The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,78
to hear what Aunt Babe had to say.
“You’re just like your dad. A sweetheart,” she said, getting up then carefully making her way across the kitchen. When she got to the other side, she took off her shoes and disappeared up the wooden stairway to the second floor. As soon as she was out of earshot, Aunt Babe turned to me and said, “What a crock of crap.”
Two hours later, the kitchen was spotless. I wore a soft pink silk robe with matching nightgown and slippers, courtesy of Aunt Babe. My hair was still wet, but free of pastry goo once again, and pulled up in a clip on the back of my head.
Lisa wore a vintage floral cotton robe over white silk pajamas that were straight out of a forties film, and Aunt Babe was decked out in a vintage cream-colored ensemble complete with feathers and big, belled sleeves that I was sure I’d seen on Ginger Rogers in The Gay Divorcé.
We sipped herbal tea out of Italian pottery mugs. “Okay, first, did you kill Dickey?” I was hoping I could see the lie in her eyes.
She gave me a warm smile. “No, doll, I didn’t kill him. I never hated him enough to do him in. I’d get stinking mad at him sometimes, but I never wanted him dead like some of the other people around here.”
I believed her.
“If you didn’t do it, how’d you get that ring? Especially since we were the ones who found him first. We could hear the killer in the barn.”
“What you heard was me trying to get that damn ring off his finger.”
“That was you grunting and groaning?”
“You know how hard it was to rip that thing off his finger? It might as well have been glued on. I had to use olive oil to slide it off.”
“Why’d you take it, and why did you try to keep it a secret?” Lisa wanted to know.
“I took it because Dickey owed me, big time. I figured I could sell it and make up for some of the crap I went through after he went to prison. The bum left me with nothing, and if it wasn’t for your mom cutting me in on this orchard I’d still be scratching out a living.”
“But the killer thinks we have it. Probably why he tried to run us off the road today,” Lisa said.
“And now Giuseppe wants it or at least he says he wants it for some other family,” I added. “What’s up with that ring, anyway? Dickey was keen on wearing it to the party. Any idea why?”
She shook her head and took a sip of hot tea, the steam still billowing off the surface. “I don’t know.”
“Okay, let’s leave that for now and get back to Hetty and Carla. Want to tell us what really happened between Carla and Aunt Hetty?” I sat forward, resting my elbows on the small table in the corner of the kitchen. A bank of windows on my left displayed a coral streaked sky. Dawn was fast approaching, but no way would I allow sleep to take hold. Not before I heard what this woman had to say.
“Carla was not a lesbian,” Aunt Babe said, emphatically.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Lisa said, moving over to the cozy looking window seat with the inviting cushions. She immediately made herself comfortable and nestled up to a particularly soft looking pillow and shut her eyes.
When Lisa was tired she could fall asleep anywhere, including in a front row seat of a Kiss concert.
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
“Because that was Carla’s shtick. She tried to get everyone to believe she was pure as morning snow, trying to make up her mind which way her libido was swinging, but we all know what happens to snow when it sits around too long. Dirty slush. That’s not to say the doll deserved what she got, but that undecided virgin thing was a big crock of crap.”
“But Aunt Hetty’s pretty sharp. Wouldn’t she have picked up on that?”
“Doll, you’re not seeing the tree. You’re too busy looking at the whole jungle. Hetty’s on fire when it comes to business and baking, but when it comes to her own emotions, she’s pure stupid. She was in love with Dickey for awhile. I think they were even doing the deed when he and I were first married.”
This was news to me, but then most things were. I was thinking that all those years of