Murder Most Unfortunate

by David P. Wagner

  “Perhaps we should put them back on before going in,” suggested Betta.

  “I don’t see any signs indicating that it’s a hard hat area.” He pushed open the front door, expecting an eerie creaking sound like in a horror movie, but was disappointed. “According to Gisa’s floor plan, the entertaining areas, if that’s the word, are off to the left. Let’s look there first.” They passed into what had been an entrance hall and through an opening where doors once must have hung. The room’s emptiness, rather than echoing their steps, muffled them. They stopped in the middle and looked up where a few tatters of paint still stuck to the ceiling and a bare wire hung from a small hole. Rick gestured at the wall opposite the windows. “The paintings might have hung there, to keep the direct sun off them. If they worried about such things in those days.” They continued into the next room and found the same emptiness, but here leaves and dirt had blown through the pane-less windows, building little mounds in the four corners. A section of the ceiling had fallen in, and they could feel the outside air being pulled through the windows and up into the hole.

  “Look at that, Riccardo.” She was pointing to a faint trace of footprints in the dirt. “I wonder how long ago that person was in here.”

  Rick walked over and knelt down to get a closer look. “Hard to know. It could have been yesterday or last week or last month. It depends on the wind coming through this room, and how long it takes the blowing dirt to cover things up.”

  She took a breath and folded her arms across her chest. “By one theory, your English friend already has the paintings, so it wouldn’t be him. That leaves the German. He could have been poking around here.”

  Rick got to his feet. “Why would he be looking for them if his grandfather took them? No, I doubt if either of them was here, unless it was to see where the paintings had been when they were stolen. That’s what we’re doing.”

  Betta looked at the open window and frowned. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Something’s written on the wall.”

  They scuffed through the dust and peered at a section of the wall next to the window. Letters, and a few numbers, were barely visible on the wallpaper, much of which had peeled off. It appeared that they had been written with a very fine pen, but when Rick bent down and ran his fingers across the surface, he found they had been cut into the wall. One long word was followed underneath by other words and numbers.

  “I think it’s German. I took only one semester, as a requirement, and could never get used to the sounds. Let me see. It looks like entfernung. I think that means—”

  “Distance,” said Betta. “I took more than a semester.” She bent to see the other markings. “Barn. Hill. Bridge. And after each one a number, followed by M. Look out there, Riccardo. So you see a barn?”

  “No barn.”

  “Is there a bridge?”

  “Way off down the hill we’re on, I think it’s the one we crossed on the way here.”

  “Is it about a hundred and twenty-five meters away?”

  “I get it, and how far does it say the hill is?”

  “Two hundred twenty meters.”

  “Someone marked off the distances and carved them on the wall—likely with a bayonet—to help the shooters sight their targets. So Germans used this window to hold off the approaching enemy, or be ready to if they appeared. Betta, it could have been Muller’s grandfather.”

  She looked out the huge opening that once held a window, careful not to brush against the dust that was everywhere. “It sounds like you want to make him the villain.”

  Rick stared out, trying to picture what the view had been like those many years ago when the war broke the silence of the hill. He stood behind Betta and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Not really. In fact I like the man. But we have to go where the clues lead us.”

  “There are no clues, Riccardo. It was seventy years ago and there were a lot of Germans in this part of Italy then. It proves nothing.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” He dropped his hands from her shoulders and put his arms around her waist. She put her hands over his and they stared into the distance before turning to leave.

  After walking through the rest of the villa they exited through the same central door, picked up their helmets, and stepped carefully down the path to the parked motorcycle. Rick was still working on his helmet strap when Betta brought the Mostro to life, and he had barely swung his leg over and settled into his seat when she pushed the bike forward and started down the hill at a low speed. They bounced over ruts and bumps before reaching the paved road, which was not much smoother. A few minutes later they crossed the bridge and came to the main highway. There was no traffic, so instead of a full stop she rolled onto the smooth pavement and gunned the engine. The Ducati responded like a huge dog being let out of a cage, and Rick hung on tightly. Betta leaned forward, concentrating on the distance ahead, while Rick bent his head slightly to the left. The motorcycle was growling into second gear when Rick spotted a dark blue sedan waiting on a side road ahead. As they zipped past, it pulled out behind them.

  Not him again.

  “Betta, we have company,” he shouted. “I hate to suggest it, but can you pick up the speed?”

  She tilted her head slightly to look into the mirror on the handlebar. “He can never catch me if I don’t want him to,” she called back. “Let’s have some fun.”

  Rick was about to suggest that it might be better simply to get away from the guy, but at that moment the bike shot ahead, taking the breath from his lungs. He clung to her waist as she alternatively sped up and then slowed down, always keeping an eye on the mirror. Unable to turn around, Rick could only guess where the car was, but he assumed that she was jerking the guy’s chain with her fast and slow speeds. This kept up for ten minutes as they raced through a few small villages and kilometers of open countryside. Rick heard the engine drop an octave and noticed a sign for Cittadella fly past. He tilted to one side in order to see around Betta’s helmet. The houses were more frequent, though still only one- and two-story buildings. Cittadella was on the list of places he’d wanted to see, since it was one of the most picturesque walled towns in Italy. But he hadn’t expected it to be from the back of a motorcycle.

