Debra Gaskill's Blog, page 2

Call Fitz Chapter 13

Chapter 13

 

I hung up the phone and leaned back in my chair. The morning was productive, but I sure didn’t like what I found. And, sad as it was, it had nothing to do with who killed Gina—just the very painful story about family dynamics.

I hooked my fingers together behind my head, thinking back to my childhood. My parents were not so different than other New Tivoli families: they were loud in their every day conversations, whether it was in love or in anger. The arguments between my brothers and sisters were loud, too, but we never would have done what Sharon allegedly did to Brian Cantolini—or what Brian might have done to Mariella.

We Fitzhughs were fiercely loyal, from what the outside world could see, and would beat anybody bloody who challenged any one of us. But if you fucked up you got yours behind the oaken door of that white clapboard house in New Tivoli. My older brothers more than once came to my aid when I was a young and scrawny Nick the Mick, then beat my ass if they found out I’d instigated it. They saw less action in high school when I, too, developed Aiden Fitzhugh’s broad shoulders and muscular, but bowed legs and no one dared approach me with any name that even hinted at an Irish or Italian slur.

I never knew what childhood sexual abuse was until I became a security policeman—SP in Air Force parlance—in Texas. I saw more of it as part of the FPD. It always generated a bottomless rage in me that dissipated as the perp’s face got pounded into ground beef somewhere between my boxing gloves and the seventy-pound red Everlast bag in the corner of the YMCA gym.

But why concoct something so destructive and so violent and stuff it into a child’s head? What kind of a mother would do that? Even if that child was an adult and more than a little gullible, as Tina intimated about Mariella, it was wrong.

Maybe Tina supported her brother because she, too, couldn’t believe what was being said in court. Maybe Brian really did commit these acts. Maybe Mariella was stupid and could be led by the nose at times, but we never know what really happens behind closed doors or in the dark of night. The world only finds out when it somehow spills out into the street and we cops get to be the ones to clean it up.

Violation is violation and nobody willingly makes that shit up, right? What do I know? I still hadn’t found out who—beside Michael Atwater—could have killed Gina Cantolini and that was what I was being paid to do.

Maybe my first impression of Atwater was right. Maybe he did do it. Michael Atwater had spent his life making anything except good choices. The argument could be made that his drug use and the violence between Gina and him had escalated to the point where he just finally snapped. In his last bad decision, angry that Gina wanted a DNA test on her boys, as she was simultaneously demanding child support for them, he put his hands around her neck one last time and choked the life out of her.

If that was so, why send someone like Jorge Rivera to scare me off this case? That’s the other part I didn’t get. Someone wanted Atwater railroaded for killing Gina. But who? And why?

Where was she killed? I hadn’t found a killer and I hadn’t found a crime scene. Police believed they had the killer, but nothing was ever said about where he did it. If they had, that information should have been provided to Ambrosi. Maybe they didn’t know either.

I sat back up. I had to put all this on the back burner for now. I had a little less than an hour to get ready for the benefit.

*****

Holding my first free drink of the evening, a watered down Jack and Coke, I wandering along the outer edges of Memorial Hall lobby, down by a table filled with items for a silent auction. The old antique benches that normally held the sedate bottoms of symphony attendees had been cleared away and replaced with large round tables. They were covered with white tablecloths, set with hotel grade china and crowned with music themed centerpieces.

The evening’s schedule had always been the same: provide as much free liquor through the cocktail hour and dinner to get folks to bid on items that ranged from Cleveland Browns tickets and gift baskets to golf trips, vacation condo rentals and symphony tickets. Just before the crowd moved into the main performance hall for the symphony’s performance, the big donors would be recognized, and after the symphony played, the dancing would begin and the free drinks would end.

Tonight’s performance featured some of the world’s best-known cello concertos, with Gracie as the featured performer.

I watched as the guests wandered in: professors from the college, local politicians, and Fawcettville business leaders. They all stopped at the bar for their complimentary adult beverage and searched the round tables for their assigned seats before mingling with other attendees.

Before long, Dennis Lance and his staff entered, all of them wearing their ‘Lance for Judge’ tee shirts underneath their tuxedo jackets. Alicia Linnerman, filling out her tuxedo quite well, waved from across the room, and made a beeline toward me.

“Fitz! How are you?” She hugged me briefly.

I lifted my plastic cup. “Getting there.”

“How’s the Atwater case going?” She took a sip of her wine. Her cornflower blue eyes bored right through me, her round breasts pushing the limits of Dennis Lance’s campaign shirt.

“Counselor, I can’t tell you that. That’s between my client and me. Heard anything from Officer Elliott?”

She shook her head. “No. There’s a no-contact order in place. I have heard that he was terminated from the FPD, though.”

“Before his case comes to court?”

Alicia smiled. “He’s taking a guilty plea. Apparently your visit to the jail made him think it’s best to own up to the assault charges than come back here to folks whispering about being involved in a murder.”

I nodded. “Hopefully, he’ll never be involved in law enforcement again.”

“Yes. The chatter is whether or not he ever assaulted any other females.”

“From what I heard he repeatedly asked my victim for sex and threatened her with arrest if she didn’t come through.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about your case.”

“Call it a small slip of the tongue. I can trust that you will see that information gets where it needs to go?” I looked over her head to see who else had wandered in. Alicia’s boss was working the crowd as only a candidate could, pressing the flesh and handing out business cards. I wondered briefly if I should ask him about who paid for Gina Cantolini’s funeral but thought the better of it.

“Of course.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught Chief Monroe enter the lobby, along with his wayward spouse. She was dressed in a clingy black number that barely covered her ass and exposed more than a little cleavage. Maris saw I was looking her way and waved. The chief saw me, too, and jerked her close to keep her attention, nearly making her stumble.

Great. Just what I need—to be in the middle of whatever marital drama the Monroe’s have going.

Alicia watched the exchange between them and snickered. “I’ve been doing a little research into you Fitz. I understand the Chief doesn’t think a whole lot of you.”

“It was seven years ago. People need to let that shit go.”

Alicia leaned up against the wall next to me and sipped her drink. “Yeah, they do. But that’s not how small towns work. You ought to know that.”

“After that mess with Maris Monroe, I married my wife Gracie and we were very happy for a long time.”

“Where is the esteemed Dr. Grace Darcy?”

“I haven’t seen her yet.”

“She doesn’t know you’re coming, does she?”

I was silent. Alicia didn’t look me in the eye, but patted my arm sympathetically, not like the aggressive female I’d met just a few days before at her apartment.

“I thought so,” she said. “Just by the way you said it the other day in my apartment.”

“Yeah. Gracie wants me to sign the divorce papers like right now, but I just can’t. I think she’s dating someone—or wants to. She wants to get on with her life. I can’t blame her.”

“Neither can I,” Alicia said, scanning the attendees as they walked through the door. “But sometimes it’s just hard to let go. Sometimes you just have to.”

I leaned my head back against the old plaster wall and sighed.

“I can’t. Not just yet.”

“Well, come on then, Fitz. Neither one of us have dates, so let’s at least pal around for the evening. No expectations, just for the laughs, just for the night.” Alicia tugged on my sleeve. “Let’s go say hello to all the muckety-mucks.”

Turns out, Alicia was pretty good at glad-handing, just like her boss. We moved from table to table as the guests came in, smiling and making small talk. She only responded to campaign questions if directly asked, sending most folks over to the table where Lance was holding court, no doubt enjoying the fruits of yesterday’s news story announcing his candidacy.

Slowly, the members of the symphony began to arrive and mingle with the guests. The crowd nearly doubled as the musicians entered, seemingly through the walls and softly, like fairies, lighting on the arms of last year’s big donors, beginning to weave their magic.

Then I saw her, entering the lobby from the performance hall. She wore a long black sequined dress, her long arms wrapped in an off white shawl that floated like ephemera behind her. She held a small black satin clutch close to her flat, toned stomach. Her hair was pinned up in a bun, as it always was for a performance and she walked like a queen entering her kingdom.

In many ways, she was. That was one thing Gracie always liked about this event—she could talk to anybody about the symphony and her love of music. More often than not, she could coax a donor up to the next rung on the donation ladder, getting funding for symphony trips into the public schools or scholarships for young musicians. She would, by the end of the evening, be circled by a throng of well wishers and admirers, her throaty laugh bringing more to the fold and more money to the symphony’s coffers.

I scanned the arched entrance behind her. Nobody followed her. She was alone. Maybe my fears about that pussy Van Hoven were unfounded.

“Excuse me,” I whispered in Alicia’s ear. “I’ll be right back.”

I caught up to my wife along the silent auction table.

“Hey, baby,” I whispered, taking her arm.

Gracie jerked away.

“Goddammit Niccolo,” she hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“Supporting the symphony, of course,” I smiled. “And checking on my favorite cellist.”

“I don’t need checking on.”

“Has anyone told you that you look wonderful tonight?”

“Has anyone told you you’re a jerk?” She turned her attention back to the clipboards describing each silent auction item, writing down her bids and her office phone number.

“Baby, what you saw wasn’t what it looked like. Judith Demyan was drunk. I’d just sent her proof that her husband was slipping it to that student on the side. She showed up at my office intoxicated and we weren’t doing what it looked like. I wouldn’t do that to you—I love you, Gracie. I was trying to push her off my lap when you came in.”

“The fact that you let her get onto your lap is what pisses me off, Niccolo. If you weren’t screwing her, she was giving you one hell of a lap dance and you were sure as hell enjoying it.” Gracie moved down the display of auction items, stopping at a Cavaliers gift basket, with an autographed LeBron James jersey, a couple tickets and a coffee mug.

I followed like the begging dog I was.

“Please, Gracie. That’s not true. You gotta believe me.”

She didn’t answer. Another couple stepped up beside her to look at the gift basket. She grabbed my arm and pushed me toward other auction items further down the table.

“Gracie, talk to me.”

“I just want you to sign those divorce papers and get this whole mess over with.”

“Give me just one more chance. We can make this work, honey. I know we can.”

She stopped and sighed. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to make it work. I want out. This might be my last quarter at the music department. My contract is up and I’ve been asked to interview at Berklee College of Music in Boston in June.”

“You’re leaving?” My heart hung in my chest.

“I might be. The college wants me to stay, but I’d be more than stupid to turn down Berklee if they offered it to me. That’s the professional opportunity of a lifetime!”

“But you have a reason to stay here!”

“Do I?”

“Gracie, for God’s sake, yes you do. Give me a chance. Give me one chance to make it up to you. If I can’t make you see that all that stuff is behind me and all I want is you, then I’ll sign the papers. You’ll be free to go to Boston or wherever you want. I won’t stand in your way then.”

She stopped looking over the silent auction items and turned to face me.

“Deal.” She held out her hand. I shook it, and lifted it to my lips for a kiss. She jerked away. “Stop that. Not here!”

“So how is this going to work?”

“You tell me, Niccolo. Don’t think you can just blow smoke up my skirt and think you can waltz back into my life, all charm and good times. It’s going to take more than that. It’s going to take some serious change on your part.”

“I’ll do whatever you want me to.”

“That’s not the point Niccolo. The point is you have to convince me to stay. You have to convince me that won’t ever happen again.”

Gracie looked across the room and my gaze followed hers. Alicia Linnerman and Peter Van Hoven were approaching from opposite corners of the lobby. Alicia grinned at me and lifted her glass of wine in greeting; Dennis Lance was right behind her. Van Hoven was honing in on Gracie like a tuxedo-clad hunting dog going in for the kill. I wanted to lay my arm protectively around Gracie’s waist, but knew she’d have no qualms about slugging me if I did.

Alicia approached first.

“Fitz, I thought I’d bring our esteemed judicial candidate over to say hello,” she said, gesturing at her boss with her wine glass.

“Good to see you, Mr. Fitzhugh, as always,” Lance reached out to shake my hand. “This time under better circumstances. That funeral the other day was something, wasn’t it? Sad, sad situation.”

“Yes, yes, it was. Mr. Lance, this is my wife, Dr. Grace Darcy. She’s principal cellist here with the symphony. Grace, this is Dennis Lance, our prosecuting attorney and this is Alicia Linnerman, one of the staff assistant prosecutors.”

Grace shot me a look: I’m your wife in name only. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Lance.”

Lance bowed formally. “Likewise. Alicia tells me, Fitz, you’re working for Michael Atwater’s defense team.”

“Yes.” If you want to call a burned out lawyer and a former cop a team, go ahead. “I don’t want to see someone go down for a murder he didn’t commit.”

“You’ve certainly got an uphill battle there,” Lance smiled. “Next Friday, the grand jury meets. I have to say our case is pretty rock solid. I think we’ll get an indictment.”

I smiled with a confidence I didn’t feel. “We’ll see.”

Van Hoven entered our conversation circle; Gracie politely introduced him as the new conductor. We chatted about his background, his aspirations for the symphony; Dennis Lance discovered their mutual love of golf.

“Do you play golf, Dr. Darcy?” Van Hoven asked politely.

“No, I don’t.” Their eyes met and sparkled with mutual attraction.

“My wife is the women’s fencing coach for the college,” I said, stepping closer to her. I touched the small of her back with my hand; the toe of her black ballerina flat struck my ankle. I cringed and dropped my hand. Touché.

“Yes, I am,” answered Gracie, not missing a beat. “I really fell in love with the artistry and the athleticism of it. That, and running bores me.”

A short grey-haired woman in a cocktail dress came over and touched Van Hoven on the sleeve. I couldn’t remember her name, but for years, she’d been president of the Women’s Symphony Association, the group that organized the benefit.

“It’s time to begin the auction,” she said politely.

“Ah, so it is.” Van Hoven offered Gracie his arm and the two of them walked toward the podium.

“She’s beautiful,” Alicia said as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Yes she is,” Lance agreed. “You’re a lucky man, Fitz.”

I took a gulp of my Jack and Coke. It was lukewarm and tasted like piss. “Tell me about it.”

Alicia’s blue eyes caught mine. She understood my pain—I could see that. I could also see that Reno Elliot wouldn’t be the last bad boy she’d fall for. If I’d met her a few years earlier, before the disaster with Maris and the happiness I’d let slide away with Gracie, she might have been added to my list of broken hearts. The old Niccolo Fitzhugh wouldn’t have thought twice. The old Niccolo would have done her and dumped her. Not now.

