by Aaron Elkins
“And now,” Francesca went on, speaking louder, working her way into a righteous indignation, “we turn to the same mechanism to rescue my dear nephew from these repulsive bastards. Of course we do, what choice did we have? Time was short, the money had to be raised within a few days. Are you now going to accuse us of doing wrong? Should we have let them kill him? You’ve seen the boy—how grateful he is to be home, how relieved the entire family is that he is safe. The money will be returned the day the insurance is paid. What would you have had us do? Do you think we did wrong?”
“Personally? No,” said Rigoli.
“Personally, neither do I,” Caravale said, “if that’s all there is to it.” And a moment afterward, to Lombardo: “Don’t tell anybody I said that.”
“And I would like to make it quite clear for the record,” Francesca said, speaking directly to the microphones rather than to Rigoli, “that I did this voluntarily, eagerly. I was in no way coerced by my brother. It was I who suggested it. As chief financial officer, it was my responsibility, my duty, to decide, and I decided. I accept full responsibility. I would do it again.”
“I see,” Rigoli said.
“Are we done? I would like to be taken back now.”
“Yes, signora, you may go. However, please keep yourself available for further contact in the event—”
“Thank you.” She was up and striding to the door on her three-inch heels.
At the door she stopped and nodded an ostentatious good-bye to the one-way glass, just to let them know they hadn’t put anything over on her.
As she shut the door, Rigoli turned to look straight at them too, dipped his chin, and tugged his lower eyelid down with his forefinger: Whew, how about that one?
“Interesting,” Caravale said, turning from the window. “Now I want—”
“Wait, stick around another minute, Colonel. I think you’ll want to hear this too.”
A moment later, a nervous, somewhat tousled Basilio was led in, looking confusedly around him, as if he’d been prematurely roused from hibernation.
“Now then, Signor Barbero,” Rigoli said in his reassuring voice, pointing to the chair that Francesca had just vacated, “what I’d like you to do is to tell me again what you were telling me just before we came here.”
“About the chauffeur, you mean?”
Caravale looked at Lombardo. “The chauffeur? What about the chauffeur? What’s he talking about?”
Lombardo smiled and put a finger to his lips. “Patience.”
“That’s right, the chauffeur.”
“Should the microphones be closer?” Basilio asked. “I should probably speak directly into them, because, you see, I’ve found that my voice is difficult to record clearly. It has something to do with a defect of the soft palate—”
“No, just continue to speak normally to me, as you are. The microphones will do their job.”
“Very well. Enrico. A sad case. What exactly do you want me to say?”
“What you told me before. The facts, that’s all. About how he never should have been there . . . all that.”
Caravale frowned. “What’s he talking about? Never should have been there . . . ?”
“Just listen, will you?” Lombardo said. “For God’s sake.”
Caravale muttered something, fumbled in a pocket, and stuck half of an unlit cigar in his mouth.
Basilio, having already told his story several times that day, was unusually concise. Aurora Costruzioni employed two chauffeur-bodyguards. On the day of the kidnapping, Enrico Dellochio, the one who had been killed trying to protect Achille, had actually been scheduled to have the day off. His alternate, Casimiro Praga, regularly worked mornings and generally was the one who drove Achille to school. But on this particular day Praga had telephoned half an hour before he was due to arrive, complaining of a severe stomachache. The office had called in Dellochio instead, and it was he, to his very great misfortune, who had been driving at the time of the kidnapping.
At the same moment that Rigoli’s heavy-lidded eyes flickered in the direction of the one-way glass, Caravale impulsively clenched his fist, inadvertently snapping the half-cigar in two. The pieces fell to the floor.
“An inside job!” he said excitedly. “Of course! It’s all coming together now. Praga is in on it. He’s supposed to go along with it. At the last minute he loses his nerve, he backs out. He’s replaced by Dellochio, who has no idea what’s going to happen. That’s why there was all that shooting.”
