The woman at the door was maybe forty and wearing nondescript black pants and a gray North Face jacket. She was half my height, about as big around as a strand of angel hair pasta, and she had brown eyes, a long nose, and dark hair that was not as luxurious as it was simply long. It hung over her shoulders in sad little clumps and, though I had plenty of other things to think about at that particular moment, the benefits of deep cleansing and really good conditioning automatically popped into my mind.
Since Cindy was still upstairs rummaging through closets, I took over the role of hostess, and when I asked the woman what I could do for her, I thought maybe her eyeballs were going to pop right out of her head.
‘You can let me in the house, that’s what you can do for me.’ She didn’t wait for the invitation, she wedged herself between me and the door jamb and pushed her way into the McClures’ living room. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded, her hands curled into fists and her cheeks the same fire-engine color as her fingernails. ‘Where’s McClure, that son-of-a-bitch?’
This, I couldn’t say since I knew better than most that the where of where a person went after death wasn’t as simple as the heaven or hell most people expected.
‘It’s complicated,’ I told her.
‘Yeah, well it better get uncomplicated, and fast.’ Did I mention that this woman was no taller than a minute? The way her jaw worked up and down and she pulled in breath after stuttering breath, she reminded me of a little gray mouse on speed. All she needed were the whiskers. As if she was reinforcing my impression of her, she zipped around and gave each of the items in McClure’s living room display a quick once-over, and I guess she didn’t see whatever it was she was looking for because her top lip curled and left a smudge of red lipstick under her nose.
‘I need to see him.’ She stomped one foot against that area rug that had been tossed over the stained carpet, and I wondered what she’d say if she knew how truly close she was to all that was left there in the house of Dean McClure. ‘I need to have a talk with that scumbag.’
‘And you are?’
She didn’t expect this interruption of her tirade and, for a few moments, she choked on her outrage. ‘I’m … I’m …’
‘Well, come on, spit it out! Who are you and what are you doing here?’
She raised her head and stuck out her pointy chin. ‘I’m Angie Triccorio, that’s who I am!’
The name was vaguely familiar, or at least the Triccorio part was, and to figure out why, I did my best to sort through everything I’d learned in the last couple days. The pieces finally clicked, and I stepped into the dining room and looked at the framed birth certificate that was set on the buffet and leaning against the wall.
‘Aha!’ Like she was a heat-seeking missile and had found her target, Angie zipped right over to the birth certificate. She wrapped her bony fingers around the gold-colored frame. ‘This is mine!’
‘Hold on there, lady!’ I yanked the birth certificate out of her hands and just so she’d know it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, I wrapped my arms around it and hugged it close to my chest. ‘You just can’t come waltzing in here and start grabbing stuff. What gives you the right to—’
‘What gives me the right?’ She was breathing so hard, I waited for her to keel over. ‘Triccorio! Triccorio!’ Though I had the birth certificate turned toward me and she couldn’t see the writing on it, she stabbed a finger toward it. ‘Joseph Anthony Triccorio was my great-grandfather.’
This, I admit, was mildly interesting.
Which didn’t mean that I was about to relinquish my hold on the birth certificate.
‘So?’ I asked.
In return I got the outraged sputter I expected.
‘Joseph Triccorio was my great-grandfather,’ she repeated as if I hadn’t heard her the first time. ‘That means that his birth certificate … that birth certificate …’ When she poked a finger in my direction again I was glad I had the birth certificate pressed to my midsection. Her fingernails were long enough to do serious damage. ‘That birth certificate belongs to me, to my family.’
‘So how did McClure get it?’ I asked her.
‘What, you’re going to play stupid?’ Apparently, she figured I was, because Angie went right on. ‘There was an auction. Six or seven weeks ago. And all my great-grandfather’s stuff was included. Don’t ask!’ I wasn’t going to, but she flipped up a hand like she had to stop me before I did. ‘My father had three brothers, and one of my cousins, Jason, he ended up with all Great-Grandpa’s things. He’s a loser, and he’s up to his ears in gambling debt. He sold all the Triccorio stuff. He sold my heritage!’
