Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(131)

Oh, whatever. He tore off the tape.

Kitchen stuff. An espresso pot, cups, pots and pans. Ceramic salt and pepper shakers that he had played with as a kid. A shepherd and a shepherdess. The shepherd’s crook and the flowers on the shepherdess’s bonnet had been broken off. His fault. A pasta strainer. Plates. He rummaged to the bottom, making sure there was no place the box could be hiding.

Everything he touched made memories swirl up through his body. He tried to freeze them, hold them back, but the plastic plates, the juice glasses with Woody Woodpecker and Wile E. Coyote, the coffee cup Mamma had favored, all made his throat ache. The breakfasts with her. Cinnamon toast and cereal. Scrambled eggs. Teasing, laughter.

Next came her clothes. Just as bad. That sweater, that blouse, that nightgown. Light, pouring into a room in his mind that had lain undisturbed for eighteen years. He remembered every piece. He didn’t know his own current wardrobe as well as he remembered hers.

He held her purple nightgown to his face and breathed in for the scent of her perfume, but it was long gone. Just mildew now.

“It was those trashy men she took up with.” Grandma Pina blurted out the words as if they were under pressure, like she’d been waiting eighteen years for someone to bitch to. “They were the ruin of her. Starting with your father and downhill from there.”

That sparked his curiosity. “Did you know him? Who was he?”

She harrumphed. “He was out of her life before you even started to show. So many things she gave up for you. All her prospects.”

Bruno grabbed another box. Photo albums. He opened one. His baby pictures. Mamma holding a miniature Bruno, looking gorgeous and happy. He fogged right up. Closed the album, fast. Not now.

He felt around with his leaky eyes closed to make sure nothing of jewelry box dimensions could be hidden there. Nothing.

“I told her.” Grandma Pina’s voice quavered with anger. “I can’t remember how many times I told her that Rudy was dangerous trash, but she wouldn’t listen. Stupid girl. She deserved what she got.”

Something in his voice made her step back. “Don’t threaten me.”

“Don’t bad-mouth my mamma. If you want to stay while I look through these boxes, fine. Just keep your mouth shut.”

He looked away. Let her glare and twitch if she wanted.

He powered through the boxes, hope fading with each one. By the time he got to the last one, hope was gone. It was a catchall. Books, magazines, miscellany. Items he couldn’t imagine why his grandmother had packed. Even a few of his old action figures. Rudy’s little brass pipe, of all things, the one he’d used for smoking hash and crack. Envelopes, magazine subscriptions, utility bills, past-due notices. Stuff from collection agencies, threatening messages stamped in red. He felt the cardboard bottom. No jewelry box.

He couldn’t start sobbing in front of Grandma Pina, but oh, God, he’d been hoping so hard for a break. “This is it?” The question was redundant, but it burst out of him anyway.

“Everything. Maybe your box got thrown away with the trash.”

He tried not to flinch. “You would have packed it if you’d seen it,” he said. “It was clear that it wasn’t garbage.”

“Then it was stolen by your no-good neighbors. Or Rudy. He probably pawned it for drugs.”

“Maybe.” He sat for a moment in a state of absolute despair. He wanted to sink down, become one with the chilly concrete. Just a dark grease spot. But desperation jerked him into action again. He leaned over that last box, rifling through it. There had to be something. Some clue, some opening. He yanked out the mail. Bills, credit card offers. Letters from the school guidance counselor about his bad attitude.

Then his eye snagged on a thick envelope, which was not addressed to Magdalena Ranieri but to Anthony Ranieri. He peered at it in the dim light. It was from the county coroner’s office. “What’s this?”

Grandma Pina squinted over her glasses. “Oh, that. The coroner’s report of your mother’s autopsy. Tony called them and requested one.”

“He did?” His voice cracked a little. “Why?”

Pina flapped her hand. “Some silly notion of wanting a record of every mark they left on her. So he’d know what to do to the people who killed her. You know how he carried on. So violent. But then he and that mentally deficient sister of his ended up running off back to Portland with you before the report even came back. They had some absurd idea that you were in danger. Ridiculous, both of them.”

Yeah.” Bruno thought of Rudy and his switchblade. “Ridiculous.”

“So, in the end, I had to deal with that.” She pointed at the envelope with a martyred air. “When I was trying so hard to forget.”

“I don’t know,” Bruno said, staring at the envelope. “Looks like you did OK. With the forgetting part, I mean.”

She drew herself up. “I was devastated! My only child!”

“Yeah, yeah. So broken up, you never even opened it.”

“How could I?” Tears trembled in her eyes. “How could I bear it?”

He could see where Mamma had gotten her flair for dramatics, but that was all she’d gotten, thank God. The flair, but not the content.

He ripped the envelope open, pulled out the sheaf of paper. He wasn’t sure why. But it seemed disrespectfult t Ranieri that this official catalog of her death wounds should go ignored for eighteen years. No one had cared enough to open the envelope.