The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,30
too deep for me?”
“You grew up with this kind of madness.”
“Not up close and personal. I was always sheltered from the realities.”
Which was basically a true statement. I always knew most of my family was mobbed up, but I never knew the exact extent of it. Still don’t, and from the looks of things, that fact might be changing rather quickly.
“Well, you’re all grown up now and the family wants to bring you into its bosom. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m Chinese. I fit the job description. Your family and mine don’t quite mesh.”
“You and I do. Always have, and I’m hoping always will. And besides, this will make the perfect survival book.” I thought I’d try to appeal to her artistic nature, or at the very least, her desire to remain on the best seller list. Her head twisted slightly, dark eyes peered out at me as if I’d hit a nerve. I knew I had. She was a sucker for good copy.
“Surviving the Mob, that just might work if I can come up with the right angle,” she said, dreamily, as if she could already see the book on a shelf.
“Anything you want. Just name it. I have secrets.”
Her right eyebrow arched. “No you don’t. Not from me. I can get anything I want out of you.”
Okay, so she knew me better than I knew myself. “I can’t do this on my own. At least help me get the gun out of the futso and come up with a plan. You’re in this now. You’re part of this murder.”
“No I’m not. I can claim—” She stopped and looked at me. I guess I must have seemed exceptionally desperate because all at once her entire demeanor changed. “My mother always said you were a bad influence.”
“You should have listened to her.”
“I couldn’t. We were already best friends.”
“And we still are . . . aren’t we?”
She hesitated, dropped her hand from her hip and said, “What do you want me to do?”
Those few words made me so happy, I hugged her and while we were hugging I said, “First off, Leo was lying about this morning. I know that was him talking to Dickey on his veranda.”
“Why does that not surprise me? But why would he lie? What does it mean?”
“It means he has some kind of connection with Dickey that he doesn’t want to admit to.”
“But you couldn’t have been the only person who saw them this morning. It’s a busy winery.”
“Exactly, and Leo had a full beard this morning, along with long hair. At first I didn’t even recognize him.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
I refused to second guess myself. For once I was going to stand by my Leo convictions.
“I know his body and his gestures all too well. It was Leo all right.”
“Then the man is hiding something, but what?”
“I don’t know, and I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the murder. We’ll have to figure that out later, right now we need to get rid of him and Nick, retrieve the gun, call the police and tell them everything we know, except for the bracelet and gun part.”
“What about the weird-Leo part?”
I considered that for a moment. “I’d like to talk to him about it first.”
“This is so wrong.”
I pulled away from her. “I know, but it’s only wrong for a little while. Just until we can find out who did this.”
“And just how do you intend to do that in this family? These people go to the grave defending their secrets.”
“Yeah, I know, but most of this group either turned state’s evidence or went straight after their time behind bars. They’re more likely to come clean.”
“So is that why Dickey took a bullet in his head? Because of his willingness to come clean?”
“Hadn’t thought of that one, but I’m sure we can figure it out as we go along. There’s one more thing I need to tell you, but it shouldn’t matter. Not really.”
“Out with it.”
“There’s a ring that my mom had been keeping for Dickey. I gave it to him right before the party and he told me it was going to give someone heartburn. It was the way he said it . . . as if someone in the group was really going to respond to seeing it. Well, when I was under that stone, I checked out Dickey’s pinky, and it was gone.”
“Maybe it flew off or something, or it was in his pocket for safe keeping.”