Such a Stronzo
Before leaving the prison, I turned to the warden. “Can we take a look at the visitors’ log?”
“Sure.” The log was kept digitally. He stepped over to the computer on the countertop and typed in Noah Fischer’s name and inmate number. When he finished, he turned the monitor toward me and the detective so we could take a look. We leaned in and looked over the information.
Booth pointed to a line on the screen and turned to me. “Leah Dodd was here in early August.”
In other words, Fischer’s claim that his former girlfriend hadn’t been to see him in months was untrue. “Do you think he intentionally lied?” I asked. “Or do you think it just seemed like a long time to him?” After all, according to the lyrics of “Unchained Melody,” time passes slowly in jail.
She shrugged. “Hard to say. But I’d keep Leah Dodd on your radar.”
With a good-bye to the warden, Detective Booth and I headed out of the prison. As we walked to the car, she asked more about Fischer’s former wife, Marissa. “So she didn’t know what was going on at the church? The financial improprieties?”
“She must have known her husband was paying their personal expenses with church funds,” I said, “and she certainly benefitted from the arrangement.” Besides filling the closets of their luxurious parsonage with designer clothing and their bellies with meals at the area’s most expensive restaurants, the couple had taken vacations all over the world under the specious guise of mission work. “Problem was, she had no responsibilities for the church’s accounting or tax reporting. Noah Fischer handled their personal finances and taxes, too. We’d have had a hell of a time trying to pin anything on her.”
It was frustrating to see the beneficiaries of crime profit from someone else’s dirty deeds, but often the best law enforcement could do was catch the big fish and hope the smaller ones would learn their lesson about swimming with sharks.
We climbed into the car and set course for Dallas. It was half past one when we passed the city limits sign. Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. The kolaches we’d picked up early that morning at Pokorny’s Korner Kitchen had long since been digested, as had the candy we’d eaten. Our vacant stomachs grumbled and groaned and growled.
“We didn’t get to speak with Tino Fabrizio,” I said, “but we could go visit his wife at her restaurant, see what she might have heard, and get some lunch. Kill two birds with one stone.” Or one stromboli.
“Works for me.”
Booth drove to the restaurant. Given that she’d looked into Tino Fabrizio’s security business, which had been located right next door to the bistro, she knew exactly where it was located. As we turned into the lot, it gave me no small pleasure to see that all evidence of Tino’s former business was gone. His wife had expanded her restaurant and taken over the space.
When we entered Benedetta’s Bistro, Luisa, Stella, and Elena looked up from their various places around the room. The three sisters were all dark-haired, dark-eyed, and olive-skinned young Italian beauties. Bellas.
“Tori!” cried Stella, the youngest, using the alias I’d gone by when I worked at the restaurant. That’s how she’d known me for weeks. It was probably hard for her to think of me as someone else.
She rushed over and gave me a hug. We’d grown close when I worked at the restaurant, but the fact that I’d saved their mother’s life would forever brand me as a hero in her eyes.
I hugged her back. “It’s good to see you, Stella.”
The others came over and we exchanged smiles and hugs, too. I held out a hand to indicate Booth. “You remember Detective Booth, right?”
They nodded. After Tino Fabrizio had been arrested, Booth and the FBI agent working the murder cases had interviewed the women to see if they knew anything that could prove helpful. They hadn’t. Tino had done a good job of keeping his wife and daughters in the dark where his dirty dealings were concerned.
The girls shook Booth’s hand and murmured greetings.
When they were done, I said, “I told Detective Booth about the chocolate cannoli here and said she had to try it.”
“It is the best in all of Dallas,” Elena said, extending a hand to show us to a table.
As I took my seat, I looked up at her. “Is your mother around? I’d like to say hi.” No sense telling them I wanted to discuss the death threats with their mom, see if their father might be behind them. It would be hard enough to come to terms with the fact that your father was a killer. They didn’t need another reminder from me.
“She’s in her office,” Elena said. “I’ll go get her.”
Booth picked up the menu and perused it. “What’s good here?”
“Everything,” I told her. I spoke the truth. God would be as delighted in me as he’d been in Joe earlier. “I gained ten pounds when I worked here. But I’d recommend Tara’s Mushroom Pasta.”
She raised a brow. “Is that named after you?”
I nodded. “I tossed a few fried mushrooms on top of my pasta one day and realized how good it was. Bendetta liked it, too, and added it to the lineup.”
She closed her menu. “I’ll give it a try.”
Benedetta, the parent from whom her girls had gotten their dark beauty, stepped up to the table. “Tara, how are you?”
