Dying on the Vine (A Gideon Oliver Mystery)

by Elkins, Aaron

  John just grinned and chewed away, jaws grinding and neck tendons popping. “Let me finish this first. Then we’ll see.”

  It took him another forty minutes to reach his limit, at which point he regretfully but contentedly set down his knife and fork.

  When their waiter brought coffee and cleared their plates, he looked at the tiny amount of meat that John had left and shook his head wonderingly. “Only Americans can eat so much. And Germans.”

  “Was that a compliment or an insult?” John asked Gideon afterward.

  “John, I honestly don’t know.”

  • • •

  AS one would expect, John took a long time over his coffee, so it was two thirty by the time they got back to Figline and the villa. There was a tour bus at the front of the building—Degustazioni di Vino, Visite Guidate it said on the side—and the occupants, two dozen or so rather beat-looking older people, were slowly descending the steps and moving toward the entrance, so John and Gideon went around to the back and entered through the opening in the section of the old city wall that served as the back wall of the garden.

  At the other end of the garden were two people seated at a table on the terrace: a placid, sturdy-looking older woman in Birkenstocks and a young man who was anything but placid. The woman sat there stolidly. The young man was agitatedly gesturing and talking angrily away despite a near-continuous, shuddering cough. The closer Gideon and John came, the more obvious his agitation was.

  “Guy’s on something,” John said.

  “Sure is. He’s practically vibrating.”

  As they neared, a particularly violent bout of coughing shut down the young man’s ranting, and he reached for a purple, hourglass-shaped bottle on the table. Gideon recognized it as Giorniquilla, an evil-tasting Italian cough medicine that he’d tried when he’d had a cold during an earlier visit to Italy and had found to be about as effective as American cough medicines were, which is to say not very.

  The young man tipped the bottle to his mouth and took an alarmingly long swig.

  “What do you want to bet that isn’t cough medicine?” John whispered—they were getting close to hearing range. “I don’t think it’s booze either. This guy isn’t drunk, he’s totally stoned. Wired. Baked. Probably got it mixed with something—coke, that’d be my guess.”

  “I don’t know. Seems to have stopped his cough.”

  They had to pass within a few feet of the table to get into the villa, and they nodded at the couple. The woman responded with an abstracted nod, the young man, no longer coughing but seemingly trying to head off another spell of it, stared blankly at them, hand pressed flat to his chest, not registering anything.

  “Did you see the guy’s eyes?” John asked as they entered the villa.

  Gideon nodded. “Pupils twice their normal size, whites of his eyes—what there was of them—more red than white.”

  “Stoned,” John said again.

  In the hallway they ran into Luca heading from the winery building to the north wing, where Vino e Cucina was being held in the great kitchen. Head down, he was shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

  “Luca?” Gideon said. “What’s wrong?”

  Luca stopped, startled, so buried in his thoughts that he hadn’t been aware of them. “Ah, it’s that miserable, sneaky, two-faced . . . it’s Cesare, goddamn him.”

  “What’d he do?” John asked.

  “He’s suing us, can you believe it? Suing Franco, anyway, which means we could lose the damn winery.” He jerked his head and grumbled a little more to himself. “He walks in out of nowhere with his lawyer, and calmly informs us he’s going to sue us. Well, not so calmly, I guess.”

  “What’s he suing you about?” Gideon asked.

  “Ah, who knows? I didn’t understand it all, but I think he thinks that he was going to inherit all this money from his mother, which she would have inherited from babbo, except that he killed her first—which I still don’t buy, by the way—and therefore deprived him of it . . . I don’t know, something like that, they lost me there. I have to go, I’m already late.”

  Gideon grabbed his arm. “Wait, hold on a second, Luca, there’s something you need to know.”

  Luca paused.

  “Luca . . . I’m not so sure your father did kill Nola. Some of the evidence seems to suggest—”

  “What?” Luca was staring at him. “How do you know? When did you get involved? What’s going on, Gideon? What—” He shook his head. “No, dammit, I have to go. Look, Franco and Nico are still in the small conference room; you know where it is. Severo too. If you’ve really got something, go and tell them, will you? I’ll find out about it later.”

