Cannoli to Die For Read online

  “You have any bright ideas as to how I should do that? Gabe says even the police don’t have any clues yet.”

  “Dotty was in real estate, right? When she wasn’t running Weigh to Lose?”

  “That’s what she told me, yeah. Said she works at that same place as your cousin Joe.”

  “There you go then. Maybe she made some squirrelly deal and the wrong people got pissed off.”

  Lucille felt better—that sounded promising.

  “So all you need to do is find out what she did and who she pissed off.”

  “Come on, Flo. How am I going to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Talk to some of the people she works with.”

  “So I just walk into their office and start asking questions. You gotta be kidding, Flo. Isn’t that going to look suspicious?”

  “Okay, here’s what you do. Put your house up for sale.”

  Lucille pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a moment. Had Flo lost her mind?

  “But I don’t want to sell my house. What would Frankie say?”

  “You’re not really going to sell your house. That’s what you’re going to tell the people where Dotty works. You’re going to pretend you’re selling your house.”

  “Oh, okay, that’s better.”

  “You’re good at getting people to talk. I’ll bet you come away with all sorts of information.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And when I get a chance, I’ll call my cousin Joe and see if he knows anything. We’re not close so I don’t know if he’ll tell me anything.”

  “That don’t matter,” Lucille said. “Family is family.”

  • • •

  Lucille figured she ought to take extra care with her appearance if she was going to visit that real estate agency. It was over in Summit and the people who went there were probably very well-off.

  There wasn’t much in her closet—her life didn’t call for no fancy outfits—just comfortable pieces like pants with elastic waistbands and loose tops. She had two dresses she saved for church—one for warm weather and one for cold. They were well past being new but would have to do.

  It was October—the time of year when you never knew what to wear. There could be frost on the grass when you left the house in the morning and into the seventies when the sun was out in the afternoon.

  She settled for her lighter dress with a cardigan over it and stood in front of the mirror. There was a faint spot on the bodice of her dress. She scraped at it with her fingernail but it didn’t want to come off. She’d have to button her cardigan in order to cover it.

  Lucille dabbed on some lipstick and powder and headed out the door.

  A couple of dried leaves were stuck under the windshield wipers on the Olds. She ran the wipers a couple of times to get rid of them. Bernadette claimed the Olds was older than Lucille, but that wasn’t true and besides, it ran real well still. Okay, it was a little temperamental in the cold weather sometimes, but who wasn’t?

  Lucille started the engine, plugged in her tape of Little Richard singing “Lucille” and shot down the driveway.

  She was kind of nervous, she had to admit, about this whole thing. Flo made it sound so easy—all she had to do was to pretend to be selling her house—but she’d had nightmares last night where she came home to find a For Sale sign in her front yard.

  Lucille parked in a lot on DeForest Avenue. The space was a little tight and she could barely get her door open. She brushed against the side of the Olds as she squeezed out and stopped to brush off her dress.

  Just her luck the owner of the car next to hers showed up just then. The woman was carrying a shopping bag from one of the more exclusive shops in town and stopped and stared at how close Lucille’s Olds was to her BMW.

  She shot Lucille a look and Lucille quickly made the sign—index finger and pinkie stuck out—to ward off the evil eye.

  The sun had come out, and by the time Lucille reached the real estate agency she was sweating, but she couldn’t unbutton her cardigan on account of that spot on her dress.

  She hesitated outside the building, looking at the pictures of houses in the window. They were huge homes with acres of perfectly manicured green lawns. What would they think of her little split-level? Lucille wondered.

  There was also a small sign in the corner that said Help Wanted. Were they looking to replace Dotty already?

  Finally she made herself push open the door.

  The receptionist looked up from her computer as Lucille walked in.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I want to sell my house.”

  Lucille said a quick prayer to Saint Felix, patron saint against lies.

  The woman looked surprised—Lucille couldn’t imagine why. She was either here to sell a house or buy a house.

  “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll see which one of our agents is free.”

  Lucille looked around. Behind the receptionist were several desks—most of them empty except for one where a woman was sitting staring at a computer screen, her hand hovering over her mouse. Lucille could see she was looking at shoes.

  The receptionist tapped her on the shoulder and she looked up. She gave a practiced smile, got up and walked toward where Lucille was sitting.

  Lucille felt her palms break out in a sweat and did her best to wipe them unobtrusively on the skirt of her dress.

  “Hello. I’m Janice Karpinsky. Won’t you come have a seat?”

  She led Lucille to the straight-backed chair in front of her desk.

  Lucille sat down. She squirmed around—the chair wasn’t none too comfortable.

  “Is everything okay?” Janice asked, a look of concern crossing her unnaturally smooth brow.

  Lucille wondered if she’d had those fillers Flo was talking about.

  “Fine, fine. Everything is fine.”

  “Good.” Janice licked her bubblegum-pink lips and put a hand to her blond hair, which put Lucille in mind of cotton candy. She leaned across the desk, the white silk blouse under her dark blue suit gaping open. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  “Sure.”

