The Mint Julep Murders Read online

  Frankie’s shoe squeaked against the industrial floor as he made a hard stop and a turn. “We’re here for Scalieri. Just Scalieri. Don’t borrow trouble,” he warned.

  “I’d like to see what will be behind us,” I said. The gangster had to respect that. Either way, I eased the door open, keeping hold of the handle in case I needed to close it really fast. A grate over the window cast a gray shadow over the small cell of a room. A rusted bed frame clung to one wall, opposite a stained sink and toilet. I saw no one. Then I felt the scratches vibrate against the door and heard a faint voice whisper.

  Let me out.

  I took a hard step back. “You’re out,” I said to it. I mean him. Or her.

  Let me out.

  “There’s nothing keeping you here,” I insisted, hoping I was telling the truth.

  Let me… The whisper faded away.

  I smelled Frankie’s cigarette before I saw him. “It can’t hear you,” he said. “That kind of ghost fades in and out. Forever. It’s trapped in a loop. There’s nothing you can do.”

  It pained me to think that.

  “We gotta focus on what we came here to do,” Frankie reminded me.

  We eased past the abandoned wheelchair, and a pair of heavily armed guards shimmered into existence as we neared room 138. We showed them our badges. The guard to the right nodded and pulled out a massive key ring, while the one to the left looked ready to gun down anything that moved. “Only you two with the visitor badges.”

  I relayed his words to Ellis, who nodded. “I’m familiar with police procedure,” he said, planting his back against the age-worn wall, keeping an eye on the wheelchair.

  “You have five minutes,” the first guard said.

  I hoped it would be enough. Then I saw Scalieri and decided I didn’t want to be there at all.

  He sat at a desk by the window, in gray hospital scrubs, resembling a physician more than an inmate. His mouth quirked, amplifying the puckered scar that ran from the black patch shielding his right eye down his cheek. His good eye sized us up, cold and calculating.

  “Hello, Verity,” he said, like a spider luring me into the web, “I’ve been expecting you.”

  3

  “I knew you’d come.”

  Scalieri cracked his knuckles and treated me to a self-satisfied leer that made me want to put on a sweater, and a jacket. Perhaps a muumuu.

  His cell was small and bare, with only two personal effects. A battered hat hung from a hook in the corner, and a framed photo perched on a rusting shelf near the bed. The matronly woman in the photo stared straight forward, unsmiling.

  “Nice digs,” Frankie said, not quite able to hide his smirk when he noticed Scalieri’s leg shackled to the desk.

  But Scalieri never took his attention off me. “I like Verity’s place better,” he said like a lover.

  His scar crinkled as he treated me to a predatory smile. I tried to ignore the way his overt gaze traveled over my body. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much his invasive stare felt like an intimate touch, just as it had when I met him on the front steps of my house.

  This was where he belonged, shackled to a table. At least justice had been served in that regard.

  Frowning, the guard closed the ghostly door. The lock turned with a heavy click.

  “So what do you want?” Frankie asked, strolling toward his old rival.

  “So many things,” Scalieri drawled, blatantly checking out my breasts.

  Frankie stepped between us. “Cut to the chase or I’m taking her out of here.”

  Hardly. I suspected Scalieri didn’t want me as much as he wanted to intimidate me. Besides, we’d come this far, and we would see this through.

  Scalieri chuckled as he sized Frankie up. “Brave words, Winkelmann. Remember,” he added, the warning in his voice unmistakable, “I have something you want. Desperately.”

  Frankie took a long drag of his cigarette. “If I’ve ever been desperate, it hasn’t been because of you.”

  Scalieri barked out a laugh. “Would have helped us if you’d been this calm on the Spitniki job.”

  “I should have dropped you in the river when we got rid of Johnny Bones,” Frankie said, blowing smoke out of his nose. And at that moment, I recognized him for the cold, hard criminal he’d been. I’d never directly asked my housemate whether the kills he’d racked up in his gangster years had been in cold blood or hot anger. I didn’t want to know the answer.

