Stealing Venice

by Anna E Bendewald

  Raphielli nodded, and then followed them through the halls back to the Little Church’s narthex. Taking his leave of them, the cardinal retreated into a small office and closed the door.

  Juliette planted a quick kiss on each of Raphielli’s cheeks. “I would like for you and I to become better friends. Can we make a plan to meet on Saturday afternoons? I will find us safe places where we can spend time together.”

  “I’d like that.” She gave the contessa’s cheek a quick peck. “I’m so glad your husband’s safe now.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  Juliette left the church first, and as Raphielli waited in the narthex, a children’s choir began practicing Gloria Deo in the loft just over her head. A few minutes later, Raphielli stepped out of the Little Church into the bright sunlight, and strolled through the most beautiful city on earth. She had time to kill before meeting the realtor, but she couldn’t bear to go back home just yet. So she did something she’d never done before. She took a seat at an outdoor café, ordered a decadent cappuccino. She loosened the crocheted tie on her purse and peeked at the roll of euros inside. Now she had money and could go anywhere she liked. Sipping the rich milk and espresso, she began to feel the effects of the caffeine. And although she’d never tasted espresso before, she’d smelled it so many times that the taste was familiar to her. It tasted like liberation, and she reached a hand up to hide the smile on her face. I’d better try to look less happy. People will think I’m a crazy person, sitting here grinning like a clown. She turned down the wattage of her smile and took another sip of heaven from the heavy ceramic cup, thinking that if she were back at the abbey, she would be in ecumenical studies right now. After her treat, she left the waiter a generous tip and then walked home to study the Scortini estate financials. She had two hours before meeting the realtor.

  At three o’clock Raphielli was standing in front of an old building that had seen better days. It had steps to the front that ascended like a tiered wedding cake, approachable from three directions. Next to the front door, was a small caged enclosure that looked a like a magazine stall or tobacconist. Behind that was a cute little private bridge that spanned a narrow canal and probably accessed a rear entrance. The building was four stories tall, and years ago someone had painted it a shade of pumpkin beginning at the top floor and made it most of the way down, but gave up at different levels of the first floor which remained a non-color mélange of greys. So the upper part of the building had a warm sunny hue, and the bottom was as drab as a prison. There were heavy bars on the windows that looked like they’d survived the middle ages. They would protect the women she’d shelter here. Raphielli liked the cheerful turquoise color of the window shutters. She agreed with Juliette, this place had potential, but right now it smelled of rotting wood and stagnant water. This purchase should have felt impetuous, but Cardinal Negrali and Juliette were right—her soul positively hungered for the chance to help people. And her first-hand experience of isolation and abuse provoked a powerful urge to help women who’d suffered similarly.

  Just then, a jovial-looking man with a round potbelly came striding over a bridge. As he approached her, he raised his hand in greeting, and swung a big set of keys in the air with his other hand.

  “Raphielli? I’m Joccomo. Juliette will join us soon, but told me not to wait for her.” He looked like a professor in his blazer, soft pleated pants, and penny loafers. But then, she’d never met a real estate agent before.

  “How nice of you to come so quickly, Joccomo.”

  “I never turn down a chance to do Juliette a favor.” He accompanied her to the front door. “I bet you’re eager to get inside.”

  “I am.”

  As he worked the keys in the locks, he said, “She tells me you plan to open a shelter for women.”

  “Sì.”

  “She also tells me you’re a Scortini.”

  “Sì.”

  “Well then, any favor I can do for you will be my pleasure as well.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “I do what I can, but I haven’t opened up any shelters like you two ladies. I’ll have to rely on you and Juliette to throw a rope over the pearly gate so I can get into heaven.” He let out a chortling laugh that was so surprising and funny that Raphielli laughed too.

  “You’re laughing at my laugh.” More chuckles burst out of him. “Everyone does.” He sounded as if he took it as a compliment and laughed some more.

  She put her hand over her mouth to try to contain her giggles. “It’s wonderful.”

  “So I hear.” And he let out a final chortle.

