“I’m sorry Pilar couldn’t join us for lunch,” said Betta.
Rick regretted that he’d neglected to tell Betta about the awkward encounter with Pilar in the police station. But did it matter? He would tell her later, and it would be interesting to see how their friend reacted.
DiMaio shrugged. “It’s just as well. We can talk about the case openly.”
It might have seemed like an odd comment to Betta, given how tight Pilar and Alfredo had been just the previous day. Rick was now sure that something was amiss between Alfredo and the comely Spaniard, and from the look on Betta’s face, he suspected that she had an inkling of trouble. They watched the waiter return with the bottle, open it, and fill their glasses. Toasts were exchanged, and they took their first drinks of the dry, red wine.
“Why don’t you tell us about your conversation with the botanical gardens director,” said Rick. “I’m sure Florio figured out the murderer and motive, so we can spend the rest of lunch just enjoying the food.”
DiMaio allowed himself a tiny smile. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly, but he did have a theory involving a kidnapping gone bad. And he decided that the drawing case was found near his office in order to make him a prime suspect and divert attention from the kidnappers who were the real murderers.”
“That must have upset him, being on the suspects list.”
The inspector took another sip of wine. “Upset isn’t the way I would have described him, Betta. It was more like I’d told him he’d be making a cameo appearance in a Montalbano mystery.”
“Do you think—”
“No, Rick. My gut feeling is that there’s no way Florio could have committed this murder. And as he pointed out himself, good detectives go by their gut feelings. What about your meeting with Garcia?”
Until DiMaio’s earlier comment about them being able to talk openly, Rick had been dreading having to recount the conversation with Lucho, but now the pressure was off. He described the encounter, left nothing out, and when he finished the policeman was shaking his head slowly and rubbing his cheek.
“He doesn’t paint a very nice picture of Pilar. What he said just reaffirms that it was a mistake bringing her in on the investigation.”
Betta put her hand on DiMaio’s arm. “It’s not like she planned her father’s murder, Alfredo. She’s just been looking after her own interests. You can’t blame her for that.”
“Riccardo can tell you about the scene with the Spanish consul. It was a very different Pilar, even if the consul deserved what she gave him.”
“She’s under a lot of stress,” Rick said. “And the reality of her father’s death, even if they didn’t get along, is starting to sink in.”
“You may be right, Riccardo.” He stared at his wineglass. “There was one bit of information Garcia gave you that I found curious.”
“What was that?” Betta asked.
“That she comes to Italy often. Several times a year, wasn’t it, Rick?”
“That’s what he said, if we’re to believe him. The last time was when the donation was announced.”
“She didn’t tell me about her frequent trips,” said DiMaio. “Maybe she didn’t want me to know about it, including what she was doing. Or who she was seeing.”
The waiter appeared wheeling to their table a cart topped with a wooden cutting board, a platter, and three plates. The platter got their immediate attention. It was stacked with various grilled items that had just been taken off the flames and now oozed juices and scents. He opened a drawer, pulled out a menacing knife and long fork, and transferred the largest item from the platter to the cutting board: a slab of beef. With quick and sure cuts, he sliced it into pieces of equal size and divided them among the three plates. After sprinkling some salt and drizzling olive oil on the steak, he turned to the other meats. Each plate received a crisp sausage, a chicken thigh, and a cut of pork loin. The colors differed slightly: the sausage was a dark brown, the chicken a lighter tan, the pork almost white, and the beef went from crispy dark on the edge to rosy pink in the center. After setting plates in front of each diner, the waiter wished them a buon appetito and retired. Before picking up their cutlery, they leaned forward and breathed in the aroma of oil and rosemary mixed with the juices.
After a few bites, and more sips of wine, Rick continued the conversation.
“Is there a way you can find out when Pilar was in the country?”
DiMaio speared the sausage with his fork and cut it into three pieces. “The simplest way would be to check her passport, though they don’t always stamp them at the port of entry, especially when it’s a citizen of the European Union. Hotels send in the names of their guests to the local police, but it would take forever to track her down without knowing cities and dates.” He smiled and took a bite of the sausage. “I could just ask her for her passport, but I don’t think she’d be very cooperative.”
More grilled meat and wine was consumed.
“The steak is definitely the top dog on my plate,” said Rick. “Though the chicken is a close second.”
After a discussion of the pros and cons of each, it was Betta’s turn to report on her meeting at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche.
“Vitellozzi was definitely in a more expansive mood. The exhibit was in place to his satisfaction, and he was taking a breather before the ceremonies this evening. Two things I found curious. First, he showed surprise when I mentioned Pilar, saying he didn’t know Somonte’s daughter was here. I’m not sure I believe him, though I don’t know why.”
“A policewoman’s hunch, like Florio told me this morning.”
“Perhaps, Alfredo. It just didn’t ring true, is all. I’m also not sure why it would be important, regardless of whether it’s true or not.”
“What was the other thing?”
