A Villa in Sicily: Olive Oil and Murder

by Fiona Grace

  “No. Besides, when it happened, most of the crew was in the south side of the city, with me. Setting up for our new job.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes trailed to the notebook on the table, where she’d double-circled CREWMEN. There were no other possibilities on the paper, because she’d stupidly thought that for sure, this line of questioning would lead her somewhere. Suddenly, something occurred to her. “If everyone was setting up for a new job, why wasn’t Ernesto there?”

  “Ernesto went back to the American’s house because …” He stopped. His bushy eyebrows came together. “Come to think of it, I don’t know why. He’d planned to meet us all at the new job. He must’ve wanted to check on something. We’d just plastered the walls. Maybe he wanted to check to make sure it set right.”

  “And that was normal for him?”

  Berto hitched a shoulder. “Yeah. Sure.” He studied Audrey carefully. “Now … you’re not police. Why do you care so much about Ernesto?”

  “Oh … I’m just an amateur detective, I guess. And I found the body, so I feel like I won’t be able to rest until I know what happened to him. I’m sure you do, too, considering he was so well-liked around town.”

  “Ah. Well.” He pushed away from the table. “Thank you for the tea. But I have to get back to the new job. I’m the foreman, now.”

  Audrey didn’t bother to get up. She was still wondering where to go from here. It felt like a dead end.

  Berto walked to the door and hesitated there. Then he turned. “Ernesto wasn’t well-liked by everyone.”

  Audrey’s ears perked up. “He wasn’t?”

  “No. He and his company, Fabri Fratelli, were starting to get a reputation in the town. He had a habit of bumping up material costs and overcharging people he didn’t like. People he did like, too. A couple of times, he got called out on it, but he swept it under the rug. We tried to tell him to stop, that he had his head in the lion’s jaws and one day he’d get it bitten off.” He frowned. “When we heard the news, I think we all thought that was what happened.”

  Audrey’s mouth opened, even before she could corral all the follow-up questions teeming in her head. Now, this was getting interesting. “Um … Really? So you think he might’ve gotten in a scuffle with a past customer?”

  He shrugged. “Possible.”

  She shuffled to the edge of her seat and grabbed her pad. “Would you be able to tell me the names of the clients you did work for, in the past couple of months?”

  “Well, let’s see. There was old lady Bianco, and the new warehouse that we built near the church, and …” Audrey scribbled the names down as fast as he wrote, though none of the projects meant anything to her. It was only when he mentioned La Mela Verde that her ears pricked up.

  “La Mela Verde? You mean that little café around the corner?”

  He nodded. “The owner wanted to remove a wall and bump out the dining area. He was expecting a windfall with all the new foreigners coming to town. I know he and the owner got into a fight on the last day of the project.”

  “The owner … you mean G?” she asked, recalling the man with the infectious smile who’d asked her out on a tour. She’d gone by to see him yesterday, but he hadn’t been in.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think much of it. Seemed like every job we did lately, someone wasn’t happy with it. But it was a pretty nasty one. The owner was refusing to pay, so I hear. Not sure if he ever did.” He waved at her. “Take care, Audrey. Thanks for the tea.”

  Audrey smiled at him and watched him leave. As he did, she thought about G. He had an infectious smile, an easygoing personality, and didn’t seem like the type to get angry about much. Then again, he’d asked her out. Considering all the other guys who expressed interest in her, she wouldn’t put it past him to be a murderer.

  But at least she had a lead. She scribbled his name down on the pad and furrowed her brow. G was a nice guy. At least, he had been, to her. But maybe he knew more than just how to make a great ciambotta.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Now that she had a lead, Audrey wanted to waste no time in heading over to La Mela Verde. She closed Nick into the house before she left and said, “Be a good boy,” like he was her actual pet.

  The skies were threatening rain and thunder rumbled in the distance as she made her way down the block. Once again, it seemed like people on the street crossed to the other side to avoid having to talk to her. That had to be her imagination, as most of the people she was sure she’d never seen before. Unless gossip really did fly that fast?

