By Book or by Crook: Solving Crimes with My Nephew, Sherlock

By Tony Vellela

"An excellent read, fun, confounding, and even appetizing, thanks to the heroic culinary artistry of Nora Berry, proprietor of the campus caf/bookshop 'Leaves of Grass,' and amateur sleuth."-Joni Pacie, author of Murder by the Mob

Nora Berry's sleepy little college town woke up with a start when Santa was found belly up with a hypodermic needle spiked in his arm. Nora's young nephew, Chief Detective Michael Valenti, is new to the job but not to the town and he already had his hands full with a student's death that possessed curious implications. Were these fatalities actually murders? Meanwhile, this pristine town is suddenly overwhelmed by a synthetic drug problem that is also wreaking havoc in the university community. But it isn't until a beautiful co-ed winds up strangled in a room over the music store that things start falling into place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 6, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595750481

Tony Vellela

Tony Vellela is an award-winning playwright, television writer and journalist. His play Admissions (Playscripts) was the winner of the Excellence in Playwriting Award at New York's International Fringe Festival. Vellela?s Test of Time won a Cable ACE Award for Lifetime Television. He has also written five other plays, three musicals, two books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper features.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The late November chill rushes through Nora’s Persian lamb coat, and tinges her ears, exposed under the rim of the matching black hat. She hurries up the long flight of wooden steps at the rear of the building. Why would Pete be late, she wonders.

The round-faced, sleepy-eyed young man always seems ready to smile, she recalls. He is a frequent visitor to Nora’s combined coffee bar and bookstore, Leaves of Grass, almost a second home since he dropped out of college to chase after his musical ambitions. Others who know more than she does about pop music believe he has real talent.

Many of Nora’s regulars at Leaves of Grass look forward to those Friday evenings when Pete and his band settle in for a night of playing music, putting their particular stamp on songs at the top of the charts, and trying out a few of their own, original numbers. These sessions are about the music. Nora never worries that they will erupt into a disorderly brawl or a drunken ruckus. She opens the back room to them for free, her way of supporting their efforts.

When the soft-spoken bass guitarist unselfishly volunteered a few weeks ago to play Santa Claus at the annual Christmas party for the town’s poor children, a project she organizes each year, Nora was delighted—for the children, and for Pete. Struggling to make your way in the creative world, with or without a college education, can test anyone’s will, Nora understood, and she believed the experience would give back to Pete as much joy as he would be providing.

And this afternoon, half a mile away, thirty-one eager, charged-up little girls and boys, all scrubbed, combed and powdered, are singing another round of carols, waiting expectantly for the North Pole elf to welcome them up onto his lap, and grant their secret gift wish. While the St. Mary’s Church Choir keeps things moving along briskly, Nora reaches the top of the stairs, trying to locate the missing Pete.

And there, in the bathroom, is the good-hearted nineteen-year-old. His borrowed Santa outfit in a heap in the corner, red hat lying carelessly on his bare chest, he is on the floor, three feet from the toilet. His cherubic, round, sweet youthful face is sucked in, chiseled in agony. Sweat has matted the curly brown ringlets above his forehead. His eyes are closed.

And in the bruised crease below the red bandana used to tie off his arm, a hypodermic needle stands up straight and rigid, blood backed up into its tube. On the floor next to him, a small empty glassine envelope lies next to a stained tablespoon with a charred underside. A crumpled napkin from Denny’s, a blue Bic lighter, the Santa wig and beard, are at his side.

Santa has OD’d. Pete is dead.

For the next few staggering moments, Nora’s mind races back in time, to early September, leading to this discovery that will so drastically change her life, and the lives of those close to her. Her recollections tumble through the days and the events that brought her here, now, standing over this spine-chilling, deadly sight.

CHAPTER 1

Don’t touch me. Don’t you come near me. Don’t even think about it. Did you hear me? Her voice seems to lack the conviction he is closely listening for. I said ‘Did you hear me?’ she repeats, louder.

I heard you. But that don’t mean I believe you. His voice bellows with determination. And you know it! Now, get over here!

missing image file

She is silent for a moment. He catches her uncertain gaze, which propels her to speak again. Don’t you try to…don’t you try to… She hesitates, looks up, then resumes. What is this word, Danny. The printing is so light.

