MC shook her head, drained her hot chocolate. “I don’t think so. I feel like I’ve hit the wall here. I’m getting too old for the dating scene.”
“I managed to skip that scene,” I said. I spread my arms wide, as if to encompass an absent Matt Gennaro. “And look at me.”
“I hope I do as well,” MC said.
I did, too.
One other concern had been crowding my thoughts, and as much as I didn’t want to worry MC, I decided I couldn’t let it go.
“Have you thought about what Jake’s murder means to you, MC? I mean in terms of your own safety?”
She nodded. “I sure have. When Nina Martin was murdered, I thought maybe she was the one they, whoever they are, were after all along. Now, Jake. Either it’s over, or …”
I was torn—should I try to put her mind at ease or keep her alert? Should I protect her from any notions of danger? MC was an adult, I reminded myself, not the little girl I waited for at a gate in San Francisco International Airport every summer.
“It’s probably over,” I said. “But please be careful until we have Jake’s murderer.”
“You’re still working on it, right?”
“I certainly am. Just be careful, okay?”
MC gave me a hug. “You already said that. I love you, Aunt G.”
“And I love you.” And woe to him who hurts you, I thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I turned onto Fernwood Avenue from Broadway, passing the former site of a favorite high schoolers’ pizza parlor, now a professional building. I could almost hear the parade of Italian-American crooners that we all loved, coming from the small jukeboxes attached to the wall of each red booth. Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Julius La Rosa, and Jerry Vale, nee Vitaliano.
We’d walk down School Street, picking up classmates along the way, singing “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” “There’s No Tomorrow,” “Love and Marriage,” “Pretend You Don’t See Her,” as if we understood the words. As if any of our hearts had been broken, or our dreams crushed, as they would be later in life—when Connie would lose a twelve-year-old daughter in a diving accident and Olga’s husband would be fired from his job and commit suicide.
I wondered what songs Alysse and Petey, Jean’s children, listened to and what their dreams were.
Not that anyone has a choice, but I was content with my age, with not being part of the dating scene that MC loathed to re-enter, not needing to worry about career advancement or any other issues of the young.
I know Matt agreed. One time his nephew Petey, the philosophical one in the Mottolo family, asked Matt if he wished he were still a kid.
“Not if I’d have to see the Ice Capades again,” Matt had replied.
As if to confirm my feelings of domestic satisfaction, I opened the door to the aroma of steaming New England clam chowder.
“I thought I was supposed to cook for you?” I said, ninety-nine percent sure all he’d done was heat up a pot that Rose had brought over.
He smiled and wiped his brow. “The hardest part was traipsing the beach in my hip boots digging for the clams.”
The same Matt. No ill effects from the radiation treatment he’d had that morning. So far, so good.
“Seems I missed a lot,” I said. “Witnesses saw Wayne Gallen and Jake Powers in a bar fight, threatening each other?”
Matt nodded. “I don’t suppose you’d want to look at the report?”
I smiled, shed my jacket, and walked to the coffee table where Matt’s papers were spread out. I picked out the ones headed POLICE REPORT—STATEMENT. I’d seen a number of these reports in my consultant work, but I’d never before paid attention to the check-off squares at the upper left where there were options for the type of report: CRIM., INCID., COMPL., INSUR., DOMES. VIOL.
I wondered if MC would feel better or worse if she knew that domestic violence was so common that it had its own line on police forms. It made me feel worse.
Statements taken at the scene weren’t as easy to read as formally typed transcripts, but I made my way through the handwriting of Officer Benjamin R. Di Palma.
The narrative told the story of two white males, later identified as Jake Powers and Wayne Gallen, both similar build, one dark coloring, the other redhead with a “barbershop mustache,” the witness had called it. They’d started to argue in the One A Bar, I read, then had taken it outside to the parking lot, where many patrons formed a ring around them and watched. Two witnesses claimed there were more verbal hits than physical; a third said the opposite.
I sighed. “Do men still really do this? It’s not just in old western movies?”