  The street was now lined with houses as they left the countryside completely and neared the city itself. It also narrowed, forcing Betta to pull back on the reins. As they got closer to the walls he could see that the street was on a straight line to one of the four city gates, but then he noticed the circular sign indicating do not enter. For an instant Rick thought she was going to ignore the one-way street and enter the city right there, but instead she paused and made a sharp right turn. Rick took advantage of the turn to glance behind and saw that the dark car was about fifty meters back. Cittadella, he knew, was a round city surrounded by an intact wall system. Inside, the two main streets went straight from one gate to the other, crossing in the center, and the other streets were concentric circles inside the circle of high walls. Rick looked to his left as the motorcycle gunned ahead. Between them and the towering walls was a wide moat and an expanse of grass crisscrossed with paths. He noticed a couple strolling below the ramparts when Betta braked and suddenly cut to the left. The narrow street took them across a bridge over the water in the moat and through a set of double gates. Between the gates Rick looked up, half expecting to be drenched with boiling oil, but by then they were through the wall and inside the town.

  Betta, thankfully, slowed down. But at the second corner she swerved to the left into one of the narrower side streets, then braked again and made another left until she reached the wall. They rode along it until a stop sign where she actually came to a complete stop.

  “I get the sense you’ve done this before.” Rick called out as she revved the engine.

  “A few times. He’ll never find us on these streets, but he’ll waste quit
e some time trying.” She turned left and they shot through the wall and over the moat. Twenty minutes later they were in Bassano.

  During the ride the noise made it impossible to talk, but Rick spent the time trying to figure out who the hell was the guy in the dark sedan. And he imagined Betta doing the same. Her comment when they reached the alley behind the gallery confirmed it. She pulled off the helmet and ran her fingers through her short, black hair.

  “Someone thinks you got some information from Sarchetti before he was killed, Riccardo, and now they’re following you.”

  “That may be, but if it’s the same guy who tried to run us off the road, he did it before I met with Sarchetti. There must be another reason.”

  “When you figure it out, let me know.” She took his helmet and kissed him on the cheek. “I’d better get back to work, there’s an artist coming in this afternoon to set up a new exhibit. Thanks for lunch.” She stared at him for a moment and then kissed him again, this time on the lips. “Please be careful.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “We need to talk again.”

  DiMaio’s voice betrayed fatigue, even through the cell phone connection. Rick was standing in the uppermost of the city’s trio of connecting squares, near the entrance to the museum and the San Francesco church adjacent to it. When the phone rang he’d been considering a quick visit to the church, partly because he enjoyed church architecture, but also so he could write to his mother that he’d been inside. She assumed that he was attending mass regularly and he tried not to disappoint her, even if it meant stretching the truth. But now it appeared that his act of piety, already tenuous, would have to be postponed.

  “Of course, Alfredo. Where do you want to meet this time?”

  “I’m near Palazzo Sturm. I’ll be out front.”

  “That’s the Ceramics Museum. I can be there in five minutes.”

  He made it, in fact, in less than five minutes. DiMaio stood in the patio in front of the building, staring over a low wall at the covered bridge just up river. When Rick came through the gates he looked up but stayed at the wall. Rick walked to him and they both leaned on the stone of the wall and stared down at the water. As they watched, the sound of voices, singing, male voices, floated up from the bridge.

  “The Alpini,” said DiMaio. “Whenever ex-alpine troops finds themselves on their bridge, they break into song. It must be something they swear on their unit banner to do when they’re discharged, but it’s a nice tradition for those of us who live here.” His eyes stayed on the river. “Better to associate music with the bridge than violence. I wonder how many people, over the centuries, have been thrown from it? Or thrown themselves from it? Our little murder last night could not have been the first.” He turned to Rick. “I’m sure you know that this isn’t the original bridge. The last time it was destroyed was not in a flood or fire, like the previous times, but with explosives. The partisans blew it up and got three of their own shot in reprisal by the Nazis.” He shook his head, as if to signal that the subject was closed. “Have you been in the museum?”

  “Not yet, Alfredo, but it’s on my list.”

  “Let’s go in, we can talk as we look at the exhibits.” They walked across the small courtyard and mounted the steps. Behind an admission desk sat a stocky man with a large red beard and a shock of hair to match it. Rick was about to pull out some euros when the man recognized the policeman and waved them both through.

  “A friend of yours, Alfredo?”

  “I took a thorn out of his paw a while back. He returns the favor by always letting me in free, not that I come here that often.” They walked into a room in which the ornate ceramics in the display cases competed with the even more ornate decoration of the walls and ceiling. “I hope you like rococo.”

  “I must admit I’m not a big fan.”

