Home for the Holidays (9 page)

T
he following day was filled with preparations for the big Borelli bash. The catering company delivered food. The liquor store delivered wine. The musicians came and set up their instruments in the living room. Nicky's mother spent hours dashing from room to room, issuing orders through the telephone.

“We're going to need more ice.” “I need those cakes delivered by noon.” “Where are those flower arrangements?” Then the party rental company came with the tables and chairs, and the tent for the backyard, and the heaters that would keep it warm. Within an hour, the backyard was transformed into a party room.

Grandma Tutti was busy in the kitchen, and she had
company. In addition to Nicky's mother, Mrs. Feingold and Mrs. Carpenter were back, plus two other women Nicky recognized but hadn't really met.

“Hello,” Nicky said. “Good morning, Grandma.”

“Good morning, Nicky!” his grandmother said, and gave him a kiss. “These are my students!”

“We're the first students for your grandmother's cooking school,” Mrs. Feingold said. “Today, we're learning marinara sauce and homemade pasta!”

“And the best part?” Nicky's mother said. “It's a vegetarian pasta dish!”

“It's macaroni—or noodles,” Grandma Tutti growled. “Pasta is a phony-baloney word made up by restaurants.”

“It smells great,” Nicky said, and sniffed a pot of sauce.

“I can't believe it's all so simple!” Mrs. Feingold said. “Olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and a little basil? Who knew!”

“And a pinch of sugar, right?” Nicky asked.

“Out!” his grandmother said, and pushed Nicky away from the stove. When he was out the door, she whispered, “You'll tell them all my secrets!”

“They don't know about the sugar?”

“Shhh!” Tutti hissed. “You and Tommy go break something. You can have a bite later … if my students don't ruin the sauce.”

Clarence came and went in the Navigator, dropping Nicky's father off somewhere and returning with an armful of party hats and horns for people to blow at midnight.
New Year's Eve! Nicky had almost forgotten what they were celebrating.

“Wow,” Nicky said. “It's the last day of the year.”

“So?” Tommy said. “What's for lunch?”

Nicky's mother flew into the room a short while later, full of energy and plans.

“I
must
run,” she said. “I have a thousand things to do, and a meeting I'm late for now. Tommy, have you called your mother?”

Tommy looked ashamed. “No. I mean, I've called, but she's never answered.”

“Call again,” Nicky's mother said. “Keep calling until you reach her.”

“Yes,” Tommy said. “I will.”

“I'll see you in a few hours. Nicholas, if your father calls, tell him I'll be out until this afternoon.”

“Sure, Mom.”

Tommy went to try to reach his mother. Nicky watched Grandma Tutti and her ladies work on their sauce.

“Some people chop the garlic,” Grandma Tutti said to her students. “No! Not in my kitchen! We
mash
the garlic, gently, with the flat side of the knife.
Ecco!
Now you do it.”

An hour later Nicky and Tommy were deep into a round of
BlackPlanet Two.

“See?” Tommy said, just as his last space probe was blasted by the Astrogoths. “You have to double your shield strength, even if it means downgrading your tacticals. Then you get the tacticals back on the next screen.”

Nicky stood up and said, “We have to go to the library.”

“Right,” Tommy said. “What are you talking about?”

“I Google'd Patrick Arlen this morning,” Nicky said. “There're a lot of references to newspaper stories about him, but they're too old. You can't read them online. We have to go to the library to read the stories.”

“They keep old newspapers in a library?”

“They have them on microfilm, and CDs,” Nicky said. “My English class had a field trip. They showed us. Come on.”

Nicky called Clarence and had him come around with the Navigator. At the front of the downtown library, he said, “We'll need about an hour. Can you pick us up at, like, five?”

“I'll be parked in front at five,” Clarence said.

Inside, the library was deserted. The stacks of books stood tall and silent. Nicky stepped up to the reference desk, where a young woman with a tall hairdo was reading a thick, heavy-looking book.

“Excuse me,” Nicky said. “I need to look something up in a newspaper.”

“Guide to periodic literature,” the woman said.

“Uh, okay,” Nicky answered. “What does that mean?”

The woman said, “Follow me.”

Nicky and Tommy sat at a long library table. In front of them was a big red book called the
Reader's Guide to Periodic Literature
—a bound directory of magazine and newspaper stories from the past.

“We'll never find him in all this!” Tommy whispered.

