Lacey Luzzi: Sliced (Lacey Luzzi Mafia Mysteries Book 13) Read online

  “Who’s would it have been?”

  “Frank Sr.—Frankie’s dad—wouldn’t take kindly to seeing their finances hurt by a lawsuit. Especially a lawsuit from one of his son’s girlfriends.”

  “You think Frankie’s father killed Amelia?”

  “Not exactly, seeing as Frank Sr. is in a wheelchair, on oxygen, and probably not moving too fast.” Anthony gave a thin smile. “But he has the money to hire someone more capable.”

  “In that case, Frankie might actually be showing genuine sadness. Even if he wasn’t the brains behind it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I just can’t believe this is all happening over a cannoli recipe.”

  “People have killed for less.”

  I glanced down at the sheet again and studied the correspondence between Amelia and Derrick Rowland, her attorney. Long story short, Amelia was unhappy that the Linguine family was continuing to use her recipe.

  Amelia noted that she’d had an agreement with Frankie where the Linguine family would pay her a percentage of profits based on the amount her recipe sold. It must have been a sizeable amount because, according to the email, they’d stopped paying her while continuing to sell her desserts. Could her cannoli recipe have gotten her killed?

  I glanced at the clock on my phone. “I wonder if I have time to swing by Derrick’s office for a super-de-dupery quick chat?”

  Anthony watched me carefully. “You want me to pick up Bella.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I tucked my phone into my pocket and pretended not to notice. “That is so generous of you to offer. Thanks, Anthony.”

  “Will it matter if I tell you that I’m not a big fan of you getting involved with this?”

  “It’s just one teensy murder.”

  “I hadn’t realized the Linguine family would be involved.”

  “Well, murder is murder,” I said. “We knew there was a pretty good chance we weren’t dealing with nice guys going into this.”

  “True, but—”

  “I’m well on my way to solving it,” I said. “It’s either the crazy boyfriend, the odd best friend, or the psycho judge.”

  “Quite the cast.”

  “I love you.” I leaned in for a quick peck, but Anthony grabbed my hand as I spun away and yanked me back to him.

  “I won’t stop you from talking to Derrick,” Anthony said, “but I strongly advise you not to get involved with the Linguine lawyer.”

  “What?” I frowned. “Why would I talk to the Linguine lawyer?”

  Anthony just sighed. “Be careful. Whatever you do. I’ll watch Bella, but I’ve got that thing tonight, so if you could be back by eight...”

  “What exactly is that thing?” I asked. “You never did tell me. You just said it was work.”

  “It is work.” Anthony waved a hand. “Boring.”

  “Little Frankie Junior doesn’t seem to think you’re very boring.”

  “That’s good.” Anthony winked. “I hope you don’t think I’m boring?”

  “Oh, no. Definitely not boring. I’m the boring one out of the two of us.”

  “Sugar...” Anthony kissed my forehead. “You’re anything but boring.”

  I ditched Anthony with the check and made my way out to the minivan. The clock was ticking on my child-free minutes, and I had to make the most of any moment that Bella was otherwise occupied.

  As I plugged the coordinates for Derrick’s office into my phone and cruised across town, I let my mind wander away from the case and back to Anthony. We’d talked about how I was going to take the rest of the year off to spend my time with our precious baby girl while she was still so little—and also to avoid the tiny fact that my work was sometimes dangerous.

  Somehow, I couldn’t seem to stay away from cases—despite my best efforts. I just happened to fall right into them. The strangest part of all was that I didn’t exactly mind it. While I loved every minute of being home with Bella, there was something rewarding about my job.

  I liked helping people. I liked exercising my mind—even if it meant that my duties were to decipher truth from lies out of the mouths of some very dangerous people. I even liked running into the gas station to get a coffee without lugging a baby carrier once in a while. Maybe I wouldn’t look to close the doors of Lacey Luzzi Security Services just yet.

