One Foot in the Grove (27 page)

“What?”

“It looks like someone wanted her dead. Like I said, these folks play for keeps.” Buck pulled out his phone and looked at the time. “I gotta go now.”

“But . . .”

“Eva, listen to me.
For once
. Go inside and lock the door. And keep Dolly with you. Now. I'll either be back later or send someone else to watch the place. Meanwhile, Malagutti and Gambini haven't returned tonight, and I don't want you out and about when they get back. Hopefully, they don't know we're onto them. We're planning to pick them up when they come up the drive.”

Before I could say anything, Buck turned and sprinted off toward his vehicle parked at the big house. With Dolly at my feet, I opened the screen door and stepped into my cottage. I waited three or four minutes and listened as Buck's car flew down the gravel drive. I grabbed two ibuprofen tablets and chugged them down with some water. Then, I snuck back outside. Only this time, I left Dolly behind.

Note to self: Order a pair of decent running shoes; walking the woods in flip-flops is for the birds. I pushed a low-hanging branch out of the way and continued slowly making my way down the moonlit trail toward the cabin. An owl hoot-hooted, and I jumped.

Buck had confirmed that Sal Malagutti and Guido Gambini were career killers. And they wanted something from me. Were they the ones who killed Lenny? Or had it been someone else? I knew that I'd never sleep until I figured out what happened to Lenny, and how Loretta was involved. Had he and Loretta quarreled, like Daphne suggested? After all, not all siblings get along. But if Loretta had killed her brother, why go to all the trouble to paint her car and then stick around?

If Loretta wasn't the killer, could it have been Ian Collier? Surely not. He seemed like a gentle soul. And he was protecting endangered species. Isn't that what he'd said? He hardly seemed like the type of person to kill someone. Still, why was he on our property that night in the first place? Certainly, he had enough of his own land to wander about
in the middle of the night. And why did Buck keep telling me to avoid Ian?

And what about Ian's gun-toting henchman, Lurch?

Or could Leonard's death have been a total accident? Had he been shot by someone poaching in the woods? I was sure I'd heard gunshots that night. More than once. Boone Beasley? Bart, the frog gigger? Could there have been someone else out there?

I sighed. It was beginning to look like half the county had been out in the woods that night.

Still, I had to start with what I knew. And I knew that Loretta had been at Knox Plantation long enough to be pretty familiar with it. She had known the pastry guy, most likely her own brother, Lenny, way better than any of us had known him. And now, after hiding for two days, she'd run off into the woods and disappeared again. Where could she have gone? I may not have understood the “why,” but I could certainly check out the “where.”

I reached the clearing on the other side of the pond and stood in front of the log cabin where Lenny had been living. Some sort of small animal scratched in the leaves on the ground by my feet before darting into nearby undergrowth. I curled my toes in my flip-flops.

Typical of cabins built by Southern Georgia's early settlers, not much more than ten or twelve feet high at the roof peak and about twenty-four feet long by twelve feet wide, the old log cabin was set on a thin foundation of stone. Extending out on the long side of the structure was a wooden platform that formed the base for a covered front porch. There was one door and several windows, and on one short side of the building there was a crudely built stone chimney.

A couple of bats squeaked overhead. When I ducked, I misstepped and stubbed my right toe into a pine tree stump.

“Ouch!” I cried out loud. “Yikes! That hurt.” I hobbled up to the porch, flopped into a rocking chair, and held my sore toe. I uttered a few bad words as I rubbed the sticky sap off my toe. If I hadn't been so angry at myself, I would
have laughed. Stubbing my toe made me madder than when I'd been in the car accident earlier in the day.

“I need to cover myself in Bubble Wrap,” I groaned. Every part of me ached.

The oak rocker squeaked as I rocked back and forth, nursing my toe and taking in the moonlit clearing. I'd loved spending time at the cabin when I was a little girl. And, of course, there were the times later, with Buck.

I scanned the moonlit yard, looking for clues regarding Lenny's murder. There was a big oak stump with an axe wedged into the top, and some wood logs scattered on the ground. Also, a Weber kettle grill squatted between a pair of old wooden sawhorses topped with some wooden planks. I remembered how Daddy used to clean fish and other game on that sawhorse table. A rope hammock hung between two pine trees. And over by the corner of the porch, a hand pump hovered over a small cistern for water. I knew that there was an outhouse, just in the woods, around back. Nothing unusual, I thought, forcing myself out of the rocking chair.