Alicia and Lance wandered off to find their seats. My glass was sweaty, like the palms of my hands. I sat it down on the table and headed towards the men’s room.

What could I do to convince Gracie our marriage could work? Flowers, candy—the usual wouldn’t work. She’d said as much. But what else could I do? Dinner at the restaurant where I’d asked her to marry me? Maybe that would be a good place to show her we were making a symbolic start. Maybe—

Maris Monroe grabbed me by the arm as she came out of the ladies’ room.

“Hey sexy,” she cooed.

“Get the hell away from me.” I peeled her fingers, one by one, from my tuxedo sleeve.

“You just don’t know a good thing when you see it,” she smiled.

“If you’re such a damned good thing, why did your husband try to shoot me? If you’re such a good thing, why aren’t you sitting next to—?”

The ladies’ bathroom door opened and I stopped to stare at the woman who was coming out the door. She was taller than Alicia, and just as juicy. She was shorter than Gracie, yet—I cringed as I realized it—without Gracie’s elegant toughness. Real rocks, real diamonds, not like the cheap crystal knockoffs Maris wore, hung from this woman’s ears and a string of single diamonds rested on a chain in the soft hollow of her throat, shimmering like the silver cocktail dress she wore. Her blue-black hair curled around her shoulders and her black brows arched perfectly over her dark brown eyes, edged in thick, black eyelashes. Her makeup was impeccable and her olive-colored skin had the toned, slightly rosy look of someone whose only reason for living consisted of drinking in the adulation of others. She looked like the kind of woman who wouldn’t even let you in the door until her clothing was impeccable and her makeup was perfect and didn’t care how long she made you wait.

Nations went to war over this kind of woman, and crimes were gladly committed in her name; the man who won her knew he had a trophy. In bigger cities or older societies, a woman like this would be the queen consort or the president’s wife; she wouldn’t give the time of day to a small town cop. “OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE” flashed over her head in three kinds of neon.

There was something in her face that I’d seen before, though. Maybe it was the curve of her nose, the arch of her sardonic smile, as she passed Maris and me on her way back into the benefit.

“So, you want to meet later for drinks?” Maris walked her fingers up my arm.

I pushed Maris’s hand away and stared as the woman slipped through the arched lobby opening.

“Shut up. Get your sorry ass back to where you belong.”

This dark haired beauty walking away from me never knew anything but white-glove care and adoration from the moment she woke in the morning until she closed her eyes at night.

Or had she?

Take away the make up, the fancy clothes and the hair, and she wasn’t much different than a lot of folks in Fawcettville. Her Mediterranean looks made me think she was somehow tied to the New Tivoli neighborhood; one bad choice in her life could have changed her life’s trajectory immensely, sending her to a job at the grocery store like Susan Atwater rather than a life spent on a pedestal. And she didn’t have to be the one who made the choice—it could have been made for her in the closing potteries and steel mills over the painful economic tides this town suffered over the years.

Put a scarf around the neck, add the damage of an abusive boyfriend plus the hard mileage of addiction then top it off with some cheap dollar-store clothing—I knew suddenly where I’d seen that face.

It was in Gina Cantolini’s casket.]

Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website,  www.debragaskillnovels.com or come back next week for the next chapter. Holy Fitz, the next book in the Fitz series is also available on my web site.

Call Fitz Chapter 12

Chapter 12

 

If I were back at home, I would have spent this Saturday on the couch, watching a baseball game, drinking a beer with Gracie at my side. I wouldn’t have worried about this shit until Monday. Living at the office made it hard to stop working.

Maybe a little distraction would help me out. I wandered over to the television atop the filing cabinets across from my desk and turned it on. I leaned back in my office chair and put my feet on the desk. I pulled the remote from the middle desk drawer, flipping through the infomercials and old movies, settling mindlessly on some blonde trying to sell cookware.

Within a few minutes, the phone rang. I leaned over to pick up it up, leaving my feet on the desk.

“Fitzhugh Investigations,” I said.

“Mr. Fitzhugh? This is Sharon Hansen.” Her voice was mouse-like and timid.

I sat up straight.

“Hello! Thanks for calling me back, especially on a Saturday. I’m sorry to bother you at such a bad time, but I’m investigating the death of your daughter Gina and just had a couple questions.”

She sighed, painfully. I hated talking to victim’s family members. This one could be especially hard. The woman had lived through the sexual abuse of her daughter by her husband for god sake. Now that daughter, who obviously struggled with keeping the horror of her abuse at bay through drugs and alcohol, had been murdered.

“What do you need to know?”

“I’m looking for information on Gina, her background and any contact you might have had with her recently.”

Another painful sigh.

“Gina and I have been estranged for a number of years. Her drug and alcohol problems were so severe that I had to separate myself from her. I’m sure you understand.” The words caught in the back of Sharon’s throat. How much agony did this woman have to endure?

I’d seen enough addiction and concerned family members to know that, sadly, happened sometimes. The violence, the theft, and the drama: after a while you just had to shut the door for your own self-preservation. But her daughter was dead. The drama —with her at least—was over and she deserved a decent goodbye.

“I saw the stories in the Beacon-Journal. You and your family have been through a lot. I hate to see something like that happen. But I have to ask why you didn’t come to her funeral?”

“I’ve been in ill health for some time, Mr. Fitzhugh, and confined to a wheelchair. I can’t drive anymore as a result and I couldn’t find anyone to bring me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It was a nice service.”

Sharon was silent.

“So are you aware you have three grandchildren?”

“No I’m not.” Her mousy, pained voice turned flat.

That’s an odd reaction. Most people I know would be thrilled to know they’re grandparents. Not me, of course, but then I’m not most people.

“Two boys and a girl. Cute kids.”

“Mmm.”

“I heard that the bar Gina worked at raised money for her burial and got about half the amount. Some unknown benefactor paid for the rest, supposedly. Do you have any idea who would do that?”

“No I don’t. As I told you, Mr. Fitzhugh, I’ve been out of touch with my daughter for a number of years as a result of her addictions. It’s been a long hard road. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

“You don’t want to know what’s going to happen to your grandchildren? Or what is going on with the investigation?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fitzhugh. It’s not that I don’t want to help, it’s just a matter that I can’t.” She hung up.

That’s weird.

What about Tina? Maybe Tina Cantolini-Jones had a little more insight into this mess. I turned the laptop back on and began my search again for phone numbers. The Indians were playing the Tigers by this time and losing by a run. Maybe by the end of my phone calls, they’d be ahead.

I didn’t find any “Tina Cantolini-Jones” and no “Tina Cantolini” listed by herself, so I made the assumption Tina and her husband Sam were still married.

I started with every Sam Jones listed in San Francisco; when that didn’t work, I tried every “S. and T. Jones” listed, then every “S. Jones.” After hours of hearing “Sorry, wrong number” my blood pressure was up and the Indians were down another run. OK, one last try and I fucking quit. I pushed in the number for the last S. Jones and listened to the phone ring.

In the background, the announcer droned on: It’s bottom of the ninth and there’s two outs. Indians are up to bat. They trail by two runs and the bases are loaded—

A young boy, his voice cracking with puberty, answered the phone. “Hello?”

There’s the wind up—

“Hi, I’m looking for Tina Cantolini-Jones?”

And the pitch—

“Hang on.” The phone made a thunk as he dropped it. I heard a yell: “Mo-o-o-o-om! Pho-o-o-o-one!” I held my breath as footsteps came closer to the phone. Please let them belong to the woman I’m looking for.

In the background, the announcer kept talking. He swings—

“Hello, this is Tina Cantolini-Jones.”

He connects with a powerful crack of the bat and that ball is flying! It’s on fire!

            “Hi, my name’s Niccolo Fitzhugh. I’m a private detective. I’m looking into the death of Gina Cantolini.”

She sighed. “She’s dead? I didn’t know that. That breaks my heart.”

And the ball sails up, up, up—it’s heading toward the scoreboard—

“Yes ma’am. She was murdered last week. They found her body under the stage at the Italian Festival in Fawcettville. I was wondering if you can tell me anything about her, specifically, her mother Sharon.”

“Oh, I can fill you in on Sharon.”

And it’s a goner! It’s a home run! The Indians win!

“What can you tell me about her? Anything specific you think would help my case? I’m looking into—”

“That bitch? It’s about time somebody exposed what she did to my brother.” Tina turned from a well-bred California mom back to her hardscrabble eastern Ohio roots.

           “Excuse me?”

“Sharon fabricated everything she had that girl say on the stand. Nothing that girl said was true! Nothing! That little bitch ruined a good man and I tell you from the bottom of my heart, my brother never did that! Never!”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You mean Gina? It was Gina who testified against her father, right?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I pulled the TV remote from my middle desk drawer, shut off the post-game celebration and put Tina on speaker. I needed to hear every nuance in her words. Her rage and the anger burned through phone lines and she was near tears. This had been simmering for a long, long time.

“No Gina didn’t testify against her father—she was the only one in that family who wasn’t bent on destroying Brian! It was Mariella, the older one.”

I thought back to Alberto’s death notice.

“Mariella was a younger sister? She was listed second in your father’s obituary, behind Gina.”

“Mariella is five years older than Gina. She was twenty when Sharon and my brother split up.”

“She was twenty when she accused her father of sexually abusing her? What the hell started that?”

“Sharon manipulated her into doing it. She called her at night at her college dorm—Mariella was going to Akron State, and wasn’t happy there. Sharon started unloading on Mariella about how miserable she was being married to her father and somehow planted the idea she’d caught her father abusing her when she was a little girl.”

“What?”

“Sharon was a master manipulator. I never understood what Brian saw in her, but he was a bookworm, never dated much. He probably thought that some babe like Sharon was going to be his dream girl. She wasn’t.” Tina spit out the word like it was poison.

“What was Sharon like?”

“She was horrible to live with. She put on one face for the public, where everyone thought she was sweet and lovely and did no wrong, but she was different behind closed doors. Brian told me after the girls were born he couldn’t do anything to make her happy. He’d do anything that woman wanted. If she wanted a new car, he’d get her one, even on a teacher’s salary. She wants a new house? They go looking for one. Sharon always dressed to the nines—she never went out without looking like a million bucks. Once, on a whim, she wanted their bedroom painted, so my brother takes a whole Saturday and paints those walls the color she wanted and everything. And when she got home with the girls from a shopping trip, she told him it didn’t turn out the way she wanted and to paint it back the original color. And he did it!”

“Wow.”

“So she keeps working on Mariella, feeding her this garbage that Brian abused her, all the while riding him like a rented mule. He was too fat; they didn’t live in a nice enough neighborhood, why hadn’t they gone to Europe like all her fancy friends? He used to call me on his way home from work and tell me all this crap. He was miserable and then he finally met somebody, somebody who treated him like a human being. When he realized that Brian decided to file for divorce. He couldn’t stand Sharon any more.”

“What happened then?”

“Brian didn’t understand why Mariella suddenly wouldn’t talk to him, so he took a day off from work and drives up to see her at college. I always thought Mariella was a lot like her dad, really gullible and in some ways not real bright, but she had her mother’s vicious streak, too. She confronted him with all this made up crap. He was flabbergasted, and then he was devastated. He tried to convince Mariella she’d been fed a load of garbage, but she believed her mother. When he confronted Sharon about the whole situation that night, it all blew up.”

Tina stopped and gathered her thoughts.

“She filed for divorce, threw Brian out of the house, then she and Mariella filed a complaint. That got Brian suspended from school, then charged with child abuse and the papers got hold of it…” her words trailed off. “Mariella’s testimony made sure Brian was going to be convicted. When he heard it and saw the jury’s reaction, he went home and blew his brains out.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Gina saw through a lot of it, even though she was only fifteen. She kept trying to tell the officials that Mariella was lying but they wrote her off, didn’t take her seriously at all. After Brian killed himself, Sharon turned on that kid and absolutely ruined her life. Sharon told Gina she was wrong, a loser like her dad. Made the kid question every memory she ever had from her childhood. Gina would call me and tell me what was going on. She hung on to how she knew her Daddy wasn’t that kind of guy and her mother crucified her for it.”

“When did Gina come back to Fawcettville?”

“As soon as she turned eighteen, she left. I don’t know why she went back to where Mom and Dad lived, but she did. Maybe she was trying to find some old family connections back in the New Tivoli neighborhood or something, I don’t know. She already had a drug and alcohol problem, poor kid. It was her only way to escape her mother.”

“So why did you leave Ohio?”

“The trial and Brian’s suicide just ruined everything. Mom couldn’t go anywhere without people whispering and pointing. Dad was heartbroken. He died within a couple months of Brian’s suicide. It was the same for my family. Sam had an opportunity to transfer to San Francisco, so we packed up all our stuff and Mom and moved out here. We’ve been here ever since—the only time we came back was to bury Mom next to Dad in Pittsburgh. Nobody knows the Cantolini name out here.”

“Do you have any contact at all with Sharon or Mariella?”

“Are you kidding? I wrote that bitch and her idiot daughter off long ago.”

“I have to tell you, I talked to Sharon a couple hours ago.”

“I’m sorry for you.”

“No, actually, she sounded very timid, very unassuming.”

“Yeah, well, that’s part of the game she plays.”

“She said she was in a wheelchair now and couldn’t make it to Gina’s funeral because she can’t drive. Said she couldn’t find anyone to bring her.”

“She could tell me the sun comes up in the east and I wouldn’t believe her. I not only wouldn’t believe her, I’d call her doctor to check the diagnosis and then find out where she bought the wheelchair and ask to see the receipt. That bitch is lying through her teeth.”

I sighed. So Gina wasn’t a victim of her father—both she and Daddy were the victim of a real Mommy Dearest. I remembered Gina’s sad eyes in the back seat of my cruiser and understood. My victim tried to stand up for what is right and got beaten down for it. What kind of person did that to her own daughter?

“A couple years ago I got a wedding invitation from Mariella. She was marrying some guy back there, but I don’t remember the name. I threw the whole thing out.”

“If I have any more questions, can I call you back?”

“Sure. I want somebody to give that bitch everything that she’s got coming.”

Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website,  www.debragaskillnovels.com or come back next week for the next chapter. Holy Fitz, the next book in the Fitz series is also available on my web site.

Call Fitz Chapter 11

It was Saturday morning and I was sitting at the Mexican restaurant, enjoying Lupe’s huevos rancheros and searching the Internet on my laptop.

