Last Dance, Last Chance

she had been poisoned. She had known since two days after her admission to the hospital, but she was as baffled as anyone else about the source. They asked her again if she used any pesticides or gardening products, and all she could remember was Miracle-Gro fertilizer. “Last year, we had an ant problem,” she said, “and Anthony sprayed the house.”
    “Have you eaten in any restaurants recently?” Finnerty asked.
    “About three weeks before I went to the hospital,” she said, “we stopped on Route 5, but I can’t recall the name of the restaurant. But I was sick before that—I was so weak that I had to have help walking, and Anthony had to cut up my food for me. I’d started having the tingling in my arms and legs a few days before we ate there.”
    Debbie told them that she and her husband had been having marital problems earlier in the year, but she didn’t elaborate beyond saying she had asked him to move out in February. She said she let him come back later in early summer, but she couldn’t remember which month. Her memory was coming back in some areas, but she still had some difficulty putting events of the last few months in sequence.
    Debbie was frank with them about taking too many Xanax in February, but she said that as soon as she took them, she called a friend for help. “I didn’t want to hurt myself—I just was trying to relax and go to sleep. I was so tired.”
    She said they’d been having a difficult time financially. Her husband couldn’t find a job he felt was suitable for him. “The only income we had was my salary from the pediatrician’s office, so we were living on our savings, with help from Anthony’s mother.”
    There were any number of things Debbie did not tell the two investigators, things they would find out later: She didn’t mention the checks that Anthony wrote for “cash” almost every day—checks for $100. She hadn’t known where that money was going, but she had an idea. Anthony seemed drowsy all the time. She wasn’t ready to get into that whole discussion—not yet.
    Debbie was pleasant enough to the two detectives from the Erie County D.A.’s office, but then they hadn’t pressed her about whom she might suspect.
    Later that day, Debbie called Chuck Craven and said she had told her husband that he and Finnerty had come to see her. “He wanted to know what I told you,” she said, “and I told him only what I wanted you to know.”
    Craven wasn’t sure what she meant by that. While Debbie had given them no information that would make her husband seem guilty of harming her, she might be unconsciously giving them a hint.
    Anthony was loudly espousing his own suspect. The revenge theory became his cry. He wanted Dan Smith located and investigated. He was convinced, he said, that Dan had poisoned Debbie—and that he might even be behind all the vandalism around their house that spring. Somebody was clearly out to get his whole family.
    Frank Sedita had kept track of Dan Smith, mostly because he admired his strength in adversity and wanted to be sure that Dan was doing all right. He learned that Dan had left the Buffalo area after Sarah died.
    But shortly after Debbie became critically ill, Frank phoned Dan in the Midwest town where he currently lived. He wanted him to know that Tony Pignataro was a suspect in another medically connected crime. “This time it’s his wife,” Sedita said.
    *  *  *
    Chuck Craven learned that Debbie had asked to have her children tested to be sure they were safe. On August 27, he and Pat Finnerty found Anthony Pignataro at Children’s Hospital. He explained that he was having his children admitted because the arsenic in their system was elevated.
    He had come there with both grandmothers, Lena Pignataro and Caroline Rago, and was standing by to be sure his children were safe. He seemed anxious to get them home.
    Later, Frank Sedita talked to the pediatric toxicologist working in the Poison Control Center. That doctor commented that Anthony was concerned when Ralph and Lauren had to stay in the hospital for further tests—but only because he wanted to be sure Ralph could play in a football game that Saturday.
    Craven and Finnerty made an appointment to talk with Anthony the next day. He said he would meet with them at Buffalo Mercy Hospital.
    The three men met in an office in the hospital, where Anthony was visiting Debbie. Asked about any chemicals that they might have in their home, Anthony said that they had