He smacked his forehead and turned angrily on Lombardo. “Why didn’t we know about this before?”
Lombardo, who had been nodding his agreement as Caravale spoke, was affronted. “How could we know? Even today, it only came out by accident.”
“Where is this Praga?” Caravale said. “Do we have him?”
Lombardo pointed through the glass, where Rigoli was just asking the same question.
“And Casimiro Praga, what happened to him?”
“That was the last we saw of him. He never returned, never came back for references, never picked up his pay, never anything.” Basilio shrugged. “Would you like my opinion? I think he decided to look for a safer occupation back home in Padua. When you think about it, after all, it’s only sheer luck that he’s alive. By all rights, he should be dead. I saw an extremely interesting television program about the inexorability of Fate—”
“Are we hunting for Praga?” Caravale asked as they stepped away from the window. He patted his pockets irritably. “Didn’t I have a cigar?”
“We have a call in to Padua,” Lombardo said, “and our own people are working on it too. So what do you think about all this, Colonel? Pretty interesting, eh?”
“Lombardo,” Caravale said, “did you ever hear of the Theory of Interconnected Monkey Business?”
TWENTY-TWO
WITH a few free days tacked on to the end of the Pedal and Paddle Adventure for R and R (Phil had predicted they would need them), the Olivers’ plan had been to spend them in Milan and Verona, seeing the sights, while Phil spent most of his time on the island with his ersatz relatives. But on Wednesday, Gideon and Julie were slow getting out of bed—they were making up for lost time, after all—not rising until almost eleven, which made a lengthy day trip impractical. So instead they stayed in Stresa, strolling the paths and gardens of the Lungolago, doing a little shopping—a wallet for Gideon, a handbag for Julie, postcards to send home before leaving (if they actually got around to it for once)—skipping meals and grazing among the cafés instead whenever the mood hit; in short, not doing much of anything beyond relaxing in each other’s company. An exceptionally lovely day.
On Thursday morning (up late again, but not quite as late as Tuesday), Julie decided that what she really wanted to do was ride in a boat without having to paddle, so they took the longest ferry ride available, an hour-and-a-half cruise north across the border to Locamo, had an outdoor fondue lunch in Switzerland, and came back, stopping for an hour in Ghiffa, a fellow passenger having assured them that the famous hat museum located there—Italy seemed to be well supplied with oddball museums—was well worth seeing, which it turned out to be. Drinks with Phil at a café-bar on the Lungolago while they watched the sun go down, then dinner on their own at the Grand Hotel des Îles Borromées again, but this time on the back terrace, beside the extravagant garden. They sat long enough over their coffees to see the last of the daylight fade away and to feel the moisture around them as the dew gathered on the camellias. Another highly successful day, they both agreed, although perhaps they were more up to snuff on eighteenth-century hat-making tools than was strictly necessary.
The next day was their last full day in Italy and, as usual, they were making plans for what was left of it over another late breakfast, tossing around and discarding various ideas.
“You want to know what I’d really like to do?” Julie asked over a bowl of anonymous, Wheaties-like cereal she’d gotten from a plastic jar on the buffet table.
�
��Yes, I do. You’d like to take the day off from being tourists, not have any schedule at all, start getting ready for tomorrow. Check on our airline tickets, do some packing, make sure we have some clean clothes, take care of the postcards, rest up for the trip home, that kind of thing, so we don’t wind up all stressed out.”
The spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. “How in the world did you know that?”
“Because whenever you quit on the breakfast croissants and the cold cuts and go back to eating cereal, I know that means you’re ready to go home. Your mental gears have shifted.” He himself was working on his second brioche, split and filled with sliced ham and cheese.
She continued to look at him for a few moments, then shook her head. “We’ve been married too long,” she said, returning to her cereal.
“Actually, not having a schedule suits me too. I’d like to go have another look at Domenico’s bones.”
“Domenico’s bones? Why?”
“I’m starting to wonder if I might have made a mistake with them.”