  A surprisingly cold wind blew, sneaking itself down her spine, ruffling the fringe on the café canopy and umbrellas and showing the undersides of the olive trees’ leaves on the street. Audrey lifted the collar of her jacket to her neck as she passed by the empty café tables. Though it was just about lunchtime, no one would dare to eat outside with the coming storm. As she navigated through the tables, the wind blew over a chair and rattled the glass in the windowpanes.

  She ducked inside as the first fat drops of rain began to fall.

  G, who had been talking to a slim man in dark jeans and a traffic-cone-orange rain jacket at the end of the bar, greeted her warmly. “If it isn’t mi piccola Americana!” he shouted from behind his counter, his voice booming over the din of the dining area.

  If it had recently been renovated and enlarged, it was a good thing, because once again, every table was taken. She went to the table and sat down at a barstool. “Hi, G.”

  “Hi, yourself. You come in today for some more of my ciambotta, yes?”

  She hadn’t planned to, but when he mentioned it, her mouth started to water. She hadn’t been shopping in a while, and the only food waiting for her at home was a little bit of stale Italian bread and some olive oil. She nodded. “Of course.”

  “Coming right up, for my favorite customer.” He motioned toward the young man in the orange parka. “Talk to Liam, here. He’s a foreigner, like you.”

  Slumped over his coffee like a man at a bar after a hard day’s work, Liam eyed her cautiously from behind a pair of black-framed hipster glasses that were almost as dark as the circles around his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t shaved, or slept, in weeks. He didn’t extend a hand to shake, just saluted briefly. “From London,” he grumbled in a British accent.

  “Nice to meet you. Did you buy a one-euro house, too?”

  He winced, as if he’d rather not be reminded of the fact. “House is a bit of a stretch. More like a dumpster fire.”

  As sorry as she was to be a part of his misery, she was glad that not everyone was breezing through their renovations like Mason and Nessa had been. “What’s going on?”

  “What hasn’t been going on? The thing’s a bloody wreck, that’s what,” he snarled, in such a way that Audrey wished she hadn’t asked. “Got here a fortnight ago. Thought I could get a jump on the renos before my boyfriend showed up, but I’m botching the thing left and right. Driving me barmy, it is. Yesterday, I went on the roof to repair a shingle and damned if I didn’t fall straight through. Thing was rotted, termites, going to cost a bloody fortune to fix. I think I made a bad bargain.”

  Audrey’s eyes widened as she watched G whirl toward the soup tureens, looking very much in his element as he effortlessly swept a bowl into his hand and ladled it in. “I’m so sorry. Are you a contractor?”

  He shook his head. “Cal, my boyfriend, is, but he’s finishing up a job. I rung him up and told him I want to call the thing. It isn’t worth it, I told him.”

  Audrey patted her chest with sympathy. “I’m so sorry. You’re not just going to give up, though, just like that? So easy?”

  “Easy?” He scoffed and pushed his coffee cup away. “Not one bloody thing about this has been easy.”

  G gracefully slid the ciambotta under her nose with the standard hunk of crusty Italian bread. “But anything worth doing is hard! You don’t give up! Right, Audrey? You push on. All part of the game of life.”

  Leave it to G to come
in with the cheerleader routine. Audrey said, “That’s right,” and dipped her head to inhale from the dish. The smell of the stew made Audrey’s mouth water even more. “Mmm.”

  He laughed. “Good, on a day like today, am I right?”

  Audrey’s eyes shifted to the windows, where the raindrops were now attacking the glass, creating a dark gray haze over everything outside. She shivered as she picked up her spoon. “Looks like I made it in just in time.”

  Liam threw a few dollars on the counter and grumbled, “Looks like I finished just at the wrong time,” threw his hood over his head, and stalked outside.

