Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Fairbanks, Nancy

  As I was leaving the interrogation room, I passed my mother-in-law going for her interview, and she whispered to me that she’d heard he was a very handsome gentleman and “so important.” How like Violetta! The general obviously had a surprise coming when he interviewed her. I’d had to stifle a giggle at the thought of that stern man being subjected to the wiles of my mother-in-law. Loppi, the one who ushered me out, gave me a suspicious look because he saw me laughing. Apparently laughter was not proper conduct during a murder investigation.

  So upstairs I went, back to the eighth floor and a shocked husband trying to deal with Andrea and Giulia, who were reacting like caged animals to our incarceration. They wanted Papa to play soccer with them. Why couldn’t they go into the hall? Why couldn’t they ride the elevators? Where was Granny? Why couldn’t they use the ice bucket to catch rain on the balcony and pour it over the railing? They wanted something nice to eat. That was the hardest demand of all to answer.

  We didn’t manage to order lunch at all and had to clean out the refreshments in the refrigerator to satisfy their ravenous little tummies. And dinner! It was delivered by a policeman—plates of overcooked vegetables, some stringy meat that I couldn’t identify and about which the children made gruesome guesses: It was the man who delivered the papers to our door in the morning; he had been roasted in the fireplace in the lobby. Or, all the little birds that flew around outside and landed in the bushes beside our balcony had been shot down with arrows and thrown, feathers and all, into a big pot. Where did they get such ideas?

  Lorenzo wasn’t any better. He said the vegetables were old auto parts painted to look like squash and eggplant and that the children should watch out or they’d break their teeth trying to eat the stuff. Of course, they immediately pretended to have tooth injuries and blood dripping out of their mouths and bits of metal digging holes through their intestines. We finally gave up and let them watch television until bedtime, then tucked them in without listening to any complaints, or demands for water, and delayed needs to visit the toilet. Then we went to bed. What else was there to do?

  But the ensuing silence revealed a lovely, wild night outside, the wind and rain lashing the hotel, while Lorenzo and I were cuddled together in bed, the children asleep, and even the baby inside snoozing. It had stopped kicking my belly button and jumping up and down on my bladder. I drifted into a blissful doze, which I really needed, and dreamed that my mother-in-law was quizzing me jealously on how much time the general had spent with me. “I’m not interested in the general,” I protested.

  “Well, I am,” said Violetta, “so don’t try to flirt with him. We’re going to marry and have lots of babies.”

  I tried to reason with her by telling her that she was past the age of having babies, which she denied, and that having lots of babies was no longer fashionable. She’d hurt Lorenzo’s career if she insisted on marrying General Bianconi and having a large family. She gave a loud scream and woke me up. She even woke Lorenzo up. “Did you hear something?” he asked.

  “It was your mother,” I mumbled, still in the confused stage between dreaming and waking.

  “My God!” He leapt out of bed and rushed to the hall door.

  “Lorenzo, put on a bathrobe,” I called, staggering out of bed myself. I fished the robes out of the bathroom, and we both struggled into them, although they were considerably bedraggled because the children had been wearing them for a game of monks in a religious procession. The hotel would not be pleased.

  What we saw was Gracia Sindacco rushing from the end of the hall to the Ricci suite and Constanza leaning against her doorframe, moaning and crying. We closed our door behind us so the children wouldn’t be awakened and hurried toward the two women. Constanza was saying over and over, “He’s dead. I heard a noise in his room, and I found him dead.”

  Lorenzo entered their suite as more conference members gathered at the door and then in the parlor. Weren’t the Riccis lucky? A sitting room and two bedrooms. They probably had two baths as well. We could have used the two baths but shared one with the children, and we certainly could have used a sitting room this afternoon. Constanza had collapsed on a sofa by then, while Gracia sat beside her, smoothing her hair and consoling her as if she were a little girl. Lorenzo returned from the bedroom, shaking his head, and called the desk to report that Signor Ricci seemed to have died in his bed.

