“The scenario that I would prefer would be that it turns up a century from now in the archives of some museum. That happened recently in Milan at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. A page from a Leonardo folio was found in the wrong archive, having been misfiled a few hundred years before. The Piero drawing was lost for hundreds of years and miraculously turned up in someone’s attic. It could happen again. And, who knows? This time it might find its way to this museum, where it belongs, among the other works by the master. I will hope for such an outcome, even though I will not be here to see it play out.” He took off his glasses and placed them on the table before folding his arms across his chest.
“Perhaps you can afford to take the long view, Dottor Vitellozzi. In my office we are focused on the here and now.” She stood. “Thank you for your time. And I very much enjoyed seeing this room. I can understand how you would enjoy working in it.” The sound of a car horn blared from the street. “I suppose it’s quieter in the morning. Do you arrive at the office early each day?” If he had been out shooting up Bruzzone’s shop earlier, he might get why she was asking, but she couldn’t figure out any other way.
“I’ve always been an early riser, and so I’m here early every day. It’s the best time of day to get my work done, when no one is knocking on my office door. The rest of the museum staff doesn’t arrive until after nine.” He raised his arm toward the window. “This morning, I was here at about seven, and the view was spectacular.”
Betta took note: he was here, but nobody saw him.
* * *
Rick tried to decide if San Giovanni Battista should be called a small church or a large chapel, but given its designation as an oratorio, it had to be the latter. The barreled wood ceiling was braced by heavy crossbeams that also held strings of spotlights that illuminated the art on the three walls. The left side was mostly bare plaster, covered in places with large fragments of the original frescoes. On the right wall it was a different story: the life of John the Baptist filled every square inch with movement and bright colors. In 1416, the Salimbeni brothers had joined forces to decorate the walls, including the Crucifixion behind the altar. There was so much activity that it was almost too much to take in, and Rick decided that if he came back with Betta, they would concentrate on one panel at a time. Which is what Lucho Garcia had apparently decided to do while waiting for Rick.
He sat on a plastic chair facing the depiction of John baptizing Jesus. In the panel, a crowd of robed and haloed saints knelt on one side of the river watching the two central figures. On the other side stood a group of men dressed incongruously in the elegant clothing of the fifteenth century. John tipped water from a shell over the head of a praying Jesus, and high above was the Almighty, flanked by angels, looking down on it all.
Rick sat down next to Garcia, and they studied the scene for several minutes before the Spaniard broke the silence.
“I would bet my salary that the men on the right were the ones paying the artist. Didn’t they used to do that a lot, Ricardo?”
The use of the first name was surprising, but why not? The informality might help to open the guy up. “The patron of the work was often painted into the picture, Lucho, usually in a pious pose.”
“Nothing has changed. Money still talks in the art world.”
“I hope that wasn’t all you had to tell me, because I knew that already.”
He turned his head toward Rick and grunted. “No, that wasn’t it. I wanted to talk about what is happening, from my point of view. I don’t have anyone I can talk to about it, even if I spoke Italian. And if you share it with the inspector, that’s fine with me…maybe it will help him in the investigation. I don’t have anything to lose or gain at this point.”
He pushed the fingers of his right hand through his long hair before rubbing the back of his neck. “As you can imagine, the death of Manuel Somonte has put me in a somewhat precarious position, if I might understate. When he took me on six years ago it was as a favor to my father, since our families were from the same village outside Oviedo. But he made it clear from the beginning, both to me and to my father, that I would have to earn the right to be kept on the payroll. I didn’t want to let my father down, and I worked hard, so hard that Somonte brought me into the front office. This was not another favor to my father; I deserved it. In return, he taught me the ins and outs of the business but also schooled me in the things he loved outside the office, like his favorite artists and the plants. You could say that he treated me like the son he never had. Everything was going so well.”
He took a slow breath and looked at the baptism on the wall. Rick thought it would be better to let him talk, so he stared with him in silence.
“Now it’s all turned upside down. Pilar will be running the mill, and she doesn’t want to keep me on, even though I have helped her in the past.”
“How did you help her?”
Garcia’s hand returned to the back of his neck, massaging away the stress that showed in his voice. “It was probably a mistake, but when I became her father’s assistant she asked me to…well…keep her informed. She didn’t get along well with him, hadn’t for years, so she wanted someone in the front office to tell her what was going on, what decisions were about to be made, that kind of thing. She knew that he had come to trust me, telling me things that no one else knew. At the time I thought I was just being helpful, so that she didn’t have to deal with her father. Mind you, it’s not that they didn’t ever talk. She was in the weekly meetings of the section heads, but he treated her like one of them. I also justified what I was doing by thinking it was helping the company, but really I was just being a spy. Somonte never knew, of course. When we got the news that he was dead, the only positive thought I had was relief that he would never find out I was spying on him. And that I would not have to do it anymore.” He looked at Rick for the first time. “What a terrible thought, don’t you think? After all the man had done for me, and I felt relief.”
