Weddings Can Be Murder (28 page)

The voice was male with a slight New York
accent. I supposed a lot of northeastern snowbirds fled south in
those days too. Right away, it became apparent the recording was a
phone call. We were hearing only one side of it.

“
Come to the city? You crazy? I’m not
making the trip.”

A long pause.

“
Oh. Scarpone’s order …”

“It’s his voice,” Victoria said. “Al
Proletti.”

Another pause. The tone changed.

“
Mr. Scarpone, sir. Yeah, yeah. It’s all
taken care of. Did it myself. Nah, we did a big concrete pour
Friday.”
Pause.
“I swear, man, I was there. Saw the stiff,
watched the truck dump the load.”
Pause.
“Whataya think?
Only my most trusted guys.”

A much longer pause while the other man
talked.

“
Don’t worry about her. Yeah, she’s young
… nah, she won’t talk.”
Pause.
“Hell, I’m sure she knows
nothing.”
Definite uncertainty in that last statement.
“No,
really, man. We’re done with the guy. Problem solved.”

The voice at the other end of the line grew
louder, a rant of harsh words that only came through on the tape as
static. A sigh from Proletti.

“
You say so … sure I can do it. You think
she means shit to me?”

A little more blustering, the sound of a
phone handset being slammed to its cradle, a groan. A chair
creaked. Another heavy sigh. Footsteps crossing a floor of tile or
hardwood. A door opening and closing. The tape went dead.

“Must have been a sound-activated machine,”
Ron said, pressing the rewind button on the player.

I stole a glance toward Victoria. Her face
had gone marshmallow white.

“Okay, now we can call Kent Taylor,” Ron
said. He rewound the tape and plucked it from the machine, then set
it on top of the green box.

I wanted to read the rest of the handwritten
account in the steno pad but he was already dialing.

“You have a copy machine in your office?” I
asked Victoria.

She nodded. “The printer. It does
everything.”

I squeezed her hand and took the steno pad
with me. Once all the pages were copied I asked if there was
anything else in the box she wanted to keep. Aside from the photo,
the contents were all business—a nasty business, true.

“The only thing I still don’t get,” I said
while we waited for Taylor, who’d said he would come right over,
“is Juliette. This was your mother, but you said her name was
Jane.”

Victoria had seemed puzzled ever since we
heard the tape. “I’ve thought of something I can check.”

She got up and made her way to the bookcase
at the left side of the TV set. Asking Ron to scoot the naked
Christmas tree aside for a minute, she bent to one of the lower
shelves and came up with a Bible.

“Mom once said to me, ‘The answers are in
the Bible.’ At the time I thought it was a little strange because
she wasn’t especially religious, but I thought maybe she was trying
to give me a little boost of faith or something.”

She carried the book to the back of the
couch where she used the cushion behind me as a platform while she
opened the leather cover.

“Just now I got to thinking, what else is in
a Bible besides a million scriptures that I can barely understand
anyway?”

She found the page she was looking for, I
could tell by the triumphant look on her face. Pointing to a spot,
she showed me a family tree illustration. The name beside her
fingertip was Jane Morgan.

“Two generations down … Jane’s granddaughter
was Juliette Mason.”

Ron stared at the page, two deep wrinkles
furrowing his brow.

“Your mother’s real name was Juliette. When
she ran from Proletti she took her grandmother’s name and became
Jane Morgan.”

“Juliette’s best friend was Carol Ann
Dunbar, married name Henderson. I spoke with her a few days ago.
She recognized the name Morgan but didn’t quite make the connection
to Mason.” Something else about that phone call still nagged at
me.

“I don’t know how Mom managed the legal side
of changing her name without letting anyone know,” Victoria
said.

“Probably stayed in a very small community
somewhere and posted the legal notices for a name change in the
local papers. I’m sure things weren’t as strict in those days
before terrorism concerns and computerized everything took over our
way of life.” Ron’s point made sense, and I’m sure if we truly
needed to know exactly what happened he could spend some time
backtracking through old records and get the answers for
Victoria.