  Scalieri held himself perfectly still and watched Frankie. “It’s amazing. If you’d think about it, you’d know who pulled the trigger on you. You just don’t want to admit it.”

  Frankie’s lip curled. He drew his revolver on the other man and took one step forward, two, three… “I. Didn’t.” He pressed his gun against the other man’s forehead. “See.”

  Scalieri grinned. “Now who’s the crazy one?”

  “Lower the gun, Frank,” I said. “This isn’t helping either one of you.” Their verbal sparring might be the gangster version of a how-do-you-do, but Frankie couldn’t afford to lose his cool. Bullets wouldn’t solve a thing. A gunshot to the head would just knock Scalieri out, and then we’d be here all night.

  “He’s toying with you,” I said. Frankie was extremely sensitive about the events surrounding his death, and apparently Scalieri knew exactly how to play on those nerves.

  “We can walk right out of here,” I reminded them both. I didn’t want to leave. This could be the closest we’d come yet to setting Frankie free, but…

  “If you two aren’t going to talk to each other like two grown adults, we won’t solve anything.”

  Frankie frowned and lowered his weapon. Thank goodness.

  “And what’s with all the gun-toting?” I added. “You haven’t been this trigger-happy since Billy Three Fingers rigged your roulette wheel.”

  Scalieri smirked. “I could’ve told you Billy was a crook.”

  Seriously? They were all crooks.

  I closed my eyes briefly, counted to three, and turned. “So what do you want? Be honest.”

  He tilted his head, his horse-like face appearing almost skeletal in the fading light. “I want you to break me out of this joint.”

  “Impossible,” I said.

  At the same time, Frankie asked, “How?”

  “Are you kidding?” I turned to my ghost. How could he think about shooting him one minute and springing him out the next? “Stop and think about what he just asked us to do.”

  “He wants me to do a prison break,” Frankie said as if he were explaining it to a two-year-old. “It’s part of my skill set.”

  “Frankie’s great with a lock,” Scalieri agreed. “And you can drive the getaway car.”

  “That’s right,” Frankie conceded. “I don’t have wheels.”

  Oh, now they were on the same page.

  “No,” I said to the both of them. “Not a chance. Absolutely not.” I couldn’t even believe we were having this discussion.

  “She gets that way sometimes,” Frankie said to Scalieri.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the hardened killer in the chair before focusing on my housemate. “Frankie, a word?”

  The gangster gave his frenemy a what-can-you-do hand gesture and followed me to the opposite corner of the too small, too narrow cell, where I turned my back to Scalieri to give Frankie a piece of my mind. “Are you crazy?” I hissed. “We didn’t come here in order to take him home with us.”

  “We can drop him off somewhere along the way,” Frankie said, glancing past me toward the psychopath in the chair. “Look, he could have asked us for something hard, or he could have asked me for mob information I don’t want to give. Instead, he just wants out. Who wouldn’t? I mean, how hard is that?”

  “Very, Frankie. It is very hard. Not to mention the fact that he’s dangerous. He’s evil.” I could see I was already boring my gangster. Frankie didn’t care about Scalieri’s criminal past. Frankie probably admired him for it. “How about thi
s?” I asked, shifting direction. “There are three guards out there waiting for trouble, and if even one of them hears us discussing a prison break, we’ll be arrested, too.”

  Frankie held up a finger. “Only if we get caught.”

  If I could throttle him, I would. “You got caught before.”

  “Nooo,” he smirked. “I got shot.”

  Whatever. “Scalieri was arrested and tried in a court of law, and this is where he belongs.”

  “You always care so much what other people think,” Frankie said, as if it were a character flaw.

  “It was a judge and jury!” I said, trying hard not to shout.

  Frankie grinned at the imprisoned criminal. “Don’t worry,” he said to me under his breath.

  “What?” I snapped.

  He leaned back against the wall and drew the cigarette case from his jacket, a knowing smile still pasted on his face.

  I leaned closer. “Do you have a plan?”

