Finding Jessica Read online

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Short of a confession from somebody, I got nothing.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Agent Marcus Thorne appeared exactly the same as he had when he’d arrived earlier that afternoon. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d spent most of the day traveling to Haven and two hours at the station interviewing Amber. His suit jacket and tie were unwrinkled, his thinning brown hair slicked back, not a strand out of place. Rocky didn’t think he’d ever looked that put together a day in his life.

  “So unfortunately,” Thorne was saying, “Amber is not cooperating.” They were sitting in Rocky’s office cubicle, a cramped space made even smaller by Rocky’s considerable size. Thorne opened a water bottle and took a long drink. “Right now, she’s afraid to tell me anything about Beach.” Thorne’s beady eyes were alert and probing. He seemed to have an inordinate amount of energy.

  “Well, I guess I’d be afraid to talk to the FBI about a mobster, too.” Rocky banged on his chest. All the coffee and greasy food he’d consumed that day had left him with a bad case of heartburn. Opening a desk drawer, he searched for a bottle of antacid, shook out two Tums and chewed them. Thorne was watching him intently. “You want some?” Rocky held out the bottle. “Cop coffee is a killer.”

  “No, thank you, detective.” Thorne pursed his lips. “I don’t drink coffee.”

  Rocky threw the bottle back into the drawer and slammed it shut. He had heartburn, he was tired, and all he wanted to do was to go home and crawl into bed with Emily. “What about those questions I gave you? Did you ask her?”

  “I asked her quite a few questions.” Thorne crossed his legs. His black socks matched his shiny black, tasseled loafers. It made Rocky feel slightly ill. “On the evening Hal Cappodecci was murdered,” Thorne continued, “Amber spent the night with a man by the name of Chad Connor. Do you know him?”

  Rocky scratched his head. “Yeah, I know him a little.” Rocky thought back to his barbecue. “But I can’t believe Amber did. She didn’t even know who Chad was before last week. I know, because I introduced them at a party at my own house.”

  “Perhaps she likes to keep her private life private.” Thorne smoothed his hair.

  “What else did she tell you?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Thorne asked.

  From the moment he’d met Thorne, Rocky didn’t like him, didn’t feel like he could trust him. Now, in the span of a few hours, he’d already reneged on a promise. “You agreed to ask some questions.” Rocky leaned forward. “If you didn’t mean it, why did you say you’d do it?”

  “I don’t see what difference it makes.” Thorne licked his thin lips. “I told you Amber’s alibi, so follow it up. I’m sure you’ll be satisfied that she’s telling the truth, and you can eliminate her as a suspect.”

  Lord, give me strength, Rocky thought. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his ample stomach. The chair squealed loudly, and he liked the way the sound made Thorne wince. “Look, I’d love to clear Amber in Hal’s murder,” he said, “but at this point in my investigation, I don’t know if he was killed during the course of an attempted robbery, or if he might have found out Amber was working for Beach, and Beach decided to get rid of him. I’ve got to consider every possibility.”

  Thorne stared at a space on the wall over Rocky’s head. “The FBI is always happy to assist local law enforcement.” He spoke the words as if he’d memorized them. “But there’s nothing more I can do for you.”

  Rocky flexed his fingers. He’d really like to slug Thorne, but then he’d be locked up for assault on a federal agent, and that would only prove to Thorne that he’d gotten under his skin. Instead, he belched quietly and said, “Tell me what happens to Amber now.”

  “She’ll be transferred to a federal lockup outside Boston, and I’ll question her further.” Thorne snapped his briefcase shut. “The change of scenery might convince her to cooperate.”

  “What if her alibi doesn’t pan out? Will you let me question her?”

  “As far as your investigation is concerned, I’m afraid it really does take a back seat to mine.” Thorne set the briefcase on his knees.

  Rocky got up from his chair. He towered over Thorne, and Rocky thought he saw a little fear in the man’s eyes. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I think a man being murdered is a lot more serious than her using a fake identity.”

