Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2) (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

It was late Monday morning, three weeks before Christmas. Giorgio Salvatori was installing a kid safety gate in his kitchen, helping his wife get the house ready to open as a day care center after the first of the year.

He stopped a moment to flex the muscles on his right forearm and felt a deep burning sensation. He’d sustained two recent injuries to his arm, nearly in the same place. The first time someone had slammed his forearm with a hammer, nearly breaking the bone. The second time, he’d been shot.

Both injuries came as a result of his investigation into the murder of Mallery Olsen up at the old monastery in Sierra Madre, where he served as lead detective.

“How’s your arm?” his wife asked, appearing from behind him.

She reached out and stroked the scar where the bullet had sliced through the skin. Her touch released a ticklish tingle up his arm.

“It’s okay,” he said, placing his other hand over hers.

He gazed for a moment into her gentle, brown eyes, noticing the first hints of age accenting her dark lashes.

“Well, don’t tire it out,” she said. “Some of this can wait.”

“I’m fine,” he replied. “And, no, it can’t wait. We’re on a schedule here.”

He squeezed her hand in a sign of support.

“Okay,” she said with a brief smile. “But don’t overdo it.”

Giorgio watched his wife return to the sink, thinking back to that night several weeks before when she had fallen down the stairs and lost their baby. The guilt he’d felt was mind-numbing, not only because he’d been the cause of the accident, but because he hadn’t been exactly supportive of the pregnancy in the first place.

Giorgio made a decent living, but they already had two children; the thought of one more on a detective’s salary had made him react to the news with less than his customary understanding and sensitivity. Angie had thought him a boor and ignored him for days.

In an effort to patch things up, he’d brought a dog home from the pound. In Giorgio’s mind, it was a peace offering and would finally replace the dog they had lost years before in New York. But Angie hadn’t seen it that way. To her, the dog was just one more “slob” to clean up after.

Eventually, they had worked it out and Giorgio had not only come to accept a third child, but even to relish the idea. And then Angie had fallen.

He’d been attacked by one of the suspects in the Mallery Olsen case, landing him in the ER. Angie fell in her hurry to get to him. The result was devastating. Angie had lost the baby and any possibility of having more.

So, once the Mallery Olsen case was closed, Giorgio had devised the plan to open a day care. As a former elementary school teacher, Angie had been thrilled. It wouldn’t completely fill the hole left behind by the loss of a baby, but with Angie, it was all about kids.

“So, what are we getting the kids for Christmas?” Giorgio asked, thinking of his own children.

Angie turned. “Tony wants those night vision goggles they keep advertising on TV. And Marie wants a hair dryer.”

Angie finished putting a last dish into the dishwasher and turned it on.

Giorgio rolled his eyes. “That girl is growing up too fast,” he said. “Soon she’ll want to wear makeup.”

Angie laughed. “Oh, you’re way behind the curve on that one.”

“Seriously?” he said. “She’s only nine years old!”

“Almost ten,” his wife corrected him. “And she’s also talked about getting her ears pierced.”

“No way!” he exclaimed. “I…”

His wife raised a slender hand as if bartering a peace agreement. “Don’t worry. I told her not until she was twelve, just like we decided,” she said. “Listen, I need to go wrap a present. Marie is going to a birthday party this afternoon.” Angie stepped past him, landing a brief kiss on his cheek. “And I’ve decided to go back to church next week.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” she said, a tear forming. “If it was God’s will when I got pregnant, then I have to accept that it was God’s will when I lost the baby. I’ll be okay, Joe. I have you and the kids. I couldn’t ask for more.” She brushed the tear away and patted his arm. “Now, I think you should take a break. I’m sure there’s a football game on
somewhere
in the country.”

He laughed. “Okay. You’re the boss.”

She tapped his nose with her index finger. “Yes, and don’t you forget it.”

She started to leave the room, when he grabbed her hand.

“You do know that it’s Monday morning, and there isn’t a football game being played
any
where in the country.”

She smiled coyly. “Then you could go pay bills,” she said with a lift to her delicate eyebrows. “They’re all laid out on the desk.”

