Free The Spia Family Presses On by Mary Leo Page A

pocket he held it between his fingers or it dangled from the corner of his mouth. He was trying to cut back on his tobacco addiction, so he only lit up twice a day, but the habit of playing with a cigar was too imbedded in his psyche to abandon.
    “Somebody shot Dickey?” Aunt Hetty’s voice rang through the barn. She walked up to us with Valerie, an overly fit redhead, mid-fifties, piercing green eyes, and an old scar that ran along her otherwise delicate jawbone. Valerie liked to say she got the scar in an old biker accident, but we all knew her first husband gave it to her one night during a battle over the correct way to prepare shrimp. Now Valerie was married to Uncle Ray, a man who had an unnatural aversion to anything that lived in water.
    Aunt Hetty nudged Uncle Ray to the side, giving him one of her hard looks. He moved out of her way. “Is the horny devil dead, or do we have to call an ambulance? The son of a . . . probably doesn’t have any insurance and we’ll get stuck with the bill. Well, you can bet that I won’t be making any contributions. I’m done with this devil.”
    No one said a word as she walked up to Dickey, crossed her arms in tight under her breasts, leaned in closer and said, “He looks dead to me. Ha! Finally you guys did something right. Dirty bastage should’a been knocked off years ago.” She stood up again, turned toward me and I noticed her moist eyes.
    What was that all about?
    Val said, “Babe can finally be free of the cheating, murdering louse.”
    “I’ve been free of the louse for a long time, doll. I don’t need nobody to kill him on my account.” Babe’s husky voice rose from the shadows. “Especially not tonight.”
    “Where the hell is Jimmy? That kid never could take orders,” Uncle Ray groused.
    “Give it a rest, Ray. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.” She peered down at Dickey. “I was kind of hoping he’d stick around for awhile for old time’s sake.” She struck a pose — one hip cocked, fluffed the bottom of her golden curls with her hand — then she spoke to Dickey. “Too bad it had to end this way, big guy. I was just gettin’ in the mood.”
    In the mood for what, I wondered.
    She turned and strolled away from the group, heels clicking on the tile in a slow rhythm that kept the men silently yearning until the sound of her shoes faded into the still night.
    This was getting interesting.
    Then Maryann, with her ample body and curly auburn-colored hair, steel-blue eyes and a sardonic outlook on life, showed up and made everyone guilty for our general lack of respect for the dead. She told us the story of how Dickey had paid for her accordion lessons when her own family didn’t believe the accordion could do “diddly squat” for a heroin addiction. “The accordion saved my life,” she said all teary eyed. “Dickey even wrote me letters of accordion encouragement from prison. He was good to me, and you people should respect that.”
    Uncle Benny lit up his stogy.
    “We should call Angelo Conti over at Conti’s funeral parlor,” Aunt Hetty said. “They do a nice job on a body, even one with a bullet hole in its head. I bet if we slipped Angelo a couple extra grand he wouldn’t say nothing about that bullet hole to the cops. Times are tough these days in the funeral business. People are going eco friendly and cremating their loved ones or burying them in biodegradable coffins they buy at Wal-Mart. Not much of a profit in a biodegradable coffin.”
    “We’re not calling Angelo Conti,” Uncle Ray declared. “This is a family matter. The Contis aren’t family. Can’t trust ‘em.”
    “Let’s just call the police,” I said, finally ready for this to be over with. Of course, there was one minor thing I had to do before they arrived . . . remove my mom’s handgun from the futso. I justified this little act of felony with the absolute certainty that she had nothing to do with his murder and would only put the police on the wrong