A murder mystery part 3

Not even 30 hours after calling this situation in to my boss and the morgue, I received a call to inform me that the server’s death was caused by a brain aneurism that exploded while he was in the walk in. What does that mean? He had a brain aneurism that reacted to the severe cold in the freezer and it exploded; that’s what caused his brain to malfunction and his inability to open the door. The manner of death was that he was frozen due to the aneurism causing the inability to move despite still having brain function.

I called my friend in the Health Inspection Department to set up an appointment later in the day with him. After getting off the phone with him, I call my brother to let him know so he’s at the restaurant for the appointment.

The day flies by with cleaning my and Vince’s apartment and then running to the restaurant to organize the place and get paperwork printed out and ready. I have the previous invoices of what my brother has in both walk ins plus new invoices of what will be shipped over once he’s got the green light from the Health Inspection Department.

Since we’re still early, I ask my brother’s second in command to prep the heavy duty cleaners with the supplies I’ve brought over; including the heavy duty rubber gloves, long rubbery plastic apron and the face mask – which kinda looks like a dust/allergy mask but it’s specialized to work with these heavy chemicals.

Just before he starts opening the containers, my friend from the Health Inspection Department comes in. We catch up for a few minutes as we wait for my brother and Vince to come on over. As I explain what happened, I show him the crime scene pics I took plus the pics that the CSI team too, as well as the sketch I did of the crime scene. My friend was happy with my thoroughness and he said that whenever I was ready, I could get started with the cleaning.

At this point, he didn’t realize I was pregnant so I explained that I talked to my brother’s second in command and he was able to start. My friend said that I could let him know to start once Vince, my friend and I left.

While he started in the corner, other staff members started throwing things out from both walk ins to be thrown out. It was a shame to waste all that food but with the health codes, we have to follow the rules and provide the best for our customers. My friend from the Health Inspection Department found Vince and me in the dining area with some paperwork for me to sign off to say that we tossed the contaminated food, bought more, cleaned and followed the laws in order to reopen the restaurant. Vince was looking over my shoulder as I was signing and reading everything quickly. He was surprised how fast I was reading and signing off on the paperwork.

“Babe. Aren’t you going to read everything before you sign everything? It’s like you’re signing your life away!!”

“Didn’t you know that I’m an attorney as well?”

“Um, no.
“Hmmmm. Thought I told you. Guess I didn’t, then!”

“Ok, so you’re the assistant chief of police, freelance employee of the FD, own and run a new business, help your brother out monetarily when he needs it AND you’re a lawyer? When the fuck do you have time to sleep?”

“You know I’m NOT leaving the PD anytime soon, I temporarily left the FD, I own the business but my former coworker is stepping in to help maintain it and make sure that my rules are being followed, my brother goes to my accountant with a list and if what he’s looking for is under a certain limit, he’s fine but if he requests more funds than that limit, the accountant reaches me to double check even though 95% of the time I ok it and yes; I’m an attorney, I have a current license to practice the law but I’m not representing anyone nor do I chose to.”

“Is that something that the Don wanted you to do? Go to law school?”

“He wanted me to earn a doctorate in Criminal Justice and I did but once we realized how well I was doing with classes and my ability to finish the classes before the semester was half way over, I asked his permission to go to Columbia Law School and he did; he also paid for it. When I completed law school and sat for the bar exam, I followed his consigliere as I waited for my results.”

“What’s a consigliere? Or do I not want to know?”

“It’s a lawyer meets counselor. Like if the Don wants to do something, I would advise him of what the outcomes would be and suggest something else. It got to the point where he’d come to me in regards of turning his family activities into legal practices instead of illegal things.”

“Speaking of the Don and the cardinal…..how are they doing?”

“Well, the cardinal retired and is now getting used to normal clothes. The Don has disbanded the family and the ones who remained breaking the law are now in prison and the ones that were now legal, turned themselves in; some earned some time and others didn’t due to their lack of activity in the family.”

“I know you said something about his personal money after he disbanded the family. What happens to it?”

“Little goes to his wife’s estate for upkeep, just enough to pay for college for his children; they’d have to work to earn an income during college, a good portion goes to charity and the rest goes to me.”

“How much goes to you?”

“35% goes to me, 50% goes to charity, 5% to the wife’s estate  and the remaining 10% goes to the kids’ college funds. Although he misses his wife but glad she’s no longer suffering, he still wants her vacant family home to be maintained and turned into some type of a learning center like a museum or an education after school program that tutors kids and provides meals to the kids year round….the planning board said that if it’s going to be an educational after school program, part of the charity will also send home food to those kids’ families that need the food. The board also wants it to be opened year round so the kids will have a safe place to go to and have positive role models and have access to food!”