  Thorne’s eyes narrowed. “Beach is dangerous. He’s head of an organized crime syndicate that’s got tentacles stretching from Colombia to Canada. His main interests are art theft, money laundering, drug running and identity fraud. I’ll have you know that identity crime is a matter of national security, and she happens to be working for an art gallery,” he said emphatically. “If you are not aware, let me tell you, art crime is right up there with guns and drugs as the highest ranking criminal trade. Fundamentalist terrorist groups are using stolen art as a big source of their funding. They tried to use it to fund 9/11.”

  9/11? Rocky thought those guys were al-Qaeda. “I thought Sandy Beach was Irish?”

  Thorne threw up his hands. “I’m trying to impress on you how serious this is.” Rocky saw his fingers were little, and he had stubby, girlie hands. “Are you aware that Beach may have been a key player in the Gardner museum heist?” He glared at Rocky. “And now we’ve heard rumors he’s grooming a woman to take over his Boston operation. That woman may be Amber, and that would mean she knows a lot, so I don’t intend to let her get away.” He pushed the chair forcefully out of his way, almost hitting Rocky with it. “You’ve got my number if you need to reach me,” he said.

  Rocky sat back down in his desk chair and waited until Thorne’s footsteps receded before he called Rose. “Did Amber ever tell you she was involved with Chad?”

  “She never mentioned it,” Rose said, “but I guess it could be true.”

  “Yeah, and my first name isn’t Elmer.”

  “You wish,” Rose said, and then she laughed. “Anyway, she knows you’ll check her story, so why would she lie?”

  Rocky opened the desk drawer and took out the bottle of antacids. “Yeah, I’ll have to check with Chad.” He popped the tablet into his mouth and chewed. “You know,” he said, realizing his mouth would taste like chalk for hours, “I really don’t trust Thorne.” He turned the bottle around and read the label, trying to figure out how many he could take.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You’re too skinny.” Priti Cappodecci slapped a slice of pepperoni pizza on a paper plate and pushed it across the table to Rose, who had called Hal’s younger sisters, Priti and Hazel, to ask if they’d like Hal’s belongings sent to them. They’d insisted on driving to Haven and meeting Rose. Hal had talked so fondly of her; could they buy her dinner? So Rose was sitting in Rashid’s at seven o’clock in the evening across from Hal’s twin sisters, thick dark hair and shaggy eyebrows just like their brother. But the family resemblance ended there. Hazel and Priti were loud and messy, and although Hal had been no fashion-plate, Rose didn’t think he’d approve of his sisters’ matching pink velour tracksuits. The temperature was in the high eighties, and Rose was sweating just looking at them. “Eat!” Priti told her.

  Rose looked down at the pizza. She resented being told to eat or being called skinny. She was muscular and fit. She didn’t need to be lectured by a woman who weighed over two hundred pounds, but to be nice, she took a little bite of the pizza.

  “Who knew a guy called Rashid could make such good pizza?” Hazel moaned loudly as she chewed. She wasn’t as big as her sister, but only by about fifty pounds. “Do you think he’s got an Italian mamma?”

  “I don’t know,” Rose said. She had only been there five minutes, but she’d already lost count of how much pizza the two women had consumed. “Maybe.” She looked down at Cosmo, sitting quietly on her lap. She didn’t want to push her luck with Rashid, who’d allowed her to bring Cosmo out of the heat. Just this one time, pretty lady, and make it quick! “It’s so sweet of you to want to meet me, but I probably shou
ldn’t stay long,” she said.

  Priti eyed Rose with her big, brown Italian eyes. “Hal told us about you,” she said conspiratorially.

  “Yeah, you’re the ass-kicker spy.” Hazel burped loudly. “He always talked about Rosie this and Rosie that like you was Wonder Woman or something.”

  Rose felt a lump rise in her throat. That was Hal, always singing everyone’s praises. It had occurred to her at one point that he never went home to see his family, and yet he’d never once said anything bad about them.

  Priti scooted her chair closer to Rose. She smelled like garlic and beer. “Did you two, you know, date?”

  “We were just friends,” Rose said.

  Priti nodded as though that was the right answer.

  “I don’t know what we’re gonna do without him.” Hazel tossed back half her beer and wiped her fatty lips on her sleeve, leaving a wet slash mark on the velour. Then her face turned very red, and for a moment Rose was afraid she’d swallowed her beer wrong, but she began rubbing a napkin across her eyes and wailing. “I miss him!”

