Baby Carter by Dina Santorelli

Author:Dina Santorelli [Dina Santorelli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: eLuna Media LLC via Indie Author Project
Published: 2021-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

ToniAnne Cataldi sat on the deck of her backyard listening to the oldies radio station and watching Lorenzo, who had his head under the hood of his ’83 Trans Am. It was amazing how much that man loved his car—besides her, it was the only thing he paid any attention to. And, yet, even with all his constant fiddling, he still hadn’t gotten it to run in years.

ToniAnne had more in common with that damn car than she realized.

She gazed down at the paperwork on the glass table that her real estate agent had given her. She had four offers on her Aunt Mary’s house in Brooklyn, all of them more than what she had asked for and probably ten times more than Uncle Paolo and Aunt Mary had paid for the dump after they got married. She didn’t want to deal with any of it, but, unfortunately, she was the only one left. Everyone else was dead—or batshit crazy.

“Lorenzo, should I pick eenie, meenie, miney, or mo?” she called out.

“What?” Lorenzo called, sticking his head out from under the hood, oil smudged across his face.

She didn’t know why she even bothered asking him anything when he had his head buried in metal. She always had to repeat herself. “Just pick one: eenie, meenie, miney, or mo.”

“Miney, of course,” he said. “Duh.”

“Miney, it is then.” She pushed the papers away from her. “Well, that’s that. What time is it?”

Lorenzo looked at his watch and frowned. He rubbed its face with the back of his hand and looked again. “About a quarter to five.”

ToniAnne watched the news more times in the past week than she had in the past few years. She didn’t expect to see or hear anything earth-shattering—so far there had been no sign of Lorenzo or of her car on any of the coverage of the second assassination attempt, and if Lorenzo knew what was good for him there wouldn’t be any—but her father had said it was important to know everything the cops knew. Therefore, she had to plop herself down and watch those two know-it-all anchor bitches smile their way through the day’s murders, rapes, and thefts.

She reached into her handbag and pulled out one of her burner phones. She typed:

What’s the ETA on the next one?

She waited a few seconds, starting to get impatient, when the phone pinged.

Should have everything in a few days.

Not good enough, she texted. Speed it up.

She put her phone away and stood up. “You coming or what?” she asked.

“In a minute. I just want to finish this.”

“Finish what? That thing hasn’t run in seven years.”

“Just go inside already.” Lorenzo ducked his head back under the hood. “I know what I’m doing.”

ToniAnne slid open the screen door and shut it behind her. She poured herself a glass of red wine and sat on the sofa, pushing aside all the sales orders for her at-home hair salon business, which was more of a hobby than a business, but what the IRS didn’t know wouldn’t hurt it.

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