“Eli Gibbit missed the gun under the mattress in the big house. Maybe he missed something here,” I said under my breath. “Okay, now I'm talking to myself. Get a grip, Eva.”

There was a wad of yellow police tape on the porch next to the cabin door. I lifted the iron latch to the door. The door wouldn't budge.

“What?” I said aloud. “How can the door be stuck?”

I tried the door again. And again. It wouldn't budge. I threw my weight against it. “Ow!” Still, the door was shut tight.

“That's weird.” I knew there was no lock on the door. Never had been.

I went to the window closest to the door and peeked inside. There was enough moonlight shining into the windows to see that the place looked just about the same way it'd looked when I was growing up. Inside, under the window, there was a small, rough-hewn oak table with an oil lamp
on it. Four chairs flanked a table littered with cards, poker chips, and open beer cans. Seeing the cards and chips, I thought of the newspaper reporting Leonard's illegal gambling outfit. Then I remembered Billy and his chronic gambling. Could he have been in the cabin with Leonard that night? Or had he been busy making a “Pooty call” with his mistress in town?

Stop, Eva. Innocent until proven guilty, right?

The opposite wall was lined with a wooden upper cupboard and two lower cabinets with some stuff scattered on the countertop. An interior sidewall nearest to my window had a door to the bedroom. On the opposite side of the cabin, there was a ratty brown leather couch and two mismatched leather armchairs facing a stone fireplace.

“I've come this far. I'm not going back now,” I said as I tried to open the window. It was stuck. I moved over to the next window and pushed. It wouldn't budge, either. Then, I went around the corner to one of the two windows on the end of the cabin. Again, I pushed up on the window frame.
Success!
I pushed the window open wide and hoisted myself up and into the cabin.

I landed on the grimy wooden floor in the bedroom. Barely large enough to hold a twin-sized cot and a small upright dresser with an alarm clock, the tiny room was littered with dirty laundry and smelled of musky body odor.

I plugged my nose as I looked around. And I wondered why I hadn't thought to bring a flashlight. Or my phone. Still, I poked around as best I could. It was hard to tell whether the place had gotten messed up from when the deputies combed through everything, or whether that'd been the way Leonard had kept the place.

“Gosh, I hope Daphne hasn't seen this,” I said aloud, still holding my nose. “She'll die.”

Regardless, I had to agree with Detective Gibbit: It certainly didn't look like a place belonging to someone who wasn't planning on coming back.

Dirty clothes were littered on the bed, on the floor, and
sticking out of open dresser drawers. A Boston Bruins sweatshirt, a green Celtics tee shirt, a couple of wrinkled flannel plaid shirts, a pair of rumpled blue jeans, boxer shorts . . . I made my way through all the clothes, picking through each pocket. Nothing turned up except an unopened can of snuff, a couple sticks of gum, some twigs, pebbles, and lint. As I grabbed a gray sweatshirt off a doorknob, something dropped to the floor and rolled under the bed. Gingerly, I got down on my hands and knees and felt around under the bed. I put my fingers around the small metal object and pulled it out. I held it up to see in the moonlight. My heart stopped. It was Pep's ruby and gold skull ring. She'd said she suspected Billy had taken it to pay off gambling debts.

“Jerk.”

So, Billy had known Leonard. Could he have killed him? What a terrible thing to think about a family member. Billy'd always been an irreverent sort. That's what drew Pep to him in the first place. Still, it was a far cry from being a killer. Up until that point, I'd been on the fence about sharing what I knew about Billy and Pooty with Pep. However, finding her ring made me mad. Family or not, Billy had betrayed his wife. In more ways than one. Pep could do better. She needed to know. I shoved the ring in my pocket.

There was a worn Red Sox baseball cap on the floor. I lifted up the cheap mattress on the metal cot and found a
Penthouse
magazine. I looked under the bed again. There was an open, empty suitcase, dirt, and dust balls. I emptied each drawer in the dresser and looked underneath. Nothing. There were a couple of dollar bills and some change on a small table next to the bed. A
Playboy
centerfold was tacked to the door.

I went out to the main room. The counter was littered with dirty paper plates and used plastic silverware. There were stinky, opened cans of tuna fish, empty Budweiser beer cans, an open bag of bread, a jar of peanut butter, crumpled
potato chip bags, and several large containers of salt littered everywhere. And there was a hunting knife. I walked past the gambling table under the window, headed across the room where moonlight illuminated a couch and two chairs clustered together on an old rag rug in front of the fireplace. There was a stool in front of the fireplace, a fire poker, and a stack of logs.

