Death in the Dolomites: A Rick Montoya Italian Mystery

by David P. Wagner

  “I’m supposed to be devastated, grieving, falling to pieces, but all I feel is exhaustion. I guess that’s because I never really got along that well with my brother. We went through the motions. He was supposed to be protective, like big brothers are, and I was supposed to appreciate it. We played that game well, especially around my parents, but there was no substance to it. We didn’t dislike each other, Rick, we just never were friends. Maybe someday I’ll feel some regret that we never were close, but right now I don’t. Is that wrong?”

  Rick thought about his own sister. With all the moves they’d made growing up there was a bond between them, something unique to foreign service families, and that bond remained. Except for the pictures on the walls, home had changed every three years. Home was wherever he and his sister found themselves, and they’d made the best of it. Rick knew that his early years were very different from Cat’s, but he still had trouble fathoming her feelings toward her brother.

  “It’s not wrong,” he said. “Everyone is different. Perhaps it’s better that you feel that way. It will help you get through this.”

  “Thanks, Rick. That helps a lot.”

  As he let himself out he realized he hadn’t told her about the previous night’s violence on the street down from her building. And she had not said anything about the sirens, or if she’d heard them, didn’t think much of it. Probably a good thing. She had enough to think about without adding something else. Something which likely had nothing to do with her.

  ***

  Rick walked the few short blocks to the police station, dodging skis swinging from the shoulders of those heading for the mountain. The sergeant on duty waved him past the front desk and pointed toward a door which was half open. Taped to it was a handwritten sign: “Inspector Albani.” He pushed the door open and heard Luca’s voice.

  “Come in, Riccardo, welcome to my mountain empire. Please make yourself comfortable, if that is possible in these chairs. The body of Signor Taylor is on its way to Trento for the autopsy, so I have been going over what we know about the case. It’s not a lot.” He tapped his hand on a file. “And now we have a second crime.”

  Rick looked around the room and took a seat at one end of the long conference table that served as Luca’s temporary desk. The walls were bare except for a calendar whose pages had not been flipped to the present month, and a local tourism poster that showed a busty blond skier. One of the poster’s bottom corners had come loose from its thumbtack and curled up to cover the tips of the girl’s skis. The room had no windows.

  The inspector’s shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark arm hair that matched the hair on his head. The suit jacket draped the chair next to him, the overcoat lay on the next chair, but his new hat had a place of honor at the end of the table. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, surrounded by files, papers, and a few empty paper cups. It appeared that Luca was not especially neat, which somehow did not surprise Rick.

  “Thanks to your quick reaction last night, Riccardo, Guido Pittini is probably going to survive the attack. But he is in critical condition and has not regained consciousness. The wound was from a small knife, according to the attending doctor. He was attacked from behind and stabbed in the neck over the shoulder. But you know where he was stabbed. Ironically it may turn out that the blow to his head on the cement will be the more critical of Pittini’s injuries…that is what is keeping him unconscious. If the snow had not cushioned him slightly, he could have been killed.”

  “Did your men find anything last night?”

  “Un bel niente. There wasn’t anyone around at that hour to question, and any footprints along the sidewalk were already covered. You remember how hard it was snowing.”

  “And no bloody knives lying in the snow.”

  “Not a one.” Luca twirled a pencil between his fingers as if it were a weapon. “I talked to his wife.”

  “And?”

  “She was shocked, as you would expect she would be, and had no idea who would want to harm her husband. She said he had gone out, but he didn’t tell her where.”

  “No doubt working on the campaign. Stuffing envelopes, perhaps.”

  Rick’s attempt at humor fell flat. Perhaps it didn’t make it through translation. “I’ll ask the mayor if he was doing some campaign work, but somehow I doubt it at that hour. I have some men checking the nightspots to see if he was seen anywhere. There aren’t that many of them in a town this size. If he was in a public place with a woman, we’ll likely find out soon.”

  “We can rule out one woman, at least.”

  A puzzled look showed on the policeman’s face, but then he got it. “Tell me how it went with Signora Taylor. As well as could be expected?”

  Rick briefly described his conversation with Cat at the apartment, leaving out that he’d told her something of his own background to help get her mind off the death.

  “So, my American friend, from what you said I sense that Signora Taylor is not suffering in her grief.”

  Rick shrugged. “Not yet, Luca, but it all may not have sunk in yet.”

  “What was her reaction to the excitement of last night?”

  “I didn’t bring it up, and she didn’t either. Her apartment must be soundproof if she didn’t hear all the sirens.”

  Luca gave that some thought. “And you say you had a brief encounter with her neighbor, Signor Lotti?”

  “There wasn’t much to it. She was annoyed and snapped at him, and he took it. He was a bit shocked, first at seeing me and then by her reaction. I found it strange that he thought I was a policeman.”

  Luca grinned. “Well, we never actually explained your presence when we visited him yesterday. You should take it as a compliment, of course.” He stood up and reached for his jacket. “I need a good coffee, the stuff from the machine here is terrible.”

  “I just had one with Cat, but I’ll go with you. This room is starting to close in on me.”