‘And let me guess, Dean McClure bought it.’
‘Well, you should know!’ She tossed her head, but thanks to the absence of that deep cleaning and good conditioning I mentioned, her tresses did not bounce in response. ‘You’re his wife, right? You’re Mrs McClure?’
I let her go on believing it and eased into my interrogation. If there was one thing I’d learned in my time as PI to the dead, it’s that sometimes going in with guns blazing gets me nowhere. It’s not like there are any rules about how these things work, it’s more of a gut feeling. At that moment, mine told me that taking it slow and easy would produce more results with Angie.
‘How did Dean get your great-grandfather’s birth certificate?’ I asked Angie.
‘I … I told you.’ It wasn’t hot in there, but she fanned her face with one hand. ‘My stupid cousin, Jason, he sold it. He sold everything.’
‘And why did Dean McClure buy it?’
‘Really? You don’t know?’ She paced a little pattern over to the buffet and back again. Since the room was minuscule, it didn’t take long. ‘My great-grandfather was Joey Ice Cube.’
‘Sounds like a hip-hop mogul.’
‘Well, he wasn’t,’ she snapped. ‘There was a reason they called him Ice Cube. He iced people, get it? He was a hit man. You know, a mobster. Family legend says that he used to do Al Capone’s dirty work.’
Which explained why Dean McClure was interested in Joey Ice Cube.
I nodded. ‘So McClure bought this and—’
‘And a pair of Great-Grandpa’s shoes, and one of his fedoras. A tie tack, an address book, the racing form he told my grandfather was lucky and every time he took it to the track with him, he won.’
‘And Jason sold it all.’
‘Jason is a jerk.’
‘And Dean McClure bought it all, fair and square. Dean McClure owns it.’
She kept her gaze on the floor.
‘Sounds to me like this is staying exactly where it is.’ I set Joey Ice Cube’s birth certificate on the buffet and made sure it was centered.
‘But I tried to buy it, see.’ Like it was a magnet and she was a helpless piece of metal, Angie took a step toward the certificate, but she stopped cold when she saw the determination in my eyes. ‘First I tried to buy all the stuff from Jason, and I offered him a fair price, too. And you know what he told me? He told me he knew that there were collectors out there who would pay a fortune for gangster stuff. He told me he was going to sell to one of them. And then, that’s what he did. He put the stuff in an auction, and I went to that auction and, before it started, I heard people talking and they said that Dean McClure was sure to snap up every bit of gangster stuff there. I talked to him. I explained. I begged him to stay out of the bidding.’
‘And Dean told you to take a hike.’
‘No.’ Angie shook her head. ‘No, he told me that he understood, that he wouldn’t bid, that I could have the whole lot of Great-Grandpa’s stuff and that he didn’t care. But then the bidding started and—’
And I didn’t need Angie to supply the details. I could tell what happened from the anger that flared in her eyes.
‘As soon as I put in my first bid …’ When Angie looked my way, her eyes were bright with tears. ‘Every time I put in a bid, McClure bid, too. I went up and up and up on my bids even though I couldn’t afford it. And McClure, he met my bid again and again and again.’
‘It was a game for him,’ I said.
Angie brushed a hand over her cheeks. ‘Joey Ice Cube lived to be an old man, and I know he did some bad things in his life, but that’s not the man I knew. I remember the man who took me for walks and bought me ice cream and told me stories about what his life was like when he was a kid back in New York. Those things, they’re important to me. I thought maybe if I came around here I could talk some sense into McClure, get him to see what was right and how I couldn’t help myself that I lost my temper over the whole thing. It ain’t right, not this, not him having something that belongs to me. So that’s why …’ The right corner of her mouth pulled tight. ‘That’s why I came over here. To tell him he’s not going to get away with this. He’s not going to buy my family heritage. It don’t mean nothing to him. Nothing except that it once belonged to somebody this McClure never even knew. It’s my family.’ Angie’s voice trembled with emotion. ‘My family. And I’m not going to let McClure do this.’ She sniffled and marched over to the kitchen and looked in, then spun back around and came at me like a bullet. ‘So tell me where he is. Maybe I can talk some sense into McClure.’
