Tax Cut (13 page)

“
I think I need to place a call to Uncle Freddy now,” Bonnie said. The restaurant was fairly empty, so Bonnie dialed her uncle and asked him for as much information on Gino Righetti as he could find. Uncle Freddy already knew a lot about Gino Righetti. His reputation preceded him. Uncle Freddy warned Bonnie to stay far away—that she was asking for trouble if she got anywhere near the likes of him.

“I feel sick,” I said to Bonnie.

“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m just worried.
After dealing with a corrupt politician at our last job, the last thing I had wanted for us was to be involved in some other sort of a scandal. This is a nightmare.”

“Maybe all this is happening for a reason.
Maybe it’s your fate.”

“It’s my fate to have lousy jobs, working for criminals?
Where do I get off this train and catch a new one going in the opposite direction?”

“I’m just saying, maybe you were meant to solve crimes o
r something. Maybe you should go back to school; start a new career as a criminologist.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I asked Bonnie. “I don’t want to be anywhere near crimes, criminals
, or anything out of the ordinary. I’m a mouse, remember?”

“I guess.
But, you were wondering who killed Vinny. Don’t you still want to get to the bottom of that? It seems like that interested you.”

“Yes, I want to know what happened to Vinny, but not because I’m fascinated with this stuff.
It’s because I wanted to protect myself.”

“Doesn’t seem to me like you are protecting yourself by digging into Vinny’s death.”

I supposed Bonnie was right. I was digging. I wondered if Marc did the deed and put Vinny in an early grave.

“Do you think
Marc is the murderer? Given what we know about him?” I asked Bonnie.

“He seems to be taking money from Gino and laundering it.
That doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.”

Bonnie was right
again. I had no proof whatsoever of Marc having killed Vinny. He seemed the obvious choice, though.

“Why is Gino giving money to
Marc?” Bonnie asked.

“I suspect for his vote on the Village Pier project or
to push the project through as quickly as possible.”

“Village
Pier?”

Bonnie wasn’t familiar with the Village Pier project,
as I was handling all that paperwork myself, so I filled her in. I also took the opportunity to fill her in on everything else I had learned—what Sylvia from the nail salon had told me, what I found out from Vinny’s exes, and everything that Babs had said.

We finished our lunch
, then left the casino for the trip back to Bonnie’s house. I was quietly thinking the whole way home. I still wasn’t convinced Marc was a killer, or was I? He had a mean streak. I realized Marc was probably taking bribes from Gino to get his vote on everything to do with the Village Pier project and also to push the project through quickly. Probably, Gino was giving out “incentives” to help encourage the government to purchase the beach club through condemnation. What I didn’t know was how Vinny fit in. Did he find out what was going on and threaten to expose them? Did bribes and murder go hand in hand? Were there other people involved? Or was Vinny killed for another reason—something that had nothing to do with the Village Pier or Righetti Brothers’? I knew I had to find out.

Chapter 1
3

Morning came much too early
. I was dragging this morning, partly due to my not being used to the time change yet. It was Monday, and back to work I reluctantly went. I felt like I was reliving something else from my old job this morning when I arrived at the municipal building. Something other than working for a corrupt boss. It was a complete
déjà vu
.
I entered my office to see that it had been ransacked. I had experienced a break-in at my previous place of employment, so I knew to immediately get out of the office and phone the police. I put my feelings of alarm aside for a couple of hours, in order to cope with the notion that my office was struck by thieves for a second time in my life. The police came, investigated, then said I could clean up. After looking around, I realized, nothing was missing. No money, no computers, nothing. Also, none of the other offices were touched. I would have thought if a perpetrator were stealing something, they would have at least gone through the tax office, since we never locked the doors between offices.

I wondered, was someone looking for something?
Did someone find out Vinny had left a note? A long shot, but plausible. I also wondered how the person got in. The door lock seemed untouched and there were no visible signs of entry. A few hours later, I would discover that the “perp” was Marc himself. He was caught on video entering the office with a passkey. When questioned, he told the police he was looking for something. I realized the police weren’t going to push the issue. Marc was one of the people who could hire and fire them and I’m sure no one wanted to risk their bread and butter.
If you looked up the hashtag for asshole, Marc’s photo would certainly be next to it.

I wondered if I should call
Marc and ask him what he had needed.
Nah, if he wants something, he can darn well ask me for it like a normal human being
, I thought. Plus, what if I was right, and he was looking for Vinny’s note? I didn’t want him to know I had already found it. Then there was also the possibility that he saw Bonnie and me at the casino. I was sure we were careful, but what if he saw us take those pictures? I began to worry.

