Basil Instinct Page 13

  I decided to keep the knowledge of Georgia’s Belfiere B to myself, at least for a little while. Doing so might buy me some time to figure out where Georgia’s purse had gone, whether her death had anything to do with her history with Belfiere, and why the presently absent Landon Angelotta was looking very much like a man with secrets—not at all like my beloved pillow-talking cuz.

  I lifted my chin. “And you might want to check out Georgia’s fingertips.”

  Ice was cracking hard and swift, everywhere.

  And any guard let down after that third tequila wasn’t about to see you home unbedded.

  The female medic checked out Georgia’s fingertips, raised her arched eyebrows even higher, and showed her partner. When he frowned and let out an appreciative whistle, then held up his phone, muttering, “I’m calling it in,” Maria Pia suddenly found her voice and started clamoring in Italian. But I’m pretty sure not even invoking the spirit of Old Blue Eyes to deliver her from her enemies in Quaker Hills—which was the first I’d heard of them—was going to alter what was rapidly becoming clear to us all: that Georgia Payne had met a violent death.

  * * *

  It was Sally Belts and Boots, the fashionista half of Quaker Hills’ two police detectives, who showed up. Right off she sat the four of us down at our finest table—Paulette got busy with the cappuccino machine—and told us some interesting things. When she happened to mention that her last name was Fanella, Nonna eyed me like we were as good as sprung already. Georgia’s death was going to be a case for the coroner, but until they hear otherwise, the cops were treating it like a homicide, and the CSI team would arrive shortly. Paulette wanted to know if they liked their cappuccino with or without foam. Sally Fanella chose foam.

  We spent the next hour and a half stepping all over each other as we tried to piece together the events of the afternoon, which, of course, was the first Maria Pia had heard of Georgia’s postdeath travel plans, all in service of keeping the news from her and her, uh, mah-jongg club. At which Paulette winked at me and I smiled brightly at Detective Sally, who was definitely not sporting her signature double belts and knee-high boots. In fact, she was wearing yoga pants and what looked like a ratty camisole under a lightweight tan jacket.

  Maria Pia, unbelievably, was practically swooning with pride at our devotion. She ordered extra foam with her cappuccino, which she savored with sounds really better off left to the bedroom. I could tell Detective Sally was thinking the same thing as she tried to take notes about the dead Georgia’s itinerary. My job at nearly midnight on that day was to convince this gal in the yoga pants—aided by the best I could provide in terms of Italian hand gestures—that I thought poor Georgia had keeled over with a heart attack or a blood clot.

  The parts that involved the back half of Landon’s BMW we handled gingerly, and I’m pretty sure the word trunk never found its way into the conversation.

  By that time Sally was clicking her ballpoint pen kind of manically. Her lips were pressed tightly together, no doubt because she was calculating just how much evidence was lost in the fouling of the crime scene, what with the equivalent of two hundred feet trampling it, coupled with the kind of manhandling of the body you see pretty much only at strip joints.

  When the Crime Scene crew showed up, carting their equipment and arguing over whether the Phillies could go all the way, Maria Pia lost some of her bounce, probably remembering just last month, when a murder shut down Miracolo—such a nuisance—and she was jailed. Now, at least, she had the sweet comfort of Belfiere. How could the mystifying electrocution of one of her employees dim that glorious success?

  The question of Landon arose.

  Joe Beck sounded lawyerly and reassuring. Back on the job.

  Detective Sally Fanella asked us to tell him to pay her a visit down at the station—at his earliest convenience. In the hour and a half she’d spent with us trying to get the overview of what had happened in Miracolo that day, the woman looked like she’d aged ten years. Her soft, wavy blond hair seemed to have lost its luster. Her skin had sprouted fine lines. She looked like she suddenly needed a trip to the local drugstore for a pair of cheaters. Wearily, she finally mentioned that the restaurant was officially a crime scene and that it was closed until further notice.

