Killer Smile

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m trying to find out if someone is buried here, an Italian internee from Fort Missoula, but I don’t see an office. Isn’t there an office here?”

  “Across the street,” the groundskeeper answered, extending a long finger, which Mary followed. Outside the cemetery, directly opposite the main gate, sat a white clapboard house trimmed with green, which she hadn’t noticed when she came in. She was about to thank the man when he said, “But you don’t have to go ask the office about that. I know where those fellas are buried. I been here twenty-three years.”

  “Do you know if someone named Amadeo Brandolini is here?”

  The man gestured, by way of response.

  Mary stood alone, her hands linked in front of her, confronting the graves of the four internees. They had bronze memorial plaques, not tombstones like the other graves, different from the others even in death. The plaques, flush with the ground, were dusted with leftover blades of grass and sat in a solemn little row. They were identical, with an embossed depiction of the praying hands to the left of a name: Giuseppe Marchese, Born Catania Italy, 1913–1942. Aurelio Mariani, Born Genova Italy, 1914–1942. Giuseppe Marazzo, Born Torre Del Greco Italy, 1896–1943. And:

  AMADEO BRANDOLINI

  BORN ASCOLI-PICENO ITALY

  1903–1942

  Mary stood at the foot of his grave, in pain. Pain for the loss of Amadeo, pain for the loss of Mike; it was hopelessly bound up now. Maybe she hadn’t been right to come here. Maybe it would make everything worse. Her chest tightened and she bit her lip. Amadeo’s grave made his death real to her. He had died out west, far from his family, far from the city he had made his home, far even from the sea. It seemed so strange. And even though the cemetery was lovely by any measure, Mary couldn’t help an uneasy sensation that crept over her, standing there. A sense that Amadeo didn’t belong here at all. And it had nothing to do with the lack of Italian surnames or showy statuary.

  She walked between the graves to his memorial plaque, knelt down, and ran her fingers along the embossed letters. BRANDOLINI. Odd. They felt warm to the touch. But they were shaded by the tree, weren’t they?

  Mary looked up. A tall, full tree sheltered the memorial, bathing it in cool shade. So why would the letters be warm? She felt them again to double-check. Warm. Maybe this type of plaque retained the day’s heat? To test her theory, she turned around and touched the plaque of the grave next to Amadeo’s, Giuseppe Marchese’s. The letters were cold to the touch. Mary ran her fingers back and forth over the name. Cold, definitely cold, in the same shade. Then she touched Amadeo’s name again. Warm.

  Alive.

  Mary edged away, rising. Then she heard a voice behind her, like a whisper.

  “Yes?” Mary said, turning, thinking the groundskeeper had come back. But no one was there. Nothing stood behind her except the polished back of a granite tombstone, and beyond it, another monument, under the same massive shade tree.

  Huh? What’s going on? She listened again, cocking her head, but the only sound was the rhythmic spray of the sprinklers. That must have been it. A spray sounds like a whisper, doesn’t it? Mary listened again, harder, her heart beginning to thump.

  No, she heard, with a softness of a Bitterroot breeze, its inflection clearly Italian. No.

  She waited, trying to decide whether she was crazy, jet-lagged, or just Premenstrual Mary. Or whether she had simply heard a voice. Because her third secret was one she joked about, but had never truly admitted until now: I believe in ghosts. It was impossible not to, wasn’t it, for a good Catholic? Growing up, she had blessed herself to the Holy Ghost, studied the miracles and the lives of the saints, and had swallowed whole the stigmata thing. So it wasn’t completely inconceivable that a ghost was speaking to her now, was it? Amadeo’s ghost.

  No, he said again, and Mary waited, trembling. Listening. Watching the shadows flit across the letters on his memorial plaque. AMADEO, beloved of God.

  And then it was gone.

  Leaving Mary standing there. She didn’t feel afraid. She didn’t want to run or scream.

  All she wanted was to know the truth.

