Alphonso sat across from Raphielli at breakfast, both were enjoying their pumpkin blintzes and fried apple slices with spiced cider, while they waited for Domina to summon them to the new suite.
To pass the time, he asked, “Raphielli, when did Salvio move you into his mother’s room?”
“The day after her funeral.”
Just then her phone chirped a little Latin tune.
“Is that Domina? Ready to unveil your room?” He was surprised that he felt so enthusiastic, after all, it wasn’t his room.
“Maybe.” She finished chewing a mouthful of food.
“Answer her!” He jumped up from his seat and stood over her.
She playfully pushed him back a step before putting the phone on speaker. “Domina?”
“Chica! Come get settled in your new room!”
They ran down the halls into the east wing and arrived breathless in the anteroom, which had been freshly painted a washed-marine blue. But, the color wasn’t the biggest change to the entry space. A glorious water fountain over nine meters tall flowed in a succession of marble bowls, each large enough to bathe in.
“Surprise!” Domina danced over to them.
Alphonso stared around the space as Raphielli did likewise. The last time he’d seen it, it’d been the same faded non-color as the rest of the house, and there certainly hadn’t been a fountain in it. There were also heavy blue curtains concealing the suite doors.
“You love it. Right?” Domina looked as excited as they were. “We found the plumbing in the floor under a cap, then we found the pieces of the fountain in a storage room at the end of the wing.”
“I didn’t expect you to decorate the anteroom,” Raphielli gushed. “This is marvelous!
“How did you get a flowing fountain…of this size in here?” He drew Raphielli over to inspect it. In the lowest bowl of the fountain were floating white lotuses in shallow glass dishes. He walked slowly around the fountain. “How could this be moved without a crane?”
“My guys do have a crane. They drove it in and out through loading bay doors by the storage room, and the fountain fits together in three pieces.” She clapped her hands. “Are you ready to greet the sun?”
“Sì! Andiamo! Andiamo!”
Domina flung the curtains open to reveal the suite’s doors and then pushed them inward. The sun poured through the enormous windows, and the most beautiful morning view of Venice lay before them. Alphonso looked over at Raphielli and saw tears in her eyes.
Domina was saying, “And here is your bed. I placed it over by the smaller of the two fireplaces. You’ll never want to leave it. The mattress and sheets are the best there is.”
Alphonso pictured lying in that enormous bed with Raphielli, and then he turned around to pay attention. Domina strutted across the vast space with Raphielli in tow, moving past the big desk, chairs, and sofas of the office, then into the sitting room near an oversized fireplace with more sofas. He had to move quickly to keep up with the two women.
Domina led them past the dressing room into a bathroom featuring a big tub, separate shower, bidet beside the toilet, and a reclining salon chair with a sink behind it for shampoos, and another at the foot pedestal for pedicures. “I got you good towels, a dreamy bathrobe, my favorite curly hair products…oh, I went crazy. Now all you have to do is to fill your closet.”
He followed them into the closet, which was larger than his apartment, and Raphielli said, “I’m hoping it’ll fill itself.” Her voice echoed off the walls and mirrors.
Domina glanced at her phone. “Okay, no rest for the wicked. I’ve worked here all night and I have a client who’s going crazy over in Sant’Erasmo. Why can’t every client be like you, chica? Call me when you want to do your dining room. I will make it a showplace, eh? Ti amo, bebe! Ciao, Alphonso!” And she went skittering off in her spiked heels.
In the silence that followed the whirlwind’s departure, Alphonso looked at Raphielli, and they both laughed.
“She should get some sleep. She needs some energy.” He rolled his eyes.
“My suite’s heavenly, but I’ve got to get my head back down to earth and my butt over to work.”
“Come on, then.” He walked her to work and left her at the shelter’s front door with Alexi, then retraced his steps back to the palazzo. Zelph was in Salvio’s office directing the contractor who was installing a door at the entrance of the secret passage. Alphonso scooped up the recently-discovered keys, and together he and Zelph went over to the far side of the palazzo to get a first look at a wing that must have been hundreds of years older than the area of the palazzo that Raphielli was occupying. They took their time and explored section by section. The hours flew by as they wandered great halls filled with musical instruments and props for what looked like an opera.
It was early evening when they met up with Raphielli in the main receiving rooms, and the three headed off to the wing opposite from Salvio’s office where the ballroom and dining room were located. They continued their exploration back by the servant areas that led to rooms that were decorated to impress. Inside an unused prep kitchen Raphielli and Alphonso found a pasta-rolling machine.
“Wanna make some pasta?” She kidded.
“Hey, look at this.” Zelph called as he inspected the corner of some empty pantry shelves where the paint had worn away. He tipped his head and looked underneath a shelf. “Here’s a spring latch.” He depressed it, the door popped open, and a gust of lagoon air wafted over their eager faces. “Want to explore this?”
Raphielli took one look at the thick network of spiderwebs draped within the loading bay, and the steps down to the canal water that were overgrown with sea grass and teeming with crustaceans the size of insects. “Absolutely not!”
They closed the secret door and Alphonso moved on down a hall leading farther behind the dining room. After unlocking more doors and descending some stairs, the trio found themselves standing before two huge doors secured with very old locks.
