Despite wearing sunglasses, I had to squint against the Wednesday morning glare. The sun seemed to have cranked up the light to eleven, and it made my head pound.
The little bell over the front door jingled as I entered Moroni’s, and I winced—its delicate chime sounded like the bells of Notre Dame clashing in my head.
Angelica smiled. She was standing by a cafe table, on which sat a plate with a pastry and a steaming cup of coffee.
“Nat sent me a message last night spilling your secret.”
I froze in the doorway. What had I told Nat last night? I tried to remember, recalling one pint of beer after another, coins fed into the jukebox, arms slung around Nat’s shoulders as we crooned to an old Sinatra song.
I groaned, and not just because my head hurt. Had I made more of a fool of myself than I remembered? Had I told him who I was?
“That’s right, young lady,” Angelica said teasingly. “I know all about your hangover. Now come sit.”
Apparently, she would not accuse me of being the famous actress Bernadette Kovac. I relaxed and shuffled over to the table.
“What’s this?”
“Maritozzi, it’s called,” Angelica explained. “It’s popular in Rome and originally was the traditional sweetbread eaten at Lent. Now, thankfully, we can eat it whenever we want. It’s good for a hangover.”
I sat down, unsure whether the cream-filled bun was a good idea. My stomach felt askew. I started with a sip of coffee, which was so strong, my eyes watered.
Then I tried the pastry. It was nothing like any other breakfast I’d ever had. A sweet bun with pine nuts and raisins, and a little candied orange peel, which was then cut open and filled with rich, homemade whipped cream. It looked impossibly decadent, but as I ate it, I found it not only sweet, but filling.
Angelica made herself a coffee and joined me again at the table. She sipped it as I devoured my delicious maritozzi bun. Remarkably, I felt more human already.
“So, what’s the plan for today? Will it be a busy day?”
Angelica made an impatient gesture. “Busy? That’s not the word. We’ll be swamped. You know, I had help over the summer. Emma Francis—have you met her?—she was working here, but she stopped. She’s off to graduate school after Labor Day.” Angelica shook her head. “Before she came along, I told myself I was fine. I could handle the bakery by myself, and when things got extra busy, I could ask my brother, Carlo, for a helping hand. But I was wrong. There’s a lot we can do alone, but to face life—with all its joys and its difficulties—you need a helping hand. And sometimes the hardest part of facing a challenge is asking for that help. Having Emma work for me taught me that. So, with Carmine’s annual street festival coming up, not to mention the big cannoli competition, I’ll need all the help I can get.”
I nodded as I took another bite of the maritozzi. This all sounded wise—clearly, Angelica had learned an important lesson.
“So,” she said, putting down her cup with a decisive clink. “I’m asking: Are you ready to help?”
* * *
At midday, Angelica dismissed me, telling me to take a long lunch and insisting she didn’t want to run me ragged on my first day. When I protested that the work was helping me forget all the bad things that had happened, she shook her head.
“You come to Moroni’s not to forget, but to remember.”
I gave her a puzzled look, and she smiled and patted my hand. “You’ll understand when you understand.”
I stepped out of the bakery with a lightness in my step that I hadn’t felt in a long while. My hangover was gone, and the aches I felt in my back and arms were from good, hard work in the bakery—kneading dough and mixing ingredients and carrying trays of baked cookies from the ovens to the counter in the cafe.
My light step faltered as I caught sight of Cafe Roma across the street. I stopped. The cafe’s shutters were raised all the way. The windows were dark, the front entrance blocked by crime scene tape. A cluster of people stood on the corner of Poplar and Garibaldi, talking and gesturing at the cafe.
Before they could see me, I hurried down Garibaldi Avenue. I strode past Carlo’s Restaurant, Russo's Realty, Milano Books, and other storefronts before I came to Martini’s Italian Market.
Inside, I headed straight for the deli and ordered an Italian sub with mortadella and provolone. I got them to wrap it and headed for the fridges at the back to pick out a soda. For a moment, my hand hovered over a ginger ale. Then I remembered my sad fridge at home and chose a bottle of iced tea instead.
Outside, I looked around for a place to sit. Beyond Martini’s, a park stretched across a long town block. A sign at the entrance said, “Puccini Park.” I found a bench under a stand of sycamores and ate my lunch.
Last night had been a mistake, I reflected. Nat was nice and all, but I shouldn’t have gotten carried away and—
And had fun?
I sighed. The truth was that Nat and I had a blast at the Old Mill. I’d laughed. I’d felt happy.
If I was honest with myself—and I had to remember Roberta’s little lesson about honesty (Christmas music, not punk music)—I was already looking forward to another night at the Old Mill with Nat.
But could I risk another night of fun?
My mind was in a muddle, and it had nothing to do with the hangover. I finished my sub and iced tea and threw the wrapping paper and bottle in a nearby garbage can. Then I took a walk to clear my head. A car slowly circled the park, but I took no notice. I needed to put my thoughts in order.
