To Die in Tuscany

by David P. Wagner

  “This was my chance to have a better life, since I knew that at my age I couldn’t hope to get to the top.” She looked at the cup, as if about to take another drink of water, but instead she went on. “Ettore had told me about his client list, and the kind of art they would buy, and it seemed like a perfect scheme. Nobody has a larger ego than an art collector, Inspector. They try to give the impression it is all about beauty, but it’s really about prestige.” She took another sip of the water. “We were both sure the local collector would buy it. What’s his name?”

  “Morelli.”

  “Yes, of course, Cosimo Morelli. If he’d bought it, none of this would have happened. No one would ever have known. Even the old lady in Monterchi conveniently died, so that part of the operation was sealed. Instead, that damned foreigner outbid Morelli. At the time I thought it was even better—the drawing would be off in another country. But then he decided to come back and donate it to the museum in Sansepolcro, and everything started to unravel.”

  “Did you plan the murder, as well?”

  DiMaio could see that the question took her by surprise. Did she think this was just an informal chat between friends?

  “Certainly not, Inspector. When Ettore read in the newspaper that Somonte was going to donate the drawing to the Sansepolcro museum, he called me immediately. He was frantic to the point of being incoherent. I knew he was a weakling, but it surprised me that this had almost pushed him over the edge. When I finally calmed him down, I said I would come up with a plan to get the drawing, which I did a few days later. It involved a burglary, with no violence, and it would have worked.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “He couldn’t wait, and decided to take the situation into his own hands. Perhaps he wanted to impress me with his masculinity.” She looked straight at DiMaio. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “I plan to…when he regains consciousness. What about the faked attempt on Bruzzone?”

  “That was my idea.”

  Some minutes later Rick and Betta took off their headsets and placed them on the edge of the desk. Unlike the windowless room where the policeman was wrapping up the interview, DiMaio’s office was splashed with morning sunlight. They sat at the small meeting table, its surface bare except for the earphones and a bottle of water they had shared while listening to Tucci.

  Betta rubbed her ears and gave her short hair an unneeded brushing with her fingers. “If the voice weren’t so familiar, Rick, I’d would have thought she was a different person than the woman we had lunch with three days ago.”

  “She had poor Bruzzone wrapped around her little finger.”

  “Poor Bruzzone? The man is a murderer.”

  “In America we have an expression about someone being thrown under the bus. I’m not sure if it works with a literal translation into Italian.”

  “I get the image. She definitely threw him under the bus down there just now, as if the murder was completely his idea.”

  “Maybe it happened exactly the way she recounted it.”

  “Or perhaps she was just trying to get a lighter sentence.”

  They looked up when DiMaio entered the room holding his pad of paper. “There was a bus accident?”

  “It’s just an expression, Alfredo.”

  The inspector dropped the pad and sat down behind his desk. “Were you able to hear everything?”

  “Perfectly,” said Rick. “Even with just the audio, our sense is that she didn’t come off as the weaker vessel, led astray by an evil criminal mind.”

  “Same with the body language.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. “I just heard downstairs that Bruzzone is conscious and talking, so it will be interesting to compare his version with hers. But after hearing her, my guess would be that she was telling the truth. I already checked to see where she was at the time of the murder and confirmed she was visiting her mother in Milan.”

  “Very convenient for her,” said Betta. “The dirty work of covering up her original crime is done by Bruzzone when she’s nowhere near Urbino. You have to think she planned it that way.”

  DiMaio rubbed his neck with both hands. “I’m not sure what I think. I finally managed to have a good night’s sleep, but now I could use a few days of just petty crime. This case has been exhausting.”

  Rick glanced at Betta before speaking. “Alfredo, I have to ask you. There is something we—”

  The policeman raised his hands to fend him off. “I know what you’re thinking, you two. What happened between the inspector and a certain Spanish person key to the investigation?”

  Rick smiled. “You’re reading our minds, Alfredo.”

  DiMaio had settled back into his chair. “When she was ushered in here, I was sure I could mix business with pleasure. Would it hurt to have a close relationship with someone who could give me firsthand information about the victim of the crime? Understanding the victim is always a first step in finding out who would have a motive to kill him. Basic police procedures. But two nights ago I found that having a special relationship actually worked against it. When I dropped her at the hotel I made a simple request. Routine really. Had she been just another suspect in the case, there would not have been a problem. I simply asked her to show me her airline ticket so I could confirm that she was in fact not in Italy when her father was murdered.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Oh, my, indeed, Betta. She exploded, saying, ‘Don’t you trust me?’ She even raised her hand and was ready to slap me but had second thoughts and pulled it back.”

  “Assaulting a police officer?” said Rick. “You would have had to arrest her.”

  Betta shook her head. “Crime of passion. Never would have held up in court. And it may be a trait of Spanish women that they slap people when they don’t get what they want.”

  “I think I recall hearing that,” Rick said. “We’re sorry it didn’t work out, Alfredo.”

  DiMaio shrugged, and a grin wrinkled his cleanly shaved face. “As am I.” He took a drink of water from a cup on his desk. “She called me from the airport yesterday.”

