Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Fairbanks, Nancy

  “I can’t tell you how unlikely that story sounds, Signora,” said the general.

  “Well, if you don’t believe me, I can take you back to the scene, because his blood is on the rock. He fell quite hard, and he’s probably seriously injured if the time he’s been unconscious is any indication.”

  “How long is that?” asked the general.

  “I have no idea, but it seemed like hours,” I replied. “While Bianca was on the road getting help, I had to find his gun so he couldn’t wake up and shoot us.” Should I admit that I might have broken Hank’s ribs? I didn’t want to, but the truth is always best, so I added, “You may find that he has broken ribs. I found a tire iron in the trunk, so I used it to turn him over—at least partially—since the gun wasn’t anywhere to be found. I was right, as it turned out. It was under his body, but I did hear a funny sound while I was levering him up with the tire iron. Of course, I didn’t mean to cause him any further injury, but what was I to do? No one wants to risk being shot by a criminal.

  “Then Bianca flagged down three men who lifted him into the back seat of the convertible, but driving it was a problem for us. I can’t drive a stick shift, and Bianca, in order to fit her tummy behind the wheel, could only get one foot on a pedal. So she shifted, and I pressed the gas pedal and brake. It was very awkward and uncomfortable, not to mention dangerous. And then, of course, she went into labor, so we had to speed up and pass cars, which was terrifying, and finally it started to rain. Being rained on in an open convertible, whose top refuses to close, is dreadful. We both found it a very stressful trip back to Sorrento, and I hope you’ll explain to hotel management that we didn’t mean to destroy their garden.” I waved at the tipped, cracked pots and the crushed bushes. “They are so picky about ordinary things. Goodness knows what they’ll say about our driving through their landscaping and breaking their pots.”

  The general, who had been leaning against the remains of the rental car, watching the removal of Hank from the back seat and listening to me, started to laugh.

  “That, Signora, is a story that will live in memory in my department. You’ll have to dictate it for the record, and I may well have the typed testimony framed and hung in my office. Perhaps with suitable drawings.”

  “Very funny!” I snapped and walked away without permission. I’m happy to say that he didn’t try to stop me. Perhaps he realized that my duty was now to Bianca—or that laughing at me was not a very tactful thing to do.

  43

  In the Manager’s Office

  Carolyn

  When I arrived in the lobby, there was a terrible hullabaloo. Signor Villani was insisting that Bianca be taken back down to await an ambulance. Bianca insisted that she be taken into his office so that she could give birth with some privacy.

  “Signora, you cannot have a baby in my office,” cried Signor Villani. “It is not proper. There is no midwife or doctor. I’m sure it is against hotel rules.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Albertine, who was at the desk for whatever reason. “The woman needs to lie down. Do you expect her to give birth on the floor of your lobby? If so, I shall certainly file a complaint with your head office. In Geneva, isn’t it? Here, Madame Blue, give me a hand. We must help her into the office while there is still time.”

  So we walked poor Bianca, who seemed to be having one contraction after another, if her moans were any indication, through the door marked “Pietro Villani, Manager.” After all his objections, we discovered that he had not only a sofa, but a chaise longue, of which Bianca said, at the end of a wail, “That one. Get my slacks and panties off.”

  “I don’t know how to deliver a baby,” I protested, weak-kneed with fright. “Do you, Madame Guillot?”

  “No. But you must call me Albertine, both of you. This is certainly not the most formal of situations. We are three women, pulling together at a time of—”

  “Oh, shut up, and call Gracia,” snapped Bianca. “She’ll know what to do. I don’t want to have to direct my own delivery.”

  “Of course,” I agreed. “Six sons. She’ll—”

  “Now,” ordered Bianca. We had both been trying to relieve her of her lower-body clothing while she thrashed around.

  I ran to the telephone, got Jill on the line, thank goodness, and told her that Bianca was giving birth—

  “Right now?” gasped Jill.

  “Yes, and we need Gracia Sindacco. This very minute.”