Then, I remembered the door. As I walked toward it, something about the rug caught my eye, but I was still focused on the door, so I didn't give it much thought. Against the wall next to the door were five or six fishing poles, a rake, and several tackle boxes on the floor. I stood on the welcome mat in front of the door, pushed up the latch, and tried to pull the door inward. Nothing.

“What the heck?”

I stood back and studied the door. There was no way to lock it, so it had to be stuck somehow. Then I saw it. Near the top on one side, something was wedged between the door and the frame. I tried to get ahold of it with my fingers, but it was too high for me to get a good grip, and it was jammed tight. I went to get the stool by the fireplace so I could climb up and get a better look. As I neared the stool, the moon outside must've gone behind the clouds, because suddenly, the room became inky dark. I stopped in the middle of the room to let my eyes adjust. And that's when I noticed the rug, again. It was rumpled and out of place. And the trapdoor was exposed.

Most people would never have noticed it—especially in the dark. The little door was so well integrated into the wood floor that you almost had to know it was there to recognize it as anything but the floor. I remembered Buck indicating that after the deputies had been through the cabin, he'd checked under the trapdoor himself, looking for Loretta. Still, something about the way the rug was—half on and half off the door—just didn't seem right to me. Buck never would have left it that way. It was just one of those quirky things that I knew about him. We'd snuck in and out of that cabin so many times ourselves, and I remember the way he
made sure that the rug was “just right” before we'd left the cabin after hiding from my dad.

I forgot the front door for a moment, dropped the stool on the floor, got down on my hands and knees, and started feeling around the edges of the trapdoor in order to raise it.

Suddenly, the door flew open—knocking me backward.

I scrambled to pick myself up off the floor. Loretta was in full attack mode, making guttural Godzilla-like sounds as she climbed forcefully from the cavern below. She quickly raised herself up from the hole and squatted down between me and the rest of the room with her hands in the air—ready to lunge. There was nowhere to for me to go. With a menacing look, she stepped toward me as I backed toward the fireplace.

“Loretta! What are you doing!”

“I'm takin' care of business, that's what,” she growled. Still in her black Boston Bruins jacket and jeans, her face looked banged up, her lip was cut, one ear was bloody, and she had bruises on her neck. Probably from the car accident.

I blindly snatched at the space behind me, and my fingers found the wrought iron fire poker. Quickly, I whipped it around and pointed it at Loretta.

“Don't come any closer! I've had a
really
bad day!” I tried not to freak out as I remembered Loretta's mob nickname: “the Cleaver.”

“Not half the day I've had,” snarled Loretta. “And I can
tell you right now, little miss, that my day is gonna end better than yours!”

With a giant growl, Loretta lunged at me. I swung with the poker and hopped to the side.

“You killed Lenny, and now you're gonna pay for it!” she screamed.

Loretta lunged at me again. I swung the poker hard and scuttled to the next corner.

“I didn't kill him! But I know who did. Wait! I'll tell you!”

Truth be told, I still had no idea who killed Leonard. I was just trying to buy time until I could find a way out of the cabin. I needed to either disable Loretta—which was highly unlikely—or make my way back to the open bedroom window where I had a chance to escape the cabin and run like hell. Okay, hobble like hell. Hopefully, my adrenaline would kick in; even crippled, I was an experienced and fast enough runner to get away from Loretta, who looked formidable but not necessarily quick on her feet. And she looked like she'd been injured in the accident. Maybe that'd slow her down. I pointed the poker at Loretta and jabbed it a few times.

“Let's just talk.”

“Okay,” she said. “I kinda like you anyways. You're not all stuck-up like your big sis. And since you're not goin' anywhere, and I got time, we'll talk.”

Loretta stood up and put her hands on her hips, still blocking me from the rest of the room. She'd surprised me.

“Okay. Good,” I said, taking a deep breath.

I kept the poker raised in front me, waving it slowly back and forth. I thought for a moment about where to start. Then, I remembered the photo back in Loretta's apartment.

“You didn't just meet Lenny here, did you?”

“No,” sighed Loretta. She repositioned herself in a “ready” position, arms out in front, knees bent, looking like she'd pounce on me at any moment.

“You've known him a long time, haven't you?”

“Yeah, you could say so.”

“Brother?”

Loretta nodded.

“Are you . . . twins?”

Loretta nodded again.

