Weddings Can Be Murder (25 page)

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked Vic,
pulling a cashmere afghan over her lap, tending to the pillows
behind her.

“I’m fine. I actually just want to snuggle
down here and grab a quick nap,” she said, making little nestling
movements.

I rattled some pots and pans, getting into
kitchen mode, and kept my voice low as I told Ron about the
condition of the house when I’d arrived.

“I didn’t call the police. Was that the
wrong way to handle it?” I worked at the counter, chopping onions,
carrots and potatoes with my back toward the living room.

He thought about it for a very long
minute.

“I don’t know. They seem happy enough to
believe the whole incident Friday night was random. So far, she
hasn’t said anything to contradict that idea.”

“We have to talk to her about it. Whoever
came back here—I have to believe it was the same guys—was after
something. Maybe they found it and will never show up again. But
what if they didn’t?” I saw his protective mode kick in.

“I’m not leaving her side, day or night,” he
said.

“I think that’s a wise idea.” The roasting
pan went into the oven and I cleaned up my scraps while Ron
practically tiptoed back to the living room and gingerly lowered
himself onto a chair where he could watch Victoria sleeping.

With similar silent intentions I walked
quietly across the room and picked up my purse. I signaled goodbye
to Ron and blew a little kiss across the room to both of them. I’d
just reached the front door when the doorbell rang. Ack! My
thoughts ran the gamut—from the police, to the intruders (silly, I
know, why would they ring?), to Drake showing up to be of help.

What I didn’t expect, until I opened the
door, was the sight of Gladys Peabody standing there with a
plastic-covered plate of cookies.

“Hello, dear,” she said. “I saw your cars
here. Noticed that Victoria is home.”

“She’s sleeping right now,” I whispered.

I could see she would have loved to come in
but at least she took the hint. She held out the plate. “Give her
these and let her know I’m thinking of her.”

I thanked her as profusely as you can do in
a whisper, took the plate, and closed the door before the
conversation could go any further. When I turned around Victoria
was stretching.

“Something’s wrong with this couch,” she
mumbled, coming awake. “The cushions feel all wrong.”

I covered by holding out the cookie plate.
Ron took it and lifted the plastic wrap.

“I heard you guys talking in the kitchen,”
Victoria said. “You’re wanting to know whether you should tell me
something, and I heard the word police. What is it?”

I gave the quick and vague description of
what I’d found and our dilemma. She’d pulled herself to a sitting
position by the time I finished.

“I don’t think we need to call the police,”
she said. “There are some things I need to tell both of you
first.”

Chapter 25

Ron helped Victoria to sit up. She swore her
injured shoulder felt better in that position than lying down. I
brought her a cup of tea and she began her story.

“I’m afraid I lied to the police,” she said.
“When the detective asked if I knew the men who shot me, I said
no.”

“You
did
know them?” Ron’s arm
holding the cup froze halfway to his mouth.

“Well, strictly speaking, no, I don’t. But
one of the men introduced himself. He said he was my father.”

Now it was my turn to be shocked.

“There were two of them,” she continued. “An
older man with silver hair and a younger one, a big thuggish type.
He’s the one who brandished the gun. The older man told me he was
my father. I don’t know what he expected me to say or do.”

“You’d never seen this man before? Not even
a photo?”

She shook her head. “I sure don’t think
so.”

“Vic,” Ron said, “your mother told you your
father was killed in Vietnam and we know that’s not true.”

She sent him a puzzled glance and he
explained our conclusion based on what Elsa had told us.

“I never even questioned it. Mom rarely
talked about him and never spoke of the war at all. I gathered
they’d been married a very short time before he went, and then he
never came home. It was just us two girls all those years. We
laughed a lot. She was playful and fun. I lost her way too
soon.”

“Any idea why this man would show up now, so
many years later? And why on earth would he bring along someone to
threaten you?”