  Seventeen

  Mary went back to the Doubletree Inn and stopped at the brownish counter at the front desk, where the ponytailed clerk was on the phone. On the left sat a metal rack of fold-up Osprey schedules and Bitterroot Valley brochures, but Mary wasn’t interested in the sights. She waited for the clerk, who hung up and looked over expectantly, her ponytail swinging in its white scrunchy. Mary asked, “Did a fax come for me? Room 217.”

  “You with the U?”

  “The University? No, I’m just by myself.” If you don’t count the ghost.

  “Be right back.” The clerk disappeared behind a door and returned a minute later with a manila envelope, which she handed across the counter. “Here we go.”

  “My death certificate!” Mary said, excited, and didn’t bother to explain when the clerk recoiled. She had applied at the recorder’s office for Amadeo’s death certificate this morning, on her way to the fort. She thanked the clerk and went upstairs but couldn’t wait to get to her room to open the envelope. She slid it from the envelope and hit the hall.

  At the top, the fax read DEATH CERTIFICATE, and it was divided into two parts. At the top half, each entry was neatly handwritten: Decedent’s Name: Amadeo Brandolini. Alias: None. Age: 38. Date of Birth: August 30, 1903. Date of Death: July 17, 1942. Marital Status: Widowed. Occupation: Unknown. Armed Forces: Not Applicable. Residence: Fort Missoula Detention Facility. Race: Caucasian. Nationality: Italian.

  At the bottom half of the certificate was a section filled out in almost illegible handwriting, evidently by a coroner whose exact name she couldn’t decipher. Cause of Death: accidental asphyxiation. Time of Death: 7:18 P.M. Place of Death: Missoula City Hospital.

  Mary read it again and again, but she didn’t get it. What was accidental asphyxiation? And the time and place of death didn’t jibe with what Mr. Milton had told her. Amadeo was supposed to have hung himself in the field at lunchtime and had been dead all afternoon. But that wasn’t true, according to the death certificate.

  Mary slid the certificate back in the envelope, hurried up the stairs and down the hall to her room, and perched on the edge of the bed to call Missoula information for Mr. Milton’s number at home. When she heard his soft voice on the line, she said, “Mr. Milton, it’s Mary, sorry to bother you.”

  “It’s no bother, dear. I did enjoy our lunch together.”

  “Me, too. I’m calling because I got a copy of Amadeo’s death certificate and it says that he died by accidental asphyxiation, which sounds impossible to me. And it also says that he died around seven o’clock at night. Does any of that make sense to you?” Mary paused, and the line went silent. “Mr. Milton?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I guess, well, I only told you part of the truth.”

  Mary felt a jolt of surprise. “Okay, what is it?”

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset you, and it didn’t matter. I told you what happened, pretty much.”

  “Please tell me everything. Like they say, the whole truth and nothing but.”

  “The accidental part, well, I don’t know for sure. I guess it says accidental so they didn’t make your client look bad. You know, a suicide and all. It was kinda embarrassing to him.”

  Not to mention to the camp. Or maybe the FBI wanted it covered up. In any event, that must have been how Amadeo was buried in the Catholic cemetery. He wasn’t listed as a suicide. “But what about the time difference? You said he died around noon.”

  Mr. Milton paused. “Well, uh, this Brandolini, your client, he didn’t die right away. As I recall it, he was unconscious when Sam picked ’em up, but he didn’t die until later, in the hospital.”

  It jibed with the certificate. “Why is that? Do you remember?”

  “Oh, I remember. You know, my memory is very
good.”

  Mary remembered he had told her that, even if he didn’t. “So what happened?”

  Mr. Milton paused again. “You really have to know? It’s kinda upsetting, the gory details.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, the rope he hung himself with? It didn’t hold.”

  “What do you mean, it didn’t hold?”

  “It broke. It wasn’t strong enough to hold him.”

  Mary swallowed her distaste. “But he was only a hundred and fifty-five pounds.” She remembered from Amadeo’s alien registration card. “What kind of rope was it? Just string or something?”

  “No, it was strong enough rope, that wasn’t the problem. Problem was, he made the rope by tyin’ two ropes together. They weren’t long enough, either one of ’em. They musta been ropes they used to tie the tools together, like I said. The rope broke where he tied it.”