  Freed of her clothes, Bianca half leaned against the back of the chaise longue, drew up her knees, gave a shriek, and asked if she was crowning. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t want to look. My experiences with childbirth had involved numbing shots, giggle gas, and a doctor out of sight behind the draperies. It had been a somewhat distant experience once I was no longer in pain and telling people that I’d changed my mind and didn’t want to have a baby after all. I’m told that is a common reaction, that and shouting curses at one’s husband, which, of course, I’d never do under any circumstances. What a way to welcome a child into the world.

  Fortunately, Albertine, who’d never even had a baby, was braver than I and took a peek. “Oui, I think that might be a patch of the head showing. Should you be bearing down now?”

  “How should I know?” Bianca groaned. “Someone always told me what to do.”

  Then, thank goodness, Gracia arrived, took a look, and said, “Why should I help you people, who are responsible for my mistress being arrested?”

  “No, no, Gracia,” I cried anxiously. “We’ve cleared her. The general will have to release her immediately because the murderer confessed, and Bianca and I brought him back. He has a serious head injury, I think, but the general knows now that we’re right. So please, please, help Bianca.”

  Gracia snorted and began to issue orders, in Italian in a crooning voice to Bianca, in English in a not very friendly tone to us. We heated water in the manager’s coffee pot; we got towels from the manager’s private bathroom and wet washcloths to bathe her face. If Gracia had told me to begin flamenco dancing to entertain the patient, I’d have tried and insisted that Albertine join me.

  “A girl,” said Gracia brusquely. “Too bad. A boy is always preferable.” She handed the baby, who was all messy, to me and ordered me to clean it up and return it to Bianca. I was terrified. The child was amazingly teeny considering how huge Bianca had been. What if I injured it? But Gracia gave me a mean look, and I hurried into the bathroom, thinking she could have given Bianca’s newborn daughter to Albertine. My feelings wouldn’t have been hurt.

  There was a good-sized, but shallow sink in the bathroom, but the baby was so slippery, not to mention the fact that she was wailing noisily. She probably realized I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t just put her in the sink and turn on the water. What if it came out hot or freezing? I sat down on the toilet lid and shifted her carefully to my shoulder with my hand holding her head and my arm flattened against her little body. Then I rose shakily and used the other hand to run and test the water and stop up the sink, all the time humming in the baby’s ear, which didn’t seem to make her any happier, and thinking that my blouse and maybe even my slacks were never going to be the same.

  “Okay,” I said softly, lowered her into the shallow sink, and splashed water over her. She didn’t like that either. Gwen had loved baths, but then she’d been older. A knowledgeable nurse probably administered Gwen’s first bath. Well, this wasn’t working very well. The water was getting all messy. I opened the drain, turned the tap at exactly the place it had been before, and grabbed a washcloth. Better. She was still wailing, but I had her pretty well cleaned up. Now for a towel. The bath towels were gone. We’d used them all, so I draped a hand towel on my shoulder, placed the baby there, and draped another hand towel on her back.

  Then I took her out to her mother, feeling quite proud of myself.

  “Good God, Carolyn, I was afraid you’d drowned her,” said Bianca, who was lying flat and reaching for her baby. “Oh,
you sweet, beautiful thing you,” she crooned, bringing the towel bundle down on her chest. The baby immediately stopped crying. Now that hurt my feelings.

  “We’ll call you Gracia, won’t we?” Bianca beamed at Gracia. A stream of baby talk followed from Bianca while Albertine and I stood around, smiling but useless, and Gracia did midwife-type things. Rubbing Bianca’s stomach and whatnot. Frowning. Why was she frowning? The baby had seemed fine to me. Then Bianca let out a shriek, and the baby started to cry again. You can’t blame her for that. There she was, all clean and warm and cuddled against her mother, and there’s this dreadful shriek.

  “I thought so,” said Gracia. “There’s another one coming. How many did your doctor say?”

  “One,” said Bianca. She looked pretty disgusted. “Four children? We’ll never live this down. Everyone in the department will be whispering behind our backs. Oh God! Carolyn, take the baby.” Her back arched, and she thrust little Gracia toward me. However, Albertine stepped forward and grabbed the baby.