  Priti dusted crust crumbs off her big bosom. “Me, too.” She reached for another slice. “He was the pride of our family, the apple of our mother’s eye.” She made the sign of the cross. “God rest her soul. Wasn’t he, Hazel?”

  “You’re gonna find out what happened.” Hazel grabbed Rose’s hand. Her palm felt as soft and warm as pizza dough. “Right?”

  “Yeah, somebody’s gotta pay.” Priti pointed her pizza slice at Rose. A clump of melted cheese dripped onto the table. “You find out who murdered Hal.”

  “Who’d want to murder him anyways?” Hazel took another sip of beer. Rose guessed she’d have to consume a lot to get drunk, considering her size. “Hal wouldn’t hurt a fly. I mean, why would anybody …” Her voice trailed off, and she started to cry again.

  “Everything okay over there?” Rashid called from behind the counter.

  “We’re fine, thank you,” Rose called back. He squinted at them but then nodded and went back to taking a customer’s order. In true Yankee spirit, the other diners hunkered down over their food, pretending the three women didn’t exist.

  “Don’t worry.” Rose patted Hazel’s fleshy hand. She felt bad for the sisters, who had driven all the way from New Jersey in a worn out Lincoln Continental to visit the town where Hal had lived and to talk to her. “I’m working on it,” she said soothingly.

  “Don’t pay her no mind.” Priti rolled her eyes. “She takes after our mamma, always cryin’; she can’t help herself.” Priti reached for the other pie. “Me and Hal, we were the strong ones, just like Pop. You sure you don’t want some?” she asked with her mouth full. “This Loaded Disk pizza is terrific.”

  “Hey, give me that.” Hazel wiped her eyes with a dirty napkin and reached over Rose for a slice.

  “I brought copies of Hal’s will for you.” Rose took two envelopes out of her bag. “He left a small car loan, but there’s money in his bank account that’ll cover it. You’ll see that his last wish was to be cremated and his ashes scattered in Italy. He didn’t want a funeral.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Priti slapped her partially eaten slice down, and sauce splattered the table like a crime scene. “We’ve got a family plot at Heavenly Bliss Cemetery in Perth Amboy. Pop will kill us if we don’t bury Hal in Jersey. That’s where our ma’s buried.”

  “Hell to pay for sure,” Hazel agreed.

  “Look, I don’t want to get into a legal tussle over this,” Rose said as kindly as she could. “As I told you on the phone, I’m Hal’s power of attorney and executrix, and I have to make sure his wishes are upheld.” The sisters stared at her, finally at a loss for words. “This is the key to Hal’s apartment.” Rose passed the keychain to Priti. “The police are done going through the place, so you can go in any time. The bank records and statements for his government Thrift Savings Plan are in the first drawer of his desk, if you want to see them. Because of an ongoing investigation, I also had to go through his phone and computer, but here they are.” She reached into her bag and put the phone and laptop on the table.

  Hazel picked up Hal’s phone. “I called him every Saturday night.” Rose hoped she wasn’t going to start crying again. “You know what they say, that’s the loneliest night of the week.”

  Rose had never heard that saying before, and it didn’t have anything to do with Hal. He had never been at a loss for friends, never bored. Everyone loved him.

  “We can’t go to Italy,” Priti said testily. “Nobody in our family’s gonna spend that kind of money, and cremation’s expensive.”

  “I’ll use the bank money,” Rose told her, “and then I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “You’re not getting me on no airplane,” Hazel snorted, “not with those scanner-thingies that can see through your clothes.” She took another slice of pizza. Rose hadn’t noticed her finishing the last one, but it was nowhere to be found.

  “Yeah,” Priti agreed. “That’s why we drove from Jersey. Nobody’s gonna see me naked.”

  “They aren’t using those anymore,” Rose pointed out. “They’ve replaced them with …”

  “We don’t got nothing to bury,” Hazel interrupted. She turned to Priti. “Pops and Mario and Nico and Vinnie and the rest of them are gonna have a fit.”

  “Auntie Gianna will probably have a heart attack,” Priti said.

