Despite his flip parting comment, Rossi had looked harried when he left the shop. No wonder. He not only had a crime to solve, he had a career to protect—his own. Once again, the realization that I was responsible for our involvement in the case ate at me like acid.
Mea
culpa
.
Slumped next to me in the passenger seat, Lee kept sending anxious glances my way. She looked tense, poor thing. She hadn’t had any fun since arriving back in Naples, only work and sleep and longing for her love.
I returned her worried looks with a smile. The biggest, most dazzling I could muster. Even faked smiles are better than frowns, and she rewarded me with a timid one in return.
“What do you say we go out for dinner?” I asked. “My treat.”
A little light leaped into her eyes, but she said, “Yesterday y’all bought a barbequed chicken from the Publix deli. There’s a lot left.”
“Screw the chicken, Lee. Let’s shake our moody blues.”
She shook her head. “You sure are using colorful language,”
“Damn right. That’s why we have to get you back to Paulo before it rubs off.”
She smiled, and I pulled a U-ee and headed back into town.
“How about the Irish Pub, our old watering hole? The food’s far from gourmet, but the people watching is great, and they pour a mean glass of cheap white wine.”
She giggled. Music to my ears.
“Young lady, you’re going to be in Paris with your husband before you know it. Guaranteed.”
“Oh, Deva.” Lee heaved a sigh. “If only I could be.”
She could, if Rossi had anything to do with it. Unless I beat him to the punch, but first I had to carve out some time to get to Treasure Island Antiques. Then, not only would I surprise Lee, I’d knock the socks off Rossi with a little secret I had in mind. I was as sure of that as I was of my own name. It felt good to be sure of something for a change.
As we cruised along Fifth Avenue South, a parking slot opened up—a minor miracle—and I eased the Audi into it.
In the warm April evening, the flower-perfumed air hinted that summer was ready to muscle its way into southwest Florida. Another month and the humidity would be relentless. But for now the palm fronds waved in the balmy breeze like fans, and the tourists strolling the open square wore the satisfied look of travelers who had hit perfect weather.
We sat at a table on the pub terrace overlooking Sugden Square and ordered two house chardonnays and an appetizer plate of nachos. After sipping our wine and snacking on the nachos, we decided on two of the house specials, Black Angus burgers. Bad for the hips, good for the soul.
I had a second glass of chardonnay so Lee drove home, chatting about Paulo all the way. Back at Surfside, quiet prevailed, not even a gecko scurried along the walkway. With no hope of seeing Rossi that evening, I slid a DVD into the player and settled down with Lee to watch
Titanic
yet again.
An hour into the show, just when Leonardo DiCaprio in a borrowed tuxedo bent over to kiss Kate Winslet’s hand, a scream rent the quiet spring night.
Then another. And another. Lee and I leaped off the couch.
“AudreyAnn,” I said, racing out of the condo. With Lee right behind me, I tore across the lawn and barged into Chip’s lanai.
“He’s dead,” AudreyAnn screamed. “He’s dead.”
“Who?” I asked, knowing, knowing.
“Chip.” Her voice rose to a banshee shriek. “He’s dead, I tell you. Dead!”
“Where is he?” Lee asked quietly, somehow realizing that calm was the best antidote to hysteria.
AudreyAnn pointed a trembling finger. “In there. The bathroom. Omigod.”
We made a mad dash through the condo, careening to a stop in the bathroom doorway. A raw iodine odor clogged the air, and on the floor, the tiles, the bath mat, every garment Chip wore ran slick with blood. On his left wrist, a gash like an open maw oozed more blood.
“A tourniquet,” I shouted. “We need a tourniquet. AudreyAnn, get a tie.”
Shocked lifeless, she stood without moving.
“A tie, a tie!”
Lee ran into the master bedroom, yanked open the closet and came back with a silk necktie. Grabbing a pair of bath towels off a wall rack, I flung them on the blood-soaked floor and knelt on them. I wrapped the tie around Chip’s forearm, shutting off the blood flow, hoping to God I wasn’t too late. His face was as white as one of his chef’s aprons.
I glanced up at AudreyAnn hovering in the doorway, wringing her hands. “Did you call 911?”
Her mouth hung open. “No. I never thought—”
“Get to the phone!”
She didn’t move.
“Hurry up! He’s dying.”
She just stared at me. Without waiting for her to snap to, I jumped up and dashed into the kitchen. I yanked the phone off the hook and gave the emergency responder the vital information, begging her to hurry.
“I’ll go out to the street and flag them down,” Lee said.
I nodded. Every second counted. Trailed by a catatonic AudreyAnn, I hurried back to the bathroom to keep a vigil over Chip. His face had turned from white to gray. The seconds were eternities, though I knew only a few precious minutes had passed before the familiar siren wailed onto the Surfside tarmac.
“This way,” I heard Lee call. “In here.”
I stood and took AudreyAnn by the arm. It felt like a piece of wood under my hand. “Let’s get out of the way,” I said as two male ERU medics rushed into the bathroom.
I don’t think she heard me, but she allowed me to lead her like a meek little lamb...
AudreyAnn
?...into the living room. I eased her onto Chip’s oversized lounger and perched on the couch beside Lee, my fists balled in my lap.
Dear
God
,
not
Chip
.
Not
sweet
,
lovable
Chip
.
While the medics attended him, AudreyAnn gazed straight ahead, eerily unmoving. She didn’t even blink. I eyed her uneasily for a few minutes then finally asked, “Are you all right?”
She slowly turned her head in my direction and looked at me without recognition as if I were a stranger who had somehow, for some unknown reason, decided to pay a social call.
“He killed himself for me,” she said, her voice filled with awe. “For me. Imagine a guy doing that.”
