Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Nancy Fairbanks

  “Ah, I see what you mean.” Gracia nodded thoughtfully. “It could be. There are some who will try anything, but it was the men she always went for as far as I could see. She’d no more than signed her employment papers than she was rubbing up against her boss, who never turned down a pretty girl. Aren’t you going to the dinner?”

  “Oh, my goodness. I’ve enjoyed our conversation so much I forgot the time. I’d better get dressed.” I twisted to the side to get a peek at my ankles, which felt better and, in fact, looked better. “You are a miracle worker, Signora Sindacco,” I said sincerely. “I wish you were my doctor.”

  She almost smiled at me—not quite—and advised me to empty my bladder twice before I went downstairs to dinner. Mother of God, would her miracle drink have me peeing at the dinner table?

  18

  Another Fine Dinner

  Carolyn

  At the predinner cocktail party, I fended off a suggestion from Francis Stackpole that I have a Scotch neat, his choice, by laughing and telling him that wine had the longer history, having been favored by the Greeks and Romans. “For centuries people drank it with their meals and without—for instance, when they got up in the morning, or to rejuvenate themselves while traveling, or even to cure whatever ailed them. Pope Paul III’s wine steward had to choose wine for his master with all kinds of activities in mind, not just to go with the Pontiff’s meals, but for dipping biscotti and gargling,” I explained earnestly.

  “That’s all very well, my girl,” said Professor Stackpole, “but in Scotland, where I grew up, there was not a grape growing, and a good nip of Scotch did just as well for everything you mentioned. Never gargled with it myself, but Eliza always fixes me a toddy for a cough or sore throat. Maybe that’s why the pope was gargling with wine. Poor fellow. Probably couldn’t get his hands on Scotch.”

  Even having heard such a fine tribute to Scotch, I decided on the Greco di Tufo, a Campanian white wine made, I assumed, from grapes that had been brought to the area by Greeks in ancient times. With it, I ate fresh anchovies and fried artichoke pieces that had been dipped in batter.

  While I was savoring the delicious tidbits on my plate and sipping my wine, Bianca whispered to me the news that Ruggiero’s father was an evil Mafia person, according to Gracia Sindacco, and might have hired a hit on Paolina to avenge her infidelity to his son. It sounded a bit far-fetched to me, but I suppose it was something that needed to be considered. I did think this Sindacco woman’s opinion, that Paolina was a slut, very unkind. Of course, the woman would take Constanza’s side rather than the side of Ruggiero’s mistress or girlfriend or whatever Paolina had been to him.

  Had she really expected to sleep with three different men in as many nights? Poor Paolina. Perhaps she was one of those girls in search of love that she hadn’t found in her family life. Surely just reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry hadn’t brought on that sort of behavior. I had read it younger than Paolina, and it hadn’t had that effect on me. But then at eleven I probably missed a lot of the sensuality. I liked the words and rhythms and needed an escape from the fact that my mother was dying.

  After she died, my father took a look at the collection and said it was too old for me. I, of course, said that it was Mama’s book, so there couldn’t be anything wrong with it. Daddy said she was an adult when she read it. Maybe so, but my mother certainly hadn’t been promiscuous. I think I’d have noticed if she’d been entertaining men other than my father.

  And speaking of mothers, Lorenzo’s mother was flirting with Francis Stackpole, whose wife didn’t even seem to notice. Eliza had cornered poor Valentino Santoro and was quizzing him about plants that grow on Mount Etna and how they were affected by lava. How else would they be affected? They’d burn up.

  “Look at my mother-in-law,” said Bianca. “How can she flirt with that Englishman? I’m sure he’s a sweet man, but his clothes look like he slept in them. And I had to pay a local girl to look after the children so that Violetta can practice her wiles on an Englishman.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t mean anything by it,” I said absently.

  “Well, she’s not looking to marry him, if that’s what you mean,” said Bianca, “but she probably wouldn’t mind a fling with him. Maybe he looks better without that dreadful tweed suit.”

  “A—a fling?” I stammered.

  “An affair. She has several a year. Maybe she’s settled on him as her next man.”

