Lisa Scottoline - Killer Smile

“It’s a type of hatch. It’s an inspection port. The fuel gauge is underneath.”

“And the spring?” Mary pushed the catch in and out, and it sprang back each time. “This is a lock. It’s automatic, this mechanism.”

“Yeah. Keeps it watertight. Now I gotta go, hon.”

“One minute.” Mary closed the lid of the hatch and read the outside. Embossed on the top in plastic were two letters: GO. GO? Go?

“That’s Gio’s hatch.”

“ What?” Mary raised her eyes slowly, as it dawned on her. “ Gio’s hatch?”

“He named it after himself. Get it? GO.”

“What do you mean by ‘Gio’s hatch’?”

“Gio invented it, the lucky bastard. Got a patent on it.” Jackmann bent over and closed the hatch. “There’s no patent anymore, it’s just the brand name, GO. But it’s the top of the line in that type of hatch.”

“Saracone invented it?” Mary repeated in disbelief.

“Yeh. It’s used on fishing boats, then got picked up for commercial boats of all kinds. It was the first to have the automatic closer. It was such an innovation, Gio was able to sell licenses on the patent and get a grant back on each one, giving him the royalties and the credit on the ap. Helluva businessman, Gio was.” Jackmann clucked. “I don’t think he worked a day in his life after that thing got patented, way back in -”

“1942?”

“Right.”

“He patented it.” Mary came fully up to speed, flashing on the laundry line in Amadeo’s backyard. It was practical, useful, ingenious. An invention . Amadeo was the mechanical one and he was the fisherman, too. He had three fishing boats when Saracone was driving a lunch truck. In one blinding moment, it all fell into place. Amadeo had invented this hatch, and Saracone had strangled him for it, under a lonely tree in Montana, in the midst of a world war.

“Yeah.” Jackmann shook his head. “I never woulda thought Gio was the mechanical type, but there you have it. Probably made fifty mil off that thing.”

“ Fifty million dollars? ”

“Easy, and Justin told me at the funeral that now that his father’s gone, he’s gonna sell the whole shebang to Reinhardt.”

“What do you mean?”

“Reinhardt’s the second biggest hatch maker. The competition. Justin told me he’s selling the trademark, the rights, and all. Next week. They’ll put the GO hatch out under the Reinhardt trademark, for a boatload of dough. It’s one big payday for the kid.”

Not if I can help it . Finally, Mary had figured out why Saracone had committed murder.

Now all she had to figure out was what to do about it.

And go do it.

Right now.

Mary was back in her semi-repaired war room at Rosato amp; Associates, where it had all started, typing furiously online. She had practically run here from the marina and hit the office on fire. She still couldn’t believe it. She had figured it out. She had Saracone. She would bring him to justice. She would set it right. For Amadeo. It was after hours, and the office was empty. The glass window behind her was black and opaque, and the conference room reeked of stale coffee. Mary had already called in reinforcements, but for now the only sound was the clacking of her keyboard.

The website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office came onto her laptop screen, and she clicked to Search Patents, where she was stumped. The search for issued patents by keyword went back only to 1976. The GO hatch would have been patented in 1942 or thereabouts. Damn . Mary had learned enough about patents in law school to know that they were frequently altered and improved, in some cases to extend their life past the permissible term of seventeen years. She moved the mouse and in the box, typed: “Saracone” in “all fields” AND “hatch” in “all fields.” Onto the screen popped:

Results of Search in 1976 to present db for:

Saracone AND hatch: 24 patents.

Hits 1 through 24 out of 24

Bingo! The screen showed twenty-four listings, which set forth the patent number, the title, and a short description of the patent. She skimmed the first four, but none of them seemed to have anything to do with hatches. Still it looked like Saracone had been busy, if it was the same Saracone. Mary clicked the first listing and started reading. It was a patent issued to Giovanni Saracone just last year, for a larger hatch than the one on the boat deck, and one that had the same configuration as the one on the boat deck. And according to the site, the GO hatch was used on bunkers in disaster areas.

She clicked the next patent, also issued to Giovanni Saracone, the year before. It was a patent for the same hatch, now issued to keep light out of certain industrial applications, such as commercial darkrooms. She read on, clicking each one, and in time discovered the myriad applications of the original patent: pressure relief hatches, vehicle sunroofs, telescopic winch drives, whatever that was, and underground shelters. She thought a minute. Saracone didn’t manufacture any of these things – or indeed anything at all – which meant that he had to have sold licenses for all of these doohickeys to others to manufacture.

Mary could barely wrap her mind around it. There had to be hundreds of licenses, each requiring the license holder to pay money to the Saracones for the use of the invention. It was the key she had been looking for. No wonder they were rich as sin. Licenses for these applications – in addition to the marine applications from the earlier patent – would bring in millions and millions of dollars. First to Giovanni Saracone, then to Justin.

For doing absolutely nothing.

Then she made another connection. Saracone hadn’t filed the original patent application on his own; he couldn’t have. Mary was willing to bet that it had been prepared and filed by Joe Giorno. They had been in it together, from the beginning. That was why Giorno made Amadeo the gift of the house on Nutt Street and later went to Missoula to tell him about his wife’s death. Giorno and Saracone were pretending to be his friends, cultivating him for the invention. They were smiling, all the while they buried a knife in his back. Then Amadeo’s son Tony had died, both ordering and funding the lawsuit by his will. Frank Cavuto must have taken over for Giorno, and when Mary started to expand her investigation into Amadeo’s death and close in on the truth, Frank must have panicked, and they’d killed him.

The scope of the scheme took Mary’s breath away. No wonder that Giovanni, stricken with guilt, had sat up on his very deathbed at seeing her, an avenging angel. He had carried that terrible secret his whole life – murdered his friend for his inventiveness, for his creativity, and stolen it to further his own ends. And Justin had to know that his father hadn’t invented a deck hatch, or anything else over the years. What had Justin said, before he hit her?

Mind your own business.

Mary clicked to the oldest patent on the screen, in 1976. At the end, it contained a reference to the original patent and its patent number. She clicked the blue link and held her breath. A patent, with a series number in the two millions, appeared on the screen:

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE, it read in the center, and underneath, the title of the patent was Hatch Frame and Hatch Cover,next to the name of the inventor: Giovanni Saracone.

Mary felt her breath catch. She had been right. Saracone had killed Amadeo for his invention, then patented it. She had it in front of her and she still couldn’t believe it. She felt tears come, with anger and with relief. She had been right, which was amazing, because she was never right about anything.