Gourdfellas (12 page)

“It’s about protecting their safe, quiet little corner of the world.” Seth reached for his coffee cup, took a tentative sip, and set it back on the coaster. “You learn a lot when you’re in the business of helping people buy a house. Sometimes feeling in control is more important than money, sex, career, whatever. Walden Corners—they don’t want anything about it to change unless they say it should.”

“And that’s worth killing to protect? If Marjorie’s out of the picture does that mean the support for the casino will fall apart?” Neil winced in pain as he dropped his leg to the floor and reached for his crutches. “Hold that answer. I’ll be right back. You guys go ahead, solve the world’s problems, clean the windows, and build stronger levees in Louisiana. I should be back by the time you’re finished.”

Without a word, Seth stood beside Neil and offered his arm. This time, Neil was either tired enough or weak enough to accept. I gathered the empty cups and plates and took them into the kitchen. The rhythmic thunk-plunk of Neil’s forward progress faded as he made his way to the bathroom.

I was about to sweep the crumbs into the garbage when I felt Seth’s strong arms draw me to him. He kissed the side of my neck before he said, “I miss you.”

I turned so I could look into his eyes. “Me, too. But it can’t be helped, at least not for now. He’s getting stronger, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving him alone for more than an hour. So we’ll have to satisfy other appetites for a while. You want to whip up dinner next Wednesday? I’ll make dessert.”

“A threesome?” He smiled as he said it, and kissed the top of my head.

“I was thinking more along the lines of four. Why don’t you bring Ron? I know your son is a sports nut. He’d probably get a kick out of meeting a professional baseball player. And Neil would love to have an adoring audience.”

“Not exactly what comes to mind when I think about spending time with you, but actually it’s a great idea. You can do dessert. Your brother eat falafel and baba ganoush?”

A new culinary adventure—I’d encouraged Seth to indulge his love for cooking, but until now the menu had been creative versions of standard fare.

“You know anyone from Brooklyn who doesn’t? That sounds like fun. But I don’t know how to make baklava. Isn’t that the thing to go with Middle Eastern food?”

“Where’s your vision, your pioneering spirit? Dare to eat pie! I’ll see you at seven.”

I was very glad that he was still standing in the doorway when the phone rang, for two reasons. His kiss was delicious and the warmth that rushed through my body left no room for anxiety. And, second, he was the voice of reason when Michele Castro told me her news.

“Good, you’re there. The report just came in. That rifle is the murder weapon. And the lab says the prints on the rifle aren’t yours,” she said.

I sank back against the kitchen counter in relief. My smile must have been big enough to light the dark side of the moon, and I allowed myself a tiny whoop of pleasure. “I told you I never touched it.”

“There’s something else. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Right away, I knew that the something wasn’t going to make me open another bottle of champagne. “What?” I asked, trying to submerge the feeling of dread that kept bobbing to the surface.

“Just don’t go anywhere.” And then the line went dead.

Seth’s eyes were full of questions I wasn’t ready to answer. With trembling fingers I dialed B. H. Hovanian’s number.

“He’s in court,” a male voice informed me. “Can’t reach him for at least twenty minutes. He’ll phone you as soon as he gets out. Cross my heart.”

I hung up and met Seth’s worried gaze. “Castro is on her way here. She says my prints weren’t on the rifle but that there’s—her words—something else.”

Neil appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What’s this? You getting carted away?”

“Maybe.” My mind wouldn’t get still and my body twitched at the thought of jail. “But not likely. This is America, not some dark, wooded Eastern European country that Kafka created. Not me—I’m not letting my imagination run away with me. Whatever Michele Castro thinks she has, it has nothing to do with me. Even so, I wish that lawyer would call.”

“I know a couple of real estate attorneys,” Seth suggested with his teasing smile. “But you rest easy, Lili. If it’s under a million, I can post bail.”

“You may be sorry you said that. Listen, you guys go back in the living room. I need to catch my breath here.” Seth might have been joking, but a second visit and that warning tone in Michele Castro’s voice made me wonder whether I’d have to take him up on his offer. To calm myself, I washed the dishes, letting the warm water and the mindlessness of the task soothe me.