  “Your mother-in-law has affairs?” I was amazed. What would I think if my mother-in-law had affairs?

  “Violetta’s a widow, and she doesn’t usually sleep with married men,” said Bianca, looking at me as if I had called her mother-in-law a slut when I was thinking no such thing.

  “Of course not,” I mumbled, but then I couldn’t help thinking of Violetta, the beautiful courtesan who died of tuberculosis in Verdi’s La Traviata. Although Bianca’s mother-in-law was probably twice the age of Verdi’s heroine. Then my mind jumped to my own mother-in-law, and I was hard put not to burst into laughter as I imagined Gwenivere Blue, radical feminist, professor of women’s studies, luring some unsuspecting older man into an affair.

  “Carolyn, are you laughing?” Bianca demanded. “It’s not funny, you know. Sometimes it’s embarrassing, all that flirting. As for the affairs, she’s very discreet about those, but the really irritating thing is that all I have to do is talk to another man for a few minutes, and she thinks I’m having an affair.

  “She’s decided Hank Girol is after me because I sat in the front seat with him today. I ask you? How likely is it that a woman in my condition is going to inspire lust, or feel it, for that matter? When I go to bed these days, I’m only interested in getting a full night’s sleep. Too bad the baby doesn’t feel the same way. Ah, it’s time to go in to dinner. More Sicilian cuisine probably. Did Constanza bring her own chef or just send menus and recipes to the hotel’s chef?”

  “She hired someone local,” I replied, having heard from Jill at the desk that Constanza refused to let the hotel’s Swiss chef prepare anything for the conferees.

  And in we went, for a Neapolitan meal this time: a spicy tomato-based bean and pasta soup (so deliciously warm and tasty when the thunder was rolling over the cliffs and heavy rain lashing the hotel), then individual roasted pepper casseroles and monkfish in wine and tomato sauce, with which we drank the most famous white wine of the area, Lacrima Christi, and finally a really wonderful dessert. It was made from layers of ladyfingers dipped in brandy, topped with cream, marmalade and, last, grated dark chocolate. The conversation, none of it about Paolina, flowed around me as I savored each dish. Of course, I made notes. I had columns to write, columns about the joys of dining in Italy, any part of Italy.

  During the soup course, Albertine Guillot remarked that French soups, and cuisine in general, were much more refined because the French were more oriented to the savoring of fine food. Bianca took offense and pointed out that haute cuisine had come to France when Catherine de Medici became the French queen and brought her chefs with her. Good for you, Bianca, I thought, and stopped making notes so that I could put a word in for Italian cuisine.

  “Actually, the Italians were so serious about food and its preparation that Petrarch complained Italians spoke only of food and that cooks were required to take examinations while copyists were not.”

  Albertine shrugged. “A poet’s jealousy and an examination for cooks does not mean that the cuisine is—”

  I interrupted her to point out that the French in the time of Montaigne had thought the Italian interest in food peculiar and condemned it as an immoral attempt to make people eat more than was good for them.

  Albertine settled into a sulk, and the monkfish entrée was served. I do like monkfish, and this was served without the intimidating teeth. Smiling at me, evidently pleased with my defense of her country’s cuisine, Constanza asked, “And what can you tell us of historical interest about monkfish, my dear Carolyn?”

  Again I put off no
te taking and thought about her question. “Well, nothing particular to monkfish, but I’ve read that the Romans preferred saltwater fish, which the monkfish is. It’s also called a devilfish because of its huge mouthful of dangerous-looking teeth and scorpion configuration, or an anglerfish because it unrolls a shiny filament to lure other fish in and then gobbles them up. But people in medieval Italy preferred freshwater fish. They thought the saltwater variety unhealthy because it made the diner thirsty. Eels were a particular favorite all over Europe as well as in Italy because they could be eaten on fast days and could be transported for periods of several days, fresh but out of water. As I remember, they were carried in grass baskets.”

  “Did they eat the grass?” Eliza asked, taking a sudden interest.

  “I have no idea,” I replied, wondering what eels ate.

