Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Nancy Fairbanks

  So Ruggiero Ricci was given to many indiscreet liaisons, was he? Did that mean that Paolina had been the first woman to cheat on him, and that he had been so indignant that he killed her? Or did it mean that his wife finally got fed up with his infidelity and killed Paolina to give him a scare?

  12

  A Chat with Nunzia

  Bianca

  I blamed Lorenzo for stirring the children into such wild moods, for he wrestled with them in bed and made jokes about the food at breakfast until they were overcome with giggles. What a wonderful father he is to my darlings! And then, once he had gone off to more serious pursuits, there was his mother, who welcomed them to her room, although they were bouncing off the walls, and suggested all sorts of delights to fill their day—a boat ride, for instance. Of course, they wanted to know why Mama wasn’t going along, but Violetta told them that I was too fat, that I’d sink the boat, which, of course, caused more laughter, although it was all too true. I hadn’t seen my feet in several months, and Lorenzo had to help me on with my shoes because I could no longer do it myself.

  But with the children taken care of, I had well over an hour before I was to meet the others in the lobby for our tour of the Amalfi Coast, one of our country’s most beautiful sights. As I was coming out of my room, I saw the French woman knocking at Carolyn’s door. Even if Carolyn proved to be the murderer of my countrywoman, I wouldn’t have wished a visit from Albertine Guillot on her so early in the morning. What could that be about? Was she going to scold Carolyn for getting knocked over by the Frenchies’ ill-mannered dog? And Madame Guillot had had the nerve to frown at me and my children while I was sitting on the floor in the hall! I ducked back into my room, peeked out to be sure she was gone, and then headed for the elevator. I’d see if I could find a maid to question on the ninth floor until the coast was clear on Eight. After all, Paolina’s room had been on Nine, even if her body was found in the pool below.

  I was quite lucky, for there had been no housekeeping carts that I could see on Eight, whereas a cart sat outside nine-oh-four near an open door, which usually meant there was a maid to be found inside, in this case, a friendly woman named Nunzia, whose graying hair was tucked back in a bun and whose nose featured an unfortunate wart.

  “Good morning,” I said gaily, and entered the room to introduce myself and mention my own room number, asking if she knew when the rooms on Eight would be made up. She replied that she covered both the eighth and ninth floors but could go downstairs if I needed to have my room done sooner. I assured her that whenever she got to it was convenient for me, that I just wanted to apologize for the state of the bedclothes, which were mostly on the floor when my husband and children got through with them.

  Nunzia, happily, liked children, as most Italian women do, and asked about mine. We had quite a chat before I managed to work the conversation around to the young woman who had died in the pool. “Such a pity,” said Nunzia. “A very pretty girl. She must have gone swimming in the early morning, which is forbidden, of course, since the hotel is owned by the Swiss. They forbid everything, including maids under the age of forty. They don’t want the customers flirting with the staff, those Swiss.”

  Of course I asked why Nunzia thought Paolina had died in the morning rather than at night, and Nunzia said because her bed had been slept in the night before she was found in the pool, a very quiet sleeper she was, only the dent in the pillow to show she had been there.

  “What? So young and pretty and no lover?” I asked.

  We both chuckled, and Nunzia assured me that Signorina Marchetti had spent both nights alone, although she had an American friend, a woman, who had returned to the hotel with her that afternoon talking of a Mafia wedding. “The Americans, they think all Italians are Mafia. So silly,” said Nunzia. “Here it is the Camorra.”

  With some difficulty I managed to get across to the rather innocent Nunzia that I wondered just what sort of friendship the dead girl and the American had had. Poor Nunzia was shocked when she caught on and wondered if she shouldn’t have stayed on the farm with her parents, respectable folk who would be distressed to think their daughter worked in a place where unnatural sexual activities might be occurring. Then she recalled that Paolina and the American had hugged and agreed to meet for dinner when they parted at the elevator, and that the American’s bed had been mussed with both pillows slept on.

  Ah ha! I thought, very pleased with the information I was gathering. Perhaps Carolyn and Paolina had slept together in Carolyn’s bed, then quarreled by the pool, where Paolina had struck her head when pushed. After that she fell or was pushed into the pool, and Carolyn left her there, dead or drowning. It could have happened that way. Instead of Paolina being thrown or jumping from the ninth floor, as the police thought. After all, who would trust them to get it right? I considered it very unlikely that Carolyn would be strong enough to dump another woman over the railing.

