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“Where are you?”
“At Mercedes’ place.”
“I’ll take a look and swing by after I finish.”
“You don’t…”
It was too late. Elvira had already hung up. Carlita waved her phone in the air. “Elvira is going to check.”
“Let’s head out to the alley. I could use a smoke,” Vinnie said.
“I could use one too.”
Carlita wagged her finger at her middle son. “I thought you quit.”
“Semi quit, unless I’m stressed,” Tony said.
“This’ll do it,” Mercedes said. “If I smoked, I would want a cigarette too.”
“No one else in this family is taking up smoking,” Carlita scolded.
The group exited the apartment single file and gathered in the alley. While the brothers lit up, Carlita wandered around in circles. Pete called the manager of his pirate ship to let him know a family emergency had come up and he needed someone to host the evening’s outing.
Mercedes plopped down on the stoop. Sam rounded the corner and came to a full stop. “Vinnie. I didn’t know you were coming into town.”
“Neither did I until last night.”
Sam looked around. “Something tells me this isn’t a happy reunion.”
“It’s a family crisis,” Mercedes said.
“Involving…”
“All of us at this point,” Pete said.
“Pops owed a lot of money to an unscrupulous lender for a property over on Morton Street,” Mercedes replied.
“Morton Street,” Sam repeated. “That’s not the best area of town.”
“And the property isn’t in the best of condition. If you ask me, it probably needs to be torn down,” Carlita said. “The lender sent his associates to collect. They were supposed to meet with us this morning and never showed.”
“Ma and I found the body of one of them a couple of hours ago inside the property.” Vinnie flicked his cigarette butt and ground it out with the bottom of his shoe.
“Are the Savannah authorities involved?” Sam asked.
“Yeah. The lead investigator is a man named Ellery.”
“Charles Ellery?”
“We didn’t catch his first name,” Vinnie said. “Why?”
“A few of my buddies down at the station have mentioned him. He’s ruthless.”
“Great,” Carlita groaned. “All we need is a ruthless investigator breathing down our necks.”
Sam cast Mercedes a side glance. “At the risk of butting in, would you like me to see if I can get a little info on the investigation?”
Mercedes motioned to her mother.