“The doors are locked,” he told her.
She’d forgotten about that. “Clancy was a little paranoid,” she told him. Then, in case he thought Clancy eccentric or crazy, she explained, “Happens after you deal with bullies a lot.”
He nodded, only half hearing her. “Do you know where he kept the key?”
“No, but I know where I keep mine.” Taking her purse off her shoulder, she pulled out a key.
Mild surprise crossed his features. “You have a key to his closet?”
“I told you I’d come in handy. Clancy wanted me to have a copy in case someone stole his.”
A person with nothing to hide wouldn’t lock their closet. “If he was into anything illegal, now would be the time to tell me.”
“He was just into being Clancy, which meant that he was a little eccentric.”
A little?
“The woman has a gift for understate
ment. Who knew?” Mike muttered under his breath as he watched her unlock the doors.
Opening both doors for him, Natalya stepped back and let Mike deal with the walk-in closet. “I’m told I’m full of surprises.”
He spared her a glance and made himself a promise that he was going to find out the nature of those surprises before more time passed.
And then he looked into the closet.
“Damn,” he muttered.
Natalya looked around his shoulder, trying to see what he had. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “What?”
Every hanger pointed in the same direction. Shirts were grouped by length of sleeve and light to dark. The same for pants.
“Your friend was the daughter my mother always wanted. My sisters are both tornadoes,” he confided. He looked into the closet again, still amazed. Most of his clothes were piled up on a chair where he’d shed them after a full day at work. Periodically he tossed the most wrinkled offenders into the wash. “This friend of yours was a neat freak.”
Which, now that he thought of it, made him wonder about the fallen toy.
“He believed in that old adage: a place for everything and everything in its place.”
Mike just nodded, still looking into the closet. “Makes things easier to find. If there’s anything to
find,” he qualified. On one side, there were a handful of books on the shelf, arranged by size. He shook his head. Incredible.
She fervently hoped that there was something to find. Something that would make sense out of all this. She didn’t want Clancy buried with a blot on his name. He
hadn’t
overdosed,
hadn’t
killed himself.
“Do you want me to stick around?” Natalya offered, raising her eyes to his face.
He detected the bit of smugness in her voice. He supposed he had it coming. And then he smiled. “Might as well,” he told her. “There might be something else I can’t open.”
The look he gave her was so significant, it was hard for her not to look away. But she prided herself on facing every challenge. It was something Sasha had taught her by example.
“Sometimes just saying ‘please’ works wonders,” she said.
Mike nodded. “Something else to keep in mind.”
“You look terrible,” Magda Pulaski declared the moment she saw her daughter walking into the small living room. Her three other sisters were already there. Only Sasha was missing.
On her feet instantly, Magda crossed to Natalya, determined to feel for a fever. For a thermometer she relied on the age-old tradition of placing her lips on
her daughter’s forehead. Natalya’s forehead was cool, but Magda remained concerned and unsatisfied.
“When you working in the hospital, you can catch anything and more,” she lamented.
Having indulged her mother, Natalya pulled her head back. Her temper felt short. “I didn’t catch anything, Mama.”
“She’s too busy trying not to get caught,” Marja, the youngest of the group, laughed. Everyone in the family knew that, until recently, Natalya did not lack for male attention. All her free time was spent socializing. But of late, she’d gone through a change. Her focus had shifted and she’d been spending more time at the hospital, more time at home. Their father said Natalya had grown up. Their mother worried it might be something else.
Tania was about to raise her voice to add to the mix, but Magda held up her hand, signaling that the chatter was to cease. Her hazel eyes narrowed as she regarded Natalya, her mother’s instincts telling her that something was wrong.
“What is it?” she wanted to know. “Why do you look as if someone had taken away your soul?”
“Maybe the girl does not want to talking, Magda,” Josef protested, coming to his daughter’s aid. He dearly loved his wife, but there were times when the woman did not know when to retreat.
Magda spared him a glance, then looked back at Natalya. “She wants to talk,” she said firmly. Her
eyes met Natalya’s. “We are family, Natalya. We are here to help.” She took her daughter’s hands in hers, her expression softening. She could feel Natalya’s pain. It all but radiated. “How can we help?”
Natalya pressed her lips together. She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to say anything, at least not today. Getting off the subway a block away from her parents’ house and walking up to their door, she’d silently vowed that she wasn’t going to ruin something her mother had been looking forward to for so long, ever since Sasha had been born. Sasha had called her late last night to tell her that she and Tony had decided to get married before Christmas. Mama had gotten on the phone and, in typical Mama style, had arranged everything. The wedding was in three weeks.
Today Natalya, her sisters and her mother were going to plan Sasha’s bridal shower.
