You Cannoli Die Once (15 page)

“Patrick is jealous,” she confided, like she was telling me he wore pink garters.

Okay, that was lower than a crawdad on a river bottom, laying it on poor Patrick. “Oh, Dana, cut it out. Reginald Jolly didn’t even know your name when I asked him about the key.”

She wouldn’t budge. “That’s no—”

“Just tell me the truth,” I said, making my point with a little push on her shoulder. “I had a dead body in my kitchen and now my nonna’s in jail, and I’m unlocking the doors of Hell by putting cannoli on the specials board, so don’t mess around with me, girlfriend.” She had the good sense to back up. “I’m a desperado, you got that?”

She whispered, “I can’t help you.”

“From what I can tell”—I started ticking off her sins on my fingers—“you have no alibi for the morning of the murder, you’re posing topless for skank shots, and you’re up to something at Jolly’s Pub. Unless you want me to run this information by Patrick, you’re going to come clean with me.” I looked at my watch. “And right now. Because I have to get to the jail.”

“You’re mean,” she hissed.

“If I were mean, I’d tell you how to sing ‘You’re So Vain.’ ” I immediately felt bad, and wished I could take it back.

She exploded: “Well, Eloise Timmler at Le Chien Rouge loved it! Loved it, Eve, when I sang it for
her
.”

Now completely perplexed, I asked, “Why are you singing for Eloise Timmler?”

“Why do you think?” Dana looked me straight in the eye. “I auditioned for her.”

“Auditioned? For what?”

“For a singing gig!” she practically yelled.

I was mystified. “You’ve got a singing gig.”

“Eve,” she said in a dose-of-reality tone of voice, “I’m not going to stay at Miracolo forever. I owe it to my talent to look for bigger and better venues.”

“Full of
Crêpe
?” It was half the size of Miracolo and totally cheesy. “So that’s where you were the morning of the murder?”

She heaved a frustrated sigh. “I didn’t want to tell you before I knew I got the gig. Then I’d give you two weeks’ notice.”

There was now one less suspect in Arlen Mather’s murder, but I felt lighter than air. I was Gene Kelly swinging around that streetlight with a hundred-watt smile, imagining late night at Miracolo, without the “soulful stylings” of my pal. We might actually draw some new customers.

Suddenly I realized—“Jolly’s! You auditioned for Reginald, too, didn’t you?”

“Well, all he wanted was a head shot and CV.”

Reginald was smooth and canny enough to figure a way out of hiring her.

“So you went to Pixie Pix.”

She nodded. “Jolly’s, of course, is the primo place in town.”

This was news to me, because
Zagat
and I agreed that Miracolo was. But Dana always believes that the thing she’s going to is so much better than the thing she’s leaving—which, of course, was so much better than the thing she left before that.

“But right now he’s not hiring,” she said sadly.

“And Eloise Timmler?”

Dana grabbed my arms and gave me such a look of excitement that I almost laughed. “She’s letting me know today.” Dana pressed a hand to her chest. “I’d get to sing Piaf!” Then her voice dropped. “You know how I so identify with the Little French Wren.”

Sparrow, but what the hell.

The minute she took a gig at Full of Crêpe was the minute I’d have to let her go, friends or no. The only thing worse than Dana exposed was Dana overexposed. In a town the size of Quaker Hills, it would never do. But how could I tell her and still save the friendship?

*

Landon got into the Volvo in a muffled, muzzled mood. I scrutinized him. He was actually wearing his dad’s old powder-blue warm-up suit from 1985. He has always been of the opinion that powder blue washes him out, and he was right. The last time one of those moods hit he bought a Barcalounger. In brown.

I stared at him, but he looked unblinkingly ahead. “Jonathan should only see you,” I said.

“Just drive,” he countered.

I obeyed. “Are you in one of your ‘We’re All Going to Die’ moods? Or one of your ‘There’s Got to Be More to Life Than Italian Cooking’ moods?”

He inhaled. “Both,” he said finally.

Truly serious, then. “Explain.” I rounded a corner, leading us out of the commercial district.

He tucked his nice chin into his chest. “We’re all going to die, but I don’t want Nonna to be first.”

“You don’t?” I was flabbergasted. “I do. Much as I love her, she damn well
should
be first, Landon.”

“Not this way,” he said, shooting me a look. “Not in prison.”

