A Dish Best Served Cold: An Italian Kitchen Mystery (Italian Kitchen Mystery, An) (12 page)

Learning about his work made it difficult to imagine him a murderer. If his goal had been to overcome his family’s criminal past, it appeared he’d achieved it. I stuffed the brochure into my purse and stood up, fully prepared to leave when his secretary came out from her office.

“He’s ready for you, Ms. Rienzi. I’ve scheduled a twenty-minute block—will that be sufficient?”

“More than sufficient, thank you,” I said, and followed her to Barone’s office, my stomach fluttering. This was a powerful man, and he would make a powerful enemy. Remembering my brother’s words, I decided to tread carefully.

“Victoria, how are you?” Richard Barone said, stepping out from behind his desk to take my hand. He gestured to his secretary. “I was pleasantly surprised when Debbie told me you had called.”

“May I get you something?” she asked before leaving. “Coffee or water?”

“No, I’m fine. Thank you.” I waited until the door closed to continue. “I won’t take much of your time, Richard. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Not at all,” he said. “And please sit, won’t you?”

I sat, glancing at the pictures on the wall behind Barone’s desk. In one, he was standing on a vast green lawn in front of a familiar white building, shaking hands with a slender, attractive man whose hair was graying at the edges. And who happened to be the leader of the free world. I swallowed nervously and asked an obvious question. “Uh, is that you with the president?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, affecting a modest tone. “I made a small contribution to his campaign and I was honored to be able to meet him.”

Small contribution, my eyeballs
. “Wow,” I said, and took my notebook and a pen from my purse.

Barone sat forward, his hands clasped in front of him, giving me his full attention. “Now, how can I help you? Something to do with your book, Debbie said.”

I sat up a little straighter in the plush office chair. “Well, as your secretary mentioned, I’m doing research for a historical novel that’s loosely based on my family history.”

“This is not one of your mysteries?”

“No, it’s a departure, one I’ve wanted to make for some time.” And that, at least, was the truth. “I’ve begun doing some research on an ancestry site, and found something very interesting—I think there may be a connection between our two families.”

“Is that so?” He still had a smile on his face, but did I imagine that it had tightened a bit?

“I’m fairly sure,” I said. “But before we go any further, I have to ask: Is Leo Barone an ancestor of yours?”

“Yes, I regret to say. He was my great-grandfather. Please understand that I have no illusions about who he was or how he made his money. And I’ve never hidden the connection.” He wasn’t smiling anymore, and I gathered this was a sore subject.

“I understand. Would you mind telling me a bit about him?”

He looked as though he
would
mind, but he nodded anyway. “Well, like other Italian immigrants who turned to crime, his family was desperately poor.” From that beginning, Richard Barone told the tale of a tough boy with a difficult life who ended up wealthy from a career of Atlantic City bootlegging and gambling operations. It sounded carefully rehearsed and well learned—a story he’d told many times before. And there wasn’t much in it I hadn’t already learned from the book and the Internet, but I couldn’t just plunge in with questions about Robert Riese. At least not yet.

“And that, Victoria,” Richard concluded, “is the story of my unfortunate relation. The best I can say of him is that he never killed anyone.”

“We all have those folks somewhere in our family trees, though, don’t we?” I said. I slipped my hand back into my purse and brought out the library book. “In fact, the man I’m researching—a man I think may be my great-uncle—was a pretty unsavory character himself.” I opened the book to the photo and turned it so he could see it. Showing this to Barone was risky, particularly if he connected Alfonso Petrocelli with Stinky Pete. But I had to see his reaction. “If you’ll look at the photo where I have a sticky note, and read the caption, please.”

Richard drew his dark brows together, his eyes flicking from the picture to the caption and then back again. He frowned more deeply and peered at the page. When he lifted his head, his expression was wary. “I recognize my great-grandfather, of course,” he said, “but none of the other men.” He tilted his head, his eyes watchful. “Should I?”

“Would you look again at the man in the fedora?”

“Is he the bad apple in your family tree?” he asked. He glanced back down at the page and then back at me. “I suppose he could be related to your father or brother. There’s a surface resemblance.”

I nodded. “I think he’s the man our family knew as Roberto Rienzi. We’d always believed he died back in Naples. But I’ve found evidence of someone using an Anglicized version of the name—a Robert Riese, spelled R-I-E-S-E, who closely fits the profile of my great-uncle.”

