Then she had let him into her home. She had allowed him to put her life and her father’s at risk. She wished she had the skinny old man here right now, with his breath smelling of
limoncello.
She would demand the truth or she would put his skinny ass on the curb and let the Weasel have him. Again.
No, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t because she always felt sorry for the old, the weak, the infirm. Whatever Uncle Donato had done as a young man, he had still been a feeble old man by the time he came to live with them. His memory had been hazy, the simple task of tying his shoes sometimes confusing, and he had begun repeating himself a lot. He had not been healthy physically or mentally.
Her father rolled over, opened his eyes, blinked, and gazed around the room. He focused on the slender crucifix on the wall, the room’s only ornamentation. “We in a monastery?”
“Nope.” She smiled. “Liam’s apartment. We left Suzy’s and came here last night.” She slipped out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants over her underwear. She needed a shower; she could still smell Liam on her skin. But that would have to wait. “Remember driving here last night?”
“Yes, I remember,” he snapped. “It was a joke.” He opened his arms and Prince wiggled free and hopped to the floor.
“I’ll take him out.” She stepped into sneakers, grabbed a sweatshirt off the top of her suitcase, and went to the door. “Come on, Prince. Outside.”
“I want coffee,” Corrato announced, slowly swinging his spindly legs over the edge of the bed. He was wearing a pair of blue flannel pajamas that were so old they were thin at the knees and elbows. Every time she ran them through the wash, she contemplated tossing them in the trash. But he loved those pajamas as much as she hated them, so she kept washing them and he kept wearing them. “And my newspaper. You think they’ve got coffee and a paper in this monastery?”
She grabbed her wallet out of her bag, slung over the single chair in the room. “I’ll get coffee,
Babbo.
Just don’t insult Liam by calling his house a monastery.”
“What?” Corrato called after her as she went down the hall. “You think he hasn’t noticed?”
Liam woke feeling heavy with guilt. The room was bright and he dressed quickly in the same jeans and T-shirt he’d worn the day before. He’d overslept. He found Mai, Corrato, and the rat dog in the kitchen. Corrato was doing a crossword puzzle in the morning paper.
“A small European fish, five-letter word, ending in T,” Corrato read aloud.
“Hey,” Mai called when Liam walked into the kitchen. “We helped ourselves to breakfast. Dad likes Rice Krispies. I hope that’s okay.” She was wearing a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and sneakers. Her cheeks were rosy, as if she’d been outside. Or was embarrassed.
He debated whether he should kiss her good morning. Some women expected that after you slept with them.
“Sprat,”
Corrato announced.
Liam decided
no
on the good-morning kiss. Maybe she didn’t want her father to know about last night. Liam sure as hell didn’t. “Not much here to eat. Sorry. I haven’t gotten around to getting to the store. Busy, you know, sorting things in the shop.” It sounded lame.
He
sounded lame. What could a pretty, smart human woman see in a loser vampire like him? It was a good thing he’d enjoyed last night, because he knew it wasn’t going to happen again. If she had any brains, she’d go now.
“I went across the street and got bagels and coffee. There’s a cup there for you.” She wrinkled her nose. He thought it was the cutest nose he’d ever seen.
“Not very friendly over there, are they?” she asked.
He shrugged and got a carton of OJ out of the fridge. He didn’t do caffeine. He was jumpy enough without it. “They’re okay. We, um, just don’t have a lot of visitors this time of year. Things kind of shut down.”
“Royal fur, six letters, ending in E,” Corrato read aloud.
The dog seemed to be the only one listening.
Corrato hesitated.
“Ermine.”
He scribbled the word.
“I thought I’d run to the store later, get a few things my dad likes. I thought I could make dinner for us tonight. If that’s okay.” She looked at Liam hesitantly.
So, apparently she
was
staying, at least until dinner. He took a drink of juice from the carton, then thought better of it and went to the cupboard. All he could find in the way of a glass was a plastic cup from the local minimart. He poured half a cup. “Sure. Dinner would be nice.”
She leaned against the counter and sipped coffee from a paper cup. “Your kitchen is beautiful. A little sparse, but beautiful.”
“Guess I just haven’t gotten around to getting dishes, silverware . . . stuff.”
She laughed. “Liam, you’ve got boxes of dishes and silverware and pots and pans downstairs. How can you not have any dishes in your kitchen?” She met his gaze. “I know, you’re not here that much.” She took another sip of coffee. “So what do you
really
do for a living?”