Lupe came by and draped her arm around my shoulders. She leaned over me to pour another cup of her strong coffee.

“Qué estás haciendo?” she asked, sliding into the booth beside me. “What are you doing?”

“Working a case,” I said, squinting at the screen. I needed reading glasses, but was too vain to go get them. It would mean I’d have to admit I was middle aged. Ma’s comments that I was old enough to be someone’s grandfather didn’t help. Fuck this getting old shit. “I’m looking into my murder victim’s past.”

I hadn’t found much, except Alberto and Adele’s death records in Pennsylvania, where Alberto found work with US Steel. Both died in Pittsburgh about the time Gina would have been in kindergarten. The trick was finding out where the hell their children went —and whether Gina was Brian’s daughter or Tina’s.

Most of what I needed—death and birth certificates, divorce or marriage records—I could order online, but Michael Atwater only had a week before the grand jury convened and I couldn’t wait for the mailman to solve my case.

Driving the ninety minutes to Pittsburgh to see Alberto and Adele’s old neighborhood might or might not have gotten me the information I needed. People in their age group were probably already dead or retired to Florida. There might not be anyone around who knew them.

My chances were a little better with the Internet and any court records I could dig up. Hopefully they would be in the surrounding counties. Most every county around here was considerate enough to archive every damned piece of paper connected to recent court cases, from original appearances, to media requests to have cameras in the courtroom, verdicts and sentencing hearings. All I needed was to find what I needed, then click the ‘download’ button and I was good to go. The catch could be if the court records went back further than twenty years. If they were, they’d be archived someplace, maybe off site, away from the courthouse, which could cause additional delays. I’d have to drive to the courthouse to pick up the documents, more time wasted.

“If you need anything else, cariño, you just call,” Lupe said, sliding out of my booth, and running her hand familiarly along my shoulders.

I waved absently as she left. I was running out of time and needed to find something to jumpstart this case, not the sweet, warm smell of a woman.

Using my index fingers, I typed “Tina Cantolini + Ohio” into the computer, hoping for enough of a news record to start my search. I hit pay dirt: the results located a Tina Cantolini outside of Cleveland in Shaker Heights. I flipped through a few newspaper entries: She married a businessman named Jones, hyphenated her last name and was active in all the right social climbing crap. She organized the bake sales at her children’s private school, was active in the Junior League and even had an exhibit of her photography at a local gallery. All Shaker Heights references of her stopped, then picked up a couple years later with another photography exhibit in San Francisco.

That’s a hell of a long way to move. Why leave Ohio? Was this the right Tina Cantolini-Jones? A little further down I got my confirmation with Alberto’s obituary: “… He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Adele, and a daughter, Tina Cantolini-Jones (Sam) of San Francisco, six grandchildren, Louis, Lena, James and Jennifer Cantolini-Jones, and Gina and Mariella Cantolini. A son, Brian, preceded him in death. Services will be held…”

So Gina was Brian’s daughter, huh? Looks like we’re making progress, I thought as I took a sip of my cooling coffee. I punched in “Brian Cantolini + Ohio” and gasped.

Four pages of archived newspaper stories filled my screen: “Local teacher charged with sex crimes,” “Jury hears graphic testimony in teacher sex-crime case,” and finally, “Teacher charged with sex abuse commits suicide.”

The news stories in the Akron Beacon-Journal were ten years old. I would have been at the end of my police career and too wrapped up in my own life to pay attention to anything that happened out of town; Gina would have been fifteen. When I picked her up seven years ago for shoplifting, she was eighteen and already had a drinking problem, and probably a drug problem as well. Maybe her problems started when Daddy Brian thought he’d visit her bedroom late at night. Maybe that bastard was the one who started her down her destructive road. Maybe getting to know Gina a little better, even post-mortem, might lead me to her killer.

I skimmed one of the stories: Brian had been a beloved English teacher at one of Akron’s most elite private schools, introducing his students to Whitman, Keats, and Shakespeare. Then his wife, Sharon, filed for divorce—along with filing a Department of Family Services complaint that Brian had sexually abused their daughter. The school administration was notified, which triggered a long and loud school board meeting, filled with acrimonious comments by supporters on both sides. Brian’s suspension, along with his vehement denials, was front-page news and so was the trial.

A few more clicks and I found video from an Akron TV station. The reporter stood outside the Summit County courthouse, interviewing a black-haired man in a trench coat. The crawl at the bottom of the screen said it was Brian Cantolini.

He had the same kind of John Wayne Gacy face I’d seen thousands of times before: a little plump and starting to sag with age. His beady eyes didn’t match the warm and welcoming smile. I could see where his supporters thought he was just a great English teacher, who opened their child’s minds to the mystery of poetry, and encouraged their love of literature and writing.

As a cop, I knew better.

Brian Cantolini was the same kind of guy who showed up at kid’s parties as a clown, luring young boys and girls over to his house where he’d offer them toys and candy and games and, when they were comfortable enough, made his move to destroy their innocence, their psyches and fuck up their entire lives.

No wonder Gina was a drunk at 18 and dead by 25.

“This whole thing is a vendetta engineered by my ex-wife,” Cantolini told the reporter. “I never did what she accused me of. I never laid a hand on my daughter!”

The reporter leaned in to ask another question, but Brian’s lawyer held up his hand.

“We will not try this case in the court of public opinion,” the lawyer said. “Our case will show that these charges are completely fabricated, engineered to ruin a good man and keep a great teacher from doing what he does best.”

I clicked the video off. Whatever. That’s what all those perverts said. At least I knew where Gina went off the tracks.

I clicked through a few other stories: apparently, Gina’s recorded testimony was shown in closed court; the graphic nature of Brian’s deeds caused one juror to vomit and another to leave crying, according to the story.

Two days later, before Brian even had a chance to present his defense, he blew his brains out.

At least he saved the State of Ohio a lot of money on appeals and prisoner meals.

I clicked back to Tina Cantolini-Jones. Her move to San Francisco looked like it happened about the same time as Brian’s suicide, no doubt out of shame and embarrassment. Can’t blame her—living with the knowledge that your own brother was a pervert and abused your niece must be a bitch.

I pulled a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet, tucked it under my coffee cup and stood, folding my laptop under my arm. Lupe, taking someone’s order at the back of the restaurant, waved as I left.

I wonder where Sharon Cantolini was these days? Maybe she could help me find out some more information.

Like why she didn’t show up at Gina’s funeral?

Or pay for it?

Those questions weren’t appropriate for Lupe’s place on a Saturday morning. Besides, it would take a little longer to chase her down and I needed to get ready for the symphony benefit.

After I left Lupe’s, I got a haircut and a shave at the barber’s down the street from my office. My tuxedo was hanging in the waiting room closet for me—and I should have been thinking about Gracie—but I had a few hours to kill before I slipped into the monkey suit and begged my wife for forgiveness.

I wanted to find Sharon Cantolini first. I plugged in the laptop again and started searching for phone numbers. No luck, at least in Ohio. I went back to the Summit County Clerk of Courts web site and began looking there. Nothing—at least she kept her nose clean after Brian’s suicide.

Maybe she tied the knot again? I searched the Probate Court records for a marriage license. Boom! There it was: Sharon Cantolini got remarried a year after Brian’s suicide to some schmuck named Joe Hansen, a loan officer at a local bank. At the time of her remarriage, she was living at an address in North Canton. Out of curiosity, I jumped back to the Auditor’s web site and checked the property tax records, just to see how—or if—the widow Cantolini spent her soon-to-be ex-husband’s life insurance money.

The house was in a neighborhood of older well-kept homes, built in the 1920s, along a group of streets named after Ivy League colleges. The house, at the corner of Northwest Princeton and East Yale streets, was nothing extravagant, nothing suspicious, well kept in a genteel, upper class sort of way, judging from the photo. She bought the house eight months after Brian’s death. After she tied the knot Joe Hansen, his name was added to the deed and hers was changed to reflect their nuptials.

A few more clicks and I had a home number. Thank God for those of us who still have landlines. I punched the number into my office phone and waited for Sharon Hansen to pick up the phone.

A perky “Hi, you’ve reached the Hansen’s” was the only voice I heard on the other end of the line. Oh, well. I left my name and number and the reason for my call. Hopefully, she’d call me back.

Maybe there were reasons why she didn’t come to Gina’s funeral. Maybe Brian’s abuse just caused too much damage and Sharon lost touch as her daughter fell into her destructive lifestyle. Maybe Sharon didn’t know Gina was dead—or that she had three grandchildren. Maybe Sharon was in ill health and couldn’t come. Maybe she was too ashamed of the life her daughter had adopted—or maybe just too judgmental. Families put up walls over the damnedest things.

Then again, maybe it was Sharon who anonymously paid for Gina’s funeral.

Who knows?

At any rate, what mother wouldn’t want to help in the search for her daughter’s killer?

Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website,  www.debragaskillnovels.com or come back next week for the next chapter. Holy Fitz, the next book in the Fitz series is also available on my web site.

Call Fitz Chapter 10

I woke up stiff and sore on my waiting room couch Friday before the sun came up. I folded up my blanket and put it, along with my lumpy pillow, in the waiting room closet, sighing as I wondered how many more uncomfortable nights there would be on that cracked leather beast.

Until I could work things out with Gracie, there might be more than I care to think about.

If I could work things out with Gracie.

My dying marriage needed to go on the back burner for now, however. I needed to focus on nailing Jacob Poole. Pinning Gina’s death on him was my last hope to free Michael Atwater. There had to be something in Poole’s life that could connect him to Gina’s murder.

My cell phone beeped with a text message as I filled up the coffee pot in my office bathroom.

It was Ambrosi. He’d had subpoenaed Poole’s phone at my request a couple days ago. Yesterday, Poole (and his attorney) willingly showed up, turned over the phone and the tech people Ambrosi hired were looking into it.

Not the actions of a killer.

Then why should I waste time looking into the actions of a man who was cooperating fully with the investigation?

Reno Elliot didn’t kill Gina. His demands on her were pretty fucked up and he was one shitty cop, but the bruises on Alicia Linnerman’s arm proved he wasn’t around to kill her.

But who was Jorge Rivera and what was his relationship with Elliot? Who shot him—or whom did he shoot? And where was the body? Was Rivera tied to Monroe somehow? Who hired Rivera to push me off the case and why?

I sipped my coffee as I flipped through the Atwater file, going through the same basic facts one more time. Nothing jumped out at me. Nothing.

There were steps outside my office door and today’s newspaper slid through the mail slot. I shuffled over to pick it up.

Two lead stories screamed for attention above the fold. On the left was a story about Gina’s funeral, slated for this afternoon: “Murder victim to be laid to rest.” On the right were Dave Lance’s headshot and the story “Prosecutor seeks Common Pleas bench.”

Maybe I ought to look into Gina Cantolini—maybe her past could lead me to a reason for her death. I scanned the story, which was basically a recap of the murder. Oddly enough, no next of kin was quoted or named.

Why wasn’t her family mentioned? Maybe my answers lie there.

Her parents didn’t live here according to stuff she’d told me when I’d arrested her in the waning days of my police career.

She was just eighteen and already a drunk, with the sad face of someone much older and much more defeated than someone three times her age. I picked her up trying to shoplift a bottle of whiskey.

“You got family to come get you?” I asked, trying to meet her sodden eyes in the cruiser’s rearview mirror. “They’ll book you and then release you since it’s a misdemeanor.”

“No.” She wouldn’t return my gaze. Instead, she watched the traffic go by, leaning her forehead on the window.

“Nobody?”

She didn’t answer and I didn’t push. I learned later she was homeless and sometimes stayed at the women’s shelter at a nearby church. Now, seven years later she was dead and I couldn’t find out why.

Growing up, I couldn’t recall anyone named Cantolini in the New Tivoli neighborhood, but that didn’t mean anything. Like any kid, my world existed only in the three-block area I was allowed to ride my bike. There could have been multiple Cantolini families living cheek by jowl in the duplexes that marked the edge of New Tivoli two blocks over, I would have never known. No one from my high school class had that moniker, but again, I didn’t know if that was a married or a maiden name. For all I know, Gina could have been born a Smith, a Jones, or a Johnson.

I had a week before the grand jury convened. I needed to get busy or Michael Atwater would be facing a murder trial. I needed to consult my ultimate source on New Tivoli. I picked up my cell phone and punched in a number. In a few rings, she picked up.

“Ma? Hey, it’s me, Niccolo. No, no. I’m fine. No, there’s no crisis. Yes, Gracie is fine. I’m calling early because I wanted to catch you before you went to Mass. No, I haven’t moved back home yet. Can I come over later this morning? I need to ask you something about a case.”

*****

The white house I grew up in sat on a small corner lot, circled by Ma’s Floribunda roses. Since Dad’s death a few years ago, she’d thrown herself into gardening, replacing the tulips, the marigolds and the petunias with the same roses she carried on her wedding day. Using Dad’s life insurance money, she’d had the clapboard exterior covered in aluminum siding, since he wouldn’t be around to paint it every five years, but left the interior of the house stuck in the mid-seventies.

I knocked, bracing for how she’d look when she came to the door. Ma was always thin, but these days had shrunken to a bird-like ninety-five pounds, her dowager’s hump stealing more and more of what little height she had left. She pinned her gray hair in the same tight bun she’d worn the day Officer Aidan Fitzhugh pulled her over for a broken taillight in 1949. I knew I wouldn’t have Maria Gallione Fitzhugh in my life much longer; her appearance at the front door of that white house reminded me every time I saw her.

Today was no different. She still had her black dress on from this morning’s mass, but she’d taken off her orthopedic shoes and replaced them with pink fuzzy slippers.

“Niccolo! Niccolo!” Sounding like she’d just gotten off the boat from the Old Country, instead of being a lifelong Fawcettville resident, she reached up to hug me then waved me inside. “Come inside! Come inside!”

I shut the oak door behind us and followed her through the dark living room and into the kitchen. A pot of pasta fagioli simmered on the old olive green stove.

“I see Sophia Armando brought you some soup,” I said, taking a seat at the familiar dinner table.

“And it tasted like merda.” Ma spit into the stainless steel sink with disgust. “I threw it out the next day. This is fresh. Sophia Armando is the worst cook in the neighborhood. Why did you tell her she could bring that immondizia to my house? Coffee?”

I shrugged. There was never any sense in arguing with Ma, no matter what the subject. “Sure.”

