and water together, though they didn’t mix. They were like, well, oil and water.
“Now I will begin the prayer for you, for God to deliver you from the evil that threatens you.” Fiorella kept stirring the olive oil, making a culinary whirlpool. “I will say a secret prayer, known only to me. It will be in Italian, so you won’t understand it, but you are not meant to.”
Mary suppressed an eye-roll as Fiorella reached over the table, made the Sign of the Cross on Judy’s forehead, and began praying softly, in dialect. Then she seemed to notice a stain on her dress, below her breast, and kept praying as she reached for her napkin, dipped it in a glass of water, and swabbed at the stain. When she had finally blotted it dry, she stopped praying.
Mary frowned, disapproving. Fiorella couldn’t deliver a full-strength prayer if she was playing with her Armani. She wasn’t a witch queen, she was a designer fraud.
“Ladies, open your eyes.” Fiorella’s lipsticked mouth curved into a smile. “Judy, you feel better now, don’t you?”
“I do!” Judy blinked, then broke into a grin. “Thank you!”
“Yes, thank you,” Mary managed to say, but now she was wondering about Fiorella Bucatina.
And she worried that her parents were about to have bigger problems than mushy gnocchi.
Chapter Eleven
Bennie waited for the scratching to start again. It was driving her crazy, and she wondered if that was why Alice was doing it. Her palms stung from pounding on the lid. Her knees ached, her feet throbbed. Urine soaked the back of her skirt. The box reeked of sweat. She had a hard time breathing.
She tried to get a grip on herself. Something about the scratching wasn’t like Alice, who always had a purpose for what she did, an angle she was working to get something she wanted. Alice was an excellent planner, she just didn’t dress like one.
Bennie remembered at trial, toward the end, the prosecution had produced a surprise witness, the proverbial jailhouse snitch who falsely testified that Alice had admitted she’d killed the cop and later recanted. Bennie was sure that Alice had gotten her to take back her story. She confronted Alice, only to realize that she had engineered both days of testimony, the original confession and the recanting, which left the prosecution’s case in shambles. Although Bennie knew Alice wasn’t guilty of the murder, she hadn’t known Alice had her own back-up plan to ensure her acquittal. It showed Bennie just how long-range Alice’s plans could be, and how purposeful.
Bennie frowned, coming out of her reverie to hear a new noise, a rumbling that sounded far away. She closed her eyes and tried to listen. It could have been a truck going by, but it didn’t disappear.
Suddenly the scratching started again, but it was faster, which terrified her. If it wasn’t Alice scratching, what was it? And what was the rumbling? Were they the same thing, related or not?
She started pounding and yelling again, fighting against the maddening noises, the confusion, and the pain.
Chapter Twelve
Alice walked to Bennie’s bedroom, tossed her cloth bag onto the bed, and unzipped it, just to take a peek inside. Packets of twenties, tens, and fives sat jumbled together, wrapped by rubber bands. It was ten grand total, which seemed like chump change after Bennie’s millions, but it was all in a day’s work for Alice. She’d started embezzling from PLG six months ago, and before she left the other day, she’d grabbed a few hundred from petty cash. The rest was profit from her business. She wondered if Bennie had any cash lying around.
She walked to the dresser, where Bennie’s jewelry box sat open like a treasure chest. A passport lay on top, but the first tray held only a few pairs of hoop earrings and two gold bangles. She looked through the trays, but all that was left was silver jewelry, not even the good kind from Tiffany’s. She lifted up the tray and found a wad of bills. She grabbed the cash and counted over eight hundred bucks.
She searched the top drawer, but all it contained were cotton bras and panties, the kind that came three-in-a- pack at CVS. She opened the next drawer; no hidden cash, only thick T-shirts stacked in messy piles. The third drawer had jeans and sweaters. She went back to the bed, put the money in the cloth bag, zipped it closed, and stowed it under the bed, for later. Then she crossed to the closet and opened the louvered doors. Blue suit, blue suit, khaki suit, khaki suit, and yet another khaki suit. Underneath that, brown and black pumps, and a huge pile of sneakers. She grabbed one of the khaki jackets and tried it on over her black tank, then went to the bathroom and checked her reflection in the mirror. She looked more Century 21 than Bennie Rosato, but it wasn’t her clothes that were the problem.
She washed and dried her face, leaving leftover eyeliner on the towel. She wet her hair and rummaged through a bin of wide-tooth combs until she found a clip, then twisted her curls into a messy topknot, checking her reflection again.
It was Bennie Rosato, looking back at her.
Chapter Thirteen
Mary sat in the passenger seat, with Anthony driving and Judy in the back, sticking her yellow head between the seats like a very golden retriever. “Can you believe her?” she said, after she’d told them about Fiorella. “She’s no witch queen. What a fake!”
“I don’t get you, babe.” Anthony maneuvered around the double-parkers endemic to South Philly. “You knew she wasn’t for real.”
“I know, but I thought she thought she was a witch queen, and now I don’t even think that!” Mary was confusing herself. “I don’t like her staying in my parents’ house, making my mother feel bad about herself. God knows what she’s up to. She might steal something.”
“Right. Count the spatulas.” Anthony hit the gas, turning onto Broad Street, and Judy raised her hand.
“Um, hello. She did cure my headache, Mare. How did she do that?”
“She lucked out. My mother coulda done it, faster.”
“Relax. I like your mother better, too. Anyway, if you ask me, the little flower was gettin’ her flirt on.”
“I know, right? She was hitting on my father.”
“Good luck with that.” Judy leaned closer. “How is Fiorella related to you anyway?”
“She’s on my mother’s side, in Italy. I think she’s Little Uncle Geno’s wife, but he died.” Mary had long ago accepted that the DiNunzio family ties were a mystery. Her mother had two brothers, but Mary had thirty-six uncles. In the DiNunzio family, you qualified as an uncle if you were male, a family friend, and lived in the tri-state area.
“Was Geno husband number four?”
“No, two, I think. She gets around, evidently.”
Judy snorted. “Who knew widow’s weeds had spandex?”
Mary didn’t laugh, looking outside the window. The shops along Broad had gone dark, except for the nail parlors and funeral homes, which seemed like the only two growth businesses in this economy. Whoever did nails for the dead would make a killing.
“Don’t worry.” Anthony patted her leg. “Did you tell your mother what happened with the stain?”
“No, I didn’t get a minute alone with either of them.”
“You should.” Anthony steered the car onto Lombard. “Fiorella’s ruining it for all home witches.”
Mary didn’t smile. “She was supposed to be praying to God to ward off the evil spirits.”
