Whiskey and Tonic, page 23
True to her usual prurient drive, Abra made a beeline for Roscoe’s rear end, inhaling him as if she hadn’t had a whiff of manhood in months. Never mind that she’d been cavorting up and down this side of the county with Norman. Her tangled blonde coat betrayed her wanton ways.
Abra had a curative effect on Roscoe, instantly relieving the last of his geo-magnetic hangover. I tried not to watch them. It had been too many months since I’d whiffed real manhood.
“Vito wants to talk to you."
Brady’s voice startled me. I must have dozed off while slumped in the lobby.
“Vito?” I echoed.
“Don’t worry. It’s not about suing you."
Brady held open the swinging entrance gate for me to pass.
“Wait." I scanned the lobby. “Where did—?”
“They’re out back. It was getting a little hot and heavy in here, so I put them in separate kennels.”
Vito Botafogo was in the kitchenette, the perfect interrogation room for a sausage vendor. I joined him at the Formica-topped table, relieved that Brady had assured me the old man didn’t plan to litigate. Otherwise his furrowed expression would have scared me all the way down to my wallet.
“Hello, Vito,” I said. “Did you get the roses I sent?”
He nodded. “Very nice. My late wife Rosa, she would have loved them."
I remembered Rosa—a tiny white-haired woman who could out-shout any vendor at a public event. She had died years ago. So Vito and I shared a common bond: we were both widowed.
“I want to tell you something,” he said. “Something about your late husband Leo.”
My heart lurched. Was this yet another revelation, or did Vito hold the key to what Leo had seen at Winimar?
“Leo, he was a good man,” Vito began. “He had respect for other people’s business, you know? When he saw something he was not supposed to see, he knew what to do about it.”
I crossed my arms on the table to keep them from shaking.
“Vito, what did Leo see?”
Slowly the old man ran his tongue over his lips. He probably tasted salsiccia fresca.
“Every year, the new Miss Blossom, she got to have her picture painted at Winimar."
“Her picture? You mean, her portrait?"
He nodded nervously. “But not just a portrait. Is special. Must be done in a . . . certain way.”
My mind flashed back to my earliest suspicions that something kinky was going on at Winimar. Crystal Crossman had firmly denied it, and I’d willed myself to believe her. Then she had died.
“What do you mean, ‘in a certain way’?”
“The new Miss Blossom, she must dress up in the clothes of the first Miss Blossom. And there’s more. . . ." He winced as if telling the story caused him physical pain.
“Go on,” I coaxed, wondering what any of this could have to do with Leo.
“She must pose by the grave of the first Miss Blossom.”
“Mar Schuyler is buried in the Magnet Springs cemetery. I’ve seen her crypt.”
Vito vigorously shook his head. “Crypt is empty. Her mama wanted to keep her body close to home.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . her mama killed her.”
I stared. “Mrs. Schuyler murdered her own daughter? Why?”
“Because she loved the wrong man, and she had his baby. Mar, she wanted to marry her lover and raise their child at Winimar. But Mrs. Schuyler, she said no, she made Mar go far away to have the baby and give it up. Then Mar came back, but not alone. She was with her baby and her husband, Antonio Paladino. Yes, they were married! Mrs. Schuyler, she said they could stay one night. And that night, Mrs. Schuyler went crazy. She killed her daughter in her sleep, and she tried to kill the baby and his father, too, but they ran away. Mrs. Schuyler, she had told everybody her daughter was sick with consumption. Now she called the sheriff. She said her daughter came home from the hospital. And Antonio Paladino, he broke into the house and killed her! Mrs. Schuyler never, never told nobody about the marriage. Or the baby."
“How do you know all this?” I demanded.
“Is part of our family legacy. You see, Antonio, he couldn’t save his wife. But he saved their baby. Before he was arrested, he told his brother what happened. And the brother told their sister, who knew how to write. She wrote everything in the family Bible, and she saved it for the Paladino baby. Who passed it on to the next baby, and so on. This is what makes the Paladinos stronger than the Schuylers.”
The old man trembled with pride.
