Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Bellucci’s Smashed Potatoes & Bloody Gravy
Aries • Russet Idaho • Classic Beef Gravy • Trespassing
“Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Numbers 32:23
Italian: “La verità viene sempre a galla.”
The truth always rises to the surface.
Five-Card Tarot Spread
The Situation: The TowerThe Hidden Enemy: Seven of SwordsThe Warning: The MoonThe Action: Queen of WandsThe Outcome: Justice
The first warning came in a pan of smashed potatoes.
Not a letter.
Not a phone call.
Not some shadow man leaning against a black car under a streetlight.
A pan of potatoes.
Russet Idaho, skin-on, smashed flat like somebody had taken a grudge to them with the bottom of a cast-iron skillet. They sat on the front steps of the Bellucci mansion on Saint Charles Avenue, steaming under the morning fog, drowning in dark beef gravy so red it looked wrong.
Valeri saw it first.
She had come down the servant stairs from the attic with her tarot deck in one hand and her coffee in the other, barefoot, hair wild, already annoyed at the day before the day had earned it.
Vinny Bellucci was behind her, buttoning his shirt, quiet in that Capricorn way that meant his mind was already counting exits, names, cars, debts, and sins.
Valeri stopped at the door.
“Vinny.”
He looked past her.
The silver pan sat dead center on the porch like an offering.
The gravy had run over the sides and dripped onto the old stone step.
Beside it was a little wooden flag stuck into the potatoes.
12 POTATOES.
12 GRAVIES.
12 SUSPECTS.
1 KILLER.
Vinny’s face changed.
Not fear.
Worse.
Recognition.
Valeri stepped closer, but Vinny caught her wrist.
“Don’t touch it.”
She looked at him. “It’s potatoes.”
“No,” he said. “It’s trespassing.”
The Garden District was waking up pretty. Too pretty. The kind of pretty New Orleans used when she was hiding rot behind iron balconies and blooming jasmine. Streetcars groaned on the tracks. Oaks stretched over Saint Charles like old judges. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked once and quit, like even he knew better.
Valeri pulled one card from the deck.
The Tower.
She stared at it.
Vinny stared at the gravy.
On the little flag, below the printed words, someone had written one more line in red ink.
The books were cooked before the gravy was poured.
Valeri looked up slowly.
“That’s not about food.”
Vinny’s jaw tightened. “No.”
From the street, a black sedan rolled past too slow.
Neither of them waved.
Neither of them blinked.
The pan of potatoes kept steaming.
And somewhere inside Bellucci’s brand-new smashed potato business, inside the comfort food, the catering orders, the family meetings, and the smiling customers asking for extra gravy, somebody had just turned breakfast into a crime scene.
Valeri whispered, “Who knows about the books?”
Vinny looked toward the street.
“Everybody wants to know about the books.”
The first chapter of the mystery had arrived hot.
And it smelled like beef gravy, blood, and betrayal.
Prayer
Lord, reveal what is hidden before it poisons what is innocent. Protect this house, expose the liar, and give us eyes sharp enough to see the truth beneath the gravy. Amen.
