Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Nancy Fairbanks

  “I imagine the Mafia killed both of them,” said Eliza Stackpole. “Constanza even admitted that her father-in-law had been in the Mafia, or his father. One or the other. I can’t imagine why you’d think Constanza killed her own husband, Carolyn.”

  Flavia jotted down more notes. Everyone else turned and stared accusingly at Carolyn, who had been continuing to eat her peach. She looked up and said bitterly, “I think you should all tell the general about your theories. I didn’t tell him that Constanza killed Ruggiero. I just mentioned that she’d pushed something into an ashtray in the hall, and later, when he asked, I mentioned that she was diabetic.”

  “I don’t see what business it was of yours, Madame Blue,” said Albertine haughtily.

  “Well, I think we’re all finished with dessert and coffee,” I said. “I’m going back to my room for a nice nap.” Of course, Lorenzo immediately asked if I was having contractions, and I replied, “No, just a great desire to make up for the sleep I lost last night.”

  After that, the whole group trailed out into the hall, nobody saying anything until Jason reached his door and cursed rather colorfully. Of course we all reassembled and watched him standing on one foot, staring at the bottom of his shoe. I could tell by the odor what had happened and said, “Charles de Gaulle strikes again.”

  “Mon dieu!” exclaimed Adrien Guillot. “I do apologize, Jason. How in the world did he get out?”

  “Maybe you should have a talk with him,” said Jason as he used the handkerchief the Frenchie had given him to wipe off the shoe.

  Carolyn sent a really mean look toward Albertine, stepped gingerly over what was left on the floor, stalked into her room, and slammed the door.

  “I’ll do better than that, my friend,” said Guillot. “I’ll put him in a kennel until we can all leave this dreadful meeting.”

  “Adrien, you know Charles hates kennels. He’ll be devastated,” cried Albertine. Her husband grabbed her arm and walked her away while Jason, having given up on his shoe, took it off and reinserted his key card in the door.

  “What a day!” I said to Lorenzo as we continued to our room. “Do you think Constanza could have killed Ruggiero?”

  “There are shots that cause an erection,” said my husband, grinning. “And pills. That sounds more likely to me, given Ricci’s interest in the ladies. All the ladies. Don’t think I didn’t see him patting your knee the first night.”

  I giggled. Nothing got by Lorenzo, but he knew better than to think I’d be interested in another man.

  Sorrento is known for its peaches, but surely, since I was not there during peach season, this recipe was not made with fresh peaches, unless the Campania produces several crops, which they do of other things because of the mild climate. Still, fresh or frozen, the following dessert is a delight.

  Stuffed Peaches with Mascarpone Cream

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Halve and pit 6 large peaches. With a teaspoon, scoop some flesh from the cavities, and chop the peach flesh you have removed.

  • Combine 3 ounces crumbled amaretti cookies, 3 tablespoons ground almonds, 4 tablespoons sugar, and 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder with peach flesh. Add enough sweet wine to make the mixture into a thick paste.

  • Place the peaches in a buttered ovenproof dish and fill them with the stuffing. Dot with 3 tablespoons butter and pour the remainder of 1 cup sweet wine into the dish. Bake 35 minutes.

  • Make mascarpone cream by beating 2 tablespoons sugar, and 3 egg yolks until thick and pale. Stir in 1 tablespoon dessert wine and fold in 1 cup mascarpone cheese, which is an Italian cream cheese made from cow’s milk. Whip 2/3 cup heavy cream to soft peaks and fold into mixture.

  • Remove peaches from oven and cool. Serve at room temperature with mascarpone cream and dessert wine.

  Carolyn Blue,

  “Have Fork, Will Travel,”

  Atlanta Press

  Friday in Naples

  The Ubiquitous Pizza

  In our time pizza is popular all over the world, its crust thick or thin, soft or crisp, it toppings varying from the early pizza with marinara sauce to pizzas topped with whatever strikes the fancy of the cook and the customer—caviar, pineapple, chili, shrimp, whatever the area provides. Why not? It is the ultimate one-dish meal.