A gray-haired couple entered the chapel and walked to the right side, careful not to block the view of the frescoes for Rick and Garcia. They spoke a Scandinavian language, but Rick didn’t know which. German, he could identify, but anything north of that sounded the same to him.
“I would have thought that helping Pilar would serve you well now, since she will be taking over from her father.”
Garcia chuckled. “Yes, you certainly would think that, but it isn’t turning out that way. Yesterday she tried to change the game, and I refused.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, Ricardo, as you can imagine, her relationship with Isabella, Somonte’s wife, was even more strained than it was with her father. The two women don’t speak to each other, period. And what does Pilar want me to do, now that her father is gone, since she knows that I get along well with Isabella?” He didn’t wait for Rick to answer. “She wants me to tell her what Isabella is doing.”
“But if Pilar inherits the business, what does she care what the widow does?”
“That’s the way Pilar is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she contests the will to get more of the inheritance, just out of spite for Isabella.”
Rick found it curious that Garcia kept using the widow’s first name. Had he called her Isabella when talking to his boss? Very unlikely. What was more curious was the picture he was painting of a scheming Pilar Somonte.
“It also wouldn’t surprise me if she tried to cozy up to the police inspector. It’s the way she operates. She has certainly spent a lot of time in this country, so she knows how to be devious in both cultures.”
The comment piqued Rick’s curiosity. “She comes here often?”
“Two, three times a year. Supposedly on business to make contacts in the fashion world, but who knows what she does. The last time was just after the announcement of the donation to the museum.”
“What are you going to do now, Lucho? I mean, when you re
turn to Spain. From what you said it does not appear that Pilar is going to retain you in the business.”
“Ah, but she may have to. Her father wrote down as little as possible about how the mill runs, but he confided in me. This may be the twenty-first century, but for commerce in northern Spain it’s sometimes still the Middle Ages. I know the secrets about our employees, not to mention suppliers and buyers. Her father wove a web of relationships based on those secrets and I’m the only one who can navigate through it for her. Pilar isn’t happy with the situation, but if she fires me she’ll regret it, and she knows it.”
“When you were spying—to use your term—you didn’t describe this web?”
“I always found ways to avoid passing those details to her. At the time I was trying to be loyal to my employer, but now I think I was just planning for this day and didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“What would you like me to do, Lucho?”
“You’ve already been a great help, just by listening to me rant, but I’m afraid it won’t help find Somonte’s murderer. If there were some way I could help, believe me, I would. He was not a perfect person, by any means, but he was like a second father to me. His killer must be found and punished.”
The best Rick could do to reassure him was to say that Inspector DiMaio was an excellent police officer. Garcia stood and shook Rick’s hand.
“I have to get back. Isabella is having her hair and nails done for the event this evening, and she doesn’t know I’m here.”
Rick suddenly remembered that he was supposed to check alibis for the time of the shooting. How could he do it tactfully? “There is a salon right at the hotel?”
“And a spa. She’s been there since early this morning.”
“Which gives you some time to relax. Have you been able to walk around the city at all?”
“I did, this morning.” He checked his watch. “I really have to go. Thank you for letting me talk to you, Ricardo.”
* * *
The gardens were twenty degrees warmer than on the street, turning a cool day into summer and adding weight to an atmosphere that was already heavy with the rich scent of plants. A trickle of sweat inched its way down DiMaio’s neck and seeped into his collar, but more annoying was that Florio did not seem the least bothered by the humidity. On the contrary, the man thrived in it, happily pointing out every plant they passed by, noting its scientific name. It was like being back in high school Latin class, taught by a priest who taunted the young DiMaio mercilessly when he couldn’t recite his verb tenses correctly. He should have asked the professor to meet him out on the street. Finally, Florio realized that the policeman was not there for a botany lesson.
“But I suppose you are not here for a botany lesson, Inspector.”
DiMaio took out his handkerchief and dried his palms. “No, Professor. What I wanted—”
“Before you get to it, I must tell you that I have another theory about the death of Signor Somonte. It came to me early this morning when I was watering the plants in my office. I always get to work early so I can do it unrushed, being sure that each one is sufficiently moist, except for the cacti, of course, which are on a separate schedule. I was also meeting one of my students, a brilliant young woman from Padova who is writing her thesis on phototropism in the aloe plant. But I am digressing.”
“Yes, you are, Professor.”
Florio gathered his thoughts, and DiMaio waited, none too patiently, hoping this wasn’t another wacky idea from the pages of a murder mystery. He was disappointed.
“I recalled a quandary that Montalbano was in when Fazio insisted that the murdered doctor was the victim of a mafia vendetta. It seemed logical, since the man had recently stopped paying protection money to the leading crime family.”
“Professor, we don’t have any mafia presence here in Urbino.”
“Exactly. Anyway, Montalbano knew something wasn’t right; he could feel it in his bones. Being an experienced policeman, he knew that when something didn’t smell right, there had to be a reason why.”