  No. Mary heard someone whisper. Okay, officially, there are no sprinklers or wind in my hotel room.

  “Mary, you all right?”

  “Sure, fine.”

  “Sorry I didn’t tell you, but you can see how come I didn’t want to mention it. And don’t think on it, too much. Your client, he didn’t suffer.”

  Yes, he did. “Is there anything else you remember?”

  “No, dear. That’s all. I’m sorry about your client.”

  “Thanks so much,” Mary said and hung up.

  She sat on the edge of the bed a minute. The hotel room had been cleaned, and housekeeping had opened the curtains on either side of her sliding glass doors. Outside her window, the sun was glimmering on the ripples of the Clark Fork, which was doing its gurgling and rushing thing. A little boy in a striped shirt and rubber overalls was fishing in the river, which came as high as his knees, and his father stood behind him, holding on to him by a strap of his overalls. The father wore a green vest with a wooden net hanging from his collar in the back. Mary watched them idly. She had never gone fishing, but she felt like she was fishing now. Casting a line into waters she didn’t know, seeing what would bite. Amadeo had evidently joined her, as a guide. Thank God one of them could fish.

  Mary tried to imagine the day of Amadeo’s death. The rope tying him to the tree, coming undone. Amadeo falling to the ground. The horror of the friend when he woke up, unable to call anyone to help. Not that anyone could have helped anyway. Mary had worked on enough murder cases to know a little about strangulation. The rope would have ruptured the carotid and other vessels in Amadeo’s neck, and he would have bled to death, internally, over a period of hours. He would have known that he was dying. Would that have made him happy? Finally given him peace, knowing that he would join Theresa? Mary couldn’t help but shudder at the thought. Even in her grief over Mike, she had never considered suicide. Her parents would have killed her.

  Part of her wished Mr. Milton hadn’t told her the truth, because it hurt to think of Amadeo suffering. She tried to dismiss the thought but couldn’t. She sighed, needing suddenly to lie down. She took off her blazer, folded it in half, and laid it flat on the other bed, near the glass sliders. Outside, the father was bending over the little boy, evidently instructing him as he tied something to the end of his fishing line. A lure, she guessed, or a fly of some kind. Last night there had been people fishing in the same spot, not fifty yards from the Doubletree. Mary knew that fly-fishing was big in Montana, from a movie she’d seen on Encore with Brad Pitt. Broad Street Runs Through It.

  She kicked off her loafers, went back to bed, and sat down, bending over and pulling off one nylon knee-high, then the next. Nobody else at Rosato bothered with nylon knee-highs, but Mary had grown up watching the mamarellas on the C bus wear them with dresses and had nursed a secret fondness for their taupe ugliness. She was about to drop the mamarella socks on the floor and lie down, but she looked at them again. They were the cheap kind from the Acme and had shriveled to nothing without her calf to give them shape. In fact, they looked like two pieces of brown rope.

  Just then Mary heard an excited yelp from outside her window and looked up. The little boy’s fishing rod had bent almost to breaking, and he was reeling something in, braced against the strain and the moving water. His father held on to him with a sure hand. In the next instant, a fish shimmering with color and water burst from the river into the air, its long body torquing before it fell sideways into the river, with a splash.

  Mary watched, transfixed; the fish was a strong, wild animal, fighting for its life, which is not the kind of thing you see at Tenth & Ritner. The boy cranked his reel, the father held on tight, and the trout jumped from the river again, thrashing more weakly. It happened one more time, the boy and the fish locked in a lethal battle that the boy eventually won, reeling in the fish close enough for his father to scoop it into the net. The boy jumped with glee, and the father gave him a hug. Then they bent together over the fish, and the father reached into the net. After a minute, they let the fish swim away.

  Mary smiled at the happy ending. She had no idea that a fish could be so big or so powerful; they were so calm in the Chicken of the Sea can. Whatever the boy had tied on his fishing line had done the trick, and the line itself had to have been strong. She considered it. Fishermen had to know how to tie things onto other things. Knots were something that fishermen knew about. Even a city girl like Mary had heard the term fisherman’s knot.