  Janice pulled up a screen on her computer. “What is your address? And how many bedrooms and bathrooms does the house have?”

  “Uh, three bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms.”

  Lucille had never been too sure how you could have half a bathroom, but that was the way she’d heard people describe it.

  Janice frowned. “There isn’t much call for a house with only one full bath.” She picked up a pencil and tapped it against a yellow pad on her desk. “Is there a great room?”

  What on earth was a great room? Lucille wondered. What made a room great, for heaven’s sake?

  Janice didn’t wait for an answer. “What about the kitchen? Granite countertops? Stainless steel appliances? Double ovens?”

  That didn’t sound like the kitchen of anyone Lucille knew. And it sure as hell didn’t sound like hers.

  “I suppose the buyer could do a teardown and build something bigger.”

  Lucille tried to imagine a big fancy house sandwiched between the two bungalows on either side of her with their postage-stamp lawns and cracked cement walkways.

  A bunch of papers spewed out of Janice’s computer and she put them on the desk facing Lucille. She pointed to a line with a French manicured nail.

  “If you’ll sign here, we can go ahead and get you listed.”

  Whoa, Lucille thought. She was here to get information, not sell her house.

  “I gotta take this home so my husband can look it over.”

  Janice pursed her lips. “Of course.”

  Lucille leaned toward Janice. “Did you hear about that woman being killed? Someone said she used to work here—Dotty Garibaldi.”

  “I heard it on the news last night. I can’t believe it. I saw Dotty only the other day.” She turned and pointed to the right. “That’s Dotty’s desk right there. It’s just as she left it.”

  �
��Had you and Dotty been working together a long time?”

  “Long enough.”

  Lucille picked up on a note in Janice’s voice. She had the feeling she didn’t like Dotty none.

  Janice fiddled with the large hoop earring in her ear. “Still, it’s awful, isn’t it? Dotty getting killed like that.”

  “And the police have no idea who did it. I mean, who would do such a thing?”

  Janice snorted and leaned closer to Lucille. “I can think of one person.”

  Lucille leaned in. “Who?”

  “Joe Ferrara. He’s another agent.” She gestured toward a desk to the left of her. “Dotty sold a house right out from under him. He’d been working that client hard, and she was about to bite when Dotty swooped in and sold the place to someone else.”

  “Really?” Lucille leaned forward eagerly. “Joe must have been furious, huh?”

  “He sure was.” Janice tossed a loose paper clip into a small dish on her desk.

  “I got the impression that commission was really important to Joe.” She shrugged. “Not that we don’t all need money, right? At any rate, that kind of thing was par for the course for Dotty. No one liked her, to be honest with you. We all hoped that when she started that weight-loss thing of hers she’d quit.”

  “So other people didn’t like her none too much either?”

  Janice shook her head. “No, they didn’t. But no one hated her as much as Joe did.”

  Chapter 6

  Lucille’s mother was standing in the kitchen when Lucille got home. She had her jacket on and her purse hung over her arm.

  “Where are you going? Is Gladys picking you up for bingo?”

  Theresa shook her head. “No. Bingo was yesterday. I want you to take me to the A&P.”

  “What? Now? Did cousin Louis give you another number to play?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did. He stopped by and we had a nice lunch together.”

  Lucille looked into the sink and wasn’t surprised to see two plates there. What was she going to do? Her mother was losing her mind. If she got worse, who knows what might happen? She could get hurt.

  “I haven’t even had a chance to take my jacket off,” Lucille said.

  “Good. Then we can nip over to the store right away. You can take your jacket off when we get back home.”

  Lucille knew there was no arguing with her mother. When Theresa made up her mind about something, that was that.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  She helped her mother down the path and settled her into the front passenger seat of the Olds.

  Lucille got behind the wheel and turned the key. The Olds didn’t want to turn over at first, and Lucille held her breath. The last thing she needed was for it to go on the fritz. Frankie would want to buy her a new car, and they didn’t need the expense right now. Besides, she didn’t want to part with the Olds even if the red leather upholstery was starting to crack and there was rust on the rear wheel wells.

  “I hope Louis was right about that number,” Theresa said as Lucille pulled into the grocery store parking lot. “He never was any good with numbers.”

  “You mean he never was any good with money.”

  “That, too.” Theresa sighed.

  Lucille got her mother out of the car and into the grocery store.

  “I want to ride in one of those things,” Theresa said, pointing at the motorized scooter by the door.

  “You don’t need one of them things. You can walk just fine.”

  “I think it would be fun.”

  “Yeah, it would be fun until you knocked down a display.” Lucille pointed at a pyramid of soup cans at the end of one of the aisles.

  Theresa went to get in line at the customer service desk, and Lucille figured why waste a trip to the grocery. Even though she’d been the day before, there was always something she could use. She poked around the aisles while her mother was buying her lottery tickets.

  They were having a sale on canned tomatoes—the good kind that Lucille liked. Some people said they couldn’t tell the difference, but she could. She grabbed a couple of cans and put them in her cart.