He grew quiet and still, so much so that I could hear the ticking of the expensive clock on his desk. “Robert Riese, you say?” he asked, his tone carefully neutral.

“Yes, do you recognize the name?” I held my pen poised over the notebook, ready to catch anything Barone might have been willing to share.

He closed the book and pushed it back across the desk. “No, I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

But I was willing to bet every bottle of wine in my father’s cellar that he did.

“S
o that’s all he said?” Sofia, who’d just polished off a dinner of local bay scallops, garlic mashed potatoes, and a pile of steamed vegetables, eyed my plate, more interested in my dinner than in my interview with Barone. “Do you plan to eat those carrots?”

“
Yes
to the first question and
no
to the second. Here.” I pushed my plate toward her and watched her dig in. “Someone has gotten her appetite back.” We were at the Shell Café, a Casa Lido competitor. But they had a great chef and plenty of electricity.

She nodded, her mouth full, and held up a finger while she chewed and swallowed (in a ladylike way, of course). “Once that morning sickness stopped, I just wanted to eat everything in sight.” She winked. “But enough about me. Finish telling me about Barone.”

“There’s not much more to tell. Like I said, he gave me the party line about his great-grandfather, talked about living down his family’s past, stressed the fact that Leo hadn’t killed anyone, and then denied knowing the name Robert Riese. But he got very, very quiet after I asked him. Like his wheels were turning. I think I caught him off guard—whatever he thought I was going to ask, that wasn’t it.”

“Vic, you showed him the picture, right? Do you think he might have connected Alfonso with Pete?”

“I honestly don’t know. If he did, he’s one cool customer.”

“But if he’s the one who gave Pete that wine—”

“Assuming Pete didn’t steal it,” I interrupted. “The restaurant was open, after all.”

“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t believe that for a minute. But you know what I’m getting at. If Barone is our guy, seeing the name Petrocelli would have set off alarms in his head.”

I nodded. “True. For some reason, he might have been prepared for that, though. But I still say he wasn’t prepared for Riese. By the way, have you found anything else out about our mysterious great-uncle?”

She finished the rest of my carrots and took a roll from the bread basket. “Yes and no. I dug up the 1950 census for Atlantic City; Pete and Alfonso were at a different address by that time, still living together, but Riese wasn’t with them.” She split open a roll and slathered on some butter. “You know, I was thinking about Roberto and the name change.
Reese
is a common name, but not with the I-E spelling. I think it’s possible he might have used the double-E version or maybe switched between the two, especially if he wanted to blend into the background. What do you think?”

“Hmm. You might be onto something there, Sofe. This is a guy who didn’t want to be found—which of course makes our job harder. There had to be a ton of Reeses in Atlantic City. He might have changed his first name, too, for that matter.”

“Here’s what I think,” she said, gesturing with her butter knife. “There were probably any number of guys named Reese in that city. But there was only one Leo Barone. If Riese or Reese is in fact the guy in the picture, and if he
is
Zio Roberto, he was connected to Barone in some way. That’s the way to go—we dig up everything we can on Barone and hope it leads to your missing uncle.”

“You’re right, but there’s only so far we can go on the Internet. I think we’re looking at hours in a library with microfiche machines or whatever they use to scan and preserve old documents these days. Maybe Gale Spaulding can help us.”

She brushed the bread crumbs from her fingers and grinned. “Maybe. But I think we need a trip to AC. We need to go down there for our research.”

“For research or to play the slots?”

She grinned. “A little of both.”

“Well,” I said, “the restaurant’s closed until the power comes back.” I held out my hand to her. “Road trip?”

She shook it heartily. “Road trip it is, SIL.”

“By the way,” I said, “in case you thought my visit to Barone was the most interesting part of my day, wait till you hear about the rest of it. My love life is growing ever more complicated.”

She held up her hand. “Save it. It’ll give us something to talk about on the ride.”

*   *   *

The next day was rainy, and we made our way slowly down Garden State Parkway South. Sofia was driving a sedate fifty-five miles an hour; the red folder sat on the seat between us. I had filled her in on both my conversations of the day before, and she looked thoughtful as she drove.

“You know,” she said, “regarding Cal—on the one hand, you don’t want to get involved with a guy who seems less than honest. But on the other, isn’t he entitled to some privacy?”

