“Claudia was helpful. Very helpful. Offered coffee, pulled out photo albums, walked me through the whole evening minute by minute without being asked. Had an answer for everything.” He flipped a page. “Too helpful?”
“Maybe. Claudia’s always like that. It’s how she operates—she’s the gracious one, the one who steps up. But whether that’s genuine or strategic depends on what day you catch her.”
Tony made a note. “Paula told me to go to hell.”
“That sounds right.”
“Said the family was a nest of vipers, then offered me a beer.” He almost smiled. “I liked her.”
“Everyone likes Paula. That’s her cover.”
“And Sal.” Tony’s expression tightened. “Your ex was nervous. Different than George—George is scared. Sal kept asking what was in his file. What we had on him. Whether anyone had made allegations.”
“You have a file on him?”
“Don’t have a file on anyone yet. But a man who asks about his file usually knows there should be one. Should there?”
I turned my coffee cup. Sal. We hadn’t been close by the end—hadn’t been close for years, if I was honest.
“I don’t know. We weren’t sharing secrets toward the end. But if he’s nervous about a file, there’s a reason.”
“Could the reason be he murdered his mother?”
“Sal’s vain, selfish, allergic to accountability. But murder? He was on a plane to Vegas before the plates were cleared. Airtight.”
“People hire people.”
“Sal’s too cheap to hire a decent hygienist. I don’t see him paying for a hit.”
Tony wrote something down, sat back, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Someone’s lying. Probably all of them.”
In the window, Rosaria sniffed. “Finally. A man with sense.”
The waitress brought my BLT and topped off both coffees, and we spread his notes across the table.
“Walk me through the night,” Tony said. “The dinner. How did it work? Who was where, who had access to what?”
I took a bite of the BLT to buy myself a second, because Rosaria had just materialized in the napkin dispenser again, and the look on her face said she was about to contribute.
“The dinner was at Rosaria’s house. Sal made the announcement over dessert. It was ugly—people yelling, Rosaria going pale, the whole thing. Dinner broke up around six. Everyone cleared out.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone. Sal left for the airport—he had a ten o’clock flight to Vegas. George and Claudia went home. Paula went to a gallery opening in Portsmouth.”
Tony wrote it down. “And Rosaria was alone after six.”
“She had a routine,” I said. “Every morning, she’d pick out one of her mother’s teacups—she had a whole collection of them, fine china, different patterns. She’d choose one for the day and set it on the kitchen counter. Then at seven-thirty, she’d brew her chamomile and pour it into the cup. Same thing every night for forty years.”
“The cup just sat there,” Rosaria said from the napkin dispenser, her voice tight. “All day. On the counter. Empty. Waiting.” She flickered, steadied. “Anyone at that dinner could have walked into the kitchen and put something in it.”
“Everyone in the family knew about the routine,” I said, shoving a fry in my mouth to cover the fact that I’d been listening to someone Tony couldn’t see. “The cup, the tea, seven-thirty on the dot. It was just—Rosaria.”
Tony tapped his pen against the notepad. “Here’s what’s bugging me, though. If someone dropped something into an empty cup hours before she used it—residue, powder, liquid, whatever—she’d have noticed. You pour tea into a cup and there’s something sitting at the bottom? You see it. You smell it.”
I hadn’t thought of that. From the napkin dispenser, Rosaria went quiet, which meant she hadn’t thought of it either.
“So what are you saying?”