This was supposed to be a happy time. But after she and the detective had left Clancy’s apartment, going their separate ways, Natalya had suddenly felt this overwhelming sense of sorrow. Clancy was dead and no one cared. While he went through Clancy’s apartment, Mike had mentioned that he’d stopped by Lucille Donovan’s house to tell her that Clancy was gone and she’d protested that she had no money to bury him.
That statement was a crock because Clancy had told her his grandfather had died a couple of years ago, leaving a sizable amount of money to Lucille.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
But she was supposed to have better control over herself than this. It just bothered her so that there was no one to mourn Clancy. And the kind look on her mother’s face made it impossible for her to hold it in the way she wanted to.
The rest of the family gathered around her, closing ranks. Forming a protective ring around her. Something Clancy had never known.
It broke down the last of her reserve. “Clancy’s dead, Mama.”
Magda covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes darting toward her husband before returning to rest on her daughter’s face.
“No,” she cried in disbelief. “How? When? He was such a young person.”
“What happened, Nat?” Kady pressed gently, her hand on Natalya’s shoulder. Her festive, teasing manner abruptly vanished in the wake of this news. Although Natalya and Sasha were closer in age—only eleven months apart—she and Kady were closer in spirit. Growing up, they’d formed a bond. Allies in a large family were always welcomed.
Natalya took a breath, silently blessing them all for being there. “The police think it’s a drug overdose.”
“But you do not,” Josef assumed. It wasn’t a question.
“Clancy did not take drugs,” Magda reminded him with authority that God would have trouble arguing with.
“What do you think happened?” Kady asked her.
Natalya blew out a breath. “What I think is that Clancy was murdered.”
The last word hung there in the air for a moment. And then her father said a word in Polish that neither he nor his wife had ever taught them. For once, Magda didn’t upbraid him. She merely nodded her head as sorrow gathered in her eyes.
T
he house was fairly packed with family and more than a few friends. At the center of it were the children, laughing, playing, chasing each other around while their parents tried to carry on some semblance of a coherent conversation. Gentle admonishments were liberally sprinkled within almost every other sentence.
It was a typical DiPalma party.
Josephine DiPalma, a petite woman who still had almost midnight-black hair except for one prominent silver streak just at her right temple, worked her way through the crowd and presented her second son with an oversized piece of cake.
To the amusement of his parents, Sofia and her husband, Jake, the guest of honor had just christened his nose with whipped chocolate frosting by bobbing his face into the plate on his high-chair tray. Alan was wearing his birthday cake and loving it.
“Does this give you any ideas?” Josephine asked, pushing the plate into his hands.
After one of his mother’s typical six-course meals, there was no room left over for a spoonful of gelatin, much less a piece of cake, but he accepted the plate, knowing that if he didn’t her feelings would be hurt. She’d baked the cake, too.
Even so, it was obvious that his mother wasn’t referring to the cake. Mike laughed and kissed her on the forehead just beneath her widow’s peak.
“You’re a great many things, Ma,” he told her affectionately, “but subtle isn’t one of them.”
Josephine sniffed, settling in beside her son. There was almost a foot difference.
“I wasn’t trying to be subtle, I was trying to become a grandmother again—in the proper order,” she emphasized before Mike could give her that wicked wink that’d had females of all ages melting around him since her son had reached puberty. “First marriage, then baby.”
He wouldn’t have had it any other way. But for the moment, he was in no hurry for either. His present lifestyle suited him just fine.
“’Fraid you’ve got a long wait then, Ma. Why
don’t you just enjoy what you have?” He nodded toward his sister, who was blossoming with her third child. Her first go-round had resulted in twins. For Theresa’s sake, he hoped she wouldn’t be overwhelmed again. “Aren’t you the one who always tells me to count my blessings?”
Josephine was not about to be distracted. “One of those blessings should be a wife.”
He tried to look at his mother as solemnly as possible, but the slight curve at the corner of his mouth gave him away. “Sorry, Ma, but you’ve spoiled me for any other woman.”
The dismissive snort told him that his mother wasn’t buying any of this. “The problem is that in your line of work you don’t meet any nice girls, Michael. They’re either harlots or dead.”
Mike choked on his cake. From out of nowhere, his mother produced a glass of wine. Mike took a long drink, clearing his throat. “Nobody says harlots anymore, Ma.”
“Your mother does,” his father said, his voice mild as he came up behind them. He draped one still-muscular arm—a trophy of fifty years as a skilled tile layer—along his son’s shoulders. His father turned his face toward him. “Need rescuing?”