It’s nothing, I told myself. It couldn’t be anything because I had nothing to do with Marjorie Mellon or her murder. My prints weren’t on the rifle. They might say that I’d worn gloves, but I hoped the sheriff ’s department would be sensible and say case closed, at least the one that had me at the center of it.

It didn’t sound as though Michele Castro was about to do that.

By the time I finished wiping down the counters, the sound of a car in my driveway announced Castro’s arrival.

I walked into the living room, where Neil reached for my hand, squeezing it hard enough to break the spell of my worry. “It’s gonna be fine. You didn’t do anything, so what could happen?”

Seth stood behind me and placed both hands on my shoulders. “It’s just some routine thing, I’m sure. You’ll see, some detail she wants to check out with you.”

The knock was firm and brisk. I inhaled, nodded to myself, and then opened the wood door but left the screen door closed, latched so that nobody could simply pull it open. On the other side of the screen stood Michele Castro. A burly uniformed officer with a suety complexion and a shirt that was straining to hold back his girth stood behind her.

The sight of him did stop the breath in my chest for a second.

But I didn’t wobble and faint, and I did not invite them in. This wasn’t a social call requiring that I offer them pleasantries and cookies. I glanced at my watch. Ten more minutes until that lawyer would be out of court—and I could get some rational, informed advice.

“You want to talk to me,” I said.

Castro’s green eyes narrowed, peering first at me and then over my shoulder into the living room. “I need to come in.
We
need to come inside.”

“Why?” I felt Seth’s presence behind me, heard Neil thumping to the door. My backup—that didn’t exactly put us on equal footing, but it gave my spine a little extra steel.

The steel melted the next second when Michele Castro whipped out a paper and pressed it against the screen. I glanced at the document, my heart sinking. A search warrant, signed by a Judge Michaels. Why hadn’t Hovanian called so that I could ask him what was going on? As the daughter of a former NYPD detective, I knew enough to realize that unless some
i
wasn’t dotted or a
t
crossed definitively, these officers of the law had the right to come into my home—again—and search through my belongings. What I didn’t understand was what they hoped to find in a second search.

“Hey, I’m Neil Marino.” My brother waved and flashed a smile at Castro. “Nice to meet you.”

She smiled back, her eyes lingering on him before she squared her shoulders as she remembered what she was doing on my front porch. “Look, I’m sorry to disturb you all, but I’ve got a job to do here. I need to come inside.”

“Would you mind telling us what this is about? From what my sister told me, you already searched her home. Pretty thoroughly, too.”

I had to hand it to my brother—he made his question sound like he was bestowing high praise for a job well done instead of challenging the necessity for yet another search.

This time, Castro’s response was pure cop. “Sorry, this is an ongoing investigation. I need to see all of your computers, Ms. Marino. And your printers, too.”

It was a good thing so many people were crowded in the doorway, because her words made me dizzy. My computers and printers? What in the world would she want with them? I looked at the warrant still pressed against the screen. Letters danced on the page. No, it couldn’t really say that they could confiscate my computer and my printer. I tapped Neil’s shoulder, pointed to the line in question, gathered my thoughts.

“I need them.” Even I could hear that my voice was strained and high, and I struggled to lower it. Calm. I had to stay calm. “I only have one computer and it contains confidential client files. My livelihood depends on it. And all the personal things—my banking and a journal and lots of other things that are private. My printer doesn’t have anything on it. What do you want that for? You can’t just come in here and take them away.”

She pointed to the lines that told me she could.

“Look, I can read. But I’m not letting you in here until I speak to my attorney. This is ridiculous, you know it is. You already checked the rifle, you didn’t find anything, and you know I had nothing to do with Marjorie’s murder. So this constitutes harassment, and it interferes with my right to earn a livelihood, and it’s an invasion of my privacy.” Each word made Castro’s eyes darker and her mouth tighter, but I was not about to let her steamroll her way over my life. “So I’m going to ask you to wait out there, and I’ll call my attorney, and then I’ll follow his advice. Whatever it is.”

