A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5) (20 page)

“Knit or crochet?”

“Either. Do you have a preference?”

Naomi thought for a moment. “I have a better idea. Instead of a layette, why don’t you create a couple of carriage blankets? One of each. That way we can offer a project for readers who knit and one for readers who crochet, and we won’t need as many column inches for directions. We’ll also be able to go with a larger photograph.”

Blanket designs certainly made my life easier. Figuring out all the increasing and decreasing needed to size sweaters and bonnets correctly took an enormous amount of time. Of all the projects I created for the magazine, knitting and crochet required the most work on my part.

However, worry niggled at the edges of my brain. Having Naomi cut my editorial space before being forced to do so by additional ad placement didn’t sit well with me. More importantly, it probably didn’t bode well for my continued employment if I acquiesced without a fight.

I forced a smile but at the same time formulated a plan to fight for my pages. “That would work,” I said, “but since we have readers of varying skill levels, why not cater to all of them from beginner to advanced?”

“Meaning?” asked Naomi.

“I can design simple blankets for beginners, ones with slightly more involved patterns for those who are more accomplished, and intricate patterns for those who enjoy a challenge.”

Naomi frowned. “Six designs? How much column space will that require?”

“No more than my normal spreads.” Once I gave the directions for establishing the pattern, all the reader had to do was keep repeating it until the desired size was achieved.

Naomi nodded. “Let’s compromise. Design two of each, one simple pattern and one more complex.”

Not a complete victory but the best I could achieve—at least until the sales force reported in with the results of their efforts. If they had an overly successful month, two, if not three, of those four blankets would land on the chopping block.

After the other editors presented their ideas, I headed back to my cubicle to plan the blankets. I hadn’t gotten very far when my phone rang. I glanced at the display and immediately recognized Detective Spader’s number.

“Hello, Detective.”

He got right down to business. “Mrs. Pollack, I thought you’d want to know the knife you discovered in your backyard is the weapon that killed Carmen Cordova. So I’m asking you again, are you certain there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

“About what?”

“About someone who might want to make trouble for you.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“You’re absolutely certain? Nothing you may have forgotten or overlooked? Even a recent minor altercation with someone?”

“Honestly, Detective, I can’t think of anyone other than my mother-in-law who takes pleasure in making my life miserable, but she certainly didn’t kill either Betty or Carmen, and she didn’t phone in a hostage threat. Were you able to pull any fingerprints from the knife?”

“None. Looks like the killer either wiped the knife before discarding it, or he wore gloves.”

“Do you have any leads yet on either case?”

“You know better than to ask that, Mrs. Pollack.”

I chuckled. “Someday you might slip and actually tell me something, Detective.”

“Fat chance.” With that parting pronouncement he hung up.

Zack had suggested that given the circumstances of Carmen’s death, her killer was probably a drug addict looking for cash or pills. How likely was it that such a perpetrator would wear gloves in order to avoid leaving fingerprints? It was equally unlikely that someone like that would have the presence of mind to wipe his prints from the murder weapon before ditching it. Especially since he hadn’t bothered to clean Carmen’s blood from the blade. Something didn’t add up. Hopefully, Spader had the same thoughts and just wasn’t sharing them with me.

No sooner had I hung up from Spader, than Zack called. “I heard from Patricia.”

“Already? Isn’t that a little odd?”

“What’s odd is that there’s no record of a Lawrence Tuttnauer anywhere in the system. As far as the government is concerned, the man doesn’t exist and never has.”

FIFTEEN

“How can that be?”

“Good question. The only thing that makes sense is if he’s in Witness Protection.”

“Which makes no sense if ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini is his second cousin.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m sticking with my gambling theory and Benini is really his bookie, not his cousin.”

“How do you explain there’s no record of Lawrence? No birth certificate. No social security. No tax returns. No passport. Nothing.”

“He’s got to have a passport. He and Mama went to Paris on their honeymoon.”

“Which means he used a counterfeit passport—an extremely good one in order to make it through airport security and customs without getting caught.”

Fear skittered up and down my spine. Who was this man my mother married? “Maybe Lawrence is in Witness Protection for some reason not related to the mob. Suppose he witnessed a drug deal or a murder somewhere else in the country, and the feds gave him a new identity after he testified.”

“Cynthia, too?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it? Especially if whatever he witnessed occurred while she was still a minor.”

“I suppose. I’m going to call a few other people I know and see what they can dig up.”

“Alphabet people?”

“Just some people I know.”

“Right. Before you hang up, I heard from Spader. The knife Alex found in the bushes is the weapon that killed Carmen.”

~*~

Naomi told everyone to leave work an hour early, so we’d make it home in time to hand out candy to the little costumed beggars anxiously ringing our doorbells and hoping for the ‘good stuff,’ rather than generic, cellophane-wrapped lollipops. I didn’t begrudge the younger neighborhood kids their yearly candy extortion. What transformed me into a curmudgeon were the teenagers who didn’t even bother to don costumes and the families from less affluent towns who drove their kids to Westfield to score better bounty.

Westfield might have a reputation for being an upscale community, but not all of us worked on Wall Street or at high-power New York law firms. I could rattle off dozens of better uses for that twenty dollars I dropped on chocolate bars at ShopRite the other day.

Even leaving work an hour early, I hit traffic on Rt. 78 and slowed to a fifteen-mile-an-hour crawl east of Warren. I turned on the news, hoping for a traffic report. Instead, I heard the ominous musical notes that signaled a breaking news story. The serious voice of a female reporter followed.

“The body of Stevie ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini, a reputed, high-ranking member of the Gambino crime family, was discovered about an hour ago slumped behind the wheel of a late model black Escalade parked on a residential section of JFK Boulevard in Weehawken.”

