Murder Most Unfortunate

by David P. Wagner

  “The man was an art dealer, perhaps he’d asked Fortuna to authenticate some paintings.”

  “That would make sense.” Rick thought a moment. “What I found most fascinating in what Muller said was the exchange about the missing Jacopos. And Sarchetti’s reaction when Muller told him they’ll likely never be seen again.”

  DiMaio shut his notebook and tucked his pen into his jacket pocket. “There is one major problem with Muller’s recollection of his meal with Sarchetti. I might add, Riccardo, that your uncle would have been the first one to point it out, and perhaps he did in the course I took from him. It’s this: when someone describes a conversation with a murder victim, we can’t consult with the dead man to get his recollection of the conversation, can we?”

  “So Muller could have made it all up, to suit his ends.”

  “Precisely.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The motorcycle had no problem with the steep curves. Rick swung his head to catch the views while he clung tightly to Betta’s waist and joined with her body leaning left and right through the turns. They had ridden slowly through the town of Marostica, a few minutes west of Bassano and famous for its annual human chess match in the main square. That piazza was devoid of chessmen today, live or otherwise, but a few locals meandered across it, enjoying the rays of mid-morning sun. Betta left the narrow streets and climbed the road that ran along the side of the town. They drove outside Marostica’s wall system, which looked from a distance like a short version of the Great Wall, complete with periodic bastions protecting it from invaders from above. At the top the Castello Superiore presided over the valley below with views over to Bassano on the east and, on a clear day, to Vicenza in the south. The castle was their destination.

  Betta drove slowly through a gate in the wall to emerge in an open courtyard below the castle building. In classic Italian fashion the castle was now a restaurant, complete with tables outside, though at this hour the few set for lunch were still unoccupied. It was questionable that they would be used, since clouds began to form, blocking out the diagonal rays of sun and dropping the temperature. Instead, the diners at midday would likely be eating inside, in what Rick supposed would be a dining room fit for a king, or at least a duke. Betta brought the bike to a stop, lowered the kickstand, dismounted, and pulled off her helmet. She pushed her hand through her black hair, though it was so short nothing needed to be put back in place. Rick brushed his hair as best he could with his fingers, realizing that, for the first time in his life he was dating a girl whose hair was shorter than his. Dating? Is that what’s going on here?

  Carrying their helmets, they climbed a short set of stairs to the covered patio. Both wore appropriate attire for a motorcycle ride—blue jeans, short jackets, and boots. Except for the footwear, Betta’s attire clung much more snugly to her body. Her boots were brown leather with the right length heel for the bike, with a strap peeking out from under the cuffs of her jeans. He wore the more casual of the two pairs of cowboy boots he’d brought on the trip. When they reached the top of the stairs Betta turned and made a sweeping gesture with her free hand.

  “Do you have views like this in New Mexico, Riccardo?”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but yes, we do. Did you know that, by square kilometers, you could fit all of Italy into the borders of New Mexico? In a state that large you can find a lot of different terrain, including views like this.”

  “Did you work for the state chamber of commerce?”

  “It’s a nice place, Betta, you should visit sometime.” He found himself again looking into those green eyes and added quickly, “Can we get some coffee here, or is it too early? A cappuccino would be perfect to warm us up after the ride.”

  “I know the manager, I’ll go in and ask.” She put her helmet on one of the chairs and pushed through the door to the inside. Rick placed his helmet next to hers and sat down to absorb a view which was indeed spectacular. Areas of open fields and groves of trees spread out to the south, broken by an occasional small town or a strip of road. To the east and west the first wrinkles of the mountains started their climb to the Austrian border. Betta reappeared and took a chair across from him.

  “Due cappuccini coming up.” She leaned back and they both stared into the distance. Their silence was broken by the waiter’s arrival with two large coffee cups. He took them off his tray and placed them on the table along with a bowl of sugar and a small plate of cookies.

  “With Livio’s compliments.” The man gestured toward the plate. “Baked this morning.”