  Betta and Rick spoke at the same time. “Really?”

  “She was actually quite pleasant. She thanked me for solving the case, and I pointed out that it was you, Betta, who put it all together. She sent regards to you both.”

  “That was kind of her,” said Betta.

  “She also asked me to pass on regards and thanks to you, Rick, from Lucho Garcia.”

  “But—”

  “They were on the same flight. Signora Somonte had flown back alone a few hours earlier.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So it was a forgery.” Commissario Piero Fontana studied the red color of the wine in his glass as he contemplated the significance of what he had just been told. “It makes everything fall into place, doesn’t it?”

  “Not exactly a forgery,” corrected Betta. “More just a fake. A very clever idea, since most sketches from that period, even those done for important paintings like this one, have been lost or simply thrown away. Artists always did studies for something they were going to paint, and it was safe to assume that Piero della Francesca drew various sketches for the painting in Sansepolcro. There may even be an actual drawing of the soldier’s face somewhere, but I’m sure Tucci did her research to be sure there wasn’t before she created one herself. She has to be quite an artist.”

  Being a policeman, Rick’s uncle was more interested in motive than art history. “If the donation had been completed to the museum in Sansepolcro, the sketch would eventually have been examined by specialists, am I correct?”

  Betta nodded. “It’s standard procedure for museums to allow scholars and other experts to study works in their collections.”

  “You’ve gone to the heart of the case, Zio,” said Rick. “Eventually, it would have been exposed as a fa
ke, and the reputations of both Bruzzone and Tucci would have been destroyed, and likely they would also have been charged with a crime. Bruzzone could have told the police that he was duped, but their relationship apparently involved more than just art fraud.”

  Piero took another drink of the wine, a deep red Cesanese di Olevano Romano from the hills southeast of Rome. “And the staged attempt on him was a diversion, but a very believable one since he used the same gun used to murder the Spaniard. Very clever indeed, but by doing so he was digging himself in deeper and deeper. How many times have I seen exactly that happen with someone who has committed a crime. The layers they build become clues and eventually it blows up in their face. But how did you come to the conclusion that the drawing was bogus?”

  Rick and Betta exchanged smiles. “Well…” Betta began.

  She was interrupted by the arrival of their antipasti. All three had ordered the same dish to start the meal: a large artichoke, braised until tender in wine, oil, and herbs. Like so many other Italian dishes, carciofi alla romana were the epitome of gastronomic simplicity. After the traditional “Buon appetito” exchange, they each cut off a piece of the long, tender stem and took a first bite. Conversation resumed.

  “It was really just by chance,” said Betta. “We were finally making a visit to the Casa Raffaello, which happens to be on the same street as Bruzzone’s gallery. We were looking at a fresco on the walls of one of the rooms, a work that has been attributed to a young Raffaello but never definitively confirmed as by his hand. Rick, with his usual American humor—”

  “I am all too familiar with it, Betta,” said the policeman.

  “Yes. Well, he joked that someone could have sneaked into the room and painted a forgery on the wall to make it look like the master’s work. A few minutes later it clicked in my mind. What if the missing drawing was in fact a fake? Once I considered that possibility, then, as you said, the motive and everything else fell into place.”

  “You must have immediately surmised that the woman from Monterchi was involved.”

  Rick put down his fork. “Since she had authenticated the drawing, she had to be. I remembered thinking when we drove behind her from the museum in Monterchi to the restaurant how it was curious that the director of a small museum could afford such an expensive car. I didn’t say anything to Betta at the time, but I should have. She might have figured out their scam sooner.” He pulled a piece of bread from the basket in the center of the table and tore it in two before using one piece to sop up the oil from his artichoke. “The woman who supposedly found the drawing must have been in on it as well, paid off by Bruzzone. The one good outcome of this may be that her daughter inherited the house purchased with the money.”

  “And now Tucci’s in custody,” Betta said, “with an additional charge of being an accessory to the murder since she knew about it and did not go to the authorities. I called Alfredo yesterday, and he said that her boyfriend is going to pull through. So they’ll both be spending time as the guests of the Italian state.” She returned to the last few leaves of her artichoke.

  It was decision time. Go on to the pasta course? Skip it and order just a main dish? Have both? Piero recommended the taglioline carciofi e mentuccia, despite their having just finished an artichoke. The artichoke in this dish would be chopped finely and mixed with oil, wild mint, and other herbs, before being tossed in the frying pan with the fresh pasta. It sounded good to Betta, but Rick decided on spaghetti cacio e pepe. The waiter took the order, removed their antipasto plates, filled their glasses, and departed for the kitchen.

  “What about the other suspects?” Piero asked. “From the report I read of his questioning, that olive oil dealer seemed like someone I would have loved to take into custody. I only read the transcript, but even without hearing his voice, it was easy to get a sense of the man.”

  “Morelli?” said Rick. “He is as oily as the product he buys and sells. I was hoping that the amphorae I photographed in his living room would turn out to be stolen.”