“Lenny and me, we came down here after Uncle Tony told us to check it out.”

“Check it out? Check what out?” As Loretta thought about Leonard, she seemed to soften. Still, I kept my poker at the ready.

“You ordered your wedding cake at Uncle Tony's shop in the North End,” she said. “And you mentioned that your father owned some big plantation in Georgia where he grew olives and made olive oil. My Uncle Tony, he's been wanting to get into the olive oil business for
ever
. He's diabetic. Pastries aren't good for him. Anyway, this olive farm is a gift from heaven, he says when he calls me later. He says there were olives right here on the East Coast and he wanted 'em. Wanted to get outta the bakery business—with all that sugar and all—and get into olives. He said he had a plan, and he sent me down here to check it out.

“Your uncle is Tony Lemoni? Tony the Baker?”

Loretta nodded.

“Go on.” I kept waving my poker. So, everything Buck had told me had been right, I thought. We had two mob families visiting Abundance, The Lemonis from New England and the Malaguttis and Gambinis from New York. And they'd all followed me to Knox Plantation because of my dad's olives.

“Great,” I said under my breath as I shook my head.

“I got down here a few months ago, and it all looked pretty legit,” said Loretta. “People in town were bragging about the farmer guy who was growing the best olives in the country. They told me his oil was winning awards. Then, I saw an ad for a chef to work at the Knox place—the very place I was supposed to be checking out. I stayed up for two nights studying Southern recipes on the Internet before I showed up asking for the job. If there's one thing I can do it's cook!”

“I'll give you that,” I said. Loretta almost smiled.

“Once I had the Southern recipes under my belt, it was a snap. After I cooked her a ‘real' Southern meal, your sister nearly fell all over herself to give me the job. Even gave me an apartment down in the basement after I told her I had no place to live. Sweet.”

“And . . .”

“I reported back to Uncle Tony that I was ‘in' and prospects looked good. After a couple of weeks, he called me and told me he wanted to send Lenny down here, too. Uncle Tony had some kinda plan, and he wanted to start the ball rolling with our ‘acquisition.' As it turns out, at the same time, your stupid sister tells me she's looking to hire a field guide. I told Uncle Tony that maybe Lenny could come down posing as a guide. Heck, the woman hired me; why not give it a try?”

I rolled my eyes.

“So, I said to Lenny, ‘Lenny, to look the part, all ya need to wear is some camo, like a vest or something, and one of those Day-Glo orange caps with some fishing lures stuck into it—these country folks really go for that stuff here.' And I told him to stick some snuff into his mouth.”

Loretta broke down for a moment and sobbed. “He did it all, and he didn't even like snuff!”

Then Loretta lost it. She was crying like a baby. I started to inch along the wall and planned to make a break for it. Except, Loretta looked up before I could get moving. She wiped her runny nose with the back side of her hand and stepped closer, looking like she was going to grab my neck.

“Don't even try it!” she snarled at me with a menacing look.

I froze. “I'm sorry for your loss. Tell me more about Lenny,” I said. I needed to keep her talking.

Loretta didn't come any closer. She started talking again. “Anyways, next thing you know, my brother is down here.”

“What happened the other night?”

“I was finishing cleaning up the kitchen. Lenny comes in and says we got a problem. He says some wise guys
from New York are staying here and they knows what we're up to.”

“The Malaguttis and the Gambinis.”

Loretta nodded.

“I says, ‘I know!' I'd just served the damn West Side guys and their wives dessert! So, Lenny and I agreed we needed to fast-forward our plan—'specially 'cause it looked like we'd be taking it to the mattresses with the West Side bunch. We're thinking, with no crew down here, we needed to bug outta the place for a while before the West Siders took a swing at us.”

I raised my eyebrows. Was Loretta actually predicting some sort of mob war? Here? At Knox Plantation? All this over olives?

“So, we write this note that says we're running off and getting married. You know, so's not to arouse any suspicion with the locals about why we left so sudden. We leave it on the kitchen counter. We think we can meet with Uncle Tony up in Boston and regroup. Then, later, we can finish business down here when we've got some ‘associates' with us. Eventually, we'd all move down here, live on a real Southern plantation, and Uncle Tony would have the olive oil industry by the balls. He'd own the whole place, lock, stock, and barrel.”

Loretta grinned, then wiped another tear from her face with the back side of her massive arm. She sniffed hard.

I flicked my poker. “Go on. What happened next?”

