Murder by Magic by Rosemary Edghill Read Free Book Online Page A

dead. Don’t that tell you something?”
    “She’s been unlucky.”
    “Her
husbands
have been unlucky. All three of them. So I’ll lay odds that number four is gonna be real unlucky, too.”
    “It’s not her fault, Vito.”
    “No, but being married to her is so unlucky it crosses over into dumb.”
    Her first husband got hit just because he was having dinner with Big Bobby Gambone at Buon Appetito the night Little Jackie Bernini decided to kill Bobby and didn’t feel too particular about who else he sprayed with his Uzi. That was the start of the first Gambone-Bernini war. Well, a beautiful woman like that couldn’t stay widowed forever. So three years later, during the second Gambone-Bernini war, she married a hit man from Las Vegas who the Gambones brought into town to teach the Berninis a lesson. But then the Berninis brought in their own hit man from Boise to deal with him, and ain’t
nobody
tougher than those Boise guys. So the Widow was widowed again. Then, maybe because she was tired of marrying Gambones who got whacked out, the Widow shocked everyone by marrying Bernini Butera, who was everybody’s favorite pick to head the Bernini family next—until Joey clipped him last year. That hit pretty much ended the third Gambone-Bernini war. But from the way the Widow Butera was glaring at Joey across Skinny Vinny Vitelli’s grave now, it didn’t look like she had forgiven Joey for stuffing her third husband into a cement mixer in New Jersey.
    “What’d she say when you asked her to marry you?” I asked Joey.
    “She told me she’d rather fry in hell.” He shrugged. “She’ll come round.”
    I shook my head. “Joey, Joey, Joey . . .”
    He gave a friendly little wave to the Widow Butera. She hissed at him. The priest, Father Michael, smiled vaguely at her and said, “Amen.”
    So, to take Joey’s mind off the Widow, I said, “Anyhow, like I was saying before, it’s a funny thing.”
    “What’s a funny thing?”
    “About Vinny.”
    “No, no,” Connie Vitelli was saying into her cell phone as she shook Father Michael’s hand, “the condo’s got to have an ocean view, or no deal. Understand?”
    “Funny?” Joey said. “Oh! You mean about the vest, right?”
    “Yeah.” I shook my head when Father Michael gestured to me to throw some dirt onto the coffin. Hey, I didn’t kill Vinny, so no way was I doing the work of deep-sixing him. Not my problem, after all. “Why’d Vinny take off that vest for the first time in five years? It ain’t like him. He was a religious bastard.”
    “I think you mean superstitious.” Joey’s an educated guy. Almost read a book once.
    “Okay, superstitious. Vinny always thought he’d get killed if he ever took that thing off. And, sure enough, look what happened. So why’d he take it off? It don’t make sense.”
    “You mean you didn’t hear, Vito?”
    “Hear what?”
    Connie was shouting into her cell phone. “Speak up! Are you driving through a tunnel or something? I’m getting tons of static!”
    Vinny’s daughter, now twenty-two years old and reputedly still a virgin, stepped up to the grave, made a face at her father’s coffin, and then spit on it.
    “Poor Vinny,” said Father Michael, who looked like he’d taken a fistful of Prozac before coming here. “He will be missed.”
    “Not by anybody I ever met,” muttered Joey.
    I said to Joey, “What is it that I didn’t hear?”
    “Oh! The strange thing is, Vito, Vinny was still wearing his vest when they found his body.”
    “Huh? So how’d four slugs wind up in his chest?”
    Joey shrugged. “It’s a mystery. No holes in the vest. No marks at all, like it was never even hit. But as for Vinny’s chest . . .” Joey grimaced.
    While I thought about this, Connie Vitelli said, “But how big is the master bathroom?”
    “So, Joey, you’re saying that someone clipped Vinny, then put that vest back on him? For what? A joke?”
    Joey shook his head. “That vest never came off him,