Amaretto Amber (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 3) (24 page)

The horror of what had happened hit me so hard that I fell backwards into the chair. Figuring that I had seconds to live, I knew what I had to do. "Mom, run! Dr. Lessler's the real killer!"

But even as I said those things, I knew that she wouldn't listen. When you threatened my mother's kids, she was half mamma bear and half mafia boss.

She rushed into the room and rose to her full five feet four inches with her claws and fangs bared. "What's happening?" she rasped like Vito Corleone. "What have you done to my daughter?"

Dr. Lessler turned to face her, and I cold-cocked him with the hanging light.

We sunk to the floor.

Nonna stormed the examining room holding her handbag like a club. "I can-a take-a him, Brenda!"

From a supine position, I watched as she pounded Dr. Lessler with her purse while my mom punched a number into her cell. Despite the chaos, I looked up at the dolphin poster and felt at peace.

The ketamine was taking effect.

My mother leaned over me and pressed the phone to her ear. "I told you that you should be more careful when choosing a doctor, Francesca!"

Then my appointment abruptly ended.

"Get the hell up," a male voice demanded.

In my semi-conscious state, I realized I wasn't dead, but I knew Dr. Lessler wasn't done with me yet.

The peaceful feeling was replaced with primal fear as I remembered my mom and nonna coming to my rescue.
What had he done to them?

I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn't.
Did he inject me with a paralytic drug?

Two powerful hands gripped me by the biceps and shook me.

Summoning my strength, I forced my eyes open. Then I let out a hair-raising scream.

Carnie was standing over me in the Private Chicks lobby, her face practically purple with rage. And in her black strapless dress and spiky white wig, she was the spitting image of Ursula, the half-human, half-octopus villainess from
The Little Mermaid
.

"The police just held another press conference," she huffed with her hands on her hips. "It seems that my amber pendant has been found."

High heels came clattering down the hallway from Veronica's office.

"Are you okay, Franki?" Veronica asked as she and Glenda rushed to my side on the lobby couch.

"Divine." I pushed myself into a sitting position. "But get Ursula off my back, will you?"

Carnie's blue lids lowered and her red mouth frowned. "You'd best be talking about Ursula Andress, or you'll wish you were back in that dentist's chair."

Glenda swallowed a sip of the celebratory
sleuthing
champagne she'd been drinking since Dr. Lessler's arrest the day before. "What's the matter, Miss Carnie?"

She pointed a red-lacquered fingernail at me. "Your partner in cracking crime here gave my family heirloom to Detective Sullivan."

"I didn't
give
it to him," I protested. "He figured out that I knew where the pendant was at Amber's funeral."

Carnie raised a McDonald's Golden Arch-shaped brow. "Then how the hell did he end up with it?"

I massaged my temples in preparation for the headache she was about to give me. "When he came to interview me in the ER yesterday, I cut a deal to let him find it in exchange for dropping the battery charges against Bradley."

Carnie gasped. "I paid you to find the amber for
me
!"

"And I did!" I threw up my arms in an I-give gesture. "It's not my fault that it's evidence in the case against Dr. Lessler."

Veronica smoothed her skirt and took a seat beside me. "Franki was legally bound to inform the police about the pendant, Carnie. So it's nice that something good came of it, don't you think?"

In reply, she looked at Veronica like she was considering biting her with her venomous beak.

"There, there," Glenda said, patting one of Carnie's massive shoulders, "you'll get it back after the trial."

"But that could take years!" Carnie cried as she collapsed onto the opposing couch.

I wanted to tell her not to get her padded panties in a knot, but I held my tongue. After narrowly escaping the clutches of one madman, I wasn't willing to get caught in the tentacles of another.

Glenda sat next to Carnie and kicked up her heels. "Where was the pendant, Miss Franki?"

As I got ready to relive the events of the past twenty-four hours, I pulled a cushion into my lap for comfort. "In a matryoshka doll on a shelf in Maybe's living room."

Carnie, who'd turned her head away to sulk, stole a glance in my direction. "How did you know it was in a nesting doll? Did it have something to do with that nasty Nadezhda?"

