“What?”
“Call your mother.”
Trish snorted. “You’re kiddin’, right?”
“No. Call your mother.”
“At gunpoint?”
“If that’s what it takes. Call her.” Mary smiled behind the gun, flinty as Clint Eastwood. “Go ahead. Make her day.”
“I was gonna call her,” Trish said defensively.
“So go ahead then. Me and my new gun will wait.”
“You are so ignorant!” Trish rolled her eyes like a teenager, stalked to the phone beside the bed, and picked up the receiver, pressing in the number.
“You need to be a better daughter and a better friend.”
“You need to shut up.” Trish turned away and spoke into the receiver. “Ma? Yes, Ma, it’s me, I’m fine, I’m alive…don’t have a heart attack…Ma, don’t freak…I’m here with Mary. DiNunzio. She found me…and it’s all right now…she’s bringing me home…we should be home by morning.”
Mary lowered the gun, and when Trish started to cry into the phone, she pretended not to hear. Her arms trembled as the adrenaline ebbed from her body, leaving her with the residue of doubt. Had Trish killed Bobby? It was scary how fast the girl had come up with the scenario. Nor did it help that Trish had pulled a gun on her. It was the kind of thing that made you doubt somebody.
“Okay, love you, too.” Trish hung up the phone, turning, but Mary raised the gun again.
“Now call Giulia.”
“Mare, get over yourself. That gun’s makin’ you mental. You’re trippin’.”
“Do it.”
“Arg!” Trish turned back to the phone and picked up the receiver, and Mary felt a certain degree of satisfaction. She’d make Trish a better person, at gunpoint.
Half an hour later, Mary was driving on the turnpike, with a silent Trish sulking in the passenger seat, her head turned to the window. Traffic was light because of the rainstorm, and she had to keep braking so as not to outrun her headlights in the downpour. The windshield wipers beat frantically, and she kept a bead on the red taillights in front of her, avoided trucks spraying water from their big tires, and switched the heat off so she wouldn’t fall asleep.
While she’d waited for Trish to get her act together, she’d called Missing Persons and told them Trish wasn’t missing anymore, and also left another message on Brinkley’s cell, telling him she had Trish with her. He hadn’t called her back yet, which was odd. They’d left the motel in her car, abandoning the BMW because she didn’t trust Trish to follow her to the city, not after that little attempted-murder thingy.
Mary flicked on the radio news to keep herself awake, and after weather and sports stories, the announcer came on. “This just in, there’s been another murder in the city’s rapidly escalating Mob war, which began Tuesday with the shooting death of Robert Mancuso.”
“My God. Listen up.” Mary gripped the steering wheel in surprise, and Trish shifted in the seat and cranked up the volume.
“Authorities report that the alleged mobster member Al Barbi, age thirty-four, of South Philadelphia, was shot to death as he entered his home at 2910 Redstone Street. Authorities have no leads at the present time, and a press conference will be held on Friday morning at ten o’clock to address the recent surge in violence.”
Mary put two and two together. “That explains why Brinkley hasn’t called back. He’s got his hands full.”
“You’re tellin’ me. That’s Cadillac.”
Mary almost veered off the highway. “You serious? You mean that guy who got killed, Al Barbi, is Cadillac? From the diary?”
“Yeah.” Trish nodded matter-of-factly.
“So what’s that mean?”
“What do you think it means?” Trish snapped off the radio. “You can figure it out.”
Mary wished for a gun. “Help me out, can you? I’m driving in a monsoon, I haven’t slept for three days, and I don’t know much about the Mob because I’m not a felon.”
“Whatev.” Trish looked over, her eyes glittering in the dark car. “Cadillac knew Bobby was skimmin’ and he always had the knives out for him. Plus Cadillac was totally jealous of his business, I know that. So Cadillac musta been the one who whacked him.”
Mary shuddered.
“And somebody musta got pissed at Cadillac for it. Maybe he didn’t get the go-ahead. So he ended up dead for doin’ Bobby.”
“The go-ahead? To kill somebody?”
“Yeah, what’re you, stupid?”
Mary felt like a mother driving her kid to school. Reform school.
“Or maybe somebody didn’t want Cadillac movin’ up.” Trish paused. “Not that I know.”
“You know more than you say.”
“Yeah, but if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Mary didn’t laugh, but Trish did.
“Lighten up, yo. Way I see it, they all got what they deserved.” Trish folded her knees up and rested her spike heels on the dashboard.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Put your feet there.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the mommy, that’s why.”
Trish slid out of her fur jacket, folded it in two, and put it beneath her head like a fox pillow. “Do these seats go back?”
“On the right, there’s a handle.”
Trish eased the seat back down, turned away, and curled up like a very curvy ball. “Turn on the heat?”
“No. It makes me sleepy.”
“I know. I need it to sleep.”
“Do without.”
“I’m hungry. Can we stop?”
“Not yet.”
Trish looked over. “What’re you in such a bad mood for, Mare? Things are lookin’ up. We just got some great news.”
“A man’s murder is great news?”
“For me, it is.”
Mary laughed, but narcissists never get the joke.
“This proves it wasn’t me who did Bobby. It shows it had to be Cadillac or somebody in the Mob.”
Mary steered through the rain. “Not necessarily. Maybe it shows that somebody in the Mob thinks that Cadillac killed Bobby. Not that he actually did it.”
“Same difference.”
“Not exactly.”
“Either way, I’m in the clear.”
Mary considered it, uncomfortably. Barbi’s murder didn’t prove anything, but it made Trish look less like a suspect. Still, something was wrong, off-kilter. Mary should have been happier, having found the innocent Trish, but now she was worried that Trish wasn’t so innocent. Trish should have been sadder, because the man she once loved had been murdered.
“Trish, aren’t you sad about any of this? First Bobby’s dead, now Cadillac?”
“Bobby, a little,” she answered, though her tone sounded less than bereft. “I never liked Cadillac anyway. He shoulda minded his own business. If he killed Bobby, he got what he deserved.”
“But what if he didn’t do it?”