“A mistake? You mean they’re not Domenico’s? Caravale’s going to love that.”
“Oh, no, they’re Domenico’s, all right. No question there.”
“What then? The cause of death?”
“No, I don’t have any doubts about that either. He was stabbed to death. But I think I might have misinterpreted something.”
She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “And you’re not going to tell me what it is, right?”
“Well, let me look at them first.”
“Is it something important?”
“Could be, if it’s true. Which it almost certainly isn’t. But it might be.”
She watched him finish his sandwich and dab pensively at his lips without saying anything more. “Thank you so much,” she said, “for that lucid and comprehensive explanation.”
“More later,” he told her, smiling. “Heck, I’m probably all wet anyway.” He finished the last of his coffee and kissed the back of her hand with a smack. “See you in a couple of hours.”
AH, no, he was informed by a sympathetic corporal at carabinieri headquarters, unfortunately it would not be possible for him to look at the bones because they’d been sent to the Rome laboratory for further forensic analysis. But a thorough set of photographs had been taken. Would the dottore care to see those? Copies could be made for him if he wished.
That might be even better, Gideon said, and a few minutes later he was sitting in an interrogation room with five dozen large, sharp, well-lit color photographs of Domenico de Grazia’s remains. He spent half an hour over them, talking to himself all the way, at the end of which time he carried them back to the clerk who’d given them to him.
“I’ll take this one, and this one, and this one,” he said. “This one too.”
They were quickly reproduced and brought back. The carabinieri had good equipment; the copies were as crisp as the originals. He slipped them into the manila envelope provided.
“Thanks very much. Oh, and is the colonel here?”
“Ah, but he’s not in the office this morning, Signor Oliver,” she said regretfully. “He can possibly be reached, however, if it’s a matter of importance. Would you care to speak with him?”
“No, that’s all right,” he said and was almost out the door with his photographs when he turned around and came back. “Well, yes, on second thought, I guess I would.”
HE found Julie back at the Primavera. She had started her to-do list and had pulled the armchair and the ottoman up to the wide-open French windows to work on it, but her eyes were closed and her hands lay comfortably folded over the note pad. The list had gotten as far as a double-underlined “To Do” at the top of the page, but no further. Soothing sounds of quiet conversations in Italian and German drifted up from the open-air cafés in the street below, and the breezes off the lake were stirring a few unruly strands of black hair at her temples. All told, she looked about as stressed out as a house cat dozing on a sunny rug in front of the living room window.
He smoothed the hair back, then bent to breathe in its clean, familiar fragrance and to kiss her gently on the temple, her hair springy and supple against his mouth. “What’s this?” he murmured in her ear. “I thought you had all kinds of things to do.”
“I’m planning,” she replied without opening her eyes. “That’s the key to my efficiency. I thought you knew that.”
He tapped the note pad. “Is that so? You don’t seem to have gotten—”
“Shuddup and gimme a real kiss.” She lifted her arms, opened her eyes wide, and puckered up extravagantly.
“I bet this is what it’s like to kiss a guppy,” he said, laughing, but of course he complied.
“That’s more like it.” She stretched and yawned. “So did you find what you were looking for?”
“I’m not sure.” He slid her feet over so that he could sit on the ottoman beside her.
“Still playing your cards close to the vest, eh? Oh, by the way, Vincenzo de Grazia called. The padrone himself.”
“Here? What did he want?”
“Achille’s going off to school in Switzerland, and there’s a party for him at the villa tonight. We’re invited. Very informal, so you don’t have to worry about fancy clothes.”
“Why are we invited?”
“Because of your kind assistance to the family in the matter of his father’s remains, is what he said. Because Phil probably asked him to invite us, is what I think. Want to go?”
He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know, it’s our last night . . . do you?”
“Actually, yes,” she said, surprising him. “I haven’t been inside the house, you know. I’d love to see it. And after all I’ve heard, I’d hate to miss the chance to see the de Grazias in action.”