  “Carolyn will need to take care of the new one,” Albertine said, and plopped the shrieking bundle of towels against her shoulder.

  “We’re out of towels,” I moaned. “Completely out.”

  “Then get some,” said Gracia as she went about delivering a second child.

  I ran to the door and called out into the lobby. “We need more towels. Immediately. Lots more.” People started running around. I considered running away but decided that wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

  “And a blanket and sheets,” Gracia commanded. I relayed that.

  Five minutes later Bianca gave birth to a son. In all the excitement, we never even thought to call Lorenzo out of the meeting. Lucky Lorenzo.

  44

  A Postnatal Gathering

  Carolyn

  Once we’d done all the work, the ambulance arrived. Violetta, with Andrea and Giulia in tow, learned from lobby gossip, in this case Eliza, that Bianca had given birth. Violetta then called Lorenzo out of his meeting, and the whole family trooped after the stretcher carrying Bianca and the two babies. Giulia could be heard thanking her mother, as the family squeezed into the elevator, for having two babies, one for each sibling. She thought her brother might have wanted to share little Gracia if a boy hadn’t arrived for him. “No trouble at all, sweetheart,” said Bianca gaily. Then she called to me before the elevator doors could close.

  “I owe you an apology, Carolyn,” she said.

  “Whatever for?” I asked.

  “I thought you were the one who killed Paolina.”

  “Me?” I echoed, astounded. “Why in the world would you think that?” But I never got an answer because the closing doors separated us.

  Eliza then told me that I really needed to change my clothes—as if I didn’t know it—but that I must come straight back to the lobby and tell her what had happened. Absolutely, Albertine agreed, and warned me that if I took a nap, as I had announced I intended to do, I’d have night-mares. She said what I needed was conversation and several stiff drinks to bolster me after our mutual ordeal. Mutual ordeal? I thought. She didn’t have to wash off two slippery babies in the manager’s sink. Signor Villani had rushed back into his office once we’d vacated it. How I’d have loved to see his reaction to the state of his chaise longue and bathroom, not to mention the piles of towels tossed onto the carpet.

  Since a stiff drink sounded good to me, I did return after showering and changing clothes, and we three ladies went into the bar and sat in comfy chairs with cocktails in our hands while I told my story. Of course, they were horrified at what Bianca and I had been through and impressed with my innovative solution to imminent death. I was impressed myself. So far only the general had found my strategy laughable. Eliza did remark that if Hank hadn’t been a fellow American, I might have realized earlier that he, not Constanza, was the murderer.

  “Oh?” I said. “And when did you suspect him?”

  “I’m always suspicious of people who won’t stop the car when I come upon an absolutely smashing plant,” Eliza replied.

  She never had a clue, I thought, but I let it go.

  Albertine asked if Constanza had been released from hotel arrest, an arrangement that had to be explained to me. It seemed that the general had sent Constanza to another hotel under guard, where she was held and questioned in the comfort befitting her noble ancestry. In fact, word had come back that she liked the food in her new hotel much better than anything the Swiss chef could produce and had announced to Agent Loppi that if Ricci Chemicals held any more conferences in Sorrento, the Grand Palazzo Sorrento would lose its place to her new favorite. Agent Loppi was of the opinion that Signora Ricci-Tassone had no firm grasp on reality if she thought Ricci Chemicals would even survive after the general got through with it. However, no one on the general’s staff had thought Constanza guilty of anything but murder.

  My, how police business does get around, I reflected. Even federal secret agents can’t keep their mouths shut. The general dropped in and had a drink with us. “Girol has a fractured skull,” he announced. “They’re operating on him now. Of course, he may not live to face trial for the two murders, but I congratulate you, Signora Blue, for wheedling a confession out of him while you tied his shoelaces together.” And the general started laughing again. I was about to say something I might have regretted, when he stopped laughing and said, “I hope the bastard stays alive long enough to feel some pain, a lot of pain, for what he did to my daughter.”