  The Italians, however, are not so tolerant of pizza innovation. Neapolitans argue on the street about what constitutes a proper and delicious pizza topping. The Italian government sets standards that dictate how the real thing is to be made. And pizza, after all, is an Italian phenomenon, awarded to Italy by history.

  The word pizza probably came from pita, a flat bread made and eaten in many early societies. The Romans had a baked bread called picea that may have been the forbearer in Italy. By the beginning of the 1100s the word had changed to piza, a flat round cake baked in a medieval oven—still not the real thing. Enter Naples around 1670, where the crust was adorned with tomatoes, garlic, oregano, and olive oil—pizza alla marinara—and the king, Ferdinand IV, who liked to go slumming, joined his poorer subjects in eating the new delight. Pizza hit the big time when Ferdinand wanted it at home in the castle. Maria Carolina, his wife, disapproved, but even a stuffy Hapsburg queen does not forbid her king his desire. She allowed outdoor pizza ovens to be built in the gardens of the Capodimonte palace, and soon not just the king and the commoners were eating pizza. The nobility built their own ovens so they too could eat it.

  The first pizzeria opened in Naples in 1830, and the first innovation occurred in 1889 when Queen Margherita, wife of King Umberto I of the house of Savoy, visited Naples and asked for pizza. In her honor, pizza maker Raffaele Esposito, owner of Pizzeria di Pietro, used mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil leaves, the white, red, and green of the flag of unified Italy, and named his new pizza for the queen. She loved it, the Neapolitans loved it, and pizza Margherita became a favorite of Naples. The poor made it at home, and Esposito’s pizzeria became a popular haunt of the nobility.

  Strangely, New York, with its immigrant population, embraced pizza before Rome and Northern Italy. There was a pizzeria in lower Manhattan early in the twentieth century, but Rome waited to approve pizza until the 1970s and ’80s. Now it’s being eaten in India and China. One wonders what the toppings are. As long as it’s baked properly in a woodfired, stone oven, it’s still pizza.

  Carolyn Blue,

  “Have Fork, Will Travel,”

  Colorado Springs Bugle

  34

  The Assignment

  Carolyn

  I woke up the next morning feeling more than a little depressed. Of course I knew that everyone was angry with me because they held me responsible for Constanza’s arrest. But what if she was guilty? Why didn’t they consider that? My own husband had complained about how much my meddling—that’s what he called my efforts—would hurt his interactions with fellow chemists. I retorted by asking whether Albertine’s dog was affecting her husband’s relations with his colleagues. Jason muttered, “Damn dog.” He’d scraped and scrubbed the sole of his shoe, but the smell was still there. At least he had the good sense to take the shoe off before entering the room. Now the shoe in question was sitting out on the balcony, while Jason, wearing sneakers, was off having breakfast with his colleagues and discussing chemistry. I was left to order my own breakfast.

  Should I order and then shower and dress, or shower and dress and then order? One could never tell how fast Room Service would deliver meals to our floor since they had the whole floor to deal with. Our dinner hadn’t arrived until ten, although we’d ordered three and a half hours earlier, and when it came, it wasn’t even the right dinner. On the other hand, breakfast sometimes arrived in ten minutes. I decided to shower first. If I didn’t answer the door, the policeman would probably deliver it to someone else.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, toweling my hair and thinking about fennel bread and fresh fruit, the telephone rang, and the general ordered me down to his conference room off the lobby.

  “I ha
ven’t had breakfast yet,” I muttered.

  “I’ll order it for you. Loppi will be at your door in fifteen minutes to escort you down.”

  Well, that was nice! He hadn’t even asked what I wanted to eat. I’d probably end up with a bun and a cup of coffee. Grumbling to myself, I threw on some clothes and stomped back into the bathroom to dry my hair and put on makeup. Before I could even reacquaint myself with the controls of the hairdryer, someone knocked on my door. I was sure five minutes hadn’t passed, but there was Signor Loppi, smiling at me. He had overlapping teeth. Very unsightly. I told him that I had to dry my hair and do a few other things. He told me the general was waiting and wouldn’t care how I looked.