“I told you, I buy and sell antiquities. For myself sometimes. I also act as a broker for other buyers. I’m gone for months at a time. All over the world, really.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You really deal in antiques. Hmm. And I thought maybe this was just a cover-up. I thought maybe you worked for the State Department. You know, CIA or something.”
He frowned and took a drink of juice. “Nah. What makes you say that?”
She was still watching him. Making him feel uncomfortable. “I don’t know.” She pointed her finger. She still didn’t quite believe him. “Something. In your eyes. In the way you move. The way you observe everything going on around you. You’re not the kind of man I would want to meet in a dark alley.”
“Five-letter word meaning ‘friendship,’ ” Corrato interjected. “Fourth letter, a T.”
It was on the tip of Liam’s tongue to ask Mai why if she would be afraid of him in a dark alley that she was willing to meet him in a dark bedroom, but he didn’t. Instead, he finished his orange juice and headed for the door leading downstairs. He had a lot of work to do in the shop. A lot of thinking to do. “I’m going downstairs to get to work. Make yourself at home. Let me know when you’re ready to go. Maybe I’ll tag along with you, get a few things.” The truth was, he wasn’t exactly comfortable sending them to the grocery store alone. The owner, Hannah, could be . . . unwelcoming, this time of year.
“Five-letter word meaning ‘friendship,’ ” Corrato repeated. “Fourth letter, T.”
“Sure. And maybe I can come down and join you. Help you out.”
Liam rested his hand on the doorknob. He really liked her. He really had to get her out of here. “You don’t need to do that. It’s my own fault I let it get away from me.”
“Liam, I’m not offering for altruistic reasons.”
She smiled at him mischievously and he remembered the taste of her mouth on his.
“It’s my polite way of saying I want to pick through your stuff.”
He shrugged, opening the door. “Suit yourself.”
“Five-letter word meaning friendship,” Corrato said again, louder this time. “Fourth letter, T.”
“Amity,”
Liam and Mai said in unison.
Liam closed the door behind him.
Chapter 11
T
hat evening, when Liam’s cell phone rang, it was a welcome escape from the tension in the kitchen. He’d been helping Mai wash the dishes, dishes she’d found in the shop, washed, and set the table with. They’d kept busy all day, treating each other nicely enough, but he could feel an apprehension building between them. It was the big question. Would she come to him again tonight? He wanted to tell her not to. That she couldn’t. In the same breath, he was afraid he might shrivel and die if she didn’t.
If only he could be so lucky.
“Excuse me,” Liam said as he flipped open his phone. It was Fia. “Hey,” he said quietly.
“Hey. Got some intel for you. Can you talk?”
“It’s Sunday night. Haven’t you got anything better to do than work at the office on a Sunday night?”
“Football is on in every bar in the city. Eagles are playing at home. I hate the fucking Eagles. You want the information or not?”
“Hang on a second.” He glanced at Mai, covering the mouthpiece. “I’m going to take this outside.”
“Okay.” She smiled, drying a plate. It was 1920s Noritake dinnerware. Simple. Beautiful. Of course, when the plate was produced in 1921, the company was still called Nippon Toki Kabushiki Kaisha, Limited. He’d bought the dishes in Nagasaki in the late ’20s, thinking his mother might like them. He’d never gotten around to giving them to her.
“Do you mind taking Prince out?” Mai asked. “I’m not crazy about my dad going out alone after dark.”
“Right. Sure. Good call.” He backed out of the kitchen awkwardly. He hated that damned dog. “Prince.”
The dog trotted out of the living room and down the hall to where Liam waited.
“Leash is on the door handle,” Mai called.
Liam scooped up the mutt. “You run, I’m sending the pit bull after you, you got it?” he whispered in its pointy ear.
The dog looked into his eyes and Liam could have sworn it telepathed,
Not a problem, buddy
.
Headed down the stairs, dog under his arm, Liam spoke into the phone again. “Okay, sorry. I’m back. Hey, are dogs telepathic?”
“How the hell should I know?” Fia asked. “What’s going on there? Someone there? I thought I heard a woman’s voice.” Her tone turned sweetly mocking. “Liam! Have you got a lady friend at your place?”
So . . . word might be getting around Clare Point by now, but it hadn’t reached Philadelphia yet.
“It’s just Kaleigh. She’s been hanging out here a lot. I don’t know what’s up with her.” He didn’t know why he lied. Fia would find out. Everyone was going to find out. He just didn’t want to deal with it tonight. “So what’d you find?” At the door at the bottom of the steps, he set the dog down, and together they went out into the dark.