  They stepped inside, and she felt instantly that this was where she’d do the work of her lifetime. Halfway through the tour, they were joined by Juliette, who did some gentle haggling with Joccomo and struck a good deal on the purchase price. He gave Raphielli the keys to the building and left to draw up the necessary documents. Raphielli had access to enough of Salvio’s liquid assets that she could wire the necessary funds with no problem. Walking out through the kitchen’s back door of the future women’s shelter, the two women figured out how to lock the old door, and then Juliette hooked her arm through Raphielli’s.

  “Come with me, I want to show you my Rifugia della Dignità.” They walked through a little zigzag courtyard, then Juliette unlocked a side door to a big building and drew Raphielli into her own lively kitchen—it was much larger than the one they’d just left.

  “It breaks my heart that Venice has so many people with no place to live. But in here, my family can give them a place to call home and regain their dignity while they learn skills to help them make a better life. We can spend time together making dinner for them.” Juliette looked energized. “Do you like to cook?”

  Raphielli’s heart fell. “I’ve never been allowed in a kitchen.”

  “Well, you enjoy eating, right?”

  “Oh, sì!”

  “Then you must learn to cook the foods you crave.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “Step into my kitchen for your first lesson.” Juliette led the way to a big commercial kitchen where volunteers were busy assembling ingredients and supplies.

  Raising her voice, Juliette, “Ciao, my dear ones!” Her team all offered hearty greetings, but didn’t stop their activities. Everywhere Raphielli looked, people were scrubbing vegetables, filling pots, and sharpening knives with care.

  A familiar voice called out, “Good to see you, Juliette!”

  Raphielli scanned the space looking for the owner of the voice, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Alphonso weighing out flour next to trays of eggs. What’s he doing in Juliette’s kitchen? Oh my lord! Could he still be spying?

  Raphielli stood frozen as Juliette went over to him. “Ah! I have missed you, my romantic friend! Today we practice the gentle touch.” She reached out and took hold of both Alphonso’s wrists. Giving his hands a shake to limber them up, she teased, “Non li strangolare, Romeo. Today we are tucking the baby into bed.”

  Alphonso’s brows shot up when he saw Raphielli staring at him from around Juliette’s shoulder. But before either of them could react, Juliette took hold of Raphielli’s arm, and positioned her right next to Alphonso.

  “Romeo, please help my friend, Raphielli, with an apron.” Then Juliette strode to the center of the kitchen and called out the day’s instructions with the precision of a drill sergeant and the enthusiasm of a cheerleader.

  Raphielli felt her scalp tingling with nervous tension, as if someone had just up-ended a bottle of San Pellegrino over her head. Alphonso took an apron from a shelf, and when he came back he placed the strap over her head.

  “I’m glad to see you.” He smiled and his brown eyes searched her face. “But you don’t look glad to see me.”

  She glanced around, not knowing what she was looking for. Some sort of proof? Perhaps Zelph lurking about? Alphonso moved around behind her, gently lifted her curls from under the apron strap, and then she felt his finger
s graze the nape of her neck as he adjusted her scarf. He crossed the ties around her waist. His arms encircled her, and he said into her ear, “Take these.” She took the apron strings, and he came back around in front of her and tied the apron at her waist. “Did Zelph give you your phone yet?”

  Keeping her voice low and trying not move her lips, she hissed, “You had better not be spying anymore! What possible justification do you have for being in Juliette’s kitchen right now?”

  “No! I’m not spying. I’m a great admirer of Juliette and her cooking. You have no idea the treat you’re in for!” He sighed and kissed his fingertips, and his face lit up.

  “Oh, thank heavens.” Raphielli was flooded with relief. “And no, Zelph hasn’t given me my phone yet. I’ve been out most of the day.”

  “You didn’t tell Juliette about me, did you?”

  “No, of course not. I wouldn’t do that. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  Juliette came up behind her, produced a hair band, gathered Raphielli’s ponytail into a bun, and then swooped in between her and Alphonso. “Okay, my two pasta assistants. Let us first wash our hands, and then we will make my letto del bambino pasta al forno.”