  So I went downstairs with my hair straggling in damp clumps down my back and my face pale with dark circles under my eyes. The general not only didn’t care, he didn’t notice. He waved me to a seat, in front of which was placed a little table that contained rolls, coffee, and fresh fruit. No eggs, no fennel toast, but it was better than I expected, and I began to eat without even saying hello to him.

  The general didn’t greet me either. Instead he began immediately to tell me about a call he had received from Rome. “A tape arrived in my office, addressed to me,” he said. “No note. Postmarked Catania, the day Lucia evidently left for Sorrento.”

  “Lucia?” I mumbled around a mouthful of melon. It was delicious. Maybe from Israel, or could they ripen melons in the Campania at this time of year?

  “My daughter Lucia,” he said impatiently. “I can see that you are hungry, but this is important, Signora.”

  I was still thinking of her as Paolina. “Right. What was on the tape?” I asked, and bit into a roll. It had a surprise filling of a fruity cream. Very nice. I looked to see if the second one was the same kind, but it appeared to be of a different variety.

  “It’s a very poor recording. My people think she may have recorded it off the office intercom—Ricci’s office. And she must have been in hurry to mail it, because she neglected to include an explanation of what she was sending.”

  His hard face looked strained, and I felt sorry for him. Had Paolina known she was in trouble even then?

  “They’re going to try to improve the sound quality and overnight it to me. What they got from it in its present condition was two men talking, no names, but one of them had to be Ricci. And my people think they made out two words. Radioactive and an Italian slang word for heroin.” He stared at me as I munched my roll and thought about the words. A bit of the fruit cream stuck to my lip, and I wiped it off with the napkin, embarrassed.

  “Have you any thoughts, Signora, on who might have been talking to Ricci, and what they might have been talking about?” he demanded.

  “Well, Gracia said a foreigner was in Ricci’s office that afternoon, the one who stopped to talk to Paolina and may have—well, visited her that night. So that might be the other man on the tape. And radioactive—well, Ricci’s company may have made those radioactive medicines hospitals use for taking x-rays.”

  The general nodded. “They do. What else?”

  “Ummm—Hank Girol was talking to Ricci one night before dinner about getting a contract to dispose of their toxic waste. That’s what his company does. He’s the vice president of a toxic waste company. In New Jersey. They’re hoping to expand abroad, in Europe and especially Eastern Europe.”

  “What would that have to do with heroin?”

  “I don’t know, unless Ricci planned to use their new containers to transport heroin, but he couldn’t have been talking to Hank about that, because Hank was in Rome the day Paolina was here sightseeing with me, and he drove down here the next morning, the morning I found Paolina.”

  The general was silent for a long time. I’d finished my breakfast by the time he spoke again. “Girol has asked permission to take you ladies to Capri today. He seems to feel it’s unfair that your husbands and his wife get to continue the meeting, but you ladies can’t do any more sightseeing.”

  “Well, it is, sort of. When you think about it,” I replied. “I’ve really been looking forward to visiting Capri. It’s so gorgeous that one of the emperors, Augustus, I think, traded a bigger island for it in Roman times.”

  “Capri’s not going to happen. I’ll have to send a policeman, probably Gambardella, along with you, and I don’t want him shoved over the side of the boat while you’re on the water. Girol’s second choice was Naples. I’ll say yes to that, and you see what you can find out from him.”

  “About what?” I asked, thinking of Naples. That would be interesting, sort of, although I’d have preferred Capri—home of insalata Caprese, site of Shirley Hazzard’s interesting meetings with Graham Greene, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Still, I wasn’t going to turn down Naples. It was bound to be better than staying in the room all day by myself. And although I’d heard it was quite dangerous, those warnings are usually exaggerated; no doubt Hank and Sergeant Gambardella could take care of us.

  “I’ll go, but maybe you could be clearer about what you want me to ask him.”