’Intimidate,’ Nora. It’s ‘intimidate.’ He sighs, puts down the script, removes his black-rimmed glasses, and returns to his coffee mug.

Oh. I see it now. Would she use a word like intimidate? In that situation, I mean? The three young women who had been lingering so long over cappuccinos at the corner table finally stand up, pay their bill, and leave. Nora handles the exchange with a smile, making certain that Danny knows she is still paying attention.

I thought she would, Danny replies, hesitantly. I mean, she’s a junior in college, after all. You don’t think so? This willingness to abandon his beliefs registers with her, unfavorably.

Don’t let me talk you out of something. This is your play. I only thought that, since she is under a lot of, well, stress here, wouldn’t you say?…she might not be so.articulate. By the way, how did I sound, the old lady reading the part of a co-ed? Hearing no immediate response, Nora flashes the smile, her nurturer-seeking-compliment smile. Co-ed?

Pardon me. A word from the Dark Ages. A college girl? She directs an older man in a vest to the shelf containing used archeology texts.

Oh, you were great. I have to laugh when you try to make yourself sound like some old bag lady or something. You run rings around all of us. Danny riffles four fingers through his curly hair, then picks off an errant red strand that lands on the script’s title page. Maybe she would be a little verbally out of control, come to think of it.

Nora nods an approving ‘yes.’ Danny jots a few words in the margin of his script, tucks it into his weary Army green knapsack, and heads toward the cafe door. Thanks. I’ll do some more work on that scene. He shuffles out, and heads to his advanced composition class.

September always means beginnings to Nora, and as she locks up the cafe for the night, her mind wanders back to those expectant mornings when she was seven, eight, nine and ten, skipping to the neighborhood school five blocks from her childhood home. It is still her home. She walked to the cafe this morning, and decides to walk home, instead of catching the last bus. The Town Council cut public transit funds three years ago, leaving those without cars unable to get to the downtown district at night. Even so, twenty blocks should not be that far for someone sixty-one years old, she affirms in her head. Choosing to leave the car at home from time to time convinces her that she still has plenty of vitality left. Operating a used book store and coffee bar near the college, which she named Leaves of Grass, helps keep her young, something she vowed to do after her husband died. Weeknights she closes at seven. Wandering along the broken sidewalks under still-green birches, maples and sycamores so familiar on every block of this Pennsylvania town, she sees herself fifty-odd years ago, hauling her plaid bookbag over to Sylvia Torelli’s house across the street. Once they’d both finished supper, they could do their homework together on her friend’s big front porch. They spent all their young years at Franklin Elementary, jumping rope during recess in the schoolyard, coming home for lunch. All five neighborhood elementary schools had long since been closed, replaced by a unified large new structure placed across the street from the expanded junior-senior high school. Most of the children now need a school bus or a parent’s car to get there. Sylvia, now Sylvia McNally, and a grandmother seven times over, still lives across the street. She is, however, still Sylvia Torelli to Nora.

*     *     *     *

He gets in the car, hauls ass down the driveway and around the block. She takes a lawn chair from inside the garage, puts it up in the driveway, sits. He comes back, barrel-asses right into the driveway, and runs her over. Balls, right? Even the seasoned veteran cops thought this was worthy of special note. She alive? Hospital. Guarded.

missing image file

The chatter stops when the Chief of Detectives comes in and closes the door. He looks like he could play the lead in a college production of Romeo and Juliet. Michael Valenti waits a minute until the assembled force settles down. He nods that he’s ready to begin, plants his hands palms-down on the desk behind him, hoists himself up to sit on its top, and knocks over someone’s half-filled coffee cup. He can read their thoughts: Attaboy, Sherlock! you’re the youngest Chief of Detectives in the city’s history, but damn if you’re not still as clumsy as you were in seventh grade. Nobody mentions the coffee.

First off, I want you all to know that I’m not planning any great changes in procedure now that I’ve been named Chief. No one makes eye contact with him, waiting for some reaction.

There is none.

Yet. A slight smile crosses his face, which prompts a few groans and some laughter.

*     *     *     *

Your radar's down again.

Leonardo Valenti stops dead in his tracks. What? WHAT!?