  For the next two hours Raphielli gave herself over to learning the new skill of making pasta sheets. She loved feeling the soft dough come together in her fingers, and the texture change as they fed the dough through the rollers of the pasta machine. She also got to know a bit more about this big, tall man with the perceptive eyes, like that he had a kind heart. Under Juliette’s tutelage, they learned to make involtini melanzana, tucking each little bundle of melanzana between supple sheets of fresh pasta, and finally under a blanket of fresh mozzarella. When the dish came out of the oven, the little mounds did indeed look like babies in their beds. That is, if you tucked a child under a bed of golden bubbly cheese! Delizioso!

  The police had heard nothing from Salvio for more than a week, and Detective Luigi Lampani had been on the lookout for him. He’d been sitting across from the Scortini palazzo when he spotted Scortini’s young wife walking home. She was certainly more beautiful in person than the wedding photos he’d seen online of her looking miserable. The wedding dress she’d worn was so huge, she’d looked twice the size of the curvaceous woman in the faded black dress who was walking toward him.

  As he stepped into her path, she stopped and scanned his face, apparently trying to place him.

  “Mi scusi, may I speak to you, Signora Scortini?”

  “Sì, okay.” She smiled tentatively but was looking him directly in the eye in a frankly open way.

  He reached into his pocket, took out his identification, and handed it to her. “Detective Luigi Lampani, I came to your home looking for your husband recently.” He smiled, but his smile faltered as his sharp eyes zeroed in on the bit of her neck visible where her scarf had slipped—someone had throttled her. As he winced at the cruel damage, she noticed his reaction and her hands flew up to readjust her scarf. He suddenly felt protective of her.

  “I’ve come to ask you a question, signora.”

  “Please call me Raphielli.” She handed his ID back.

  “Raphielli, do you know where your husband is?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “No. But if I find out, I’ll be happy to tell you, detective.”

  “Grazie.” He stepped closer, studying her expression. “It’s very important.”

  “Is this about Marco Falconetti’s son?”

  “Sì, Reynaldo. I believe your husband killed him.”

  “I don’t know anything about the crime, but I believe you’re right.”

  “And why is that? What did Salvio have against Reynaldo?”

  “Nothing that I know of. But Salvio has a terrible temper. If Reynaldo upset him, he could have snapped.”

  From the looks of her neck, he trusted that she knew what she was talking about. He felt a headache threatening just behind his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose to stave it off.

  “Did he ever mention problems with the Falconetti family?”

  “No. I know Salvio has hopes of continuing to work with them the way his family always has.”

  “So he hopes to preserve a long-standing business relationship between his building empire and their marble business?”

  “Sì. He wants Marco Falconetti to trust him.”

  “Killing Marco’s son would hardly help his cause.”

  “No.”

  “All right.” He offered her his business card, which she studied carefully but declined to take.

  “When Salvio comes home, he’ll find that card and be…displeased.”

  “Okay then. Grazie for your time and honesty Raphielli.” He put the card back in his pocket, turned to go, and then turned back to face her. “I don’t think I need to mention that when Salvio comes back, I should be the first call you make.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll call you right away.”

  “Grazie.” He nodded and walked off down the calle.

  As Raphielli climbed the steps to her palazzo, she repeated Detective Luigi Lampani’s name and number to herself…just in case. Then she went to Salvio’s office, picked up the phone, and called Alphonso.

  “Ciao, Raphielli. Long time no see.” He sounded so happy to hear from her that her mood automatically perked back up.

  “Sì, it’s been almost half an hour.” She laughed, and then became serious. “I just called to tell you that a police detective named Lampani is investigating Salvio for the murder of Reynaldo Falconetti.”

  “Oh?”

  She told him about the brief encounter.

  “Yeah, well Zelph and I wondered if the police’d be interested in Salvio for that. They’ll probably get a warrant for his phone records, and find out about us. We have no problem telling them that Salvio hired us, but that it had nothing to do with Falconetti, and we can’t alibi him for the time of the murder.”