I smirked as I shook my head. "It was partly because of Glenda and partly because of the nonne. When we were at the St. Joseph's Day altar, the nonne covered her up like the Virgin Mary. Then when my nonna was shooting the lemons at me, a statuette of the Virgin Mary broke in half, and it reminded me of the nesting doll because it was hollow inside and because the doll depicted a stripper. Since Curaçao was a stripper and the amber was Russian, I just knew that was where she'd hidden it."

Glenda winked. "Glad to know my body could be of service, sugar."

I took a deep breath as I prepared to say something that I never dreamed would pass my lips. "Your near nudity was a huge help. Thank you."

She raised her flute in a salute. "Speaking of naughty matryoshkas, what's going to happen to Nadezhda?"

"At the initial press conference yesterday, the police said others would be indicted." Carnie fluffed her odd updo. "You know that Russki's one of them."

Veronica cleared her throat. "I'm sure they'll charge Nadezhda and Eugene both if they can prove they conspired to steal the necklace."

The creases in Glenda's brow deepened. "And Miss Eve?"

"She confessed to withholding evidence, so she'll face prosecution." Veronica looked down at her lap and shook her head. "If she'd told the police that she'd seen Curaçao at the crime scene, they would've taken Curaçao into custody—and she might still be alive today."

Regardless of what she'd done, I felt bad for Eve. In trying to protect Curaçao, she'd more than likely contributed to her demise. And I knew that was the last thing she would have ever wanted to do.

Carnie shifted and crossed her ankle over her knee, despite her dress. "What I don't understand is why that dentist knocked you out instead of killing you."

I shot her a long look—making sure to avoid the area below her torso. "According to Detective Sullivan's theory about what happened, Dr. Lessler needed to make it look like I'd died under anesthesia."

My story stopped as I made the sign of the
scongiuri
. Given everything I'd been through, I wasn't completely cured of my curse conviction yet.

"So he gave me ketamine, which is what dentists usually use for oral surgery, but just enough to knock me out for fifteen minutes or so. In that time he could've hooked me up to an IV to make it look like the drug had been administered normally and then cut off my air supply." I shuddered at the thought—and at the fact that I still had to get my permanent crown done.

"What a sick, twisted man," Glenda said, staring at her glass.

"I'll say," I muttered. "But then, he's a dentist."

The office phone began to ring.

"That's probably my mom calling to tell me they're leaving." I rose to my feet, and the room began to spin. "Whoa!"

Veronica stood up and placed her hand on my back. "I wish you would've taken the day off."

"You know I couldn't do that." I sunk back into the couch. "My mom and nonna said they were going to stay until they were sure I was all right. And after
getting
to share my bed with my nonna last night," I grumbled, "I'm more then ready for them to go."

"You owe your life to your nonna, Franki," Veronica chided as she walked to the reception desk. "If she hadn't insisted that your mother bring her to that office…"

I grimaced. The fact that my nonna's meddling had not only helped me find the amber but had also saved my life was a particularly bitter pill to swallow—and one that would keep coming up over and over again, both literally and figuratively.

When Veronica reached for the phone, it stopped ringing. She brought the receiver to the couch and placed it on the coffee table.

Glenda drained her glass. "Why
did
your nonna want to stop by Dr. Lessler's, sugar?"

"She never told me." I chewed the inside of my cheek. "But if I had to guess, it was to try to marry me off to the man."

The phone started ringing again.

"I'll get it." I grabbed the receiver. "Private Chi—"

"Why haven't you been answering your phone?" Ruth growled.

I squeezed the couch cushion. "Well, apart from the fact that it was crushed by a homicidal dentist, I've been kind of busy fighting for my life. Maybe you saw something about it on TV last night?"

"If it's not on
Nancy Grace
, I don't know about it."

That was worrisome news.

"Now, as much as I'd love to sit here and chit chat about the ups and downs of your day," Ruth snarked, "I have work to do. This is a courtesy call to let you know that Jeff Payne just resigned from Ponchartrain Bank thanks to your sweet grandmother."

As shocked as I was to hear that Jeff had resigned, I was even more astonished that my nonna had anything to do with it—and that she was "sweet." "Are you sure it was
my
grandmother?"

