“Cecelia!” Enzo cries.
The second he says her name, I know exactly who this girl is: Cecelia Winchester. I used to sort of be her nanny a while ago. And Enzo also looked after her while some other stuff was going on in her life. I haven’t seen her in person since she was ten years old. And now she’s
Oh my God, she’s twenty-seven. I am horribly old.
Despite everything, Enzo runs over to her. He wraps his arms around her, and she hugs him back. He whispers something in her ear, and she smiles and nods. I couldn’t make out what he said, although I heard the words “your mother.”
I cross the room to get a better look at this girl. She might be twenty-seven, but she still looks very young. I would believe twenty if somebody tried to convince me. But there is something very shrewd and hard about her blue eyes. She has the eyes of someone twenty years older. Something about her eyes makes me believe that having her on our side might be the best weapon we can have.
“Hello, Millie,” she says. The last time I heard her voice, it was high and child-like. Now it’s crisp and business-like. She seems like the sort of woman who is working even at the dinner table.
I manage a smile. “Hi, Cece. It’s really good to see you.”
“Same.” She smooths out the lapel of her suit jacket. “I wish it didn’t have to be under these circumstances.”
“Cecelia is a public defender, so officially, we are mortal enemies,” Ramirez says. “But I admired her passion when I saw her in action. I ran into her about a year ago at the supermarket when I was picking up that cake you asked me to get for Ada’s birthday party, and we got to chatting. When I told her who I was getting the cake for, it turned out she knew you just as well as I did. So when you called me this morning, I gave her a call right away.”
“Just as well as I did” is pushing it. We’ve been friends with Benny for years, and I last saw Cecelia when she was a child. Has she been keeping tabs on us?
But if she has, I should be grateful. She’s our only hope right now. “Benny has been filling me in on all the details while I battled the
Long Island Expressway,” she says as we return to the living room. “They have been building quite a case against you, Enzo.”
He winces. “I know. Is terrible. Cecelia, you need to know, I didn’t ”
Cecelia settles down on the sofa, crossing one of her skinny legs over the other. She places her briefcase on her lap and opens it with a snap. She extracts a yellow legal pad of paper and clicks open her ballpoint pen. Clearly, she does not want to waste time on small talk, which I appreciate right now. “Maybe you didn’t kill him,” she says, “but they are going after you hard. I promise you that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got a search warrant in the works.”
Enzo sneers. “Let them search. They will find nothing.”
I don’t feel the same way. I have had my home searched by the police before, and it’s the largest violation I can imagine. They go through everything. They rip apart your entire life, and they don’t put it back.
“What will they be looking for?” I ask Cecelia.
“A murder weapon,” she says without hesitation. “Any traces of Lowell’s blood.”
I think about that bloody T-shirt Enzo was wearing last night. I never ended up finding it. He must’ve gotten rid of it.
Except if it really was his blood, why would he get rid of the shirt?
It wouldn’t be incriminating if it was his own blood. “They won’t find that,” he says firmly.
“It would help,” she says, “if you tell me everything from the beginning.”
And so he does what she asks. He tells her everything while she quietly jots down notes on her yellow legal pad. He talks about his relationship with Suzette, the things he did to help Martha, and finally working in the yard yesterday while Jonathan was being murdered.
“I did nothing,” he insists. “Nothing. Why would they think I would kill him?”
It’s a rhetorical question, but Cecelia seems to be truly considering it. She has clearly grown up to be a very thoughtful young woman. I wonder if Ada will turn out like her.
Of course, if her father gets locked up in prison, that’s going to mess her up forever.
“I’ll be honest with you, Enzo,” Cecelia finally says. “I believe it might have something to do with Dario Fontana.”
At the mention of that name, all the color leaves Enzo’s face. “What?” he says.
“My understanding”—Cecelia glances over at Ramirez, who nods—“is that Detective Willard has done some digging into your past, before you came to this country. And that is a name that has come up.”
I’ve never heard the name before in my life. So it’s disturbing that the man I have been married to for over a decade has such a violent reaction to it.
“Who is Dario Fontana?” I ask him.
“That was a long time ago,” he chokes out.
Cecelia’s voice is firm, leaving no room for bullshit. “Not that long.” “Enzo?” I say.
He is squeezing his knees so hard that his knuckles are white. “Dario was my sister’s husband.”
His sister’s husband. Okay, now it makes sense that the name upset him so much. Antonia was abused by her husband for many years, until he finally ended up killing her. He was also a man with dangerous mobster ties, and when Enzo took his vengeance, he immediately had to leave the country. I can understand why he never wanted to say the man’s name. But what I don’t understand is why Cecelia has brought him up.
“He wasn’t just that,” Cecelia says. “We need to be honest about the situation we’re dealing with.”
Enzo shoots me a pained look. “Millie, would you leave us for a moment?”
Is he joking with me? Does he really think I would leave right now? “No way,” I say sharply. “What is it that you don’t want me to
know?”
“Enzo,” Ramirez says. “Just tell your wife the truth.”
Enzo mumbles something under his breath. There is no way I am leaving this room without finding out what he doesn’t want me to know.
“Enzo?” I say again.
“Okay. Okay.” He clenches his hands into fists. “I worked for him. I worked for Dario Fontana. Okay?”
My jaw drops. That is a piece of the puzzle I never heard before. Enzo worked for the guy who used to beat up on his sister? Not only that, but from what I understood, the man was a mobster. So if Enzo worked for him
“I was a kid,” he says. “I was sixteen when I started working for Dario. I didn’t know who he really was. By the time I realized ”
“How many years did you work for him?” Cecelia presses him.
Enzo looks completely miserable having this conversation. “Eight years.”
“And when you were working for him, what did you do for him?”
Enzo closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again. “Please stop. I I understand. This is bad. I get it.”
What did Enzo do for this mobster?
“Okay,” Cecelia concedes. “We don’t have to talk about this right now. But I need you to see what we are dealing with. If this were to come up in a courtroom ”
“Yes. I understand.”
“I will fight for you,” she says. “But I don’t want to hear lies, Enzo. I can’t do a thing for you if you lie to my face. You have to tell me everything. You have to be completely honest so I can protect you.”
He looks her straight in the eyes. “I did not kill Jonathan Lowell.
You have my word.”
“Fine,” she says. “But if you didn’t, then who did?”
“Suzette Lowell,” I blurt out. That has been the thought in my head since the moment I saw that dead body lying on the floor. Suzette never seemed to respect or even like her husband. My first instinct was that she finally killed him.
“But how?” Ramirez asks. “That neighbor—she swears Suzette was out all day.”
“Does she have an alibi?” I ask.
“No alibi, no. But it’s not like this cul-de-sac is walkable. She would’ve had to come home with her car. It would have been noticeable.”
“There is another way,” Enzo says.
Cecelia raises her eyebrows. “I’m listening.”
“There’s a way to park around the back without going through the cul-de-sac,” Enzo says. “Suzette told me about it. She could have parked in the back, gone in through the back door, and Janice Archer would never have seen her.”
“And you wouldn’t have noticed her?”
“I was back and forth between our yard and theirs. I wouldn’t have necessarily seen her.”
“Okay, that’s a start. Let me look into it.” Cecelia looks down at her watch. “All right, I’ve got a busy afternoon, so I have to run. This is not going to be a walk in the park, but I promise, I’ll do everything in my power to keep them from pinning this on you. I’ll fight for you.”
Enzo frowns at her as she rises to her feet. When did little Cecelia Winchester learn to walk in such high heels? “You have had cases like this before and won?” he asks.
To her credit, Cecelia artfully dodges the question. “We are going to win this one.”
I hope she’s right.
