Insatiable Appetites

49

Dino was having a rare lunch at his desk when his secretary buzzed him. “There’s a woman on the phone called Gina Corretti. She says you know her.”

“Sure.” Dino picked up the phone. “Gina? How you doing?”

“Hey, Dino, not so good. Carmine didn’t come home last night.”

“Has he ever done that before?”

“Not without calling. I called his precinct, and they haven’t heard from him since he signed out yesterday. He came home and got his tackle box and a couple of rods and said he was going fishing.”

“At this time of year?”

“Go figure. He was wearing rubber boots and a heavy, waterproof jacket.”

“Does Carmine own a boat?”

“No, but he sometimes goes fishing with a friend of his who has one. I called him, and he hasn’t heard from Carmine since last summer.”

Dino began to get a bad feeling. “Gina, do me a favor. Call the friend back and ask him to check on his boat.”

“Sure.” Gina hung up.

By the time Gina called back, everything had fallen into place in Dino’s mind. “What’d he say?”

“He checked at the marina. A guy who said he’s a friend of his took the boat. Sounds like Carmine. The boat is a Boston Whaler, eighteen feet with a forty-horsepower outboard.”

“Okay, I’m going to check this out, Gina, but it might be a while before I can get back to you.” Dino buzzed his assistant. “Call the Coast Guard and see if anybody has reported a Boston Whaler found in Jamaica Bay or around there.” Half an hour later, his assistant buzzed back.

“They found such a boat this morning, aground on one of those little islands in the bay. It had some bullet holes in the bottom, but Whalers are almost impossible to sink. And, boss, there was some blood in it. Could be fish blood, but I called Corretti’s precinct, and they’re sending some people out there.”

“Keep me posted,” Dino said. He hung up and called Stone.

“Hey.”

“We got a problem,” Dino said.

“What problem?”

“Dolce.”

“Oh, shit. What’s happened?”

“I think one of my detectives went out to the Brooklyn property, and he didn’t come back. The Coast Guard found his boat.” Dino filled him in on what he knew.

Bruce Willard received Elton Hills at his shop and gave him the tour. A lot of what the shop had to offer was in line with what Elton had in his house, and he seemed to enjoy it. When they were done, Bruce rode over to Evan’s town house with Elton. The old man took an even greater interest in what Evan had collected.

“Did you find all these things for him?” Elton asked, stroking a piece of silver.

“Many of them, but Evan’s tastes were in place before we met. I think he must have inherited them from you.”

“More likely, his mother,” Elton said.

Bruce led him to the best guest room. “This is quite handsome,” Elton said, looking around. “I can sleep here.”

The woman who took care of the place brought them tea in the library. Bruce poured.

Elton accepted a cup, added lemon and sugar, and sat back in his chair. “Did I tell you that I served in the Korean war as a young man?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I was a platoon leader in the battle of Chosin Reservoir.”

“That was a bad one,” Bruce said.

“I was a first lieutenant. When our command post took an artillery shell, I suddenly found myself a regimental commander. We made a fighting retreat, and the best I can say for myself was that I got most of the regiment out.”

“That says a very great deal,” Bruce said. “We studied that battle at the Point, so I have some idea of what you must have gone through.”

“It wrecked me,” Elton said. “They sent me home with a decoration, and I spent four months in a military hospital, getting the experience off my chest.”

They sipped their tea in silence. Bruce wondered why on earth Elton had brought up his military service.

Dino rang the bell at Mary Ann’s apartment, and she opened the door.

“Come in,” she said, “and tell me about it. Anybody want a drink?”

“No, thanks,” Dino said, and Stone shook his head. They threw their coats over a chair and sat down.

Mary Ann sat in a chair, her hands tightly clasped in front of her. “What has Dolce done? Has she been worrying you, Stone?”

Stone shook his head.

Dino spoke up. “It appears that Dolce has murdered two men: one, a Catholic priest, the other an NYPD detective.”

Mary Ann got up, crossed the room to a drinks cart, poured herself a stiff scotch, then she came back, sat down, and waited wordlessly for Dino to continue.

She looked frightened, Stone thought, something he would never have imagined of Mary Ann.

“The priest was also a psychiatrist who treated her when she was in Sicily. The cop was looking into his death on his own time.”

“Was the priest the one who was found in the bay?”

“Yes.”

“Dear God in heaven! Are you certain of all the facts?”

“No, I’m not,” Dino said, “but I know enough to know that she did these things or had Pietro do them.”

“Are you going to arrest Dolce?”

“We don’t have a case in either instance,” Dino said. “If we wait until we do, then it’s going to be the biggest story in the news for a month.”

“We can’t have that,” Mary Ann said.

“No, we can’t,” Dino replied. “Here’s what we can do.”

While Mary Ann finished off the scotch and poured another, Dino outlined what he had in mind.