“You did that on purpose,” he said with a grimace.

Her eyes merely twinkled as she pulled her hand away and left the room.

He finished tightening the last screw on the safety latch, feeling a sense of accomplishment. His last project would be to build a dog yard for Grosvenor, the abused Basset Hound he’d rescued from the county animal shelter. Giorgio had acted on impulse that day, saving the young canine only a day before he was scheduled to be euthanized. And now the poor dog would be tortured daily by a bunch of screaming toddlers that would overrun their house.

Giorgio’s cell phone rang just as he tucked his toolbox into a cupboard. It was his partner, Detective Swan.

“Hey, Chuck, what’s up?”

“I know you’ll be back to work next week, but I thought you’d like to be in on this,” Swan said. “They just found another body at the monastery and called us in. I’m up there now.”

Giorgio dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, a heaviness spreading across his chest.

“Where?” he murmured.

“An abandoned well. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Mallery Olsen case,” Swan was quick to say. “Apparently this body isn’t much more than a bunch of bones. The demolition crew found it. We’ve called in the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team to help get it out. They just arrived. Anyway, I thought maybe you’d like a break from housework.”

Giorgio smiled with relief. “Give me five minutes to change.”             

CHAPTER THREE

It was almost noon by the time Giorgio emerged onto his front step. He was greeted by a bank of storm clouds rolling in. He paused along the walkway to reposition a holiday reindeer that had fallen over on the front lawn. Then, he climbed into his police-issued sedan and started the engine.

Giorgio had moved his family from New York four years earlier, after his partner had been killed in a standoff with gunrunners, and Giorgio had suffered a bullet wound to the chest. Their destination, Sierra Madre, nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Los Angeles basin in Southern California. With only sixteen thousand residents, it’s a town where people know each other mostly through school, scouting and other community activities.

The move was supposed to give Giorgio a more relaxed work schedule and a break from the horrific crimes that had become a part of his everyday life in New York. Until recently, Sierra Madre had been known largely for its enormous wisteria vines and the historic Pinney House, an old Victorian home that had been the location for several movies. But the murders connected to the Mallery Olsen case had suddenly given the town a sordid past that few would be proud of.

Now, here he was again, about to head up Sunnyside Avenue to view another body on the grounds of St. Augustine’s Monastery.

As Giorgio backed out of his driveway, he thought it was too soon to be going back to the place where he and his brother Rocky had confronted the killer. The place held unpleasant associations for both of them. It was in the bell tower that he and Rocky had found evidence of a decades-old pattern of sexual abuse when the monastery included a boys’ school. The big bell tower had been torn down by order of the bishop, but everything else would still be there. It was enough to make Giorgio take an apprehensive sigh as he headed up the street.

St. Augustine’s sat alone at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, with two hundred acres of land around it. Some of it was garden. Some of it was a grove of walnut trees. And the rest was open field.

As his car approached the massive mission-style building, Giorgio couldn’t help but wonder about Christian Maynard – or rather his ghost.

Giorgio had always had hunches, and most of the time, those hunches came true. Yet he had never believed in things like ESP or ghosts, and had in fact dismissed the ideas. But during the case, he’d been confronted over and over again with the image of a young boy who had hung himself on the monastery property in 1943. In the end, the boy had actually helped with the investigation, pointing Giorgio in the right direction for critical clues, making him reluctantly accept the possibility of the paranormal.

He arrived to find the street to the monastery blocked off to normal access. A patrol officer waved him through. The west side of the religious campus had been the location of the retreat center, where Mallery Olsen’s body had been found. It had also formerly been the site of the old boys’ school. But now, with demolition underway, it was organized chaos, surrounded only by piles of rubble.

In addition to the police, there were local news reporters, the coroner’s van, and about twelve members of the demolition crew, all watching a group of firemen and rescue team members work around the well. A fire truck blocked the drive that wound around to the far side of the big building, and a group of monks stood watching quietly in the background.

This was all too familiar, and Giorgio felt a flutter of unease cross his chest.

Swan’s intimidating figure greeted him as he emerged from his car. Swan had wrestled in college and was built like a linebacker. Yet, he had the disposition of a priest.

