The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,110
crunchy but delicate with a hint of almonds and avocados, I headed up the freeway to pick up my mom. Those overworked prison guards had to be as tired of her by now as she was tired of them.
Santa Rosa was a forty-minute drive, give or take five or ten minutes depending on traffic. Of course, that didn’t take Benny’s phone call into consideration. Luckily, I had already strapped my Bluetooth earpiece around my ear before I stepped in the truck so I didn’t have to go digging for it in my purse when my phone did its doorbell ring.
It was Uncle Benny.
“Your mom’s been booked for Dickey’s murder,” he calmly said into my ear.
My speed picked up along with my heart rate, and my trusty little GPS that I’d activated through a connection in my now basically redundant cigarette lighter, estimated my time of arrival to be in exactly twenty-four minutes.
“On what grounds?” I asked, hoping against all that was even remotely good in the world this booking had no real basis and Benny could work his magic to spring her.
“The bullet in Dickey’s head came from your mom’s revolver.” Of course it did. Lisa already said it would. I tried to breathe through my nose, slowly, but my chest was locked down at the moment. The most I could do was take in a short burst of air and try not to drive into the nearest ditch.
“Are you still there?” Benny asked after what seemed like forever.
“I’m here,” I said in some deep voice I didn’t recognize. “Go on.”
“I cannot seem to get a straight answer out of anyone about how them cops came across her gun. Your mom never pulls that thing out. Where did the police find it? Do you know? As I recall, they did not have a warrant to search the house.”
“Umm,” I hesitated, so not wanting to tell him what happened.
“Are you there? Damn cell phones. I hate these things.”
I had no choice but to tell the truth. “I’m here. They didn’t need to search the house. It’s a long story, but long story-short, it fell out of a futso.”
I could hear him suck in a breath. “How did . . . in the barn?”
“Well, no, actually. Out in Mom’s parking lot.”
A moment of silence.
“You want to tell me how that happened?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Is your mother’s life important to you?”
“Do fish need water?” I didn’t know why that phrase came to mind, but I guessed because he was being ridiculous.
“Just tell me how this happened.”
I told him the sordid details and all the while I could hear him sucking on his cigar. When I finished he said, “Just tell your mom I’ll do everything I can to have her out in time for her weekly Sunday afternoon card game.”
As if that was somehow important. “I wouldn’t want her to miss that,” I shot back, knowing I sounded like a total bitch.
“Mia, it is the routines of life that keeps your mom happy. You of all people should know that by now.”
“You’re right.” But this changed everything. My mom’s life was truly at stake.
“You need to reassure her that everything is going to be fine.”
Like anyone had that kind of power over my mom. “Me? Why me? Can’t you do the reassuring? Seems as if you’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”
That didn’t come out the way I’d hoped.
“Yeah, so what? Your mother needed comforting when she found out Dickey got it, so I spent a little time with her in the house right after we found him while you and Lisa were busy entertaining Leonardo and his cop friend. One thing led to another and now me and your mother are, shall we say, officially an item. But right now I have to concentrate on the paperwork to get her out of there, and you have to be a good daughter and convince her that this rap will never stick.”
That explained his absence from the porch the night Dickey was killed. At least I knew he wasn’t in the barn moving the body. He was in the house moving my mom.
“Do you know who did it?” I asked him.
“I am working on it, but I have to admit, going legit has its limitations.”
This was not the news I wanted to hear. I was probably closer to tracking down the killer than he was.
How did this happen?
“But why did my mom take Leo and Nick out to the barn