Tony rolled his eyes nonchalantly and waved his pizza slice around. “The question. The question. About Preston. The guy found floating with the fishes. We all know that’s why you came here. Why you were poking your nose around.”
Ali gulped. Fat Tony was goading her to ask him if he’d knocked off Preston. Practically daring her.
Ali’s instincts to get up and run away had never been so strong. But she fought them off. She was about to finally get her answer. If the mob were going to kill her, she’d prefer to go out knowing the truth.
“Okay,” Ali said, swallowing nothing, since her mouth was completely dry. “Did you?”
A slow smile inched its way across Fat Tony’s lips. He lowered his face.
“Did I what?” he pressed.
“Kill him,” Ali clarified. “Did you kill Preston Lockley?”
Fat Tony leaned back in his chair, making it squeak in protest under his huge frame. Slowly, he wiped the grease off his fingers with a napkin, one at a time. He was biding his time. Making her sweat. And boy was she sweating! Ali had never felt fear quite like this in her life. It seemed her body’s only way of responding to the spike in adrenaline and cortisol was to open up every pore in her skin and let the sweat come flooding out of it.
Finally, apparently satisfied that his fingers were clean, Fat Tony put his crumpled napkin on his plate and began to speak.
“I had the opportunity,” he said, nodding his head. “And the means.” He pointed at the men behind him and grinned. Then he opened his hands out wide. “But what was my motive? Why would I want to kill Preston Lockley?”
He spoke with the cadence of a teacher, and it took Ali a moment to realize his question wasn’t rhetorical. He actually wanted her to guess what his motive for murder might be.
“Because he annoyed you?” she suggested.
Tony steepled his hands over his pizza. “Do I look like the sort of guy who can’t handle a mild annoyance?” He shook his head. “Try again, Blondie.”
Ali wracked her brains. If this was Fat Tony’s way of telling her he wasn’t the culprit, it was painfully convoluted. And if this whole thing ended in her being executed anyway, what was the point of this charade? He was clearly getting his kicks out of watching her squirm.
“Because he threatened your store?” she tried.
Now Tony laughed. “Balloon man? A threat? Hardly.” Behind him, his cronies laughed too. “Any other guesses?”
Ali had to admit it. Tony was obviously a shady guy with some dodgy dealings going on, but he had no reason to kill Preston. Unless…
“He insulted you,” she suggested, the idea coming to her all at once.
Fat Tony stayed as solid as before. But Ali noticed something else. Giuseppe was starting to look flustered. The twitch under his eye was going at a thousand miles a second.
Ali mind raced as she assessed Giuseppe’s sudden shift in demeanor. The cousin who’d been leased the pizzeria in spite of his prior unspecified “little mishap” was suddenly agitated, shifting from foot to foot like he wanted to be anywhere else but here.
Ali realized she was onto something. Fat Tony might not feel threatened or easily offended by a man like Preston Lockley coming around making a ruckus, but what about Giuseppe? It was the thin cousin who’d been on the receiving end of Preston’s tirade, after all, not Fat Tony. Giuseppe had been the one standing behind the counter being accosted by an angry stranger about a lease, getting the “Preston Lockley treatment,” as Nate called it. Ali knew herself from personal experience just how unpleasant that was. Maybe Giuseppe wasn’t as level-headed as his obe
se cousin.
Filled with confidence, Ali kept her gaze on Fat Tony as she spoke, but secretly directed her words to Giuseppe, who was squirming behind him.
“Did Preston disrespect you?” Ali asked. “Insult your family? Your pizza? Do you have a temper? A history of violence? A record of not being able to control yourself? Some past… little mishaps?”
Suddenly, Fat Tony’s brow furrowed. At the mention of the key words “little mishaps,” a look of realization overcame him.
He swiveled in his chair, the wood straining beneath his sudden movement, and focused on the fidgeting man behind him.
Giuseppe went bright red. The telltale sign of guilt.
“Giuseppe!” Fat Tony yelled, heaving his enormous body to standing so suddenly his chair fell back and hit the floor with a dramatic crash. “Did you kill the balloon man?”
Giuseppe put his hands in the air. “I didn’t mean to, Tony, I really didn’t.”
He had the same thick accent as his cousin, but his voice was weaselly, high-pitched and nasally.
Ali watched, astonished, as the truth came tumbling from his thin lips.
“He came in here yelling at me,” Giuseppe said, “just like you said he would. And I let him go, just like you told me to.”
“Then what happened?” Fat Tony said through his clenched teeth. “To make you go against my clear and expressed conditions?”
“Well, I bumped into him on the pier,” Giuseppe continued. “And he started up again. And this time he really pressed my button, Tony.” He clenched his fists and shook his head, as if riled up all over again by the memory replaying in his head. “He insulted the pizza. He insulted Nonna’s recipe.”
Fat Tony made a cross on his chest at the mention of their presumably deceased grandmother. Then he switched straight back into frustrated, disappointed mob boss mode.