“They’re so plain. No ornamentation or helpful servant labels,” Raphielli said, sounding unimpressed.
Zelph said, “Now these doors look like they were purposely made to look unimportant.”
“I never thought about the psychology of doors.” Alphonso watched his cousin unlock the first two locks, and use graphite to loosen the third lock. “They’re really big, and painted to look like…”
Raphielli finished, “Janitor’s doors…with so many locks…” Her voice drifted into silence as her eyes swept the colossal access way.
Alphonso looked around. “We’re down to the water level. Maybe it was a loading entrance. It’s big enough to slide a boat in and deliver right here.”
Zelph took instruments with flattened hooks and inserted them in a lock. “They look like they aren’t worth opening. It really makes me want to open them.”
Alphonso and Raphielli worked on their map notes and assisted Zelph occasionally. Finally, Alphonso took close-up photos of the troublesome locks with his phone. “Let’s call it a night. I’m ready for dinner. How ‘bout you two?”
Raphielli kneaded her fists into her lower back and stretched. “Sì, I’m hungry.”
“I’ll check with some experts to find a way in.” Zelph looked dejected as he replaced his tools in his kit. “Sorry, Raphielli. I know it’d be easy to just smash these doors open, but they’re such strange old locks and I don’t want to ruin ‘em.”
“It’s not a race. You two are doing a great job. Let’s have dinner in Salvatore’s library, and you can tell me about the music wing you mapped out earlier today.”
Dinner was just ending, and Giselle sat at the table feeling relaxed. Her thoughts had turned to Immure to Madness when Gabrieli’s voice brought her back to the present. “What is it?” He sounded anxious.
Tiberius entered the dining room from his post in the hall. The Pope’s head of security, Alberto, was with him. Everyone fell silent as Tiberius beckoned to Gabrieli and the Pope, who got up from the
table and went into the hall. The servants were hustled into the dining room, and Alberto closed the door.
Giselle felt uneasy and she looked to Juliette who began twisting the end of her napkin. “I do not like them leaving the room for discussion. We can be trusted.” She nodded to her staff, who hovered with their eyes downcast. “Secrecy increases tension, and no one needs that.”
Giselle tried to give her a reassuring look, but Juliette just sat silent, and no one spoke until Gabrieli and the Pope returned to the table. They looked resigned.
Juliette demanded, “Tell us.”
“A man’s body was just discovered in a tidal outlet at Verdu Mer,” the Pope said. “From the condition, it’s been in the water for some time.”
“Well, mystery solved.” Juliette unfurled her napkin and smoothed it in her lap. “That monster has risen from his watery grave.”
“Once again, part of our construction zone is a crime scene,” Gabrieli said.
“Oh, no.” Giselle felt sick. “As next of kin, Raphielli isn’t going to have to identify his body, is she?”
CHAPTER
7
Hurrying from the coroner’s office, Luigi hunched inside his coat to avoid the blasts of wind and rain that were coming from all directions. It was a frigid bitch-of-a-day, and all of Venice was clattering as ropes smacked against flagpoles and boat masts. He’d just boarded a vaporetto when his phone buzzed in his breast pocket. Leave a message he thought, and climbed aboard a water-bus heading in the direction of police headquarters. His phone had been glued to his ear for nearly twelve hours. He’d given his card to a lot of people in recent investigations, and while the public rarely contacted him to offer assistance, the moment a body surfaced at Verdu Mer, they all found his card and called to pester him with questions. Arriving at headquarters, he went straight to his desk and plugged his phone into the charger. Then he went to Laszlo’s office. The inspector was on the phone, but looked up and put his hand over the receiver. “What do you have?”
“They’re running tests. The body’s pretty ugly. Can’t tell if it’s Scortini.”
“Could it be him?”
“Sure, this body’s consistent with his general description, but he was an average guy and so’s this stiff.”
“Keep on it.” Laszlo waved him off and returned to his call.
Luigi walked down the hall to get a vending machine breakfast: a bag of Pocket Coffee. Then he took his booty back to his office to make calls instead of answering them like he was manning some dial-a-cop hotline. He popped a chocolate bonbon into his mouth and bit down, letting the sugary espresso spread over his tongue. Savoring it, he thumbed through his phone’s contacts until he found Raphielli Scortini’s personal number.
She answered on the first ring. “Detective, how are you?”
“I’m well.” He noticed that she didn’t sound upset. “How are you? How are you recovering?”
“My physical therapy is doing wonders for me, and last week I got the ‘all clear’ from my throat specialist. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to call you personally. I’m sure you’ve heard about the body that surfaced at Verdu Mer last night.”
“Sì.”
He waited but she didn’t continue. “Uh, well, I just came from the coroner’s office, and it’s going to take time to identify the body.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, well, I wonder if you could help me.”
“I’d be happy to. What is it?”
“Did Salvio have any tattoos?”
“Tattoos?”
“Right, tattoos. Did he have any?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t know if your husband had any tattoos?”
“Correct.”
“Uh, I gotta tell you, Raphielli, I find that unusual.”