  “I don’t want you to ask him anything, Signora. I want you to lead him into conversation. See if you can get him to knock down his own alibi. Find out what he thinks about Ricci’s death. Show an interest in his business connections with Ricci. You seem to have collected a lot of information since my daughter died, but most of it regards motive; motive doesn’t help us in court without hard evidence. Try to find out some facts, Signora.”

  I was a bit peeved, really. I hadn’t told him anything that would stand up in court? Why would he say that? “How do you know he’s going to invite me to go to Naples?” I asked. “Everyone’s mad at me since you arrested Constanza.”

  “Trust me to see that he does,” said the general. “Now go back to your room and think about how you’re going to approach him. And you might do something with your hair. It looks—” He searched for a word.

  “Wet?” I suggested. “Loppi showed up too fast and wouldn’t let me dry it. He said you were in a hurry and wouldn’t care what I looked like.”

  “I don’t,” said the general, “but Girol might.”

  Although I was supposed to be thinking of questions I could ask Hank, should he invite me to go to Naples, I couldn’t help thinking about Naples itself and everything I’d read about it. Of course, I did want to see the archaeological museum since it housed the artifacts from Pompeii, but the city? Its reputation was mixed at best. A city where people hung their washing above the streets? Didn’t it get all dirty again? A city where homemade pasta was hung to dry outside on lines so that it could be preserved for times of famine and war? How sanitary was that? But probably they didn’t do that anymore.

  Then there are all the wars, plagues, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions over the years, some in recent times. One period of violence that the Neapolitans avoided was the devastating raids of Saracen pirates. While the rest of the Campania suffered from these predators, the Neapolitans cultivated them as friendly trading partners and evidently weren’t bothered at all that they were “infidels.” The Pope, however, was bothered and excommunicated the whole city.

  Aside from the attacks of all the conquering armies that besieged Naples, including the Nazis and the allies during World War II, there were the little wars—the rebellion of the population against the “vegetable tax” imposed by the Spanish Viceroys, the modern “family” warfare among various branches of the Camorra, which is the Mafia of the Campania; it has no central organization. A bishop actually organized a local “army” to fight the Camorra gangs in Naples in the 1980s, although the effort failed. And once a cabal of artists led by the Spanish painter Rib-era terrorized noncabal artists to eliminate the competition for art contracts, but that was in another century.

  It is said that there is no law in Naples, where crime and graft are rampant. Even professors at the university accept expensive stays on Capri paid for by the parents of their students when oral-exam time comes up. Those factors
made Naples less alluring than it might have been given its castles, palazzos, museums, and its opera house, the San Carlo, which is the largest opera venue in Italy. It was founded by a king who didn’t like opera, and its patrons are given more to conversation than attention to the performance. In other words, it’s beautiful but noisy.

  Also, to the eyes of a Protestant American, maybe even a Catholic American, Neapolitans are bizarrely superstitious. The city’s patron saint is San Gennaro, a bishop who arrived to support Christianity early in the first millennium and was sentenced to death by the local Roman leader, Timotheus. On pronouncing the death sentence, Timotheus was struck blind. The kindly Bishop Gennaro prayed for the return of his tormentor’s sight, God obliged, and five thousand people were converted by the miracle, although the Roman leader was not one of them. However, Gennaro was not an easy man to execute. He survived a fiery furnace and hungry wild beasts in the amphitheater. Finally he was beheaded, which did kill him, but the stone on which his blood fell was saved, and his blood was collected in vials which are still shaken on certain feast days in order for the miracle of liquefaction to occur and forecast a good year for the city. The dark blood spots on the stone brighten to red. When the blood does not liquefy in the vial or turn red on the stone, Neapolitans expect to be visited by volcanic eruptions and defeats of their soccer teams, and the saint is cursed by the populace.

  Furthermore, Neapolitans believe in the evil eye. They have amulets to ward it off, and some have more than a passing interest in numerology and black magic. Not that I believe in any of those things, but did I really want to visit the most superstitious city in Europe?