Mike glanced toward his mother before answering. He had genuine affection for her. For both his parents. But he wished that she could be content weaving in and out of his siblings’ lives. Carl wasn’t
married, but he was engaged and it was beginning to look serious for Matt and his girl. Theresa was working on her third child and Sofia had Alan. Only he and Claudia were unattached and he had a feeling she might be capitulating soon.
“I need someone to change the topic,” he told his father.
Salvatore pretended to frown. “Are you trying to marry him off again?” He wasn’t fooling anyone. Everyone who knew the couple knew that, as far as Sal was concerned, nothing his wife said or did ever merited censure. Married on his twenty-first birthday, thirty-three years later he still doted on her.
Josephine didn’t answer her husband’s question. Instead, she looked at her son and sighed deeply. “Well, someone has to be concerned about him. Look at him.” She gestured at him with both hands. “Thirty years old and no prospects. What kind of an Italian boy is that?” she demanded.
“A smart one.” Sal chuckled. The remark had been aimed at Mike. Looking now at his wife, he pretended to be properly sobered. “Just kidding, Josie.”
Curious, Carl had come up to join the small circle and had been privy to his mother’s last question.
“Mike’s got plenty of prospects, Ma.” He rolled his eyes comically, a wistful expression on his brutally handsome face. He clapped his brother’s back. They were almost the same height, with Mike less than an inch taller. “I should have prospects like Mikey, here.”
This time Josephine’s frown was genuine. She wanted the best for all her children. Health, happiness and most of all, someone to love who loved them back. “One-day stands don’t count.”
“‘Night,’ Ma, one-night stands,” Mike corrected her. His own words echoed back to him and he deftly backtracked. “And who says I’ve got one-night stands?” His expression was the epitome of innocence. All except the twinkle in his eyes. “I’m an altar boy, remember?”
That was too much for Carl. “A funny thing happened on your way to the altar,” he cracked. “You became a playboy.”
“My job leaves me too tired for that kind of stuff,” Mike responded, giving his brother a warning look. Josephine DiPalma was a sharp woman. He had a hunch that she knew a great deal more about the kind of life he led than she was saying, but he didn’t want to be blatant about it. For the most part, it was a game they both played and he for one was content to leave it at that for now.
And then his mother surprised him. “Bull.”
Mike’s jaw dropped open, as did the jaws of all the DiPalma men. Josephine DiPalma didn’t talk that way. “Ma.”
Josephine jabbed her forefinger at Mike’s chest. “You heard me. Ever since you broke up with Brenda, you just go from woman to woman.”
That wasn’t strictly true. For the most part, he
didn’t have the time to be the Romeo Carl was making him out to be. But every encounter he
did
have had been superficial by design. Mike focused on the one saving point his mother seemed to have forgotten. “You didn’t like Brenda, remember?”
Josephine waved her hand dismissively. “Beside the point. I would have turned her into a proper DiPalma woman.”
Mike inclined his head toward his brother and said in a stage whisper, “Remind me to send Brenda a note telling her that I saved her.”
His mother’s arched eyebrows narrowed dangerously. “Laugh.”
Mike held his hands up before him in a visible protest. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Josephine took his face between her hands the way she had when he was a little boy. Except that now she had to stand on her toes to do it. “I just don’t want you to wind up old and alone, Michael.”
Gently he removed her hands and for a second held them in his. “With all the nieces and nephews everyone else is going to be giving me because you’ve given them quotas to fill, I might wind up old, but alone is the last thing I’ll ever be.”
She refused to be amused. For the moment, she blocked out the rest of her family, trying to convert the unconverted. “I’m serious, Michael.”
“Uh-oh,” Matt murmured as he came to see what this impromptu family meeting was about. “Ma’s
using your full first name. If she throws in the middle one, I’d say it was time to run.”
For a moment, Josephine relented. She retreated to the one person who never gave her any grief or opposition. Standing with her back against him, she took both his hands and wrapped them around her waist as she looked at three of her sons. “I just want everyone to be as happy as your father and I are.”
Maybe that was part of the problem, Mike thought. His parents were a tough act to follow, much less live up to. “Not possible, Ma.”
Josephine nodded toward the youngest of the DiPalma men. “Why can’t you bring me a nice girl like your brother Matt?”
Mike laughed. “There aren’t any nice girls like Matt and a good thing, too. They’d be ugly enough to stop a clock.” He saw the exasperated look his mother gave him. He knew that look. It meant that he’d pushed her as far as she was willing to go. “Okay, okay, I promise. The next time I’m in the store, I’ll go down the nice girl aisle and pick one out.” He leaned down, bringing his face next to his mother’s. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Until then, enjoy the party. Remember, a kid only turns one once.” With that, he retreated before his mother could gear up for another round.