  “Grazie,” said Rick and Betta simultaneously.

  “You must come here often.” Rick dropped sugar into his coffee.

  “Not that often. But I spent a lot of time here last year planning for the wedding reception. The one that never took place.”

  Rick wasn’t sure what to say, but sensed she wanted to talk about it. “With the guy from the bank?”

  She took a sip and flicked the foam from her upper lip with her tongue. “Yes. We called it off about a month before the date. We were at a party with friends and he had too much to drink. There was an argument and he got rough with me, which was the wrong thing to do with my brother Marco there. I thought Marco was going to kill him, it took several friends to restrain him. By the end of the evening the engagement had ended.” She stirred her coffee. “That’s all there is to tell.”

  “I will remember what you said about Marco and be on my best behavior if I ever meet him.”

  She smiled. “My brother’s a sweetheart. And I hope you will meet him.”

  “I do, too.”

  She reached across the table and covered his hand. Her fingers were warm from holding the cup. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant, like murder and stolen art.”

  “If we must,” answered Rick. He reached the cookies, using his free hand. “Unfortunately they appear to be connected. We now have one less person who could know something about the missing Jacopos, and he was our prime suspect. Maybe we’ve been deluding ourselves about the two paintings. Muller, the German professor, said again this morning that he thought they’d never be seen again.” He didn’t mention that it was during a police interrogation that Muller said it.

  “Let’s get to the paintings later. Tell me about last night.”

  He told her, leaving nothing out. “The inspector probably would have interrogated me longer if they didn’t have to go talk to Angelo Rinaldi. It’s very curious that they received an anonymous tip about his having met with Sarchetti at the villa.” He looked carefully at her but she picked that moment to take and taste one of the cookies.

  “Yes, very curious. These cookies are quite good, don’t you think?”

  Rick smiled and shook his head. “They certainly are. Speaking of villas, did we ever find out if Rinaldi’s villa is the same one as where the paintings disappeared?”

  Betta brushed a cookie crumb from her jacket. “It wasn’t. The villa of the Jacopos was in Fossalunga, but Angelo’s villa…”

  “Fossalunga? Wait a minute. Remember when I told you about meeting with Oglesby, the Englishman, in the bar at the hotel?”

  “Of course. Complaining about his suocera feeding him too well. You’d never hear that from an Italian.”

  “Right, likely not. But when you mentioned Fossalunga it came to me that it was the town where his in-laws live. Do you think…?”

  She picked up another cookie. “I think we’re grasping at straws, Riccardo. It would be perfect if they’d had the paintings, gave them to their English son-in-law, and now he’s selling them to the highest bidder. But I doubt it. Coincidence. Just like it’s coincidence that Muller’s grandfather was around here in the war. But we can check it if you’d like. What was the name of his wife’s family?”

  He looked at the last cookie and then at Betta. She nodded, and he took it. “Let me think. It was a northern name, Venetia
n. You know, no vowel at the end.” After a bite of the cookie he remembered. “Vizentin, that’s it.”

  Betta patted her lips with the paper napkin and held up her finger before pulling out her cell phone. She scrolled through her directory and tapped on a number. “Ciao, Gisa. We’re coming by to do some more research.” She listened and rolled her eyes. “Riccardo is right here, Gisa, and might have heard that. Listen, could you pull out something about the town of Fossalunga? And any genealogical material on the Vizentin family that lives there? Separate it and we’ll go through it when we get there. Right, Vizentin. We’re in Marostica, so we should be there in about twenty minutes.” Another pause. “Very funny, Gisa.” She tapped the phone off and slipped it back into an internal pocket. “It’s time to go back to work, Riccardo.”

  He held a hand over his heart. “It doesn’t feel like work when I’m with you, Signorina.”

  “There you go again.”