“The Weasel, aka Salvador Machhione. Born in Brooklyn, 1939, a distant relation to the Gambino family,” she read. “Apparently hung out with his Gambino cousins, learned some of the tricks of the trade from them. In his early twenties, he started working for a guy named Carlo DeCava, who had a legal front selling antiques and junk in Brooklyn. In the ’60s, DeCava played the usual games: loansharking, racketeering. The young Machhione was a go-getter and had a thing for import / exports. A little stolen merchandise here and there—electronics, high-end clothing—but then he started moving stolen artwork and such. He was very good at what he did, apparently so good that he got too big for his britches. In ’77, three guys who worked for DeCava were found dead in a coffee shop. Nice, neat single nine-millimeter round through each of their foreheads. Machhione was supposed to be with them, but
weaseled
away.”
“Ah,” Liam said. “Thus
the Weasel
.” He snapped his fingers, leading the rat terrier to the end of the building where there was still grass growing.
“A month later, DeCava was headed to a baptism at Our Lady of Lourdes. Never showed up, him or his driver. Car was found abandoned. Never heard from them again. Machhione divorced his wife and married DeCava’s only daughter, the old lady DeCava retired to Palm Beach, and lo and behold, the Weasel was suddenly the owner of the antiques store and all the business that went with it.” Fia exhaled and then went on. “His name was tossed around once in a while among the Feds for a number of years, but no one could charge him with anything. Then in ’86 he was charged with masterminding a diamond heist in South Africa.”
“Diamonds? Damn.”
“Big international fiasco,” Fia continued. “Charges were eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence. He was alleged to have gotten away with stealing about six million dollars’ worth of some kind of rare pink diamonds I’ve never even heard of. But the diamonds never show up, as far as anyone can tell. He finally slipped up in ’89 and went to federal prison for tax evasion and racketeering. He was released in 2010 due to health reasons. I guess they figured he was too old to cause much trouble. Let’s see, that made him—”
“Seventy-one when he was released. Okay.” The wheels in Liam’s head were turning. “You come across the name Donato Ricci anywhere? R-I-C-C-I. D-O-N-A-T-O.” Liam snapped his fingers. The dog was digging in the grass. Eating something.
The dog ignored him.
Fia gave a snort of disgust. “I came across, like, a thousand names. You asked me about the Weasel.”
“I know, I know. Cut that out!” He pushed the dog’s head away with his toe. He was eating something disgusting in the grass.
“What?” Fia said. “Cut what out?”
“Prince, knock it off.” Then into the phone, “Dog-sitting. Don’t ask.”
“I have no intention of doing so,” Fia answered dryly. “So you want me to check out this Donato Ricci?”
He hesitated. The dog was still gnawing on the unknown substance. It smelled like crap. Literally. He scooped up the dog. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
“You’re going to have to give me a few days. Might even be next week before I can get to it. I’ve got a field assignment.”
“As soon as you can get to it.” He thought for a second. “And see if you can find anything on a Corrato Ricci, while you’re at it. C-O-R-R-A-T-O. They’re brothers.”
Liam hung up with Fia, made an instantaneous decision, and called Kaleigh. He had to get out of here. He had to get away from Mai. He needed time to think. Time to get ahold of his emotions. It was the perfect night for a road trip.
“I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it, but I swear it’s going to get cleaned up,” Kaleigh said into the phone.
Liam walked to the door. “You’re damn straight they’re going to clean it up, but that’s not why I’m calling. I need you to do me a favor.”
“Sure. Hang on a sec. Connor’s listening in on private conversations again,” she said in her best nasty-teenager voice.
“Am not!” Liam heard.
It was Kaleigh’s little brother. At fifteen, he was a pain in the ass. He would become a bigger pain in the ass as time passed.
“Okay,” Kaleigh said after a few seconds. “What’s up?”
“I need to go out of town for a day or two and Mai and her dad are staying at my place.”
“So I heard.”
He didn’t respond. It was the vampire network at work. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Can you just check in on them?”
“I’ve got school. Mom caught me skipping last week, so I’ve got to go. She’s threatening to go to classes with me.”
“I was thinking about after dark. Elwood and Jake were poking their fangs around here last night. I think I’ll pay them a little visit on my way out of town, but if you could just drop by and check on her? Make sure they don’t need anything.”
“No
problemo
.”
Upstairs, Liam deposited the dog in the living room. Mai had found a TV for her dad somewhere in the shop and had hooked it up. Liam had no cable and the antenna on the house was old, but Corrato seemed to be content watching
60 Minutes
.