Thinking she was being helpful, the broadcasting intern, assigned to the local television station from the university, pulls her head back, shrugs her shoulders, and points to the computer console at the other end of the newsroom. The blue light is off. Which means the signal is not coming through.

It’s nearly four-thirty, and the station needs a weather update for its five o’clock lead-in to their double block of ‘Friends’ reruns. Leo throws his jacket on the desk chair, wheels it out of the way, and stands, hunched over, in front of the vacant screen. The dull gray glass reflects his deep scowl, a full sheath of thick black curls topping his appealing young face. The scowl grows darker than the curls. Running his fingers in various combinations over the key pad does not produce results. Kicking the leg of the desk does not produce results. Cursing does not produce results. He needs results.

*     *     *     *

It always seemed like such a big place when Nora was a child. Her child's-eye view of the old homestead was correct. Four stories, fifteen rooms, four porches, an open-air deck, a wide driveway leading to a two-car garage with an apartment above, a garden the size of half a tennis court, and a rolling green yard big enough to host fifty—seven people at last year's Valenti family reunion. Macintosh apple, Queen Anne cherry and Bartlett pear trees bracket the property, and smaller peach and plum trees line the driveway from the street. Ginny's flower patch, crammed with puffy mums, seven sisters roses, pink and white impatiens and a dusting of violets, hugs the side of the house during their appointed blooming periods each spring and summer. This revolving burst of color has brought pleasure to the family since Nora’s brother married Ginny and set up housekeeping upstairs. Donato was the oldest of the Valentis, and when he died nine years ago, and Sherlock took over the upstairs, Ginny and Nora settled into a comfortable sharing of the downstairs half of the house. Ginny was much younger than her husband, and chose to stay close to his family after his death rather than start another marriage. She and Nora give and take, bicker and laugh, withhold and confide, more like sisters than sisters-in-law. Nora cooks; Ginny cleans. It’s tidy, and it works for both of them.

Tonight, Nora heats up the rest of the eggplant parmesan she made on Sunday, tosses together some red leaf lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, escarole and plum tomatoes from the garden, baptizes it with her homemade garlic and basil dressing, and listens to Ginny complain about the spoiled students who needlessly sought her help today as the school district’s nurse practitioner.

«I’m getting headaches almost every day now,» Ginny whined on, sprinkling more hot pepper flakes onto her plate. «They drive me nuts. Nuts.»

«I wish you’d see a doctor about it,» Nora admonishes, not for the first time.

«Nora, I am almost a doctor myself.»

«Well, ‘almost a doctor,’ all I can say is ‘almost a doctor, heal thyself!’» They exchange half-smiles, as Nora pulls two napkins from the drawer and places them on the table.

«These kids don’t know what they’ve got in life. They turn everything into a complaint,» she continues.

«They’re only kids, Ginny. To them, their problems are very real.»

«To them? Well, to me, their problems are, are…what? I don’t even know the word. Stupid. Yes. Stupid.»

Nora turns her head toward the back door just as Sherlock hurries in. «Hey, how are you two?» he says.

Ginny makes a ‘not-great, not-terrible’ face.

«Good. You?» Nora responds to her nephew.

«Hungry. But in a hurry,» he answers quickly.

«Here or take-out?»

«Take-out,» he laments. «I have to sort through files for that drug store robbery on Poplar Street.»

«Hennessey’s Pharmacy?»

He nods ‘yes.’ «You know it?»

«I went to school with the man who opened it up. George Hennessey. I think his two sons run it now.»

He nods ‘yes’ again. Nora scoops out some eggplant and salad onto a dinner plate, adds a sesame roll, and passes it off to him as he smiles his appreciation. He’s out the door and up the stairs before she can serve herself another portion.

«Just how dangerous is that job of his?» Ginny wipes marinara sauce from her chin and returns the napkin to her lap.

«You know something? I don’t know the answer to that. But,» Nora continues, «he’s been dreaming about this job since he was a kid. You remember how he…oh. Maybe it was before you started seeing Donato.»

«I met your brother in 1977. He was still doing construction.»