She put a tiny cup of espresso in front of me and I loaded it up with sugar. I waited to speak until she shuffled over with her own cup and sat down across from me. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

“So when are you and Gracie getting back together?” she demanded. Her claw-like hand trembled slightly as she lifted her cup to her lips, her eyebrows arched.

“I don’t know, Ma.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” She stopped sipping, gesturing widely with her hands.

“I didn’t come here to talk about Gracie.”

“What do you mean you didn’t come here to talk about your wife? What kind of husband are you? I get twenty grandchildren from your brothers and sisters, but the one son I tell everyone is my favorite, the one who follows in his father’s footsteps, God rest his soul, I get niente, nothing.”

“Ma.”

“That’s what happens when you decide you gotta wait until your old enough to be a grandfather yourself before you get married—”

“Ma, I’m not old enough to be a grandfather.”

“Sure you are! Sophia Armando’s daughter, remember her? The one you dated in high school? She got married right out of nursing school and had four children before Sophia was fifty-five, the same age you are now. Thank god, you didn’t marry Barbara though. She probably couldn’t cook any better than her mother. Not that I would have tried to teacher her—that’s a mother’s job to teach their daughters how to cook. I wouldn’t have shared my marinara recipe with her anyway. She would ruin it.”

“Ma! Stop it!”

“What do you want, then?” Ma looked at me like I was being rude. Her white espresso cup clinked delicately on its saucer as she sat it down.

“I came here to ask you if there were ever any Cantolini’s that lived in the neighborhood.”

“Cantolini? Hmmm…” She tapped her index finger on the table. “There was one family, down near Puccini’s, but they moved away by the time you were in eighth grade. They had a son, I think, and a daughter. You wouldn’t have known them because the kids, they went to St. Rita’s. I wanted you kids should have a good Catholic education, too, but with us living on a cop’s salary, that wasn’t possible. So we send you to the city schools. That wasn’t too bad. I mean, you got a football scholarship out of it, didn’t you?”

“Focus, Ma, focus. Where did they move to?”

Ma shrugged. “How should I know?”

“I’m trying to find information on the family of that girl who was murdered. Think, Ma. These folks could have been the victim’s grandparents. If you can just give me a name, it’s something to start with.”

“Let me see… The parent’s first names, they started with A, I think.” Ma rested her chin on her hand, thankfully silent for the moment. “Anselmo? No, that’s not it. Adalberto? No. Wait! Alberto! That’s it! Alberto! The father was Alberto and the mother was Adele. They came here after the war. The son’s name was Brian and the daughter’s name was Tina. There!” She threw her hands up in the air triumphantly. I reached across the table and clasped her grey head in my hands, kissing her forehead.

“Thanks Ma,” I said sinking back into my chair. “What can I do to repay you?”

“Your brothers all married idiots. You were the only one to marry a woman with brains, the only daughter-in-law I can hold a halfway decent conversation with. Go home and make things right with your wife. That’s all I ask.”

*****

Gina’s funeral was held at one of the less classy funeral homes at the edge of Tubman Gardens. Susan Atwater was sitting with her two grandsons in the front row, dabbing at her eyes. Prosecutor Dennis Lance was sitting at the other end of the same row. After today’s newspaper story, I didn’t know if this was to assure the attendees of the hard work his office would do to convict her killer or if it had morphed into a campaign stop.

A small group of Fawcettville’s rougher residents walked through, paying their respects to Gina’s two boys and nodding at Susan Atwater. A few sat in the back rows, intending to stay for the service.

When I was a cop, I spent a lot of time with these folks. These were the people who rode on Fawcettville’s ragged edge, both legally and socially, men and women who worked with their hands and didn’t use gloves, who woke up on Saturday morning hung over and without their weekly wages, if they had any to start with. Their clothes were stained and their steel-toed boots mud-caked, their faces lined with the cost and the dirt of their lives. Uneducated, unwashed and uncouth, even for a dago mick like me, they would throw punches or shank someone at the first perceived slight. Many, like the Atwaters, were the hardscrabble Appalachians who came to Fawcettville to work in the potteries and the mills; they brought with them their mountain fierceness, hard drinking and clan loyalty.

For whatever reason, they adopted Gina.

I got in line to pay my respects to the deceased. Gina’s face was plastered with pasty makeup, and a silk scarf tied around her neck to hide the strangulation marks. I wondered how much work the undertaker had to do to repair the bullet wound in her chest.

Susan Atwater left her grieving grandsons to stand beside me.

“Such a sad, sad story,” I said softly. “Does she have any family here?”

Susan shook her head. “Just the boys.”

I took her elbow and steered her away from the casket and the line of mourners.

“I’m still working to free your son,” I whispered. “I found out the cop didn’t do it.”

“You’re sure?” Susan’s long bony fingers picked at her sleeve.

“I’m sure. He was beating up his girlfriend at the same time Gina was killed, so he couldn’t have done it. I need to ask you a couple questions.”

Susan sighed.

“Who claimed the body? Who paid for this funeral?”

“I identified the body and found the funeral home. The bar where Gina worked took up a collection to pay for this. They came up with about half, but then supposedly some anonymous donor paid the rest.”

“What do you mean ‘supposedly’?”

Susan shrugged. “One of the folks from the bar told me she thought it was the prosecutor. Said he heard it from the funeral home.”

“Why would a prosecutor do that? Did you ask him?”

“I’m not asking that bastard anything,” she hissed. “He wants to kill my boy! He wants the death penalty! I can’t believe he had the nerve to even show up here.”

Canned organ music began to play; my conversation with Susan ended as mourners began to take their seats. A preacher I didn’t recognize—not that I knew who the priest was at St. Rita’s, either—got up to lead the service. My thoughts raced, barely listening as the service droned on.

Could the rumor be right? Why would Dennis Lance pay for the funeral? Why would the prosecutor help pay for a murder victims funeral, if it wasn’t to curry votes? How ethical could that be, especially in light of his formal declaration as a judge candidate? Probably not very ethical at all, considering he’d already declared he wanted to see Michael Atwater face the death penalty. Shouldn’t an action like that make Lance consider recusing himself from the case? My opinion of the man was changing and not for the good. She had to be wrong— had to be. If not, I had to ask what was going on in this town? Between Chief Monroe and the prosecutor, had everybody’s ethics gone down the shitter?

I stood as six mourners, in black tee-shirts and jeans, walked Gina’s now closed casket down the aisle and out to the hearse. Slowly, the crowd shuffled out, a few of them stopping to hug Gina’s boys or shake Susan’s hand. A few stopped to talk to Lance; he made sure to look properly concerned and sincere, as any good candidate would. As the last of the mourners filed out, he approached Susan, his hand extended, looking like he was mining for more votes. Without a word, she turned on the worn heel of her shoe and, grabbing the boys by the hand, walked out.

Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website,  www.debragaskillnovels.com or come back next week for the next chapter. Holy Fitz, the next book in the Fitz series is also available on my web site.

 

Call Fitz Chapter 9

I’m trying something new: posting a chapter of my first PI novel CALL FITZ here on my blog for you to enjoy. Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website,  www.debragaskillnovels.com.

Chapter 9

 

“So you’re saying that Reno Elliot couldn’t possibly be Gina Cantolini’s killer because at the time of her death, he was beating you up?”

Alicia Linnerman was no shrinking violet—and from the size of Sadie, no crazy cat lady either. She looked me straight in the eye and nodded.

“He tried to at any rate. He grabbed me by the arm as you can see and slapped me a couple times, but Sadie put an end to that real quick—she had him cornered in bathroom by the time the police responded. Didn’t you, girl?” Alicia pulled her sleeve back down and patted the panting mastiff on the head. “I’m too nearsighted to be a good shot, so as a woman living alone, Sadie is the next best thing. She proved that Sunday night. Elliot was taken in and charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, but they let him go, ROR.”

“Released on his own recognizance.” I nodded. “I’m surprised that didn’t show up in the paper.”

Alicia shrugged. “I can’t comment on how the police do or do not handle press inquiries on one of their own. There’s an awful lot of ugly going on at the FPD right now. I’m sure you could get a copy of the report, though.”

I sighed. “If they filed one. I don’t believe, and Jim Ambrosi doesn’t believe, that his client Michael Atwater is guilty. I hoped I was onto something with Reno Elliot, but I guess not.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Fitzhugh. I’d like to hang the bastard as much as you would, but I think a murder charge won’t stick.” Alicia picked up her glass of wine and walked toward to kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink? A glass of wine? A beer? It might take the sting off a bit.”

“Call me Fitz,” I said, following her into a small kitchen that was just as trendy as the living room. “Sure. A beer sounds great.”

Alicia opened the fridge and leaned over to pull a beer from the bottom shelf. I liked the look of her round behind, still in the conservative navy work skirt he’d had on when she walked out of the courthouse.

            She stood quickly, catching my stare and blushed as she handed me the beer. She pulled a pilsner glass from a cabinet and sat it on the kitchen table, across from her wine glass.

“Have a seat, Fitz. Tell me about yourself.”

I twisted the cap off the beer bottle.

“What do you want to know?” I turned to toss the bottle cap into the trashcan behind me. “Or should I ask, what have you heard?”

Alicia smiled and took a sip from her wine.

“A couple friends over in domestic court that mentioned you one or two times. I know you do a lot of work for the divorce lawyers in town.”

I nodded. “That’s true. I retired from the police force about seven years ago and got my PI license. It pays the rent.”

She looked down at her wine glass and spun it in between her fingers. She looked up over her glasses. Her eyes were cornflower blue, ringed with thick black lashes and sucked me in with their intensity.

“You married?”

“I’m separated.”

“Ahhh.”

“What’s that mean?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Just asking.”

“So let me ask you a question. How’d you end up in Fawcettville? And with Reno Elliot?”

Her smile turned a little sad. “I came to Fawcettville basically so I could be a big fish in a small pond, maybe make my name on a big case or two. As for my personal life, I was just out of Cleveland Marshall College of Law and tired of working in Akron when I met Reno on a case.”

“As a defendant or as a witness for the state?” I took a sip of my beer. I liked this girl. I liked her a lot. Why did she get involved with a scumbag like Elliot?

“Aren’t you snarky? I was in the prosecutor’s office then, too. So he was a witness, when I met him, of course,” she said. “I wasn’t aware of his background then and over the last year as I learned more about him, defended him to everyone I knew, like anybody involved with a jerk does.”

“Was this the first time he hit you?”

“He was never the calmest guy I ever dated. But in the last six months or so, I saw a lot more anger, I don’t know why. We had more arguments and they escalated pretty quickly. I never understood that dynamic with the DV cases I’d handled before. Let’s just say I’ve become a little more sympathetic.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Mind if I ask why you and your wife separated?” She looked at me again with those fierce cornflower blue eyes.

“It was a bit of a compromising situation. Let’s just say that.”

“I’ve heard that about you, too.” Her eyes didn’t move from my face. She may have just split up with a boyfriend, but this girl wasn’t letting any grass grow under her feet. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

“I was always faithful to my wife, OK?”

“I thought you said you were caught in a compromising position.”

“It wasn’t what it looked like, but unfortunately I can’t convince her of that.”

“I understand.” She didn’t look like she believed me.

We were silent for a moment as each of us sipped on our drinks, both of us trying to figure out what hung in the air was between us, whether it was going to stay professional or veer dangerously, for me anyway, into the personal. It was probably best to change the subject.

“I hear your boss is thinking about running for office.”

“Yes. He wants to be the next Common Pleas judge.”

“Think he’ll be a good one?”

She took a sip of her wine before she answered.

“I think he’ll be pretty good. Dennis is a good guy.”

“That sounds pretty non-committal. I always liked working with him when I was with the PD. You know something I don’t know?”

She shrugged and smiled.

“We’re kind of getting roped into campaigning for him—unofficially of course. He hasn’t got anyone running against him yet but he’s bought us all tickets to some big thing this weekend.”

“The symphony benefit?”

“Yes. He’s aware of current ethics laws, so anyone who didn’t want to go didn’t have to. Everyone in the office has rented tuxedos and we’ll be wearing campaign tee shirts with them: ‘Lance for Judge’ or something like that.”

“My wife plays cello for the symphony. Her name’s Grace Darcy, Dr. Grace Darcy. She teaches music theory at the college—and cello, of course.”

“Oh? So will you be there?” The blue eyes drilled through me again.

“Yes I will. Grace is performing.” It was time to go. I stood, drained my bottle and sat the empty on the counter. “I want to thank you for your time, and the beer. I’m sorry for what happened to you, but it clears Officer Elliot of murder.”

The predatory vibe emanating from her side of the table seemed to diminish. She tossed back what was left of her wine and escorted me to the front door. Sadie jumped off the couch as we passed and, once at the door, stood beside me, pawing my leg. I reached down and scratched her ear.

“She doesn’t do that with just anybody,” Alicia said. “You must be a nice guy, down deep inside.”

“It’s the same story—all I attract is dogs and dangerous women.” I smiled.

Alicia laughed. “And all I fall for is bad boys.”

I leaned in close, close enough to smell the wine on her breath and sense the heat of her skin. I wanted to kiss her, the first time I’d felt that way in a long time. She tipped her chin up; I cupped it with my hand, leaning in for the kiss.

I stopped. I couldn’t do it—not if I wanted to get Gracie back.

“And despite what Sadie believes,” I whispered. “I’d be just another bad boy.”

She stepped back and smiled as she opened the door. “That’s too bad, Fitz. I get the feeling you might just be worth the trouble.”

*****

Back at my office, I sat the cardboard tray holding my fast food on the desk and flopped into my chair. I opened the lower desk drawer and sighed, pulling out my wedding picture from the bottom drawer, where it lived next to its neighbor, the bottle of bourbon.

I held the wooden frame in both hands. We’d gotten married at city hall by the judge. Gracie was wearing an off-white suit and a small veil and carried a bright red bouquet of roses. I wore my best navy blue suit. My mother took the picture of the two of us standing in front of the smiling judge.

Saturday night was the symphony benefit. It generally followed a standard theme: beginning with a cocktail hour, then moving to dinner at themed tables lushly decorated by a group of symphony spouses. Following dinner, there was an auction of items donated by area businesses, then the symphony performed.

If you were in business or in politics, it was a great place for recognition and meeting with your constituents, as Dennis Lance obviously had planned. Anyone who thought they were anything usually attended, along with long-time symphony supporters and music school faculty from the college.