  Actually, none of us moaned, not even Maria Pia, who, this time, might have been contemplating her “time off” as an opportunity for another fling with a brawny miner. Apparently she had an alibi for the time of “Georgette’s” death—she and Choo Choo had stayed up late watching Babette’s Feast, whereupon they both feel asleep—and was feeling footloose and unlikely to be considered a suspect. Ditto Choo Choo, because the two of them had stayed up late watching the movie together.

  At the first indication from Sally Fanella that we were free to go, but not too far, I slipped out, exhausted, while the rest of the staff divvied up tasks for the following day. None of which included opening at 5 p.m. for the dinner crowd. I drove exhausted all the way home in my Volvo, which my poor foot didn’t have the strength to push to 35 mph. When I pulled into my little parking spot and walked under the starry night to my Tumbleweed Tiny House, where I’d left a battery-op candle lighted in the window, I walked on shaky legs up to my front door. Grateful for an end to the day. Grateful for solitude. I always say I like my privacy, but really, it’s my solitude. I stopped just to take in the sweet sounds of the night, and I was so happy happy happy I couldn’t tell whether what I was hearing out there in the woods was spring peepers or summer crickets.

  All I knew for sure was, they had nothing to do with Georgia Payne’s death.

  Could I say the same for the rest of us?

  I left my teeth unbrushed.

  That’s how dog tired I was.

  I stripped at the bottom of the ladder up to my sleeping loft, and I left my clothes right where they fell. At the top I sank into my mattress, crawling over to the window to push it open, and flopped onto my back. The peepers or crickets—or maybe some third possibility I hadn’t yet thought of—were audible. So I listened and drifted.

  Who had a reason to kill Georgia Payne?

  I shivered at the fleeting thought that Nonna had just attached herself to a group that Georgia seemed to want all the way out of her life. But how far did she go? Was removing the Belfiere tattoo just the first step? How far did Georgia have to go to . . . what? Feel safe? Was she hiding out? If so, what bad luck, what with the whole mah-jongg club coming to the very restaurant where she’d just gotten a job.

  And then I remembered Georgia’s red purse that had disappeared. Did that have something to do with her murder? Who would steal a purse? It was like a different kind of crime. The sort of thing that middle-aged culinary cutthroats, no matter how out of control, would never think to do. Stealing a purse was more along the lines of . . .

  CRIBS kids.

  Corabeth?

  Really?

  As I started to doze off, I vowed I’d get on the case, not to nab Corabeth, but hopefully to clear her. All my arms and legs were arranged in just the right way as I slipped off to sleep. I’m pretty sure I had a smile on my face that no one could see because in those delicious final minutes I could hear very clearly those words spoken by Joe Beck when he wanted me to get out of Miracolo’s foyer and give the medics room next to Georgia’s body: “Honey, come on out of there.”

  Honey.

  * * *

  Overnight a storm blew in and I woke up once just to pull the window shut. Lighting darted through my little house, and thunder boomed away, right overhead, it seemed. All I felt was that drowsy kind of happiness that only made me slink farther under my lightweight comforter as the downpour pounded my tin roof. How bad can anything be, really, if at its absolute worst it still sounds like music?

  But by morning it was still raining, so I had my coffee in my window seat, one of my favorite places in my precious little space, leaning u
p against a raft of colorful throw pillows, courtesy of Pier One. You can tell by the spangles and embroidery. All I had was my phone for company, and between sips, every time I called Landon, it went straight to voice mail. I could fool myself into thinking he was still sawing wood in his bed the size of a football field over there south of town in his pricey condo. But Landon Angelotta was an early riser. At any rate, Vaughn Angelotta, his handsome tabby cat, was, and would knead and paw him into submission, when he’d get out of bed and come across with a can opener.

  While I nibbled a two-day-old chocolate croissant (I think the chocolate keeps it from getting stale), Maria Pia called—sounding totally on her best game—and told me she had called the entire staff of Miracolo and told them we were on hiatus and that they would, of course, assist the police in their efforts to solve the mystery of Georgina’s death. I waited for her to add what I knew she was thinking—namely, that the sooner any evildoers were put behind bars, the sooner we’d reopen—but she was admirably restrained. For Maria Pia.

