Sticky Fingers Read Online Free PDF Page A

outside.”
    “She’s staying here for a little while. Tonight we decided to try getting rid of a few dark hairs.”
    “A few? Loretta, in dim light, she’d pass for Uncle Salvatore.”
    Aunt Roberta wasn’t really my aunt, but a cousin of Loretta’s. She was a former nun, known in the family as Sister Bob. Which explained the Dodge Neon—the car all nuns drive, for some reason. For years, she’d worked as some kind of bigwig hospital administrator, but the hospital was sold to a conglomerate and Sister Bob was asked to retire.
    Instead, Sister Bob suddenly turned in her rosary and quit the nun gig. Since then, she moved from family household to family household, and everybody was working on Sister Bob’s appearance. The crazy hope that at sixty-two she might still find happiness as a married housewife burned as brightly as a candle in church.
    I said, “Is she praying for courage in there?”
    “I think so.”
    At that moment, Rooney nosed the back door open and rushed past me. He’d probably been pooping in the neighbor’s yard. Or maybe killing their Chihuahua. In a flurry of slippery paws, the dog skidded to a stop and parked his butt at Loretta’s feet. He fixed her with an adoring stare and dropped a splat of drool on her clean floor.
    “What does the baby boy want?” Loretta cooed, blind to the drool. “He’s such a good puppy! He loves his aunt Loretta, doesn’t he, sweet puppy?”
    A hundred-plus pounds of pit bull, rottweiler, and mastiff mix quivered and whined. The mutual admiration society.
    Loretta stopped stirring the wax long enough to drop Rooney a piece of cookie, which he snatched out of the air the way a frog zaps a fly over a lily pond.
    I reached for a cookie, too, but Loretta slapped my hand away.
    “Not that one! Have an oatmeal raisin.” She pointed down the counter at a collection of misshapen lumps. “Mary Pat Caravello brought those over. Poor thing doesn’t even know oatmeal raisin cookies don’t belong on a cookie table.”
    “Why does Rooney get a cookie and I don’t?”
    “Because you don’t deserve it.”
    “Why the hell not? What have I done?”
    Loretta’s mouth tightened, and for a second I thought she was going to hold back. But with a tart snap in her voice, she said, “I hear you tricked Gino into leaving his girlfriend’s apartment in his underwear.”
    Aha. I’d sensed a certain chilly air in Loretta’s manner from the moment I stepped into the house. She’d given Irene Stossel a welcome kiss, but not me.
    I said, “How’d you hear about that?”
    “Gino’s sister told Mary Pat at the Shop ’n’ Save, who told me last night at the ladies auxiliary meeting.” Loretta fixed me with a stern stare. “Roxy, Gino’s an important man in the neighborhood. What were you thinking?”
    I said, “First of all, he’s married. And second, she wasn’t his girlfriend, Loretta. Gino was banging a fifteen-year-old.”
    “Don’t say things like— Wait. A fifteen-year-old?”
    “Yeah, one of Sage’s friends, in fact. Gino Martinelli is a slimeball, and the rest of the Martinellis ought to throw his ass in the river before he gives away the bride on Saturday.”
    Loretta crossed herself as if she’d just had a whiff of the devil. “Where did you hear such a rumor?”
    “It’s no rumor. I saw the girl myself. Talked to her. Dropped her off at her babysitting job.” I munched the cookie. “She’s fifteen, and Gino is scum.”
    Okay, maybe Kiley Seranelli was one of those oversexed fifteen-year-olds who took the impact of Britney Spears on American culture very seriously. When I’d gone back and dragged her out of Gino Martinelli’s love nest, Kiley had been smoking a postcoital cigarette with the aplomb of Marlene Dietrich. But you can’t blame a fifteen-year-old for fornicating with a middle-aged man. He’s the one who’s supposed to know the difference between right and wrong.
    Loretta took her hand from her mouth. “So it’s true? What you