She gave a ragged sigh and handed her mug
over to me. “He wanted something, some kind of papers. I don’t
know—I was so stunned at what he said about being my father that
the rest of it kind of zipped right past me.”

“Papers. What sort of papers?” Ron
asked.

“He used the word evidence. Said my mother
stole some evidence from him.”

“Evidence of what?”

“I should have asked. I was just so …
shaken. I was already in my robe, getting ready for bed, and these
guys show up in my house and make this unbelievable announcement,
and all at once he wants evidence of something. I couldn’t think. I
just kept shouting at them to get out, go away.” Her voice rose,
the panic of that moment still fresh.

“I was standing right there,” she said,
pointing to the kitchen island, “and I could only think I should
get to my phone. When I started toward my purse on the dining
chair, the guy with the gun got really anxious—or over-eager, or
something—and the gun went off. I just remember being shocked to
find myself on the floor by the sofa. Then they were standing over
me. The older one was furious—kept talking about this so-called
evidence—and the other one wanted to shoot me again. Somehow I got
to my feet and I just ran, right out the front door. I remember
thinking I had to avoid the street and the lights, get out of
sight. After that, it’s a blur.”

I could see she was rapidly tiring and I
suggested she sleep some more. She nodded but said the sofa wasn’t
comfortable. I could imagine—the stuffing in the cushions had been
pulled out and hastily replaced by me. We would need to send it out
to be reupholstered.

Ron helped her to her feet, asking if she
was okay to walk on the big clunky boot. When she admitted to being
so filled with painkillers nothing bothered her, he helped her to
the bedroom. I cleared the tea things and tidied the kitchen,
thinking about what we’d just heard.

Suppose this man really was Victoria’s
father. He’d been out of her life, living somewhere else all these
years and had somehow figured out where she was. The fact that he
described the items he wanted as ‘evidence’ led me to believe he’d
committed a crime of some sort.

The idea shocked me but the possibility was
certainly there. There was a lot more to this whole story and for
the life of me I couldn’t quite put it together yet.

I went into the bedroom where Ron had helped
Victoria out of her robe and under the covers. Her eyelids were
droopy but she came around a little when she saw me.

“Did I do the right thing, not telling the
police the man said he was my father? Surely whatever he wanted
from me couldn’t be important after all this time.” Her voice faded
to a murmur.

Ron assured her everything would be all
right, kissed her forehead and tucked the blanket up to her neck.
We left the room, closing the door behind us.

“What do you think?” I asked, once we were
back in the living room. “Does Kent Taylor need to know that part
of it?”

He paced the length of the room. “The thing
I can’t figure is, unless his own life was on the line, why would
this stranger have showed up with some big muscle man to help
enforce his demand?”

“Right. Why wouldn’t he have taken the time
to get to know Victoria gradually, work his way into her confidence
and then ask about the papers? He might have had her cooperation
and even access to her house if he’d played it differently.”

“I think we have to ask, what crime was
serious enough the evidence of it could still hold threat over him
after more than thirty years?”

I thought about that. There weren’t many.
The statute of limitations would have freed him from nearly
anything, except murder. Did Victoria’s mother know the father of
her child was a killer? It would certainly explain why she’d rarely
mentioned him and made up a story about his death.

Chapter 26

Now that Victoria knew about the condition
of the house when I’d arrived earlier and the hasty cleanup I’d
done I asked Ron again about involving the police. We knew the men
wanted some sort of evidence, and it was pretty obvious who had
done the searching.

“Kent Taylor needs to know about this,” he
said.

“He’s convinced it was a random
burglary.”

“But now we know better. We know the guy was
specifically after Vic and something he thinks she has.”

He was right. I should have called the
police right away and probably shouldn’t have cleaned up.

“Maybe they found what they were after, took
it and will never darken her doorway again.”

