Suicide Italian Style (Crime Made in Italy Book 1) by Pete Pescatore

beneath the handle. A fingerprint scanner. One of the start-ups in Gigi’s stable had specialized in biometric security. Fingerprint scans and voice recognition. “Where did he get it?”
    A drawer beneath the sink slid open. She found what she wanted and handed it to me. Aluminum, thick blades curving in a sinister smile. Poultry shears.
    “Someone gave it to him.” She paused and handed them to me, avoiding my gaze. “He never said who it was.”
    I tore open the bag and peeled back the paper. Pink and white flesh. Pale red crest, beak half open, dead eyes staring. Feet, no feathers. I picked up the shears. “Nasty looking piece of equipment.”
    A sigh, impatient. “Just cut it up, Pete.”
    “Right.” I turned the thing over a couple of times. “Where do I start?”
    “Please. Just take it apart. Do you want a knife?” She was peeling and chopping onions on a board. “There’s one in the drawer.”
    I shook my head.
    “Start at the joints.”
    I set to work. I took the head first and placed the neck on the notch in the lower blade. Two handed grip. Crunch. Snip . The head was off.  
    “Where was it, Jules?” Crunch . Left foot gone. Right foot to follow. “Where did Gigi keep the briefcase?” Crunch.
    “In the safe, up on the roof at the Villa Sofia.”
    “So it’s true.”
    “What?”
    “There’s a safe up there?”
    “Please, Pete.” She gave me a hard stare from the stove. The onions were browning in a frying pan. “The briefcase is missing. Someone’s taken it.”
    I wondered who her sources were. Had she seen Billy Bob? Or was someone else taking an interest? “I hear Billy Bob had it. And then he lost it.”
    “Billy Bob?” She was shaking her head. “Why would Billy Bob have it?”
    “So maybe someone else took it.”
    She threw another dark look my way. I ignored it.
    “We know the docs are worth something to someone,” I said. I stretched the legs, snipped and separated drumsticks from thighs.
    “I should think so.” She lifted her eyes and looked straight into mine.
    I held her gaze. “Tell me something I don't know.”
    “It isn’t much.”
    I had to stand up to split the chest. I clipped it through, scooped out the guts, shuffled to the sink and dumped them in the garbage pail beneath it.
    Julia plopped the parts in the frying pan and assembled a salad while she talked. People say the eyes give it all away, but for me it’s always the hands.
    Gigi’s lover couldn’t keep hers still.
    She took a breath and led me through the story, from the early years to the high-tech start-ups and the IPO that made Gigi’s name. Word got around he could make a man rich, so people came scrambling out of the woodwork, demanding he sell them a piece of the dream. It worked for a while. He sold them shares in one start-up or another, bought them back at a higher price, sold them on to fresh investors. Then the towers came down, the markets crashed and the rushing river of cash froze over.
    Gigi hung on a couple years after that, kept on betting, pouring good money in after bad, praying for the windfall that would save us all.
    Then Eva died, and Marco with her, drowned in Lake Lugano.
    There was nothing left for me after that. I slunk home to Milan to lick my wounds and forgot about Gigi Goldoni. And now he was dead, too.
    End of story.  
    Julia lowered a hand to my arm. “I felt so sorry for you, Pete. He let you go so quickly.”
    “We were going down, Jules. I was the first of the rats to jump ship.”
    “You didn’t jump, you were pushed. First Eva—” She hesitated, shook her head. “Then Gigi threw you overboard.”
    “It’s over now. Everybody knew the good money was gone, and nobody else stayed on for long. Billy Bob, Sarge, Tommy O’Sullivan. Every last one of them ran down the ropes.”
    “Not me.” A defiant, sorrowful look in her eyes.
    “No. Not you.” I had to give her that. “Why didn’t you leave, Jules?”
    She extracted a Swiss pinot grigio from the