“Roger that,” I answer back. “Fucking off now.”
War has been declared.
Chapter Four
Life is good. I’m in the kitchen, up to my neck in preparations for a backyard dinner of Tony Valenti’s Famous Burgers. Family occasions such as this are a big reason why my daughter, Brittany, and I came to the Valenti family home in Cedar Heights when we fled Atlanta last summer in the wake of my failed marriage to Brittany’s mother. My mother may be gone now, having passed away a little over a year ago, but my father, Francesco—“Papa” to us—and my fifteen-year-old daughter are making up for lost time.
Papa is washing a batch of his prized homegrown tomatoes at the kitchen sink. “You want the tomatoes?” he asks Brittany.
“Those yucky things?”
“No?”
“I’m just kidding!” she exclaims as she eases closer to Papa. “I’d love a few of your tomatoes.”
He gives her the stink eye as he pulls the bowl away from her. “No tomato for you! You have only the one chance when I ask!”
My father stands a couple of inches under six feet, has a wiry build, and tufts of thinning gray hair. The most prominent features on his olive-complexioned face are wild, bushy eyebrows over a pair of piercing hazel eyes. He talks and walks fast, always has. I recall oftentimes running to keep up with him when I was a kid. There’s a fair amount of him in my features, although I keep my eyebrows carefully trimmed. I have his hazel eyes, but inherited Mama’s lengthy eyelashes and a more rounded face in comparison to Papa’s sharper features. You’d be hard pressed to find much family resemblance between my daughter and father. Brittany’s lithe build, bright blue eyes, and striking good looks owe much to her mother.
As I turn away from yet another faux grandfather-granddaughter confrontation to survey my meal preparations—raw hamburger patties, German-style potato salad, and pasta salad—I see Papa wink and flip a tomato to Brittany. She catches it and pops it into her mouth in a single motion. What in hell makes these two think their fake dramas are so amusing is beyond me, but that might be because I’m neither young nor old enough understand the dynamic. Or maybe I’m just dense. What the hell, they seem to enjoy it.
I’ve prepared a dozen of my signature half-pound patties—two each for my father and myself, one for Brittany. The rest will find their way down Papa’s gullet within a day or two. I pick up the platter of uncooked burgers and head for the door leading to our backyard while Papa smiles in anticipation. He came late to the burger party—burgers hadn’t been a thing where he grew up in Calabria, Italy. He and Mama tended to favor Italian dishes in the years after he immigrated to the United States, yet Papa loves the damned things nowadays. It’s a wonder he hasn’t chained me to the grill for the entire summer. Deano, our plump fourteen-year-old black Labrador retriever, lumbers along in my wake, wagging his tail at the prospect of a stray bite to inhale.
“Hey, Ed,” I say when I reach the beige flagstone patio.
Ed Stankowski is a retired Cedar Heights detective we’ve hired to provide a little security for Papa. After my father was acquitted of murder charges and our home was rescued from a predatory developer last year, he often faced harassment when he ventured out in public. The abuse had eventually followed him home. Hence the security.
Ed dips his chin in my direction. “Tony.”
I lift the platter of patties. “We’ve got plenty of burgers if you want one.”
Ed glances at his watch. “May as well. Jake’s gonna be late picking me up.”
“Again?” I ask with a wide-eyed chuckle.
“Yeah,” he grumbles, but he’s smiling as he does so. “Another big case, or so he says. He might just be out having a pre-brew brew, y’know? Maybe with one of those young women cops they’ve got nowadays.”
I lift the lid on our Weber grill and start tossing patties on the rack. “Nah, Jake’s a one-woman kinda guy, don’t you think?”
Jake Plummer is the Cedar Heights PD homicide detective who was the lead investigator in Papa’s case. To my immense surprise, Plummer turned out to be a good guy. He’d put me onto Ed when it became clear that Papa needed a little temporary security.
Ed laughs at my observation. “You’re damned right. Jake has the good sense not to piss off his wife by chasing after young women. We old farts need people to care for us in our dotage. It’s not as if the gals are interested in us old farts, anyway.”
I soon have a veritable bonfire going on the grill. I’m using two spatulas to move the patties around in an almost futile bid to keep them out of the grease flares that always threaten to overwhelm me when I cook burgers. It’s like playing whack-a-mole with continuous bursts of flame.
Ed watches with an amused smile. “Y’know you need a bigger grill for that many burgers, don’t you?”
“Oh, I know,” I reply dryly. I’ve been thinking that I might be able to get Papa to spring for a larger grill by telling him I could cook two dozen patties at a time on a bigger grate. My appeals for a grill manufactured within the past century have fallen on deaf ears. “Papa seems to think a Civil War-era grill is all we need.”
“Lemme talk to the old coot and knock some sense into him.”
I give Ed a skeptical look. “Good luck with the old coot.”
His eyes stray around the backyard sanctuary my parents built over the years. Papa and Mama added plenty of Mediterranean flourishes, including a creamy four-foot-tall stucco fence that features a mural my late sister, Amy, painted the summer after she graduated from high school. A rock-and-rose garden rises in the middle of the yard. Papa’s tomato plants line the north side of the fence. To the surprise of everyone—no one more than