  “Wait just one more second,” Gideon said. He pointed through one of the windows that lined the corridor. “Is that him out there?” The two were still sitting at the table, and the young man was tipping the bottle to his mouth again.

  Luca looked and growled. “Yeah, that’s him, the little . . . Gotta go.” And off he hurried.

  In the conference room, Severo, Franco, and Nico were huddled over the table immersed in whispered conversation. The door was open, but John knocked on it anyway.

  Franco turned, looking displeased. “Si?” It was not an invitation.

  “Franco,” Gideon said, “we were just talking to Luca—”

  “Gideon, could this possibly wait? We’ve got something important going here and—”

  “Luca told us about Cesare’s suit, Franco. I thought you’d want to know that I’ve been looking at some of the evidence, and in my opinion there’s some doubt—serious doubt—about whether Nola was actually killed by your father.” He spoke in English, wanting to make sure that he wasn’t misunderstood.

  The three men, Severo, Franco, and Luca, all stared uncomprehendingly at the newcomers. Severo was the first to surface. He gestured at the empty chairs. “Come, come in. Ah, perhaps you would . . .”

  Franco cut him off. “I don’t understand,” he said to them as they sat. “What are you saying?”

  “He’s saying,” John said, “that some pretty strange things have come up that make us think that maybe your father wasn’t the murderer after all, that maybe somebody else killed him and your stepmother.”

  “I knew it!” Nico exclaimed, coming half out of his seat, hands flat on the table. “Didn’t I tell you? Oh, Gideon, that’d be great, that’d be so—” He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Jeez, did I just say what I think I said? I didn’t mean—”

  “We know what you mean,” Franco said, “and I assure you we all feel exactly the same way. If it can be shown that babbo did not kill her, then Cesare has no case whatever. Gideon, what—?”

  Nico interrupted, showing a rare flash of anger. “No, that’s what you would have meant, Franco, that’s not what I meant. I meant that for me the fact that babbo’s dead is bad enough, but the idea that he was a murderer—that was almost too damn much too to bear.” Tears glistened at the rims of his eyes. “But if it turns out that it wasn’t that way at all, that he didn’t kill anybody—including himself—that would throw a whole new . . . ah, the hell with it, it’s too much to take in,” he finished weakly. He fell back in his chair, and covered his eyes with his hand.

  It was a surprise to Gideon, an unmistakably real display of emotion from Nico, who was usually so lazily affable.

  “Are you finished, Nico?” Franco asked coldly. When Nico responded with no more than a listless wave, he turned to Gideon and John. “Now, what is this all about?” He glanced up at the doorway, where Luca had shown up a little out of breath. “What are you doing here? How are your faithful disciples getting along without their guru?”

  “I changed the schedule. They’re taking the winery tour now instead of tomorrow. Linda’s showing them around. I told her to make it last.” He took the one remaining chair, next to Quadrelli. “So. What’s going on? Gideon said—”

  “Gideon said that babbo didn’t kill anybody. We’re waiting for the explanation.” />
  “No,” Gideon said, “let’s get that straight before we go any further. I didn’t say that your father didn’t kill anybody, and I’m not saying it now. What I said was that some questions have arisen that tend to confuse—”

  “No,” said Nico, “you said that you had some serious doubt that—”

  “No, you said more than that.” Luca said. “You said that you didn’t think babbo—”

  “No,” Luca said, “what he said—”

  “Well, whatever the hell I said,” Gideon declared, rather too loudly, “do you want to hear the rest of it or don’t you?” He was annoyed with the whole bunch of them. Here he’d devoted hours of his time to looking into the case, he’d gone out of his way to be careful of their feelings, and now he had something to tell them that could turn out to be of tremendous emotional and financial benefit to them, and what were they doing? They were sitting around like a high school English class, parsing his damn sentences for him.

