I still don’t know where we ate. There was no name above the door, just the street number. The plate glass window, bedecked from the inside with red gingham curtains, offered no clue.
The pasta was so good I had to hold myself back from simply lowering my head into the bowl and slurping. We drank fairly cheap Chianti and talked about our kids. We also may have discussed sex a bit, but that was after at least three glasses of wine. Enza insisted on espresso, which I knew would keep me awake all night, but it seemed like such a perfect ending for such a perfect meal. We sat and sipped in silence until I saw a tray laden with slices of cheesecake go by.
“So, I’m guessing the cheesecake here is good?” I said.
Enza closed her eyes and sighed with pure bliss. “To die for.”
“Too bad I’m so stuffed I can’t imagine taking even one bite.”
Enza waved her hand and the waiter appeared. “Two slices of plain cheesecake,” she said. “To go. And the check.”
She insisted on paying, and I was still a little too buzzed from the wine to argue. We took our cheesecake-laden paper bags to the car, and as I was strapping myself in, Enza was poking around in the bag.
“No forks,” she complained.
“Is that an issue?”
“What if there was a cheesecake emergency, and I needed a bite on the road?”
“Ah…” What could I say?
It started to rain again. She settled the bag between the seats and sat for a moment, then smacked the steering wheel with both palms.
“I know what we need to do,” she announced.
“Eat celery and cottage cheese for the next three days?”
“No. We need to get some proof”
“Proof?”
“About that Silvio guy. You know, our serial killer.” She started the car.
“He’s right next door to my aunts, and we’re close.”
“How close?”
“Where’s your phone. I can enter the address.”
She dug around in her handbag and handed her cellphone to me. “So we’re going to check out Mr. Silvio’s apartment? Is that such a good idea? It’s breaking and entering,”
“Didn’t you just say we needed proof?” I entered the address and gave the phone back to her.
She glanced down at it, and pulled out into traffic. “You think we’ll find bodies stashed in his apartment?”
“No. But I bet if we look around, we might find his trophies.”
“Oh my God. The earrings.”
“Yep. All those missing earrings.”
She glanced at me. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be snooping. And didn’t you say this was too much, even for you?”
“I know, but…we’re right here.”
She grinned and put the phone on the dashboard. “I’m starting to like the way you think. Call Jo,” she said loudly.
A disembodied voice called out, “Dialing Joanne Collins.”
Jo answered on the third ring. “What’s up?”
“Listen, Jo, track me on the FindMyPhone thingy. We may need help.”
“Help with what?” Jo sounded, understandably, confused.
“We’re going to check out the apartment of that Silvio guy. Ellie here figures there’s an answer or two to be found there.”
“Oh my God,” Jo muttered. “Ellie, this is your idea? Can’t you stop her?”
I glanced at Enza, who wore a look of pure determination. “I think it’s too late for that now.”
Jo swore, and I could hear a flurry of activity on her end of the line. “Enza, you do remember that we are a party-planning company,” she muttered, “and not Charlie’s Angels?”
Enza braked hard and made an illegal U-turn, tires screeching against the wet pavement. “Yeah, and listen, Jo? Phone Phyl and tell her what’s happening. In case we all disappear, we’ll need somebody to know where to start looking.”
Jo swore again. “Okay, I’ve got you. I can be there in fifteen minutes. Can you wait twenty minutes?”
Enza sighed. “No.” She clicked off the Bluetooth connection.
“Why can’t we wait twenty minutes?”
“Because Jo has a negative sense of direction. Even with the GPS, written instructions, a map, and a trail of breadcrumbs, it’ll probably take her a week to find us.”
“Then why did you call her?”
“We may need backup.”
“What about Phyllis?”
Enza rolled her eyes. “She’s in the middle of a domestic crisis right now. She may be our last resort, but definitely not the first line of defense.” She tapped the wheel impatiently with her nails. “But you’re right. Not a whole lotta confidence here.” She raised her voice. “Call Sam.”
While the phone was dialing, my brain was racing. Why did she have my boyfriend on her Bluetooth speed dial? Before I could start really worrying, Sam picked up.
“Enza? What a surprise. What’s going on?”
Enza had stopped for a red light and obviously didn’t like it, and drummed all of her fingertips against the steering wheel. “We’re close to Rose and Gloria’s place. In Newark? So we thought we’d take a look around Henry Silvio’s apartment.”
“Do you think he’s going to just let you in?”
“Probably not, but I don’t see that as a problem.”
“Enza? That sort of thing is against the law. You know that, right? Believe me, Silvio is being looked at very carefully. If there’s anything there, it will be found. And besides—wait. We?”