Liam stuck his head through the doorway in the kitchen. “Something came up,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He kept his gaze at her feet. “I gotta take off. Might be gone a day or two, but you’ll be fine here.”
She turned to face him, a wet dishcloth in her hand. She was a good cook. The shrimp scampi she’d made was amazing. “Okay.” No questions. No anxiety. She didn’t look like she even cared.
“Um, you’ll be fine here, but you should probably stick close to the shop. Not . . . go anywhere. Stores or whatever.”
She watched him carefully but said nothing.
“I’ve got a friend. She’s a teenager, but she’s cool. You can trust her. Her name’s Kaleigh. She’ll stop by, see if you need anything.”
“Okay. Have a good trip.” She turned back to the sink of dirty pots and pans. Just like that. No questions. No whining about him leaving her alone at the mercy of the mafia. Nothing about sleeping with her and dumping her. Not a word.
Liam headed down the steps, totally relieved that Mai hadn’t given him a hard time about taking off. And oddly disappointed at the same time.
Late in the afternoon on Monday, Mai was still busy opening boxes and sorting through the contents. Liam had an incredible inventory, from what she could tell. She couldn’t even guess at the value, but everything was so disorganized that she didn’t see how he could sell much of anything. Right now, customers couldn’t have gotten in the door if they wanted to.
It had occurred to her midmorning as she was making an area to put lamps that Liam might not want her picking through his stuff, or organizing it. But she had to do something; otherwise, she was going to go crazy. And since she obviously couldn’t go to her own shop and work, Liam’s was the next best thing.
Besides, he had
way
too much baggage to be worried about something this trivial. She could just tell: the nightmares, the sad-beyond-his-years look in his eyes, the way he moved like a caged animal. He said he wasn’t CIA, but she didn’t believe him. She’d dated a CIA agent just after college and she knew the look, the way they moved. Liam was
so
a spy. Or something equally crazy. She just felt it in her bones.
Which was yet another reason to get out of here while she had the chance. The relationship with the other CIA agent hadn’t gone well. She arranged books she’d unearthed on a bookshelf on the back wall of the shop. She couldn’t believe how many first editions Liam had.
Things with Robert had definitely not ended well. She’d broken up with him when she discovered he slept with a semiautomatic under his pillow. Loaded. There was also one in the linen closet and one taped to the back of the toilet tank. Also one in each of his cars.
She hadn’t checked Liam’s toilet tank. Not to say it hadn’t occurred to her.
But who was she kidding? If she found an Uzi taped to the back of the toilet tank, where was she going to go? With her seventy-five-year-old, headed-for-senility father and a five-pound rat terrier? The truth was that whether she liked it or not, the only thing she could do was hope that Liam would be able to help her figure this out. If she could just talk to this crazy Weasel, find out what he wanted, if she had it, God knew she’d give it to him.
A tap at the door of the shop caught her attention. She saw a red-haired teenager with a backpack on her back standing on the sidewalk. Liam had said he was sending a friend by to check on her. This had to be Kaleigh.
Mai walked to the bottom of the staircase. “
Babbo?
You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he shouted from the living room upstairs. “We’re watching our stories.”
Thank God for soap operas.
Mai went to the door but didn’t open it immediately. Better safe than sorry. “We’re closed. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mai. I’m Kaleigh. A friend of Liam’s. He asked me to come by. Can I come in?”
Mai hesitated, thinking she should just tell her they were fine and send her on her way.
“It’s safe, really,” the teen said from the other side of the door. “I’m, like, the safest girl in town.”
Mai smiled and unlocked the door, even though a part of her didn’t want to meet this Kaleigh. She didn’t want to get to know Liam’s friends or in any way make herself a part of his life. She was just sticking around because she had nowhere else to go right now. She wasn’t going to make whatever this was between her and Liam a
thing
. He’d been amazing in bed; they’d been amazing together, but she wasn’t naive enough to think that meant anything. He obviously wasn’t interested in a
thing,
and she had bigger problems right now than her lack of bedsheet action.
“Thanks for stopping by.” Mai stepped back to let her in and locked the door behind her. “You really didn’t have to. I’m fine. We’re fine. I imagine Liam will be back tonight.”
“I don’t know about that. He gets antsy sometimes, takes off. Could be days before he’s back.” She glanced around the shop. “Wow. You do all of this? Is that a wall over there?”
Mai chuckled. “That’s a wall. I think there are four of them.”
“Liam’s been working for almost three weeks and I think you made more headway in a day.”