  The tension was cut by Maria’s entrance with a tray of espressos and biscuits and a stern look that said, Drink. Now, before it gets cold. Everybody obediently downed their coffee, and an atmosphere of calm, reasonably good fellowship was restored.

  The explanation took a long time. To start with, Gideon had to explain his involvement in the case by way of the forensic seminar, and to (not very successfully) justify his keeping it from them until now. Then there was the matter of making it clear how the accepted murder-suicide scenario was muddied by his conclusions that Nola had been shot after the fall had already killed her, and that Pietro would have had to clamber back up the cliff afterward to shoot himself.

  “No, no,” Quadrelli said excitedly. “Climb up the cliff? Pietro was not a climber of cliffs. Why would he do such a thing? No, no.”

  “That’s the question, Severo,” Gideon told him. “It’s one of the things that makes the whole scenario suspect.”

  And of course there were questions to be answered about how it was possible to tell such things from skeletons, and about how confident he was in his findings. But it was clear that he’d made an impression.

  “So what happens now?” Nico asked. “Do the Carabinieri get back to work on it?”

  “They’re thinking about it.”

  “Well, do they have any suspects?”

  “Nobody serious, as far as I know.” Just you three and Cesare, to start with. And maybe an unknown lover.

  “Gideon,” Franco said, “we very much appreciate all that you’ve done. If there’s any way we can thank you . . . a fee—”

  Gideon held up his hands. “I didn’t do anything. I’m just glad I was able to help a little. I wish I could do more.”

  “Well, actually, I have a thought, Gideon,” Luca said. “You got some pretty amazing clues just from looking at babbo’s autopsy report. Would there be anything more to learn if you examined his actual remains? I know I’d certainly be willing to authorize an exhumation.”

  Franco wasted no time correcting him. “I believe that such authorization would have to come from me, Luca. That’s correct, isn’t it, Severo?”

  Before Severo could answer Luca bowed his head Indian style, fingers steepled at his forehead. “I crave forgiveness, elder brother.”

  Franco smiled skeletally.

  It had taken until now for Gideon to process what they were talking about. “Wait a minute, do you mean your father’s remains are still there? He wasn’t cremated?”

  Franco stared at him. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure . . .”

  “That’s what Rocco thought,” John said. “He mentioned it in class.”

  “Well, he was wrong,” Nico said. “Jesus, babbo’d never let us get away with cremating him. Are you kidding me?” He made the wrist-wobbling gesture that Italians use where Americans might say, “No way.”

  “But Nola was, wasn’t she?” Gideon asked. “The mortician, Cippollini, said it was set for yesterday.”

  Franco’s mouth turned down. “That’s Cesare’s doing. She would have preferred otherwise, I’m sure, but it wasn’t up to us.”

  “Well, could I see your father’s remains? Would you object? Would you be willing to authorize it, Franco?”

  Franco didn’t look happy about it. “I don’t like to do it, to disturb his bones.”

  “Get real, Franco,” Luca said. “We’re trying to clear his name here. I don’t think he’d mind having his bones poked at if it would help.”

  “Well, what exactly would you be looking for, Gideon?” Franco was unconvinced.

  “I don’t really know. It’s impossible to say. Anything I can find that might be pertinent.”

  Franco shook his head. “I really don’t . . .”

  “Oh, Franco, for Christ’s sake—” Luca began.

  “Yes, yes, but you know, these things take time. I’m not sure it can be arranged before you leave, Gideon.”

  “It will take no time at all,” Quadrelli said, joining in on the pressure on Franco. “Pietro is no’ buried, they no’ need picks and shovels. They are in a vault in the crypt. To turn a key and open the door is all that is necessary. I will call signor Cippollini myself.”

  Franco reluctantly gave in. “You would treat them with respect, Gideon?”

  “Of course.”

  “Very well. Call signor Cippollini, Severo. Tell him he has my permission.”

  “If you could do that right now, I’d appreciate it,” Gideon said. “As Franco said, we’ll only be here another couple of days.”

  Quadrelli promptly hauled out his phone. He spoke in rapid Italian, nodding at Gideon and making a circle with his thumb and forefinger at one point to indicate it was a go. He hung up, pleased with himself.

