Don of the Dead

AVONBOOKS

An ImprintofHarperCollinsPublishers

Copyright © 2006 by ConnieLaux

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-082146-3

ISBN-10: 0-06-082146-9

FirstAvon Books paperback printing: June 2006

FirstAvon Books special printing: March 2006

Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

For David,

my cemeterystommpin ' buddy.

Here's to tomato soup andCheez -Its!

I have to admit, the first time Gus
Scarpetti
spoke
to me, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention.

After all, the guy had been dead for thirty years. How much could he possibly have to say?

"Hey, doll baby!" He called out from the back of the crowd that was gathered around me, and though I'm usually pretty quick on my feet, I was so freaked when I saw him that I was speechless.

I glanced over my shoulder at the black marble mausoleum that contained the worldly remains of Gus Scarpetti . I looked back toward where this GusScarpetti wound his way in and out of the clumps of tourists waiting for me to begin the day's talk: "Cleveland's Famous Dead."

Dead being the operative word.

I reminded myself of that fact while I watchedScarpetti sidestep between two blue-haired ladies. "Doll baby. Hey!" He gave me the once-over. Like I'd been hearing since I was thirteen, I was too tall for a girl. Five eleven. Just about the same height as this guy. I also happened to have a size 38C bust.

Guys always noticed. Even guys who were pretending to be dead guys.

Scarpettistared at my chest for a while and he smiled when he looked me in the eye. "You got no manners? I'm talking to you. The least you could do is say hello."

"Hello." I answered automatically. I was still trying to figure out who concocted a joke this lame.

Whoever it was, I had to give him (or her) credit. Where they found a GusScarpetti who looked exactly like the GusScarpetti I had seen in the pictures in the cemetery's research archives was a mystery to me.

The guy was shaped like a bull, compact and big-boned, with a nose that sat on his face at an angle, a souvenir of his early years working as mob muscle. He had a football player's neck, as beefy as a porterhouse. Like the photos I'd seen, this GusScarpetti was dressed in a perfectly tailored dark suit, a fat tie, and a diamond ring on the pinky finger of his left hand. A white handkerchief peeked out of his breast pocket.

It was probably what he'd been buried in.

The thought sent a shiver up my spine, and I shook it away. Good thing. My too-curly carrot-colored hair was wound into a braid and it twitched against the back of my white polo shirt, snapping me back to reality.

It had taken me a solid week to get the script for this tour down pat. Now this guy shows up and throws me off my game? He deserved to be put on the spot. I made a sweeping gesture toward our guest.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you all to meet Mr.AugustinoScarpetti ."

You'd think it would have had a little more effect on the crowd. A little more than none, anyway.

Two dozen pairs of eyes stared at me. As empty as my checkbook. Two dozen people whose sticky tags said their names were things like Gladys and Rose and Henry, waited for me to say more.

No one atGardenViewCemetery had ever bothered to tell me how to handle a cemetery-tour heckler. I knew I had to punt.

"Mr.AugustinoScarpetti is buried here." I pointed toward the mausoleum with its Egyptian columns at the front corners and a door that had been imported all the way fromItaly . It was brass with a glass insert, and according to what I'd been told by the folks who knew about these things, the door cost more than I paid in rent for an entire year. I guess that was only right since the mausoleum was bigger than my apartment.

Pretty classy digs for someone who was too dead to appreciate it.

From the other side of the door, I could see the glow of the stained-glass window at the far end of the mausoleum, the oriental rug that covered the marble floor, and the dozen red roses that were delivered every week like clockwork. Always on Thursday, the day GusScarpetti had been gunned down.

When I turned back around, I half expected that the Gus clone would be gone. But he was still there, looking as interested in what I had to say as everyone else in the group. Which was pretty much the reminder I needed to get my head back into the game.

"I'll bet most of you have heard stories about Gus," I said, and everybody but Gus nodded enthusiastically. "His mob nickname was the Pope, and he was the head of one of the largest crime families in—"

"One of the largest?"Scarpetti looked me over like I was a salami hanging in a deli window. His eyes glinted. Just like the diamonds in his ring. "What idiot told you to say that? One of the largest? That's what they get for letting a girl talk about something as important as this. TheScarpetti Family was
the
largest.
The
largest family. Go ahead, you tell them that."