Absurdly, I waved my hand. “Hi, Sam.”
“Ellie, make her turn that car around right now. You know how I feel about you poking into things better left to the police.”
Enza leaned sideways and spoke into my ear. “Let me handle him.” She straightened. “But, Sam, the thing is, we’re right around the corner,” she said smoothly. “Now, if you want, you can help us out a little bit here. Or we can just, you know…”
“Enza,” he said, very patiently, “I’m a police officer. I cannot help you out.” What you’re doing is—”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, hitting the gas pedal hard and sending us shooting past the just-turned green light. “Well, whatever.”
“Ellie, I mean it, you can’t break into Silvio’s apartment.”
“Well, actually, we probably could,” I said, feeling a little guilty.
“You realize,” he said, his voice getting louder and a little less patient, “that he may very well be a serial killer?”
“Well, come on, Sam,” Enza said. “I just told you. We won’t go in there if he’s at home. Listen, we’re almost there. Talk soon.” She hung up.
I stared straight ahead as Enza made a few more turns, and we were on a familiar block, tree-lined and peaceful looking in the growing dark.
“Where?” she asked.
I pointed, and she pulled up to the curb in front of my aunts’ house.
I glanced up to the top floor, left. All the lights were blazing.
“We should go up there and say hello,” I said. “They might know if he’s home.”
“Another good idea.”
We got out of the car, ran through the rain, mounted the stoop, and I pushed the bell, three short taps, the family’s signal. I heard the lock on the outer door click a few seconds later.
I opened the front door. “Why do you have Sam on speed dial?” I asked.
She tilted her head at me. “If I tell you, I guarantee you’ll be pissed.”
We stared at each other for a few moments, then went upstairs.
Aunt Gloria had the door to the apartment open, and her arms were spread wide. “Hello! What a surprise! And in this terrible weather, too. Enza, how lovely to see you again. Come in. We have cannoli.”
“No cannoli, Aunt Gloria,” I said.
“Is your serial killer neighbor home?” Enza asked, getting right to the point.
Aunt Gloria frowned. “Henry? Well his car is gone.”
“Good enough,” Enza said. “Maybe a little cannoli?”
The kitchen was the biggest room in the apartment, still decorated in classic 1975 colonial wallpaper with a faux wagon-wheel light fixture. Aunt Rose came shuffling in, kissed and hugged, then folded her arms critically.
“You came all this way for cannoli?” she asked.
I don’t know how I was doing it, but the bites of crisp shell and creamy filling were actually going into my mouth. I shook my head and pointed my fork at Enza.
She delicately wiped a bit of cream from the corner of her mouth. “This Silvio guy killed Connie.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “But we sorta have a feeling about him.”
“A big feeling. So Ellie and I want a peek in his apartment.”
Aunt Rose’s eyes widened. “I knew it! Henry was never a nice man.”
“Just because he wasn’t a nice man doesn’t mean he’s a killer,” I said, but logic had fled the room.
Aunt Gloria, sitting next to Enza, hitched herself a little closer. “He never had a pet,” she confided.
“And he would never buy from little Emily downstairs,” Aunt Rose said. “Who doesn’t buy Girl Scout cookies?”
“And that sweet little African-American boy who wanted to ride his bike in the driveway? Henry told him no.”
Enza licked her fork and then pointed it at me. “See?”
“See what? He’s a cranky old man who doesn’t like kids or pets, Enza. Remember, the reason we’re here is to look for proof.”
“He’s a cranky old man who doesn’t like strangers in his business, even if those strangers are children. Or animals. Which means he’s hiding something.” Enza looked sideways at Aunt Gloria. “Remember at Leona’s party, you said a girl went missing, and Leona thought Silvio killed her? Tell me about that.”
Aunt Rose and Aunt Gloria exchanged glances.
“That was a long time ago,” Aunt Rose said. “Patty Benedetti.”
Aunt Gloria sniffed. “She was a slut.”
“A flirt,” Aunt Rose corrected. “She liked the boys.”
“All the boys,” Aunt Gloria said. “Any of the boys.” She got up. “Wait.”
Enza and I finished our cannoli in patient silence until she came back with a thin old book. It was a high school yearbook, and Aunt Gloria opened it with reverence. She flipped the pages, and the smell of old book wafted through the kitchen. I loved that smell. She finally found what she was looking for and pointed triumphantly. “There. Patty. She was a pretty girl.”
Enza and I leaned forward to look. Yes, she had been pretty, with delicate features, big, soft eyes and dark hair curled around her ears.
I flipped one page, and then another. There she was. Constanza Gratti. Connie at eighteen, young, and fairly plain, but with a wide, sassy smile that had not changed in over fifty years.