  Soon the room was stuffed with people, including Lieutenant Buglione, who took Gracia’s place on the couch and questioned Constanza very gently and sympathetically. She said, blotting tears, that her husband must have had a heart attack and described hearing noises and going into her husband’s room to investigate, only to find him unconscious or dead.

  Gracia muttered to me, “He probably had a woman in there and died in bed with her, after which she ran off, leaving my poor Constanza to find the body. Serves him right. Faithless, cruel man.”

  While the lieutenant was consoling the new widow, the general and his aides arrived to join the room full of people in nightclothes and hotel robes. We looked like a bathrobe convention. Once he’d ascertained the problem, the general went in to look at the body, decided Ruggiero really was dead, and ordered Lieutenant Buglione to call in a coroner and schedule an autopsy. When Constanza protested the autopsy, he ordered her to bed and offered to send her a doctor with sleeping pills to ease her through the night.

  My mother-in-law was the last to arrive, heard the news, and immediately attached herself to the general, saying what a hard day he’d had, and now his sleep had been interrupted in such a sad way. He looked rather surprised and told her that sleep was not something he expected to go uninterrupted on a regular basis. Violetta squeezed his arm sympathetically and murmured that she did admire a man who was willing to sacrifice his own comfort for the good of his country. Did he believe all that? I wondered. Even my husband was watching his mother skeptically.

  Later I heard the general murmur to Loppi that a dead Ricci was one less trial the government had to pay for, although he’d have relished the chance to question him and ultimately put him in jail. Very sympathetic, I thought. And what had poor Signor Ricci done that didn’t have to do with sins of the flesh? I almost felt sorry for the sharp-tongued Constanza. Had she overheard the general saying Ruggiero belonged in jail? Even stranger, where was Carolyn? And Jason? Had they slept through the whole fuss?

  When the general ordered us all back to bed, I headed for her room instead of ours to share the latest news. What would she make of it? Could she have killed Ruggiero because of his affair with Paolina? Out of jealousy? But Paolina was dead, so jealousy was out of date. Perhaps Carolyn hadn’t killed Paolina. She’d certainly said often enough that she thought Ruggiero had. When I passed on the news, I couldn’t tell much from Carolyn’s reaction. She was half asleep and didn’t seem to take in my explanation of events. Maybe she’d missed her nap.

  31

  The Morning After

  Carolyn

  I awoke the next morning wondering if my brief conversation with Bianca had been part of dream. Was Ruggiero really dead and Constanza really so grief-stricken she had to be sent to bed by the general? Jason’s attempts to order breakfast from whichever policeman had room-service duty for our floor had jerked me from sleep. My husband was becoming very frustrated. Since breakfast was our only hope for a decent meal as long as we were quarantined, I grabbed the room-service menu from the bedside table, struggled to the floor in my nightgown, and took the phone from Jason. Then I scanned down the menu picking out the English translations of things both of us liked and reading them off in Italian. The policeman didn’t find my Italian easy to understand, but I think he got most of my order. Why hadn’t I done that last night? Well, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Dinner was always awful here, unless it was provided by Constanza.

  Jason gave me a kiss on the cheek and told me I was “brilliant,” always nice to hear from one’s husband, and he went off to the shower. I, having remembered Constanza’
s possible widowhood, now that my empty stomach had the promise of relief, then tried to tell the policeman that I wanted to talk to the general. “Generale Luca Bianconi—er—grazia telefono Signora Blue.” That was probably Spanish. “Do—you—understand?” I asked. “Generale Luca Bianconi telefono Signora Blue. Si?”

  “Si,” said my policeman, but what did he mean? Then he read back the things I’d ordered. I sighed. After breakfast I’d go out into the hall, where I’d be told to return to my room, to which I’d reply with a demand to see the general. Maybe that would work. I did peek out and retrieve USA Today from in front of my door. There were no mementos from Charles de Gaulle, thank goodness. But then, he was undoubtedly quarantined, too. Nothing on the death of Ruggiero Ricci, well-known criminal and Sicilian industrialist, appeared in any USA Today headlines, but that wasn’t a surprise. When the telephone rang, I was reading an article about a standard French poodle that had been shot to death in Tulsa by an irate neighbor. What had that poodle done? I wondered.