My teeth worked the inside of my cheek. “What else?”

“Yes, there’s more to life than Italian cooking,” he burst out, “but with Nonna gone, what does it—”

“Okay, wait just a minute. You’ve already got her tried and convicted, Landon. So she dropped Arlen Mather off at the restaurant that morning. So she lied about picking up the dress at Saks. So she doesn’t have an alibi worth a damn. It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

When he said, “I’m going to Hell,” his eyes all glazed and puffy, I swiftly pulled over and shifted into Park.

“Landon, you don’t even believe in Hell.”

“I don’t believe in gay bars, either, but I go there.” He huddled against the car door, looking smaller than I could stand.

“Hardly the same, Landon.” I rubbed the back of his neck. “Hardly the same.” Then: “
Caro mio,
tell me what’s wrong.” He just kept sighing. Finally, I released my seat belt and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “Landon.”

We sat together in silence for a few minutes.

“I don’t want to make it your problem, too,” he mumbled.

I peered into his stricken face. “Hey, I’m making cannoli tonight, so I’m already going to Hell if Nonna ever finds out.”

He laughed softly.

“You can only make it my problem if you
don’t
tell me,
capisce
?”

He nodded slightly and seemed to come to some conclusion. “You remember the morning of the murder?” he said, pulling away just enough to face me. I nodded. “Remember when I came into the kitchen?” Of course. “Well, before I got to the kitchen, I found something in the dining room, Eve.”

“Go on.”

The words tumbled out. “I was going to show you, but then the murder kind of took over. And then later, I found it in my pocket, where I must have shoved it. Not thinking, you know?” His eyes pleaded for understanding. “And I just kept staring at it, because suddenly I knew what it meant, and I just couldn’t bring myself to take it to the cops.”

Now I was worried. “Landon, honey, what is it?”

Very slowly, from the baggy pocket of his powder-blue warm-up suit, my cousin Landon pulled something shiny. A silver bracelet. He opened his hand all the way, so I could look at it. The clasp was broken.

“I found it on the dining room floor, right near the kitchen doors.”

We both stared at the bracelet, and then at each other.

It was the twenty-fifth anniversary present from our grandfather to his wife, Maria Pia. “It could have fallen off anytime,” I said reasonably.

Landon slowly shook his head, looking at me with something like pity. “I checked, Eve. The cleaning crew had been there during the night. They would have seen it. She dropped it that morning. She didn’t just drop Arlen Mather off. She went inside, Eve.”

The question was, why?

12

“Withholding evidence,” I said into my phone in a purely hypothetical sort of way.

“Yes?” said Joe Beck warily.

“What can you tell me about it?” Beside me, Landon was chewing a fingernail.

Joe rattled off, “Spoliation of evidence means altering, destroying—”

“Wait, wait,” I said with a laugh, “who said anything about spoliating?”

The man plowed on. “Covering up, concealing … ”

I suppose that part included stuffing the evidence absentmindedly into one’s pocket. And showing it three days later to one’s cousin. “Okay, I got the picture. How bad are we talking here?”

Silence. Then: “What are you withholding?” Then: “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

My voice dropped. “I don’t blame you.”

After about three seconds, he went on: “I’ve still got your Visa, so I want you to authorize a one-dollar charge.”

I was puzzled. “What for?”

“Me.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little high?” I couldn’t resist.

“Quit kidding around,” said Joe a trifle sternly. “You’re hiring me.”

Did the bottom drop out of the lawyer market? “I thought you charge four hundred an hour.”

“That’s when I actually do something for the money. For a buck, you’ve just bought yourself attorney-client privilege.”

I already liked the sound of it. “Which means?”

“You can tell me your deepest, darkest secrets and I can legally keep my trap shut.”

I reached for my secret stash of pico de gallo chips, tucked away in the glove compartment. “Okay, Joe, I authorize you to put a buck on my card.” Then I turned to Landon. “Now I’ve got me a lawyer.”

Landon looked encouraging, and pointed to himself.

I turned back to the phone. “For another buck, can you be Landon’s, too?”

“Whatever. Yes. Fine.”

“Now, about those consequences.” I filled him in on Landon’s finding the bracelet and stuffing it into his pocket until now.

By that point, Joe Beck was groaning. “No, no, no, no … ”

Wasn’t looking good. “So tell me.”