  Chapter 10

  When I arrived outside of Derrick’s office, I found an unused corner of the parking lot and took it. Then, I turned on my favorite podcast and pulled out my breast pump. Even murder didn’t stop Bella from being hungry. Plus, it basically counted as exercise. I hooked myself up to the stupid thing and waited exactly ten minutes before I called it a day and climbed out of the car.

  I took a moment to re-button the top snap of my jeans. Two lunches didn’t fit in one pair of jeans, even with all the nursing and pumping that took up eighty-four percent of my days. Then, I marched into the office and stopped before the receptionist’s desk.

  “Howdy,” I said. “I’m here to see Derrick, please?”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Um—”

  “Mr. Rowland has a busy day.” When I didn’t budge, the receptionist lowered her long lashes at me and chomped her gum. “A very, very busy day.”

  A burst of inspiration hit, and I smiled. “Tell him that Frankie Linguine wants to talk to him.”

  “Frankie Linguine?” She looked at me like I’d spoken Chinese. “Who’s that?”

  “Just tell him,” I said. “If he turns me away, then I’ll skedaddle—no questions asked.”

  With a smug smirk, the receptionist shrugged and dialed the phone on her desk. “Whatever.”

  While we both waited, I looked around the sparse office. The walls were a strange gray-blue that couldn’t ever be described as beautiful. The chairs were a slightly puke shade of green that were just on the safe side of offensive. A hefty yellow couch in one corner that looked like it belonged in the seventies provided the only pop of color.

  “Mr. Rowland will see you now.”

  I glanced around the lobby, hardly daring to believe my luck. “Me?”

  The receptionist scanned the lobby too. It was still empty.

  “Right, of course.” I shuffled toward the door that supposedly entered into the offices. “Where should I meet him?”

  Before the receptionist could answer, we were both interrupted by an angry voice coming from the hall. A minute later, a man appeared, red-faced and obviously fuming. It was pretty easy to guess he’d been the one yelling.

  “I had to set up an appointment to talk to Derrick three months ago,” he snapped to the receptionist. “And now he kicks me out early? I better not be paying for this, or I’ll have my lawyer—my new lawyer—calling him before he knows what hit him.”

  The receptionist stood, looking miffed at the accusation. “Mr. Peters, please. If you’d step up to the desk, I’ll get you rescheduled. Of course you won’t get a bill for the time that went unused, and I’m sure Mr. Rowland will waive any other fees...”

  I hung in the background as the receptionist calmed down the frustrated client. When she finally got Mr. Peters settled into a chair in the lobby, she looked over at me and jerked a thumb toward the back offices.

  “It’s the one with the name on the door!” She hissed. “You can see yourself in. And out.”

  I hightailed it to the back office, thinking the Linguine name must have spooked Derrick Rowland even more than I expected. I’d thought he might squeeze me in for five minutes between meetings. I hadn’t expected him to kick out a client for me. An irate client who, judging by the looks of his frown, wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

  The door with Derrick’s name plate on the outside stood partially open. I stood next to a copy machine and large Culligan water jug while I knocked and waited. And waited. And waited.

  I knocked again. There was a slight scuffle from the inside. Poking my head around the open door, I sucked in a breath when I caught sight
of a man’s tail end halfway out the window.

  “Derrick?” I called, rushing into the office. “What are you doing?”

  Derrick—or what I could see of him—had a thin build with skinny legs that were currently sticking directly in the air. His window was thrown open, and the top half of his body wasn’t visible. Presumably, it was hanging out the other side. Since he wasn’t moving anywhere, it wasn’t difficult to assume that he’d somehow gotten stuck.

  “Let me go!” he shouted into a shrub. “I don’t want anything to do with the Linguine family. I’m innocent. I wasn’t going to help her. Cripes.”

  “Help who? Amelia?”

  “Who else?”

  “Why don’t you let me pull you out of there so we can talk?”

  While I’d been speaking, I’d let myself cross the room. I rounded Derrick’s desk and deftly avoided his skinny pins as he kicked and struggled to get free. Popping my head out the window, I snapped my fingers until he looked up at me.

