The Spia Family Presses On (27 page)

A strange thought hit me, one that made perfect sense, but one that Aunt Babe might never have considered. “You saw them kissing, and you assumed they’d spent the night together, but maybe they hadn’t. Maybe she’d just arrived, and Hetty had actually spent the night with him. The reason he kissed Carla for so long out on the stoop was because he didn’t want to invite her in with Hetty hiding under his bed.”

A long couple of minutes passed before Babe leaned back in.

Lisa opened her eyes. “Babe, I think you’ve been had.”

It seemed as if Lisa had been listening the whole time pretending to nap so Babe would feel more like talking. I had to give Lisa credit. The woman knew when to keep her mouth shut and when to speak up.

With Lisa’s words I remembered Hetty coming out of my mom’s house the night of the party with her blouse undone, and Dickey slicking back his messy hair, and wiping his face, especially his mouth with his white handkerchief. No wonder Hetty had been so huggy. She and Dickey had been getting it on and I had disturbed them.

I was beginning to think Hetty’s heart wasn’t as kind as Babe would like to think it was.

“That two-timing . . . I’ll be damned.” And she lit up another cigarette.

“One more thing,” Lisa asked. “When did all this take place? How close to Carla’s murder?”

Babe sat back in her chair, took a long satisfying drag and said, “Carla’s housekeeper found her lying under an overturned coffee table, shot in the head, that very afternoon.”

I awoke several hours later on my aunts’ sofa, alone, covered in a pink fluffy blanket, still wearing the vintage nightgown from the previous night, with Dickey’s pinky ring tucked safely into my left shoe. Aunt Babe had given it to me right before she’d slipped up to bed to grab a couple hours of sleep.

I figured if I took charge of the ring I might be able to smoke out the killer. Either this was the absolute smartest idea I’d ever had, or the absolute dumbest. Whatever happened depended an awful lot on how Lisa and I lured the fly to the ointment. I felt both scared and empowered. Lisa, on the other hand, was all about the game, whatever it turned out to be.

The house was quiet except for a ticking cuckoo clock. My aunts had their own clock from Bisnonno Luigiano. He liked to spread his cuckoos around. Even Federico had a clock.

Lisa was nowhere around. She must have gotten up earlier and was probably back in my apartment, haunting my closet, figuring out today’s outfit.

As I sat up, my thoughts swung to Hetty. Did she kill Carla and make it appear that Dickey did it? If anybody had motive, she sure did, but the ring just didn’t figure into it. At least not the way the clues were stacking up now.

Dickey knew enough to give that ring to my mom for safe keeping. He knew of its significance, so much so that the first thing he did when he got out was to parade it around at the party, almost begging the killer to come and get it. Regrettably, the plan backfired and Dickey ended up being just another victim, something I was hoping to avoid.

As events were beginning to gel in my head, I stood up and headed off to the bathroom.

Of course that was the reason for the freedom party. Why my mom was so insistent on having it. She knew what Dickey was up to. He never wanted the land back. It was all about Carla’s killer. So why didn’t she tell me? Why did she have to keep everything a secret?

Because she knew absolutely I would have never agreed to such a treacherous game. And I would’ve been right.

But it was too late for I told you so.

And how the hell did her charm bracelet get tangled up under Dickey’s feet? I was still hoping the killer had put it there. But how did the killer get it? Did she lose it out in the yard and the killer accidentally stumbled on it? I liked that scenario. If the clasp was broken, it could have fallen off anywhere, even right in the killer’s path.

Once again, I needed to talk to my mom, but today was olive picking day for almost everyone in the family, and I had no choice but to join in. Dickey’s murder would have to wait. And unless I stumbled over his body in the orchard, or my mom was up in the same tree I was, I really needed to give my full attention to picking.

Ten minutes later I was on my way back to my apartment still wearing the vintage pink nightgown and robe. The ring was now hidden in the left pocket of the fuzzy robe.

The very first thing that caught my attention when I stepped on the front porch were the three turkey vultures that circled high above my head. I knew they were vultures by their unstable flight pattern. They tended to tilt from side to side while they flew, plus those unmistakable deep-red bald heads that only another vulture could love. These birds of prey had a keen sense of smell and a reputation for locating carrion even inside a building with open windows or in this case, a barn.

I didn’t know where Dickey’s body was hidden, but it was a good assumption that they did. And, soon, so would the entire Sonoma Sheriff’s department. A clue this obvious couldn’t be ignored.

Could it?

But I was on a mission this morning that even vultures couldn’t keep me from.

Olives.

I knew by now everyone was out in the orchard working hard to harvest the fruit. Timing was essential with olives, and Uncle Federico had hired a small crew of twenty or so men to do most of the work. Today was the last day to pick our Koroneiki olives at their peak and most of my family would be out there helping. Even my mom would spend time out in the grove. She hated to climb up on the ladders. She’d fallen off of one once. Nothing broke, but my mom didn’t like risks of any kind, and from then on she refused to climb up even one rung.

Now she used a long wooden pole with a sort of double clamp at the end to shake the olives free so they would fall in the catchnet. The pole ran off an air compressor and shook the limbs and the olives fell off. She could clear a tree in a quarter of the time it took the rest of us to pick, but Federico didn’t like the mechanical rake. He said it damaged the fruit and the tree, but my mom won’t be intimidated. Her harvest went into yellow bins and was pressed first along with olives that he’d purchase from other groves who harvested in the same manner. That way there was no time for the possibility of mold or rot to attack the olives. Mom had learned this technique that Federico despised while she was in the Basilicata region of Italy with my dad on our one and only trip as a family.