The doorbell rang and I quickly stashed the
copied steno pages in my purse while Ron went to admit Kent Taylor.
We spent a few minutes explaining how we’d found the box and
basically what the contents were. Ron went ahead and admitted we’d
listened to the tape, mainly to be sure it would be useful to the
police.

“Would you be willing to make a formal
statement that the voice on the tape is Proletti’s?” Kent asked
Victoria.

She nodded, although I saw a lot of
hesitation.

“Very good,” he said. “The FBI will be very
grateful for your help.”

Chapter 29

FBI? I couldn’t quite wrap my head around
the shift in focus, imagining only that it must have something to
do with Proletti crossing state lines to come after Victoria.

I watched her carefully as Taylor bagged the
evidence and left. She seemed completely drained. What a gamut of
emotions she must be experiencing right now. Learning of her
mother’s secret life, finding out her father was a murdering
mobster, knowing he was still out there and still looking for the
evidence from Juliette. In that regard it was a relief to hand it
over to the police.

Compounding the air of exhaustion in the
room was, I felt certain, the fact that it had been hours since
we’d eaten. I warmed some soup while Ron finished stringing the
Christmas tree lights and we all sat down silently to the meal.

Victoria didn’t perk up a whole lot so I
suggested she have a good, long nap in her bedroom. She made little
protest noises, thought she should help with the tree.

“It can wait. You sleep. Now.” I felt like a
little nanny but sometimes you just have to be that way.

While she rested, I retrieved the copied
pages and began reading.

I’m alone and afraid and can’t think what
to do. I have made such a mess of my life—my parents would have a
fit.
This last part was scratched through as she must have
realized she didn’t have the luxury of writing a personal diary;
this was to be an account of Proletti’s crimes.

I’ve begun to gather some evidence, the
little bit I can get my hands on. Al guards everything so closely,
I’m beginning to realize my job is all superficial. What goes on
here behind the scenes is huge and it’s frightening. Twice I’ve
heard him refer to ‘getting rid of’ someone. I’m going to try to
set up the dictation machine so it will come on sometime without
his knowledge. Maybe I can catch a conversation that would provide
evidence to the police.

What I have so far are a couple of pages
that refer to drug shipments. He brings airplanes in from South
America and the Caribbean—I don’t yet know where they originate,
will try to find out. He guards these papers printed in Spanish
very closely so I couldn’t take more than two, and I pray to God he
doesn’t miss them.

This poor girl!

Another entry, in September:
Around the
office things are more tense than ever. Sheila, not so much. She
answers the phones and smokes her cigarettes and shows up for the
mandatory holiday parties and picnics. But I think Marion is very
aware of what’s going on. Maybe not the bodies, but for sure the
drug shipments. I removed a page from her ledger one day when she
inadvertently left her door open during her lunch hour. My heart
was pounding—I knew someone would catch me. Marion might still
figure it out. She would have had to redo a bunch of entries and
not much gets past that old bird. I feel sure she keeps two sets of
books, so maybe the missing page will slip by, at least long
enough.

September 10:
I had to get out of Miami
last night. Al was on the phone with someone. He thinks someone has
reported his activities to the law and I got a sick, sick feeling
he thinks it’s me. I didn’t do it! But that doesn’t matter. If he
thinks I did, I’m dead.

September 12:
I drove all night, heading
for Texas. Starting to think that’s not a good idea. Al knows I
grew up there. He’ll come after my family.

September 13:
Talked to Carol Ann from a
little motel in Louisiana but I didn’t tell her where I was. She
said an FBI man found her, asked all kinds of questions about me. I
couldn’t sleep after that—so afraid for myself and my baby.

September 17:
Called Carol Ann again but
she wouldn’t say what the man wanted to know about me. She said she
couldn’t talk, that Tommy wanted his dinner. At nine o’clock at
night? Just as I was about to hang up she lowered her voice and
said, “Jules, you can’t call again. That man has a lot of power,
they may have bugged my phone. I don’t want you hurt, but I don’t
want me and Tommy hurt either. That’s all I’m saying.”