I stared at her, unbelieving. So Chip’s suicide attempt was a tribute to her ego? A notch on her gun? Disgusted, I shook my head and got up to pace away my nervous tension. One of the medics, the one with
Bill
sewn onto his shirt pocket, strode into the living room.
I hurried over to him. “How is he?”
“He’s lost a lot of blood, but his vital signs are steady. We’re giving him a plasma transfusion before we move him.”
“He’s going to make it then?”
“His chances look good.”
I turned to AudreyAnn. “Did you hear that? Chip’s going to live. He didn’t kill himself after all.”
Hiding her face in her hands, she collapsed over the arm of the lounger and, shoulders shuddering, wept like a baby. In between sobs, gasping for breath, she blurted, “Thank God, thank God. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
Lee sent me a little knowing glance that said maybe, just maybe, Chip had done the right thing—convinced the love of his life that she needed, really needed, him.
“Can someone answer a few questions for me?” Bill asked, shifting from one foot to the other, looking like the deluge was making him a little uncomfortable.
“I can,” AudreyAnn said, wiping her eyes with the back of a hand. “I’m the patient’s next of kin.”
Wrong
. But who cared about the legalities? To Chip, AudreyAnn
was
kin, and if she thought so too, this might actually turn out to be a win-win situation.
“Do you know any reason why the patient...” he consulted his clipboard, “...Mr. Salvatore, would attempt suicide?”
“Yes, I do,” AudreyAnn said, her chin rising. “He thinks I don’t love him.” She smiled, more to herself than anyone in the room. “But I do. I just found out.”
Bill flicked a male eye over her Junoesque form and continued writing. No comment, just that eye flick. But I read flicker very well. So apparently did Lee. She winked at me.
Bill took down the rest of the information he needed and went back to the triage site in the bathroom.
AudreyAnn sniffled a few times, but continued to sit straight as an arrow in the hideous defecation-brown lounger. When Chip recovered, I’d have to speak to him about getting a new chair.
“There’s another reason he fell to pieces,” AudreyAnn said, glancing over a shoulder to see if Bill was anywhere in sight, “but I didn’t think the medic needed to know.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“Lieutenant Rossi came by today. Told us Donny was poisoned. Did you know that? Poisoned.”
I nodded as a sole tear trickled down her cheek.
“Chip said even though he was innocent, when word got out he’d be finished as a chef. How could he reopen the restaurant with a poisoning hanging over his head? So whoever killed Donny, killed Chip’s dream.” She heaved a shuddering sigh. “If only Lieutenant Rossi had stopped there. But he didn’t. He probed and probed...he wouldn’t let up.”
“What do you mean, wouldn’t let up? That’s not his style.” I’d seen Rossi’s questioning technique.
Sotto
voce
, calm, quiet. To be interviewed by him was to get the velvet glove treatment...but I had to admit the velvet glove covered a verbal fist of iron. “I guess he had to get at the truth. But what more could Chip tell him?”
She pointed a finger at her chest. “Not Chip. Me.”
“Oh?”
She heaved another sigh. “He asked how well I’d known Donny before the...uh...murder.”
“And you did know him well, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I knew him all right.”
“I’m curious. How on earth did you two meet?”
Her eyes misted over, whether with memory or regret I couldn’t tell. “At the Island Grill on a girls’ night out. Donny bought me a mai tai and stayed to talk. Said he had come over from Miami with his boss. Francesco had business interests here and was looking for a house. Thought he might relocate to Naples. Donny wasn’t happy about that idea until he met me...then everything changed...for both of us. I drove over to Miami with him one night and—”
“The rest, as they say, is history,” I finished.
She nodded then bit her knuckle to stifle yet another sob. “But our relationship was over weeks ago when he...when he...”
“Asked you to move out?”
She looked over at me, eyes widening in surprise. They were a striking shade of bright blue. Funny I’d never noticed before. Guess like everyone else I had trouble getting up above the
carpe
diem
on her T-shirt.
“How did you know he kicked me out?” she whispered.
I shrugged. “Lucky guess. Obviously something happened to bring you back to Naples. Besides, I never believed you left to go live with your aunt.”
“Chip did, though. He wanted to, I suppose,” she said, a spark of insight that stunned me. “So he was shocked when he found out about Donny. I tried all afternoon to convince him the six months had been a disappointment, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Well the night Donny died, you did give an Academy Award performance over his body.”
“I know.” She actually looked embarrassed, remembering. “His death tore me up. A guy with a build like that. But I meant what I told Chip. I was over Donny. For good. He had a lot of baggage, and I didn’t need that.”
“What kind of baggage?” While AudreyAnn was in a confessional mood, I wanted to keep her talking. She might say something that would help Rossi.
“Oh, I don’t know. Nothing I could put a finger on. A bunch of phone calls. He’d walk outside to talk, but I heard Francesco’s name come up a lot. And Donny had visitors he warned me not to mention to anyone.”
“Visitors?”
“Yeah, always two men at a time. In business suits. Who wears business suits in Florida except lawyers and bankers? These guys didn’t look like bankers. Toward the end, I wanted to leave anyway...I got scared. Something was going on, but I never found out what.”
“Do you think they wanted to harm Francesco?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but with those two I think anything’s possible.”
The medics wheeled Chip through the living room on a gurney. Suspended from a pole, an IV drip fed liquid into his intact arm.
AudreyAnn jumped up. “I’m riding in the ambulance,” she told Bill and, bending over the stretcher, she kissed Chip’s cheek. “I’ll make everything up to you, honey, every day for the rest of my life.”
Though flat on his back and semi-conscious, whether he knew it or not, Chip was sitting in the cat bird seat.
