Limoncello Yellow (Franki Amato Mysteries) (2 page)

The toilet flushed again.

"
I'm coming, Franki!" Stan rushed from the bathroom, fumbling with the buckle on his oversized pants. He drew his gun and aimed it at Petra. "Freeze!
You're under arrest!"

Petra
stopped in mid-spank, leaving my bare bottom directly under the glow of the only light in the dimly lit room.

"
Drop the officer, boy," Stan commanded.

To my chagrin,
Petra promptly did as she was told, and I hit the ground with the full force of my weight on my right knee. I was almost positive that it was either dislocated or broken.             

"
Now lie down on your belly real slow-like, son, and put your hands behind your back," he continued.

I rolled onto my back and clutched my knee.
"She's the female, Stan. Vince is unconscious on the other side of the bed."

He sauntered over to
Petra and squinted at her in the soft light. "Well I'll be damned."

After he cuffed the now astonishingly docile
Deutschländer
and pulled her to her feet, he whistled in amazement. "You're a real nutcracker, aren't ya?"

Despite my loathing for the woman, I rolled my eyes at Stan
's remark. The guy had no filter.

Next, I looked on angrily as he led the placid
Petra out the door to the squad car, carefully protecting her head with his right hand as he helped her into the backseat with the other.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Vince was regaining consciousness across the room. If I could have walked or even crawled to his side, I would have knocked him out again.

Vince sat up and rubbed his jaw where he'd been elbowed. Then he turned to me. "Are you okay, babe?"

I stared at him in disbelief.
"You mean after finding you in bed with a woman who then tried to kill me? Yeah, Vince. Doin' great."

"
I can explain . . ."

"
That's classic," I snapped, turning my head to hide my tears. "Do us both a favor and shut your mouth."

Stan chose that moment to pop his head into the room.
"Uh, Vince, can I talk to you outside for a minute?"

Vince nodded and followed Stan out the door.
I couldn't hear what they were saying because they had lowered their voices, but I would swear that I heard the two of them chuckling at one point. I watched in silent fury as they solidified their male bonding moment over a handshake before Vince got into his car and drove away.

When Stan re-entered the room, he nonchalantly pulled out his report pad and started to write.

I looked up at Stan from my supine position on the floor. "Um, Stan? Do you think maybe you could help me up? Since I'm injured?"

"
Huh? Oh sure, Franki. One sec." He finished writing his sentence and ambled over to me.

Stan put his hands on his hips and looked down at me.
"You looked pretty funny hanging upside down like that over Suzy Schwarzenegger's shoulder. Did you know your butt was showin'?"

"
Yeah, thanks, Stan," I replied through clenched teeth. I was forever on the receiving end of his asinine comments.

"
Sure, Franki. That's what partners are for."

I snorted. Since starting this job, Stan had been about as helpful to me as a ball and chain around my ankle and a noose around my neck. I had watched in frustration as the other rookies from my class flourished under the watchful eyes of their respective partners while I had slowly deteriorated under the disinterested gaze of mine. And when I
'd finally gotten up the nerve to privately request a new partner, I'd been publicly branded as a troublemaker and earned the nickname "Finicky Franki," as though I were a petulant child or, even worse, a cat.

As Stan helped me off the ground
, he let out a loud, greasy fart. "Hooo! That felt goooood."

I closed my eyes—and my nostrils—and promised myself that I would learn how to meditate.

"You know, I've really got to see somebody about my stomach," he reflected to himself for what must have been the hundredth time since I had met him. "I think I might have some kind of problem, but I don't know why. Hell, I'm in the best shape of my life."

Stan confidently patted his spare tire belly as he walked—and I hopped unassisted—to the squad car.

As soon as he climbed into the seat, he emitted three resounding sausage-scented belches. "Ugh, this heartburn is a killer. I feel like Old Faithful's eruptin' in my gut. Hey, could you hand me my antacids? They're in the glove box."

By this time, I knew very well where he kept his antacids, anti-diarrheals
, and anti-gas tablets, all of which I regularly replenished out of my own pocket unbeknownst to Stan. I opened the glove compartment and handed him the box of antacids. Then I rolled down my window for life-sustaining oxygen. He'd already left me to die a violent slamming death. I'd be damned if I was going to let him suffocate me too.

"
You okay, Franki?"

"
I'm fine, Stan."

"
Well, you rolled down your window like you needed some air. You feelin' dizzy?"

Oh indeed I am
, I thought,
but not because you let the Teutonic Titan
spin me around the motel room for half a freakin' hour
. He had absolutely no concept that his bodily functions might present a problem for me, both in terms of my physical safety on calls and my ability to breathe.

We arrived at the station and took
Petra to booking. After she was processed and taken to her cell, Stan turned to me and began his customary end-of-the-shift lecture. "You know, you've really got to pay attention when you're out there on the street. This isn't the first time I've had to come to your rescue."

"
Stan, I—"

"
I mean, I'm not bragging or anything," he interrupted, "but I'm the best of the best. If you can't learn from me, then I don't know if you're gonna make it on the force."

"
Stan, you—"

"
You know I have to write this in my report, Franki. You put me in real danger out there. I had no backup. I could've been killed!"