‘I’m afraid it’s a little late for that.’
She gave me a blank stare, and I knew it was time to reveal the ace up my sleeve. ‘I’m not Cindy McClure,’ I told her and added a little lie for oomph. ‘I’m here in an official capacity. I’m working with the police.’
Angie staggered back against the nearest dining room chair. ‘I didn’t mean nothing. No matter what Dean McClure told you. I didn’t—’
‘He didn’t tell me anything. Dean McClure is dead.’
‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not possible. He can’t possibly be—’
‘As a doornail!’ I pointed toward the bloodstain on the living room carpet. ‘Happened right there. Just last night.’
Angie had bad coloring to begin with and her blusher – too purple for her sallow complexion – didn’t help. Now, what little color there was in her face drained away completely and left her as pale as most people think ghosts are. She backstepped toward the front door and waved her hands in front of her as if that motion could brush away the bad news.
‘It isn’t possible,’ she said. ‘You’re lying. You gotta be lying. No way McClure is dead.’
‘Saw the body myself,’ I told her. ‘But don’t worry. Word is, McClure’s wife is willing to sell his entire collection. If you keep your ear to the ground, no doubt you’ll hear about it and be able to swoop down and get your great-grandfather’s stuff.’
I thought this would cheer Angie right up, and maybe it did but it was kind of hard to tell. Because while I was still talking, she raced outside and slammed the door closed behind her.
Cindy picked that moment to clunk, clunk, clunk her rolling suitcase down the stairs. ‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘Nobody important.’
Yes, this is what I said, but the more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t so sure. See, there were a couple things about Angie’s visit that got me to thinking, and what it got me thinking was this: Angie was awfully upset about how McClure bought her great-grandfather’s stuff out from under her and to me, upset equals motive.
But there was something else, too. See, whether she realized it or not, Angie had said something damning there in the dining room. She said she wanted to explain to McClure why she’d lost her temper about the whole thing, but when she told me the story about going to the auction and talking to McClure, she never said that they’d exchanged angry words. Something told me that meant that Angie and McClure had talked before – or since – the auction.
This was all good news, right? I finally had a suspect, one with a motive and a temper, and I should have been all thrilled that the mystery was finally starting to clear up.
I was thrilled, honest.
Until I realized nothing is that easy.
Because on my way home, I realized something else. Cindy – Mrs Dean McClure – told me she had an airtight alibi for the night of Dean’s murder. She was at dinner with friends at Max’s. Only on my way home, I drove right past Max’s, and it was pretty hard to miss the fact that the windows were covered with brown paper and someone had written a message on it in bright blue letters: Opening soon.
I’d gone from no suspects, to one, to two and while I could see why either Cindy or Angie might have conked Dean over the head with that pen holder with the marble base, I could not see any reason either one of them might have done it and then walked off with Eliot Ness’s ashes. Since Dean was dead, the ashes officially belonged to Cindy, so she didn’t have any reason to spirit them away. And Angie didn’t strike me as anything like the HITmen I’d met at the old church. Unless she was related to Eliot Ness, I didn’t think she’d care.
And then, of course, there was the matter of that note Dean McClure had written to Quinn’s lieutenant.
These thoughts played over and over in my head the next day as I went through the motions over at Garden View. I typed up the latest version of Chet’s newsletter and accepted a whole lot of undeserved kudos when Ella proofread it and praised me to the high heavens because it was so interesting and so well written. I took a busload of people from the Parma Heights senior center on a tour of the high points of the cemetery, the chapel, and the memorial to a long-dead president (oh, if they only knew that he and I had once solved a murder together!). I consulted with Albert, my ghostly accountant, who gave me some advice on how to forecast my budget for the next fiscal quarter, and though I didn’t understand a word he said, I did what he told me to do and was glad to be done with it.