  When she mentioned that she was contemplating entering the Sisters of St. Margaret Retreat Center to, er, contemplate for a day, preparing for her induction into—here her voice dropped to a whisper like she was uttering a state secret—Belfiere, I told her she’d better let Detective Fanella know her whereabouts. She grunted at me and we hung up.

  I decided right then and there that I loved the word whereabouts.

  I declared to myself that I’d celebrate this discovery with a second croissant.

  The rain came on steady, driving hard against my roof.

  Without leaving the window seat, I went to work, calling each of the Miracolo staff to check whether any of them had “seen” (subtext: stolen) a red purse belonging to the late Georgia Georgette Georgina Payne. Since Nonna had already awakened them, I figured to cash in on their stumbling around their homes trying to figure out what in the name of holy roasted nuts was going on at their place of employment.

  Jonathan remembered seeing a red purse when he was first introduced to Georgia, but that was it. Vera thought the purse had been yellow and hemp and really sort of crappy, right? That one, I told her, was mine. Oh, then, sorry (I could picture her looking sheepish), but no. Li Wei asked, “What purse?” I told him the red purse. Li Wei asked, “What red purse?” I told him Georgia’s red purse. And “Who’s Georgia?” pretty much ended our conversation.

  L’Shondra remembered the red purse because it was the one Georgia had brought to our first Basic Cooking Skills class and she thought it was kickin’, but she hadn’t seen it at the restaurant, and oh, by the way, can she collect unemployment? Giancarlo rhapsodized about a red purse worn by a sexy spy for the Allies he once knew, but couldn’t help with Georgia’s.

  That left Corabeth Potts.

  And Choo Choo Bacigalupo. Who owed me. Big. I placed a call to the Callowhill Residential Institute for Behavioral Success, where I learned I was welcome to visit anytime today, and that the students in question were indeed in their cottages. Saturdays were chore days. Not, I was betting, that many got done. Still, I’d go. And my mind slipped from thoughts of Georgia’s mysterious death and the disappearance—whereabouts—of her red purse, to thoughts about the familiar figures of my hit-and-run graffiti artists.

  I placed my final call for the morning to my monumental cousin, Choo Choo. Who actually sounded like lugging bodies was a beauty treatment, he was so upbeat. I dampened his exuberance a bit when I forged right ahead and told him what I had in mind. It wasn’t until a little while later, as the rain started to let up and the sky brightened, that I got a call while I was slipping on a pair of gray cropped pants and a pink camisole.

  “Eve?”

  For a split second I had to admit to myself that I was hoping it was Joe Beck, even though the caller ID was unidentified.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Mrs. Crawford.”

  Like the sky, I brightened up. “Did you hear from Maria Pia, Mrs. C.? We’re closed, probably until Monday.” Even as I said it, I realized I had to call Dana Cahill and the regulars. Grief Week was about to get cut short. Shucks.

  Georgia had been cut short.

  “I heard,” she said. Then she went silent.

  “Everything?” I probed. “All about the—death?” Not only does Mrs. Crawford read between the lines, she reads between the pixels in the spaces between the lines. It was one of the things I especially liked about her.

  “Yes.”

  “So . . .” I was a little at a loss.

  Her voice came back with some energy. “Let’s get together today, you and I.”

  Was she inviting me out for tea? What? “Okay.” After my trip out to CRIBS, I’d have some time on my hands. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking.”

  When other people say that, it’s usually along the lines of whether they want pizza or burgers for dinner. When Mrs. Bryce Crawford says it, you can bank on her having figured out crop circles or what happened to Amelia Earhart. So, I slowly replied, “Yes?”

  “There’s no Georgia Payne.”

  “Well,” I stated the obvious, “not anymore.”

  “Not ever.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “So, Eve,” said Miracolo’s mysterious pianist, “meet me at Jolly’s Pub at three o’clock and I’ll tell you who she really was.”

  * * *

  Try having a normal day when you hear words like that. It’s like hearing (not that this happened) a neighborhood brat blurt that he saw you and Ronnie Rosa lose your respective virginities in Ronnie’s brother Ricky’s bright blue Camaro. It hangs there. (I’m talking about the words.) It weighs. But my celebratory croissant had given me enough of a pastry fix for the morning that I was able to attend to other matters. The unbrushed teeth. The bug on the window, the slant of the maple flooring, and whether I needed a few more throw pillows for the window seat.