I turned the page back to Patty. “So what happened?”
“One day she disappeared, and the cops came through the neighborhood asking questions. We all figured she just ran off with someone,” Aunt Rose explained.
“Probably a married someone,” Aunt Gloria said.
“But Leona insisted that she saw Patty down at Henry’s store, and they were fighting about something, and Henry looked angry enough to kill Patty, and once that girl got an idea in her head, she stuck with it.” Aunt Rose shook her head. “We told Leona she was just causing trouble, but she insisted. In fact, she told that nice police officer, you know, Gloria, the Irishman with the big blue eyes?”
Aunt Gloria sighed. “Jimmy Kilcullen.”
“Yes.” She sighed and shook her head sadly. “Died so young. The cancer. Anyway, Leona told him and made him go over and look in Henry’s basement window.”
Enza leaned forward and glanced at me quickly. “Really? And did he look? This blue-eyed Jimmy?”
Aunt Rose made a face. “Of course not. Leona was just a silly kid.”
“Why the basement?” I asked.
Aunt Gloria shrugged. “Because Henry was always down in that basement.”
Enza pushed away her empty plate. “So, maybe Ellie and I go down there and look, instead of his apartment? Do you think we’ll find poor Patty?”
“In Henry’s basement?” Aunt Gloria looked thoughtful. “She’d probably be all shriveled up by now.”
“At least she wouldn’t smell,” Aunt Rose offered.
Enza grabbed Aunt Rose’s hand, then Aunt Gloria’s. “Ellie and I are just going to look around. But we need your help. You need to stand watch. If Henry comes back, you need to call Ellie on her cell phone and tell us, so he won’t catch us. Can you do that?”
Both of them broke into wide smiles.
“Of course we can,” Aunt Rose said.
“But maybe we should get a code?” Aunt Gloria asked.
I stood. “No, I think a straightforward phone call will work just fine. Enza, Are you ready for this?”
She grinned. “Honey, I was born ready.”
Since Henry Silvio’s house was an exact copy of my aunts’, I knew where the outside access door would be. Of course, it was locked. In fact, it was padlocked. We huddled under the tiny overhang to keep dry.
Enza took out her phone and turned on a flashlight app that shone brightly on the offending lock. She swore under her breath. “Any ideas?”
“Well, there are two windows on this side, but you can see they have bars. On the other side of the house, we might be able to break the glass, but the fence is so close on that side, we’d never fit. If we got in the front door, we can take the stairway down, but that door may be locked too.”
“Can any of the tenants get in the basement that way?” Enza asked.
“Yes. But it’s Henry’s building, so, technically speaking, he doesn’t have to let the tenants down there if he doesn’t want to.”
She yanked on the padlock in frustration. “Let’s try that way.”
We went around to the front, and pushed all the doorbells. After a few seconds, the front entrance door unlocked with a click.
“People,” Enza muttered, “should really be more careful about who they let into their building.” We opened the door, and I led Enza past the stairs going up to the second floor, around the corner, and down a darker stairwell.
“This weather,” she muttered. “Talk about murder? It’s killing my hair.” She shook her head, and droplets went everywhere.
The door there was also locked, with a sign, faded and badly printed, asking any tenet that needed to get into the storage units in the basement to please see the landlord.
Enza used her flashlight-phone again, looking closely at the lock. “Why no padlock here?”
“It’s not like anyone can get in here. This is only for tenants, and they’ve probably all lived here forever. They know the drill.”
Her hand went into her handbag, a large, shapeless thing with a discrete logo on the clasp. She pulled out a hairpin.
“Enza, really?”
She knelt down in front of the door. “You’d be surprised the things you need to know when you’re an event planner. I have to break into people’s houses all the time.”
“Do they ever hire you back?”
She straightened and turned the handle. The door cracked open. “All the time. I’m very good at my job.”
We took a few steps in, and Enza shut the door behind us. The darkness was complete.
“He must have blacked out the windows,” Enza whispered. She clicked on her flashlight-phone, and we followed the tiny beam farther in.
I tried to orient myself, using the basement next door as a reference. “The light switch should be right here,” I said. I reached out and found the switch. The space was suddenly brighter, but not by much. It was lit by a single bulb that dangled from a fixture that dated back to the sixties.
Enza reached over and turned off the light. “Are you kidding?” She hissed. “Someone might see us.”
I turned the switch back on. “Are you kidding? The windows are blacked out, remember.”
“Oh. Right.” She adjusted her handbag over her shoulder. “Where should we start?”