“Let’s hope so.” By his tone, I didn’t feel
too confident about that. “C’mon, let’s get that call over
with.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket and
punched Kent Taylor’s number from memory. Quick rundown of what I’d
told him about the condition of the house and what I’d done about
it. I had the feeling I was another five notches down on Taylor’s
list of esteemed citizens in this town.

“There’s something else and we’re not sure
how it’s related,” Ron said. He passed along what Victoria had told
us about one of the men claiming to be her father.

By the look on his face, I could tell Taylor
had delivered some kind of bombshell. I waved my hands at Ron,
signaling him to put the phone on speaker.

The detective’s voice came through. “… drug
runner in Florida. I’ll get the local authorities there to check
further. According to the rap sheet I got after we made the DNA
match, Proletti was convicted on drug trafficking charges in 1981
and did twenty-five years at the minimum security Federal
Correctional Institution outside Miami. It’s the same place they
held Manuel Noriega, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the two managed
to connect and Proletti kept his enterprise going. I assume he got
out when his time was up. Maybe sooner if there were any good
behavior points or favors done. The record I received didn’t go
beyond what I just told you.”

I was practically tugging Ron’s sleeve by
the time he clicked off the call.

“DNA match? Tell me what I missed.”

“You got most of it,” he said. “It goes back
to the DNA test they did on Vic’s blood from the rug. Kent says the
DNA result was run through a national criminal database and they
came up with a parental match to her.”

I was having a hard time wrapping my head
around this new information. Criminal databases—why on earth would
the police have thought there would be criminal ties to
Victoria?

Ron was still talking. “Turns out it was her
father, one Albert Proletti, mobster millionaire drug smuggler. As
soon as I mentioned Victoria’s father, Kent clicked to it right
away and knew that was who we were talking about.”

“So it makes sense why there was no sign of
him for most of Victoria’s life, and why her mother didn’t want her
to know about him. But still—why would anyone think there would be
a connection between Victoria and some Florida mobster? I just
don’t get it.”

“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “He was
a little cagey about that. Sometimes a victim’s past leads to the
reason a crime was perpetrated against them. He thought that might
be true in this case since we can’t find any motive other than a
random home invasion.”

“I thought that’s exactly what they believed
it was, someone breaking in and abducting her. It was the point of
the posters and hotline and all.” Or—the thought leaped into my
head—maybe they thought Victoria had a past and wanted to check it
out in case she’d purposely gone on the run. Maybe the prospect of
marrying someone with friends in law enforcement suddenly became
frightening to her.

“Anyway, Kent said once they knew the
parental connection was an old one and the man did his time for his
crimes, when Victoria showed up safely, he couldn’t imagine any
connection to this case.” He seemed to shrug it off.

Goes to show you never know what little fact
will be crucial—it was something both Ron and Kent Taylor had said
to me at different times. I’d picked up my purse, thinking I should
get home to my husband and my dog—they hadn’t seen much of me in
recent days—but I noticed Ron’s demeanor had changed.

“Okay, what’s up?” I asked.

“I feel so rotten about the argument with
Vic Friday night. Here we were, about to get married, and I kind of
wigged out when she said she didn’t want to go to Florida. Now it
turns out there was a reason.”

“Yeah … what would that have to do with your
plans?”

He lowered his voice. “How did she know
Proletti was from Florida if she didn’t even know he was her
father? I just feel—felt—there were a lot of secrets that I was
only now finding out. She told me she grew up in New Mexico, that
she’d never been to Florida. Did she lie about that? Are there
other secrets I still don’t know?”

“Ron, everyone has a past. Sometimes it
comes out gradually. No—
most
times it comes out gradually.
I’m still learning things about Drake, and he’s learning about me.
Why would you think she deliberately hid things?”

I heard a slight sound behind me.

“Because maybe I did. Hide things.” Victoria
stood at the edge of the living room.

Chapter 27

She looked a little shaky on her bandaged
foot and I rushed to her side to get her to a chair. Ron didn’t sit
but couldn’t seem to stand still either.