  He glanced past me as he wedged a cigarette on his bottom lip. He didn’t seem nervous at all. In fact, maybe he was plotting. Maybe he was just playing along with Scalieri. Maybe he had another idea.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t worry,” I whispered.

  He struck a match on the wall behind him and cupped his hands around his cigarette to light it. “I’m really good at lock picking.”

  Wrong answer.

  “It isn’t worth it,” I said as he took a drag, smoke trickling out his nose. “I could get arrested along with you. If they did something to keep you from disconnecting me, I’d be stuck too.”

  Then I’d really be in trouble. I seriously doubted they’d remember to feed a live prisoner.

  “That live girl of yours,” Scalieri called from across the cell, “she’s cute, but she worries too much.”

  “She’s not the one with the chisel,” Frankie said, lifting his pants leg and revealing an entire lock-picking set strapped over his sock.

  “And you just happen to carry that around?” I demanded. Maybe he’d plotted this all along.

  “Always be prepared,” he said, lowering his pants leg.

  “You are no Boy Scout,” I reminded him.

  The guard knocked on the other side of the door. “Time’s up.”

  He had no idea.

  My first instinct was to walk out of there with my head held high and take Frankie’s urn with me. My housemate would have no choice but to leave the property the moment I did, and Scalieri would be sorry he’d even asked us to do something illegal.

  But then we’d also fail to get what we wanted from Scalieri, and we’d be back at square one.

  And if this didn’t work, I didn’t know what we would do to set Frankie free.

  “Miss?” the guard prodded.

  I chewed my lip. There might be another way, but I’d have to turn on the charm when I really didn’t feel like it. And I’d have to get Frankie to cooperate.

  That might be the hardest part of all.

  I gathered my wits, directed my best smile toward the guard, and said, “If you please, I’d like another few minutes with the prisoner.” I added a little eye batting for good measure. I wasn’t a Southern girl for nothing. “I know you’ve already been very generous, but I must tell Mr. Scalieri one more thing. Something rather private.”

  The guard hesitated, and for a moment, I thought he’d turn me down.

  But then he tilted his head like a true gentleman and said, “Sure, miss. I suppose a few more minutes couldn’t hurt.”

  “Thank you so much,” I simpered before eyeing Frankie. “You can wait in the hall.”

  My plan did not call for him or his opinions.

  “Glad to.” My gangster winked at me. “I might as well get started.”

  If he could hear my teeth grinding, he ignored it.

  Frankie ducked out with a grin and a thumbs-up to Scalieri. He didn’t seem concerned at all about leaving me to be ogled by a hardened criminal now that he could break said criminal out of the asylum.

  Well, he could enjoy it while it lasted because I was putting a stop to it.

  As soon as the guard closed the door behind me, I stalked straight up to Scalieri. “I am not letting Frankie Winkelmann bust you out of here, so you’d better think of something else you want.”

  I expected a smug retort or another leer, but he sat with his jaw hard and his body stiff. “I’m not staying,” he said, his tone plain. “Not for a day longer. This place is bad news.”

  “It’s not supposed to be a church picnic.” He’d earned hard time. “There must be something else you want.” Love. Friendship. Redemption. Just a few ideas off the top of my head.

  When he didn’t respond, I strolled to the rusted shelf with the picture. “Who is this?”

  He snorted. “Nobody.”

  He lied. This woman had to have meant something to him if hers was the only picture he cared to display. I studied the stern woman in the ghostly silver frame and noticed the glass had been removed, a prison regulation no doubt. “Do you want me to find her?”

  “No,” he said quickly. Then after a moment, he added, “She wouldn’t want to see me.”

  “You might be surprised.” Most people had others who cared deeply about them, even after arguments or time apart. It was sometimes hard to accept love, especially after unkind words or actions, but it didn’t mean that love wasn’t waiting. “So who is she?”

  He stared at the table. “My mother.”

  That was easy, then. “I’m sure she’s worried sick about you.” She could be just the one to help him find his way out of that dark place he’d lived in for so long. Scalieri obviously needed some kind of support. We all did. “She’s a good person, right?”