I left the park and crossed Garibaldi Avenue and turned down a side street.
Rimini Street led to another tree-lined neighborhood. The ranch-style homes here were more modest than my own. Lawns ran wild, kids’ toys lay strewn across cracked driveways, and plywood covered the windows of one house I passed. Behind Garibaldi Avenue’s manicured facade, Carmine had an unhappy side, too.
My thoughts returned to Mark Lewis and the crime scene. The killer must have come in the back using keys…
Or did he?
The smudge from an espresso cup. Mark’s keys on the counter. Back door locked. Front door, too. The sound of a door slamming.
An idea was forming in my mind…
Occasionally, a kid raced by me on a bike, or a car rumbled past, but otherwise, it was quiet. Most people were at work. Which was why it didn’t take me long to notice that I was being followed.
The car kept its distance. Still, I could hear its engine, the steadiness of its rumbling as it drifted behind me, and then when I turned off Rimini Street onto St. Francis Avenue, I saw it.
It was a police cruiser.
That should have reassured me, I suppose, since it wasn’t a madman with a shotgun stalking me. No, it was the Carmine police shadowing me. This was no doubt Chief Tedesco’s doing. She was keeping an eye on me.
I clenched my fists and increased my stride. I marched onto Modena Street. There was no sidewalk, so I walked on the cracked and potholed blacktop alongside the curb. I could sense the car speeding up to keep pace with me.
At the end of the street, I turned right onto Cabrini Avenue. There was a low tree on the corner, and together with a hedge, it blocked the view from Modena Street.
As soon as I’d rounded the corner, I stopped and crouched down, making sure the driver of the car wouldn’t be able to see me.
The car reached the end of Modena Street and idled. No doubt the driver was craning his neck to see where I went, and although the windows were down, I couldn’t see who drove the car.
I jumped out of my hiding place and up to the car window.
Behind the wheel sat Officer Anthony Ferrante.
“Jeez,” he said. “Was I that obvious?”
“Why are you following me?”
He turned away, his hands gripping the steering wheel as he refused to meet my eyes.
“I’m supposed to keep an eye on you,” he said. “Chief’s orders.”
“I see.” I would have enjoyed staring at his handsome face, if it weren’t for the anger that was coursing through me like electricity. “You think I’d kill my boss because we disagreed about a cannoli?”
He shook his head. Then bravely turned his attention back to me. “Look, I don’t like this detail. Honestly. But Chief Tedesco—”
“Chief Tedesco and I need to talk,” I said, shocking myself as much as I apparently shocked Officer Ferrante. He flexed his fingers on the wheel, clearly nervous.
As soon as I’d said the words, I knew I was right. Chief Tedesco represented justice in this town. She knew about my placement in witness protection and how precarious my situation in Carmine was. If she was a serious officer of the law, she would want to find the right killer, not nail the murder on the first fool who walked in on the dead body. I refused to play the patsy.
“Take me down to the station,” I demanded. “I want to speak to Chief Tedesco now.”
“She’s not at the station. She went home for lunch.”
“Then take me to her house.”
Officer Ferrante gazed at me, probably thinking I was crazy. Then he sighed and leaned over and opened the passenger door.
“All right,” he said. “Hop in.”
* * *
Chief of Police Diana Tedesco lived at the far end of Verdi Lane, a few streets from my own home. I had pictured her living in something big and solid, like a Scottish castle, complete with dungeons and torture chambers. But of course they didn’t have those in Carmine.
In fact, her house was a modest ranch with ivy-covered trellises and a well-kept lawn.
Officer Ferrante didn’t accompany me to the door. Maybe he was one of those guys who would happily take a bullet to protect and serve, yet cowered under the couch whenever two women had a confrontation.
I rang the doorbell, which chimed inside. Distantly, I could hear a TV or radio. Then steps came toward me. The door opened.
Chief Tedesco’s eyes widened. She took a step backward.
But then recovered quickly.
She frowned. “What do you want, Miss Smyth?”
Was it my imagination of did she say my name—my assumed name—with sarcasm? She gazed over my shoulder toward Officer Ferrante, which only deepened her frown.
“I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Mark Lewis,” I said. “Can I come in?”
She pushed the door, halfway closing it. “You can tell me what you need to tell me right here.”
I sighed. She wasn’t going to make this easy. Behind her, TV voices fought for my attention. I could glimpse the corner of a framed print on the hallway wall and a little table with a ceramic bowl for keys and coins.
“My only crimes are finding Mark and then panicking,” I said. “Although you seem to suspect me, I had no reason to kill him. You know how important a new life in Carmine is to me. I needed that job badly. I may not have liked him, but that’s no reason to kill someone.”
“Interesting that you should say that,” Chief Tedesco said with a bitterness that surprised me.
I tried another tack. “Look, I remembered something. It may be important. There was a coffee ring on the counter. I noticed it when I found Mark, and it was only later that I realized why it stood out.”