  Betta sighed. “Actually, Rick, I heard this morning from the person in our office who traces such things, that it is legitimate. The sale was even registered. Sorry about that.”

  “Mannaggia,” said Rick, lightly punching the air. “I really wanted to nail that guy.”

  “But in the other picture you took with your phone there was a small, bronze oil lamp. It turned out to be Roman, first century, and unique. It’s worth about three thousand euros and is on the list of items stolen from a museum in Calabria three years ago.”

  Rick picked up his glass. “This deserves a toast. After solving the mystery of the missing drawing and now finding a precious ancient artifact, we’ll soon be toasting your promotions, Betta.”

  “I’m not counting on it,” she said as the glasses touched.

  “Are you going to be sent up to retrieve the oil lamp?” Piero asked.

  “No, we’ll leave that to the local police in Urbino, along with collecting a hefty fine from Morelli. He’ll claim he didn’t know it was stolen when he bought it, but he’ll end up paying.”

  “Local police?” Rick said. “Somebody we know?”

  “It very well could be.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Piero, “I was going to ask you about Inspector DiMaio. You both were mentioned in his reports, so you must have been working closely with him. Is your impression of him still the same as after the Bassano case?”

  Rick had expected the question. Alfredo’s initial relationship with Pilar still bothered him, and he expected it might not sit well with his uncle. Yet wasn’t it the job of the police themselves, not that of an outsider like Rick, to rule on the professionalism of their own officers? The memory of the exchange of gunfire in Bruzzone’s shop was still fresh in Rick’s mind, and he wasn’t about to pay back Alfredo with even a hint of criticism. On a list of transgressions committed by police every day, this one would be considered minor, and Alfredo had learned his lesson.

  “I’m sure his reports bear out our impression of DiMaio’s work, Zio. I can’t see how any other policeman would have done any better investigating what was a rather complicated murder. Add to that the delicate international aspect of the case, and I think he did quite well.”

  “I have to agree,” said Betta. “It was not easy to deal with those Spaniards.” Was she having the same thoughts as Rick?

  Three plates of pasta were placed on the table. They were similar in their basic creamy color, but the plates with the artichoke were sprinkled with greens and browns while Rick’s cacio e pepe showed only the white of the cheese with flecks of black pepper. Rick made a mock protest when both Betta and his uncle stole forkfuls of his pasta for a taste. He counterattacked by taking bites from each of their plates before everyone tasted their own. It was declared a tie, and they returned to the suspects list.

  “Before Betta solved it,” Rick said, “I thought it was Vitellozzi, the museum director. He struck me as just too smooth an operator, and he had the motive of missing out on getting the drawing, not just once but twice.” He looked at Betta. “You were leaning in his direction as well, weren’t you?” He didn’t mention her questionable foray into Vitellozzi’s office since it might have chafed his uncle’s professional sensibilities.

  “Either him or Garcia,” Betta added. “Garcia was the assistant to the murdered man, Piero, and he seemed to have had a relationship with Signora Somonte. Or Garcia with the support of Signora Somonte. They had the most to gain from the death of Manuel Somonte.”

  “Along with Somonte’s daughter,” said the policeman. “I assume she inherited something.”

  “She did, Zio. She got the family business, where she was already working. There is some question in our minds whether she and Garcia might be romantically involved.”

  “This Garcia fellow must be quite the ladies’ man.” He pushed the pasta with his fork before twirling some on it
. “Any other suspects?”

  “There was another, the director of the botanical gardens where the body was found, but it was difficult for DiMaio to take him seriously.”

  “How is that, Riccardo?”

  Rick told his uncle about Florio’s penchant for publicity to boost his attendance numbers, and how the man’s interest in crime fiction made him think that he could solve the murder.

  Piero smiled. “I’ve had a few like that. Usually they just walk in off the street and give us their theories, hoping to get a few moments in the limelight. We have to talk to them, since—ogni morto di papa—what one tells us turns out to be correct.”

  Piero had used one of Rick’s favorite phrases, “every time a pope dies,” the Italian equivalent of “once in a blue moon.” The policeman placed his fork in the empty dish and patted his lips with the napkin while Rick waited for the inevitable story. Having spent many pleasant lunches with his uncle, he knew when there was more to come—something in the man’s expression said so. Betta sensed it as well and quietly finished her taglioline.

  There was a story, but it had nothing to do with public-spirited citizens helping the police.

  “When I heard that you were going to Sansepolcro to witness the donation of a work by Piero della Francesca, I was pleased. Several times I have planned a trip to the towns of Tuscany where his works are found: Urbino, Sansepolcro, Arezzo, and of course, Monterchi. The office always got in the way, but I’ll do it eventually. Not only is he an artist who I admire greatly, I feel I have a personal connection with him. No, I am not an aspiring artist—far from it. The connection is through your grandmother, Riccardo.”

  Rick and Betta kept silent.

  “You said you went to Monterchi to interview the woman who found the drawing. I was hoping you would go to Monterchi and that while there you would stop at the museum to see the Madonna del Parto. If I had known that before you left Rome, I would have insisted, but fortunately, as it happened, you went anyway.”