  “Eels? That sounds disgusting!” exclaimed Sibyl Evers. “Sort of like eating a snake.”

  “I’ve never eaten a snake,” I replied, “although people do. There was an excellent restaurant in Washington, D.C., that served rattlesnake, but my father and I didn’t order it. Eel is actually tasty. Sort of meaty, with a high fat content, I would imagine.”

  “You eat eels in Texas?” Sibyl asked. “I thought it was all deserty. Don’t they need some water to live in?”

  “Carolyn had eel here in Europe,” said my husband, smiling in a friendly way at Sibyl. “I’ve never seen it on a menu in Texas, even in areas that have lakes and rivers in plentiful supply.”

  Since there were only three courses and espresso, we broke up early, the better for the chemists to meet in the morning, and went to our rooms, all on the eighth floor. Ruggiero’s company had taken the whole floor, conference rooms and all. After booting up my laptop and writing a column, I got ready for bed and turned on the television. Jason was already under the covers reading. A little channel surfing got me past the Italian stations to something in English, Sky News. First there was a news report about a “lorry” accident out in the English countryside and a sheepdog contest in Scotland, then sports, a boxing match. Normally I wouldn’t watch boxing, but Jason seemed untalkative and grumpy, while the announcer was hilarious. He had a Cockney accent that wasn’t to be believed. “I fink this” and “I fink that”—all referring to a pale, skinny pair of fighters who looked as if one hard punch would shatter them both and end the match.

  “Jason, you’ve got to listen to this man’s accent. It’s incredible.”

  Jason looked up from the reprint of an article on chemistry, listened, and shrugged. “English,” he said.

  Duh, as my daughter would have replied. I turned off the television and asked cheerfully, “How’s the meeting going?”

  “Oh, wonderful,” my husband replied. “It’s turning out to be an attempt by Ricci to pick our brains without paying a consulting fee. A little free R & D for them—”

  “And a free vacation for us in a beautiful place.”

  “Maybe for you,” said my disgruntled husband. “I take it that the trip to Amalfi was a success.”

  “Delightful, except that I was squished into the backseat and have bruises under my chin where my knees knocked into it at every bump in the road.” That really wasn’t doing the trip justice, so I added, “Aside from coming back partially crippled and definitely sunburned, I did really enjoy our outing. The coast is spectacular. I have hundreds of pictures. Shall I get out the camera?”

  “Some other night,” said my husband.

  “Well, did you notice my new face?”

  Jason gave me a quizzical look. “You looked fine to me when you came back. I couldn’t even see the bruise on your cheek.”

  “That’s because Albertine Guillot forced her way in the room this morning and attacked me with expensive cosmetics, her way of apologizing for her dog’s unprovoked attack. I wonder what Alitalia thinks of Charles de Gaulle. He had his own reservation on their flight from Milan, scarfed down some spicy pasta, and threw up on the seat. Or pooped. I’m not sure which. Albertine blames the airline.”

  “So Adrien told me. He’s actually a good man, and an excellent scientist, not to mention quite embarrassed about the dog’s behavior. I hear you think Ruggiero Ricci is a saint.”

  “I do not. I said he looked like a saint whose picture I saw in Sorrento. And he does. You’d be amazed. As for his character, I think he may have murdered Paolina, his secretary. He was certainly having an affair with her.”

  Jason snapped his book closed. “Carolyn, I hope that you’re not getting mixed up in this murder investigation.”

  I scooted down under the covers and said, “I’m listening to gossip, Jason. I’m not investigating. The police are doing that, but not very effectively. The lieutenant in charge is so overwhelmed by the importance of the Riccis that he’s let them convince him Paolina’s death was probably an accident or a suicide.”

  “Probably was,” said my husband and turned out the light.

  “And the Carabinieri evidently aren’t even interested in the case,” I muttered as I turned on my side and settled down to sleep.

  “Good for them. I wish you weren’t,” said my husband.