I had finished cleaning up the mess in my office—it took me the remainder of the day.
The books were back in the bookcase, the phones were back on the desks, the papers on the floors were sorted and back in their proper files. Paperclips, staplers, tape dispensers, and pens were all returned to the normal resting places.

I
suddenly heard a strange sound overhead. I asked Bonnie if she heard it too. She did.

“Sounds like someone is walking up there,” I said.
We were in a single-floor building, so I couldn’t imagine why anyone would be walking around in the ceiling.

“Maybe they are working on the air conditioning or pipes or something,” Bonnie said.

I shrugged my shoulders. The sound of footsteps persisted and prevented me from concentrating. I desperately needed to get some paperwork done since I spent the day cleaning up after Marc. I stepped out of my office and over to Bonnie’s desk.

“I can’t concentrate with that noise.
I’m going to go ask around and see if anyone knows what is going on…”

Crash
.

A body plummeted through the ceiling. Startled, Bonnie and I both jumped back.
Luckily, we didn’t get hit. I took a step closer, and saw the body was none other than Mike Nero. He let out a groan.

“What the
eff, Zero?” Bonnie yelled. He groaned again.

“Bonnie, call 9-1-1. This bozo looks hurt,” I said.
Mike’s eyes rolled back in his head. I leaned over him. “Nero? Nero?”

He didn’t answer me.
I slapped his cheeks several times. No response.

“The paramedics are on the way. Is he breathing?” Bonnie asked.

“I don’t care if he’s not. There is no way in hell I’m giving him CPR.”

“Me neither!” Bonnie exclaimed.

I felt bad saying that. I wasn’t a bad person…normally. Bonnie gave him a swift kick in the side. He said, “Ow.”

“He’s breathing,
” Bonnie said.

Mike opened one eye.
“My love,” he said to me.

“You’re an idiot,” I said.
“You could have snapped your neck. What the eff were you doing up there?” I asked.

“Umm,” he said.

“You little freak. You need to stop stalking her,” Bonnie said.

“I’m not stalking her
. I just wanted to see her,” Nero said as he sat up.

“Hey
, freak…walking in the attic and falling through the ceiling is a form of stalking. She’s not interested. You need to knock it off.”

“But we are destined to be together,” he said.

“Listen here, Zero…” Bonnie said.

“The name’s Nero.”

“Like I said, Zero, if you come near here again, I will kick you so freaking hard in the baby maker that you’ll need your nuts surgically removed from your bung hole.
Capisce
?”

The EMTs arrived and
, after giving him a thorough once-over, they told Nero that he would need some stitches. They carted him off to the hospital.

I didn’t even have
to say, “What is wrong with him? Why would anyone creep around in the attic to just see me?” Bonnie must have read my thoughts.

“Dangling participles,” she said.

I shook my head.

“There’s never a dull moment when you’re in charge,” Bonnie said to me.

“Ha. Ha,” I said sarcastically. Bonnie was right, though; there never seemed to be a dull moment. I decided to pack up and head for home. Once again, I had more than my fill of Coral Beach and couldn’t stand to be there for one more moment. I felt as if a black cloud was directly over my head, sending lightning bolts my way. Angry bosses, senile old women, insane stalkers, dead bodies. I wondered why I was back at work when I had some money left over to pay my bills for a few more years. Then I remembered, jobs in this field were few and far between, I had no other skill set, and the chances of another job opening near my home would be unlikely. I started to think I needed to move far, far away from the Jersey shore.
Note to self: Look for a new job and house back in Middlesex County. Nothing ever happened when I worked there.

* * *

I picked up Mandy from my parents’ house on my way home, fed her dinner, then put her to bed early. She was cranky from not taking a nap during the day. It worked to my advantage, because it gave me some time to search the internet. Before I had left the office for the evening, I took home a copy of the mailing list of property owners affected by the zoning ordinance. I started looking up the addresses of the properties owned by the Righettis. They were all oceanfront homes. Thanks to a website called Zillow, I was able to track down the purchase price and the purchase date. The majority of the properties were purchased very recently for a below-market price. The properties were located along Ocean Avenue, where the Village Pier project was proposed. I wondered why the owners would sell out at such a low price.

I typed the first address into Google.
Eighteen Ocean Avenue, Coral Beach, NJ. A news station provided me with video footage of the home catching fire two months before. The home was a vacation home and the owners were not there for the winter, luckily. Makes sense that they would sell for a below-market price. There was no house there and they likely collected the insurance money, so perhaps they made out with a lot more money than they thought they would.