  “And you’ve only been sitting here for five minutes.”

  They left the room, nodded to the sergeant, and walked outside. The sunlight that had started to peek through the clouds was now out in full. It would be a good morning on the trails. A parking lot spread out in front of the entrance to the police station was surrounded by hotels and businesses. Luca pointed out a bar at the opposite end and they began to walk between the parked cars to reach it. Ahead of them four young men were getting out of a muddy SUV, slipping on their coats and stretching their limbs. One checked the skis on the roof while the others looked around the square and up at the mountains surrounding Campiglio. Once the vehicle was secured, they began walking toward a hotel at the far end of the square, talking loudly. Rick watched them and suddenly grabbed Luca’s coat.

  “Riccardo, what—”

  “That kid, Luca, we’ve got to get him.”

  Rick began running toward the group, followed by a bewildered Luca. The lot was full, and they darted between cars, sometimes having to double-back where there was no space. Rick kept his eye on one of the group, who he estimated was in his early twenties. When Rick was about twenty meters from him, the boy looked around and saw the two men running toward him. A look of panic came over his face and he started to run while his three friends stopped and stared. Rick and Luca brushed past the three and continued the pursuit.

  “Stop, police!” yelled Luca as he gasped the thin air.

  The boy tripped and fell against the hood of a car, his hat flying to the ground. Rick was on him immediately, forcing the boy’s chest and face against the front of the car like he’d seen cops in Albuquerque do on various occasions.

  “I didn’t do anything.” The boy’s words were muffled by the metal of the hood.

  Luca finally reached the car, breathing heavily. “What… is going on…Riccardo?”

  Rick kept one hand against the boy’s back and pointed to th
e ground with the other. “There, Luca, look there.”

  The policeman reached down and picked up the cap. It was dark blue, and the gold letters ND were intertwined on the front. On the back, also in gold, was the word IRISH.

  ***

  The boy sat at one end of the long table, a tape recorder directly in front of him. A uniformed policeman with a pad and pen sat to his left, Luca to his right. Rick leaned against a side wall, wishing there were windows in the room.

  “Go over it again, Lorenzo, to be sure I understand.”

  The boy looked up at Rick, as if he could somehow avoid repeating the story. Rick shrugged.

  “We were just coming to the edge of town. We’d left Verona before dawn, stopping only to have a cappuccino and a roll at a bar in some small town on the road. We knew it would be a while before we could check into the hotel, and we, well, after the coffee, we needed to…”

  “You had to take a leak,” said Luca. “I don’t need the specifics. Go on.”

  The boy took a sip from the cup in front of him. “We pulled off the road into a clearing. No trees, but covered with snow, of course. We could see the trails off in the distance where people were coming down off the mountain, and the chairlift to take them back up. After we, uh—”

  “Yes, took care of your bodily needs. Go on.”

  “I saw something blue sticking out of the snow, walked over and pulled it out. It was mostly covered, but after I shook off the snow I saw it was a nice cap. It wasn’t like it was anything that valuable. If it had been, I would have turned it in when we got to town.”

  “I’m sure you would have,” said Luca. “You didn’t see anything else lying around?”

  “No, sir, just the cap.”

  “Then what?”

  “We got back into Gino’s car and drove into Campiglio. It took us a while to find a place to park, but luckily we got that space near our hotel when somebody was pulling out. That’s when you grabbed me.” He frowned and looked up at Rick who grinned back.

  “And you think you can find this place?”

  “Sure. I’m good with directions. It’s right outside town.”

  “Good. Sergeant, take him out and make copies of his documents. And let him use the bathroom if he needs to, we don’t want him up there contaminating the crime scene any more than he has already.”

  Lorenzo and the sergeant left the room. Before the door closed, another policeman stuck his head through the doorway. “Two journalists are here, Inspector. They say they have an appointment with you. I asked them to wait.”

  “Thank you, Corporal. I’ll be with them in a moment.”

  Rick was pushing down the corner of the old ski poster on the wall when Luca gestured for him to take a seat at the table. “The newspapers can wait. What did you think of our little hat thief?”

  “It sounded to me like he was telling the truth,” Rick said as he eased into one of the chairs.

  “I’m sure he is. And it’s very possible that we have found where the murder actually took place.” Luca looked at the blue cap, sealed inside a clear plastic evidence bag. It sat in the middle of the table. “Explain something to me, Riccardo.” He picked up the bag.

  “If I can, Luca.”

  “Notre Dame, the name of this university. That is French, is it not?”

  “It is indeed.”

  Luca turned the bag in his hands. “And the word on the back, ‘Irish.’ That means irlandese, if I am not mistaken?”

  “Yes, Luca, Irish are people from Ireland.”

  The policeman nodded slowly, his face serious. “So we have an American university with a French name whose students are from Ireland?”

  “That’s close enough.”

  “I will never understand your country, Riccardo.”

  “Don’t even try, Luca. It’s easier to solve murders.”

  ***

  So much for the sun. As Rick walked up the hill from the police station to the hotel, the clouds closed ranks to eliminate the last patch of open sky. And it had begun to snow again. He looked at his watch and wondered if Flavio had already headed for the mountain. Not that he’d blame him if he had. Just because Rick had become involved in the investigation didn’t mean Flavio had to stay in the hotel.