  Tuesday in Pompeii

  Vesuvius—Disasters and Blessings

  In the eighth century BC, Greeks sailed to the Island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, but many were discouraged by the volcanic activity that drove them to settle on the mainland at Cuma. Ironically, that move brought them into the shadow of Vesuvius. The largest eruptions in Europe occurred here in 5960 and 3580 BC, and the area suffered devastating earthquakes, but we have no written records of these. Now a grim reminder of disasters ancient and modern, Mount Vesuvius rises from a plain in the Campania with Naples to the north and the Sorrento Peninsula to the south. Over two million people live near it today.

  Preceded by a violent earthquake in 62 AD, Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other Roman towns. Between 3,400 and 16,000 citizens were killed—no one is really sure how many. This was the first earthquake to be described by a historian, Pliny the Younger. Fifty more eruptions followed into modern times. Between 79 and 1037 AD the volcano brought fear and disaster every hundred years or so, and then it went dormant for 600 years. In 1631 it reactivated and destroyed a dozen towns or more, killed another 4,000 people, and continued to erupt off and on into the twentieth century, devastating Naples in 1906, with lava flows invading towns up to 1944.

  During eruptions Vesuvius has expelled columns of smoke, ash and fire, mud, boiling water, lava, and poisonous gases. The descriptions in historical times are terrifying. Yet between the earthquakes and eruptions, the lava breaks down into rich soil, trees and plants grow, people forget that Vesuvius is a volcano, and they move back to reap its blessings. They plant fields, orchards, and vineyards and produce delicious food, wonderful wine, and a superb cuisine. They build houses and public structures on the land, while Vesuvius, the only active volcano on mainland Europe, lies in wait for a greater disaster than ever with two million people at risk, and more every year.

  Carolyn Blue,

  “Have Fork, Will Travel,”

  Raleigh Star-Telegram

  19

  Carabinieri—Absent but Revered

  Bianca

  We had a little family argument because Lorenzo didn’t think I should go to Pompeii in my delicate condition, while Violetta and the children wanted to go in my place. I insisted that I’d be fine, that I could always go back and rest in the limousine if I got tired, and that there wouldn’t be room for three people to take one place, even mine.

  Downstairs I found Carolyn breaking up an intimate conversation between Jill at the desk and Lieutenant Buglione so that she could tell him about Gracia Sindacco’s Mafia hit-man theory. The lieutenant insisted that he had interviewed all guests on Paolina’s floor and found them to be ordinary tourists, not Mafia hit men, and on our floor, he added, smiling triumphantly, everyone was a guest of the Ricci convention, either a scientist or the spouse of a sci
entist. When Jill suggested that the criminal might have been a Mafia hit lady, Buglione chuckled appreciatively while Carolyn’s lips pressed together in irritation. I noticed that the bruise was back on her cheek. How strange.

  “Haven’t the Carabinieri returned?” I asked Lieutenant Buglione. “I called them myself because I thought you could use some help.”

  He frowned at me. “Do you know why they have that red stripe up their trousers?” he asked slyly.

  “So they can find their pockets,” I replied. “And I also know what a tumor does on the brain of a Carabinieri. Nothing.” Carolyn was looking shocked, so I told her to pay no attention. “The Carabinieri are national heroes. Everyone loves them. That’s why they’re called la Benemerita , the well deserving.”

  “Collodi didn’t think so,” snapped Buglione. “He made fun of them in Pinocchio.”

  “That was a long time ago, Lieutenant,” I responded, “when they were poor, uneducated lads. And Collodi was from Florence. The Florentines are known for thinking they’re better than anyone else. These days the Carabinieri officers are the top graduates of the military academy.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Carolyn. “But when are they coming back?”

  “I see that you ladies are not satisfied with my investigation,” said Buglione resentfully, “and I, you will notice, am here every day with my men.”

  “Doing what?” Carolyn muttered as he stomped off. Then she told me that Pompeii, as she remembered it, was short on shade and long on sun. She had come prepared, with comfortable shoes, a hat, sunscreen, and drinking water, and hoped that I had done the same. As if I’d never been to Pompeii. “Are you sure you’ll be up to so much walking?” she asked, looking worried on my behalf.