I said, “How did Mrs. Schuyler get away with murder?”
Vito laughed ruefully, rubbing his second and third fingertips against his knobby thumb.
“Nobody questions the richest family! Nobody can afford to!”
“But who murdered Mrs. Schuyler? And her nephew’s wife?”
“We will never know,” Vito said sadly, “but me, I think it was Antonio’s brother, Alessandro. I think he did it to avenge his brother. Family against family.”
Beauty ends. Vengeance is never satisfied.
“What happened to the baby?” I said.
“Ah, the baby. The night when Mrs. Schuyler went crazy, Antonio, he gave the baby to his brother. And his brother, he gave the baby to their sister, who lived in Grand Rapids. She raised that baby.”
“Was it a boy or a girl?"
“A boy! A fine, strong boy! Mar, she named him after his father, Antonio. From then on, every Paladino boy is named Antonio.”
“But you’re named Vito,” I pointed out.
“That’s because I am a Botafogo, son of Giuseppe. My father, he come to this country when he was thirty years old. He make rule at our house: we speak Italian always. It is my first language. It was my sainted late wife’s first language, too.”
“That explains your accent,” I said. “But not Dock’s name.”
“My mother, she was a Paladino,” Vito said. “The Antonios, they are the sons of Antonios.”
“I see. So the name Antonio is part of the curse.”
Vito bristled. “That is no curse! That is a Paladino tradition! The curse is on the Schuylers and the things they owned: Winimar and the big ugly crown. I tell you now about the curse."
And he did. What I really wanted to know was what any of it had to do with Leo. Vito told me that, too. . . .
Chapter forty-seven
Before we discussed the gritty details, Vito Botafogo insisted that we eat. He was an Italian sausage vendor, after all, and we were stuck in the police station kitchen at dinner time. Vito made magic using a can of minestrone, Brady’s leftover chili and a handful of questionable items found in the fridge.
“Your husband Leo, he was half-Italian, no?” asked Vito.
Actually, Leo was a hundred percent Irish. I wasn’t sure that was the right answer, however. So I smiled noncommittally over my steaming soup bowl.
Vito smiled back. “I thought so. Leo, he understood about honor. We talked about Winimar. I told him I cared nothing for Sweeney’s damn gag orders. I knew how bad that place was. I knew it was no good for nobody. And I was not afraid to say so. Leo, he was not afraid, either. He did the right thing.”
I waited while the old man noisily slurped his soup. Finally, he said, “There is a very old tree at Winimar. On the trunk of that tree is carved a heart and the words ‘Antonio Paladino loves Mar Schuyler.’ Leo knew that I am part Paladino. So he came to me first . . . before he went to the police."
“Leo went to the police because he saw a heart carved into a tree?”
“No! Leo saw Miss Blossom pose in the old dress by Mar Schuyler’s monument. It marks her grave, deep in the woods. Is big and bronze and very beautiful.”
The ‘tree-woman’ I saw in the fog? I wondered. The female figure “who came for” the creator of the crude map faxed to Deputy Clifton?
Vito went on. “Leo, he already knew something was not right. Every year, Miss Blossom must leave Magnet Springs after she gives back the crown or . . . bad things will happen. Or so she believes. Is the curse of Winimar. When Leo saw the secret grave, he knew the trust did not give full disclosure. Leo, he wanted to protect innocent Miss Blossoms from the poison of an old secret. And he wanted to protect you, too.”
I squeezed the elderly man’s bony hand. “Vito, this is an important question: Are you the only Schuyler heir?”
“I am the oldest living heir, but not the only heir.”
“How many are there?”
He raised two gnarled fingers.
“You . . . and Dock?”
Vito’s face darkened. “Yes. Antonio—Anthony—who calls himself ‘Dock.’ The man who runs with married women and their daughters. The man who steals the prize check of poor Faye Raffle. Bah. He is a bad Paladino! Sometimes, the Schuyler blood, it shows up again. This Paladino has the bad blood in him!”
I waited a moment for the sausage vendor to calm himself.