“I know,” I said. “I feel the same way. But clearly, the guy’s got some baggage, and for all I know there’s a kid hidden in one of those suitcases. It makes me hesitant to get more involved with him.”

She sent me a knowing look. “Sweetheart, you’re hesitant anyway. You’re so cautious there should be an amber light blinking over your head at all times.”

“Thanks for that. Though it’s true, I guess.” I made a face as I remembered Cal calling me an “old-fashioned girl,” and wondered if that was merely code for
boring
.

“Actually,” Sofia said, “I’m more interested in your little chat with Lacey. You knew she’d had a broken engagement, yes?”

“I did. But I jumped to the conclusion that she was the one who’d had her heart broken.”

“It makes sense you would think that, though, right? I mean, that’s what happened to you.”

“Again, thank you, Sofia, for reminding me that Tim dumped me for somebody else eight years ago.”

She raised an eyebrow in my direction, but managed to keep her eyes on the road. “Yeah, and look how well that turned out for him. That girl was one big bucket of crazy.”

“Small consolation,” I said, and we were both quiet for a few minutes.

“Hey, Vic?” Sofia asked, breaking the silence. “Have you thought enough about your feelings for Tim? I mean, taken a really good look at them, without flinching—you know what I mean, right?”

I nodded. “I know what you mean. When Lacey told me she was having her doubts about Tim, my heart was beating like mad. I’m not sure I even understand the reaction.”

“Is that so?”

“Honestly, I really don’t. But I will say that watching him with Lacey makes me feel old and wallflowerish. Kind of like Anne Eliot when Captain Wentworth is cavorting with the Musgrove sisters.”

Sofia frowned. “Who’s Anne Eliot?”

“Geez, Sofe, what good are you if you don’t even get my literary allusions? I’m talking about
Persuasion
. You know, by Jane Austen? Only the second-best novel ever written. My company is wasted on you.”

“Tell ya what,” she said. “You read up on some Nora Roberts and we’ll talk. In the meantime, the expressway comes up in a couple of miles. We’ll be in AC before you know it.”

Once inside the library, my research partner and I found side-by-side study carrels and got to work. By the end of an hour, Sofia and I had become experts on the topic of Leo Barone. From his beginnings as a young bootlegger to his “retirement” in the late 1950s, Barone’s life was well documented. His inner circle included Alfonso Petrocelli and two other younger men: Louis “Lou Lou” Bellafante and Gerardo Domenica, aka Gerry Sunday. Though their specialty was illegal gambling, they also dabbled in prostitution and drug trafficking. Apparently, Barone and his cronies prided themselves on having a “bloodless” organization, which seemed to be borne out by Richard’s assertion that his great-grandfather hadn’t killed anyone.
That we know of,
I thought.

As the rain pattered against the library windows, we worked in silence, with me taking notes on paper while my sister-in-law typed into her phone. I was startled when she poked her head around her study carrel.

“Vic,” she whispered, her voice urgent. “You need to look at this.” She handed me an old-fashioned photostat of a newspaper article dated 1949. It featured a picture of a man, his face partially hidden by his hat, being led away from a courthouse in handcuffs. Next to that was his mug shot. I stared at it and seemed to be looking into the eyes of my father and brother. But the man’s hairline had receded, and there were now lines and shadows on his face that spoke of a hard life. Gone was the cocky grin, and his glittery gaze was pained and unfocused.

“Look at his eyes,” I said in a low voice. “Drugs, I think. Or possibly alcohol. But whatever it is, he looks like he’s in withdrawal from it.” I felt a pang of pity as I stared into the face of the man who might well be my grandfather’s lost brother.
What happened to you, Roberto?

“Read the article,” Sofia urged, just as though she had heard my unspoken question.

Trenton, November 12, 1949

Robert Reese, aka Robert Riese, of Atlantic City was convicted of second-degree murder today in the death of Nino Mancini, known racketeer and lieutenant in the Caprio crime family. Mancini was found in his car in the Pine Barrens, dead of gunshot wounds. Reese was remanded to Trenton State Prison, where he awaits sentencing.

I raised my head slowly, meeting Sofia’s eyes, nearly as wide as my own.

“Do you get it now?” she asked. “That’s why Robert Riese wasn’t living with Alfonso and Pete in 1950. He already had another address—a great big stone house in Trenton.”