  The general had received my message and opened the conversation by asking if I had any theories to pass on about the death of Ricci. Which meant my conversation with Bianca hadn’t been a weird dream, so I said, “I suppose he could have died from natural causes, but I did hear him bragging about how fit he was. This was after one of the dinners. On the other hand, if he was murdered, it could have been anyone, given his alleged criminal activities and his well-known sexual proclivities. However,” I added, “one does have to feel sorry for his poor wife. I wanted to ask your permission to pay her a sympathy call. Her suite is right down the hall. It wouldn’t involve my leaving the floor or—”

  “Fine, as long as you don’t mention our investigation of her husband,” said the general. “Let me know what you find out.”

  I agreed to be discreet, and he agreed to tell the guard at the elevator to escort me to Constanza’s rooms. Then Jason got out of the shower, and a waiter arrived with our breakfast, which was huge and looked like the items served at the breakfast buffet, thank goodness. I had been afraid the Swiss chef might be enlisted to cook for us in the morning, too, as an added pressure to make one of us confess.

  Breakfast was excellent and included the unpronounceable shell pastries. Like a person expecting famine to follow, I ate heartily. Then I told Jason that I had permission to pay a sympathy call to Constanza. He said to extend his condolences as well and to ask the guard at the elevator when we’d be free to leave our rooms. Gracia Sindacco answered my knock and let me into the suite.

  Although I had expected to find Constanza lying in bed weeping, I found her, instead, being fitted for a mourning wardrobe by two seamstresses, overseen by a designer, while she talked on the phone to an archbishop in Sicily about the necessity that he himself preside over a high mass at Ruggiero’s funeral. Gracia told me what that conversation was about and added that her late employer, considering how he had treated his excellent wife, deserved to be buried in unhallowed ground rather than celebrated by an archbishop.

  Constanza finished with the archbishop, nodded to me, and made another call, actually two calls, both of which involved tears and consoling remarks in Italian, punctuated by sharp commands to the nervous seamstresses. She was, according to Gracia, telling the two children the terrible news, consoling them on the death of their father, and ordering them to be in Catania in four days for the funeral. “She is the best of mothers,” said Gracia. “Her children were blessed by God to have such a loving parent.” Naturally I agreed.

  Then while Constanza examined widow’s veils—sheer silk, delicate lace, long and short—she made yet another call, this one, according to Gracia, to the company headquarters in Catania. “She makes arrangements to take over the company, to protect the children’s patrimony. The evil old father must not be allowed to get his hands back on the power and ruin the company. He is no good in the mind no more—has a stroke. But still is evil. You know?”

  I nodded, thinking that nobody in this room seemed to be very upset about Ruggiero’s death, only about its consequences.

  Just as the business conversation, evidently a series of orders from the widow, ended, Albertine Guillot arrived to offer her condolences, which segued immediately into a discussion of the clothes Constanza was ordering. The designer, who, fortuitously, was vacationing in Sorrento, and the seamstresses, who were locals, pulled out drawings and swatches of material; Albertine approved of the dresses but not the long funeral veil. The designer agreed. Constanza shrugged and explained that in Sicily, and given her position in society, it was absolutely necessary, even if it did cover up the top half of an excellent gown.

  Albertine nodded and asked how long the mourning period would be and, when told, said how fortunate it was that Constanza looked chic in black. While they chatted, I mused on the absence of Albertine’s poodle. Perhaps she had realized that bringing Charles de Gaulle along on a condolence call might result in his doing something socially unacceptable in front of the new widow.

  Then the whole fashion contingent, including Albertine, departed, and Constanza fell limply into a chair, a chair, I might add, that was much more comfortable looking than any in our room. She announced that she simply could not stay in this suite where her husband had died so tragically. At last, I thought, something I can do for her, given that my opinion on her new wardrobe was not solicited. “Why don’t I call the manager, Signor Villani, and see if I can’t arrange for you to change rooms?” I suggested.