She finished her last bit of chicken, leaving a clean bone. “Well, again, it was more the way he said it than anything specific. I asked him if Somonte had the drawing when he’d called on him, and he confirmed that he did. Since the museum hadn’t bid on it when it was up for sale, Vitellozzi hadn’t actually seen it before. But he didn’t take it as a courtesy on the part of Somonte, letting him study it before it went to the museum in Sansepolcro. Instead, he was sure the man wanted to needle him about missing the chance to have it in the museum here.”
“Somonte does not come across as a very simpatico person,” Rick said. “Yesterday morning Morelli said that he did the same thing to him.”
DiMaio had finished his food and picked up his wineglass. “Well, if he was trying to provoke someone, he definitely succeeded.” He looked at the red liquid and put down the glass. “I have to confess that I neglected to ask Florio where he was this morning at the time of the shooting, but I’m having real trouble taking him seriously as a suspect. Did you two check alibis at your meetings?”
“Vitellozzi was at the office, but nobody was there besides him,” said Betta.
“Garcia was wandering around the city by himself while the widow Somonte languished in the hotel spa, so he doesn’t have a strong alibi either.”
DiMaio nodded. “As expected. Morelli will likely be at the galleria tonight, Betta, so you can try to pin down his morning whereabouts then. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get there.”
Another waiter came and took away their empty plates as the first waiter arrived, again pushing the cart. On it this time were three plates filled with salad leaves of different types, but all of them green. Again the drawer opened, and out came a soup spoon and a fork. He poured olive oil into the spoon followed by a dash of vinegar, salt, and pepper, then stirred the spoonful with the fork before adding it to one of the salad plates and gently tossing the greens to give it a slight coating. The process was repeated for the other two plates before he placed a salad first in front of Betta, then the two men. They all took bites.
“Just what we needed after that meat cour
se,” said Betta. “And exactly the right amount of dressing.”
“Like with a good pasta,” DiMaio said. “Just enough to coat it without losing the taste of the greens.” The three pondered this bit of gastronomic wisdom before he changed the subject. “There was something else that came out of my conversation with Florio. It was when he ran his kidnapping theory by me, and I thought about what insurance Somonte might have had on himself. After I left the gardens, I called Pilar and she confirmed that her father had a policy, and his wife was the beneficiary. In fact, Isabella Somonte had insisted that her husband be insured. I would guess not a small sum, either.”
“From the little contact we had with her,” Rick said, “that would seem very much in character.”
“Exactly. No great surprise there. But something else occurred to me, Betta. Could he have had any insurance on the Piero drawing?”
Her fork stopped in midair. “O Dio, why didn’t I think of that?”
“I’m sure you would have, Betta. Your mind’s been on other things.”
“Rick, it should have been one of the first things I checked. Often the thieves contact the insurance company directly and a deal is cut to the advantage of both parties. The artwork is returned, the thieves get paid, and the company is relieved they don’t have to pay the full amount on the policy. Naturally, we don’t approve of such arrangements.” She took a drink, but of water, not wine. “How can I find out what company insured the drawing?”
DiMaio held up his hands defensively. “You’re getting ahead of things, Betta. Pilar didn’t know if her father even had a policy on the drawing, but she said that if he did, it would likely be with the same company he used for the rest of his insurance.” He pulled his small notebook from his pocket and flipped through the pages. He tore one out and passed it to Betta. “Here you are. Seguros Suarez in Madrid.”
She glanced at the paper and stuffed it into her pocket. “We have a woman in the office who deals with insurance companies in these cases. I’ll call her after lunch. Fortunately, she’s a friend and won’t ask me why it took so long to get the name.”
“Come on, Betta, we’ve barely been here two days. And you’ve been busy working various angles to the investigation.” She was sending off signals that Rick had come to recognize from similar situations, when she talked to him about the frustrations of her work. The perfectionist in her was not mollified by assurances from him those times, and it wouldn’t be now. Better to change the subject and get her thinking about something else—preferably something else related to the case. “Have you changed your thoughts about Vitellozzi, after meeting with him a second time?”
It seemed to work. She pondered the question. “There was something he said that, thinking about it now, was very curious. He talked about taking the long view, meaning that he’s surrounded by works of art that have been in the collection for centuries and will still be in it centuries from now. He mentioned some priceless object that had been misfiled in a museum for decades and suddenly found. He implied that what is important is that the drawing turn up eventually, even if it is after we have all left the scene.”
“So that makes you think he has it stashed somewhere,” Rick said. “Why don’t we steal down into the basement tonight when everyone is at the reception?”
“That’s not a bad idea, Rick.”
“I was joking, Betta.”
Betta pushed at the leaves in her salad before spearing one on her fork.
“Did you hear that, Betta?” asked DiMaio. “Riccardo was joking.”
Betta held up an empty fork. “Why don’t you get a search warrant, Alfredo?”
“Based on Vitellozzi telling you that the collection will outlast him, and he hopes the drawing turns up someday? That would get a good laugh from the judge.”
She concentrated her attention on the plate, carefully cutting a slice of lettuce.
* * *
“That explains it,” said Betta after Rick filled her in on the encounter between Pilar and Alfredo at the police station. “Perhaps we were a bit too quick to assume that he would step away from his professional persona to become involved with someone connected to his investigation.”
