“I never said a moat, Pierce,” Sophie said. “Your uncle wouldn’t like having his living room flooded, so we’re not even going there.” Vito winced when Connor dumped another stack of books next to Sophie, but she just smiled sweetly up at the boy. “Thank you, Connor. How are we doing on that counterweight for the trebuchet, Michael?”
His father looked affronted. “Quality takes time, Sophie.”
“Edward the First only needed a few months to build the biggest trebuchet of all time, Michael,” she said dryly. “It could hurl three-hundred-pound weights. We’re only launching popcorn kernels, so hurry up.”
“We need to be going,” Vito said. “It’s the boys’ bedtime.” And mine, he hoped.
“Oh, Uncle Vitooooo,” Pierce whined. “Just a few more minutes.”
“Yeah, Uncle Vitoooo,” Sophie echoed, her whine even better than Pierce’s, and the two co-conspirators snorted with giggles. “Just let us finish the wall around the outer bailey.” She angled him an amused look. “It would go faster if you would help.”
She looked so happy, Vito couldn’t refuse. Folding himself into position on the floor, he looked around. “Where is Dante? He should be helping.”
“He didn’t wanna,” Pierce said. “He said he wasn’t feeling well.”
“He’s sick? Should he go back to the doctor? Maybe he was exposed to more of that mercury than you thought.” Vito started to get up, but his father shook his head.
“Dante’s physically fine. He’s just dealing with some issues right now.”
“Dante broke the gas meter,” Pierce said matter-of-factly.
Vito remembered the stark despair on the boy’s face when he’d found him crying on the back porch a few nights before. “I thought as much. How did it happen?”
“Neighborhood snowball fight with ice balls in the center for ballast,” Michael said. “One of the neighborhood boys told his mom and Dante had to come clean. On the bad side, he lied at first. Said he didn’t know how it happened. On the good side, Molly’s going to be okay and Dante has a future with the Phillies. The boy has a helluva arm.”
“He’s got two arms, Granpop,” Pierce said. “And you said the ‘H’ word.”
“Good strong arms they are, too,” Michael agreed. “And you’re right, I did use the ‘H’ word. I’m sorry, Pierce. I won’t do it again. Here’s your counterweight, Sophie.”
She’d been watching them with curiosity. “You’ll fill me in?” she asked Vito.
He let out a breath. “On a lot of things.”
Thursday, January 18, 11:35
P.M.
“It was nice of Tess to send dinner home with us,” Sophie said, scraping her plate clean. She sat naked on her bed while Vito lounged against the pillows watching her, simply because he could. She licked her fork. “It’s even good cold.”
“It wouldn’t have been cold if you’d have let us eat it when we first got back,” Vito teased. “But no, you’re a sex-starved fiend, dragging me up the stairs by my hair.”
She grinned and pointed her fork at him. “You’re gonna get it.”
He leered at her. “Promises, promises. Come here and pay up.”
Sophie’s grin faded. She carefully set their plates aside and Vito knew the moment of reckoning had arrived. “Speaking of paying up, it’s time to come clean, Ciccotelli. I want to know about the roses. I think I’ve waited long enough.”
“I know.” He sighed. “Her name was Andrea.”
Sophie’s cheeks grew dark. “And you’ll love her always.”
To deny it would be wrong. “Yes.”
Sophie swallowed. “How did she die?”
He hesitated, then let it out. “I killed her.”
Sophie’s eyes registered initial shock, then she shook her head. “Tell me the whole story, Vito. Start at the beginning.”
“I met Andrea through a case, the murder of a teenager. Andrea’s little brother.”
“Oh.” Her eyes grew sad. “It’s hard to lose family like that.”
Vito thought of Elle, the name Katherine had let slip, and wondered who she was. But it was his turn to come clean, and he was no welsher. “Nick and I were working the case, and I was attracted to Andrea. She was attracted, too, but she fought it at first.”
“Why?”
“Part of it was that she was still grieving. She was afraid she’d turned to me on a kind of emotional rebound. But there were other complications. Not only was she part of an active case, she was a cop, and I outranked her. But I pushed and pursued.”
One side of Sophie’s mouth lifted wryly. “I think I’ve witnessed that myself.”
“And I thought long and hard before I sent you that present. I didn’t want to push you if you really didn’t want to be pushed. But you fascinated me, Sophie.”
“You did it just right. You left it all up to me. But this isn’t about me, so continue.”
“Eventually I pushed enough that Andrea caved, but she was afraid her boss would find out. We decided to keep quiet until we figured out how far our relationship was going to go. Then we’d need to make some career decisions. Didn’t seem worth rocking the boat until we knew if we had something permanent.”
“But you thought you did.”
“Yes. After a few months, we decided we’d come clean with our bosses. Liz was mine, and I trusted her to help us find the best solution. Andrea’s boss wasn’t so magnanimous, and Andrea expected trouble. All through this, Nick and I had been working her little brother’s murder. Turns out her big brother did it. Andrea was devastated.”
“Why would one brother kill another?”
“Drugs. Big brother was a major meth user, little brother got in the way. The night she died, I’d just gotten home from her place when I got a call from Dispatch. A neighbor had seen Andrea’s older brother come back and called 911.” He sighed. “Later we found Andrea had given him money.”
Sophie winced. “She was helping him escape.”
“Yeah, but Nick and I didn’t know that. I never would have dreamed it even possible. We got to her place, had backup covering the exits. Andrea wasn’t even supposed to be there. She’d left her apartment when I did. She was on duty.”
“But she was there.”
Vito closed his eyes, remembering it all too clearly. “Yeah. She was there. Andrea’s brother heard us announce ourselves. We think Andrea tried to get him to surrender and when he wouldn’t she pulled her gun on him. But he hit her in the head with a chair. We found the chair with her hair and blood on it. Again, later. We evacuated the residents and stormed the apartment. Her brother started shooting.”
“He’d taken her gun.”
“Yeah. It was night by then and we trapped him in a stairwell. He shot out the light and it was… really dark. Nick turned on his flashlight and the punk bastard shot at him. Grazed Nick’s shoulder and Nick shut the light off. The brother kept firing. When our eyes got used to the dark we could see his outline, so we returned fire. After a minute he stopped firing and we turned our maglights back on. He was dead. So was she.”
She rubbed his arm. “Oh, Vito. He’d used his own sister as a shield?”
“We didn’t know. We didn’t even know she was in the building. He’d knocked her unconscious and was dragging her down the stairs. I guess he figured he’d have a hostage. If I’d allowed him to get outside, we would have seen her.”
“If you’d allowed him to get outside, he would have had a whole lot more targets, Vito. Every evacuated resident and every curious passerby. You contained him. I can’t imagine you were found at fault.”
“I wasn’t. There was an investigation, just like every time you fire your weapon. This one was deeper, because people died. A cop died.”
“Nobody found out about you and Andrea?”
“No. We’d done a really good job of being discreet. Only Nick knew, because I said something when I saw her lying on the stairs.” Covered in blood. “Tino knew, because I told him last year on the one-year anniversary. I was ploughed.”