  On impulse she went with the mamarella socks to the borrowed laptop she’d set up on the desk, then hit the enter key to wake it up. She logged onto Google, typed in “fisherman’s knot,” and the cheery blue-and-white screen yielded the results of her search. She eliminated the first few links, which looked irrelevant, then about the middle of the page came upon what she was looking for: Get Knotted! Animated Knots for Scouts! She clicked on the link, and the screen changed as the computer found the website, which was for a Boy Scout troop in East Sussex, in the United Kingdom. Underneath the title was a bright blue list of all sorts of knots: bowline, clove hitch, figure-of-eight knot, fisherman’s knot.

  Bingo! Mary stopped there and clicked. Fisherman’s Knot, read the heading of the new page, next to a definition:

  The Fisherman’s knot is used to tie two ropes of equal thickness together. It is a useful and common knot used by fishermen to join fishing line, and is very effective with diameter strings and twines.

  Instantly, at the top of the page, two animated pieces of rope, one bright red and one bright blue, started tying themselves into a very solid knot. She watched the rope tie and untie itself a few times, slowly enough so that even a Philadelphia lawyer could follow. She scanned the page and underneath were directions: Tie a thumb knot in the running end of the first rope — and Mary had to click on a link to learn about the thumb knot part — then tie a thumb knot in the second rope, around the first rope. Note the thumb knots are tied such that they lie snugly against each other when standing ends are pulled.

  Mary double-checked the directions, picked up the mamarella socks from the desk, and followed the directions for the fisherman’s knot to tie them together. Then she pulled the reinforced toe of each sock. Presto! She had joined her mamarella socks! She yanked hard. Nothing would make them come apart. She was screwed if she needed to wear them, but she had taught herself one thing. No rope joined by a fisherman’s knot would ever come apart.

  What had Mr. Milton said on the phone? Problem was, he made the rope by tyin’ two ropes together…. The rope broke where he tied it.

  Mary felt a bolt of excitement that was almost electric. The knot in the rope hadn’t held. Amadeo, a fisherman by profession, would have known how to tie a fisherman’s knot. So only one conclusion followed logically, and to confirm it, she didn’t need a ghost. Amadeo hadn’t tied that knot. Somebody else had, and there was only one other man with him in the beet field that day.

  Mary reached for the phone.

  Eighteen

  “It’s almost closing time,” said the cashier at the Fort Missoula museum. It was the same woman in
the denim shift, who had helped earlier today and was undoubtedly regretting it now. Mary was on a new mission, to find a mystery man.

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” Sorry, sorry, so very sorry. They were upstairs at the museum, and on the way over, Mary had called Frank Cavuto and Jim MacIntire again and left more messages. Skinny Uncle Joey wasn’t in either, and it gave her a pang of homesickness she was too old for. She considered calling home and asking her mother why she was so frigging thin, but stopped because she’d have to reveal she was on Pluto.

  “I do have some paperwork to finish up, but then I’ll have to get home.” The cashier hustled down the hall on the museum’s second floor, past the administrative offices, and halted at a door bearing a red sign that read: STOP! YOU ARE ENTERING A CURATORIAL ZONE! “Can you be done in an hour, Mary?”

  “If I can’t, I’ll come back tomorrow, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Certainly. The director said to help you in any way we can.” The cashier nodded. “What you’re looking for might be in here. If it isn’t, the U has a lot of archival information in the Mansfield Library, as you know.”

  “Yes, thanks.” Mary had read as much, and was a library fan from way back. She would never have learned to love books if not for the Free Library of Philadelphia. She’d grown up in a household where there was only one book other than the Bible. TV Guide.

  “Our archive is more specialized, as you’ll see. It pertains strictly to goings-on and internees at Fort Missoula, during the internment.” The cashier opened the door with a jingling set of keys and flicked on the light in the small, windowless room, which was wall-to-wall history.

  “Wow,” Mary said, meaning it.

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” The cashier went to the end of one of the gray accordions, pulled a sheaf of papers from the last one, and handed them to Mary. “This may help you. It’s an index made by a volunteer named Dale.”