  “Yes,” Nunzia was saying, “it was a strange day, the day they found the girl in the pool. I discovered in my cart—” she gestured toward the wheeled cart in the hall—“a tray, two pretty plates, and two wine glasses. The cart was in the housekeeping room on the eighth floor, and the dishes, surely a gift from the Holy Virgin, were hardly chipped at all, and they weren’t the hotel’s! It is not allowed to bring such things into the hotel with food and drink. Very strange indeed.

  “Since the police didn’t ask me about them, I took them home. I imagine they belonged to the American. Americans are so rich, you know. They probably carry around their own dishes and throw them away when they’re soiled. Or maybe she threw them away after her argument with the dead girl. Such sinful conduct, to seduce an Italian girl!”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “In some places in America, women are allowed to marry women and men, men.”

  Nunzia gasped and crossed herself. “I wonder if the Holy Father knows of these things. It must be very hard to be a good Catholic in America. I’ve heard terrible things about the American priests.” She whispered the last. “I don’t know whether to believe such things or not.

  “And then this morning when I was getting the cart to take upstairs, I thought I saw Saint Giuseppe Moscati. What a fright he gave me. Came right around the corner and bumped into my cart, looking very upset.”

  Ah, I thought. Ruggiero Ricci. He does look like the Naples doctor who was sainted not so long ago, although Ricci’s no saint. A saint would never squeeze the knee of a pregnant woman and propose to meet her in Rome once she’s had her baby.

  “It gave me a shock, but of course he wasn’t the saint. He sounded Sicilian to me, and Saint Moscati was from Napoli, bless his kindly soul. He ministered to the poor without charging a lira. My own grandfather, who was burned in a big eruption of Vesuvius, was healed by the saint’s very hands. But this one, I heard him shouting, ‘What did you do?’ and some foreigner—he spoke Italian, but he was a foreigner—he said, ‘I wasn’t here. Where were you?’ and the one who looked like the saint said, ‘In Catania, of course.’ Then the foreigner said, ‘Maybe it was your wife,’ and the one from Sicily, where Catania is, said, ‘Don’t be a fool,’ and he came storming around the corner right into my cart. What a day!”

  “What did the foreigner look like?” I asked, knowing that when I told Carolyn this tale, she’d want to know, or at least pretend to be interested.

  “I didn’t see him. He must have gone the other way,” said Nunzia. “Shall I bring some candy for the pillows of your children? A little surprise? I make it the way my mother did.”

  “Why, Nunzia, they’d love it. You must stop by our room tomorrow morning and meet them.”

  By then Nunzia, having finished making the bed and emptying the waste baskets, was about to do the bath, so we parted good friends, and I stopped by my room on Eight before going downstairs to meet the others. I’d had an excellent and rather amusing idea. I’d dial 112, the Carabinieri, and report the murder. Although they are our military police, their functions overlap those of t
he Polizia di Stato outside the big cities. Wouldn’t Lieutenant Buglione be surprised when they showed up? And maybe something would be done to solve the murder. If not, at least they could entertain us by arguing over jurisdiction.

  13

  Pre-Trip Detecting

  Carolyn

  I put away the black jacket I had been considering before Albertine Guillot arrived to make me look normal again—better than normal, actually. I still had over an hour before I was to meet Hank in the lobby, more than enough time for breakfast. Of course, Jason had already been out for a run, eaten breakfast, and was now in a conference room talking about toxins. I’d have to eat by myself.

  When I stopped by the desk in the lobby to ask for more hotel stationery so that I could write to the children when I got back from Amalfi, I promptly made a fool of myself by telling the clerk what excellent English she spoke. In reply to my compliment, she grinned and said that was probably because she was a native of Michigan, doing a hotel internship with the Swiss company that owned the Grand Palazzo Sorrento.

  “Well, that explains the rules posted everywhere,” I remarked, not very tactfully, but she laughed and introduced herself, Jill McLain of Ann Arbor. We fell into conversation about how she liked living in Italy—a lot; how long she’d been here—almost a year; and last, but most important, what, if anything, she knew about Paolina Marchetti.