After a day like that, a long soak in a hot tub sounded like the perfect way to spend the evening.
At least until I had a better idea.
Long day? Overstressed? Tired and frustrated by a case that was going nowhere?
I knew the perfect antidote.
Quinn.
I texted him and told him I was making dinner at his place. Don’t worry, this didn’t scare him. At least not too much. He knew that when push came to shove, I could make a decent pot of spaghetti sauce and that I considered bags of salad God’s gift to the culinary world. I stocked up at the grocery store and headed over there.
Quinn lives in a seventh-floor loft where the floor-to-ceiling windows afford a killer view of the river and the downtown skyline. From the kitchen, I could also see a smidgen of Lake Erie shoreline and as I opened cans of tomatoes and tomato paste and sprinkled oregano and basil and fennel into my concoction, I watched the evening sunlight glint against the water.
I set the table and chose a bottle of wine from Quinn’s extensive and expensive stash, lit some candles, and waited.
Quinn had promised he’d be there, and I knew his word was golden, but I also knew that there were times he got waylaid by bosses and crime and bureaucratic red tape. By the time he showed up, I’d already opened that bottle of wine and started in on a glass, but he didn’t hold that against me. I poured for him, we clinked glasses, and he sipped and savored.
‘This is terrific.’ He breathed in the scent of the spaghetti sauce and gave me a kiss and that made it official – I couldn’t dispute what he said, things were terrific. Well, except for that note I’d found over at McClure’s.
A funny sort of rat-tat-tat started up inside my chest even before I told myself there was nothing to worry about. Whatever had happened at that downtown bar with Dean McClure, I knew Quinn had a good reason for everything he did. Just like I knew he’d give me a sound explanation – for that and for why he’d shown up at my office the day before and told Ella he was going to surprise me when number one, he said it wasn’t possible for him to leave work and number two, there was nary a surprise in sight
He strolled into the living room. ‘This is exactly what I needed. It was a long, long day.’
‘I’ve been working, too.’ When he sat down on the sleek leather couch and loosened his tie, I snuggled close. ‘For one thing, I’ve been trying to figure out what the surprise is.’
He gave me a look that clearly told me he didn’t know what I was talking about.
‘The surprise. The one you told Ella you were leaving in my office. You know, yesterday when you—’
‘Oh, that.’ He laughed, but not like it was funny, more like he was anxious to change the subject.
‘Even though you told me you couldn’t get away from work,’ I pointed out.
‘Well, that was the surprise, wasn’t it?’ Another chuckle didn’t exactly convince me but, hey, I wanted an explanation, right? And at least I was getting one. ‘I was going to leave you a note and invite you to dinner tonight, but I dunno …’ His broad shoulders rose and fell. ‘That felt so impersonal. Then you beat me to it when you called and said you were coming here tonight, anyway, so it worked out just fine.’
It did, and I knew in my heart of hearts that the whole I-can’t-come-see-you-but-then-I-did thing would turn into the big ol’ nothing it did.
Grateful, I sighed with relief. At least until I remembered Dean McClure. ‘This whole Dean McClure thing doesn’t make sense.’
‘McClure.’ Quinn put his glass down on the mid-century teak coffee table in front of the couch. ‘One less creep in the world. Good riddance.’
I suspected his attitude had something to do with what had happened in that downtown bar, but Quinn didn’t know that I knew. I played it cool. ‘You never talk about a victim that way, even the ones you know are bad guys.’
‘Yeah, well, McClure was …’ A shiver snaked over his broad shoulders. ‘All I’m saying is that without people like McClure in it, the world is a better place.’
‘Does that mean you found something in his place that proves he was a bad guy? That he was going to do something he shouldn’t have done?’
‘Found something? I wish. We’ve got a dead body and a lack of clues.’
‘What about …’ I knew the time was right. Since it was impossible to explain, I got up and took the note from McClure out of my purse. ‘This was in his desk,’ I told Quinn and, curious, he sat up and tried to see what I had, but I held on to the paper. ‘You didn’t take it with you when you searched.’