"I don't have to. You just did."

"Did what?" The question came from a woman named Betty in the front row. I looked her way.

"What he said," I told her.

Betty turned toward where I pointed. "He who?"

"He. Him." For a second, I wondered how the practical joker (whoever he—or she—was) had convinced the Heights Lutheran Senior Citizens League to go along with the gag. Just as quickly, I decided there was no way. They couldn't be bullshitting me. Not all of them. Not Lutherans.

"GusScarpetti . The mobster." This time I didn't just point, I stabbed, the gesture broad enough so that evenChester , the guy with the thick glasses who stood at Betty's side, could see it. "GusScarpetti is—"

My stomach hit bottom, then bounced up again and lodged in my throat.

Because that's when I realized that nobody else saw the guy.

"Crazy." The word escaped me on the end of a gasp of 100 percent pure panic.

Didn't it figure, theScarpetti figment of my imagination noticed. Smiling, he stepped back and settled his weight against one foot. "You know what to do, doll baby," he said, his voice smooth and satisfied. "Tell them all about me."

It's not like I had a lot of options. Being a tour guide at Garden View might not be the most ideal job in the world, but it paid better than the barista job at Starbucks that I'd tried and hated. It also didn't involve typing and filing (at least not much), like the phone company job I'd been told I didn't have enough experience for. So it wasn't Saks. Or even Nordstrom. I'd applied at both those places, too, but until I heard back from them (if… when) or figured out some other way to handle the monumentalscrewup that was my life, this was all I had.

Besides, I had to get the tour over with and get out. Fast. Before I convinced myself that the crack-up I'd been waiting for had arrived, not only in living color but wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit.

"GusScarpetti . Born in 1921. Got his start with theNew York mob. Tried to take over somebody else's territory. Forced to leave town. Came here toCleveland . Died."

Even before the last word was out of my mouth, I turned and walked away from the mausoleum.

"Follow me and we'll see the grave of famous entrepreneur—"

"But isn't there more to the story?" Betty's question stopped me dead in my tracks. "Aren't you going to tell us all that interesting stuff? You know, about how he was killed?"

With a sigh of surrender, I turned back to the group. And to GusScarpetti , who looked pretty satisfied.

Like he'd just won the first round and I was the down-for-the-count loser.

I sucked it up and scrambled to remember my tour script. "One summer night thirty years ago, Gus walked out of his favorite restaurant."

"And that's when he was killed, right?" A man in the front row asked the question. "He was shot to death by a mob hit man."

No way could that guy know how grateful I was. Now that everyone knew the not-so-happy ending to the story, I didn't have to tell them. That meant we could get out of Dodge. Ibackstepped my way toward the street where the tour bus waited for us. "No one was ever arrested," I said. "But the cops are sure that's what happened."

"You were doing fine right up until then, sweetheart." Like I was some kind of bigol ' disappointment, Scarpetti shook his head. "You bought into that same line ofbullsh ——
Madonn'
!" He pressed a hand to his heart. "I beg your pardon. I forgot myself. When there are ladies present—"

I couldn't help it. I started to laugh.

"Did I miss something?" Betty tapped her hearing aid. "Did I miss a joke?"

"No!" I tried my best to explain away my sudden fit of the giggles, but my panic got the best of me and sent me into a serious laughing jag. How could I be serious when I felt myself on the brink of the mother of all nervous breakdowns?

Not only was I hallucinating, now I was getting apologies from the hallucination.

I wiped away the tears I knew were smudging my mascara and so I could try to get a grip, I waved the group back toward the bus.

At the last minute, I remembered the advice that had been drilled into me during my training. "Be careful," I told them. "The ground at a cemetery is pretty uneven. It's easy to trip. Just a couple days ago—"

The truth hit me like a whiff of knock-off perfume. Just three days earlier, I was giving this very same tour when I stepped in a hole and twisted my ankle. The heel of my right shoe snapped off and I went down in a heap and smacked my head on the front step ofScarpetti's mausoleum. When I came to, I was in the ER. The doc there told me I was just fine and at the time, I believed her.

Apparently, neither one of us figured leftover delusions into the mix.

The tour group walked ahead of me and now that I had finally figured out what was going on, when Scarpetti walked past, I was ready for him. "I'm just seeing you because I hit my head," I told him.