  ***

  Betta managed to squeeze the motorcycle into the middle of a row of Vespas a few meters from the entrance to the archives. Rick could almost feel the mini-bikes cowering in the intimidating presence of the Ducati. Carrying their helmets, they mounted the stone steps of the building and walked down a long hallway toward the reading room. An exhibit of crayon drawings mounted on panels set away from the walls lined one side, each identified by name, age, and school, on a card below.

  “Future artists for your gallery,” Rick noted.

  “You never know.”

  “I remember the library in Albuquerque doing exhibits like this. It must be a requirement to get your international library license.” There was no reaction from Betta. “There’s actually no such thing as an international—”

  “I know, Riccardo. There she is.”

  Gisa stood in front of a bulletin board outside the tall doors leading into the reading room. Today she wore another loose sweater with a long, knit skirt and burgundy clogs. She spotted them and walked in their direction.

  “So good to see you again, Riccardo.” The words were like honey, and spoken as if she and Rick shared some kind of secret. Her grin added to the impression.

  “The pleasure is completely mine, Gisa. You are very kind to help us with our little research project.”

  The librarian held up her hands in defense. “What would you expect for an old friend?” She glanced at Betta and back at Rick. “As well as the new friend of an old friend.”

  “Okay, Gisa, that’s enough.”

  “I was just starting to enjoy this,” Rick protested. “But I suppose we have some work to do.”

  Gisa shrugged and looked them over. “I have the material in my office, and since I don’t want our archive patrons frightened by the appearance of two biker gang members, you’d better read it there.” They followed her through a side door, down a narrow hall, and through another door.

  Her rectangular office gave Rick the impression she was organized, but not to the extreme. At one end, next to a small window, stood her wood desk with a computer, telephone, a gooseneck lamp, and a few papers. No books, but who needs them when there are so many in the other rooms? A table and six chairs took up most of the rest of the space, though a single bookshelf stood against one wall, with only a few books, and stacked horizontally. Otherwise, except for a small bronze statuette, it was bare. The only item which could be considered decorative, except for the statuette, was a large photograph of Bassano under snow, its covered bridge in the center bringing memories of the previous evening into Rick’s mind. Gisa motioned to a short stack of papers on the table.

  “Sit down and I’ll tell you what I’ve found. Not much, I’m afraid, but I don’t really know what you’re looking for.”

  “We don’t either, Gisa.” Betta and Rick sat in the chairs across from their host. Two modern fixtures hung from the high ceiling, lighting the table and the room. “If there is something more about the villa where the paintings were last seen, and if we can pin down whether the Vizentin family lived near it, that might help.”

  Gisa opened a file and pushed it across. “The villa was never occupied again after the war, and is still in a state of disrepair if not a total shambles. The family line ended in the late 1940s and there was a legal dispute as to the ownership of the property for a decade or so after that, but then everyone seems to have lost interest, and it remains in legal limbo.”

  Rick studied the papers, running his fingers down the lines. “You’ve extracted quite a bit of information, Gisa.”

  “Most of it is from an article written in Il Mattino di Padova a couple years ago. I’m not that fast. But I did work on your Vizentin family and found an item which may be of interest. We have a pretty good genealogy section here.” She opened the file in front of her. “There are some Vizentins living in the area now, including one older couple in Fossalunga itself.” She noticed Rick and Betta exchanging looks. “It appears you knew that already. The others are scattered around the Veneto, but our records don’t go too far afield. The family has been around for a while, of course; I found records of births, deaths, marriages, and baptisms dating back to the sixteenth century. But one more recent Vizentin you likely will want to hear about.” She pushed a sheet between them and tapped a red fingernail on one line. “Coluccio Vizentin was employed as a gardener at your villa in the late 1930s. I did a general search on him, hoping I would get lucky because of his unusual name, and found that he was listed as a member of a partisan brigade that operated around Bassano in the late years of the war.”

  Rick put his arm around Betta and gave her a quick squeeze, causing Gisa to raise an eyebrow. “There’s our connection, Betta.”

  “A somewhat tenuous one, you’ll have to admit. Half the male population of the region was fighting in the mountains at that time.”

