Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [45]
“Ah, Mrs. Tomaso,” LaRue said, kissing her on both cheeks. “You’re looking lovely this evening.”
“Go on,” she said. “There was a time when I was beautiful, back in Italy. Too many years ago to remember.”
“You’re like fine wine,” he said, “getting better with age.”
“Come, sit,” she said, leading him to what had become his regular table, a small one with two green vinyl-covered chairs beneath a fading mural of an Italian seaside town, identity unknown.
“Vino?” she asked.
“Yes, a glass of house red. And some breadsticks, if you don’t mind.”
Breadsticks and wine in front of him, he opened that day’s Washington Tribune to the Metro section and read Joe Wilcox’s article—for the second time. When Mrs. Tomaso reappeared to take his order, she noticed what he was reading and said, “Animals! Serial killers! No such thing ever happen in Italia. Only here in America. Washington is the worst. Murders every night, two, three, sometimes four.”
His laugh came out soft and comforting, as it was meant to be. “This is a lovely city,” he said, “no worse than others.”
“In the daytime maybe,” she said. Then, she leaned closer to him. “At night, everything changes. Am I right?”
“I suppose it does,” he said, folding the newspaper and setting it on the green linoleum floor next to his chair. “Do you know what I’ve always thought?” he asked.
“What?”
“I’ve always thought that if you’re looking for a serial killer, you should first look at those men who drive the ice cream trucks through neighborhoods.”
“Why?”
“They have to spend all day listening to those dreadful tunes that play, over and over—’London Bridges Falling Down,’ ‘Happy Birthday’—.” He sang: “With a knick-knack, paddy-whack, give the dog a bone, this old man came rolling home.”
A schoolgirl giggle came from her.
“Even I would become a serial killer if I had to listen to that all day, every day,” he said, waving off the menu she held. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“Of course you are,” she said, “and I stand here talking too much.”
“And I sit here singing silly songs,” he said. “Lasagna?”
“Joey made it fresh today.”
He smiled at her calling her sixty-year-old overweight husband “Joey.” The name might have fit forty years ago when he was a swarthy young Italian stud seducing his bride-to-be, but those days were long gone, for both of them.
“Lasagna it will be,” he said, “and a simple green salad with your wonderful house dressing.”
“Garlic bread?”
“Not tonight.”
“You see a young lady tonight, huh?”
“You never know,” he replied with a mischievous grin.
Besides that day’s newspaper, he’d brought a book with him, which he read while eating. He finished his meal with a cup of cappuccino, paid in cash, kissed Mrs. Tomaso on both cheeks, bade her husband a pleasant night, and went to his apartment on the ground floor of an elegant, six-story brick building that had once been someone’s stately home.
His apartment was at the rear of the building; windows in the small bedroom overlooked a compact brick patio and a garden that needed tending. There was an old-fashioned look to the apartment; it was slightly tattered and in need of fresh paint, but impressively neat. The furniture was nondescript but useful, function trumping form. A corner of the living room, with windows facing the street that ran along the side of the building, was devoted to a work area consisting of a hollow core door supported by two short, putty-colored metal file cabinets, a large cork bulletin board, and a small folding table providing an additional work surface. A portable electric typewriter sat on the desk, along with a desk calendar, pens, pencils, and scissors in matching coffee cups, a telephone, halogen desk lamp, and a stack of books neatly piled with the larger ones on the bottom, creating a pyramid. The room’s white walls were virtually void of art or photographs, with the exception of three replicas of old theater posters displayed side-by-side, but not benefiting from having been hung with care. A relatively new TV set and VCR sat on a cabinet on which its previous