“Well, they’re worth seeing, all right, but what happened to resting up for tomorrow?”
“Oh, come on, be a sport. How bad can it be?”
“Okay, let’s do it,” he said, doing his best to get into the spirit. “Might actually be fun. What time?”
“They’ll send a boat to the pier for us at five thirty.” She looked at her watch. “Which gives me just three hours before I have to start getting dressed. Yikes.” She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. “Have to get going. Lots to do.”
“Need any help from me?”
“No,” she said, as he knew she would. “No offense, but things go better if you just stay out of the way.”
“That’s fine,” he said, unoffended. “I have a phone call to make, and then I was thinking of going up to Gignese again.”
“Gignese? Do you have a burning desire to see the Umbrella Museum? Or don’t tell me you want to talk to what’s-his-name, Franco, again?”
“Not in this lifetime, thanks. But Caravale’s going to be up there with some of his people, going through Dr. Luzzatto’s records, and I’d like to stop by and look at some things myself. I already called him. He said okay, he’ll let them know to expect me if he’s not there himself.”
He stood up too, and they embraced contentedly, looking out across the lake at the red-roofed villages climbing the far hillsides. “And are you planning to tell me anytime soon why you want to go to Gignese and look at some things in Dr. Luzzatto’s office?” she asked after they slowly rocked back and forth for a while. “Or why it was so important to look at Domenico’s bones, for that matter?”
“Julie,” he said, “I’ve got this idea . . . well, it’s too crazy to even talk about at this point”
She nuzzled up beside him again. “Come on, what? You can trust me.”
“No, this is really crazy. Let me do some more checking first; think it through a little more before I talk about it.”
“Oh, dear, our relationship is on the rocks for sure. You never hesitated to tell me your crazy ideas before.”
“I know, but this is probably the craziest one I ever had.”
She dug a knuckle into his ribs and laughed. “Now
that,” she said, “would really take some doing.”
“PROFESSOR O’Malley?”
“Yes?” The voice on the other end of the line was guarded.
“This is Gideon Oliver, sir.”
“Oliver, for God’s sake, you make me feel a million years old when you do that. I hereby give you permission for the two hundred and sixty-seventh time to call me just plain ‘O’Malley,’ or even ‘Bill,’ if you can bring yourself to do it. You’re a big boy now, you’re as famous as I am. Well, almost.”
“Sorry, uh, Bill, will do.”
But he knew it wouldn’t last any more than it ever had before. William Tuskahoma O’Malley, M.D., Ph.D., was a towering figure in skeletal pathology and one of the very few academics who could still intimidate him. He had been one of Gideon’s professors at the University of Wisconsin and had served on his dissertation committee. His Non-traumatic Osteomyelitis of the Post-cranial Skeleton remained the undisputed giant of the field, even after thirty years in print. A gruff, melodramatic, bugle-voiced genius famously impatient with unpreparedness, inattention, fuzzy thinking, and most other human failings, he had terrified Gideon as a young graduate student.
Gideon had taken O’Malley’s courses at a time when, in an effort to make his dissertation deadline, his resources were stretched thin and he was starving for sleep. With most of his professors, he was able to get away with the occasional discreet catnap in class. Not with the eagle-eyed O’Malley, however, who would pounce before he knew himself that he was drifting off. “Snap out of it, Oliver!” the bulky, bearded figure would bark at about eighty decibels, and Gideon would jerk awake. It happened so often that for a while his friends started referring to him as Snap-Out-of-It-Oliver.
Even now, the occasional back-to-school stress dreams that he had didn’t involve discovering he’d studied for the wrong test or being unable to find the right room in which to take an exam. Instead, he would dream that he was peacefully dozing, perhaps on a beach, perhaps in a hammock, and would suddenly hear O’Malley’s curt “Snap out of it, Oliver!” He would awaken (in his dream) to find himself in O’Malley’s paleopathology seminar. Totally unprepared, of course.