Джанет Иванович - Fortune and Glory

“It’s empty,” Grandma finally said. “There’s nothing in it but some comic books. It looks to me like Jimmy used to come here to sit in his La-Z-Boy and read comics. How could this be? Where’s the treasure?”

“Superman and Uncle Scrooge,” Potts said. “Excellent choice of comics but not worth much in their present condition.”

“This here’s a bummer,” Lula said. “I almost got blown up for nothing.”

“There was no charge attached to it,” Ramone said. “There was no chance of Hiroshima.”

Lula was hands on hips. “Well, what about those tunnels with the rats and the fire and the crazy-ass old assassin? What about that?”

“All in a day’s work,” I said.

Morelli was standing next to me. He looked over at me. Quizzical.

I shrugged. Truth is, it could have turned out a lot worse. My mother and my grandmother could have been horribly hurt or killed. I could have been horribly hurt or killed. Those possibilities had been laid to rest.

“The La-Z-Boys were sure there was a treasure in here. There were clues. There were keys,” Grandma said. “They were willing to kidnap and kill for it. What happened to it?”

“In this video game I play there’s a princess. And a dragon took her treasure. It was in a chest in the tower room and the dragon flew away with it,” Potts said.

“I like it,” Lula said. “Some hot-shot dragon flew away with the princess’s treasure.”

“I guess it could happen,” Grandma said. “Did the princess get her treasure back?”

“I’m working on it,” Potts said.

“I can’t think about this anymore,” my mom said. “I’m exhausted. Look at the time. I need to get dinner going.”

“I need some selfies for Facebook and Instagram,” Grandma said, standing in front of the safe. “I bet I could be a sensation. And if nobody minds, I’m going to take the comic books.”

“I’m gonna snap some selfies, too,” Lula said. “I might be able to add in a dragon to mine.”

Gabriela hadn’t moved forward with everyone else. She’d stood in place. Her expression throughout was thoughtful. Ranger was back on his heels with the same thoughtful expression.

I knew what they were thinking because I was thinking the same thing. This wasn’t done. There was more.

Morelli’s phone buzzed, and he checked the screen. “I have to go,” he said to me. “I don’t want to lose sight of Shine. And I have paperwork to do. I’ll call you later.”

I turned to Lula when Morelli walked away. “Can you take everyone home? I want to stay and talk to Ranger and Gabriela.”

“No problem,” Lula said. “I might even let Potts hum. He told me he stole a car so you could sneak up on the bad guys. He’s coming along.”

I waved them off, and I walked back to the safe. Ranger and Gabriela joined me.

“What was supposed to be in here?” I asked Gabriela.

“Diamonds,” she said. “D color and flawless. I represent the legal owner of the diamonds, and I’ve been empowered to claim them and have them tested and ultimately returned to my employer.”

“I assume you have documentation for this,” I said to Gabriela.

“I do,” she said. “Morelli has seen it, and it’s been filed with the court and the appropriate agencies.”

“Why were you following me?” I asked her. “Why didn’t you just go after the diamonds?”

“You and I have something in common,” Gabriela said. “Tenacity. Beyond that our talents are miles apart. You have no skills whatsoever, but you have dumb luck and uncanny instinct. I have skills, but I don’t always have luck. And as they say, it’s better to be lucky than good. At least some of the time. I realized in this instance, I was better advised to follow you around and let you find the diamonds than for me to do my own investigation. All I had to do was keep you alive. That in itself is a full-time job.”

I shifted my attention to Ranger. “Did you know?”

“No,” he said. “I was concentrating on keeping you in cars.”

“None of the La-Z-Boys took the diamonds,” I said. “I’m sure Jimmy has them stashed somewhere, either for himself or as part of the clue system. Shine had the last clue. Number nine. That was the number on the storage locker. The wedding bands had the safe combination, but maybe that wasn’t Jimmy’s clue.”

“You know the location of the clue,” Gabriela said.

I nodded. “I have a suspicion. Look under the La-Z-Boy seat cushion.”

Ranger lifted the cushion and found a folded piece of paper and a key ring with some age-worn keys on it.

Ranger pocketed the keys on the key ring and opened the paper. “RIP, Anthony.”

I called Connie. “Did Jimmy Rosolli have a relative named Anthony?”

“His grandfather,” Connie said. “Anthony Rosolli.”

“Do you know where he’s buried?”

“Hold on,” Connie said. “I’ll ask my mom.”

Connie came back on the line a minute later. “She thinks it’s Saint John’s. It’s outside of Egg Harbor. Anthony was a big deal. He immigrated from Sicily, and he was made. I guess he was like Godfather or something. Mom said she was a little girl when she visited the cemetery, but she remembers that Anthony Rosolli had a house there.”

“A house in the cemetery?”

“She said it was probably a little chapel or maybe a monument, but she remembers it as a house. I already heard there was no treasure. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Life goes on.”

I hung up and looked at Ranger and Gabriela. “Saint John’s Cemetery.”

“Let’s check it out,” Ranger said. “Ramone has already gone back to Trenton, but I have the keys and the wedding bands.”

Gabriela had the cemetery pulled up on her smartphone. “It’s about twenty minutes from here. Follow me.”

Saint John’s Cemetery was on the northwest side of Egg Harbor. It was a small, ancient-looking graveyard attached to a small, ancient-looking Catholic church. We parked on a dirt road that ran parallel to the church lot, crossed over some scrub vegetation, and passed through the elaborate wrought-iron gate that led to the graves. We read the names on the weathered tombstones as we walked. Gianchinni, Mancuso, Salerno, Capaletti. Obelisks, crosses, statues of the Virgin marked the graves of the wealthy. Others had simple granite markers. A badly maintained small stone and granite chapel had been erected on a patch of flat ground in the middle of the cemetery. There was a peaked roof on the one story, windowless building and two Corinthian-style columns on either side of the door. The entire building was decorated with reliefs of angels, cherubs, Madonnas, and horse-drawn chariots. The name carved into granite above the door was Rosolli.

“I think we found the house of Rosolli,” I said.

Ranger tried the door. Locked. He looked at the three keys on the key ring he found in the La-Z-Boy chair and selected one. He turned the key in the lock and the door opened. He switched the light on and nothing happened. No electricity. We stepped inside and Ranger and Gabriela powered up their Maglites.

The walls were covered with religious paintings. Some were in the form of murals, others were on velvet. An occasional cobweb clung to the velvet. Two rows of ornately carved pews that could have seated no more than four people were on either side of a center aisle. A small altar holding a cross and a bunch of burned-out votives was at the front of the room. There was a tiny cast-iron staircase behind the altar.

I saw Ranger scan the room, looking for security cameras.

“See anything?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “I think this chapel no longer plays an important role in the spiritual life of the Rosolli family.”