Startled, I wasn’t paying attention to traffic and didn’t realize the car in front of me had stopped. I slammed on the brakes, stopping inches from his back bumper. Brakes squealed behind me, followed by a series of irate horn blasts. I glanced in my rearview mirror in time to see the driver of one of those enormous macho pickup trucks shooting me the bird. Ignoring him, I reached for the radio knob and cranked up the volume.

“Initial reports indicate Benini died of natural causes, but the medical examiner will perform an autopsy to determine cause of death.

“In 2009 Benini was indicted, along with several others, on charges of racketeering and extortion. Shortly before the case went to trial, the DA was forced to drop all charges after their star witness disappeared, and several others scheduled to testify recanted their initial statements to investigators, claiming the detectives had used excessive force to coerce those statements from them.”

The historical information parroted that of the documentary Zack and I had watched. The report ended without offering any further facts, and the station segued to a commercial break.

Had ‘Jelly Bean’ Benini really died of natural causes? My Spidey senses told me otherwise. More importantly, did his death have anything to do with Lawrence? I sure as hell hoped not, but Lawrence had connections to ‘Jelly Bean,’ and he’d definitely lied about the nature of those ties.

I fished my phone out of my purse and placed a call to Zack. When he answered, I dispensed with pleasantries and greeted him by asking, “Did you hear the news about ‘Jelly Bean’?”

“Just now. Where are you?”

“Stuck in traffic on my way home, but I’ve got to stop at the condo first.” I explained why. “Looks like the lovebirds are back to being all lovey-dovey.”

“Good. Better for Flora that way. Get back here as soon as you can. On second thought, forget about the feline empress for now. I’ll go over there with you later tonight after all the doorbell ringing ends.”

“No need. I only have to check to make sure she still has food and water. I’ll be in and out in under five minutes.”

I hung up from Zack and decided to ditch the highway for the back roads, exiting at the next off ramp. Twenty minutes later I pulled up in front of the condo, keyed in the alarm code, and let myself into the apartment.

Catherine the Great sat sunning herself in front of the French doors that led to the small back patio. She glanced my way, then turned her face back to the setting sun, having decided I wasn’t worth the effort of further exertion on her part, much less a royal greeting. After all, I was but a mere servant. I retrieved her pricey cat food from the fridge, adding some to her empty food bowl, and topped off her water dish.

I was about to leave the apartment when the urge to snoop in Lawrence’s file cabinet drew me to the den. I quickly discovered the file cabinet was locked. A standard metal two-drawer unit, it contained a simple locking mechanism in one corner above the top drawer. Never having picked a lock in my life, I had no idea how long it would take or even if I’d succeed, but I knew I could find instructions on the Internet.

I flipped up the lid of the laptop sitting on the desk and hit the power button. A minute later I frowned at the screen. Damn! The computer was password protected. However, now that I owned a brand new smart phone, I had another way of accessing the Internet. Less than a minute later I was watching a Youtube tutorial on lock picking.

I grabbed two paper clips from the desk, and following the step-by-step directions on the video, bent them into the proper shapes. Kneeling in front of the file cabinet, I inserted the paper clips as instructed into the lock’s keyhole. After a minute or two of trial and error, the lock popped open.

I first slid out the bottom file drawer, groaning when I discovered the contents—a large metal lock box. I removed the box and placed it on the desk. After settling onto the desk chair, I grabbed the paper clips and hoped beginner’s luck held for my second attempt at lock picking.

The lock box proved more difficult than the file cabinet, taking me fifteen minutes of fiddling with the paper clips before maneuvering them correctly into place to spring the lock. I raised the lid and gasped.

I’d come in contact with some badass guns over the last year, but the one nestled inside the box out-badassed all of them by a mile—even if I had no idea what it was. This gun made Zack’s Mr. Sauer look like a toy. Alongside the gun sat a scope of some sort and what I believed might be a silencer since one end contained screw threads. A box of ammunition—labeled as hollow-point bullets—an envelope, and a large black velvet pouch with a drawstring rounded out the box’s contents.

Not knowing whether or not the gun was loaded, I slid the envelope out from under it, taking care not to touch the gun. Inside the envelope I found five passports, all with Lawrence’s picture but issued in different names. Alvin Esposito. Claude LeBlanc. Donald Sarkasian. Franklin Quinn. Wilson Schmidt—Spanish, French, Armenian, Irish, German—Lawrence had covered a large segment of white male ethnicity. Was one of these names the real Lawrence Tuttnauer, or were they all aliases? I grabbed my cell phone and snapped photos of each passport. Then I returned the passports to the envelope and gingerly slid the envelope back under the gun.

Just when I thought nothing could shock me further, I opened the velvet pouch and blinked, not believing what twinkled back at me—four or five-dozen very large, exceedingly brilliant diamonds. I poured several into the palm of my hand, estimating each at three carats or larger. To my untrained eye, the diamonds appeared pretty darned flawless. I weighed the pouch in my hand, wondering how many millions of dollars I held. A couple of these babies would wipe out my Karl-induced debt, restore my bank accounts, and set my kids and me up for life.

For a nanosecond I wondered if Lawrence would miss a few diamonds among his cache. Then the moment fled, and I was left alone with my conscience. I poured the diamonds back into the pouch and placed the pouch inside the lock box.

Only then did I realize the flaw in my plan. I didn’t have the key to relock the box. I grabbed my phone and searched for an answer on the Internet. Apparently, no one cared about alternate ways to relock a lock because I didn’t find a single site that offered any help. I’d just have to hope Lawrence wouldn’t notice the box was already unlocked the next time he went to open it.