  “My dear Carolyn, how thoughtful of you,” said Constanza. “In the absence of my own daughter, you are such a source of kindness and strength. You and Gracia.” She gave each of us a sad smile. Gracia rose from her place beside me on the couch—she was already wearing black, had probably been in mourning since the death of her own husband so many years ago. I wondered if half the women in Sicily might not be wearing black for dead relatives.

  “Come,” said Gracia, “I will help you change into clothes for the move and begin to pack for you.”

  Off they went to deal with more wardrobe problems while I called the policeman on the room-service phone and demanded to speak to Signor Villani. When I finally got hold of him and explained the problem, he was horrified to hear that such an important man had died in his hotel without his being informed. Perhaps his staff was afraid to awaken him in the middle of the night with such bad news. Signor Villani had to call the general, who said none of us could move off the eighth floor and no one was to enter the room in which Ruggiero had died. As a result, a room that connected to Gracia’s was made available to Constanza, and I found myself escorting the moderately grief-stricken widow to her new quarters while a Carabinieri, splendid in white sash and red striped trousers and armed with a large weapon of some sort, stood guard over the crime and/or death scene, and Gracia, with the help of several hotel employees, moved all other Ricci possessions down the hall.

  Having inserted the new key card into the slot, I turned to gesture Constanza in. Oh my! I whipped my head right back toward the door because I had caught her shoving something into the sand of a tall ashtray in the hall. Then she sailed past me, evidently unaware of what I had seen. I glanced nervously at the sand, now quite smooth. Had I imagined the whole thing? And if I hadn’t, what had she buried there? A gun? Probably not. Ruggiero had not been shot. Nitroglycerine pills? Perhaps he had had heart trouble after all, unknown to anyone but the two of them, and she had replaced his pills with some innocuous substitute, and he had died. Now she was hiding the evidence. I followed her into the room, thinking I needed to talk to the general. Before some maid came along and cleaned out the ashtrays.

  “This is not a suite,” said Constanza irritably.

  I explained the problem with the general, and she said she’d have to complain to his superiors in Rome, but first, having slept not a wink since she discovered her Ruggiero’s dead body, she needed to go to bed. I had her in that bed with her shoes off and her robe draped carefully over a chair before she could say another
word. As soon as Gracia appeared, loaded down with clothes, I kissed Constanza on the forehead, patted her hand, and escaped.

  32

  Evidence in an Ashtray

  Carolyn

  On my way out of Constanza’s new room, I decided to look in the ashtray myself, but that didn’t happen. A local policeman met me at the door and escorted me to my own door. I did try to tell him that I needed to see the general, but he insisted in broken English that the general was busy. Then I asked for Lieutenant Buglione and was told that he, too, was busy. At least the fellow spoke English, but he also insisted that I go back into my own room. When I stayed outside to argue, he whipped out a key card and opened the door for me. What could I do but enter? However, I was not happy to think that at least four people, counting Jason, now had cards for my room.

  Jason was out on the balcony, laptop on a little table, so I began the arduous process of reaching the general through Room Service. He returned my call about twenty minutes later and promised to have someone sift through the ashtray outside Constanza’s door—this after I had assured him several times that she did not smoke and had not been eating an apple or chewing gum. Sometimes law enforcement authorities make it very hard to assist them. I suppose assistance from an amateur seems beneath them or hurts their professional pride. I consoled myself by postulating that a female law officer would be more grateful to and cooperative with helpful citizens. Perhaps I should have called Lieutenant Flavia Vacci, whose voice I could hear in the background as I talked to the general.

  I had just curled up on the bed with a book when the telephone rang again. That was fast, I thought, excited to hear what they had discovered in the ashtray. It was Gracia telling me that Constanza had permission from the authorities to gather the conference members and their wives for a luncheon at one o’clock in the meeting room at the end of the hall.