  Good smells drifted over from the bakery section. Lucille fished her Weigh to Lose chart from her purse and looked it over. There was no mention of cake—not even angel food, which she knew was low in fat and tasted so good topped with fruit and some whipped cream.

  Her cart must have had a mind of its own because all of a sudden she found herself standing in front of the display of coffee cakes, doughnuts and layer cakes. She looked over both shoulders, snaked out a hand and tossed a cinnamon pecan coffee cake into her cart.

  “There you are.” Theresa came up in back of Lucille and Lucille jumped.

  Theresa pointed to the cart. “I thought you was on a diet?”

  “I am.” Lucille tilted her chin up. “That there’s for Frankie.”

  “If you ask me, Frankie could stand to lose a few pounds, too.”

  Lucille raised her chin. “Frankie is fine the way he is.”

  She wheeled her cart around and headed for the checkout lanes.

  “Did you get what you wanted?”

  Theresa held out her lottery tickets. “I’ve got one for the Powerball tomorrow night—you should get one, Lucille, it’s a three-hundred-million-dollar jackpot—and a couple of scratch-offs just for fun.”

  The lines at the checkout were long, but the ones for the self-checkout weren’t bad. Lucille stopped to count the items in her cart then headed toward the express lane.

  The woman in front of her took forever, shoving half a dozen coupons into the slot. And she had more than twelve items, Lucille noticed. She shuffled her feet impatiently as she waited.

  Finally it was her turn. Lucille scanned her cans of tomatoes and placed them one by one on the belt. Suddenly the belt stopped and the machine began blinking. Lucille jumped back as a disembodied voice said Unexpected item in the bagging area. Unexpected item in the bagging area. Lucille checked. There wasn’t no unexpected item in the bagging area. What was the lady talking about?

  Lucille tried removing the last can she’d scanned, but the voice droned on—Unexpected item in the bagging area. She looked around in a panic but all the clerks were busy checking out their customers.

  By now everyone was turning to look at her.

  “Do something, Lucille, would you?” Theresa said.

  “I’m trying, okay?”

  “There is no unexpected item in the bagging area,” Lucille yelled at the machine, but it kept up with its monotonous drone: Unexpected item in the bagging area.

  Lucille looked around again, but there was still no one coming to help.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Lucille said, grabbing her mother by the arm.

  “But what about your tomatoes and the coffee cake.”

  “Forget it. Let’s just get out of here.”

  Lucille looked behind her, but no one came after them as they bolted from the A&P. She got her mother settled in the car and peeled out of the parking lot, muttering under her breath.

  Theresa had taken the lottery tickets from her purse and was busy scratching at them with the side of a penny.

  “I won,” she screamed suddenly.

  “What!” Lucille slammed on the brake, and when she looked in the rearview mirror, she could see the driver behind her shaking his fist at her.

  “Turn around,” Theresa said. “We can cash this here ticket in at the grocery store.”

  “That’s great,” Lucille said.

  Her mother had won money. Maybe their luck was changing. Maybe they could now afford to do a few things around the house—fix the leak in the roof and put in a new water heater before theirs conked out.

  “How much did you win?” Lucille asked as she pulled back into the grocery store parking lot.

  “A dollar,” Theresa said. “Isn’t that something?”

  • • •

  Frankie was sitting at the kitchen table when Lucille wal
ked in.

  “You’re home early.”

  “Yeah. I finished that last job faster than I expected.” He put his head in his hands. “And there aren’t too many more after that.”

  Lucille glanced into the dining room. Some of little Lucy’s toys were still in there, tucked into a corner. There was one of them things that Bernadette called an activity center, where Lucy could sit and make all kinds of noise—bells, whistles, rattles. She loved bouncing in it, her chubby little legs going up and down like pistons.

  Lucille felt tears pressing against her eyelids.

  “Listen, Frankie, why don’t we let bygones be bygones and have Bernadette, Tony and little Lucy over for dinner. I could throw together a lasagna and—”

  “No.” Frank swiveled around in his seat. “Not after what he did to me. And Bernadette going along with it after all we’ve done for her.”

  “Tony only wanted to stand on his own two feet.”

  “He was standing on his own two feet! Joseph left him half of the company—half of JoFra.”

  “I guess he wanted to see if he could make it on his own.” Lucille patted Frankie’s shoulder. “You’ll see. He’ll be back.”

  “I don’t want him back.” Frankie pushed his chair away from the table and it screeched across the linoleum floor. “And when I asked Bernadette to talk him out of it, she said she couldn’t do that. She even said she was all for it.”

  “But, Frankie, cutting off your family is like cutting off your own arm. It don’t make no sense.”

  “I’m sorry, Lucille, but I’m still angry. I can’t help it. And now he expects me to buy him out when he’s taken a lot of our business with him.”

  “But what about little Lucy? Don’t you miss our granddaughter?”

  “What do you think? Sure I do.” Frank spun around. “You go see the baby all you want, Lucille. Just don’t expect me to come with you.”

  • • •

  This wasn’t the first time they’d had money troubles or family troubles, Lucille reassured herself as she punched her pillow trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. They’d come through it before and they’d come through it again.