I took my paper dinner napkin and wiped a smear from the glass covering the photo. Gracie and I were a fixture there. Now that we were separated, why did I even decide to go? Would Gracie even acknowledge me there? Could I stand to see her next to Van Hoven all evening?

By the time I’d met Gracie and decided to settle down, the horn dogging I’d done was a thing of the past. Or had Maris Monroe just scared the shit out of me?

Back then I had an apartment in one of the old converted Victorians in New Tivoli, six blocks from my newly widowed mother.

I’d met Maris once or twice for drinks after my shift. I knew I was playing with fire, but I didn’t care. It was all about the hunt, the conquest, not about getting back at my boss for anything although down deep, that was probably why I was really going after his wife.

I didn’t like Nathaniel Monroe when he was assistant chief and I disliked him even more when he made chief. He got conceited and big headed when he pinned on the chief’s badge. He treated the officers below him like dirt and the rank and file’s opinion went downhill even faster when he dumped his long suffering first wife and took up with Maris.

Like I said, I wasn’t the first notch on Maris Monroe’s bedpost; I was just the first to get caught. She and I found carnal delights for six nights in a row on most of the solid surfaces at my place before everything blew up.

We were on the kitchen floor. She was on top of me when the chief pounded on the door. My hands were exploring the luscious contents of the pink lacey bra bursting out of her shirt as she straddled me; her matching panties were on the floor beside us.

“Open the door, Fitzhugh!” he screamed. “I know you’re in there and I know my wife is with you!”

“Oh my God! Oh my God! He must have followed me here!” Maris jumped up and began buttoning her shirt.

“The door, Fitzhugh! Open the fucking door!” The pounding got louder; it sounded like he was using the butt of his gun. “Maris, I hear you in there! Maris!”

“What do I do? What do I do?” She quickly zipped her skirt and slipped into her shoes.

“Here—” My kitchen window faced the back alley; I opened it and helped her outside onto the fire escape, tossing her purse to her as she ran down the iron stairs.

The hinges on the door gave, splintering the doorframe as Chief Monroe burst in, his weapon drawn. Behind him, my neighbor, the elderly Mrs. Falletti, standing in the hallway in her white muumuu and pink sponge rollers, screamed.

“Where’s my wife? I know she’s in here!” Monroe shoved the barrel of his gun in my face.

I held up my hands. With a quick kick, I tried to send Maris’s underpants beneath the fridge, but Monroe was faster. Keeping the gun trained on me, he bent down and grabbed the pink panties with his free hand.

“Who do these belong to, Fitzhugh? Your sister?”

“So I fucked your wife. I’m not the only one. Go ahead—shoot me. Nobody would blame you,” I said. “You can spin the story however you like. You’ll make certain you come out looking like the hero, I’m sure.”

In the hallway, Mrs. Falletti gasped.

Monroe grabbed me by my shirt and jammed the gun barrel beneath my jaw. I lowered my hands, but didn’t try to resist. Twenty years on the force just went down the shitter. So why be afraid to die? My mother would grieve, as would my brothers and sisters, but the manner of my death wouldn’t surprise anyone. Hell, they probably would think I had it coming.

“Let go of him!” Mrs. Falletti cried. “Don’t shoot him!”

“Here’s how it’s going to go, Fitz,” he hissed into my ear. “You’ve been stalking my wife. You conned her into meeting you for drinks —yes, I know she met you every night this week—and then you abducted her. I followed her phone’s GPS signal here to your apartment, we struggled, and I shot you in self defense as my wife escaped.”

He pulled back the trigger and I closed my eyes. I was going to die over a goddamned piece of ass.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Three cops, with their weapons drawn, burst into my apartment. One of them was Lt. Baker.

“Drop the gun, Monroe! Drop it right now!” he commanded, his service revolver trained on the chief.

Monroe lowered his weapon and released me.

“We know what happened here, Nate. Maris called me,” Baker continued, sharply. “If you shoot Fitz, you’re done as a cop. You will spend the rest of your life in prison and you’ll ruin the reputation of this entire police force. You want to ruin your career over some cheap broad like Maris? It’s easier to get divorced.”

Monroe stepped back and holstered his weapon, glaring at Baker. He turned to me.

“You got lucky, Fitzhugh. I had every right to blow your brains all over this wall. I want you in my office at ten thirty tomorrow morning. There will be disciplinary action.”

Monroe and the two other cops left the apartment. Baker waited until the door downstairs closed to speak.

“You’re a good cop, Fitz, even though you’ve pulled a lot of stupid personal shit over the years. I want your retirement papers on my desk half an hour before you’re supposed to meet with Monroe. You’re not going to that meeting with him. This is for your own good and you know it.”

Within six weeks, thanks to some pals at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, I had my PI license and six months later, I met Gracie.

Had I learned my lesson with Maris Monroe or had I been lucky enough to meet the love of my life? I never could decide which one it was.

I traced Gracie’s face on the photo with my finger. Even though I might not be able to nail Reno Elliot with Gina Cantolini’s murder, and by extension, further tarnish Monroe, I had to get Gracie back.

 

 

Call Fitz Chapter 8

I’m trying something new: posting a chapter of my first PI novel CALL FITZ here on my blog for you to enjoy. Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website, www.debragaskillnovels.com.

Chapter 8

The Fawcettville cop was picked up in Akron after a half-dressed woman, bleeding from facial wounds, ran screaming from a cheap motel, into the street where a passing cruiser picked her up, according to the story.

The officer made an attempt to flee in his vehicle; a short chase ended when he hit a parked car six blocks away. He had scratches on his face and arms, and was carrying his badge.

The cop was identified as Reno Elliot. The paper didn’t have a mug shot but ran his FPD shot from the department web site instead.

The victim was a known drug addict and a prostitute with an extensive record; Elliot met her at the corner and allegedly beat her after sex. She suffered facial fractures and two broken ribs, the story said.

I looked over at Ambrosi.

“This doesn’t look good for Elliot, but it looks good for our case,” I said.

“You think Elliot killed Gina?” he asked.

“I think there’s too many things which could tie him to the murder at least circumstantially.” I filled him in on what I’d found out. “He’s got a checkered career at best and now he’s been arrested for beating the shit out of some working girl,” I finished.

“We’ll be stirring up a hornet’s nest if we accuse a cop of murder. You know that, don’t you?” Ambrosi didn’t look like he had the backbone.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked. There’s nothing I want more than to hang Monroe over a dirty cop. If you’re too afraid to do it, you don’t need to be in this business.

Or is this why you’re paying me?

“You don’t think Jacob Poole has anything to do with this?”

“I’m not sure. He showed me a picture on his phone. He said he was at a birthday party for his daughter, supposedly at his sister’s house. If I were you, I’d subpoena that sucker as fast as I could and see if somebody could find where that photo was taken and if the time stamp is accurate. If it turns out that he’s telling the truth, then he’s off the hook.”

“So what happened to your face?”

I filled him in on Rivera, including the shooting in the alley, his alleged post-mortem appearance at Puccini’s coffee shop, along with his previous acquaintance with Elliot.

“What does he have to do with this case?”

“Maybe a lot. I think that the word went out from the jail straight to Chief Monroe that I was investigating this case. Monroe’s out to get me—he has for a long time.”

“Over what?”

“It’s a long story—one that doesn’t make either of us look very good. Anyway, I think Monroe heard I’m on the case and he panicked. He’s terrified our investigation will uncover he’s hired a bad cop. With everything going on with his wife, that could end his career.”

“Ah yes. Mrs. Monroe. I’ve heard quite a bit about her. Not a good situation for a man like the Chief.”

I grimaced.

“I’m betting he thinks Rivera’s intimidation will shake me off the case.”

Ambrosi exhaled the smoke from his acrid cigar toward the ceiling and nodded.

“The grand jury meets next week. If we want to present evidence to clear my client, you need to talk to Elliot.”

*****

Elliot was being held at the East Crosier Street Jail, about an hour from Fawcettville. Males and females were held in the five interconnected diamond-shaped pods surrounded by razor wire and a neighborhood that had seen better days. Because he was a cop, Elliot was being held in isolation for his own protection.

He sat across from me, separated by bulletproof glass.

He looked like he’d had the shit beat out of him. His angular brown face had long fingernail scratches down each cheek. There were abrasions on his muscular arms and on the side of his shaved head. His knuckles were bloody.

I wondered how much of the damage came from the hooker and how much of it came from the crash and his apprehension.

If he hadn’t been so roughed up, I guess I could have seen while someone—Alicia Linnerman, for example—might even think he was handsome.

We picked up the receivers to talk.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

“They didn’t tell you my name before they brought me back here?”

“Yeah. I don’t know any Nick Fitzhugh.”

“I’m a PI. I’m looking into what happened to Gina Cantolini and your name keeps coming up.”

“How’s that?” His lip curled sarcastically.

“You broke up a fight between the victim and her boyfriend Sunday night at the Italian Festival.”

“So?”

“You were also heard demanding a blow job from the victim before she died.”

Elliot smirked but didn’t answer.

“Another thing, Officer Elliot, I’m a retired cop. One thing I and my other brothers and sisters don’t take too kindly to is assholes like you who tarnish the badge.”

Reno leaned into the glass, his fist tightly clutching the phone receiver that linked us.

“Listen, I don’t know why you are here and frankly I don’t care—”

“I’m here because I’ve put some things together about you—and they could make you a pretty likely murder suspect. I know what kind of cop you are. I know you’ve bounced from department to department because you’re either too stupid to do what you’re told or you’re one of those dicks who things a gun and a badge is a license to break all the rules.” I leaned in closer, too. I knew the conversation was being recorded and I wanted the jailers to catch every word. “I think this girl who got away from you wasn’t your first. I think you like hitting women, particularly powerless ones who won’t or can’t fight back. I think you found a sad drunk whore in Gina Cantolini and you made her your target.”

I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t, so I kept going.

“You think you have a built-in alibi for the night she died when you were seen breaking up a fight between her and Atwater, but you were overhead giving your opinion on her worthiness to walk this earth. Atwater may be an asshole and a loser, too, but he’s got as much right to oxygen as Gina did.”

Elliot leaned back slightly, but his expression didn’t change.

“I think you wanted something from the victim and you went looking for her that night. Only this time, what you wanted from her was something she got tired of giving you and she fought back. When she fought back, it pissed you off, like it does anytime someone stands up to you, so you killed her. To cover your tracks, you dumped her body back at the festival, where enough people saw her arguing with Michael Atwater to hang him for the crime.”

Elliot leaned back toward the glass.

“You think you can make that stick? Talk to my lawyer.”

“And could that lawyer be Alicia Linnerman? You got her conned, too, Reno? You hit on her?”

“You keep Alicia out of this.”

“The only thing I haven’t got figured out about this whole thing is where you did it. And I’m not going to stop until I do.”

Elliot slammed the received down and called for a guard to escort him back to his cell.

*****

Back in Fawcettville, I stopped at the prosecutor’s office, which was on the second floor of the county courthouse. The courthouse was across the street from the Civil War monument in the center of town, a block from my office, a big Romanesque limestone building, each of the three public entrances flanked with a pair of carved Neptunes staring blankly at those who came through the door.

The prosecutor’s office entrance faced the white marble staircase. I stepped through the door. The spring sunshine shone through a pair of arched stained glass windows, shining blue, green and purple hues down on a row of clerical workers, kept from the public by a rail and gate moved there from the last courtroom remodel.

Dennis Lance, the prosecutor, had an office to the left of the entrance, behind a big carved mahogany door. I knew from experience the four assistant prosecutors had individual cubicles in the office to the right of the entrance.

A large wooden frame showing a pyramid of each staff member’s photo hung on the door above their names, which were engraved on brass plaques. Lance’s “Look at me, I’m your next judge” face was at the top of the heap. Alicia Linnerman’s photo started at the next row.

Her face wasn’t what I thought she’d be: she was neither the tall, gorgeous, TV lawyer in expensive suits, nor the lonely, overweight woman desperate for a man, but a plain-faced competent-looking brunette with glasses and a welcoming smile.

I pointed at the photo.

“I want to see her.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Linnerman is in meetings for the remainder of the afternoon,” the secretary said.

“It’s four-thirty. Thirty minutes isn’t long. I’ll wait till she comes out,” I said, seating myself.

“The meetings aren’t here,” she said firmly. “They’re off site.”

I stood up and pulled a business card from my sweatshirt pocket. “Got it. Please tell her I stopped by.”

“Will do, Mr. Fitzhugh,” she said accepting my card.

Back outside the courthouse, I leaned against one of the majestic maples on the courthouse lawn, watching the employee entrance. At five o’clock, right on schedule, Alicia Linnerman, wearing a pair of outsized sunglasses, and a very lawyerly navy suit, came out the secured door and walked to her car.

“Off-site” my ass.

I got a good look at her as followed at a safe distance. She was medium height, a little plump, but in a good way. She may have had bad taste in men, but she didn’t look at all like the lonely cat lady I’d first imagined.

Parking wasn’t easy in downtown Fawcettville—most everyone coming to the courthouse, including the employees, had to find a spot in the adjacent lot. Only the judges and other elected officials were lucky enough to have designated curbside parking. Lucky for me, Alicia Linnerman was parked just one row over from my Excursion. Even luckier, her bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle made it easy to follow her through what passed for rush hour traffic.

I followed Alicia to where she lived, the only swank apartment complex in the hills overlooking Fawcettville, a complex was where the muckety-mucks and wannabes lived before they decided to move on to bigger things or put down money on a house.

I parked on the street and watched which apartment she went into before sprinting up the sidewalk and knocking on her door.

She threw the door open, smiling like she was expecting someone else, holding a glass of white wine in her hand. A big grey mastiff ran out from the back of the apartment growling. I reached inside my hoodie, making sure I could touch the Glock in my shoulder holster.

“Down, Sadie, down!” Alicia ordered, her smile gone. “Can I help you?” The mastiff sat obediently. I pulled my hand from inside my jacket and handed her a business card.

“Miss Linnerman? I’m Nick Fitzhugh. I’m a private investigator. I need to ask you a few questions about Reno Elliot. May I come in?”

“Sure. Is this is about the incident in Akron, or… something else?”

I followed her into the living room, furnished in sleek hipster grey and lime furniture.

“Something else, sort of.”