That did it.
Although I was mostly mad at Vince, Stan was about to find out what it was like when I lost
my
filter. And it's not like he didn't have it coming. "Wait just one minute, Stan. Let me get this straight. I put
you
in danger? Are you freakin' kidding me? You put
me
in danger when you left me alone with the
Deutsch
Destroyer! And this was hardly the first time. I mean, I'm always covering my ass while yours is planted on a toilet seat."

Stan smirked.
"Well, you didn't do such a good job of covering your ass tonight, now did you Franki?"

Now
why
did I have to mention my ass? I'd practically handed it to him on a platter with that remark.

"
And that's the problem," he explained. "You can't protect yourself out there, and you can't be relied on to protect your partner from loonies like Schotsie the Sausagestuffer, either."

"
Petra the Pretzelmaker!"

"
And if you really want to know something, Franki," Stan continued in an offended tone, "I think it's inappropriate for you to discuss my bathroom habits."

"
Me?
" I'd had to endure play-by-play reenactments of the ins and outs of his bowels—make that the outs—on a daily basis since the first day of our partnership. But Stan was too self-absorbed to ever be able to realize that, much less admit it. I could tell that this conversation was going nowhere fast, just like my career. There was nothing more to say.

In that moment I knew it was over—I had to quit the
police force. It wasn't because of Stan's utter lack of self-awareness or mentoring skills. (Although, after suffering through the many misadventures of his entrails, the idea of spending my days—or, in this case, my nights—joined at the hip of a partner had forever lost its appeal.). It was because I was tired of the kinds of people I had to deal with, the unpredictable situations and the humiliations. In the past few month, I'd been accidentally knocked head first into a steaming hot tub by another cop during a hotel fight, punched in the face on Halloween night by a drunken sorority girl who'd assumed I was wearing an "unsexy cop costume," and attacked by a disorderly circus clown's overprotective monkey, just to name a few. And now I had to add "spun and spanked by a
German female wrestler
with anger management issues who was fresh out of bed with my boyfriend"
to the list. The time had definitely come to consider other forms of employment.

* * *

I shoved the crutch that the emergency room doctor had given me into the backseat of my 1965 cherry red Mustang convertible and winced as I climbed gingerly into the front seat. The pain in my sprained knee was intense, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my heart. I reached into my bag for my car keys but pulled out my phone instead. I glanced at the time on the display: 7:30 a.m. If I knew my workaholic best friend Veronica Maggio, she was already toiling away at her new detective agency. I debated waiting to call her until after I'd had some time to sleep on the devastating events of the night shift, but I decided that I'd rest a whole lot easier knowing how she was going to react to my news. So I scrolled through my contacts, tapped her name and held my breath.

"
Private Chicks, Incorporated," Veronica answered, her voice unnaturally clipped and professional. "If you give us the time, we'll solve your crime. What can I help you with?"

I tried to pretend she was next door instead of
five hundred lonely miles away in New Orleans. "Do you always answer the phone that way?"

"
In this economic climate, you have to be aggressive, Franki. You always have to be ready to give your thirty-second elevator pitch. Even when you're answering the phone." Unlike me, Veronica was extremely practical and all business. Though, no one could tell that about her at first glance because she looked and acted a lot like Elle Woods in
Legally Blonde
—petite, blonde, perky and perfectly put together at all times—only she had a cream Pomeranian named Hercules instead of a tan Chihuahua named Bruiser. Veronica was everything I wasn't, and that was putting it mildly.

"
Maybe," I responded. "But I don't know about the 'If you give us the time' part. It makes it sound like it could take you a while to solve a case."

"
It's an expression, Franki. It means that if you hire us, we'll solve your case."

"
I suppose."

There was an awkward pause.

"Is something wrong?" Veronica asked.

I did my utmost to feign surprise.
"Why on earth would you think that?"

"
Because you're doing everything you can to avoid telling me why you called."

"
I called because I've decided to take you up on your offer to join your PI firm. I'm moving to New Orleans."

"
Really? What about Vince? And your job?"

"
Vince and I aren't together anymore." There. I said it. And it had hurt.

"
Do you want to talk about it?"

"
Let's just say that I was in a committed relationship, but he wasn't."

"
I'm sorry, Franki."

"
Me too," I whispered, wiping away tears with the back of my hand.

"
But I really hope you're not leaving your job because of Vince."

"
He's got nothing to do with it," I fibbed. If I told her that I discovered Vince's betrayal thanks to a 911 call, she would never believe that I was leaving the force because it was the right thing to do. "The hard truth is that I'm just not cut out for the police force. I gave my two weeks' notice this morning."

"
Are you kidding? You're a born cop, Franki. I mean, you still need some experience and all, but you come from a Sicilian family, and you grew up in Houston. If you don't know crime, who does?" she joked, trying to raise my spirits.             

"
Verrrry funny. Need I remind you that you're half Sicilian too?" I asked, half-heartedly playing along.

"
Yeah, but I'm also half Swedish, which tempers the Italian-ness considerably. You've got it on both sides, so you're screwed."

"
You're just a laugh a minute, you know that? I tell you what, let's leave ethnicity out of this," I replied, as though I believed that were possible. Veronica and I had bonded as pre-law students at the University of Texas—not over our criminology classes, but over all things Italian: our Italian language courses, our families, endless bottles of Chianti and, of course, Gucci, Prada, Armani and Dolce and Gabbana (in Cosmopolitan and Vogue, that is). "I might have the makings of a good cop, but that doesn't mean I belong on the police force."