I looked around. It was a large space, mostly filled with an ancient boiler and a bank of homemade storage cages, two-by-fours and chicken wire, obviously the individual spaces for the tenants upstairs. We moved closer. There were four of them, each filled with boxes and stray pieces of furniture, each locked with a padlock.
We gazed at the bins.
“This doesn’t look promising,” Enza said.
“No, it doesn’t. But I doubt that if Henry had anything to hide, it would be here.” I grabbed her hand and pointed her little light toward the back of the basement. “My aunts have a big room all to themselves,” I said. “Let’s see if Henry does, too.”
Sure enough, a few more steps into the semidarkness was another door. And another padlock.
“Now, this looks serious,” Enza said softly. “Do you see a crowbar anywhere?”
“Enza,” I said, feeling increasingly nervous, “I’m not sure about breaking open the lock.”
“You were willing a few minutes ago,” she said. She looked at me. “So?”
I took a breath and nodded. “We can do this.”
The thing about basements is that they’re filled with basement stuff, and we found a crowbar sitting on table crowded with tools in a corner. Enza had that lock popped open in seconds. We pushed the door open slowly, our eyes following the thin beam from her phone.
“We need more light,” she whispered.
I felt along the wall, imagining my aunt’s basement room. I found the switch.
In my aunt’s house, the basement room had been for parties. The tiny apartment could not accommodate the friends and family that routinely showed up for birthdays and holidays, so the much larger room downstairs had been fitted with round cafe tables and folding chairs, a few battered but comfortable couches, an old stereo system for music, and a big hutch for storing plates and platters, as well as wine glasses and coffee cups.
Henry’s room was very different. Cabinets covered the entire back wall. In the center of the room were a long table and a single chair. Florescent lights sputtered and hissed, casting a bluish glare on the stark, cement walls.
“Well, this is cheerful.” Enza said, and crossed over to the center cabinet, opening the doors.
Henry was a collector. Each cabinet was crammed with cardboard boxes, marked with numbers and letters, and as we opened each, we found old buttons, broken watches, odd-shaped washers, rusty gears.
“Henry was one weird guy,” Enza muttered as she blew the dust off yet another box. I had just lifted the cover of a box full of glass doorknobs when I heard her make a strangled sound. I push my box back into place, and hurried over.
Inside the box that Enza held in her shaking hands were earrings, eight single earrings, each in a cotton lined paper cup. In one of the cups was a hot pink, golf ball sized clip-on.
She covered the box carefully and put it in the center of the table. “We need to call Sam right now,” she said.
I nodded and reached in my pocket for my phone, and as I dragged it out, it rang. I glanced at the Caller ID.
“It’s Aunt Gloria,” I breathed. “He’s here.”
I held the phone to my ear as we both walked out, Enza turning off the light and carefully shutting the door behind her.
“He just pulled up,” Aunt Gloria cackled in my ear.
“Thanks,” I whispered. “We’re on it.” I was pleased—and surprised—at how calm my voice sounded. I slid the phone back into my pocket.
We walked quickly back to the inside access door and switched off the light. Enza had her hand on the knob.
“Would he come up the front?” she whispered.
Before I could answer, we could hear a noise at the outside door. He was coming directly into the basement. I felt Enza sigh in relief, and then she turned the handle of the door.
It didn’t turn. It had apparently locked itself after we had shut it behind us.
I felt myself go cold as a sliver of light cut through the basement.
Henry had come in from outside.
We both flattened ourselves against the wall. The boiler was to the left. If we moved, quickly and quietly, we could get behind it and be safely in its shadow before he could turn on the light. I reached down and took Enza’s hand and pulled her with me to the left.
She and I thought alike, all right. She knew exactly where we were going. I felt a movement, and her hand in mine shifted. She had stepped out of her heels. We moved along the concrete wall in silence.
Henry didn’t bother with the light. Why should he? He’d grown up in this house, had spent his life going in and out of this basement. His wet shoes made a faint squelching noise as he walked past us toward the back room.
“We need to run.” Enza’s voice in my ear was a bare breath. I nodded. The outside door had closed behind Henry, but it would be unlocked. It was our only way out.
I fought down the urge to bolt. As soon as he reached the door to the back room, he would see the broken padlock and know someone had discovered his secret. What would he do? Try to escape as quickly as possible? Or search to see if the culprits were still in his basement, fearful and shaking in the shadows.
I took half a dozen steps, and three things happened at once.
First, the doorbell upstairs buzzed. Repeatedly, accompanied by the sound of someone pounding at the front door.
Henry stopped in front of the doorway, saw the broken lock, and swore, loudly, as he pushed into his secret back room.