“Mr. Elliot and I are no longer romantically involved, no matter what he might have told you.”

“I’m investigating the murder of Gina Cantolini. Her body was found Sunday night under the stage at the Italian Festival. I’m working for the defendant’s attorney, Jim Ambrosi.”

“I know the case. I’m not handling it, but if I were, I’d have to tell you to talk to Mr. Lance about it. I can’t give you anything, especially not here.”

“I just need to ask a few questions. Were you working at the festival when Officer Elliot broke up the fight between the victim and the defendant? I talked to festival organizers earlier and they said a female was working the police department booth Sunday when the fight occurred.” No they hadn’t, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Yes I was. I was handing out neighborhood watch information. Officer Elliot did break up a fight—I saw that.”

“What time was that fight?”

Alicia shrugged and took a sip of her wine. “The middle of the afternoon— two, three o’clock maybe? The man, who I later learned was Mr. Atwater, was pretty drunk.”

“After Officer Elliot broke up the fight, my client says he fell and injured himself. Did you see him fall?”

“No.”

“And after that happened, how long did you work at the police booth?”

“Couple hours, then I went home.”

“Did Officer Elliot go with you? Was Officer Elliot with you all Sunday night?”

“You’re not looking at him as a suspect in the Cantolini murder are you?” Her directness took me by surprise.

“I have some information that point to him as a potential suspect, yes.”

“He was here, with me.” She looked a little uncomfortable.

If you’re going to be a lawyer, you’d better develop a better poker face than that.

“You understand, then, when I ask if anyone else was here to verify that?”

“There were others here, yes.”

“Who?”

Alicia sat her wine glass down on a glass-topped table. She pulled up the sleeve of her blouse, exposing her upper arm, which was marred with blue finger-shaped bruises.

“As you know from the incident in Akron, Reno has some issues—with women and with anger. Sunday night he accused me of sleeping with my boss, Dennis Lance, then tried to beat the shit out of me. My neighbors and half the Fawcettville police force were here.”

Call Fitz Chapter 7

I’m trying something new: posting a chapter of my first PI novel CALL FITZ here on my blog for you to enjoy. Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website,  www.debragaskillnovels.com.

Chapter 7

 

By nine in the morning, I was back at Puccini’s coffee shop, this time meeting over espresso with the Italian Festival organizers, a group of older civic-minded Tivoli Gardens’ residents. Most of them were retired steel workers or their spouses or widows.

The Italian Festival started in the fifties, before I was born, by a group of World War II veterans in conjunction with the local Sons of Italy Lodge as a bocce ball tournament at the city park. Over the years, the bocce ball tournament died off and the event became a downtown celebration of Italian food and wine with local bands thrown in.

Sophia Armando, this year’s festival committee president, discovered Gina Cantolini’s body. At least seventy five, she dyed her coiffed hair jet back, wore heavy black eyeliner with fake Bambi eyelashes and bright red lipstick, trying to retain the beauty she once had as a young woman. She and her husband Eddie had a boat up on Lake Erie and her clothing seldom lacked some sort of nautical print.

She was sharp as a tack and no one you wanted to mess with. I learned that when I brought her daughter Barbara home late from a high school dance. That hadn’t changed. Sophia ran the Italian Festival committee like she ran her home: toe her line or find something else to do.

She tapped her fake red nails against the white espresso cup in front of her.

“Niccolo, how is your mother?” she asked as I slid into the only empty chair at the table of six. “I haven’t seen her in a couple weeks.”

“She’s fine, Mrs. Armando, she’s fine.”

“I made a big pot of pasta fagioli—too much for Eddie and me. I’ll take some to her later this afternoon.”

“That would be kind of you.”

“So I thought they caught the boy that killed Gina Cantolini.” An older man, one I didn’t recognize, spoke up.

“They arrested someone, a guy named Michael Atwater,” I said. “He’s been charged, but his attorney believes he’s innocent and hired me to look into what happened that night. That’s why I asked you all to meet me.”

Sophia shook her head and shivered. “I’ve never seen anything like that, Niccolo, never in my life. That poor girl!”

“Did any of you see her before she was killed?”

“She was arguing with a man, a red headed guy. He was pretty drunk. I was selling raffle tickets at the festival information booth and saw them both.”

“There was a policeman working at one of the booths,” someone else interjected. “He was handing out information. He stepped in and broke it up.”

“That black kid? Officer Elliot? He’s such a nice young man…” Sophia thoughtfully tapped her chin with a sharp red nail.

“He broke up a fight between the victim and a red-headed man?” I pulled a notebook from inside my hooded sweatshirt. “An actual physical fight or an argument?”

“It was an argument, but a loud one, very, very profane. Completely inappropriate for a family festival,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “I got the feeling that one of them was going to hit the other if it wasn’t stopped. And people around them were scared.”

“So Officer Elliot stepped in? Was he in uniform? Was he on duty?”

“Officer Elliot was off duty, but he had his uniform on, since he was working the police department booth, right next to the festival information booth. He stepped in between them and got them to go their separate directions.”

“Did they?”

“Yes. The redheaded man walked about three blocks and I didn’t see him after that. He was really drunk.”

“You didn’t see him fall down at any point?”

Sophia shrugged. “No.”

That wasn’t good. Atwater claimed his injuries weren’t from physical contact with the victim, but from a fall. Maybe I’d have to convince Ambrosi our boy was guilty after all.

“Anything else stand out about the whole situation?”

“Not really.” Sophia knit her black-penciled brows and took a sip of her espresso. “No wait— Officer Reno said something really odd after he came back to the booth.”

“What was that?”

“He called them both a ‘waste of humanity who don’t deserve to walk this earth.’ I thought that was a little harsh.”

Truth be told, Gina Cantolini was a waste of humanity, but she didn’t deserve to die like that—and Michael Atwater was an asshole but he didn’t deserve to go to jail for a murder he didn’t commit. The more I looked, the more I believed Atwater didn’t do it, just like Ambrosi.

My money was on Reno Elliot. He was looking more and more like the bad cop who could be capable of killing a hooker, which in turn, could bring Nathaniel Monroe down.

Besides winning back Gracie, it was all I could ever want. And hell, if I got both my wishes, I’d be on top of the world.

I just needed to find out everything I could about Elliot.

I put my notebook inside my coat and finished off my nearly cold espresso.

“OK, thanks.”

“Tell your mother I’ll be over later this afternoon with the soup.”

“Will do.”

I got Barnes on the cell phone while I drove. I had some time before I was supposed to meet with Ambrosi and fill him in on what I’d learned so far.

“Tell me about Reno Elliot.”

“Shit, Fitz. I told you everything I knew the other day. He’s the boyfriend of one of the assistant prosecutors, the blonde one named Alicia. For the life of me, I can’t ever remember her last name. Linnerman? Lonnergan? Hell, I don’t know. Anyway, Elliot played football for KSU, like you, only he didn’t get thrown off the team. He’s only been on the force for about a year or so.”

I ignored the jab. “How many departments has he worked for?”

“What do I look like, HR? Call ‘em yourself and ask.”

As a private citizen, I’d have to go through the chief with a public records request to get into Elliot’s personnel file and I knew Chief Monroe would stonewall me for as long as he possibly could. I’d have to make some calls, do some digging.

“Is he off this week?”

“How should I know?”

“One more question—you know anybody named Jorge Rivera?”

“Nope. Why?”

“Just curious.”

“I know you better Fitz.”

“Yes, you do. Thanks, Barnes. Talk to you later.”

Before I got to Ambrosi’s, I stopped back at the office, to call guys I knew on other departments from around northeast Ohio. They told me everything I needed to know: Elliot was young and arrogant and had all the makings of one hell of a bad cop. He’d been through four departments in the ten years he’d been in law enforcement. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—follow orders, had more than one complaint of excessive force filed and was investigated several times for discharging his weapon, once into the tires of a car belonging to the teen-age son of a county commissioner. There was some talk—none of it proven—that he’d filched cash from the evidence room on more than one occasion. He managed to resign and move on before anything could be pinned on him.

The first couple times, the union stood behind him on most disciplinary actions, but that didn’t surprise me any. That he was able to keep getting jobs did.

Somewhere along the line, he hooked up with Alicia Linnerman, an up and coming young lawyer now working for Dennis Lance, the county prosecutor. She’d been there just under a year and somehow managed to get her boyfriend on the FPD.

Why is it sharp, educated women like Alicia Linnerman always fall for wrong guys like Reno Elliot?

Maybe Gracie could give me the answer.

Then again, maybe Alicia wasn’t as sharp as I thought. Maybe she was one of those desperate females who were thrilled any man paid any attention to her. In my mind, I’d first envisioned Alicia as a tall, thin TV lawyer in an expensive suit and heels, giving the jury an aggressive, bulletproof opening statement.

Maybe she wasn’t.

Suddenly the tall TV lawyer morphed into the short, slightly overweight woman, who lived alone with three cats and binge-watched Netflix most weekends while stuffing her fat face with Cheetos. In this new assumed portrait, Linnerman’s courtroom techniques would have been OK, but not flamboyant. Maybe she accepted Reno Elliot’s offer of a date because she believed down deep in her heart that no one else would ever find her interesting.

Maybe she wasn’t “up and coming.” Maybe she would be one of those young lawyers who’d stay an assistant prosecutor for her entire career, a female version of Ambrosi. Small towns were full of them.

The clock in the waiting room chimed. I changed into the blue sport jacket that was hanging over a chair by my desk. I needed to get over to Ambrosi’s office and fill him in.

*****

Ambrosi’s office was a dull and as gray as he was, only he had enough business to pay for a secretary to answer the phone. Despite the three sad sacks sitting in the waiting room, she led me back to Ambrosi’s office as soon as I walked in the door.

Ambrosi’s office stunk from the cheap cigar he clenched in his yellow teeth. He stood up to shake my hand.

“What happened to your face?” he asked.

“Some goon was trying to make a point. I’ll tell you later.”

“So what have you found out?”

Quickly, I filled him in on my interview with Susan Atwater, Mac Brewster and the kid at Puccini’s. I finished with Sophia’s story about the argument.

“I think that Reno Elliot has some real possibilities. He could be the real suspect, given that he’s been heard asking the victim for sex and calling her a waste of humanity. But he said something to the kid at Puccini’s about going on vacation this week. I don’t think talk to him.”

“Maybe you can.” Ambrosi pushed today’s issue of the Fawcettville Times my way. Reno Elliot’s picture was splashed across the top of the page: FPD officer held on sex assault charges in Akron.

Call Fitz Chapter 6

I’m trying something new: posting a chapter of my first PI novel CALL FITZ here on my blog for you to enjoy. Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website, www.debragaskillnovels.com.

Chapter 6

No gunshot victims showed up at Fawcettville General Hospital.

I checked.

The sour, middle-aged woman in happy face scrubs at the emergency room desk looked at me over her glasses.

“Why do you need to know?” she asked.

“I was chasing a man down an alley. He turned the corner and I heard a gun shot. When I turned the corner, he was gone—or what was left of him.”

“And you don’t think the staff here wouldn’t call the police if a gunshot victim showed up here?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“If we had a gunshot victim here, this place would be crawling with cops. Do you see any cops here now?”

“No.”

She rolled her eyes like I was the dumbest asshole she’d seen all day. Maybe I was, but it wasn’t worth my time to explain myself or my case to her. I walked out the door.

I didn’t expect Rivera—or what was left of him—to show up, but I had to ask. If he made it to Akron, or Steubenville alive, I’d be surprised. If he were dead, whoever shot him would most likely dump the body on a slagheap at some abandoned steel mill, where it wouldn’t be found until the skeleton was picked bare.

I returned to my office to think over everything I’d found out.

Mac Brewster wouldn’t talk to me until he’d submitted his retirement papers—but what he wanted to tell me probably led more into the floundering marriage that was infecting Chief Monroe’s professional career. Brewster was too much of a Boy Scout to kill a fly, much less some drunk whore.

Jacob Poole was allegedly at his sister’s house, in a room full of goons, sharing birthday cake with the daughter he’d had with Gina,. The time stamp on the photo proved he didn’t kill Gina, even if he wasn’t in Akron.

Atwater admitted he argued with the victim over her requesting a DNA test, but said his wounds came from a drunken fall, a story that was thin at best.

I needed to talk to Reno Elliot.

*****

It was two in the morning when I opened the door at Puccini’s coffee shop. The long-haired college student, his pony tail corralled in a hair net, looked up from whatever book he was reading and stood up from his seat near the cash register.

The place still looked like a hang out for teenaged girls in poodle skirts, who babbled about Bobby Darin. The red and white striped awning over the front window matched each booth’s upholstery lining up on the other side of the glass. The stools at the counter were patent leather red. Next to the cash register was a display case where rows of Joe Pucca’s famous Italian pastries sat, waiting to be purchased: pizzelles, biscotti, Italian doughnuts called bombalones and ciarduna sicilianos, tiny sweet cookie shells filled with mascarpone or ricotta cheese. Inside the case, a piece of paper clung to the glass by yellow, cracked adhesive tape: “WE DO WEDDING CAKES” was written in fading ink. A huge brass espresso machine, the same one I’d operated as a teenager, sat on the other side of the counter, surrounded by tiny white espresso cups and saucers, bottles of flavored syrup at attention along the mirror behind it.

The only nod to this century was the electronic cash register and the industrial strength coffee machine.

I ordered a decaf and a cannoli.

“So, I’m looking for a cop named Elliot. He works nights. Does he come here at all?” I asked when the kid brought my order.

“Big black guy? Bald? Maybe mid-thirties?”

“That would be him. He come in tonight?”

“Not tonight. I overheard him talking last week about going to see family someplace.”

I nodded and took a sip of decaf. And maybe he’s on the run from a murder.

“He’s popular though.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re the second person tonight who’s been in looking for him.”

“That so? Who else was looking for him?”

“Some Latino guy in a jacket and black baseball cap.”

“What? What time did he come in?” Rivera was here? He couldn’t have been—he’d been shot. I’d heard it myself. Unless… Rivera had done the shooting and he’d been the one to drag the body off. If that’s the case, who is this latest victim?

“The Latino guy—he come here often?”

The kid shrugged. “Maybe a couple times a week. He and the cop would sit over there and have a cup of coffee.” He pointed at a booth in the corner, one that gave customers a good view of the sidewalk without being seen.

“What did they talk about?”