“You said the curse was on the Schuylers and all they owned. Aren’t you, as an heir, entitled to some of that wealth?”
He laughed until he choked. “No! The trust, it was set up for the glory of the Schuyler name. I do not have that name. No descendent does since Mrs. Schuyler’s nephew. But the oldest living heir, he or she is entitled to make a decision. He or she decides if the youngest living heir gets a special privilege.”
Vito sneered.
“Which is—what?"
“If the oldest living heir says yes, then the youngest living heir, he or she can tell the judges how to vote for Miss Blossom.”
“You mean—rig the contest? How can that be?"
“Is part of the trust—and the gag order. Is the only power Mrs. Schuyler gave to heirs who are not named Schuyler. But we Paladinos never stoop so low! Until this Paladino.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t let him exercise that right.”
“No, I did not,” Vito declared. “He is a bad man. Only interested in sex and money. Mostly money. He said Mrs. LePadanni would help him if her daughter won the contest. He threatened me. But I refused. Today he came again to my house. He said he would not leave until I give him my money. He said he needs to run away. And Mrs. LePadanni does, too. I think they hurt somebody. They have nasty tempers. The daughter, she has a temper, too. Beautiful but very bad. Bah.”
“Do you think Dock and Tammi tried to kill Kevin Sweeney?” I said.
“Maybe. Dock, he is a Schuyler heir, so he sees things.”
“You mean . . . hallucinations?”
“I mean every Schuyler heir sees Winimar with the lawyer. Is in the trust. The lawyer must show us the estate. So we can see how much wealth the Schuyler family had. Ha! We see what evil looks like."
“Does it look like two white eyes that glow in the dark?”
Vito stared at me. “Yes! That is what remains of Mrs. Slocum Schuyler!”
A shiver shot down my spine. “Do you mean . . . Mrs. Schuyler’s remains are in the bath house? Behind the locked door?”
“No! Her memories are there.”
Vito explained that after Mrs. Schuyler killed her daughter, she placed Mar’s best things—including her dresses and jewelry—in a vault within the bath house, where Mar used to spend her leisurely summer days. Only the lawyer had access, but he was obliged to show the contents to all Schuyler heirs.
“What’s the point?” I said.
“It was Mrs. Schuyler’s way to keep her daughter alive. The same with the portrait. She made sure that every year the new Miss Blossom is painted. In the same pose and the same dress as Mar Schuyler. But the new Miss Blossom can never tell. You have seen the original portrait, no?”
“You mean . . . the one that hangs in the Town Hall?"
I recalled an untitled oil painting of a young woman in a rose-colored gown. Never in all my comings and goings through the Town Hall had I wondered about the people in the half-dozen portraits displayed there. I assumed they represented Magnet Springs’s wealthy founding families, and, being a second-generation Springer myself, I didn’t much care who was here more than a century before me.
“Yes,” Vito said. “That is Winifred Margaret Schuyler, age eighteen. Her mother believed no other girl will ever be so lovely. She thought she could prove that by making sure every new Miss Blossom posed for the same portrait, only smaller and in Mar’s very old dress. In front of her statue.”
“Where are the portraits? And who paints them?"
Vito sighed wearily. “I am not supposed to tell. But I am an old man sick of secrets. According to the trust, the Schuyler lawyer must hire a different artist every year. The artist must be from out of town and not very good. Also, he is sworn to secrecy. The paintings are stored in the bath house."
“You’re saying . . . there are over a hundred and fifty paintings in there?”
“Small ones, yes, they are stacked everywhere. I have seen them; they are quite poor." He made a face. “The lawyer for the trust, he tells the girls there is a curse on the winner if she stays in Magnet Springs. Mrs. Schuyler, she believed that a girl who goes away will soon be forgotten. But the image of her dead daughter hangs in the Town Hall. And so Mar lives forever."
I recalled the feel of Mar Schuyler’s hair jewelry in my hand and shuddered.
“Vito, do bad things really happen to former Miss Blossoms who don’t leave town?”
“If they believe it will happen, then it does. Most Miss Blossoms believe they will have a good life when they leave, so they go. The curse, you see, is in what we believe."
