Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set by Nanci Rathbun (surface ebook reader TXT) 📗

and lowdown and immoral, but if I had to report everyone I knew who cheated, the streets would be pretty empty.” I gently set my cup down on the table, pushed back my chair and stood up. I knew I didn’t hold the advantage, five-three to his six feet, dressed in slippers and robe, with my hair in its wild bed-head mode, while he wore a navy blue suit and his dark hair was perfectly combed and parted.

Nevertheless, I stuck out my chin and took a step toward him. He backed up. I graciously extended my hand toward the foyer. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I have business to attend to. You may direct any further inquiries to Bart Matthews.”

“That scum,” Wukowski muttered under his breath.

Iggy grabbed his arm and pulled him to the door. “Ange, a woman is dead. We need to find out who did it.”

“How’d she die, Iggy?” I asked.

He hesitated. “The coroner will have to decide. There was a gunshot to the chest, and a lot of cuts to the face and hands. It wasn’t pretty.”

After they left, I sank down on the couch and stared out at the panoramic view of Lake Michigan. Light was just breaking over the horizon. A new day, but not for Elisa Morano. I slowly recited the prayer for the dead that I learned as a child:

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Considering her lifestyle, I wasn’t sure that Elisa was one of the faithful, but I figured there was no harm in asking.

Chapter 3

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

Oscar Wilde

Bart called on the dot of ten o’clock. “Angie, you up?” he asked.

“Yes, Bart, I’m up.” My voice was edgy. I don’t do well without my usual seven hours of sleep. “What’s the story?”

“You can see Tony at one o’clock, at the county jail. You’re listed as on my staff.”

I heard the intake of yet another of Bart’s cigarettes. “Bart, those things will kill you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before. Read my bumper sticker—‘Eat right, exercise, live healthy, die anyway.’ I figure I might as well die from something I enjoy.”

No sense arguing. My Aunt Teresa would say, “Save your breath to cool your soup.” Switching gears, I took out a legal pad and started to make notes. “Did they charge him yet?”

“Nah, the DA is tap-dancing around it for the moment. It’s all circumstantial.”

“Tony still claims he’s innocent, right?”

“Right.” He hesitated. “The thing is, I believe him, Angie. And you know I’m no sucker for a story.”

That made me pause. Bart had probably heard every low-life excuse there was, every alibi, every outright lie. I’ve seen him break a guy’s story with just a raised eyebrow and a long silence. If he believed Tony, it carried weight with me. “What line do you want me to follow, Bart?”

“If Tony didn’t do it, someone else did, right? She didn’t shoot herself. Even disregarding the cuts, there was no gun at the scene. We need to find some other plausible suspect. We don’t need to prove anything, but we need to cast doubt on the Tony angle. Dig into her past and see who might have had a beef with her. Let’s sling a little mud.”

He was right, in a crude way. I’m not saying Elisa deserved to be murdered, because I don’t think anyone has the right to make that decision for another person. But she wasn’t an innocent bystander who was gunned down on the street; she was a kept woman who was murdered in her own apartment. Somebody hated her pretty badly, or was so afraid of her that murder seemed the only way out. Either way, it didn’t look like Elisa’s reputation would be lily-white when we were done.

We ended the conversation with Bart promising to fax the police report to me. I dressed and headed for the office.

Susan was already hard at work when I got in. Looking up from her computer monitor, she raised an eyebrow and glanced at the clock. I’m generally in the office by eight, with a cup of Starbucks in hand, ready to lay out the day’s work. “Bad night,” I responded to her unspoken question.

“You and Kevin finally made it?” She grinned.

“No. But I did have three men vying for my attention at four this morning.” I slipped behind my desk, uncapped the coffee and poured it into a ceramic mug. I hate drinking from Styrofoam or cardboard.

Susan lifted her ever-full teacup in a toast. “Way to go, girl.”

I told her the real story, leaving out Tony’s name. She just shook her head in wonderment as the details unfolded.

When her phone rang, I turned to my mail. The business side of my profession is not one that I can afford to ignore. Too many independents fold because they don’t get their bills out on time. Most of it was junk mail, which I shredded anyway. I don’t put any paper in the garbage, and I contract with a company that hauls my bags of shreds away and burns them. Even landfills are not secure. The city doesn’t just roll the garbage truck in and randomly dump it. They have a systematic plan for what garbage goes where, based on the day, and a committed snoop with enough hands to help can usually find something that she knows was discarded on a particular day.

There was one envelope that I dreaded opening. The return address read “Marcy Wagner.” Marcy hired me four years ago. Fifty-three months, to be exact. Every single month, I get a check in a letter from Marcy, asking if there’s any news on her deadbeat husband, Hank. When he first ran off and left her high