I moved on to the next house. Twenty Ocean Avenue.
A newspaper article of a man celebrating his one hundredth birthday appeared. I imagined that the man was being moved to some sort of facility—a nursing home or assisted living. Those facilities typically took all the proceeds of the person’s house, so I could see why the homeowner or perhaps his next of kin wouldn’t mind selling at a lower price. I guessed that without a realtor’s commission being taken out of the sale, the price wasn’t as bad as I thought.

With there being nothing seeming suspicious to me on the surface of the first two homes I found, I searched for
Home Number Three. Twenty-two Ocean Avenue. No results. I logged into the County’s database for deeds and I typed in the block and lot of the property. The owner of the house was Mitchell Johnson. I typed Mitchell Johnson into the search engine. He was reported missing about one month prior. Alarms went off in my head. Was this the handy work of Gino Righetti?

I thought about what Sylvia, the nail salon
owner, said about the Righettis and how people were selling after strange things happened, like fires and disappearances. I had enough time to check out one more property, Twenty-four Ocean Avenue. It appeared in the police beat several times for break-ins. Many valuable things were stolen and there was extensive property damage.

My list of properties revealed that Righetti Brothers had owned twenty-five other properties.
I wondered where they got all the money to purchase all those properties. The numbers ranged from One through Fifty, both odd and even. On
Google Earth,
it seemed that the properties being bought led right up to the amusement park that already existed.

I put down my laptop and went to the bathroom sink to wash my face.
I was concerned about the rest of the people who lived there, who hadn’t sold yet. But more so, I was concerned about my own well-being. Thoughts were racing in my mind. The image of Mr. Craft’s dead body appeared in my head. I went back to my computer and typed in Eugene Craft. His address appeared on the screen before my eyes—Twenty-six Ocean Avenue. A chill ran down my spine.

I searched for information on that the missing couple that I read about in the newspaper too.
They lived at Number Fourteen. The beach club was located at Number Two Ocean Avenue.

I
double-checked that all the windows and doors in my house were locked. My baseball bat was under my bed where I could reach it in seconds. I armed the alarm and loaded my gun. I allowed Snickers to sleep outside of his crate. I doubted that anyone was coming after me tonight, but I wasn’t taking any chances. All my security measurers didn’t help me relax. Sleep wasn’t going to come for me that night. I tossed and turned until daylight broke. I left for work in the morning like a zombie.

I stopped by Take Ten and ordered a double espresso to go.
From there, I drove to work and pulled in the parking lot. I looked in my rear view mirror to see how bad my dark circles looked. They were bad. I added some extra powder makeup to them and headed on inside. Bonnie had arrived before me. I passed by her desk and gave her a little wave as I took a sip of my coffee. In return, she rolled her eyes. I gave her that look, like
what
? She nodded toward Dingo’s office. I glanced in. He was sitting at his desk, picking toe jam out of his left foot. I looked back at Bonnie with a facial expression like,
eww
, then continued on my way. I didn’t have many dealings with Dingo, but from what I had seen of him so far, I didn’t like him much. He was a weirdo.

I spent the rest of the morning keeping busy with paperwork, while I intently watched the clock. I couldn’t wait for noon to roll around so I could go somewhere else and get some more coffee with caffeine
in it. To my grave disappointment, those in charge of ordering coffee for the municipal building were only stocking decaf this week.

My phone rang.
It was an interoffice call, except I didn’t recognize the extension.

“Hello.” I said.

“Nero alert!” Bonnie said.

“What?
Where are you calling from?”

“The conference room.
I can see Nero coming into the building from the parking lot. Run for your life!”

“Gotcha!” I said as I hung up the phone.

I darted out of my office and into the ladies’ room. I waited a few minutes and wondered how long I’d have to wait until the coast was clear.
I might as well use the latrine while I’m in here
, I thought. I entered the stall, lined the seat with a disposable seat protector, and sat down to do my thing. My tush no sooner hit the seat when I heard his voice.

“Hello?
Chelsey? Hello?”

You have got to be kidding me!
I thought as the blood boiled up through my veins.

“Chelsey?
Are you in there?” I heard as the door began to crack open.

“Seriously? Seriously?”
I screamed.
I certainly can’t pee now, knowing that jerk is trying to come in here!

“Chelsey, it’s me.
Mike Nero.”

“I know who the heck it is, and if you don’t get the
eff out of here, I swear I’m going to march right down to the police department and have them lock you up for being a Peeping Tom!”

“Al
l right, geez, calm down. You must be PMSing.”