He liked going over to see his family. He liked coming home to the peace and quiet of his apartment
just as much. He loved his parents dearly but the moment he’d turned twenty-one, the age his father had married his mother, his mother started to drop hints. Initially they’d descended on him a drop at a time. At thirty, they were coming down with the intensity of a storm at sea.
Tonight, she’d been in rare form. Eventually, to gain a little peace, he’d told her that he was actually seeing someone. His mother’s face had lit up and then turned suspicious as she’d asked where this so-called “someone” was. He’d placated his mother by saying that she’d had a prior engagement, making the commitment before he’d asked her to Alan’s party. Then, before his mother could say anything, he quickly tacked on that she was shy, so he wasn’t certain when a meeting would come up.
It surprised him a little that the woman he’d summoned to mind when giving his mother the most cursory of answers had been the doctor he’d met yesterday. Natalya.
Funny how she’d managed to stick in his head like that.
But then, when a woman looked the way Natalya Pulaski did, if she hadn’t stuck in his mind he would have seriously had himself checked over for a pulse.
So now he was stuck with a fictitious romance his mother was sure to ask about. He glanced at the phone. He had to admit he was surprised that it
wasn’t ringing, that his mother wasn’t calling for more substantial details. He could only hope that the others would keep her busy.
Two weeks. He was going to give the “romance” two weeks and then tell his mother that they broke up. She’d respect his space for a while, giving him sympathy and sending his brothers over with food, the way she had when he’d stopped seeing Brenda. With any luck, it would buy him a reprieve for about a month or so.
Emptying his pockets, Mike tossed his wallet and keys onto the coffee table. A somewhat crushed card was peering out of his wallet.
Her card, he thought as he picked it up. She’d given it to him so that he could call if there were any new developments. For a second, he just held the card, debating. And then he shrugged. What the hell? One way or the other, there was nothing to lose.
Going with impulse, something he placed a fair amount of faith in, Mike dialed the cell phone number Natalya’d written on the back of her card.
He counted off five rings and was about to hang up when she picked up. “Hello?”
Her voice sounded low, sexy, moving in waves over the phone. “Doc?”
He could almost hear her snapping to attention. Belatedly, he realized what she probably thought. “Did you find anything?”
Feeling a little guilty he replied, “No. I was just
wondering if you were up for a cup of coffee, or a nightcap.” When there was no response, a smattering of awkwardness seeped in. It was an entirely new sensation for him and it took effort to shut it down. “Never mind, bad idea.”
“No.” The single word crackled as it shot out of her mouth. “Not a bad idea.” The volume of her voice lowered again. “A good idea.” She hesitated a moment, as if undecided whether or not to admit something. “I was actually thinking about calling you.”
Maybe this wasn’t a mistake after all. “Oh?”
“Yes, I just remembered a piece of information that might be able to help you.”
A vague disappointment stirred through him. This wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. “Oh.”
If Natalya didn’t know better, she would have said that was disappointment in his voice. Probably her hearing playing tricks on her. She really wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Ever since they’d discovered Clancy’s body, everything felt as if it had been turned on its ear.
“Where do you want me to meet you?” she asked.
He didn’t want her standing on some corner, waiting. “I’ll pick you up,” he told her. “Do you need to get ready?”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t mean to imply that she should do something special, but he was accustomed to his sisters’
behavior. “My sisters always needed time to get ready. Whenever they had to go anywhere, they spent an average of forty-five minutes in the bathroom first, with hair dryers, makeup and an armload of clothes.”
Her laugh was almost musical. “I just got in. I’m ready now.”
“Just got in,” he echoed. Mike picked up his helmet on his way out the door. “Had an emergency?” It seemed a logical assumption, given her profession.
Was that his way of feeling her out to find out if she’d come back early from a date? No, she was giving this too much weight, Natalya upbraided herself.
But then what kind of weight should she be attaching to this invitation that had come out of the blue?
Not into playing games, she gave him an honest answer. “My family is many things, but I never quite thought of them as an emergency.”
Talk about a small world. “You went to see your family?”
She couldn’t quite make out his tone. Was it amusement? “Yes, why?”
Mike shifted his phone from one hand to the other, suspending his helmet strap around his wrist as he slid his jacket back on. “Nothing. It’s just that I just came home from seeing mine.”
That would explain the amusement. “We have something in common.”
Natalya sank into the deep cushion of the sofa she and Sasha had picked out together when they’d first began to furnish the apartment. She tucked her legs beneath her seat.
“I guess we do,” she heard him say. “Your mother nag you about being single?”
In response to his question, Mike was rewarded with a rich laugh. The sound spread through his veins like warm honey mixed with brandy as he made his way down the stairwell.