  He drew the blunt tips of his fingers over the metal table and didn’t answer.

  “Oh.” Or maybe she wasn’t kind. Oh, dear. Maybe she was a terrible person who’d turned him toward a life of crime.

  “Was she—?” I motioned toward the picture. Mrs. Scalieri appeared as if she belonged on a jar of pasta sauce, with stacked graying black hair and a stern expression.

  His chair creaked, and his chain rattled as he grabbed the photo off the shelf. “Don’t you touch her.”

  “Believe me, I wasn’t going to.” I wasn’t about to be the one who made her picture disappear.

  “It was just her and me,” he said, running a finger over the frame. “She tried to raise me right, but it was hard times.” His voice went cold. “When I was eleven, I took my mamma’s silver box that she kept hidden in the cupboard. It had thirty-eight dollars in it, and I used it to buy my first gun.”

  Yikes. “Talk about an early start.”

  His eyes flicked up to meet mine, and for the first time, I saw shame. “My mamma never forgave me, and I don’t blame her.”

  “Maybe you can make it up to her,” I suggested. “Or at least talk it out.”

  His fingers tightened on the frame. “No. I’m too far gone.”

  “Is she still…here? Where you can talk to her?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah. She haunts the house where I grew up. I never even told her I buried her box in the yard.”

  “Then you can still fix it,” I reminded him.

  I watched the idea dawn on him. “By giving my mamma her silver box with thirty-eight dollars in it,” he said, disbelieving. “I have more than thirty-eight dollars in my pocket right now!”

  “I don’t think it’s about the money or the box exactly,” I hedged. “I think it’s more about being honest with her about your past and the mistakes you’ve made. It’s about trying to change and be a better person.”

  “No.” He clutched the frame to his chest. “It’s definitely about the box.” He gripped the frame tighter. “I stole from my own mamma. Once a man will do that, he’ll do anything.”

  That was one way of looking at it.

  Only he’d done so many more awful, awful things. I’d read the library articles on him. Scalieri had killed more than a dozen men
in cold blood. He’d tortured a police officer. He’d drowned his girlfriend with his bare hands. But this, his momma’s silver box, was what bothered him.

  Then again, maybe this was what he needed to fix in order to move on, this incident that started his life of crime. It certainly couldn’t hurt. And it really wasn’t up to me anyway.

  “How about this? Frankie and I will get your silver box back,” I said. “You can put the money inside, and Frankie and I will deliver it to your mamma at her house. Then you can tell Frankie what he needs to know.”

  “Sure.” Scalieri nodded, not listening. “It’s buried under the old oak tree. I can make it up to her by giving it all back. Show her I’m a man she can respect. But first, I need you and Frankie to break me out of here.”

  “Nope. Not the plan,” I reminded him. “Try again.”

  “Get me out of here or I’ll kill you,” he gritted out.

  As I’d learned with Frankie, sometimes redemption could be a rocky road.

  I ignored his attitude and set my own terms. “We’ll help you, but you have to stay in prison. That’s the deal.”

  “Who says you’re in charge of the deal?” he balked.

  “I do,” I stated, “because I’m the one you and Frankie both need to get anything done.”

  “Now you listen to me—” Scalieri leapt up, rattling his chain, stumbling as the taut links held him back.

  The guard rapped on the door. “That’s it. You’re finished in here.”

  We couldn’t afford to be overheard if Scalieri started talking about jail breaks again. “It’s a good offer,” I pressed. “My only offer. I’ll be back. Soon.”

  But first, I had a ghost to corral.

  4

  I glanced back one last time at Scalieri and found him glaring at me as the guard closed the steel door. He hadn’t appreciated my attempt to negotiate. Well, tough. The deal he’d offered was completely impossible. He didn’t need to escape. He needed to face his issues straight-on.

  He’d have to see that once he thought about it. Or maybe Frankie could help convince him. This was truly the best solution for everyone. I’d reunite Scalieri with his mamma, and he’d stay locked in prison until he truly had changed.