  “I’m not dangerous,” I said. “I’m not carrying a gun, and I don’t care about the Linguines. Well, I do care about the Linguines—but only because I think they might be involved in something ugly. I don’t work for them.”

  “Are you the cops?”

  “Better,” I said. “No badges involved.”

  Derrick Rowland appeared to be a thin, pasty-pale man with wispy blond hair. Except his pale face was currently a shade of uncomfortable red that was quickly approaching unhealthy purple.

  “You don’t look so good,” I said. “Are you sure I can’t give you a hand?”

  “It’s this stupid bush. And my belt. I think it’s hooked on something.”

  Sure enough, I found the place where his belt had gotten stuck on the ledge. The tall, shaggy bush on the exterior of the building hadn’t helped Derrick in the slightest either, though it had left several scratch marks down the sides of his face. I gave him a shove in the opposite direction of his caught belt, and he came free.

  Unfortunately, his weight was more on the outside than the inside, so he began to topple into the landscaping. He flailed, I grabbed an arm, and somehow, I managed to haul him inside. He collapsed to the floor in a heap.

  “Yikes,” I said, facing him. “You really aren’t a fan of the Linguines, huh?”

  Derrick wiped a leaf from his hair. “Nah,” he gasped. “I don’t care about the Linguines, but I’m not touching Britta Facelli with a ten-foot pole. Scratch that, with any pole.”

  “Britta Facelli?” I scrunched up my face. “The name sounds familiar, but I don’t know why I’d know her...”

  “The newspaper?” Derrick’s red face was rapidly fading to a very peculiar shade of white. “She’s only the biggest lawyer in town. Well, the biggest dirty lawyer, I should say. Represents mobsters, criminals, and the like.”

  “Oh, Britta,” I said with a thin smile. “Right.”

  I was pretty sure Carlos had invited her over to Christmas dinner several years ago, but maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I’d just seen her face in the paper.

  “What’s so scary about her?”

  “She could sell ice to an Eskimo,” he said. “She could sell water to a fish. She could get a murderer off on a technicality faster than you can blink. It’s a good thing they got Capone before she came on the scene, let’s put it that way.”

  “Is she that smart? Or does she have other... tactics helping her out?”

  “Let’s just say that when Amelia came to me asking to go after the Linguines, I took a trip to Mexico.”

  “Is that metaphor?”

  “No way.” Derrick pulled out his wallet, fished around for a minute, and eventually located some crumpled ticket stubs. “Just got back this morning. That’s why I freaked out when you came in here—I thought they were coming after me. Watching me. Knew the second my feet hit the mainland.”

  “You’ve been out of the country?”

  “Not only out of the country but off the grid.” Derrick pulled himself off the floor. He sighed, put his hands on his hips. He looked paler as the seconds went on. “There’s this spa in Mexico I go to—never mind the name—but it’s a no cell phone, no Wi-Fi sort of place. I mean, Britta could’ve found me if she really wanted, but I wasn’t going to make it easy on her. I took three trains and five taxis and checked in under a fake name.”

  “So, when Amelia came to you, you turned her away?”

  “What else could I do? I can’t sully my name in this industry. Law is the only thing I know. My practice is everything. If I went after the Linguine family, I’d be ruined.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “They have Britta Facelli on retainer. Keep up with me, here.”

  “But you’d just have been helping out Amelia.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Derrick said. “Taking on a case against Britta is like... dude. She’s ruined greater men than me over lesser things.”

  “How did Amelia find you? Did you have a connection, or did she look you up in the Yellow Pages?”

  “We have the internet now,” Derrick said, completely missing my sarcasm. “I’m sure she used the internet. Who uses phone books anymore?”

  “You didn’t know her in any way before she sent you an email?”

  “She sent an email, and when I ignored it, she came in through the front doors. I tried to shoo her out, but she was persistent. I guess she’d tried just about everyone else in town, and no one wanted to help her.”

  “You were her last resort?”