I explained my theory about the espresso cup, and how it suggested Mark had a visitor before me. “The killer was there when I arrived. I’m almost sure of it. I heard a door slam. It must have been the door between the cafe and the kitchen—or else the back door. The killer locked the back door. Why bother? Well, to slow me down and allow the fire to take hold.”
Chief Tedesco said nothing, simply continuing to glare at me. It wasn’t a good sign, but it wasn’t a bad sign, either. At least I still had her attention.
“So, based on clues, who could the killer be? As far as we know, only two people had keys. Mark and myself. So Mark must have let the killer into the cafe. If the killer had been any old stranger, he probably wouldn’t have let them in. Even if he did, would he then have offered them an espresso? Mark was notoriously cheap. There would be a sales record for the espresso. But I bet there isn’t.”
“There isn’t,” Chief Tedesco confirmed.
“Right,” I said, excited to see an opportunity to find common ground with the chief. “Which means that he did give the visitor an espresso for free. It would have to be someone close to him or he’d demand money.”
“Or, Miss Smyth, he’d simply dock their pay.” She narrowed her eyes. “An employee could make the espresso and then Mark would have subtracted it from her paycheck. An employee knew when Mark would be at work and when others were likely to turn up. She had the keys to get in and out. She knew where the knife was.”
“But she wouldn’t gain anything from killing her boss, least of all if her greatest desire was to keep a low profile,” I protested. “Look, you have to believe me…”
Behind Chief Tedesco, the voices on the TV argued about something. It was as if they were echoing our conversation, as if one of them was me, demanding to be heard.
My whole body tensed as it dawned on me: There was a reason I thought the TV sounded like me. Because it was me. The voice coming from the TV within the house was Eve Silver.
“Mr. Henslow’s body was found in the lake,” Eve Silver was saying on the TV. “But the autopsy showed he’d swallowed saltwater.”
“He didn’t drown in the boating accident.” (That was Adam Gold, Jay Casanova, my former co-star.)
“Right. He was drowned in the ocean. Then the killer stuffed him in the trunk of his car and drove him to the lake and dumped him.”
Both Chief Tedesco and I had gone quiet. I was listening intently. So was she. We were staring at each other, and a cold, horrible realization crept over me.
“We’re done,” she blurted. “You want to talk? Fine. Come to the station.”
She swung the door shut. Slam. The lock clicked.
I stood on the front steps of Chief Tedesco’s house, dazed. As I turned around, I caught sight of Officer Ferrante in the cruiser. He was looking as uncomfortable as ever, entirely focused on the view of the street ahead. You’d think he was studying a particularly gnarly traffic jam, or he’d spotted several would-be burglars creeping around houses. But apart from a sprinkler spraying a neighbor’s lawn, Verdi Lane was dead quiet.
Chief Tedesco, home for lunch, had been watching Silver & Gold when I interrupted her. If she’d been listening to NPR or WFUV or watching the Weather Channel, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But Silver & Gold was old news. Either the rerun on TV was a massive coincidence or else Chief Tedesco had deliberately chosen to stream it during her lunch break.
Well, which was it?
And if she was deliberately watching Silver & Gold, was it because she was researching my background? Presumably she had a big case file from U.S. Marshall Roberta LaRosa. Watching Eve Silver solve mysteries with her dashing co-star could hardly constitute serious law enforcement research. Or could it?
I was halfway down the driveway, thinking I’d let Ferrante drive me home, when I decided I had to know. I swiveled around and cast a glance at the front windows. The lace curtains were undisturbed. There was no sign that Chief Tedesco was peeking out. I headed around the house.
Behind me, I heard Ferrante hiss at me, “Hey, Smyth, what do you think you're doing?”
But I kept going.
Around the side of the house, I found another window. The curtains were parted, providing an ample view of Chief Tedesco’s modest kitchen-living room combo. Diana Tedesco sat at her kitchen bar, staring at a flatscreen TV mounted on the wall while eating pasta from a bowl. Leftovers? No, a discarded bag on the counter suggested a frozen, ready-made pasta meal. Which, no doubt, she’d microwaved. I had a moment to wonder at the sad state of her culinary experiences when those thoughts were interrupted.
No, not just interrupted. Blown apart.
Because not only did I see my own face on the TV screen—I was Eve Silver standing next to Jay Casanova as Adam Gold—I also saw Jay’s face everywhere else in the living room. There were movie posters from all his feature films: 24-Karat Gold I, 24-Karat Gold II, The Adam Gold Files, and From Cold Case to Gold Case. Plus framed photographic prints, one of Jay at the Academy Awards, grinning at the camera, one arm around his brother’s shoulders. The print was signed. I recognized Jay’s handwriting. The other scrawl was no doubt Harry’s. There was also a heart-shaped pillow on the couch with Jay’s face embroidered onto it. It looked distinctly homemade.
My hands had gone ice cold. I clenched them. Then unclenched them. This was beyond my worst nightmares.
Because everywhere I looked, there was irrefutable evidence: Chief Diana Tedesco was a die-hard Jay Casanova fan.