Part 5 (1/2)

”One of us should.”

”Honestly, Eve, one little mistake-”

”Nonna, please. You know I love you.”

”What if you're lying pa.s.sed out on the floor? Who's going to let in the paramedici?”

Oh, for G.o.d's sake. ”I'll take my chances.”

Her eyes narrowed and her voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. ”What if it's Landon lying pa.s.sed out on the floor?”

Low. Really low. I actually gasped and she pressed her advantage, painting the scene. ”And Choo Choo is home shaving his head nice and close”-in Maria Pia's view, her grandson's choice to go hairless was akin to my wearing pants-”and you're home wondering what you can wear to ruin your chances.”

”Well, if n.o.body's there,” I said, leaning toward her, ”who would know if Landon pa.s.sed out, hey?”

She slammed a hand on her chest and said imperiously, ”I am his nonna. I will know.”

”All right, Nonna,” I said finally. I would find out why she really let Arlen Mather in to Miracolo. I would find out why he pulled down my Caruso 78. I would find out whether she was indeed on her way to pick up her dress for Festa della Repubblica-or with him, instead. But for now, ”Keep the key,” I told her, sounding casual. If she thought I'd backed off the key business, she might get reckless.

I asked her, ”Was Arlen retired?”

She gave me an innocent look over the rim of her cup. ”Semi,” she said.

”What did he do?”

”This and that,” she offered. And, to clarify: ”Here and there.”

”You'll have to do better than that with the cops, Nonna.”

”Ours,” she said grandly, ”was a love relations.h.i.+p.”

Well, I couldn't go anywhere with that. ”Did he leave any stuff here?” Toothbrush? Boxers? v.i.a.g.r.a?

She sprang up, raised a finger at me, and flowed out of the kitchen at a pretty good clip. I heard her clip-clop down the hall and up the stairs. Finally she returned with a blue summer-weight blazer over her arm and a Polo Ralph Lauren dopp kit. Luckily, at that moment her landline rang out in the living room and she darted off to answer it. While she was gone I fished around in Mather's blazer, pulling out a movie stub, a nearly empty packet of Tic Tacs, and-from the breast pocket-a worn blue business card.

Viceroy Vinyl Your Source for Vintage Opera Recordings Buy * Sell * Appraise Abel LeMeur 212-765-8302.

With a thrill of discovery, I slipped the business card into my pocket, and then dug around in the kit. Brushes for teeth, nails, and hair. Clippers for nails and nose hair. Mint floss. Three different prescription meds. The only one I recognized was an anticholesterol drug. As I heard Nonna head back toward the kitchen, I hurriedly tapped the names of the other two meds into my phone, then zipped up the kit and set it back on top of the blazer, where she had left it. There's something infinitely sad about going through the personal-very personal-possessions of the newly dead. The dead who got up one morning perfectly healthy and had no idea that Fate was patiently hanging around outside.

When my nonna reappeared, she brushed back some hair with infinite weariness. ”It was Choo Choo.”

”Nonna,” I said, gesturing to Arlen Mather's things, ”you'll need to turn these over to the cops.”

She staggered back a step. ”It feels like poor Arlen is getting lost in all this-this-murder business, do you know what I mean?” She stared for a moment at the pathetic little pile of his things, and then her face fell apart and she started to cry. ”He would simply hate all this.”

Being the victim and all. I squeezed her shoulder, wis.h.i.+ng I were Dana, who could do it better.

She pressed a tissue against her waterproof mascara. ”You're thinking I should go to the-the-police place and get it over with.”

Maria Pia was just going to have to suck it up and go see Ted and Sally. It would look a whole lot worse if she didn't. ”That's a yes, Nonna.”

Of course, she shot me a look like I was exiling her in a dugout canoe somewhere deep in the Amazon. ”Thank goodness he wasn't shot. They'd want to know if I own a gun.”

For the first time in the last twenty hours, I laughed. ”Well, if that happened, you'd really have nothing to worry about.” If my granny really had a hate on, the worst she'd do is serve somebody b.u.t.ter that she'd left out for a week.