  “Actually, she’s been here before,” said Jill, “several times. Because I was meeting American friends to celebrate that night, I particularly remember that she was a guest of the hotel on the Fourth of July.”

  “Alone?” I asked, trying to seem casual about it.

  “No, she met an older man, very distinguished looking.”

  Ruggiero Ricci, I thought.

  “They registered under the same name but had separate rooms, and it doesn’t seem to me that the name was Marchetti. Odd, now that I think of it.” Jill tugged thoughtfully at the brown strands of hair that curved in toward her chin. “What was that name? I can’t remember.”

  “Do you think they were lovers?” I asked.

  “I suppose they could have been. They were certainly very affectionate, and she was so upset when he was called away on business. She cancelled her own reservation and left. Maybe it was one of those May-December romances, and they were trying to act like uncle and niece or something.” Jill laughed. “You’d be surprised at how many of those uncle-niece couples we get.”

  Of course I wanted Jill to remember the man’s name, but she couldn’t. Then she asked me the name of the handsome police lieutenant who was in and out of the hotel investigating Paolina’s death. I promised to introduce her to Lieutenant Buglione if she’d glance through the hotel register to see if she could spot the name of the couple that spent the Fourth of July at this hotel.

  Then I spotted Bianca coming off the elevator and talked her into having a cup of coffee with me while I ate breakfast. She’d already eaten with her family but agreed to join me because she had information to pass on, things she’d learned from a hotel maid named Nunzia, who thought she’d seen Saint Giuseppe Moscati in the hallway, although it had evidently been Ruggiero Ricci, fresh from a quarrel with a foreigner who spoke Italian.

  The reported conversation Ricci had had with the foreigner was really quite interesting: “I wasn’t here; where were you?” And Ricci replied that he was in Catania. Then the man said, “Maybe it was your wife.” Could they have been talking about Paolina’s death, her employer claiming to have been elsewhere when it occurred, the stranger suggesting that Ricci’s wife was responsible? If so, who was the foreigner who spoke Italian? And could he have killed Paolina? He might be either of the Europeans at the meeting—Professors Guillot and Stackpole. I’d have to pay more attention to them. I suggested that Bianca listen in on anything Guillot might say in French while I monitored Stackpole’s conversations, which was not a very exciting prospect.

  While we were having this conversation, I was eating a new item from the buffet table. Bianca called it Sfogliatelle . She wrote down the name for me. How delicious it was. Crispy dough, not the least greasy, although it evidently had lots of grease in it—including that contemporary no-no, lard—shaped into shells and filled with a soft cream that smelled and tasted of orange and vanilla. Bianca advised me to forgo looking for a recipe. “If no Italian wants to make it, why do you think Americans would?” she asked.

  “Because they can’t get it at home,” I suggested. However, once I’d seen the recipe, I decided not to impose it on my readers.

  Bianca made a quick trip up to her room after her second cup of coffee, and I returned to the lobby, where I found Lieutenant Buglione on the job, but unable to give me any news of his investigation because, as he explained, it was too early to know anything about the death or even the deceased. I had to tell him that Paolina had been Ruggiero Ricci’s secretary, something the lieutenant had yet to discover for himself, and about Ricci’s conversation in the hall on the eighth floor with the mysterious Italian-speaking stranger.

  Lieutenant Buglione was appalled at the idea that he might have to investigate a big-shot Sicilian industrialist, so I suggested that he talk to Jill, who had seen Paolina in the hotel with an older man last summer. “It could have been Ricci,” I suggested. “And what about the autopsy?”

  “Autopsy? There is no autopsy,” said the lieutenant. “We don’t know the signorina was murdered. She is safely at rest in ice chest until we know—”

  Constanza Ricci-Tassone sailed up to us at just that moment, causing me to worry that she’d heard me suggesting her husband might be a murderer. “Of course, Paolina was not murdered,” said the lady in her most haughty voice. “In her distress over the desertion of her lover, she must have become careless and fallen over the edge of the pool. Such a sad but romantic occurrence. So Italian, do you not think, Lieutenant?