  “Ouch.”

  “I’m trying to get the facts straight.”

  “Why?” Derrick ran a hand through his hair, then over his face. He paused, as if something had dawned on him. “Why are you even here in the first place? If you’re not working for the Linguines, then you’re working against them—and I just told you I want nothing to do with them in any way.”

  “I’m a private investigator looking into Amelia’s death.”

  “Amelia’s what?” Derrick shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  I froze. “Oh, crap. You’ve been out of the country? Without internet?”

  “I just told you that.”

  “You haven’t heard the news.” I groaned. “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but Amelia is dead. I’m sorry.”

  “Amelia’s...” Derrick was almost yellow now, which on him looked to be close to the hyperventilation stage of panic. “Dead? Like, not alive?”

  “The one and only... dead.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. I’m looking into Amelia’s death.”

  “And you think the Linguine family is involved?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say—”

  “You don’t need to say. Your presence says it alone. Get out.”

  “But—”

  “Get out!”

  “Please, Amelia didn’t deserve to die. Help me out. Is there anything, anything at all that she told you that might point me in the direction of her killer?”

  “Why would you want to find her killer? She’s already dead. Obviously, whoever killed her doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty, and I’m sure they’ll do it again.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” My eyes flicked to Derrick’s desk as he sat heavily in his chair. He sunk forward, resting his head into his hands. Next to him was a photo of three people—Derrick, a woman, and a small child. “Your baby?”

  Derrick nodded without looking up. “Lucas. He’s almost one.”

  “I have a daughter just a few months younger,” I said. “I know the job I do is a dangerous one. I don’t want to be away from her, but I do want to help people. Amelia deserves justice. Please. You already turned her away once, and I can’t say I blame you. But don’t do it again.”

  “I can’t. Sorry.”

  “This won’t come back to you,” I said. “I have plenty of sources. Trust me. I can blame anything on my cousin.”

  Derrick gav
e me a confused frown but seemed intrigued. “I mean, I told her about Britta. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  “I’m assuming it’s not a secret that Britta works for the Linguine family? So how does that help me?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “The lawyer part isn’t the secret. Before she was a lawyer, Britta was a baker. In fact, she still owns a bakery up in Duluth. She doesn’t tell anyone about it because who would take a baker seriously in the courtroom? She might not have the same edge in trial if people were picturing her wearing a frilly apron and kneading dough.”

  “Why was that important? And how did you know?”

  “I’ve been around a long time,” he said. “I thought that maybe Britta would have a soft spot for a fellow baker. Especially because Amelia was reported to have the best chance of overthrowing The Sugarloaf for the first time in thirty-seven years during the bake-off. I read the paper—when I’m in the country.”

  I spotted his suitcase near the door. Despite Anthony’s warning to doubt every word out of everyone’s mouth, I found myself believing what Derrick said.

  “But what if it went wrong?” Derrick bit his lip looking worried all over again. “Did I kill her?”

  “I dunno, Derrick,” I said a little dryly. “Did you go to the bake-off qualifiers and put a knife into Amelia’s back? If not, then you didn’t kill her. If so, then I’m gonna need to call the police.”

  “But I sent Amelia to appeal to Britta’s human side. What if she’s not human?”

  “Not human? Did she go to Hogwarts?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure she’s human. She might be a Slytherin, but I really don’t think magic is real. Sadly.” I rested my hands on the desk. “Listen to yourself. You didn’t kill her. But you can help me find out who did and that is the best thing you can do for her.”

  “Maybe Britta got nervous. Maybe she knew that Amelia had a solid case against the Linguine family,” Derrick suggested. “It would kill Britta to lose in court. No pun intended.”

  “You’re suggesting Britta might have killed Amelia?”

  “I don’t know what she’s capable of,” Derrick said. “But I do know that she’s capable of a lot. Even if she didn’t do it... she’s intertwined with the Linguines. I’m sure she knows someone who would’ve done it for a box of hot pizza and a bottle of wine.”