  “Will you say what Salvio hired you to do?”

  “If this Lampani asks, I see no reason not to cooperate. Anyone who can build a case against Salvio deserves as much accurate information as they can get, in my opinion. I don’t mind saying that we were looking into the lives of the Veronas…and found them to be really good people.”

  “Sì, okay then. That sounds fine.” She didn’t know what else to say. “Well, that’s all I called about.”

  “Thanks for giving us the heads-up. Now that you’re home, I’ll tell Zelph he can drop off your new phone.”

  “Ooh, I can’t wait!” She felt giddy at the prospect of learning to use technology.

  “He’s loading it up with apps and books and special ring tones for you.”

  “I’m so excited, Alphonso! Now I’ll be like everyone else and have a phone.”

  “Zelph’ll teach you how to use everything.”

  “Good. Otherwise I don’t think it would be of much use to me.”

  “All right then, call me with it some time.”

  “I will. Well…ciao, Alphonso.

  “Ciao, Raphielli.”

  With Primo at his side, Giancarlo Petrosino walked down the stairs below the basement of his cliffside building in Palermo, descending to the entrance of the cistern. The old watertight room under his consigliere’s office was the perfect place for Scortini to spend the rest of his life. Air circulated through the open gutter slits near the room’s ceiling, and there was a natural opening in the floor that allowed water to drain through a jagged fissure down to the Tyrrhenian Sea. At one time a big iron plate covered the four-foot-square grate in the floor to make the room watertight, but currently the iron plate leaned against the wall. Scortini could squat over the grate to relieve himself over the rocky gash below. Even if Scortini grew tired of using the natural drain as a toilet and found a way to pull up the metal grid, the fissure below offered no chance of escape. At its narrowest, the drain wasn’t even large enough for a rat to navigate. So if Scortini lowered himself down, he’d fall thirty feet below and get caught in the rocks, trapp
ed within the teeth of the mountain. No one would hear him scream for rescue. Gio wouldn’t mind that at all. If Scortini pursued that feeble attempt to leave his prison, and was swallowed up by the cliff, the world would be rid of a madman, and Gio would still have kept his promise to Raphielli.

  Gio unlocked the door, and below him lay the scion of the Scortini family, face down and limp on the gritty cement floor. Scortini’s suit was a mess from the waist down, because at some point on the trip from up north he’d soiled himself. Gio raised a hand for Primo to stay on guard in the hallway, and then descended the wrought iron steps into the cistern. He walked over and looked down at the man who lay contorted at his feet.

  “Don’t bother to get up, Scortini. I’m only able to stay a minute—but then you probably won’t recover any concept of time for another day or so. You’ve demonstrated to me that you’re a man who enjoys surprises, so I surprised you with this getaway…some solitary isolation for your spiritual growth. In order to facilitate your travels, I gave you a sedative.” Gio adjusted the legs of his tailored pants and crouched down to get a better look at the inert psychopath on the floor. “I’m going pay you the compliment of speaking to you frankly, Scortini. You have some character defects. It was one of those defects that caused you to kill Marco Falconetti’s son.”

  He leaned in close. “And your call to the police so that they could catch me just after I’d killed Count Verona wasn’t a good way to begin our partnership. You see, my son, Primo, was going to handle that hit.” Gio was caught off guard at the emotion those words stirred within him, and his voice became tight. “And I won’t forgive that call. Nobody endangers my son. Your plan to have me get Verona out of the way so you could take over Verdu Mer was a bad strategy overall. But, don’t bother yourself about it now. You’ll have plenty of time to think of a way to explain yourself to me.”

  Wrapping up his visit, Gio stood. “The sedative I gave you is called veleno, and it’s usually refined before its administered to minimize some really unpleasant side-effects. But the doses I gave you today were crude…unrefined, so you’re gonna be in pain for a while yet. Nothing you can do about it, they’re just temporary after-effects…albeit really fucking horrible ones. I don’t envy you.”