September 20:
Drove all the way through
Texas without stopping to see anyone. I don’t dare. If Al Proletti
has found Carol Ann and sent someone to scare her this bad—I have
to stick to my disguise and my new identity and not contact anyone
I know.

The entries stopped. I could only fill in
the blanks by assuming that was about the time she got to
Albuquerque and decided to take her chances and stay. For all I
knew she could have roamed the highways all over the country until
winter set in and then decided to stay. There was no way to know. I
imagined Juliette—Jane—pregnant and scared, carrying around these
pages of documents and feeling as if she couldn’t trust anyone. As
she’d said, if Proletti’s reach went that far, he might track her
anyplace. And if the man who’d visited Juliette’s friend really was
from the FBI … even if they offered to put her in a witness
protection program, could she trust that the mob wouldn’t
eventually find her?

I hoped Kent Taylor would read the steno
book before turning it over to the feds, just to get a feel for
what Victoria was facing. They could breeze in from Washington and
investigate all they wanted, but unless they hauled Proletti’s butt
back with them, he was still here in Albuquerque and Vic was still
in danger. At the very least, we needed to be sure she had
protection from authorities at the local level—police, local FBI
office … somebody.

I had just picked up my phone to call Taylor
and discuss it when the ringer went off in my hand. Drake. He’d
been out at the airport nearly all day, performing some inspections
on the helicopter and getting her cleaned up in readiness for
whatever the next job might be. He reminded me that Freckles had
been home alone all day, which of course made me feel all the guilt
of a bad doggie-mom.

I left the steno pages with Ron, suggesting
he read them and remain on alert. If he felt calling Kent Taylor
was a good idea, by all means go ahead and do it. For now, I was
off duty in the homecare and protection areas and on duty with my
own little family.

Freckles was ecstatic to see me, wagging her
entire body, her floppy ears practically flying behind her as she
raced from one end of the house to the other. She could keep this
up for quite awhile, I know from past experience, so I hooked on
her long leash and we headed for the neighborhood park. The air was
cold but blue sky and bright sunshine did a lot to dispel winter
gloom. I zipped my parka and slipped on gloves, ready to get my
blood circulating with a brisk walk.

Bare trees rimmed the park, punctuated with
occasional evergreens. Kids aren’t out of school yet so the swings
were empty. With no one else around and the area fenced but for a
couple of entrances, I unclipped Freckles’s leash and let her
run.

My mind was still filled with the morning’s
events at Victoria’s house—the revelations on the cassette tape
playing through my head and the written words of Juliette Mason
floating around. I felt for her—the terrified young woman forced to
change her name and run for her life. No wonder she hadn’t wanted
to discuss any of it with her daughter. And poor Vic, blasted with
so much new information at once. She had to be wondering what other
secrets could be lurking out there—how much of her entire childhood
was based on lies.

I let myself worry the little details for a
few more minutes, until Freckles brought me a decrepit tennis ball
she’d found in the bushes. She dropped it at my feet, her intention
clear. What can I say—I can’t resist those soulful brown eyes, so I
threw it as far as I could and laughed as she caught up to it,
grabbed it up in her mouth and came tearing back to me. More! she
said. By the time my arm began to ache and the dog’s pace slowed a
little, I had put the other situation in perspective.

As we headed home I rationalized: those
notes were made more than thirty years ago. The criminal had served
his time. It was ancient history. Except for his words on that
cassette.

I unlocked the front door and Freckles raced
me to the kitchen, blatantly reminding me it was time for her
dinner. I set the bowl down but my thoughts wouldn’t stop.
Juliette’s box of evidence referred to old news, true, and yet
Albert Proletti gone to such great lengths to identify and find his
daughter
and
to demand that she turn over the evidence. He
must know something in Juliette’s possession could still
incriminate him.

Mulling it over didn’t get me anywhere and
it wasn’t until I heard Drake at the front door I thought about
hunger. As all smart women do when asked what they’re making for
dinner, I answered with, “Reservations!”