  For a minute there I’d forgotten that the general was in mourning. He was so stoic. I patted his arm and said, “She was a delightful young woman. And extraordinarily beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” said the general. “She was, wasn’t she?”

  “In fact, I have pictures of her on my camera. If you would you like to choose some, I’ll have them printed and sent to you.”

  “That would be very kind.”

  We were all looking at pictures of Paolina when the chemists finally got out of the meeting and joined us in the bar. That’s when I realized that someone was going to have to tell Sibyl that her husband was not only in the hospital with a fractured skull, but also that he had committed two murders. I let the general do it. He’d only gotten as far as the fractured skull when she burst into tears and threw herself into Jason’s arms.

  It was at that moment that my jealousy of Sibyl ended. My husband looked completely flummoxed. He stared at her in dismay, this woman who, because she was much taller than he, was putting a crick in her neck in order to cry on his shoulder. Then he turned to me with the most helpless look. If ever a man needed rescuing, Jason was that man. I wouldn’t have chosen myself for the job, considering that I was more or less responsible for Hank’s condition, but Sibyl didn’t know that. She hadn’t heard a quarter of the story. I pried her gently away from my husband, murmuring sympathetically, patting her on the back, providing tissues, and suggested that she’d want a cab so that she could go straight to the hospital to be with Hank.

  She was very grateful and went along with me to the desk and then downstairs to the entrance where the cab pulled up much more promptly than the ambulances had. I helped her in, handed her a whole pack of travel Kleenex, and sent her on her way. I suppose I should have prepared her for the double-murder part of the story, but there were police there to guard him. She’d hear. And after all, I had been one of his intended targets. How much more could be expected of me?

  On returning upstairs to the bar, I discovered that in my absence my husband had been apprised of my adventures and was very upset. “You weren’t even supposed to leave the hotel, Carolyn,” he said reproachfully. “I didn’t even know you were gone. Why would you ignore the general’s specific orders and—”

  “I didn’t know about the general’s orders,” I interrupted. “Hank said he had permission. And I really did want to go to Capri. How was I to know Hank planned to toss me off a cliff and let the tide wash me up on the island? I was expecting to take
a boat.”

  “For shame, Professor,” Albertine scolded. “Do not upset your wife when she has had such a trying day. I am distraught myself, and I only helped with the delivery of the babies. Poor Carolyn did that after surviving a terrifying attack on her life and a very dangerous auto trip back to Sorrento with a murderer and a woman in labor.”

  Jason looked embarrassed. Adrien asked, “What babies are these that you and our good Carolyn helped to deliver?” an incredulous smile on his lips.

  “My grandchildren,” trilled Violetta, fluttering up to the group and linking her arm through the general’s. She leaned forward to drop kisses on my cheek and Albertine’s. “How can we thank you? Such beautiful babies. And to have them on a chaise longue with you kindly ladies in attendance.” Then she rifled through her handbag and lifted out hospital photos of the newborns, who looked as newborns usually do, red-faced and wrinkled. “Aren’t they adorable?” she asked the general.

  He looked sadly at the pictures. “They are indeed, Signora. You are a lucky woman. Now that my Lucia is gone, I can never hope to welcome grandchildren into the world. Signora Blue, perhaps you would be so kind as to show Signora Massoni the picture of my lovely daughter, the one you took in the Piazza Tasso.”

  My camera and the baby pictures were passed around the ever-widening circle—Agents Marsocca and Loppi had joined us, not to mention Lieutenant Flavia Vacci, who was cooing over the twins. Violetta squeezed the general’s arm again and said, “You poor, dear man. To lose such a beautiful daughter. It is so tragic. But you shall share my adorable grandchildren. You must come to visit us, once we are all back in Rome.”

  Valentino told the general that he had loved Paolina to distraction and would have been a happy man could he have called the general father-in-law. Then he offered to take everyone out to dinner at the expense of Ricci Chemicals. The general confused him by advising him that he should be looking for work rather than spending company money that might soon belong to the government.