The Family Affair: A Made in Savannah Cozy Mystery (Made in Savannah Cozy Mysteries Series Book 9) by Hope Callaghan (top 10 ebook reader TXT) 📗

“Of course. How about if I whip up one of your favorite Italian dinners?”

“Spaghetti and meatballs,” Vinnie guessed.

“Yes. I have some errands to take care of at six. In the meantime, I’ll whip up some spaghetti and meatballs and have them ready later this evening.”

“That sounds good, Ma.”

Brittney emerged from the apartment. “I thought I heard voices. How do you like my new shoes?” She squeezed past her husband and wobbled into the hall.  “These are my new favorite pair. They’re Christian Louboutin.”

She tilted her foot and modeled the gray-green mini spike stiletto heels.

“Those are nice,” Carlita said. “You wouldn’t catch me wearing them. I would break my neck.”

“They look expensive. How much for this pair Brit?” Vinnie waved his hand, not giving his wife a chance to answer. “Never mind. I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

Brittney blew Vinnie a kiss and tottered back inside the apartment.

“I’ll let you go, son. What do you say we have dinner around seven-thirty at my place? It will give Tony a few minutes to clean up after he closes the store.”

“Sounds good, Ma.”

With dinner plans in place, Carlita returned to the apartment. Before she stepped inside, she glanced at Shelby’s apartment door.  She was on the fence about confessing to the young woman that she, along with Mercedes and Elvira, had snooped.

Surely, Shelby was curious to know how Carlita and Mercedes knew about Quinton. She quickly decided it was best to let it go for now.

Carlita pulled the ground beef from the fridge to start making the meatballs. After mixing the ingredients and forming the balls, she stacked them inside a bowl, covered it with plastic and placed it in the fridge.

Mercedes hurried into the kitchen. “I did a little digging around on Emmett Pridgen, the business development guy Vinnie paid a visit to earlier. The guy is shadier than a palm tree.”

“Really?” Carlita hung her apron on the hook near the pantry. “Shady as in how?”

“Maybe not shady, but definitely suspicious.  He’s only been a member of the city council for about a year. In that short amount of time, he’s spearheaded several special interest projects including the downtown warehouse project, which tentatively includes a casino gambling venue.”

“Gambling isn’t legal in Georgia,” Carlita said.

“Ah, and that is where you’re wrong. There’s a gambling boat in South Georgia. I’m not sure of the exact location. The gambling boat travels out far enough to hit international waters and then the passengers are allowed to gamble.”

“So this Emmett Pridgen is trying to open a gambling boat in Savannah. It doesn’t make him a criminal.”

“Pridgen was investigated for allegedly accepting kickbacks in Atlanta for some business dealings. The case was headed to trial until the lead investigator, a man by the name of Mason, mysteriously vanished and the case was dropped.”

“Pridgen killed him?” Carlita asked.

“That’s my theory, but it’s hard to prosecute when there’s no body.”

“The investigator, Mason, never surfaced?”

“Nope.” Mercedes shook her head. “Dead or alive.”

“So you think this city official, Pridgen, may be responsible for Robert Towns’ death?” Carlita asked.

“It makes sense. I’m not ruling out anyone, including Quinton Towns.”

“Don’t forget Vito Castellini and his ‘associates.’ I don’t understand how Robert was involved and there’s still the mystery of the backpack and cash. I sure wish we could figure out who owns the Harner Street property.”

“Well, that’s the other thing I found out. We know it’s owned by East Coast Ventures. Annie told us that. What we need now are the partners’ names. If we can figure out who owns the property, I think we’ll have another piece of the puzzle.”

“How do we do that?” Carlita asked.

“Skip trace.” Mercedes explained skip tracing was an online service used to track down fugitives or people wanted by the law. “You can also use it to find out who owns specific property.”

“We could ask Elvira.”

“I already thought about that. If Elvira operated a skip tracer service, she would’ve offered it to us by now, for a fee, of course.” Mercedes tapped her chin. “I was thinking we could ask Annie. She might know someone who has a skip tracing service, especially since she works in the real estate business.”

“I saw Annie’s car in front of her office earlier. Why don’t we run over there to see if she can help?”

“Let’s do it.” Mercedes ran to her room to grab her cell phone and met her mother in the hall. “I feel good about this. I think we’re about to crack this case wide open.”

Carlita cast a glance at Shelby’s apartment door.  “Hopefully, it leads us to someone other than Shelby. C’mon Rambo.”

“Right?” Mercedes bounded down the steps and Carlita and Rambo followed behind.

“Before we do that, let’s see if Tony was able to crack the code on the laptop.” Carlita stepped into the back of the pawnshop. The store was empty and she spotted her son sitting at the desk, staring at a computer screen.

“Is this the computer we found?” Carlita said in her son’s ear.

Tony jumped. “You scared me half to death.”

“Sorry, son. Were you able to unlock the laptop?”

“No. I tried a hundred different combinations. So far nothing is working.”

“Annie is a whiz with technical stuff. We could ask her to try to unlock the computer.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Tony said. “It’s hard for me to focus on it in between helping customers.”

A customer entered the store. “See?” Tony shut the laptop and handed it to his mother.

“Thanks for trying, son.”

Rambo led them out of the pawnshop and onto the sidewalk out front.

A gentle breeze blew around the side of the building and Carlita gazed up at the clear blue skies. “What a beautiful day.”

“Yes, it is,” Mercedes agreed. “It would be a perfect