“I never paid attention. They didn’t argue though. Neither of them ever got loud at any rate. I figured he was an undercover cop or something. They’d talk for maybe half an hour, and then they’d leave, but never at the same time. They were good tippers.”

“Did they come in about the same time every week?”

The kid thought a little bit before he answered. “Yeah, kinda. They’d come in anywhere between two and three thirty, usually. Cops on nights get lunch breaks, right? I figured they were on lunch break.”

“Thanks.” I took a bite of my cannoli and the kid walked back to his seat beside the cash register. When I finished, I paid my bill and got back in the Excursion.

As I drove through Fawcettville’s dark streets, some of this shit was starting to fit together. The same thug who was tailing me knew the crooked cop and met with him on a regular basis. That same cop, Reno Elliot, had to be intimidating Gina Cantolini.

Maybe he even killed her. That would explain why nobody wanted me looking into the case, why it would just be easier to let Atwater hang for her murder.

Maybe what Mac Brewster had to tell me was more than just the long sad tale of Chief Nathaniel Monroe ruining his professional career. Maybe I should sit down with him again and listen to what he had to say.

But that still didn’t explain what made Gina a target.

Maybe it was nothing more than covering up the actions of a bad cop to save Chief Monroe’s ass. If his position with the city was as precarious as Brewster told me, and he knew he had a bad apple, along with a sleazy wife, it could spell the end of his time at the helm of the FPD.

I smiled as I drove. What I wouldn’t give to be the one to push Chief Monroe out the door.

I stopped the Excursion at the intersection and realized where I was. Three houses down on the left was the Tudor I’d shared with Grace.

As I pulled up to the curb, a soft light shone from the front bedroom. I knew it was the light on the nightstand beside the brass bed. Gracie was a notorious night owl. She probably couldn’t sleep again and was probably reading or grading papers from her music theory class.

I sat behind the wheel, chewing my thumbnail.

I met Gracie when money went missing from the college music department and the college hired me to do the quiet digging before calling in the cops.

Asked by the college president to interview each member of the department, I stood outside her office door, letting the warm sounds of her cello fill the hallway before I knocked.

The tall beauty answered the door and took my breath away. Long, slim fingers of one hand held her cello’s neck and the bow as she reached out to shake my hand with the other. A loose skirt showed off thin hips and her black curly hair hung around a white boat necked blouse.

Her dark eyes met mine, shooting something I’d never felt deep into my gut and I couldn’t speak.

“Well, you’re either the oldest student I ever had request lessons or you’re the private dick that everybody is bitching about,” she said.

“I’m—I’m the—the,” I stammered. This didn’t happen to a wop like me. I was the one who could coax the panties off any woman in record time. I didn’t stand in anyone’s doorway at a loss for words, but now, here I was, dumb as a boy at his first middle school dance.

“You’re the dick. I get it. Come in. Let’s get this over with.”

The interview went well, not that the beautiful Dr. Darcy was ever a suspect. Eventually, the department secretary, a little old lady who verged on terminal virginity and whose eyes got large as saucers every time I entered the department offices, admitted to forging department checks when her trips to the Wheeling, West Virginia casinos didn’t go as planned. She paid everything back and quietly retired at the end of the academic year. No charges were ever filed.

Meanwhile Dr. Grace Darcy and I met every day for lunch on the college commons. We had dinner at her Tudor style house in the hills after symphony rehearsals and nights… Dear God, the nights. I closed my eyes, as if that could keep away the pain of what I’d lost.

I was truly the frog who’d been kissed by the princess, although our marriage didn’t lead to any magic transformation on my part. Simultaneously elegant and rough-edged, the Julliard-educated doctor of philosophy and the son of a steel town beat cop were the odd couple at faculty events, the subject of gossip at the symphony, but we didn’t care. We were happy.

And, after six years, I ruined it.

If I went to the door and knocked, will she let me in? Will she curse me for coming by at this ungodly hour? Or, if she was alone, will she open the door and welcome me in? Into her arms—or her bed?

Probably not, judging from the conversation we had the other day.

Maybe that Van Hoven asshole was there. Maybe he was in her bed, where I should be.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I should sign the papers and we should move on.

I put the Excursion back in gear and drove back to the office.

Call Fitz Chapter 5

I’m trying something new: posting a chapter of my first PI novel CALL FITZ here on my blog for you to enjoy. Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website, www.debragaskillnovels.com.

Chapter 5

The sun was setting when I found Mac Brewster at one of the empty Tubman Gardens lots he’d turned into a softball field. He was pitching the ball toward a chunky almond-eyed white boy with thick glasses. The ball connected with the aluminum bat with a low, metallic tunk and bounced along the third base line as the boy ran awkwardly toward first base.

Mac saw me and waved. I stood on the sidelines, behind the parents with their camp chairs and coolers, cheering with them as each child had a chance to hit the ball. From the distance, Mac looked older and more tired. It shouldn’t have surprised me; he was on the force when I came on and was still there, pulling the same twelve-hour shifts as everyone else. He never tried for any promotion that I knew of, content to be the best-known, longest serving cop on the beat.

“OK, ya’ll, take a break. Get some water.” Mac pointed toward the team mother, who smiled broadly as she held up bottled water for the players.

We shook hands and hugged.

“How’s it going, Fitz?” he asked.

I shrugged. “It’s going. I’ve been hired to investigate the Atwater case for the defense. Was wondering if you could help me out.”

“The kid that killed the hooker? Sad situation.” Fitz stuffed his hands in his windbreaker.

“My client says there’s been a black cop who was harassing the victim for sex. Big guy, bald. Says the guy could be the real perp in this mess.”

Brewster stepped away. “Don’t do this to me Fitz. We go too far back.”

“Oh hell, no. I was wondering if you knew anything about anybody new on the force, anybody who’s a little shady? I’ve been gone too long to know everybody these days.”

Brewster sighed and shook his head. “It’s a mess, Fitz, a sad mess. That department is a shadow of what it used to be.”

“Do you know anything about a new recruit who is the boyfriend or husband of the new assistant prosecutor? From what I’ve heard he fits that description.”

“His name is Reno, Reno Elliot. He’s rotating through third shift this month.”

“Seem OK to you?”

Brewster shrugged again. “I don’t know him well enough to say one way or the other. The new recruits come and go so fast these days my head spins.”

That was a lie. Mac went out of his way to welcome every new recruit on the force. His wife brought food to cops who had to work holidays, serving them the big homemade meals they were missing.

I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my hooded sweatshirt.

“Something about this case stinks, Mac. That’s part of the reason I came to you. Maris Monroe shows up at my office after I meet with my client and his attorney, then I get cold-cocked outside my office door. Today, somebody’s parked in the square watching my office with binoculars.”

Mac was silent for a moment. “Leave it alone, Fitz. Leave it alone.”

“Why? What’s going on that I should know about?”

“I’m putting my retirement papers in next week. After that, we’ll talk.” Mac turned toward his athletes and began clapping his hands. “OK, kids. Let’s catch some fly balls!”

He walked away and I shook my head.

Back in my Excursion, I sat and watched Mac work with the kids some more. He had taken the bat himself and was tossing up the softball and hitting balls—a little harder than necessary I thought—into the outfield for catching practice. He was angry about something. What had happened to the department I’d spent my professional career at?

Nate Monroe was a sergeant when I started at the PD. Dave Stanforth was chief back then. After a few years, he moved up to lieutenant and then assistant chief. When Stanforth dropped dead from a heart attack at fifty-three, Monroe took over as interim and then was appointed by the city manager as the permanent chief.

Somewhere in there, he went crazy with ego. He dumped Darla, his wife of thirty years, and took up with Maris. The divorce was ugly, but everybody has some ugliness somewhere, and cops more than most folks. I don’t know if Nate’s kids speak to him even today. Needless to say, marrying Maris was a disaster.

But what did that all have to do with Gina Cantolini’s murder? That’s what I was more concerned about. Was there a dirty cop, as Atwater had implied and as Mac completely avoided? That was just like Mac, though—he wouldn’t have said shit about another cop if his mouth were full of it. It made sense that he would talk after he knew his pension was secure. Could I wait that long?

And who was this Reno Elliott? If he was on third shift this month, I knew where I could catch up with him tonight. There was a singular coffee shop called Puccini’s that operated all night on the edge of New Tivoli and the downtown. It was a haven for third shift cops.

Located down the street from my ma’s house, I’d worked there as a teenager after school, serving Joe Pucca’s famous cannoli, coffee cake, and espresso from behind the red and white Formica counter. I could sit at that same unchanged counter, talking to one of the college students who staffed the place overnight until Reno Elliott came in.

I pulled the Excursion away from the curb and slid into traffic. I had a second appointment—this one with Jacob Poole.

*****

            I met Poole at Lupe’s, the Mexican restaurant around the corner from the jail. He didn’t look up as I slid into the booth seat across from him. He was hunched over his beer, a strand of stringy dirty-blonde hair hanging in his face. He wore his biker leather jacket bearing the Anarchy Road Motorcycle Club logo, scuffed boots, leather gloves without fingers and a perpetually angry expression.

No wonder Susan Atwater didn’t want Michael’s alleged sons to be carrying this man’s DNA: if Poole was their father, neither of those boys had any future. There was slight hope, if there were Atwater blood in those veins.

Lupe, her black hair cascading around her shoulders, brought me a Dos XX without asking.

“Good to see you, Fitz,” she purred, pulling a notepad and stubby pencil from the apron hung around her ample hips. “What will it be this evening, gentlemen?”

Poole finally raised his scummy head. “I don’t need nothing to eat. And this beer’s on him.”

“Very good, sir,” Lupe raised her eyebrows at me. “What about you, Fitz?”

“Just a couple enchiladas, Lupe, and beans.”

“¿En caso de que mi padre tiene su bate de béisbol listo? Este chico se parece a un verdadero imbécil.” Lupe asked as she wrote down my order. I understood what she was asking: my short air force career in Texas left me with a decent understanding of Spanish. “Should my father have his baseball bat ready? This guy looks like a real jerk.”

“I don’t think so, but thanks for asking,” I answered.

Lupe walked away, smiling at me over her shoulder.

“What did she say? I hate fucking wetbacks who don’t talk good English when they come to this goddamn country.”

“She just wondered if I wanted to see the dessert tray.”

“Hers?”

“I’m here to ask about where you were the night Gina died.”

“I was in Akron, at my sister’s. We were celebrating my daughter’s birthday. I told the fucking cops this shit.”

“You got proof?”

Poole reached inside his jacket and pulled out his phone. With a few clicks, he showed me a picture of himself in a pink tiara, smiling at a little girl in a similar pink tiara. There was a birthday cake with five candles, surrounded by ashtrays with burning cigarettes and beer cans in front of the pair. At the corner of the shot, someone’s tattooed knuckles, spelling the word KILL, held a beer mug. In the background, long beards and big guts in tattered tee shirts filled the shot. No other faces were visible. The photo was time-stamped in the corner, just after nine-thirty Saturday night, half an hour before Gina’s time of death.

Good times. Holy shit. I nodded and Poole put his phone back inside his jacket. If he truly was in Akron and the time stamp was accurate, he was at least forty-five minutes away when she died. I made a note to have Ambrosi subpoena Poole’s phone and have the data analyzed—hopefully, the photo would have a location map embedded as well as a time stamp. Even if he deleted it, any good forensic lab Ambrosi hired would be able to recover it.

“I assume you know how she paid the bills.”

“Yeah.”

“What did she do?” Poole had to know she was a hooker, didn’t he?

“The system doesn’t make it easy for anybody on the dole.”

“That’s the idea. The system is designed for you to go out and get a job.”

“Or work around it.”

“So you know she had sex with other men for money.”

Poole shrugged. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“She whored for you, didn’t she? You’re her pimp.”

He leaned back in the booth and smirked.

“There are a lot of things I asked Gina to do. That wasn’t one of them.”

“Like what?”

“Mr. Fitzhugh, or whoever the fuck you are, the man who killed my daughter’s mother is in jail.”

“And he says he didn’t do it. I’m obligated to provide information for his defense that proves that.”

“So you’re looking to run my ass into the ground to get that weasel dick Atwater off? I got proof. I didn’t kill her.”

“You want to give me the address of that birthday party? Names of some of your fine associates?”

Poole rattled off the names and phone numbers of everyone at the birthday as I scrawled them into my notebook, all of them known members of Road Anarchy. He signaled for another beer as Lupe brought my plate. I laid my pencil down and picked up a fork.

“Did you know she had door locks installed on the outside of the kids’ bedrooms?”

Poole arched an eyebrow.

“You’re comfortable with your daughter being locked in her bedroom in case of a fire?”

“I didn’t say I was.”

“I’m hearing stories of a cop who harassed Gina for sex. Know anything about that?”

Poole took a drink of his new beer and shook his head.

“I know a cop was leaning on her pretty hard. She didn’t say what it was about.”

“Could it have been in regards to anything you’re doing?”

Poole put the beer bottle down slowly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Are you involved in something that could have gotten Gina killed? You tell me you didn’t kill her yourself, but I know your record, Poole. You’re no angel.”

Poole’s eyes hardened. “Michael Atwater is in jail for killing Gina. I think that says everything.” He took another sip from the beer bottle and stood up. “If you need anything else, I think you need to talk to my attorney.” With a smirk, Poole strolled toward the door. Tossing a twenty on the table, I jumped up and followed him. As we both came out into the late day sunshine, I called his name.

“Poole!” I said. “I’m watching you.”

He whirled around, stepping close to me with clenched fists. I could smell the beer on his breath.

“You trail me and you’ll regret it.”

“If you haven’t done anything, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Poole flipped me the bird and walked away. He got on a big black Harley Davidson Fat Boy parked about halfway down the block, fired up the bike and roared down the street.

Then I saw him from the corner of my eye—the man who’d been watching me from the town square.

He was leaning against the wall of Lupe’s place, wearing sunglasses and a black ball cap low on his forehead. The collar of his black leather jacket was pulled up to further obscure his meaty, pockmarked face.

He tried to turn and walk away unnoticed but I grabbed him by his jacket collar, shoving him against the dirty bricks.

“Who the fuck are you? Why are you following me?” I punctuated each question with a shove, sending his thick skull against the bricks. “Answer me, mother fucker! Answer me!”

