My Tragic Mafia Life | ✔️

35

Houston slid his hand inside his jacket. "We found something in one of Hugo's pockets when he died."

He handed what was a badly burned note to Luca, the ink nearly faded with some unknown stain. Josephine tried to steady her hands as she caught a glimpse of the words.

He won't find out.

He read the sentence out loud with a stern expression. Camillo stayed silent, alone in his thoughts. Luca flipped the frail piece of paper to see if anything else had been written. When he found nothing, he brought it to his nose and sniffed. "What is that?" He said with wrinkled eyes. "Beer?"

Luca handed the note to Camillo while Beatriz answered. "Rum. The entire thing is covered in it."

Camillo's brow rose as he inspected the note himself. "They were planning on burning it?"

"Tried to," Beatriz said, gesturing to the burnt edges.

"Hugo or the killer?"

"We don't know which one tried to burn it, or why. But it's probably connected to how he died."

"Any fingerprints?"

"All clean."

Camillo took a deep breath and handed the piece of paper back to her. "Beatriz, I know that sometimes I'm a tease, but we're in a bar. Your family's bar that has a lot of alcohol." Josephine looked out at the shelves lining the wall, and the broken bottles crumpled beneath. Was the killer planning on setting the entire building on fire? That would leave Hugo's corpse burnt to a crisp, nearly unrecognizable, but it wouldn't explain his disappearance. Too many holes. With the lights drawled to a luminous glow, the broken glass on the floor flared brightly and flooded the room full of color. Josephine's gaze cut back to Beatriz whose own throat had tightened. "That's highly flammable," Camillo added.

She looked at him the way women did to cut mens' balls. "We've already thought about that."

"So?"

"So anyone could have bought rum. We're not the only bar here in Jubilee Lane."

Camillo narrowed his gaze. "Sure."

"Another thing we found, but this time from the killer," Dante said as he straightened his frame and stepped forwards. This time, Dante was the one who whisked out a tight folder and pulled a large piece of paper hidden inside. It was oddly pink. "They were trying to burn this as well."

Valentina was the closest, so she snatched it away and flipped the paper around. Her eyes scanned nimbly at the written contents. She frowned. "I...no entiendo."

Maybe it was her lack of the English language, so Lucia had decided to take the note for herself. She did a great show of biting her lips and considering the details spared across the pink paper, but Josephine's knack for reading faces was far more than Lucia's height. She couldn't read it either.

Josephine tiptoed nearer, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of what Lucia was so troubled by. Her brother had grabbed a flashlight to shine on the garble. The note was tinted a dullish shade of rose, perhaps faded over a years worth of time that made her brow rise, with a heavy list of jumble with every so often a word would blur and another would be set in dark, lavender ink.

Lucia read some of the more recognizable words out loud. "Love, spirit, benefits, victory..." Her frown deepened. "Is this a love letter or a contract?"

Her brother nodded. "The killer was definitely a guy."

"Or gay," Piped Houston. Isla regarded him in a shrewd manner.