  Audrey watched him leave, head down, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Talk about Johnny Raincloud. But she had to feel for the guy. She knew exactly what he was going through. In fact, she could be him, in another few days.

  As if sensing her thoughts, G said, “How are your renovations going, little American?”

  Audrey hated to admit that she hadn’t even thought about renovations since poor Ernesto had met his end. “A little slow, truthfully. Hit a little roadblock. I need to get back into them.”

  He shot her a quizzical look. “That roadblock have anything to do with the murder you’re accused of?”

  Audrey had been blowing on a spoonful of the steaming stew, but she let it spill back into the bowl. He hadn’t just said what she thought he said, had he? “Um, what?”

  He smiled broadly. “Oh, you think I hadn’t heard? News moves fast in this place.”

  She stared into her stew, her appetite suddenly gone. “What did you hear, exactly?”

  “Ernesto Fabri finally got himself caught,” he said, with so much enthusiasm, it was obvious there was no love lost there. “Someone got rid of the big spider. That’s what he is, spinning webs … But I have a hard time believing why they’d think it was you, eh? Why would they, now? Just because you live where the body was found?”

  She let out a big sigh. “It’s more than that. I found the body, and I made the mistake of picking up his boot …” She cringed at the thought. “Forget it.”

  “Little thing like you, against a brick like that? Never.”

  He did have a point. “Unfortunately, the police don’t see it that way. I guess they think it could be me because I was arguing with him the day before.”

  He laughed. “Is that it? If that’s all they have to go on, he could’ve been murdered by half the town. Town’s pretty small. All the locals know each other here.”

  She finally succeeded in getting a sip of the stew. Warm and delicious, the liquid coated her insides and made her feel instantly better. “I heard his construction company did some work for you, and you weren’t happy?”

  He nodded and pointed to the dining area. “I got an inheritance when my mama passed, so I put it into the business. Fabri Fratelli Construction’s people made the room bigger. Was too small. But they cut the corners, used cheap materials, took twice as long as they promised. They were messy, too. No pride in their work.”

  Audrey recalled the heap of garbage and lumber that had been piled in front of her door. “I understand. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “No. It wasn’t. And then he told me he ran into unexpected expenses and wanted to charge me twice as much as he estimated. I told him to go to Hades. Chased him out of my place.” He laughed at the memory. “I could be a suspect, too, eh? Along with everyone else. He’s swindled half the people in this town, I’ll bet you. Bastardo.”

  “Really?” All these potential enemies. And the kicker of it was that somehow, she’d wound up being the police’s prime suspect.

  “Si. He’s no good. Better off right where he is.”

  “Don’t let the police catch you saying that. You will wind up on the suspect list with me. All I was doing was holding a boot.”

  He shrugged. “So be it. Let them come for me. I’m not scared of them.”

  Something occurred to Audrey right then. “Wait. You’re saying the police haven’t interviewed you yet?”

  “No. But I’m ready, if they do.” He flexed his muscles, which popped under his too-tight T-shirt. She could see the curve of them, even under his white apron. “I’ll tell them just what they need to know.”

  “You did have a fight with him? You never paid him for his work?”

  “No. I did not. And I never would’ve, either. Kept coming around, threatening me.” He pounded his fist on the counter. “He was a bad one. It’s no wonder he’s dead.”

  She pressed her lips together, thinking. “I don’t get it. I mean, you’re the perfect suspect. You had a fight with him and you’re big enough to have shoved him off the cliffside.”

  His voice grew quiet. “I’m sure there are many of us.”

  “Why wouldn’t they at least come and ask you questions? That seems like shoddy policework to me.”

  “Maybe they’re making their way through the list.”

  “Or maybe they’ve just been too busy hanging around my house, thinking I did it,” she muttered bitterly. “Totally not fair, considering there are real suspects around.”

  His smile fell. He stared at her, and his voice took on an uncharacteristically serious tone. “What’s this? You think I did it, Audrey?”

  “Oh! No,” she backpedaled. “Of course not. I just think they’d interview you first. You obviously have a lot of information they could find helpful.”