  DiMaio stopped and peered at a large flowered bowl under one of the glass cases. “The style goes with the ceramics, at least in this room.” They studied the bowl for a few moments before walking through a doorway to a room with more of the same on walls and display. “But we didn’t come here just to talk about decoration. Riccardo, Inspector Occasio is getting more and more frustrated with this case. I know the man well, unfortunately, and if he stays true to form he will lash out. I fear that he may take someone into custody who is not the guilty party.”

  “You mean me.”

  “It would not surprise me.”

  “Listen, Alfredo, Occasio might think I’m some naïve American, but if he’ll have his hands full if he tries something with me. You know as well as I do there’s no evidence to make me a serious suspect in either of these crimes.”

  The detective kept his eyes on the displays and did not answer. Once they left the large salon, the other rooms were of smaller and similar size, and the ceramics more recent. “Have you spoken to your uncle?”

  It had been in the back of Rick’s mind since Occasio and his men had appeared at the hotel. “No, and I don’t want him to get involved. You can call it the American in me, but I would rather deal with this myself than lean on family connections.”

  DiMaio put on the ironic smile with which Rick was now all too familiar. “Very noble of you, Riccardo, and yes, not very Italian. Perhaps once you’ve been back in Italy long enough you’ll change.” He took what was either a deep breath or a sigh. “I, of course, will do everything I can to keep Occasio from doing anything rash, but I can’t promise I’ll be successful.”

  “I appreciate that, Alfredo. What about all the other suspects? The real ones.”

  They had wandered into a room with modern, whimsical pieces, including a ceramic table on which everything was also ceramic, including the silverware and food. All the items on the table had an eerie, white glaze, as if it were a banquet set for ghosts.

  “He has not told me so specifically, but I believe he has ruled out the prominent people of our community. Your friend’s uncle Angelo Rinaldi, for example, as well as the banker, Porcari, and even our museum curator Paolo Tibaldi. They would have had to be caught standing over the bleeding body of our victims before he would take the risk of arresting one of them. Occasio is very careful when dealing with anyone who has power, be it political, bureaucratic, or economic. So that leaves our three foreigners. Randolph, your compatriot, doesn’t have a real motive any more than do the others. He is also so engrossed with his fidanzata that he wouldn’t want to spoil the magic by getting involved in murder. Oglesby, the Brit, seems too disorganized to plan a couple murders. The German is an interesting study, as you’ll remember from our interview with him. I just wonder if something went on during his dinner with Sarchetti that he didn’t want to tell us. But if he killed Sarchetti, what motive did he have to murder Fortuna?”

  They looked silently into one more glass case before Rick spoke. “I know you don’t want to hear this, nor does your boss, but I believe that the two murders have something to do with the two missing Jacopo Bassano paintings.”

  “I’ve seen this movie before, Riccardo. I didn’t like it then and I don’t now.”

  Rick held up his hands. “As you wish. Then how about Gaddi? You didn’t mention him.”

  “The ancient professor? It is highly unlikely that Gaddi would have the desire or certainly the physical strength to commit one murder, let alone two. Even when he told Occasio and me this morning that he’d met with Sarchetti yesterday, the inspector crossed him off the suspect list. The man was shaking like a leaf, and not from guilt.”

  Rick remembered how strong the professor’s handshake had been, but kept that little detail to himself. He wanted to argue for a connection between the murder and the Jacopo paintings, but given DiMaio’s strong reaction, he let it go. Also, while he hated to admit it to himself, DiMaio could be right—the murders had nothing to do with Jacopo’s work, missing or otherwise.

  A few minutes later the two walked down the steps int
o the open air. As it had the previous day, the sky was darkening and what had been a slight breeze had become a chill wind. Both unconsciously pulled their coats closed. When they reached the gate, the detective’s normal face had become somber.

  “Riccardo, promise me you’ll think about calling your uncle.”

  ***

  The last issue Rick wanted to face at that moment was Erica’s pre-marital quandary, but as he walked through the doors into the hotel lobby it raised its head again. This time it was without Erica herself. Randolph spotted Rick, strode to him, and asked—almost pleaded—that he join him in the bar for a chat. It was the last way Rick wanted to spend a few minutes, but there was nothing he could do. After ordering for both of them, the professor got down to business.

  “Erica has gone for a walk, Rick. She seems to be doing that a lot since she arrived here. And she’s been moody too. At first I thought it was the fatigue of jet lag, but I’m wondering if there’s more to it.”

  Oh, boy, thought Rick. “Jet lag always wipes me out too, Jeff. I usually figure a day for each hour of time difference to get used to the new time zone. She’s only been here a few days.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Randolph stared into his drink, a draft beer. Rick did the same with his Crodino. “But you know, Rick, there is an age difference between the two of us.”

  Rick nodded but kept silent. He couldn’t really say that he hadn’t noticed.

  “Since you knew Erica before…before she came to the States, I thought you could give me your thoughts. Man to man.”