“Up to twenty years.”

I needed to hear some wiggle room. “Hypothetically?”

He got a bit starchy. “There’s nothing hypothetical about prison, Eve, so if you—”

“Thanks, Joe.” If he was going to go all Marian the Librarian on me, he was useless.

“Wait!” He raised his voice. “None of that’s going to happen, because you’re going to take that bracelet to Ted and Sally. Right now. And you’re going to—”

“Thanks, Joe, talk to you later.” I hung up as we pulled up to the two-story brick colonial that housed the Quaker Hills Police Department. Landon grabbed his canvas tote with Bad-Ass Tree Hugger scrawled across it that contained some goodies for Maria Pia: a box of Godiva dark chocolates, her blue kimono, a few
People
magazines, new red rhinestone reading glasses, a pump container of Lubriderm, and a Magic 8 Ball.

I slipped the bracelet into my purse, the bauble that could buy Landon and me twenty years in the slammer. I needed time to think.

Inside, the QHPD was surprisingly bright and pretty nonthreatening, considering. Hanging globe lamps, natural woodwork, those little white octagonal floor tiles. Through a half-glass wall near the back, I saw Ted downing an overstuffed sub at his desk.

The desk sergeant signed us in and escorted us to the door at the back, which led to the cells. All two of them. Nonna sat on the edge of her lower bunk, a thin green blanket wrapped like a pashmina around her shoulders. Her hair was flopped in all the wrong directions and yesterday’s mascara had slid off her lashes. She looked every one of her seventy-six years, and I hated it.

The desk sergeant settled into a chair near the entrance and started rummaging through our Bad-Ass Tree Hugger bag, checking, I suppose, for metal files.

I heard Landon swallow a squeak, so I wrapped an arm around his waist. “Not a word about the cannoli,” I whispered.

He glanced at me quickly. “It would kill her—what’s left of her.”

“Same with the bracelet.” Then brightly: “Hi, Nonna!”

“Nonna?” Landon cajoled her.

We moved in close at the door of her cell, our hands gripping the bars. She finally looked up at us blankly; then she rushed over and kissed our fingers, the only part of us she could easily reach, which was pretty sweet. “Tell me, tell me, how is my Miracolo?”

Landon fielded that one. “Fine, Nonna. Lots of customers—”

“Some gawkers,” I put in, just to be truthful.

“Eve’s brilliant food,” gushed Landon. I tried to look modest. He added: “And Mrs. Crawford is on fire at the piano.”

Then I remembered. “Dana dedicated ‘Three Coins in the Fountain’ to you,” I told her, rubbing her hands, which were clutching the bars.

Nonna sniffled, clearly moved. “That girl can hardly sing, but
she
is a dear, considerate child with a heart as big as a
zuppa inglese
—”

I definitely didn’t imagine that emphasis. “
She
is auditioning for gigs all over town.”

“That
strega
!” she breathed. Maria Pia suddenly looked as good as if she had spent the last four hours in a spa. Then she told us she had hired Belinda DiMaio to represent her.

I told her that that idiot Belinda DiMaio couldn’t defend her decision to go to law school, let alone anyone charged with murder. Then I got bossy and told Nonna that she already had a lawyer: mine.

Landon gaped at me.

“He will accompany you to the arraignment.”
Note to self: Call Joe
. “And I’ll call off Belinda.”

Nonna twisted her hankie, her earnest eyes on my face. “Well, that—that thing you just said—”

“The arraignment?”

“It’s been postponed. Someone got the flu.”

Quaker Hills: three cops, two cells, one judge. For the first time since I had left Manhattan, I felt like I had moved to Mayberry.

Landon and I gave each other a quick look. This was Friday, and Maria Pia didn’t seem to have absorbed the implications. She was a jailbird for the whole weekend now.

“Choo Choo says you have”—I glanced back up the corridor to where the desk sergeant was snoozing, and whispered anyway—“something to confess.”

Maria Pia dropped her hands from the bars and gazed heavenward with a pious look. I knew she was referencing her favorite paintings of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where her eyes are rolled up to the corner of the room and she looks like she’s thinking,
This kid is driving me crazy.

“I do.” She chewed her lower lip. We waited. Landon looked like he was going to topple over with suspense. Finally: “I went back,” she breathed, her eyes still heavenward.

“You went back?”

“That morning.”