“He did become involved, Betta, but something soured the relationship. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk about it, but he wasn’t hiding the fact that it’s over between them. We may never know if it was Alfredo or Pilar who caused things to go awry.” A college student passed them, talking loudly on his cell phone. “Betta, you didn’t tell Alfredo about your conversation with Pilar yesterday.”
“Maybe it was just as well I didn’t, given the way he’s feeling about her. It’s not relevant to the investigation.” She stopped in her tracks. “But it may explain something that we couldn’t figure out.”
“What’s that?” he said after returning to her side.
“You remember the slap in the cathedral?”
“It is etched in my memory.”
“Well, Lucho told you this morning that he knew more about what the old man was doing than anyone in the company. Pilar understood that, and pressured him to spy on her father. But there was one secret Lucho may have known that he didn’t pass on to Pilar.”
“The purchase of the summer house.”
“Precisely. She confronts him in the church, and he admits it. Wasn’t ‘inheritance’ one of the words you managed to catch?”
“It was.”
They walked along a narrow street before coming to a familiar corner. All streets in Urbino led to Via Raffaello, or so it seemed. They found themselves back on it and began the descent toward the hotel when Betta decided to call her office. Rick strolled over to the window of a shoe store while she talked on the other side. Like the shoe stores in Rome, or any other city in Italy he’d visited, the men’s and women’s footwear in this establishment were clearly separated. He knew this because he had taken on the habit of the locals while walking around Rome, that of perusing the windows of shoe stores. Somewhere he’d read that the Italian obsession with shoes started with the Etruscans, and, over the millennia, design changed while the love of fine footwear persisted. He found it curious that styles were the same in the capital as in the provincial cities—perhaps they all used the same distributors. This year, for men, the heavy-soled, industrial-looking shoe was in. It would take more than that to get him out of his cowboy boots. Next year, if the pendulum swung back to light loafers, he might be tempted. As he looked, trying to picture who might actually buy these shoes, his thoughts were interrupted by Betta’s voice.
“She’s going to check on it.”
“Check on what?”
“The insurance Somonte might have had on the drawing. But it may take a while since protocol requires that they go through the Spanish police, and who knows what kind of bureaucracy that is.”
“Unlike the streamlined Italian police.”
“Do you make that kind of sarcastic remark around your uncle?”
“No, but he makes them around me all the time. Which reminds me—I should call him.”
She squinted through the glass at the shoes, but Rick could tell that her mind was on other things. “I also talked with the guy I sent the pictures you took at Morelli’s house last night. He promised to check them against the list of missing artifacts. That also might take some time, since Greek amphorae are reported missing all the time. It’s not like checking fingerprints.”
Rick glanced down the street. “Speaking of your friend Morelli, isn’t that him?”
Betta followed his eyes. “It certainly is. And it looks like he just came out of Bruzzone’s art gallery. Why would he be paying a call on Bruzzone?”
“He buys art, Bruzzone sells it. Isn’t that the way it works?” He noticed her scowl. “You’re right—it is a bit curious.”
“Why don’t we drop in at the gallery ourselves? Just to see how Bruzzone is doing
after the attack this morning, of course.” She tugged at Rick’s arm but stopped for a moment and looked back at the rows of shoes. “Who buys those things?”
They walked past the house of Raphael to Bruzzone’s shop, where a bored policeman stood outside smoking. He must have seen Betta and Rick with DiMaio at the commissariato, since he quickly stamped out his cigarette and opened the door for them. They thanked him and entered the shop, which looked as it had earlier that day except the door to the office in back was ajar rather than wide open.
“I’ll be right with you.”
A moment later the door opened and Bruzzone peeked out. For an instant he didn’t recognize them, causing Rick to wonder if the gash on his forehead had affected his faculties. A square white bandage, perhaps larger than it needed to be, covered the wound. Color had returned to his face since the morning, but his body language indicated he was still somewhat in shock.
“Dottoressa Innocenti and Signor Montoya. It is good to see you again, and it gives me the opportunity to thank you. I was in no condition to remember such niceties this morning.”
Betta took his hand in both of hers. “No need for that, Signor Bruzzone. We wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Much better, thank you. Much better. I wish I could offer you some coffee, but I haven’t had time to load my machine.” He smiled. “It isn’t very good coffee, so you are fortunate. Have you heard anything from the inspector regarding…” He raised his hand to his forehead without touching the bandage.
“We know he’s been working hard on various leads,” said Rick, knowing he didn’t sound convincing. “You’re able to get back to your regular routine of work?”
“Oh, yes. The clinic took good care of me and told me to go home, but I had work to do here. Word must have spread around the city about the incident, since several people have called or stopped in to check on me. Cosimo Morelli was just here.”
“Morelli?” said Betta. “The art collector?”
“Yes, he even showed some interest in those miniatures, something I found very strange. It’s not the kind of art he’s ever collected, as far as I know. Maybe he was just trying to make me comfortable after the attempt on my life, although making someone feel comfortable is not in Cosimo’s nature, in my experience. Just the opposite. I think he just wanted to snoop.”
To Die in Tuscany Page 17