Killer Smile

“What! No! Hey! Don’t you dare!” Melania shouted from the door, but for once Mary didn’t apologize.

Go! She darted up the stairs as fast as she could. She could get there. She could see Saracone. She wasn’t too late, not if he was alive. She reached the landing at the top with Melania on her heels. Where was Saracone’s bedroom?

“Stop!” Melania shouted. “No!”

Mary looked wildly right and left, panting hard. Two rooms were at either end of the long carpeted hall. Which was Saracone’s? An open door, with lamplight behind it! Left! Go! She bolted for the lighted bedroom just ahead of Melania, fueled by thoughts of Amadeo, the hanging tree, and the noose, which trumped a StairMaster any day.

“No! Chico, help! Chico, hurry!” Melania screamed, the sound reverberating in Mary’s ears.

Go, go, go! Mary tore down the hallway. There! She could barely stop in time as she reached the bedroom door and grabbed the doorknob. She scooted inside the bedroom, slammed the door closed behind her with a bang, and twisted a brass thumbscrew above the doorknob to lock herself inside. Thank you, God!

Almost instantly, Melania started pounding on the other side of the bedroom door, which shook with the force of each blow. “Get out of there! Chico! CHICO!”

Mary didn’t want to meet anybody named Chico. She whirled around on her heels and came face-to-face with Giovanni Saracone himself.

The old man sat bolt upright in his huge, fancy bed, his wobbly head egg-shaped and bald. His dark, sunken eyes had gone wide with alarm in their withered sockets, and his parched lips formed a wasted circle of alarm. A transparent greenish oxygen tube snaked from under his nose to a portable tank beside the bed, and he was hooked up to an IV and a small home monitor for his vital signs.

The sight took Mary aback, or maybe it was just the shock of what she had just done, breaking into his bedroom. But what she saw in Giovanni Saracone was stark, cold fright. Saracone was afraid of her, terrified of her, and in that one instant, eye to eye, she knew exactly why. Because he had killed Amadeo. He had been told she was here and he knew why she had come. He must have been dreading this day, and now it had finally come, on his deathbed. The knowledge flooded Mary with unholy power.

“You killed Amadeo Brandolini!” she shouted at Saracone, against the pounding on the bedroom door.

“Stop!” Melania screamed from outside the door. “ Chico, here! Break it down!” In the next minute a huge thud pounded against the door, almost tearing it from its hinges.

“Please! Please!” Saracone rasped, and his head tottered. He put his hands up feebly, the IV tubes slack. “Please don’t hurt me! Please! God!”

“God won’t help you!” Mary shook with a rage she didn’t know she had. “God doesn’t help murderers! You strangled Amadeo with your bare hands! You tied a rope on his neck and you tried to make it look like he killed himself! You got away with murder!”

Suddenly, the door began to splinter. Melania’s shouts were joined by a man’s. “Let me in, you bitch! Let me in!”

“No. Please. No!” Saracone’s head kept shaking, and Mary saw wetness spring to his eyes, but his tears didn’t soften her heart. He hadn’t denied what she said. He was afraid only for himself. He had done it. He had killed Amadeo and now he was crying for himself. Only she stood for Amadeo, traveling across space and time to face his killer, at death’s door. Saracone might never be called to court to pay for what he had done, but after all this time, he would account to her.

“You killed him! You murdered him, and I want to know why.” Mary stepped toward the bed, and Saracone didn’t recoil from her but instead inclined toward her, seemingly transfixed. He raised his arms as if to embrace her, and Mary wondered fleetingly if he was so drugged that he thought she was an avenging angel. In a way, she was. “Why did you kill your friend Amadeo? A man who trusted you? An innocent man? Why?” Then Mary heard herself speaking to him in Italian, which she hadn’t spoken in years. “Perche, Gio? Dicami! Dicami perche!”

“Miss DiNunzio, please don’t hurt him,” said a woman’s voice, almost drowned out by the clamor at the breaking door. It was Keisha, who had risen from a chair in the back of the room. Mary hadn’t noticed her in her frenzy, but the nurse’s expression remained calm. “Please. Don’t hurt him.”

The bedroom door was about to break from the pounding. “No! Stop! Come out of there!” Melania screamed.

Saracone wept fully now, tears trickling down his slack cheeks, and Mary knew she wouldn’t hurt him. It wasn’t for her to hurt him. The bedroom door was about to burst open, and she felt nothing but pity for the terrified man. Not even anger anymore, but merely sympathy. She leaned over the bed and whispered to him in Italian:

“Dica al vostro Dio perche. Dica al Dio.” Tell your God why, Giovanni. Tell God.

Mary went weak in the knees, and in the next instant, the bedroom door burst open and a huge man rushed through like a charging bull. He was followed by another man, short but brawny, and Melania, who hurried to the bed to check on Saracone.

In the next instant, a force with the impact of a freight train rammed Mary, grabbed her by the shoulders, and hurled her backward into the entertainment center. The back of her head exploded in pain. Her neck snapped backward, then forward. It happened so fast she caught only a glimpse of her attacker. Pitted skin. The Escalade driver. He came after her, picked her up by her shoulders, and was about to hit her again when she thought she heard the other man shouting, the man who must be Saracone’s son.

“No, Chico! Stop!” the son shouted, clearly an order.

Thank God. Mary’s heart eased and she slumped in the Escalade driver’s powerful arms. Her eyelids fluttered open long enough to see the son standing before her, his face contorted with rage.

“Mind your own business!” the son shouted, spitting in her face, and the last thing Mary saw was the awful blur of his balled fist.

And the sneer on the face of Justin Saracone.

Twenty-Six

Mary regained consciousness in the dark, slumped in the driver’s seat of her car. Her keys and her purse rested in her lap. The car’s clock read 3:18. Rain pelted the roof, and the sound made her head throb. Her thoughts were muddled. She closed her eyes a minute and waited for her head to clear, but it didn’t. Her right cheek stung, and she touched it gingerly. Ouch. She flipped down the car’s visor, checked the mirror, and even in the dim light, almost yelped in surprise. Blood covered her right cheek, the skin broken, and her right eye was red and swollen.

She turned her head, and pain arced through her neck. Saracone’s front gate stood closed, as if she had never been inside. Her brain struggled to function. So Saracone had killed Amadeo. And the Escalade worked for Saracone. Saracone must have had him follow her after she’d started investigating Amadeo. But now that she’d seen Saracone, she didn’t understand. The old man had terminal cancer. There was no statute of limitations on murder, but could he seriously be worried about being prosecuted at this point? What about Frank’s murder? Had Saracone, or his wife or son, been involved in it? And what were those legal bills for?

The bills. Mary reached for her purse. Her wallet, cell phone, and date book were inside, but the legal bills and the scanned photo were gone. Her mouth went dry. They had taken the bills, and they were originals. There were no copies that Mary knew of. With the legal bills missing, there was no physical evidence linking Frank to Saracone. What was she gonna do now?

She didn’t have time to puzzle it out. She wanted to get out of here before Chico and Justin came back for her. She jammed her keys in the ignition, started the car, and headed back to Philadelphia.

It had to be safer than Birchrunville.

The next day dawned bright and clear, and Detective Daniel Gomez turned out to be young for a full detective,