  “As for an autopsy, you certainly cannot send the girl’s body home to her parents in such a state. It’s bad enough, the rumors of suicide. They will want her buried in sacred ground, as any parent would. Because Paolina worked for my husband, we will stand as her parents in the absence of her own, and demand that her remains be respected. You understand, Lieutenant. There is to be no autopsy and no talk of suicide, and certainly not of murder.”

  “Si, Signora,” said Lieutenant Buglione, all but bowing as she swept regally away to breakfast.

  I tried to argue with his decision, but he pointed out that Signora Ricci-Tassone, a woman of noble stock, who looked on the deceased as her own daughter, was not to be denied her wish that the body be interred intact. “I can not offend such a woman,” he protested.

  “Very few wives look on their husband’s pretty secretaries as daughters,” I retorted. “She’s trying to protect her husband or herself.”

  The lieutenant ignored my comment and fixed his gaze on the front door. “What are they doing here?” he grumbled.

  They were a man and a woman in fancy uniforms with red stripes down the sides of their trousers and skirt, respectively, a white leather sash stretched diagonally across their chests, and hats with visors and a big gold thing on the peaked tops, sort of Nazi-looking. They whipped their hats off, stuck them under their arms, and strode across the lobby toward us.

  “Who are they?” I whispered.

  “Carabinieri,” said Buglione through tight lips. “Captain. Lieutenant.” He saluted. “We’ve had no terrorist events in the area, no civilian riots, no—”

  “Why are we speaking English?” demanded the male, who had the most gold on his uniform, not to mention a number of medals.

  “A courtesy,” Buglione replied. “This lady is an American.”

  The two Carabinieri—were they soldiers?—studied me, nodded, and the captain said, “Captain Giorgio Pagano and Lieutenant Flavia Vacci. We received a call about a murder.”

  “That was yesterday,” snapped Lieutenant Buglione. “And it’s a suicide. Or an accident.”

  “It is not,” I
broke in, so pleased that they were all politely speaking English. “I discovered the body. I’m Carolyn Blue. And this is Lieutenant Buglione of the Polizia di Stato.” It wasn’t very nice of him not to introduce himself when they had.

  “Signora. Lieutenant.” The captain made a little bow, looking ever so formal and solemn. His subordinate actually smiled at me.

  Maybe they’ll take this seriously, I thought, and not do whatever Constanza Ricci-Tassone wants.

  “I think we should adjourn to the breakfast room, which I’m told has an excellent buffet,” said Captain Pagano.

  “It does,” I assured him. “And this morning they have—” I couldn’t remember the name of the pastry—“those shells with orange and vanilla cream inside.”

  Lieutenant Flavia Vacci, as plump and cheerful as her captain was grim and formal, absolutely beamed.

  “Shall I show you the way?” I asked, deciding that I wouldn’t mind having another of those delicious pastries. Besides which, I needed to pass on to the newcomers all my information and theories. I really didn’t trust Lieutenant Buglione to remember everything. “I have information for you,” I added.

  “Signora, you are too kind,” said the captain, “but this initial discussion must be one between colleagues. We shall be happy to interview you later once we have assessed the seriousness of the case.”

  Buglione shot me a rather smug look. I suppose if I’d been a pretty young thing, like Jill, to whom he’d missed an introduction, he might have insisted that they listen to me. Well, I’d tell the Carabinieri what they needed to know later, and I certainly wasn’t going to wait around for them and miss the trip to Amalfi. Late afternoon would be time enough. Were there two police forces that investigated murders? How odd.

  . . . Many of the pastries that are most popular in Naples and the towns of the Campania are complicated and never made at home, but good bakeries abound in the region. One such delight is Sfogliatelle—hard to pronounce and spell, wonderful to eat. It turned up at the breakfast buffet one morning while I was in Sorrento, a spiraled shell pastry that is painted before it is baked with a butter and lard mixture (which is so delicious that one can almost forget the cholesterol dangers) and filled with seminolina, ricotta, and egg yolks flavored with vanilla, cinnamon, and candied orange peel. Sfogliatelle. I ate two and thought I’d gone to pastry heaven. All over the Campania the inhabitants were devouring them with their morning coffee, probably thinking the same thing.