”Well, I don't know why you say that.” She seemed offended.

”Oh, that's right,” I joked, ”I forgot about your nine millimeter Browning handgun.”

”Of course I don't own a Browning, Eve.” She laughed at the very thought. ”You know my gun is a Glock.”

I lost no time calling Landon. ”Did you know Nonna packs heat?” I slammed myself into my ten-year-old blue Volvo sedan and jammed the key into the ignition.

He was silent for a moment. ”Well, does she actually carry the, uh, heater?”

I backed out of Nonna's driveway. ”Landon, listen to you. 'Heater.' You should try this s.e.xy talk on Jonathan.”

”No,” he said shortly. ”Too much too soon.”

I could see his point. ”I think Nonna keeps the gun in the drawer with the custard cups. She kept eyeing it while she was telling me that she would never tell me where she keeps it.”

”The question, of course,” said Landon slowly, ”is the ammo. I vote for removing it.”

”Unanimous.”

Landon slipped into his communing-with-the-spirit-world voice. ”Check the drawer with the ramekins. Right below the custard cups. That's my guess.”

Landon often had flashes of insight into our grandmother's labyrinthine brain. I'd definitely check the ramekin drawer next time. ”Is this something we have to worry about at the restaurant?” I had visions of Maria Pia taking out some disgruntled patron who dissed the gnocchi.

As I hit Friends Way, the prettiest boulevard in Quaker Hills, we chewed over whether Maria Pia had a permit for the ”heater.” We decided she probably didn't. The Glock was likely one of her impulse buys, like the time she bought scuba equipment.

In the short run: snag the ammo. In the long run, we would research plastic Glock look-alikes online and order a replacement for whatever was stashed in the custard cup drawer. She'd probably never miss it.

Then Landon had to go. His a.s.signment for Operation Free Maria Pia consisted of quizzing shopkeepers on the north side of Market Square for info about suspicious activity in the commercial district the morning of Arlen Mather's murder.

”Be sly, caro,” I urged him, kind of breathlessly. ”Sly.”

He tutted at me. ”Girlfriend.”

”Remember, you're not getting just information. You're getting alibis.” Landon was a good choice for that stretch of the district: he was in a bocce league with the owner of Sprouts (Landon designed the team uniform), he hit garage sales with the owner of Pleasure Chest Antiques, and was still on good terms with his former boyfriend Jimi Baker, the locksmith at Baker and Locks.

Of the remaining operatives, Jonathan-who hadn't lived in Quaker Hills for the last ten thousand years and didn't know every citizen's choice in toilet paper-was put on research detail, along with Vera Tyndall. Choo Choo took the shops on the south side of Market Square (he and Reginald's bouncer, Adrian, belonged to the same gym, but Adrian actually went). The charmingly abrasive Paulette got the east side because the group felt those shopkeepers would cave quickly under an Italian steamroller; and I got the leftovers: the Becks, Eloise Timmler from the creperie around the corner, and Maria Pia herself.

Alma Toscano was a.s.signed to pound the beat on the west side of the square. Landon believed Alma was hoping to entice Sasha Breen, the sleek-like-a-blond-whippet rich-girl owner of Airplane Hangers, into selling her line of hand-decorated shoes, Toscano's Tootsies-”Art for Your Feet!” (or, as the discerning Landon mutters, ”c.r.a.p for Your Corns!”)-at the shop. The hard-luck Alma had apparently cornered the market on felt, feathers, b.u.t.tons, beads, fabric paint, and glue guns.

I parked the Volvo down the street from Miracolo. Then, pulling out the business card from Arlen's jacket, I put a call in to Abel LeMeur of Viceroy Vinyls. I don't know what I was hoping for, but some insight into Arlen would be a start. How much of a collector of vintage opera recordings was he? And would any possible murder suspects step out of those particular shadows?

The voice that rumbled ”h.e.l.lo” sounded browned by years of cigarettes.