"Yes, ma'am," she crowed as she popped what sounded like a cork from a bottle. "About fifteen minutes ago, she burst into the board meeting with your mother. I didn't catch everything she said because she speaks like a female Father Guido Sarducci."

That was
Nonna
, all right.

"But I did hear her likening Jeff to a
mafioso
." She took a slurp of something. "Then she started passing out the compromising pictures."

"Hang on." I shot forward in my seat. "My nonna had compromising pictures? Of Jeff?"

Veronica and I exchanged a freaked out look.

"Did. She. Ever," Ruth syllabified. "She said she'd gotten them from 'the Madonna,' but I'll tell you what—the Virgin Mary don't know nothin' about the kinds of things going on in these pictures, even if she is looking down from heaven."

"What are you talking about?" I wheezed as the air left my lungs. "What was in the pictures?"

Veronica put her ear to the receiver, and I bowed my head to listen.

"Well, he was drunker than Cooter Brown on the 4
th
of July, but that ain't no big whoopty doo to a bunch of boozehound bankers," she said in a teetotaler tone. "What got them was that he was all tarted up in a stripper costume, performing for a gaggle of drag queens."

My head shot up, and I glanced from Glenda to Carnie—both of whom averted their eyes.

"And he was at a real swingin' cathouse, too," she said with relish, "because some of the pictures were taken in an all-pink room with a loveseat, others were in an all-red room with a small stage, and there was even one in an all-white room with a giant champagne glass."

My eyes zeroed in on Glenda.

Her lips spread into a slow smile. "Men find it hard to resist a free coupon for the VIP room, sugar."

"Actually, Ruth…" I paused and broke into a grin. "I'm friends with a Virgin Mary who knows all about those sorts of things—because she's anything but a saint."

*   *   *

As I slowed the Mustang to a stop in front of my apartment, I eyed my Mom's Ford Taurus. For the first time in days, the
Psycho
soundtrack was gone. It had been replaced with "When the Saint's Go Marching In"—the Louis Armstrong version. And when I got out of the car and headed up the driveway, I was mentally high-stepping and twirling a baton as I led the brass band playing in my head.

Although I had a newfound appreciation and respect for my mother and nonna after they'd defended me from the deranged dentist, and I loved them more than words could express—English, Italian, or Sicilian—I was oh-so ready to see them go. Now that the case was over, I needed some rest and relaxation before getting back to the grind. And I wasn't going to get any of that by sleeping in my bedtub.

I also needed some space to work out what had happened between Bradley and me. I'd planned to call him if he hadn't contacted me by Tuesday. But now that the day had arrived, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to talk to him. I understood that he'd been under attack at work, not to mention under orders to lay low, but I was hurt that he hadn't contacted me after I'd nearly been killed. Surely he'd seen the news, unlike Ruth?

When I reached my front stoop, and the door opened.

"What are you doing home, Francesca?" my mother asked, swinging her purse onto her shoulder as she exited. "Aren't you feeling well?"

"I'm fine, Mom." I wrapped my arms around her and considered asking her about what had happened at the bank, but I decided to leave it alone. After all, everything had ended as it should. "I just wanted to come and say good-bye."

Her face was flushed as she reached up and brushed a strand of hair from my face. "Well, aren't you sweet."

My nonna appeared in the threshold with her big, black weapon on her arm. "
Bella mia!
"

"
Ciao,
Nonna." I hugged her hard, breathing in her garlicky aroma and wondering for the nth time what made her purse so heavy. I could've asked, but I decided to let that go too. Some things were better left a mystery.

"I'm-a glad you're here," Nonna said while we walked arm-in-arm to the car. "There's-a something I forgot-a to tell you.
Un piccolo dettaglio
."

I opened her passenger door while my mother climbed into the driver's seat. "Is this 'small detail' what you came to Dr. Lessler's office yesterday to talk to me about?"

"Don't even speak-a his name,
quel criminale
." She waved her hand as though brushing away the doctor's memory and got into the car. "It's about-a the lemon." Her eyes darted to my front door. "And you need-a to know it-a now."