He shoved me away and ran toward the alley. I followed, my legs pumping like pistons. Within a few steps, I was close—close enough to grab him in one horse-collar move. As I grabbed his shoulders, his feet flew out from under him and he landed hard on his back between my feet on the dirty gravel, blinking. I stood above him and pulled out my Glock.

“Who are you? Answer me or I’ll blow your head off!”

He started to reach inside his jacket. I pulled back the slide and a bullet clicked into the chamber. He froze.

“Tell me who the fuck you are and why the hell you were watching my office! Now.”

“My name is Jorge Rivera. Who I work for isn’t important.” His was the same rasping voice I’d heard when I’d been cold-cocked outside my office.

“Bullshit. Why are you watching me?”

“You need to leave this case alone.”

“What if I won’t?” I stepped back and Rivera scrambled to his feet, grabbing his cap. I kept my handgun leveled at his face.

“Gina Cantolini didn’t die for the reasons you thought. Don’t mess with something that’s bigger than you, Fitzhugh.”

“Bigger than me? How?”

“It just is. Be smart—leave it alone. Just leave it alone.”

“I need more than just your warning. I got too many people telling me something more is going on and a man in jail for a murder I’m convinced he didn’t commit.”

Rivera shifted nervously from one foot to another. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll kill me.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

Rivera didn’t answer. He turned quickly and ran down the alley.

“Hey!” I shoved my Glock back in my shoulder holster and followed. Rivera was faster this time; I couldn’t keep up. He turned down another alleyway and I lost sight of him.

I made it to the corner when a single shot, muffled by what had to be some kind of silencer, rang out. Someone moaned and I heard the thump of a body hitting the ground. I threw myself against the side of a building and pulled out my gun.

Carefully, I leaned around the corner, weapon ready, expecting to see Rivera dead on the ground. Nothing—nothing but trash cans. And silence. I stepped tentatively into the alley, taking cover wherever I could, searching for Rivera.

By the time I made it back into the light of the street, I was flabbergasted.

Where was the body? Who shot him? And why?

Call Fitz Chapter 4

I’m trying something new: posting a chapter of my first PI novel CALL FITZ here on my blog for you to enjoy. Can’t wait to see how it ends? The entire book is available for purchase on my website, www.debragaskillnovels.com.

Chapter 4

“Thank you, Mr. Fitzhugh.” The woman behind the glassed window pushed a single ticket through the slot. “And thank you for your support of the Fawcettville symphony.”

I was in the grand entrance of Fawcettville’s Memorial Hall. I smiled and nodded as I slipped the benefit ticket into my wallet. My tuxedo, rented this year, hung over my arm. Gracie and I may not be going together, but by God, we were going to both be there. I had to see if van Hoven was really her date for the evening, even if it cost me an arm and a leg. If he were, I would have to accept that it was over between us, and I’d sign those goddamned papers.

In the meantime, I had another appointment. Det. Joe Barnes was one of the few folks left on the force I could still call friend. He knew the truth about Maris Monroe. He was also assigned to Gina’s murder. We were supposed to meet at Horvath’s, the Hungarian coffee shop.

I was already on my second cup and working my way through an apricot kifli when Barnes slid into the booth seat across from me and signaled the waitress for a cup of coffee.

“Fitz, how’s it going? What the hell happened to your face?” Barnes was an old school detective, the other side of retirement age and held politically incorrect views that made even a mick like me cringe.

I shrugged. “Nothing that won’t heal in a week. You probably heard I’m investigating Atwater’s case for the defense.”

Barnes barked out a short laugh. “And how’s that working for you?”

“He looks guilty as hell to me, too, but I need the money.”

“I heard that too.”

Why the hell is my personal life the biggest topic in the police department, seven years after I’m gone? I shook my head. I didn’t want to feed the department’s rumor mill, but Barnes didn’t need to know that.

“Anyway,” I continued. “I’ll go through the motions, look at every angle, just like you probably did and most likely come up with the same conclusions. By the way, Maris Monroe showed up at my office the other day and said she knew I’d been there with Ambrosi, talking to Atwater.”

“So?”

“So who is she banging there who would tell her I was there? And why would anybody care?”

Barnes shrugged. “I don’t know. I know that the Chief is constantly trying to keep her corralled. There’s no respect for Monroe any more—it’s like some game, keeping track of everybody his wife has done. The only thing patrol doesn’t do is keep a running list of names on the wall where everybody can see. She’s a train wreck and that marriage is a disaster. Talk is, the city manager is thinking about firing him, moving the Assistant Chief into the position.”

“Probably a good move. So, what else is going on at the PD? Who all is still around that I worked with?” I didn’t look him in the eye as I spun my spoon on the table.

“There’s always a few new faces, right out of the academy, but they don’t last long. They get training and move on to a bigger department or the sheriff’s office—or they become Maris’s target and get fired.”

“I hope some of the old guard is still around, folks like Mac Brewster?”

“Oh sure. Brewster’s still around.”

“Still the eternal do-gooder?”

“Yeah. You know Mac—he’s trimmed back some of the stuff he’s been doing, though. I guess he’s still coaching the Special Olympics softball team. He’s not the only black face on the force these days.”

Jesus, Barnes. I cringed inwardly, but tried to sound nonchalant. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, when a new assistant prosecutor came in, she recommended Monroe hire this guy. Former KSU football player, real big guy.”

My ears perked up. This could be the cop that Susan and Michael Atwater claimed was demanding sex from Gina.

“Know anything about him?”

Barnes shook his head. “No. Don’t know if he is a husband or a boyfriend or what the deal was, but he’s a real go-getter. Monroe likes him a lot.”

“What’s his name?”

“What do you care? You’re retired.” Barnes arched an eyebrow.

“You’re right. I don’t care. Just trying to keep up, I guess.” Honestly, I was relieved I had someone else to look at other than Mac Brewster. I’d find somebody who knew the name of this new cop. I finished my kifli and my coffee as Barnes rattled on for another twenty minutes about the same shit that he complained about seven years ago: the department secretary who left food in the employee fridge until well past its expiration, the dispatcher who was clear as a bell on the radio but mumbled on the phone, the damage EMTs did to crime scenes.

He stopped yammering when I lay my napkin on the table.

“So, I figured you were going to try and pull information out of me about Atwater.” Barnes looked at me over his coffee cup.

I shrugged and leaned back, shoving my hands in my hoodie pockets.

“Isn’t that what the discovery process is all about?” I asked. “Don’t we play ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ when the trial date gets closer?”

Barnes smiled. “That’s what I always liked about you Fitz. No bullshit, no games.”

“Thanks. You guys still trying to find the actual crime scene, right? I read that in the report.”

“Yup, and the gun. I think you ought to know though; it still doesn’t look good for your boy Atwater. There’s too much evidence against him.”

“I know.”

“There’s something else. Have you talked to the prosecutor lately?”

Dennis Lance was a Fawcettville native with bigger aspirations than county prosecutor. Tall, blonde and athletic looking, word was that Lance wanted bigger things out of life: a judgeship, maybe state senator. He contributed money to all the right causes and was seen at all the right events, glad-handing everyone in sight.

Lance came to the prosecutor’s office right out of law school and stayed, until ten years ago when he decided to run for his boss’s job and won. He was a good enough prosecutor, a real bulldog in court, but I never quite trusted his made-for-TV looks and courtroom antics, even though his record of convictions was strong.

I didn’t know a whole lot about Lance’s personal life, but knew he had a big fancy house with some acreage and a couple horses out in the county.

“No. Most of my dealings are in family court these days.”

“It’s been a long, long time since this town’s had a homicide,” Barnes said. “Lance could be looking at the death penalty on this one, just to make it look like he’s tough on crime. The common pleas judge is up for reelection next year and from what I hear, Lance is thinking of challenging him for the seat. This could be the one case Lance hangs his hat on.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Detective,” I said. “Does Ambrosi know that?”

Barnes shrugged. “I’m assuming so. That’s between the prosecutor and the defense attorney. It would have to come up in court.”

“I’ll ask, just for my own information if nothing else.”

We laid money on the table to cover our respective orders and walked out the door. Out on the sidewalk, Barnes shook my hand.

“Good luck, Fitz.”

“You too, Barnes.”

Walking back to my car, I pondered everything Barnes told me. A police department in shambles, thanks to a one-woman wrecking ball, and a prosecutor intent on making a name for himself could spell a lot of trouble for my client, if he was truly innocent. Could either of them be behind the visitor who decided to christen me outside my office?

That didn’t make a lot of sense. Lance didn’t need to rely on strong-arm tactics—I’m sure that his arguments for Ohio v. Atwater were solid and if he wanted a case to build a political career on, this could be it.

But, if there was anybody who hated me, it was the Chief. As desperate as his situation seemed, maybe the knock on my head really was less about the Atwater case and more about Maris’s visit—he just wanted it to look like it was. If Monroe was firing young recruits who came into his wife’s field of vision, it made sense that he would be going after whoever she was slithering in to see—in this case, me.

I would deal with Maris later.   The next thing on the agenda, was to find out the name of the new cop on the force and if he was the one who was trying to intimidate Gina Cantolini.

But first, I had to generate some income: a surveillance case, chasing down yet another wayward spouse.

My client suspected her CPA husband of meeting his secretary for quickies on their lunch hour. I’d followed the secretary for two weeks as she went about her life, which didn’t show me anything, except that she was extremely health conscious. She was in the Sunrise Yoga class at the YMCA, ran every evening through the park with a yellow Labrador she named Spike and ordered sliced turkey with sprouts, cucumbers and mayo on whole wheat bread at lunch. The contents of her trashcan showed me someone who followed the stock market through The Wall Street Journal and drank cheap bottled water and expensive pinot noir; Spike apparently liked chewing her shoes when bored.

If she was doing her boss, it was happening at the office because it sure wasn’t happening at home. I needed to find something one way or another if I wanted to bill the wife’s lawyer.

Today, I was going after the CPA. After I left Barnes behind, I dug a pair of binoculars and my camera, with its big zoom lens, out of the back of my Excursion and drove down to the office building, which was out near the mall in a cluster of nondescript office buildings.

The CPA in question drove a bright red Mercedes two-seater, which made it easy to pick out from among the minivans and SUV’s in the parking lot.

I pulled the Excursion into the parking lot and slithered down in the seat, binoculars in my hand. Before long, my target—a tall brown-haired man with sunglasses—came striding toward the Mercedes. With his thumb hooked into the collar of the suit jacket slung arrogantly across his shoulder, he had the self-confident smile of a man who thought he was getting away with something. He lifted his sunglasses and looked around before sliding into the red car.

I was good at what I did now for a reason—I understood why men chased women… or at least why I’d done it. When I was young, it was all about the chase and the conquest, tapping into the primal hunter that still lurked in the male, despite all the socialization we’d been forced into absorbing. As I got older, I realized that it was less the hunt than the connection, finding that one person who’d give life meaning.

I just never knew when to stop looking, until I found Gracie.

I reached over to the passenger seat and pulled the camera over to my lap. I slowly drew the viewfinder up to my eye, focusing on my target.

The CPA sat in the Mercedes, looking left to right, and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Suddenly, a tall, blonde woman in a white medical coat came hurriedly into range—it was the orthodontist from the suite next to the CPA’s. I knew who she was: as a favor, I’d once taken one of my sister’s kids to the office for an appointment.

I began to click off shots as she leaned into the driver’s side window and planted a big wet one on the number guy’s lips, then quickly slid into the passenger side. The CPA fired up the Mercedes and, tires squealing, pulled out of parking lot.

I sat up in my seat, tossing the camera aside and threw the car into drive. I followed the Mercedes at a respectable distance, but close enough to keep an eye on them. The destination wasn’t a surprise—one of the motels out by the interstate. They parked in front of the motel room door and slipped out quickly. She already had the room key—maybe she was footing the bill for this assignation since the CPA’s wife told me she never found those usual telltale signs of an affair in his finances.

The shutter clicked repeatedly as they slipped into the room. An hour later, they came back out: I got shots of her running her hands through his hair as they kissed again. Following them back to the office, I watched as he dropped the orthodontist about a block away before pulling back into the parking lot.

He smirked and smoothed his hair in the rearview mirror. I could tell this was no grand affair to him, no great love he’d stumbled into after years of unhappy marriage. The lady who straightened pre-teens’ teeth for a living was a game to him, a conquest, simply a more interesting way to spend a lunch hour than reading profit and loss statements. When this relationship blew up in his smirking face, he’d move on, dick in hand, to the next woman.

I pulled the blue photo disc out of my camera and put it in an envelope, addressed it to the CPA’s wife and headed back to the office.

I called her with my proof and listened to her sob, then dropped the envelope, along with my bill, down the mail slot in the hall.

It seemed a little cold, but I was more than a little leery of having wronged wives in the office these days.

After all, Judith Demyan was the pissed off, half-drunk wife in search of vindication who brought my marriage to its knees less than a month ago.

That day, I had four or five photos spread across my desk, capturing Professor Dave Demyan with his girlfriend, a junior English major at Fawcett University, when Judith burst through the door. She wanted to share a drink with me, to celebrate catching her two-timing husband and her now-impending divorce. She’d already been celebrating when she poured me a couple shots of whiskey from the flask in her purse.

“You know, Fitz, I’ve always thought you were one sexy bastard.” Judith leaned over the desk.

“Now Judith, Judy—I—I really, I mean, I…” I stuttered like a teenager. I could smell sweet whiskey on her breath.

“Oh, silly boy. After what you did for me, I think I owe you a little something special.” Judith pushed the photos of her husband and his girlfriend onto the floor. Before I could stop her, she was straddling me in my chair, grinding against my groin as she unbuttoned her blouse.

It didn’t look like my hands were meaning to push Judith off my lap when Gracie walked in the door, but that’s the truth.

“You dirty son of a bitch!”

I started sleeping on the waiting room couch that very night.

Showing up at the symphony benefit this weekend might seriously piss Gracie off, but it would give me the proof I needed as to whether our marriage had any future or not.

Pensive, I leaned back to look out the window onto the city square.

I sat up sharply—parked just beyond the Civil War soldier was a non-descript four-door sedan with a man wearing all black, leaning on the roof of the car. Long sleeves and a black baseball cap blocked his face as he held binoculars directly aimed at my office.

I threw the window open to get a better look, but the man saw me and jumped into the sedan, speeding off down the street. All I could catch was the first three letters of his Ohio license plate, GRD.

Who the hell was he and what the hell was going on?