He started reading under the listings for P. Then he went back and started looking under the listings for A. Five minutes in, he suddenly said, “Here he is! Patrick Arlen.”

The listing said, “Arlen, Patrick. ‘Local Developer Missing.’
Ridgeway Register.
Nov. 13, 1982.”

“What's that mean?” Tommy said.

“Beats me,” Nicky answered. “We'd better ask.”

The librarian directed the two boys to a computer terminal and sat them down. Then she returned with a CD-ROM and inserted it.

“This holds all the
Ridgeway Register
stories from 1975 to the present,” she said. “Use the Search command to find the stories you need. Do you know how to do that?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Nicky said.

He did as he was told. The disk booted up. Nicky performed a search on “Patrick Arlen.” A dozen stories popped up. Nicky read the most recent one first.

The headline was LOCAL DEVELOPER MISSING. The story said, “Ridgeway real estate developer Patrick Arlen is missing and presumed dead, Comstock County Police Officer David Huckney said, after a weekend blaze that left Arlen's home in cinders. Huckney said an investigation into the cause of the blaze is underway. Fire officials, meanwhile, said that …”

“Wow,” Tommy said. “Van Allen torched the guy's place and burned him to death.”

“Murder!” Nicky said. “But who was Arlen?”

“Beats me,” Tommy said. “Where's Ridgeway?”

“Down the shore,” Nicky said. “About half as far as Newton.”

“Read the next story,” Tommy said.

The rest of the stories went back in time, all of them written by a reporter named Sean O'Farrell. One was about the fire. The one before that was about Arlen and his realty company declaring bankruptcy. The one before that was about Arlen being investigated for tax evasion, fraud and malfeasance.

“What's malfeasance?” Tommy said.

“I don't know,” Nicky answered. “But it sounds bad.”

The story before that was a big one about Arlen's real estate business and his alleged connection to organized crime.

“Check it out!” Tommy said. “He was a gangster!”

There was a picture, grainy and small. “He looks like a creep,” Nicky said.

“He looks like a wiseguy,” Tommy said. “Wait a minute! Is he one of the guys we saw at the amusement park? He looks familiar.”

Nicky stared at the grainy picture. “He does, a little. But he's dead, remember?”

“Good riddance,” Tommy said. “The guy was a crook.”

Clarence was waiting for the boys outside when they left the library. He said, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tommy said.

“So where are your books?”

“It was a reference book,” Nicky said. “I just needed to take some notes.”

Clarence dropped the boys in the driveway. Inside, the house smelled like heaven. Grandma Tutti had outdone herself. Even though Nicky's mother had hired a catering company to prepare food for the evening, Grandma Tutti had made a rack of meatballs, two huge lasagnas, several ricotta cheesecakes and another batch of
sfogliatella.
Now she was rolling out little rounds of dough for baby pizzas.

“Nicky, at last,” she said. “I need someone to test the meatballs. I think they're too dry.”

Nicky and Tommy flew to her side and found she was wrong. The meatballs were perfect.

“Good,” Grandma Tutti said. “Now help me make the
pizzettas.”

Before dinner, Nicky went to his bedroom and looked up the
Ridgeway Register
in an online telephone book. When he had it, he turned on his cell phone and dialed.

“Ridgeway Register,”
a voice said. “How may I direct your call?”

“Uh, Mr. O'Farrell?”

“Hold on,” the voice said. The phone rang twice and another voice said, “Yeah, O'Farrell.”

“Hello?”

“Yeah,
hello.
We covered that already. Who is this?”

“This is Nicholas—uh, Smith. Ington. Smithington.”

“Sure it is. And?”

Nicky took a breath. “And, and I'd like to ask you a
question about Patrick Arlen. I might have some information about his disappearance.”

“Is that a fact?” Nicky could hear O'Farrell's heavy Irish accent. He sounded like the leprechaun on the Lucky Charms commercials. “Well, let me think. If I remember correctly, Mr. Arlen disappeared about twenty years ago. Is this new information?”

“I don't know,” Nicky said. “But I think Patrick Arlen was murdered. And I think I know who did it.”

“Great John O'Groats!” O'Farrell said. “That
is
interesting. Would you come down to the paper and talk to me about it?”

“I don't know,” Nicky said. “I want to, but I have to be careful.”

“Why is that, son? Are you in some kind of danger?”