DiMaio spotted an open sack of fertilizer and tried to breathe through his mouth. “I know how that is.”
“Montalbano decided to go in the opposite direction from where the evidence was pushing him. Forget the mafia; someone was using it to throw him off the real track, which involved an insurance policy. I think that may be the situation in this investigation. Everything here says that Somonte was killed for the drawing, am I right?”
“For the sake of argument, let’s say you are.”
“Well, it could just be a ruse to keep you from focusing on the real motive.”
“Which is?”
“The ransom.”
“Ransom?”
“Absolutely. Somonte was kidnapped, and before they could send a ransom note, he tried to escape and was killed.” Florio held out his hands, palms up, to show how obvious was his conclusion.
“Hmm. Very ingenious, Professor. A botched kidnapping. But before I follow that hypothesis, I must first tie up any loose ends on the one regarding the stolen drawing. Which is the reason I wanted to talk to you.”
A large group of people were trying to squeeze past them on the narrow path between the plants. One of them looked at Florio and stopped. “Do you work here? We’re looking for the place where the body was found.”
“Just around that corner. The Spanish dagger. Very rare, but of course we have an excellent collection of rare plants.” The group shuffled ahead and disappeared around the corner of the path. Florio returned his attention to DiMaio. “It’s astounding how our attendance has shot up since the, uh, incident. I won’t have to worry about my budget for this quarter. It should get the rector off my back. Now, what were you saying, Inspector?”
“We found the case in which Somonte was holding the drawing. It was empty.” He pointed toward the back wall of the gardens. “On the street behind here, in a garbage bin.”
“That’s almost in front of my office.”
“I know. That’s why I’m bringing it up.”
“Do you think I threw it in there after killing Somonte?”
“You didn’t really have an alibi for the time of the murder, Professor.”
A grin spread across Florio’s face. “This is delicious. I am really a suspect in a murder? But tell me, Inspector, would I have tried to hide the case at a place so close to my office? Isn’t it obvious what happened here? Montalbano would have understood in an instant.”
“I’m not Montalbano, Professor. I’m not even Sicilian.”
“It’s clear that someone wanted to keep suspicion far from himself, which was why the body was dumped in my botanical gardens, and the case thrown in a trash can in front of my office.”
“So that you become a prime suspect, and the police are kept far off the trail of the kidnappers.”
“Exactly. It makes perfect sense.”
It made no sense at all to DiMaio, but something Florio had said would need checking. DiMaio tucked the thought into the back of his memory and turned to the priority at the moment: getting himself out of the humidity. A few minutes later he was out on the street in front of the gardens’ entrance near several dozen people who were milling around on the steps waiting to get in. As he breathed in the cleansing fresh air, he spotted the pool under the decorative fountain and walked to it. Cupping his hands, he scooped up the water and splashed his face before drying himself with his handkerchief. He suddenly remembered that he hadn’t asked Florio where he was earlier, at the time of the shooting. It was not important enough to brave the humidity, he decided. Florio was just not a serious suspect, and DiMaio had vowed never to enter the botanical gardens again.
At least there was one idea he got from interviewing the man. He pulled out his cell phone, took a breath, and hit a recently entered number. It was answered on the second ring.
“Ciao, Alfredo.”
Her voice almost made the phone feel cold. “Pilar, I can’t talk very long, but I have a question.”
“Another question? What is it this time?”
“Do you know if your father had an insurance policy on the drawing?”
“Knowing my father, my guess is that he looked into what it would cost and decided he’d take the risk instead. But he always used Seguros Suarez, a company in Madrid. If he had insured the drawing, it would be with them. On the business side, the company was fully covered since he could write it off. Against fire, disaster, that sort of thing, we were, and still are, highly insured.”
“What about life insurance?”
“When my mother was alive, he didn’t have any. Macho Spaniard that he was, he thought he would live forever, I suppose. He also knew his family would inherit the business, so money would not be a problem for us. It all changed when he married that woman. She insisted on it. Is that all you needed to ask me?”
“Yes. That’s very helpful. Thank you.” He quickly hung up.
Chapter Ten
The restaurant reminded Rick of a churrascaria where he had dined when he’d visited his parents in Rio. At the far side of the room, chicken, sausage, and various cuts of meat sizzled over the red embers of a grill, sending out waves of delicious scents. As he sniffed the air he realized that there had to be something primeval about the smell of meat on an open fire. When they were outside the restaurant and about to enter, DiMaio had mentioned that grilled meat was the place’s specialty. Thanks to the aroma, their minds had been made up even before they sat down: it would be mixed grill and salads for all three, no menus needed. The decor of the restaurant complemented the open grill: dark wood beams, barrel vault brick ceilings, and cave-like arched doorways separating the rooms. They grabbed a passing waiter and put in their order, including a Rosso Piceno from a nearby vineyard that was the house wine.
To Die in Tuscany Page 16