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

fridge. “It never occurred to me. I had everything I wanted. Almost.” She sat and sank her gaze into the past.
    I twisted the cork out and filled our glasses. “What happened after I left?”
    She took a while to surface, then raised her eyes again to mine. “Things got very nasty, very quickly. The investors were desperate to get something back.” Her face darkened. “Anything at all.”
    “The shares?” I sampled the wine. Not bad.
    “Worth nothing.” She closed her eyes. “They all had them, worthless pieces of paper they were desperate to sell back to him. He’d made so many promises, Pete, but there was nothing left. And he felt so badly about it all. He even sold the house in Sicily so he could give them three or four cents on the dollar.”
    “Better than nothing.”
    She shook her head. “We couldn’t even pay the rent.” She was staring down tunnels bored through time to an underground vault where Gigi Goldoni was alive and well, cracking jokes and hawking shares. “But he never gave up. You could knock him down a hundred times, he would always bounce back on his feet.”
    “That’s true. It was amazing. I saw him in Milan couple weeks ago. Had some brand new deal in the works.”
    A long sigh. “He was sure it would save us.”
    “The Arabs? Same old story?”
    “Arabs? A bitter laugh. “There were never any Arabs.”
    “But he made it seem so real, Jules. We were all true believers in Arab money.”
    She reached for her glass, took a sip and set it down. “It wasn’t the Arabs, but if the deal had gone through—“ Her voice trailed off.
    She was staring out the window into the trees. She surfaced again and busied herself with the chicken and the salad, cut the bread and set it on the table. She sat and we ate and talked about England for a while. She would go back soon, she said, for a visit.
    I said I'd thought about going home after Eva died. 
    “Where’s home, Pete?”
    “Good question,” I said. “I grew up in L.A.”
    “Yes. I think you told me that once,” she said. “Is there nothing left for you there?”
    I shrugged. “Nobody I know. No family. No friends.” 
    She smiled, absently, waiting for the conversation to work its way around to Gigi again. I cleared the table. She washed. I watched. When we were done I walked her down the hall to the living room. She sank into the sofa and closed her eyes.
    “What did Gigi do when you ran out of cash?”
    She opened her eyes. “What he always did, Pete. He took risks.”
    I followed her gaze to the window. “A gambler at heart.”
    “And I loved him for that. He was reckless. In everything.”
    “The casinos?”
    She bit her lip, nodded.
    “How much did he lose?”
    “Everything we had left.”
    “And then what? Somebody help him out?”
    Another slow nod. “Gave him enough to cover his losses. And paid the bills.”
    “Who?”
    She shook  her head.
    I pushed on. “What sort of bills?”
    “Rent, phones, whatever it took to keep the business going.”
    “What business was that, Jules?”
    A flash of anger ripped through her face, leaving it flushed and blotchy. “Whatever his benefactor wanted. And please stop pretending you don’t already know. It’s insulting.”
    “No offense, Jules, but what do I know? Tell me.”
    A passing thought jerked her mouth into a grimace. “We had no choice but to do what he said.”
    “To do what who said?”
    The look in her eyes grew harder, colder. “He’s a terrible, terrible man.”
    Her eyes lost their focus.
    “Gigi promised me a future. A treasure house full of diamonds and gold where the two of us would live happily ever after. All he needed—” A wave rolled in. She let it pass, took a breath, swallowed and went on. “All we needed was a little more time.”
    I had nothing to add.
    “I have to go soon, Pete. Would you like some coffee?” She pushed herself to her feet and wobbled off down the hall.
    I hauled myself up out of the sofa and followed her to