“No, but someone I know might be—from the same person who I think killed Patrick Arlen.”

“Okay, laddie,” O'Farrell said. “Listen to me. It's New Year's Eve, or it will be shortly. I'm leaving the office. But tomorrow, or anytime after, if you want to stop by the office and chat, I'll be here. It's Sean O'Farrell, at the
Register.
You won't forget that, will you?”

“No, sir.”

“All right then,” the leprechaun said. “Ta-ta for now.”

Nicky hung up. His palms were sweaty and he felt a little dizzy. Was he making a mistake talking to some newspaper reporter about this?

He didn't know. But he didn't know what choice he
had. He needed more information before he could go to the police. He needed to know who Arlen was, and if Peter Van Allen really killed him. He also needed to know, for sure, that his dad wasn't doing anything against the law. He wanted to get rid of Peter Van Allen if he was a criminal. But what if he got his dad in trouble at the same time?

That was why he had to see O'Farrell. He had the information. And the reporter couldn't go to the police unless Nicky told him the whole story … which Nicky didn't have to do until O'Farrell agreed to help.

Nicky told Tommy everything O'Farrell had said.

“Do you know this guy?” Tommy asked. “Can we trust him?”

“I don't know,” Nicky said. “But we have to go see him. For now, let's just keep our eyes open. And keep quiet.”

The Borellis' guests started arriving around seven. By eight, the Borelli house was filled. Here came Jimmy the Iceman, Charlie Cement, Oscar the Undertaker, Bobby Car Service and of course Sal Carmenza, with wife and daughter. Donna was wearing a black velvet dress, and her hair was up. To Nicky, it was like he'd never seen her before. He'd known she was pretty, but
wow.
She looked so grown-up that he got shy and tongue-tied when he said hello to her. That funny feeling returned to his stomach.

“Uh, hi,” he said.

“Uh, hi,” she said back, and laughed. “Uh, what's wrong with you?”

“Uh, nothing. I mean, nothing,” Nicky said. “Can I get you a soda?”

“Uh, yeah!” Donna said, and laughed again. “Where's your hoodlum?”

“My
whatl”
Nicky asked. “Oh. I think Tommy's still getting dressed.”

Nicky took Donna to the back of the living room, where the caterers had set up a bar, and got her a soda. He showed her the tent in his backyard. Then he stood with his hands in his pockets and found he had nothing to say.

Luckily Donna had plenty. The marathon poker game had gone on so late, the owners of the bed-and-breakfast had told the Brooklyn men they were going to call the police. Uncle Frankie had had to tell them he
was
the police to calm them down.

Then, the next morning, the whole gang had sat down for breakfast. The Brooklyn men had eaten so many pancakes that the owners had run out of pancake batter. They'd never seen people who ate so much.

“Your uncle was laughing so hard I thought he was going to die,” Donna said.

Across the room, Uncle Frankie was laughing now as Charlie Cement retold the pancake-eating-marathon story to Nicky's father.

“I'm never going to be able to show my face in Newton again,” Nicky's father said. “You guys have ruined my reputation.”

“Now he's got a reputation!” Jimmy the Iceman said. “Mr. Big Stuff!”

“Well, look at this house,” Oscar the Undertaker said. “What do you do here, Nick—rent rooms? This is bigger than the place you got us staying in.”

“Nicer, too,” Charlie Cement said. “And I bet every bedroom has its own bathroom. How come we don't get to stay here?”

“Nick don't want to trash the joint up with bums like you,” Jimmy said. “This is only for classy people.”

“That can't be right,” Sallie said. “Frankie's stayin' here.”

“Watch it, you,” Frankie said.

“Seriously, guys, you're welcome,” Nicky's father said. “I'm really touched to have you all in my home.”

“You're gonna get touched, all right, with a place like this,” Oscar said. “I'd like to hit you up for a couple of
hunge
right now.”

“You must be doin' all right for yourself,” Jimmy said. “This ain't exactly Bath Avenue!”

Nicky's father looked embarrassed. “Oh, it's just a house. What difference does it make where you live? It's just a place to eat and sleep and hang your hat, right?”

“That's the truth, Nick,” Sallie the Butcher said. “And you're a swell guy to invite us all up here. Right, guys?”

“You bet,” Jimmy said. “Now, where's the wine?”

“There you go,” Charlie said. “It always ends up being about the wine with you.”