“Well, Salvio was an unusual man.”
“Are you telling me you never saw…did you ever see your husband’s naked body?”
“No.”
“Wow. Okay. I’m sorry this has turned into such a personal call, here.”
“No, it’s all right. I’ll tell you, he was very…uh, controlling would be the way I’d put it.”
“Controlling? Do you think he was ashamed of his body? Or had some sort of deformity or mark he thought would upset you?”
“Frankly, I never tried to see it from his point of view. He was very private about everything. Secretive.”
“Uh-huh, but, and forgive me for asking…but you two were intimate, weren’t you?”
“Sì.” She cleared her throat and then continued. “But he never let me look at him, and never took his shirt off.”
“I see,” he said, but he didn’t see at all. The more Luigi learned about him, the stranger Salvio Scortini became. He thought about his own wife. She was a bit self-conscious, but he knew every inch of her body.
“Anything else I can help you with, detective?”
“If you don’t mind my saying, Raphielli, you don’t seem half as interested in this water-logged body as the people who’ve been calling me.”
“What people are those?”
“Workers I’ve questioned about Reynaldo and Petro’s murders, and just about anyone with access to my number.”
“I can’t see why they care.” She sounded bemused. “If it’s Salvio, nothing changes. I mean, the police have already officially declared him dead.”
“The department considers him dead,” he corrected her. “Declaring someone legally dead is a job for the courts.”
“Oh, I didn’t know there was a distinction.” She sounded worried.
“Can you think of anything that would help me determine if this body in the morgue is Salvio?”
“He was average height, average weight, dark brown hair.”
“Did he wear rings?”
She didn’t answer right away.
“Raphielli?”
“Sì, he wore a big gold ring with a horse and boat emblem.”
“On which finger?”
“The index finger of his left hand.”
He tried to keep his frustration out of his voice. “Well, it was worth a shot.”
“Did that help?”
“The body’s only got two fingers remaining on the left hand, and the index finger isn’t one of them.”
“Yuck.”
“I agree. Hey, while I’ve got you on the line, I have to ask you... You’re a bright girl. What did you ever see in him?
“You may not believe this, but it was an arranged marriage.”
“Seriously? In this day and age?”
“Sì.”
“That surprises me for a number of reasons.” He didn’t want to be offensive, but he really wanted to know. “Why did you agree to it?”
“I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I was intimidated by my mother and nonna.”
“Not Salvio.”
“Later, when I was his wife, I was intimidated by him, for sure. But it was mostly that I’d never disobeyed my mother.”
“That makes me really sad for you.”
“Well, I survived.” She sounded resigned.
“That you did.” He paused, and then pushed on with a question that popped into his head. “Were your parents wealthy?”
“I don’t know. I grew up in a nice apartment—nothing like a palazzo, just a regular home. My father was well respected, but not flashy. We never traveled or shopped or bought things that I can remember. As for whether my family had much money in the bank, I can’t say. I left when I was very young.”
“Proves you never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you?”
“Even in one’s own family.” Her tone darkened. “That’s particularly true in Venice, I believe.”
Luigi’s phone started vibrating. “All right, I’ve got another call. Good to talk to you, young lady. I hope I didn’t upset you.”
“No, I’m fine.”
Juliette kept her eyes averted as their boat passed newsstands. Seeing headlines bearing that madman’s name brought back her feelings of terror and helplessness from the attack. She reminded herself that Vincenzo had recovered, and instead focused on Giselle, her God-sent daughter. She was such a blessing to the family, providing endless enjoyment for Juliette, so full of life, and love, and bursting with talent. Juliette had felt it the moment she saw Giselle on Vincenzo’s first day of exchange classes in France. Arriving at the school to pick him up, half the school was trailing behind him—he was a curiosity for the country teenagers—and at his side was this confident, leggy blonde girl in jeans talking animatedly with her son in French and Italian. It was the casual way she juggled her books, handed them off to Vincenzo, and dropped into a curtsey before Juliette that touched her heart. She smiled, her green eyes sparkling, as Vincenzo introduced her.
“Mama, this is Giselle Forêt. She volunteered to show me to my classes.”
“Je suis très heureux de vous rencontrer, comtesse,” Giselle said with smooth formality displaying refreshing manners.
Juliette remembered thanking her, and Giselle said candidly, “I’ve never much liked boys, but Vincenzo’s different. Can I keep him?”
Juliette could already sense a closeness between the two that day as Vincenzo offered Giselle a ride home. Vincenzo was boarding at a rectory in the Champagne-Ardennes region as a student of sacred scriptures during his last year of school, and Giselle’s home was on the way to the rectory. During the ride they had spoken easily about school and popular things to do in the area. The driver pulled up the long drive, the tires crunching up white gravel for quite a while. When Juliette saw the Forêt family’s breathtaking château, she understood why the Verona title did not intimidate the girl.
Giselle’s mother invited them to enjoy some sparkling apple cider in a glorious drawing room, and Giselle’s brothers and sister breezed through, respectively bowing and dropping a curtsy. They each lifted a square of coffee cake from a china platter before moving on to ride their horses.
Storming Venice Page 13