A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5) (17 page)

TWELVE

Spader’s words hit me like an ice bucket challenge during a blizzard. “Are…are you accusing me of having something to do with…with Carmen’s murder? How could you—”

He held up his hand to stop my sputtering. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Mrs. Pollack.”

“Then, why—?”

“I think you might know more than you realize. Hear me out.”

I rattled off a quick mental count from one to ten, hoping to stay the massive amounts of fright hormones currently coursing through my body, before nodding. “Go on.”

“Something about Mrs. Bentworth’s door being left open doesn’t sit right with me.”

“This is more than just about Carmen’s murder?”

Zack squeezed my shoulder. “Let him speak.”

“I’m looking at the larger picture here,” continued Spader. “You’ve got a hit man who went to great lengths to sneak into a house without being noticed. Then he exits the house through the front door, leaving it wide open. That in itself is odd.”

“Or he opened the front door and left the same way he entered the house,” said Zack.

“Precisely. But either way, this scenario only makes sense if—”

“If he wanted the body found,” I said.

“By you,” added Spader.

I gasped. “Why me? Anyone could have discovered Betty’s body.”

Spader raised an eyebrow. “Anyone? From speaking with your neighbors, I got the impression you’re the only person on the block who would have cared enough to investigate that open door.”

I pondered that for a moment and realized Spader was probably right. Everyone hated Betty. No one would care that her front door was left wide open on a chilly October evening—no one but me.

“In addition,” continued Spader, “Carmen Cordova is murdered the following day, and what could very well be the murder weapon, winds up in your backyard.”

“The killer needed to ditch the knife,” I said. He tossed it into some bushes.”

“No, he tossed it into
your
bushes, Mrs. Pollack. In your
back
yard. Not your front yard.”

“Which means he either deliberately entered the yard to plant the knife—” said Zack.

“Or entered the yard next door and tossed the knife over the fence,” I said. “However the knife wound up here, he went out of his way to ditch it in my yard. But why?”

“That’s what we need to figure out,” said Spader. “And let’s not forget the swatting incident Thursday night. Someone specifically targeted this house. Three separate crimes occurred on this block within the last week, and they all lead back to you in some way.”

I shook my head. “None of this makes any sense.”

“It makes sense to someone,” said Zack, “assuming the detective’s theory is correct.”

“You got a better one?” asked Spader.

“I wish I did.”

“Then we’ll be going with mine for now. I’m calling in the Crime Scene Unit. We’re going to have to cordon off your property, Mrs. Pollack. You’ll have to remain indoors while they comb through the yard.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“As in a couple of hours or an entire day?”

“As long as it takes.”

Abandoning my recent vow to stop whining, I let my emotions trample my common sense. “You can’t do that. We’ve got to get the leaves raked. The collection for our street is tomorrow.”

Spader scoped out the leaves still covering a major portion of the yard and shrugged. “You can always pray for a hurricane to postpone the pickup.”

If that was Spader’s attempt at humor, I hoped he wasn’t planning a second act on the comedy circuit once he retired. “How about if we make a deal? The knife was found in the backyard. We’ll rake the front yard while you do your forensic combing through every blade of grass in the backyard.”

He raised an eyebrow and scowled at me. “Really, Mrs. Pollack? I expected better from you.”

And he would have received it if not for the town leaf deadline. I offered him a weak smile and sighed in defeat. “You can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?”

~*~

After lunch Zack helped me fix the toilet, a task I’d looked forward to with about as much enthusiasm as I would a case of shingles. Before Karl died he’d taken care of home repairs. For anything he couldn’t fix, he’d call in a repairman. I no longer had Karl, and I couldn’t afford a plumber. Luckily, Zack knew how to replace a toilet flushing mechanism because the directions on the box might as well have been written in Japanese for all the sense they made to me.

Detective Spader had allowed the boys to leave the house to watch the Giants/Eagles game at a friend’s home before he cordoned off my property and posted an officer at the front of the house to keep away my curious neighbors. Meanwhile, a phalanx of police continued to comb through my yard. “I swear, they really are examining every single blade of grass,” I said, watching from the kitchen window. “What else do they expect to find?”

“They won’t know until they find it,” said Zack.

“Meanwhile, I’ll be raking leaves at midnight.”

“If that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll do.”

“There is one upside,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“If we’re outside raking leaves after dark, no juvenile delinquents will dare TP or egg any properties on the block.” For as long as I could remember the night before Halloween was known as Mischief Night, a time when teenage hellions ducked out of their homes to commit pranks and minor acts of vandalism throughout the area.

Zack tipped my chin upward and planted a peck on the tip of my nose. “I’m glad to see you’ve regained your positive attitude.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“From me? That’s your realm of expertise. I’m just the hired gun.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“Good to know.”

I turned away from the window. Watching the police progress was tantamount to watching grass grow. “I’ll make some popcorn. Maybe there’s something worth watching on television.”

I pulled the popcorn maker from the cabinet above the stove and plugged it in to warm up. Zack headed for the den. Once the popcorn was popped, I joined him.

“What are you watching?”

“A PBS documentary on the mob.”

“Really?” I frowned at the screen as I curled up on the couch and placed the popcorn bowl between us. “We live in New Jersey. We hear about Mafia crime on a daily basis.”

I’d also had more than my share of personal run-ins with the Mafia this past winter, thanks to Karl. His loan shark had tried to shake me down for fifty thousand dollars. When that failed—because thanks to Karl, I didn’t have a spare fifty dollars, let alone fifty thousand—he tried to kill me. Luckily, he failed at that, too.