“You’re just in time, Joe,” he said. “They’re going to extend the aerial ladder over the hole, and then they’ll lower a guy down.”

He pointed to the fire truck. A brisk breeze had risen, blowing dirt from the demolition site into mini tornadoes around the demolition site.

“Shouldn’t we be the ones to go down?” Giorgio asked.

“Maybe. But I guess the well is pretty compromised. They just dropped an air monitor down to make sure there’s enough oxygen down there.”

The two men walked across the paved driveway and up onto the dirt where the team was working. Sierra Madre Search and Rescue was well-known in the area, and since this was a small town, emergency personnel often trained and responded to calls together. Giorgio nodded to a couple of the guys he knew.

They approached the fire chief who stood with his arms crossed, watching the men work. The chief greeted Giorgio with a grim smile.

“Your car must be on autopilot for this place,” he said, using his fingers to stroke his moustache.

Giorgio chuckled politely. But it wasn’t funny. He'd spent far too much time up here, and the end result had been pretty grisly.

At the thought, he glanced past the well to where the bell tower had once stood. It was the last place he’d seen the ghostly image of the boy. But the tower and the secret room with its shackles and old mattress were gone. Giorgio couldn’t help but wonder if the boy’s spirit was gone, too. He hoped so.

“The crew chief, Jock Peters, is over there,” the chief said, bringing Giorgio’s attention back.

The chief pointed to a tall, thin man in gray slacks and a heavy denim jacket.

“He said they lowered one of his guys down earlier because they saw something metallic at the bottom.” The chief shook his head. “These guys are idiots. Someone could have been killed. But they’ve already had to stop the project once because it’s considered an archaeological site, so they thought they’d better check it out.”

“And they found a body?” Giorgio said.

“Just a skeleton,” the chief replied. “I guess it scared the hell out of the kid that went down. At first, they thought maybe it was left over from the Spanish rancho days. But the guy who found it said he found a metal chain and a heart pendant with it, plus a heavy zipper buried in the dirt. Maybe from a duffle bag. That’s why you guys were called. A heart pendant and a duffle bag sounds way too modern. And I don’t think the rancheros had zippers,” he said with a sardonic smile. He raised his eyebrows and then turned and spit onto the ground as if to make a point.

One of the rescue team members appeared at Giorgio’s elbow. He was already fitted into a harness and a helmet.

“Wanna be the one to drop down there, Joe? I’d be happy to give up my spot. I know how much you like finding dead bodies.”

The guy in the harness was Pete Colbert. He was in his late thirties and sported a goatee. He’d also been Giorgio’s instructor when Giorgio participated in a search and rescue training class the year before.

Giorgio smiled. “Didn't you tell me once that I ought to stick to detecting?”

The man’s lips separated into a grin, exposing a chipped front tooth. “Damn straight. That way you can stand around while we do all the tough stuff.”

He winked and started to walk away. Giorgio stopped him.

“Hey, Pete, wait a minute. You got a camera? You’ll need to record the area before you pull the body.”

Colbert tapped a pocket in his cargo pants. “Right here. But you realize that if she’s all bones, she isn’t going to come up in one piece.”

Giorgio shrugged. “Do the best you can. And get shots from all angles, including the position of the bones, if you can.”

Colbert nodded. “I know the drill. I’ll bag and tag everything.”

Giorgio smiled. “You’d make a decent detective.”

Colbert grinned this time. “Never!”

“Okay, but be careful down there. I’d hate to have to come save your sorry ass if you get into trouble,” Giorgio quipped.

The man chuckled. “Right. I’ll tell the guys to send
you
down in case there’s an S.O.S.”

He walked away, laughing.

Giorgio folded his arms across his chest, feeling his muscles flex. The slow pace of a small town had left him a little flabby, something he’d noticed when the Mallery Olsen case broke. So after that case closed, he’d started working out again. He could already feel the difference, making him wish he was the one strapping on the harness and dropping into the well instead.

A rescue team member approached the well and dropped a ventilation hose down. It was attached to a small orange fan that began to blow fresh air into the shaft.