Enza, moving behind me, must have stepped on something with her bare foot and gasped. She grabbed hold of my arm with both hands and squeezed. Whatever had happened, it must have really hurt her.
I stopped and turned to Enza. She was bowed over, but shook her head and pushed me forward. I looked to the outside door, and in my minds eye, it was ten, twelve steps at the most, and then we’d be out, up from the basement, away from any danger that Henry Silvio may have represented.
Easy.
“Who the hell are you?” Henry yelled. The light to the back room turned on, and it spilled out into the whole basement. Henry was outlined against the doorway. I had Enza’s hand, and we ran.
And we almost made it. But Henry was suddenly very fast and nimble for a little old man, and he threw himself in front of us just a few steps from the back door.
“You?” His voice was incredulous. “What do you think you’re doing down here?”
I stopped so abruptly that Enza crashed into me from the back, and I stumbled right into Henry Silvio. He pushed me back, hard, and I stepped away from him as fast as I could. His face was wild in the flickering light. Just like a movie, I thought for one insane moment. A horror movie where the heroine gets dismembered with a chainsaw, because she was simply too stupid to live.
“We know your secret, Henry,” Enza said. She was standing unsteadily on one foot. “The cops should be here any second.”
His face lit up with anger, and he spoke loudly, this time in rapid Italian.
“Henry,” Enza said. “Not nice.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You two should not have come down here,” he said, his voice cold. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”
“Let us go,” I said. “Don’t make this worse.”
“Who else knows?” He was coming at us slowly, and we were backing away, Enza hopping on one foot. The only place for us to go was into his back room, and once there, we would have no way to get out. I didn’t like the odds if he forced us back, so I stopped and clenched my fists for courage.
“Don’t make this worse,” I repeated.
“Who else knows?” he roared.
I was watching his face, but caught a flicker of movement behind him. So did Enza, who waved both hands above her head.
“We know,” Enza said. “And so does she. Whattaya gonna do, Henry, strangle all of us?”
Jo Collins came through the outside door and was standing, mouth open. “Enza?”
“We’re good,” Enza called.
Jo took a few steps forward. “What is going on?”
Enza put her hand on my shoulder for balance and began to hop toward the open door behind Jo. “We’re done here. Let’s go. I gotta put something on my foot before it gets infected.”
Henry swung his fist at her, and she dodged it enough that it did not hit her in the face, but rather smacked into her shoulder. She went down with a grunt.
I saw his fist coming at me and ducked. I flattened myself on the floor and tried to kick at his legs. After all, there were three of us, and he was an old man.
He was also a killer. He aimed a kick to my face.
It never landed. Jo Collins came at him, screaming, both hands in front of her, fingers curled like claws. But she did not tear or scratch. Instead, she twisted, positioned her legs, grabbed him, and threw him to the ground in one swift, smooth movement. He landed on his back with a loud, satisfying thud. She bent down and turned him over on his stomach while he was still gasping for air, grabbed his wrist, and brought his arm up and to the center of his back. She then knelt beside him, holding the arm in place.
“Enza, honey, you okay?” Jo asked.
Enza grunted and sat up. “I stepped on a rusty thing. Probably gonna need a tetanus shot. I hate shots. You okay, Ellie?”
I stared at Jo. “Where did you learn to do that?”
She grinned and applied a bit of pressure to Henry as he tried to move. “When you’re as short as I am, you learn a few things.”
I had my phone out and dialed Sam. I closed my eyes and heard it ring.
It was ringing in my ear. It was also ringing just outside the basement door.
He came in, gun drawn. He stopped and stared. “Ellie?”
I got up off the floor and ran to him, throwing my arms around his neck and holding so tightly I wasn’t sure he could still breathe.
His one arm went around me. The other arm, the one holding the gun, dropped to his side.
“Are you crazy?” he asked, very loudly, and I could hear the anger and something else—fear—in his voice.
“Calm down, Sam.” Enza pushed herself up off the floor and once again tottered on one foot. “You’ll find all of Henry’s trinkets in that back room. Course, that may not be admissible in court, seeing how we kinda broke in here. Maybe a confession would be best.” She bent down. “Henry, why’d you kill all those women?”
Henry repeated his earlier, not nice Italian phrase.
“Yeah, well.” Enza straightened. “You’re gonna need more cops, Sam. And let go of her, would ya please? I’m the injured one, here. If anybody needs a strong arm around her for support, it’s me.”
Jo, still on the floor, shook her head, shifted her body, and sat down on Henry’s butt. He grunted, so she gave his arm a bit of a jerk.
“Extra cops would be good,” she said.
As Sam tightened his arm around me, he started to laugh.