When I arrived in my apartment, there was a note on my front door from Lisa that she had gone home and would meet me at the ball that night. Her mom had stopped by to pick her up. Lisa probably felt a lot safer with her mom, and who wouldn’t? The woman was a tiger when it came to her cub.

I could only imagine how that went down. Her mom must have been in a complete meltdown when she saw the sling. I was glad I had slept through it.

As an afterthought on her note, she wrote, oh, by the way, Dickey’s finger is missing from the fridge. And might I suggest that you lock your door from now on. From the looks of things, the idiot-killer stopped by to search for the ring. Good thing we weren’t home when he/she came calling.

She signed it with a smiley face.

I opened my door to find my apartment in total chaos. The mattress was off the bed, the sheets had been ripped off, the closets were open and all my clothes and shoes were scattered on the floor, all the drawers in the kitchen had been emptied out, my fridge was open and the contents dumped, and what was the worst of all was that my mom’s espresso machine was in pieces on the table.

She would never forgive me or the dismantler.

Before I allowed myself to react, I immediately walked over, locked my door, not that it made a difference now, and phoned Lisa, only to get her voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. She didn’t like messages and rarely listened to them. My number on her missed calls list was all that was needed.

Then I sat right down on the floor and wailed, sounding very much like Zia Yolanda.

Two hours later, after I cleaned up as best I could
—
I was determined not to let the intruder get to me
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I was out in the orchard, clad in jeans, a long sleeved sweater, a black hoodie, and hiking boots
—
the only shoes that weren’t touched
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ready to do my share with the harvest.

The sacred ring was hanging from a silver chain around my neck, safely tucked under my clothing.

Okay, I admit this was strange behavior considering my apartment had just been trashed, but my self preservation was at risk of crumbling if I allowed myself to wallow in self pity, so off I went to pick olives and show the killer my True Grit, thank you very much, John Wayne.

“Start over on that row of trees,” Federico ordered when he saw me drive up in my pickup. I followed his directions, parking behind his brown Nissan pickup, along a row of countless bright red olive bins that lined the dirt road. I killed the engine and jumped out, totally psyched to pick as many olives as possible. It took a ton of milled olives to produce fifty gallons of oil. That was a lot of olives and after all, this was what Spia’s Olive Press was all about.

In the past few years we’ve had bumper crops with no frostbite or bug infestations, thanks to Federico. He pampered the trees and the crop as if they were his own children.

It had already been a wearisome day, to say the least, and I could still see those nasty vultures circling overhead. I would have laughed if I didn’t think the whole thing was ludicrous. After all, it was barely ten in the morning, plenty of time for my day to get even worse. But I refused to dwell on what else could possibly happen.

I would give my complete focus to the olives, joining Maryann and Uncle Benny as they moved from one tree to the next. I would concentrate on the task at hand.

But what about Dickey, a little voice echoed in my ear. What about the ring? And your trashed apartment?

“Over here,” Maryann yelled while standing on a ladder that leaned on a branch of one of the trees that produced Coratina olives, creating an oil that had a fruity fragrance, but a slightly bitter, spicy flavor. I forced myself to think of a tasty arugula salad with goat cheese and red onions that begged for our Italian blend oils. How these trees were to Italy like our Mission olive trees were to California. How Uncle Federico had imported them less than five years ago to add the oil to our Italian blends, and how well they had grown in our rich soil.

Incredibly, I was feeling better. Feeling one with the olives. With nature. With my bucket. My olive rake.

With my very own vertical wooden ladder, always at the ready, which I always kept in the back of my truck this time of year. I slid it out and was thinking of setting it up under Maryann’s tree when the vision of the endless sea of bright orange catchnets attracted my attention. The entire area was covered in a blanket of orange. They’d been put down in the last few weeks to trap the fallen olives. It had taken six men three weeks to put them down.

The refection off the nets caused the silvery trees to glow orange in the warm sunshine giving off a fun Sesame Street effect. As if Miss Piggy and Big Bird lived in our orchard and children would be hanging out of the trees playing hide and seek. At least that was the thought that always came to mind whenever I saw the catchnets.

Today was no exception. The bright orange always made me happy, and I was really trying not to let anything get in the way of that feeling.

As I walked over to Maryann, who was now waiting for me, I reflected on the hard truth that I now carried a house key in my hip pocket, something I hadn’t done for the entire two years I’d lived on the property. Something I had grown accustomed to. It was like living in a safe, small town and I liked it. Liked the fact that I never had to worry about break-ins or crazed killers. Too bad it had been a big fat lie. A false sense of security. The crazed killer was living in my very own house. Well not exactly in my own house, but close enough to walk in whenever he or she felt the need.

Of course, it had taken me almost a half-hour to locate an actual key; my mom had it hanging on a hook in her kitchen cupboard, along with every other key she owned, but who squabbles over such minor inconveniences when the entire ship was sinking. And for all intents and purposes, this ship was taking on water at an alarming rate.

But I was there to pick olives, and to be happy with the sight of our orange catchnets and not to ponder un-recovered gangsters. One of whom was probably the same dude who killed Dickey, chopped off his finger, threatened me, tried to run us off the road and trashed my apartment looking for the ring.

But it was all in the family.

The family that kills together . . .

“How’s it going?” I asked Maryann once I arrived under her tree.

“Great,” she said. “It’s going to be a good harvest.”

The catchnet was littered with olives, and dozens of red bins, filled with olives, were stacked on the side of the road waiting to be picked up.

I leaned my ladder up against a sturdy looking tree limb on the next tree over, knocking the branch a couple times with my ladder to make sure I didn’t hear any cracking sounds, a sure sign the limb wasn’t strong enough to hold me.