“So, after I'm done in the kitchen, I follow Lenny to his cabin here—he's gonna pack and then we're gonna go back and get my stuff from the house, load my car, and go. See, Lenny don't have a car. He never learned to drive. But then, Lenny says he promised Uncle Tony that he'd salt the olive trees real heavy that day, and he forgot to do it. So, before he packs, we grab some salt he had stashed in the secret place we found under the floorboards, plus we grab a couple of shovels. Then, Lenny shoves his Glock in his jacket pocket, and we head out toward the olive trees, planning to
salt the ground around the trees one last time before we pack and leave.”

“Salt? I don't get it. Why were you putting salt around the trees?”

“To make the trees sick. It was all part of Uncle Tony's plan. Don't you see? By makin' the trees look sick, we'd slow down production, depress the value of the olives and the farm, drive your father's business under, and then Uncle Tony would be able to buy out the farm for next-to-nothing. Of course, if that didn't work, we'd do business in the ‘usual' way, you know, give everyone the deep six. But that gets messy.”

“I see. Thanks for small favors.” I rolled my eyes. So, the “sick” trees that Judi and Bambi had mentioned were actually trees that Lenny had been salting. I didn't say anything to Loretta about how salting the soil was stupid if they'd wanted to continue growing olive trees in the same soil later.

“Only, that night the weather is real bad . . .” continued Loretta. It was almost as if I wasn't in the room with her. Loretta just rambled on. She seemed to need to talk. At least it gave me more time, I thought. I stayed silent, studying the room, waiting for my chance to make a break for it.

“Like a hurricane, it was,” Loretta said. “Raining hard that night. The wind was blowing and the lightning was crazy.”

“Tell me about it,” I said quietly. Again, I rolled my eyes. Loretta didn't seem to notice me.

“I didn't have a raincoat or nothing,” said Loretta. “So, Lenny says I can wear his old Bruins jacket that he's got hanging back in the cabin, the one I gave him for Christmas once. So, I run back here to get Lenny's jacket. This jacket. See? I'm still wearing it.” Loretta wiped another tear. “The plan was, I'd catch up and meet Lenny where we'd been salting the trees.”

“Anyways, inside the cabin, I grab Lenny's jacket. Then, when I step outside, I was reaching for my shovel, only I
didn't see it. All of a sudden something hard hits me in the back of the head. Like that, I'm out like a light. That's all I remember. And I got the bump on my head to prove it.”

I nodded. Afraid to move. Still waiting for my opportunity to make a break for it. As if she read my mind, Loretta's eyes darted back and forth before she continued.

“Anyways, next thing I know,” said Loretta, “I'm waking up out in the yard. The rain has stopped and I smell smoke everywhere. There's a dog barking like crazy somewhere and a fire that looks like it's near where Lenny was supposed to be. So, I get up and go tearing through the woods to find Lenny. Only, I can't find him anywhere. I didn't dare call him 'cause we didn't want people to know we were out there. But there's this big tree on fire along with the brush around it. So, I go closer, worried about Lenny. Then, all of a sudden, I sees him, lying on the ground, next to this woman with pink hair—it was you. I call, ‘Lenny! Lenny! Lenny!' But even through the fire, I could see that he was . . . dead.”

Loretta teared up again and sobbed heavily. Then she shook her head.

“Damn! Anyways, seeing Lenny like that, I felt sick. Even barfed up my dinner. But before I get a chance to figure out whether you were dead or not, or to look for Lenny's Glock, I hear someone calling out. And he's pretty close. I couldn't tell if it was one of the West Side guys or not, but without a piece, I wasn't going to hang around and end up like Lenny. And the fire was gettin' real big. So, I ran back to the big house, jumped in my car, and took off. I'd planned to figure out what to do about Lenny later. Turns out, Lenny's cell phone and wallet were in the Bruins jacket pocket, so I had his phone and some cash. I dumped his phone right away. I figured the cops would be looking for it.”

“Then what happened?”

“When I got to the highway, it was shut down—both directions—on account of some big accident. Since it's the only way I know outta this backwoods place, I was trapped. Once folks found Lenny, and figured out who we were, they'd be looking for me and my car. So, I drove real fast to
the Corner Store place, broke in, and grabbed some spray paint, drinks, and junk food. Then, I drove to that old campsite road by the big curve and pulled off into the woods. I spray-painted the car. I've been living in it. I figured I could finally get away today. Then, you came along on the road and hit me. So, if it wasn't you—then who killed Lenny?” asked Loretta.