Chapter 11: Casserole

I was off the counter before Tino finished.

Elio was already past him into the hall, shouting for his men.

Nonna's room was at the end of the ground floor, because she wouldn't do stairs in somebody else's house.

The bed was made with hospital corners.

Her housecoat was folded on the pillow.

Her rosary was gone from the nightstand, and so were her good shoes.

"The man on the gate," Elio said into his phone. "Now."

The man on the gate had seen nothing.

The man on the dock had seen nothing.

The man in the car at the end of the drive had been asleep.

Elio's voice went quiet and flat.

The men around him went quiet too.

I stood in the middle of Nonna's room with my heart going so hard I could hear it.

Then I looked at the clock on her nightstand.

5:52.

"Pope," I said.

Elio turned.

"She feeds Pope at six. Every morning for nine years. She's never trusted anybody else to do it."

"Dina feeds the cat," Tino said.

Dina, behind him in her slept-in dress, put her hand over her mouth.

"Dina's here," I said. "Nonna would have worked that out at midnight."

"There's a bus on Lakeshore," Tino said slowly. "Five-ten."

Elio was already holding the car door open.

We went up Mayfield Road at half past six with Tino driving.

The plywood over my front door still smelled like smoke.

The old men at the coffee bar were setting up their chairs.

Nonna was sitting on my clinic's front step in her church coat with her cane across her knees.

Pope was in her lap, eating something out of her hand.

My knees nearly went.

Then I saw who was standing over her.

Trent's mother, in a lilac pantsuit, holding a covered glass dish in both hands.

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