  By the time Choo Choo pulled up outside, I was outfitted in black pants and an electric-blue, drapey jersey top (must have been thoughts of Ricky Rosa’s Camaro). I paired all that with a black Coach bag Maria Pia had passed on to me—never used—years ago and a pair of joke earrings I kept from a Halloween party thrown last year by Landon: dangling chains sporting little replicas of human bones.

  I smudged on some eye shadow and stroked some red blush across my high cheekbones and slathered tomato-red lipstick across my lips. With a felt-tip pen I even added a couple of beauty marks, then I sprayed my hair into vampy place. This was just about as bad-ass as I get. Coach bag and stupid earrings. Fake beauty marks straight out of the 1940s.

  I even wore heels.

  Which I shined with black polish.

  * * *

  Then I locked my front door and ran down the two little steps to the wet grass. Choo Choo was leaning against a black limo he had borrowed from his seriously sketchy friend Junior Bevilacqua, who sat behind him in homeroom all throughout their school years. Junior now owned a “livery service,” and I hesitate to consider what he transports for a hefty fee.

  Choo Choo himself went mostly for the stereotype, decked out in his usual fine black suit he wears at Miracolo, but today he’d added a black shirt, white tie—here he varied the classic look with a bolo tie, secured with a skull carved out of bone—and a hat. Not a fedora, like any self-respecting gangster would wear. A beret. A black one. The look was strangely sinister, so I loved it. Points for Choo Choo Bacigalupo.

  We silently high-fived.

  Then Choo Choo Bacigalupo—aka Don Lolo Dinardo—climbed into the backseat of one of Junior Bevilacqua’s limos. And I slipped into the driver’s seat. We were off.

  10

  A slave to any GPS, I got us to the Callowhill Residential Institute for Behavioral Success without incident. Don Lolo sat reflectively in the back, legs crossed, eyes narrowed with musings. CRIBS was west of town by about a half hour, set—I
had found out online—on twelve acres of woodland. The drive up to the main building, the kind of staunch red-and-white colonial that gives nothing away, ran through an arbor of towering black locusts. The public face of Callowhill, I was guessing. I parked in front of the main entrance, figuring that when your wheels are a limo, no one asks questions.

  Leaving Don Lolo behind his privacy glass in his bulletproof (well, probably not) vehicle, I went inside the main administration building long enough to identify myself as Mitchell, Slash, and Corabeth’s teacher at the Quaker Hills Career Center. A short young receptionist with a slight tremble in her voice, hands, and head—understandable, from what I’d already seen of this crew—and large haunted eyes, had me sign in, which I did primly. More primly than my eye shadow and earrings warranted. I had a sudden bad moment wondering if (I stole a look at her name tag) Jenny Johnson was scared of me, not them. Should have taken off the earrings. She was too young to appreciate the Coach bag . . .

  Choking out some vague directions to what she called “Cottages Three and Four,” Jenny let me go, and I skipped down the steps and back into the limo. We drove halfway around the semicircle and turned an easy right onto Alvin and Marcia Higgenbotham Drive. Big donors, no doubt. Naming rights, and all that. I found myself wondering whether half the problem for these kids was having to tell your buds you live on Alvin and Marcia Higgenbotham Drive. Can you blame them? I’d be flicking lit matches, too.

  Brick “cottages” Three and Four, which stood next to each other, eased into sight. I drove slowly, since slow carries its own brand of menace, if you ask me. I parked silently, since silence carries its own brand of menace, if you ask me. I spotted the three of them—the dreadlocked Mitchell, the suspiciously clean-cut Slash, and Corabeth, whose hair was screaming red again and rubber-banded back into its Shrek ’do. Apparently the lads were mocking her, which she thanked them for with a quick twist of Slash’s arm and Mitchell’s, well, private parts. I shot a look at Choo Choo, who seemed impressed the boys didn’t howl.