Whenever it was that I actually reached him. I stepped back into the living room, aware that Seth had taken my place at the screen door. “Hey, Michele,” he said, his voice warm and friendly. “You can understand, right, how upsetting this is. Maybe if you could tell her why you—”

“Seth, you know I can’t. It’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

Just then the phone rang, and I ran the rest of the way to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver.

“I have three minutes,” the voice on the other end said. “Speak.”

I was glad my folksy country lawyer stereotype had already been shattered. “Michele Castro is standing on my porch with a paper that looks like a search warrant. It says she can take my computer and my printer. Judge Michaels signed it. Do I have to give it to her?”

“Yes. But why does she want it? I know, she didn’t tell you. I’ll be out of here in ten minutes and I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll be in touch. Give her what the warrant says. Don’t give her a hard time over this.”

“Too late,” I said quietly.

“Well, then chalk it up to you being the entertainment for the afternoon. I’ll call you later.”

Somehow, I trusted the man. He made me feel a lot of things, and right now the most important one was—safe. He was direct and he knew how Walden Corners worked, and I was glad to have him on my side.

When I got back to the living room, the big cop was still standing with his hands clasped in front of him but Seth, Neil, and Michele were laughing. Great—my stalwarts were doing a fine job of keeping the enemy off guard.

“Are you sure I can’t just show you some file, or make you a copy of the things you’re interested in? I’ve got two jobs that I worked on for three weeks. It would kill me to have to call my clients and return the money they already paid me.” Despite Hovanian’s advice, I didn’t want to give up my link to work, all my client files, my ability to communicate with Albuquerque or Amman or Alicante whenever I needed to.

“I need the computer and the printer.” Michele Castro frowned, looked directly into my eyes, then glanced at Seth and Neil before she said, “Before I leave, you can make a back-up of those two work files.”

“And her address book?” Seth said. “She can’t do business without that.”

“You’re pushing it, Seth. Quit while you’re ahead. That’s good advice for gamblers. Of all kinds,” she said, her gaze staying on my face. “Okay, the address book, the two files, and that’s it. Now, please open the door and let us in.”

Neil hobbled back to the sofa, Seth stood watch at the window, and I led the undersheriff and the deputy to my office, where the laptop I’d bought three months earlier sat in sleep mode. It took her less than twenty minutes to read the two files I needed to finish for my clients, look over my address book, back them up to a disk that she handed over to me, and unplug the cables and connectors.

“You can use my laptop for work,” Neil said as Michele Castro brushed past him with my computer in a plastic bag. “As long as you give me a chance to check my email and Google myself every day to see if I’m fired.”

I hugged him, and then punched his shoulder. “Not going to happen. Getting fired, I mean. Thanks.”

Seth leaned against the windowsill and together we watched the deputy load the equipment into the cruiser. “Makes you feel a little like a television star, doesn’t it?” he said. “You know, like the guy who’s made millions with his Mafia connection and now has a starring role on
America’s Most Wanted
.”

That kind of celebrity I didn’t need.

 

Hovanian summoned me to his office an hour later. The building, formerly a bank with a columned facade and two-story-high windows, sat at the northeast corner of the main intersection of town. The downstairs space now housed an antiques conglomerate called The Goods, while the upstairs was divided into space for three offices: B. H. Hovanian, Seth’s MidHudson Mortgage, and something that called itself Luney’s Toons, Rick Luney’s advertising agency that specialized in producing radio, television, and print ads for local businesses.

Hovanian’s secretary, a young man with a blond pompadour and a manner that suggested he would have been wearing an ascot if the weather were the least bit chilly, hung my jacket in a closet, offered me coffee, and engaged me in small talk until the man himself made his appearance seven minutes later.

“Hold my calls, David. We’ll be in the conference room.” He stood aside to let me in and pointed in the direction of a long table surrounded by eight burgundy leather chairs.