‘I didn’t have a chance to search McClure’s place until this morning,’ he admitted, and before I could even ask he added, ‘Yeah, I know, I should have done it Monday night when I was there, but after you left, I don’t know, I felt as if all the energy had drained out of me and my head pounded like a jackhammer. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to search, I couldn’t even think straight. So I kept the place locked up tight and—’
He sat up and aimed a laser look in my direction and his eyes shot green fire. ‘But not locked up tight enough, am I right? Pepper, were you poking around at McClure’s? You can’t compromise evidence like that.’
‘I was with Eliot Ness, doesn’t that make it all right?’
He either didn’t get the joke or he didn’t care. ‘No, it’s not all right.’ Quinn got up and stalked over the fireplace and back again. ‘You can’t screw around with my crime scene.’
I fluttered the paper in his direction. ‘Except this doesn’t have anything to do with your crime scene. At least I didn’t think it did. I figured you’d already searched the house and that’s why you left this in McClure’s desk, because it didn’t mean anything and you didn’t care who saw it.’
He held out his hand and instinctively, I pulled the paper closer.
‘McClure was going to tell your lieutenant,’ I said. ‘About what happened at that bar a couple weeks ago.’
‘And what?’ Quinn threw his hands in the air. ‘When you found that stupid note, you thought it wasn’t anything and now you think … what? That I killed Dean McClure to keep him quiet?’
Quinn is not one to jump to conclusions and this time he’d gone in with both feet.
I sucked in a breath of surprise. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t have to.’ Quinn scraped a hand through his inky hair. ‘Give it to me,’ he said.
‘What if it’s evidence?’
‘I said, give it to me.’ He didn’t wait for me to offer the note, he yanked it out of my hand and when he was done looking it over, he ripped it into a hundred little pieces and let the scraps rain down on the hardwood floor. ‘There. Now it doesn’t matter. I just did what I would have done if I’d found that at McClure’s the night of the murder. It’s done. It’s over. You don’t have to think about it anymore.’
‘But, Quinn … is it true? If McClure was going to contact your lieutenant—’
‘Like I told you, McClure was a jerk, and I don’t know why you care. I also don’t know why you’d believe some stupid letter from him when you don’t believe me.’
‘Maybe because you haven’t explained your side of the story yet.’ Was that my voice, high and tight and loud enough to bounce around the loft?
‘Maybe I don’t need to.’ He grabbed his glass and downed the rest of the wine in it. ‘So are we going to eat or what?’
I swallowed around the knot in my throat. ‘You can eat, I’m not very hungry.’
‘Don’t be so sensitive.’ Quinn took a step toward me and I stepped back. I was in no mood for an apology, not right then.
‘I’m going to …’ I refused to cry in front of Quinn because if I did, he’d think I was upset rather than just out-and-out pissed so I turned and raced across the loft and into the master bathroom.
There I allowed myself a couple minutes of hot, furious tears, then splashed cold water on my face and considered my options. Dinner with Quinn wasn’t one of them.
My mind made up, I left the bathroom and was almost out into the hallway, headed for my purse and the door when something in his bedroom caught my eye. It was nothing more than the sparkle of the last of the sunset against the waters of Lake Erie, but it flashed through the windows and across the room and landed on Quinn’s open closet door.
I am not a neat freak and, any other time, I would have ignored that open door. But hey, an open door gave me something to slam, and I marched into the bedroom all set to take out my anger and my frustration.
I didn’t, and I had that stream of sunlight to blame again.
Because it oozed across the floor and into the closet and landed on something that glimmered in light.
I bent for a better look and was instantly sorry I did. For one thing, I was pretty sure I’d never be able to get up again, that my legs wouldn’t hold me and my heart wouldn’t start up again and if it did, it would be with a thump that Quinn could hear. I checked over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t around before I got to my knees for a better look at the object tucked in the back of the closet.
It was a fountain pen holder on a marble base with a brass elephant on it.
And it still had Dean McClure’s blood smeared all over it.