The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,51

just as my years of binge drinking and smoking still lingered around my eyes and mouth. Those tell-tale lines, always visible, like stigmata, and there was absolutely nothing any of us could do about it.

I took in a deep breath and realized he smelled of my mother’s cherry-blossom shower gel.

“This is a matter of little importance, Mia,” he said with a forced smile while peering over the top of his glasses. “You were mistaken. The document never existed.”

There comes a time when a person has to take a step back from the notes to hear the melody. Poetic, but you get the picture.

I couldn’t get anywhere with Uncle Benny, but then Uncle Benny was a lawyer. If anyone knew how to make documents and bodies disappear, he did. It was like questioning a priest about something that was said in a confessional.

Impossible.

Benny knew the importance of keeping secrets, and I sure wasn’t the person who could penetrate that code of silence therefore I decided to take on a new course of action.

I left my mom’s house and headed back to my apartment to report to Lisa, but found her dressed in my clothes cleaning out her car for any leftover oil residue. I gave her a quick rundown of what happened with Benny and the missing document, then I headed off to do some investigative work.

Not that I knew the first thing about investigative work, but I’d seen enough TV shows to be able to fake it. Of course, my family was more into the Jack Bauer method of interrogation, but I didn’t think I had the stomach for it, so I’d stick to the more direct tactics of some of the CSI heroes. One of my interrogations had to be with Aunt Hetty. I wanted to know what she meant when she said “she was done with the devil.” And why were her eyes moist when she turned away from Dickey? I could only hope she would be more forthcoming than Uncle Benny.

But first I needed to check out the soil near the old olive tree next to the barn. I mean, after all, this family might very well have buried Dickey under that tree just like Ray suggested. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past them.

I came upon the old gnarled tree with mixed feelings. On the one hand, if I found evidence that Dickey was buried there, what would I do? Would I actually call the police? What if someone had set up my mom again? Would I have to unearth the body to check it out first and then bury him again?

Way too much effort.

Fortunately, on closer inspection the earth around the tree was packed solid. Tall grass and weeds lined the ground, providing absolutely no evidence of any activity near this hundred-year-old specimen. I was glad for that. It would have been almost sacrilegious to bury a murdered mob boss under this tree.

This olive tree, with its ripening mission olives, dated back to the time the Mission San Francisco Solano was built on First and Spain Streets in the village of Sonoma in the eighteen twenties. The Mission was the last one in the chain of California Missions. The first one was down in San Diego. Every time I passed this old olive tree I thought of its history. Father Jose Altimira was responsible for the construction of the final mission, which had a sordid past. If I had my history straight, at one point the buildings were sold to a man named Schocken, who built a saloon in front of the chapel. Eventually, the place was restored with the help of the Women’s Club and became a state park in nineteen twenty-seven.

I had no idea how this tree ended up here, so far away from the Mission, or why, but for me it was as if the tree stood as a symbol for more than a hundred years, just waiting for somebody to get a clue and cultivate the land around it into an olive grove.

Unfortunately for this magnificent tree, with its twisted limbs and silvery leaves, it was my family.

On the way over to Dolci Piccoli, I walked through our new store, a long room painted a soothing green. Two of the walls were lined with dark wooden shelves that held our various oils in smoky glass bottles with gold embossed labels, our balsamic vinegars, a few imported labels that we knew to be pure, imported Italian olive oil candles of all