I stood and gave the woman a hug. “I’m good.” Okay, so saying I was good wasn’t entirely true. But God would just have to forgive me, and we’d get to that subject in a minute. I held out a hand. “You remember Detective Veronica Booth from the Dallas Police Department?”
“Wonderful to see you again,” Benedetta said, taking her hand.
“Can you sit with us?” I asked, keeping my voice low so her daughters wouldn’t overhear. “I have something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Of course.” She dropped gracefully into the seat next to me.
Elena returned. “Have y’all decided what you’d like?”
“We’ll both have Tara’s Mushroom Pasta,” I told her.
“Excellent choice,” she said with a grin. “Iced tea? Sparkling water?”
We opted for tea.
Once Elena had left the table, I turned back toward her mother. “I’ve received death threats, Benedetta. Someone tried to run me down in the street, too.”
“Che cavolo!” Her hand went reflexively to her chest as if to slow the beat of her heart. “Who would do such a thing?”
The detective flicked her cloth napkin to open it and settled it on her lap. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Benedetta’s eyes ran between us, narrowing. Her mouth became a grim line, too. “You’re thinking it could be Tino, aren’t you? That stupid, evil, nasty—” Her eyes popped wide and her mouth curved up as her daughter stepped up to the table with our drinks.
“Thanks, Elena,” I said after she’d set my tea in front of me.
Once she’d gone, so did Benedetta’s smile. She resumed her tirade against the girls’ father. “Awful, horrible, disgusting stronzo!”
I wasn’t sure of the exact translation of that last word, but I could hazard a guess. “Do you think he could be still running his mob network from prison? I’ve heard he’s in jail in Chicago now. Maybe that cousin of his that you didn’t like has been helping him out.”
She bit her lip and slowly lifted her shoulders. “It’s possible,” she said. “That side of the family was no good. But last I heard they were trying to distance themselves from Tino. They don’t like snitches, and when one of them gets arrested, they’re treated like a snitch. They assume that whoever got picked up might turn on them. At the very least, the person who gets taken in makes the organization vulnerable. Mobsters don’t like feeling vulnerable.” She gave me a pointed look. “If you ask me, Tino’s days on earth are numbered. The guys in Chicago? They got other guys on the inside, ones who didn’t roll over, ones they still trust. They could have someone shank Tino in the shower. Uno, due, tre.” She picked up a knife in one hand and raised the other, snapping her fingers once, but unlike Trish LeGrande’s earlier snaps, this one was meant for emphasis and thus didn’t offend me.
Luisa ventured over to the table, apparently responding to the snap. “Did you need me, Mom?”
Rather than telling her daughter the real reason she’d snapped her fingers, Benedetta said, “Bring Tara and her friend a couple bottles of the new Lambrusco to take home with them.”
“Thanks,” I told her. “But I’m not allowed to accept anything of value from a taxpayer.”
She laughed. “How many free meals did you eat when you were working here?”
“Too many,” I said, laughing in return. “But that was different. I was undercover.”
“Do what she says, Ma,” Luisa said with a smile. “She has a gun.”
I nodded and smiled back. “You’re a smart girl.”
As Luisa topped off my tea glass, she noticed my hand. “You have a ring on your finger! You’re getting married? To Nico?”
Nico had been Nick’s alias. He and Josh had opened an art gallery in the same strip center as the restaurant so that they could keep a close eye on both me and Tino’s security business.
“Yep,” I said. “Nico and I are getting married in October.”
Benedetta clapped her hands three times in glee. “I’m so happy for you! Will the ceremony be here in Dallas?”
“No. We’re getting married in my hometown in east Texas. Nacogdoches.”
“Ah,” she said. “It’s beautiful there. So many trees.”
“Would you and the girls like to come?”
“Of course!” She tossed her hands in the air. “We’d love to!”
“And we’d love to have you.” I realized the party bus could be getting awfully crowded. We might have to arrange for a second bus to ensure everyone got a seat. “I’ll get an invitation in the mail to you.”
“Grazie,” she said. “I am so happy for you. I know your marriage will be much better than mine.” She rolled her eyes and waved her daughter away. “Bring them each a chocolate cannoli, too.” She turned to Booth. “It’s to die for.”
Given the recent threats on my life, I preferred to think of the cannoli as worth living for.
Our meals arrived and we dug in, topping the pasta off with the delicious chocolate cannoli.
When we returned to the cruiser, we both unbuttoned our pants to let our full stomachs have more room.
“You weren’t kidding about that food,” Booth said as she started the car. “It was delicious.”