  “But only Coluccio had a connection to the villa where the paintings disappeared.”

  Gisa shifted her glance between the two while she listened to their exchange, and then pulled out the last of the files. From it she took a folded piece of thick, and almost ancient, paper. She carefully opened it at the creases, revealing what was likely an architectural drawing of a building. “This is the original floor plan of the villa, if that is of interest to you. Naturally it is anyone’s guess where your precious paintings were hung, but most likely it was in one of the public rooms.” She pointed to one of the rectangles drawn within the C-shaped structure. “They were on this side, if I understand the writing here, and the sleeping wing is over here.” Their eyes followed Gisa’s fingers over the yellowed paper. “The kitchens and service quarters were in the back, here.”

  Rick tapped on the table. “This compass point indicates north, so the windows point south. Is it near a main road?”

  Gisa rose to her feet and walked to her desk where she lifted the laptop and brought it back to the table. “I was looking up a satellite view of it just before you got here. Let me get it out of sleep mode.” She typed in a password and turned the screen toward Rick and Betta when a screen came to life. “There it is. You can see there is an unpaved road that goes in front of it, but the strada provinciale that connects Bassano with Padova is about two kilometers south. It was likely put in after the war and the older road probably fell out of use since it doesn’t serve any purpose except to get to and from the villa.”

  Betta nodded. “A villa that nobody needed to visit.”

  Drumming his fingers on the table, Rick said, “I know we won’t find anything, certainly not the missing Jacopos, but do you think it might be fun to return to the scene of the crime?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Betta replied.

  Gisa smiled. “You two make a good team. But promise me you’ll be careful.”

  ***

  Lunch was minimal. They stopped in a bar in Fossalunga and ordered two ham and cheese pannini with glasses of mineral water. Rick contained his urge to quiz t
he proprietor about the Vizentin family, but he did ask about the villa and got nothing. The man had just bought the bar after moving from Padova, and knew little about the town and its surroundings. He might as well have been from Naples. Rick picked a small tube of Baci off the counter display when he ordered their coffees, and they split the chocolates as they drank. When they realized it was an odd number in the tube, he insisted Betta have the last one. Hazelnut and dark chocolate—the surest way to a woman’s heart.

  After tightening the chin straps of their helmets they swung their legs over the Ducati, and Betta brought it to life. Coming out of the town they jogged to the north and turned onto a very straight road on very flat terrain. It was the Via Postumia, an ancient Roman consular road that connected Genoa with the Adriatic Sea, and the Romans didn’t like bends. Not only was it straight, it was smooth, since—fortunately for Rick and Betta—it had been re-paved since construction in 144 BC. They turned off the highway after only a few kilometers, crossed a small bridge, and drove onto a small road that was in less than ideal condition. Betta slowed down and skillfully managed to avoid most of the cracks and potholes. But as bad as that pavement was, it was like an airplane runway compared to the rutty dirt road that came next. It bounced and bumped them out of the flat land and up a small hill until they came to their destination.

  The hill on which the villa sat was dotted with rocks and weeds, the former likely the reason no one had gone to the trouble to take ownership of the land. Even if someone wanted to develop the land, it would have been a labor of Hercules to move the rocks and boulders from the dirt. And then, what would grow there? Grapes for wine? Rick was not an agronomist, but he thought it unlikely. Even the weeds didn’t look healthy.

  The path up to the building wove through many of the larger boulders, but it was so overgrown with scrubby bushes that they decided to leave the motorcycle and walk the final meters. As they got closer they could see that the tall windows were without panes of glass, and many window frames had simply disappeared. Had there been curtains, they would now be flapping in the wind, but they were long gone. The architecture was similar to the Rinaldi villa only in that the essential shape was horizontal and long. Any ornamentation had been removed years, perhaps decades, ago. What remained was a shell, like a once-elegant stretch limousine now rusting on blocks. Betta and Rick reached the doorway and set down their helmets.