They say the newest generation of Mafiosi doesn’t live up to the name. Ricardo is living proof. Anyway, I had no desire to kill a few hours watching a television show about the Mafia.

Zack handed me the remote, then rose from the couch. “Find a movie.”

“Where are you going?”

“This popcorn would taste a lot better with a bottle of wine.”

“I don’t have any. Think Spader will allow you out of the house and into your apartment?”

“I’ll sweet talk him,” he said, exiting the den.

I was about to commence channel surfing when an image on the screen caught my attention. I immediately hit pause and stared dumbstruck at the face partially filling the screen.

Five minutes later when Zack returned, I was still transfixed by the black and white shot of a group of men standing clustered on the sidewalk in front of the door of a pizza parlor with a large plate glass window and a striped awning.

“You shouldn’t leave the screen paused too long,” said Zack. “It’s not good for the TV.”

I waved the remote at the television. “Take a look at the guy second from the left. Remind you of anyone?” The awning had cast a shadow across the four men captured in the grainy photo, but something about one man’s stance sent a shiver down my spine. “Am I letting my imagination run amok, or does that guy look like who I think it looks like?”

Zack moved closer to the television and bent down to take a better look at what appeared to be a photo taken from a security camera across the street from the pizza parlor. “Steven Jay?”

“Exactly. What’s he doing pictured in a Mafia documentary?”

“Could be a coincidence.”

“As in all Mafia look alike?”

Zack took the remote and pressed the Play button. The narrator began speaking about the men in the picture. “In 2009 the District Attorney believed he had an ironclad case against four high-level members of the Gambino family, pictured here in front of Mama Leone’s Pizza Parlor. Vincent ‘Little Vinnie’ Vinci, Stevie ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini, Bruno ‘the Nose’ Labriola, and Dominic ‘Macaroni’ Marchioni were all charged with racketeering and extortion, but the case quickly fell apart, and all charges were dropped when a key witness disappeared and several others recanted their statements before the start of the trial.”

“It’s him,” I said. “Steven Jay is Stevie ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini.” That’s why he looked familiar to me when he showed up at the condo yesterday. In the back of my mind I must have remembered seeing pictures of him in the newspaper and on the news during the court proceedings.

I suddenly understood why Lawrence had no money, even though he’d sold his commercial laundry concern. No wonder he sponged dinner so often. “Lawrence is being squeezed by the mob,” I said. Even though I had reservations about my new stepfather, I could sympathize with his situation. I, too, had dealt with mob extortion, and I wouldn’t wish that experienced on anyone, whether I disliked him or not.

“Stevie ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini didn’t come to pick up papers from Lawrence yesterday; he came to pick up a payment.”

But for what? Interest on a loan? Protection money? Lawrence no longer owned the laundry. “Do you think the mob continues to demand protection money even when a business goes out of business?” Or, like Karl, was Lawrence under the spell of Lady Luck?

“Anything is possible with the mob,” said Zack. “All they care about is getting paid. However, it’s more likely Lawrence is either at the mercy of a loan shark or he’s being blackmailed.”

“Over what?”

“There’s only one way to find out. We ask him.”

“Do you think he’d tell us?”

“He may not have to. We might be able to glean the truth from the way he reacts to the question.”

“And then what?”

“Then we figure out what to do about it.”

THIRTEEN

Spader and his crime scene investigators found no further weapons or other evidence after combing through my backyard for hours. They packed up their gear and vacated my property by five o’clock.

Zack and I finished raking the backyard as dusk transitioned into the deepening darkness of a moonless night. By the time we began tackling the front yard, our only light was the pole lamp illuminating the walkway leading to the front door and the fixture hanging above the door. We felt, rather than saw, the tree detritus under our feet. I wouldn’t know the extent of our success in clearing the lawn of all the fallen leaves until daybreak.

I spent most of my raking time mulling over how Lawrence had gotten himself entangled with a member of a known crime family. “Do you suppose it has anything to do with Cynthia’s drug habit?” I asked Zack. “It could explain his hardened feelings toward her.”

“That’s certainly a plausible supposition. Drugs and the mob go hand-in-hand.”

I stopped raking the leaves at my feet and stared ahead into the night as another thought—one that caused an ominous shiver to course through my body—formed. “What if Cynthia’s death was a mob hit?”

“The medical examiner ruled her death an overdose,” said Zack. He, too, paused from his raking and grew thoughtful for a moment. Then he added, “Although it’s possible the overdose was forced on her rather than her own doing.”

As much as I had disliked Cynthia, I shuddered at how terrifying her last moments of life must have been if that were the case. No one deserved such a fate. Then I had an equally terrifying thought. “What if she was killed to teach Lawrence a lesson?” History had taught us the mob was big on administering lessons through lethal means.

And now that Cynthia was dead, were the rest of us in danger should Lawrence step out of line again?
But out of line over what?

My throat turned dry as the Gobi. What if this was the reason for Betty and Carmen’s murders and why one of the murder weapons was tossed into my bushes? Were these signs meant to frighten Lawrence? If so, what the hell was he mixed up in?

In the dim glow of the walkway lamp I looked up at Zack and realized he had had the same exact thought. “We need to get to the bottom of this,” I said, “before Lawrence gets us all killed.”

Or Harriet Kleinhample.

A moment later as we stood at the curb dumping another tarp full of leaves onto the pile, Harriet barreled up in her orange VW minibus and nearly drove into us. We jumped out of the way just in time.