“They worried about the air quality?” Giorgio asked the chief.

“We’re worried about everything,” he replied. “The well is about thirty-five feet deep. Pete will carry an air monitor with him, just in case. If the air changes, he’ll let us know and we’ll pull him up. We’re not taking any chances.”

A fireman had climbed into the big rig parked at the curb and fired up the engine. He backed it up about fifteen feet. A second fireman was at the rear of the ladder on a turntable, moving a lever. The ladder began to extend until the tip of it hovered just above the opening to the well.

When it stopped, he climbed out to the end of the ladder and attached a huge hook and pulley system for two ropes. Both ropes were then stretched back and looped through a second pulley anchored at the base of the ladder. One was equipped with a lifting bridle designed for small spaces.

Pete Colbert moved to the back of the truck and was securely attached to the first rope. He nodded to two firemen who handled the ropes back by the base of the ladder. One of them released the safety lock on the pulley, and they pulled back so that Pete’s feet left the ground. A few seconds later, he was hanging over the center of the well. The two men controlling the rope began to lower him into the opening.

“Why the big rig?” Swan asked, nodding toward the fire truck.

“We want him going right down the middle so he doesn’t hit the sides of the well,” the chief said. “It’s very unstable. That’s why we’re all standing back. We don’t want any more pressure up close.” He nodded toward the sheets of plywood that lined the perimeter of the well opening. “At least the demolition guys had enough sense to put down the plywood.” He rolled his eyes again, and his moustache twitched in mock appreciation for their effort.

Swan nodded and they all waited patiently while Pete descended through the opening. It was only a minute or two before they heard the crackle of the radio.

“At bottom,” he said.

The firemen stopped extending the rope.

“Give me a few minutes,” he said, his voice breaking up.

As everyone waited above, there were intermittent bursts of light as Pete took pictures. When those stopped, Giorgio supposed he was beginning to unearth the remains. A couple of minutes went by. Then there were more bursts of light. Ten minutes later, Pete’s voice could be heard asking for the litter.

Within seconds, the small boat-shaped device was lowered vertically through the opening of the well. As it slid past, a sudden breeze came up, blowing it sideways. It hit the edge of the well, dislodging a few bricks, which dropped into the depths.

Everyone paused and held their breath. A moment later the radio spurted.

“I’m okay,” Pete said. “Keep it coming.”

It was a good five minutes before Pete’s voice finally sputtered on the radio again.

“Bring the litter up,” he said.

When the litter reappeared, it was filled with a body bag. The cradle was raised all the way to the ladder, and then one of the firemen pulled it up and over, before releasing it to slide down to another waiting team member.

“God, these guys are good,” Swan mumbled, watching them.

“Yeah,” Giorgio agreed. “Just think if that had been a live kid down there.”

It was another minute before Pete’s yellow helmet appeared at the top of the well. His face and boots were dirty, but he was safe. By the time he was climbing down the ladder, the litter had been placed on the ground.

“Now it’s your turn,” the chief said to Giorgio. “We don’t do dead things.”

Giorgio snapped on a set of gloves and approached the small bundle. He and Swan crouched down and unzipped the body bag to find a bunch of bones with dry dirt still clinging to them. Bagged separately was a heavy, rusted zipper and two metal grommets with short strands of thick cotton thread attached to them.

The bones were completely bare; there were no strings of cartilage or swaths of skin left. The bagged skull sat off to one side in the cradle. Also separately bagged was what appeared to be the plastic toe box and spiked heel of a woman’s shoe.

A few large patches of a faded deep green polyester fabric was stuck to what looked like rib bones. And at the bottom of the litter, were the bagged pieces of a rigid plastic hairband. One piece of the hairband still had a small plastic flower attached. Its original dark pink coloring had faded to white in most places. Next to it was the bag holding the heavy metal chain with its heart pendant. Alongside that was one dangly heart earring.

The Army shovel lay next to the remains, also bagged.

Giorgio picked up the skull and peered at it through the plastic bag, turning it over in his hands. A moment later, he waved in the technician from the coroner’s office.