«That’s right. Well, it was about then. Maybe you would remember. Michael used to come home after school and watch the Dialing for Dollars movies on television. Four o’clock. And any time they had a mystery movie, or a police story, or something with crimes in it, you couldn’t budge him from the set.» Nora points unconsciously into the living room, where the old Philco used to sit, imprisoned in a mammoth mahogany cabinet that overwhelmed the room.

«I remember that old set,» Ginny laughs. «It used to belong to your parents. Everybody treated it like it was an antique solid gold Cadillac.»

Nora emits a chuckle at the remark. «That is so true! Well, that’s when Michael’s mother started calling him ‘Sherlock.’ It goes back to then.»

«So you don’t know if it’s dangerous, Chief of Detectives?» Ginny asks again.

«This is not such a big town, Edensburg. How dangerous can it be?»

CHAPTER 2

Kelly’s easy laughter fills Leaves of Grass. Nora looks around the cafe and sees how the place is filling up, for the Friday night music session in the back room. And she sees how confident Kelly seems to be, a confidence Nora wishes she’d had when she was twenty-four. Nora had always been a clever, exemplary wife and mother and sister and daughter and teacher and cousin and neighbor and friend. But it was not, curiously, until after her husband died, and her kids were grown and gone, that she came into her own, a new identity emerging during her middle years. Kelly squeezes in next to Nora behind the counter and rings open the register, dropping in a ten and a five.

That crew in the corner used to be in my advanced organic chem class, she points out, sliding the register drawer shut. I’m the only one who made it through both semesters.

You’ve got what it takes, kid, Nora jokes. Some day, you’ll be a world famous…what? What do you become with all that?

Research scientist. President of a multinational corporation that has laboratories in every country on earth. Something.at the top of the top! But in the meantime, I’m the best manager you ever had. She plants a quick peck on Nora’s cheek and heads out to another table to take their orders. Kelly now feels like a niece, their friendship growing

since the young woman began working at the cafe more than a year ago.

The loud slamming of the cafe door, letting in a hint of autumn air, cuts through the room sharply. Roberto stalks past the tables, through the bookshelves and straight into the back, whacking every available surface with his drumsticks along the way. Pete, still outside, on the receiving end of the slammed door, slowly opens it and creeps in. He doesn’t acknowledge every eye scanning his entrance. Arms wrapped around his worn black guitar case to compensate for its broken strap, his large, lumbering body wrapped in a thin raincoat, Pete hugs the wall and follows Roberto’s path to the large area behind the velvet curtains Nora loans out to the pick-up band for their music sessions. It brings in student business, and so far, they’ve never caused her any trouble. The slammed door concerns her.

missing image file

What’s the matter? Do you know? Nora asks Kelly. Both college students, she and Roberto live near each other. Although Pete dropped out of school, to pursue his music full-time, he maintains a strong connection to Leaves of Grass, especially through the Friday night gigs, and through Danny, his roommate. Kelly shakes her head from side to side, then walks to the back to find out.

*     *     *     *

We're being surrounded by aliens! Leo declares, as his cameraman pans the swelling mass of three-foot-tall bodies milling around the Edensburg Courthouse Square. Mixed in with the green-faced creatures are assorted princesses, superheroes, cowboys and barnyard animals, each one clutching orange and black Trick or Treat bags in one tight little fist, and an adult hand in the other. One zealous mom has turned her wary daughter into a fully-decorated Christmas tree, complete with lights.

As the station's ‘second' weatherman, Leo is also expected to cover those human interest feature stories the news reporters consider too ‘soft' to be identified with. Halloween Night on the Square is one of those rituals. He is familiar enough with the event, having attended it from birth through twelve, each year capping off the downtown ceremony with stops at the homes of relatives and friends eager to shower the Valenti brothers with homemade candies, cookies and loose change. Leo spent several Halloween nights in hand-me-down costumes originally worn by his older brother, but pulled back from wearing the Sherlock Holmes outfit their mother fashioned for Michael when he was nine, and stuck with for the next three Octobers. She could never figure out how to comply with Leo's request, to go dressed as a hurricane.

*     *     *     *

Kelly comes back to the register. Pete says it's nothing. They had a fight about what to play tonight.

Nora looks doubtful. Pete never exhibits any sign of aggression, one of his many endearing qualities. What do you think?

"Roberto does have a stubborn