I believed that. So did Murray McCready.
“Is there a way to break the curse?” I said.
Vito’s watery eyes sparkled. “Ah, that is a good question! And the answer is yes, I think. If we crown a Miss Blossom who refuses to pose for the portrait.”
“You mean—?”
“A girl who defies every gag order will cancel the effect of the curse. But she must be a very brave girl."
Just then Brady pushed open the kitchenette door.
“What smells good in here?”
“Not your chili,” I replied.
The sausage vendor served Brady a bowl of his special soup and answered his remaining questions about Winimar. Brady knew most of the story already from speed-reading and reading between the lines, as well as from interviewing the LePadanni ladies.
“Tammi admitted that she hit on Dock. Not because she wanted him but because she wanted what he could do for her,” Brady said. “He promised to make sure Brandi won.”
“But why would Tammi and Brandi care so much about winning the Miss Blossom competition?” I said.
“Brandi has her heart set on becoming a top model. Or the next Angelina Jolie. And Tammi’s the Stage Mom from Hell. Together they took an online course called Three Steps to Building Your Modeling Career. Step One is to enter and win beauty pageants. Miss Blossom was supposed to be their easy first victory. If Dock didn’t come through, they had a back-up plan.”
Tammi admitted to Brady that she’d never loved her husband; she’d married him for the prestige of being a surgeon’s wife. At her prompting, Dr. LePadanni had agreed to lobby for Brandi’s victory. He would “bribe” the judges by offering them entrée into the Magnet Springs Country Club.
I snort-laughed. “Not that panel of judges!”
“Exactamundo,” Jenx concurred. She had joined us in the kitchenette and was now ladling soup into a coffee mug. “Hen hooted when the doctor offered her a membership in exchange for her vote. The other judges felt the same—except Rico. He has fantasies about seducing homophobic bluebloods. And Martha Glenn accused the doctor of trying to seduce her.”
“What about the doctor?” I said. “Did Tammi kill him?”
Jenx tipped back her head to drink from her mug. Then she smacked her lips. “Not directly. But she helped.”
“She let him eat too much fast food!” Vito exclaimed. “The man, he was a big fat pig!"
“True. And he was scheduled for coronary bypass surgery,” Jenx said. “Tammi says he frequently got chest pains. She picked a fight before she left at around seven on Saturday. She wanted to upset him, but she couldn’t have known for sure she’d kill him. The coroner thinks he had a heart attack. He was probably already dead when Brandi had her tantrum. Brandi thought he was just being a bore.”
I said, “What happened to the lights at Providence?”
“Brandi was furious with her father for failing to ‘buy’ her the crown. So she pulled the same stunt her mom once did when she got angry: she turned off the power and stormed out.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
Brady said, “The doctor knew a lot about a lot of things but nothing about his domestic life—from his wife’s sexual partners to the infrastructure of his house. You might say the women in his life liked to leave him in the dark.”
“And then Dock picked up Brandi and took her back to his place?” I asked. To Vito I added, “I . . . uh . . . went looking for them at the marina.”
“Nope, that’s not what happened,” Jenx said. “Tammi picked up Brandi and took her to a motel. Abra was in the car, too. With the crown. That’s when Tammi pried out the jewels. See, the doctor had a neat little pre-nup that would have prevented Tammi from getting much cash if they divorced. Which looked like a possibility. So Tammi planned to fence the jewels. We’ve recovered them.”
“Back up,” I said. “How did Tammi get Abra to give her the crown?”
“Just as Wells suspected, Whiskey: she corrupted Abra’s training. Tammi knows a lot about dogs. She figured out how to subvert The System. But Abra got away and took the stripped crown to Vestige. Tammi and Dock were back at Winimar this morning looking for her. They’d heard police scanner reports that Abra was in the area, and they were afraid she’d tip off the cops. Tammi lured her into the Hummer, but Abra jumped out at Mrs. Brewster’s house and left her scat. Then Abra followed Tammi to Vito’s. We can only assume your dog planned some kind of revenge.”