  Rose wished she could call Hal and ask him why he’d put her in such a horrible position. She thought his family had known what he wanted, but his grand plan to blow away on a strong breeze in Italy was obviously a big surprise. “I’ll tell the funeral director to have his ashes divided into two urns,” Rose suggested. “You can bury one in the family plot, and I’ll take the other one to Italy.”

  Priti chewed her pizza slowly, thinking it over. “Okay,” she finally said. “That oughtta work.”

  “I don’t know.” Hazel licked her fat fingers. “Maybe we should check with Father Pat. I mean, we don’t know if it’s okay to put him in two urns, do we?”

  Rose was trying hard to be patient, but patience had always been Hal’s strong suit, not hers. Now she understood how he’d actually developed that patience.

  “Hazel’s got a point.” Priti nodded. “I don’t know about two urns. We gotta big family, we gotta deal with.”

  “So don’t tell them,” Rose said. “Just do it.”

  The sisters looked shocked, then a little scared. Rose wasn’t sure who they were more afraid of, their family or her. She waited, letting them make up their minds.

  “Okay, we’ll do it,” Priti decided. Rose forced herself not to smile. “We won’t tell anybody it’s only half a Hal, right Haz?”

  “Yeah, we’ll keep our traps shut,” Hazel agreed. “It’s the right thing to do anyways. It’s what Hal wanted.”

  “Thank you.” Rose set Cosmo on the floor and stood up. “Thank you so much for this delicious dinner, but I really have to go.”

  The sisters’ mouths hung open as they looked up at her. Priti glanced at Hazel and then back at Rose. “But we got tons more pizza to eat.” She gestured to the table.

  “I hope you can enjoy my third.” Rose was suddenly desperate to leave. “I have a case to solve.”

  “Right!” Hazel nudged her sister. “You find out who did this to our big brother, and we’ll have you down to Jersey for a visit and treat you right. Pop will be dying to meet you.” Then she started crying again, and her sister reached across the table for a bunch of napkins.

  As she and Cosmo walked to the door, Rose started to feel bad that she hadn’t spent more time with them. She had loved Hal, and they were part of Hal. She could have asked them what he was like growing up, gotten them to email her pictures of him as a little boy. She was about to go back when she heard Priti shout at Rashid, “Yo, Jungle Book boy, you got that ham and pineapple ready yet?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Rose got home, a blue Ford Focus was parked in front of
her house. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, and no one was waiting on the porch for her. After that scuffle with Beach’s bodyguard, she wasn’t taking any chances. Still sitting in her car, she reached into her handbag for her Ruger 9mm, racked the slide and loaded a round in the chamber. Then she kicked off her Rag & Bone platform sandals. “Stay in the car,” she told Cosmo.

  On bare feet, she sprinted across the driveway to the slate porch. With her back against the house, she reached over and slowly turned the handle on the eight-foot-high mission-style door. It swung open. Her heart pounding, she slipped into the front hall and checked the security system. Disarmed. She thumbed the Ruger’s safety off, then quickly and quietly stepped through the archway into her living room with its familiar log walls and cathedral ceiling.

  Suddenly she stopped short. Through the bank of windows facing the lake, she saw Daniel on the deck with his back to her, talking on his phone. She didn’t need to see his face. She’d know him anywhere by those muscular shoulders. She recognized the smooth tenor of his voice. At least that explained the open door and the disarmed security system, but what the hell was he doing there?

  As if he knew she’d come home, he turned around. They watched each other through the window. His white cotton shirt and linen slacks looked just pressed. He was so different from the men in Haven, more polished, more sophisticated, someone with secrets to keep and places to be. When he closed the phone and set it on a small wooden table between two Adirondack chairs, she walked over to the French doors and stepped outside.

  “You’re here.”

  “I have to be in Minneapolis tomorrow for a meeting,” he told her. “I wanted to see you in person.”

  He smiled, and her heart almost stopped. He looked older now, the creases around his dark eyes deeper, his face rounder than she remembered. But he was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” She could feel her insides shaking, and she held onto the door jamb as though not sure whether she was in or out. “I told you when I left D.C., I …” she faltered, and he watched her with those steady deep eyes. “I didn’t want to see you again.” She realized it didn’t matter if it had been five years, it felt like yesterday, and she wanted to run into his arms. She felt deeply relieved and happy, she realized now, but she said, “I can’t do this.”