  Something in his countenance told her he didn’t believe her. He pushed away from the counter and went to fill someone else’s coffee cup, and after that, he didn’t come back to talk to her, even when she was ready to pay. Great. Now not only do most people in town think you are a murderer, but you’ve alienated pretty much the only friend you had in town. Nice going, Audrey.

  She’d planned to stay inside and wolf down second and third helpings of ciambotta until the rain stopped, but after a while, when she spun around on the stool, she realized that all of the eyes of the diners seemed to be on her.

  Watching her. Judging her.

  Just her imagination, again. Or maybe not …

  Either way, she longed for the solitude of her little home. Throwing a few euros down on the counter, she slipped off the stool and stepped out into the driving rain.

  As she walked through the puddles, she thought about G. Was it her, or had he gotten mighty defensive for no reason?

  She wasn’t paying attention, and wound up stepping in a puddle that swallowed and filled her entire shoe. She cringed as the cold water seeped into her sock.

  Then she froze as every nerve ending stood at attention, and listened. She could’ve sworn she heard something other than the sound of the rain. Once again, she had the distinct feeling that she was being followed.

  She whirled, raindrops drenching her face and blurring her vision. “Nick. Come out,” she muttered, her words echoing through the empty street.

  But this time, Nick didn’t appear.

  She searched up and down the street, wiping rain from her eyes, and then turned and hurried back to her house. By then, the magic of the ciambotta had worn off, and she was left shivering again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Audrey tilted her head as she crouched on her hands and knees in the bathroom. Straightened it. Tilted it again. Squinted.

  That was weird.

  Though she’d measured very precisely and used a level, she couldn’t help feeling like the tiles on her new floor weren’t even. In fact, they seemed to be going in a definite downward trajectory, just like her mood.

  Ever since she’d moved in, she’d been longing for the feeling of nice travertine tile under her feet. Unlike the vast majority of jobs which gave her a bit of trepidation, this was one job she thought she’d have no trouble with. Growing up, she’d helped her father lay tile in over a dozen bathrooms and kitchens of the multimillion-dollar Back Bay mansions he renovated.

  She smiled, thinking of the way she’d proudly wear her kid-sized toolbelt, following him around. She had to wonder if
he was still out there somewhere, tiling bathrooms himself. If he missed having her as his little helper. He’d always loved his job and the houses he worked on, so much.

  Of course, those had had the benefit of being ripped down to the studs and reconstructed from the ground up, and had nice clean angles and smooth walls.

  She grabbed the level and checked it again. Her tiles were perfectly straight.

  Which meant that the corner of the house was likely sinking. That probably wasn’t good.

  Sitting back on her haunches, she reached into her toolbox and picked up a screw, setting it on its side. Sure enough, it rolled right to that dark corner of the bathroom, behind the toilet.

  It was fortunate she’d called to rent the tile cutter from the hardware store, as well as another box of tiles and some more grout. She was probably going to need the extra material, especially since she was pretty much guaranteed to make more mistakes.

  “Whatever,” she said, smoothing the grout for the next piece onto the floor with the trowel. As she did, Nick pranced by, trying to be smooth, cocking a curious eye her way. Her attention was caught by the fur of his tail. It wasn’t poufy and red, as she was used to, but matted and gray. She stared at it. “What did you …?”

  She looked around and noticed there were little gray footprints all over the kitchen floor.

  “Ugh. No! You really stepped in it now,” she groaned, scooping him into her arms. She brought him to the big porcelain kitchen sink and sat him there. “Don’t fuss. I need to get that off you before it hardens, or else I’m going to have to cut it out.”

  He whined and scratched at her as she turned on the water. She tried to scrub him, but he flailed his limbs and tail, body alternating rapidly between boneless and board-stiff, spraying water everywhere and carrying on like she was torturing him. “Calm down!” she shouted at him as he swiped at her wrist. “Ouch!”