  He pushed his hands into his coat pockets, reminding himself that he had to get another pair of gloves, and felt his phone vibrating. When he checked the number it was a 2 area code. Milano.

  “Montoya.”

  “Rick, this is Mark Fries.”

  “I thought it might be you, Mark. I suppose you heard the news.”

  “Yes, the police came to the bank today. This is terrible. How is his sister taking it?”

  “As well as can be expected. The consulate is sending someone up to help her out.”

  “I know. I called the consul general and he told me. I said that the bank is ready to help in any way we can.”

  Rick brushed the snow off his phone. “What did the police ask you?”

  “Pretty much the same things you asked when you called, and I gave them the same answers. Well, they also asked about possible enemies, arguments he may have had with someone, that sort of thing. Nobody here could think of anyone with a motive to…to take Cam’s life.”

  “I suppose they asked you to contact them if anyone recalled anything that could help the investigation.”

  “They did. I suppose that’s standard procedure.”

  “I think so. But if someone does remember something, since I’m helping out the inspector here who’s running the investigation, it might speed things if you called me, and I can pass it immediately on to him.”

  “Certainly. I’ll be glad to do that, Rick. I’ve asked my assistant to check on that loan. Perhaps there’s something there that could be of help. I’ll let you know.”

  They said their good-byes and Rick tucked his phone back in his coat pocket before continuing up the road. He wondered if the Milanese police would be annoyed that he’d cut them out of the loop. Probably not, and Luca was the lead investigator who had likely instructed them to question the workers at the bank in the first place.

  He pushed open the door of the hotel and walked into the lobby. Flavio was standing near the front desk, dressed in his ski pants and sweater, talking with a woman whose back was to Rick. She wore a dark pantsuit and had short hair, instantly reminding him, even without seeing the face, of one of his college classmates, Linda Chavez, who got a job with an Albuquerque bank on graduation. Flavio noticed Rick and said something to the woman. She immediately turned on her heel and began striding toward him. She even walks like Linda, he thought, but is much better looking. She stuck out her hand.

  “I am Lori Shafer, from the American Consulate General in Milan. Signor Caldaro told me that you know how I can get in contact with Catherine Taylor.” She spoke in relatively correct but somewhat accented Italian, like she was reading from a practice dialogue in language class.

  Rick glanced at Flavio’s grin and toyed for an instant with the idea of continuing in Italian, but decided against it. “You can speak English with me, Ms. Shafer. Pleased to meet you, I am Rick Montoya.”

  “But I…” She looked back to Flavio, who did a theatrical shrug, and then returned her glare to Rick. “He didn’t tell me you spoke English.”

  “He probably didn’t tell you that he speaks English himself.” Flavio was now at her side, and Rick added: “Though not very well.”

  “I was so impressed by your Italian, Signorina,” said Flavio, “that I did not want to expose my limited English.”

  Rick shook his head. It was Flavio’s Latin Lover persona that Rick had not seen since they’d frequented the bars on Route 66 those many years ago. The vice consul would have none of it.

  “I really must contact Ms. Taylor immediately. If you could please give me her address?”
>
  Her demeanor, which was so common in young American professionals, was something that drove Rick crazy. And it was why he’d had only one date with Linda Chavez.

  “This is Italy, Ms. Shafer, and we go through certain niceties before charging into business. Call it Old World, if you’d like, but that’s the way Italians are. Apart from that, Catherine Taylor is resting now after a very difficult morning, and she shouldn’t be disturbed.”

  Flavio watched the two, fascinated by the exchange. His grin was wider than ever.

  “I don’t think you understand the function of United States consular officers, Signor Montoya.”

  Rick took a deep breath. “My father is the American Consul General in Rio, Ms. Shafer. He’s told me about his work over the years.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “He’s…Wait a minute, there was a Mr. Montoya who lectured in my Italian area studies course. Was—”

  “He’s done some lecturing at the Foreign Service Institute.”

  “So you…you’re American.”

  “Brava. So why don’t you relax, call me Rick, and call this guy Flavio. And we’ll call you Lori. We’ll get you over to see Catherine Taylor in good time. She goes by Cat, by the way.”

  For the first time Lori Shafer’s frown somewhat softened. “Thank you, Rick. And Flavio. I guess I was a little short. I just want to be sure to do the right thing for this poor woman. Milan is my first overseas assignment.”

  “Somehow I guessed that,” said Rick.

  Her face was returning to normal from the previous blush. She checked her watch. “Since there’s no rush I’ll get settled in my room. Will you be here when I get back?”

  “Yes, I will be in the bar,” said Flavio quickly.

  She took the handle of her bag and rolled it toward the elevator while the two men watched.

  “She’s a fire biscuit, isn’t she?” Flavio, without realizing it, was still stuck in English.

  “The expression is ‘firecracker,’ Flavio, and let’s get back into Italian.” He glanced at his friend’s attire. “Aren’t you going skiing?”

  “Not now, Rick.”