Chapter Forty-Seven
Forty-seven
By the time I got back to my loft, Tony and Spike were already there. Blake had let them in. They were sitting at my kitchen table with my assistant, who was toiling away on his laptop as Rosie slept at his feet.
“What’s up?” I said.
Rosie jumped up and greeted me. I don’t know that I was ever happier to see anybody.
“A lot’s up,” Blake said. “And it’s literally just happened within the past ten minutes.”
“Talk to me,” I said. I reached into my purse and pulled out the homemade dog biscuit I’d bought at the convenience store. Rosie sat back on her haunches and put her paws up—a trick I hadn’t seen her do in so long, I’d thought she’d grown out of it. I gave her the biscuit.
“Good girl,” I said as she scurried over to the dog bed with her new treat. “Good girl.”
“Blake found Edward Piro,” Tony said.
It was the only thing he could have said that could have torn me away from my dog. “What?”
“Yo, spoiler alert,” Blake said.
I looked at Blake. “You really found Piro?”
“Took, like, forever,” he said. “I had to use that search engine we pay for. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay,” I said. “Who is he?”
“I mean…I didn’t find out that much, yet. But it’s something.”
Spike said, “Does anybody want coffee? Or whiskey? Whiskey and coffee?” All of us took the third option, except for Blake, who, because of his dietary restrictions, could drink only water after eight p.m.
Spike went into the kitchen.
“You sure it’s the same Edward Piro?” I asked.
“Yes,” Blake said. “He’s on Park Avenue. Same address. I got a phone number for him, too. A landline.”
Spike returned from the kitchen with whiskey and coffees for himself, Tony, and me, as well as a glass of water, without ice, for Blake.
He carried them like the food service professional he was, not spilling a drop.
I was impressed. When I got mine, I took an enormous swallow.
Whiskey and coffee was one of those things you didn’t realize how much you needed until you had it.
“Does he have an arrest record?” I said.
“No,” Blake said.
“That’s surprising,” I said.
“Why?” Spike said.
I explained to the three of them why I wanted information on him in the first place, starting with my first sighting of the Porsche—and how it had disappeared after the murder.
“I remember that car,” Spike said. “When you and Melanie Joan were talking to Leila, I kept thinking about how out of place it was next to that house. What type of person Book Babe had to be to lavish all her money on that one showy car.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t hers,” I said. “And once I was able to find out who the car was registered to, things took a turn…”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning somehow Piro learned that I’d found him out, put a tracker on my car, and started harassing me.”
“God,” Tony said. “And I thought my job was stressful.”
“Did you see him?” Blake said.
“That’s a tricky question.”
“What do you mean?” Tony said.
“I saw him once in silhouette, and then a second time, he came up behind me and held a gun on me, but I never got a look at his face.”
“Jesus,” Spike said.
“I know,” I said. “It’s been quite a day.”
“Okay, well, in that case, I don’t think the guy who stalked you was Edward Piro from Park Avenue,” Blake said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because Edward Piro from Park Avenue is ninety-two years old.”
I stared at him. “Really?”
“Teddy Piro, on the other hand…”
“Wait, what? There’s a Teddy and an Edward?”
“You gave me the name Teddy to look up after I’d found Edward.
” Blake tapped at the laptop. “I couldn’t find much on him.
Just a really shitty LinkedIn profile. But just now, I decided to look up both names together, and this came up.
” He turned the laptop to me. On the screen was an obituary in the archives of the Albany Times Union for Sergio Piro—a local banker who had died at the age of eighty-five in 1995.
“That’s Edward’s dad,” Blake said. “Look at the last paragraph.”
I read it. He is survived by his son, financier Edward Piro; former daughters-in-law Beatrice, Linda, and Rayanne; and grandchildren, Donna Withers (and husband, Troy), Samantha Smythe (and husband, Bradley), Danielle Piro (and husband, Brian Langford), and Edward “Teddy” Piro Jr.
“Teddy is Edward’s only son,” I said. “And his youngest.”
“Yeah,” Blake said. “Probably spoiled. Classic bad apple.”
“And what do we think his connection is to Leila Donnelly?” Tony said.
“Well, for one thing, Leila’s mother told me that when Leila was in her early twenties, she moved out of her house and stayed with some rich friend of hers in New York that she met at a Star Trek convention,” I said. “His name was Teddy.”
“Aha,” Tony said. “He’s an incel. He was probably stalking Leila because she rejected him. Maybe he saw how famous she’d gotten and decided they belonged together.”
“We probably shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I said. “It could be a coincidence that the Trekkie’s name was Teddy.”
“That’s right,” Blake said. “We never assume.”
“Is there a way to figure out if Star Trek Teddy is Teddy Piro?” Tony asked.
I thought about what Mimi had said about him. The burglary in the Hamptons. “Did you look for arrest records?” I asked Blake.
“I couldn’t find any.”
“You looked up Edward and Teddy both?” Spike said.
“Yep.”
I nodded. “But juvenile records are sealed.”
“Huh?”
“Can I borrow your laptop?”
“Sure.”
I took the laptop from Blake and went to the website of The Southampton Press.
I clicked on the archives. If Teddy Piro was around Leila Donnelly’s age, he would have been seventeen in 2012, but I needed to account for the possibility that he was a few years older or younger than her.
As Blake, Tony, and Spike discussed the best way to look for more info on Teddy, I searched the terms “burglary,” “juvenile,” and, just for the hell of it, “Piro.”
Several articles popped up, most all of them with “Piro” missing. But when I got to the year 2010, I hit paydirt—a whole series of articles about a burglary that took place in July of that year, in which more than $35,000 in jewelry, cash, and electronics had been stolen:
The seventeen-year-old suspect—whose name is being withheld due to his age—is the son of prominent financier Edward Piro, who maintains a summer home down the road from the burglarized residence.
“Maybe we should just contact Edward Piro and ask if his son knew Leila,” Tony was saying.
“Parents don’t always know everything about their kids,” Blake said.
“And they don’t always tell the truth, either,” Spike said.
Tony conceded that it might not be a great idea to call Edward Piro, and they moved on to Melanie Joan’s bail hearing, which was slated to take place the following morning.
“We should go. She needs supporters there,” Spike said. “What do you think, Sunny?”
I couldn’t respond. Couldn’t open my mouth to speak.
I’d just gotten to the final article in the series about the Piro robbery, in which several residents expressed dismay over the fact that the seventeen-year-old had gotten off with just probation.
It’s all about privilege, said one of these Southampton residents, who was no doubt extremely privileged.
But that wasn’t the part of the story that was making my heart pound.
It was the final quote in the piece: I think [the boy] has learned his lesson, it read.
Money isn’t everything. The Piros are good neighbors, and it’s time we all moved on.
It had come from the owner of the burglarized home, famed publisher Gloria Scepter.