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. He will have the remains ready for you. But he makes a request. He says please not to bring this time the entire police force with you.”

  FOURTEEN

  WITH no memorial service under way at Onoranze Funebri Cippollini, Gideon and John were not required to go around to the back door this time. Signor Cippollini, wearing what seemed to be the same tightly fitting black suit and pretty much the same hassled demeanor, distractedly ushered them in through the front entrance, took them through the church-like chapel with its faux stained-glass Gothic windows, and into the strangely cheery, brightly colored workroom. On a flatbed, wheeled table lay something quite different from Nola’s child-size cardboard box. Pietro’s casket was the full-size item and made for the long haul, rather than for a single incendiary appearance. Constructed of ebony or something like it, it was elegantly traditional in style, with ornate brass handles and carrying rods, an arched, carved lid, and, on the side, a plastic-coated black-and-white studio photograph of Pietro as a young man, along with his name—Pietro Vittorio Teodoro Guglielmo Cubbiddu—and dates—1953–2011—incised in flowing gilt script. It all was clean and gleaming, as if it had gotten a coat of furniture oil that morning, which it probably had.

  Cippollini himself unlocked and opened the coffin’s upper panel—the lid was in two parts, Dutch-door style, as if in preparation for an open-casket display—which Gideon very much doubted had taken place. The broken, gaping, lichen-blackened skull was nothing the mourners would have cared to look at, but it was reverently placed, face up, at the center of an immaculate, satin pillow. The rest of the bones were neatly hidden beneath a padded white coverlet, equally spotless. Cippollini stood admiringly before his creation for a few seconds, then opened the lower lid as well, and, with a bullfighter’s flourish, removed the coverlet to reveal the earthly remains of Pietro Vittorio Teodoro Guglielmo Cubbiddu in their totality.

  Their condition came as something of a surprise. Dr. Bosco’s report had listed the trauma, all right, but when he’d written “multiple fractures,” Gideon had taken him to mean that the skeleton as a whole had suffered many breaks, not that each named bone was broken into separate pieces. But unlike Nola’s bones, which were cracked and splintered but
mostly in one piece, these were shattered. The most cursory of glances showed him three pieces of the left scapula alone.

  That got him thinking. Why the difference? Two bodies undergoing exactly the same terrible fall and impacting on the very same rocky scree—why should the injuries to their bones look so different? Could they be the results of “taphonomic” changes—natural postmortem changes that had occurred as a result of lying out in the open for almost an entire year? No, they’d lain right up against each other and endured exactly the same weather conditions and animal depredations for exactly the same length of time. He could come up with only one answer, but it seemed too bizarre to . . . He tucked the question away for later, when he had time for solitary cogitation.

  Despite his trade, it was clear that Mr. Cippollini had little knowledge of skeletal anatomy. Either that, or his penchant for symmetry outweighed his care for anatomical precision. The bones of the legs and pelvis, which were among the few that were unbroken, were in place (although he’d gotten the left and right tibias and fibulas confused), but just about everything from the hips up was arranged strictly for show. “Matching” pieces of scapula and ribs were placed on either side with no regard for what had gone where in the living body. The “spinal column” consisted of vertebrae, whole and in chunks, that tapered beautifully down from skull to pelvis—in complete defiance of nature’s way. At their bottom, between the hipbones, was the broken sacrum, misarranged, but at least in the right general area.

  Cippollini was quite proud of the totality of his efforts and even more of the quality of the coffin. Gideon couldn’t follow it all, but he understood enough to learn that the exterior wood was ebony, the interior wood was mahogany, the soft interior fabric was arranged and sewn in a French-fold design, and the mattress was his own patented invention, the Eternal Rest Adaptable Couch.

  “Well, next time I need a coffin I’ll sure know where to come,” John said, but of course he said it in English and with a smile, so Cippollini happily nodded along with him. Encouraged, he began to get into the finer points of the wood molding, but Gideon politely told him that they were pressed for time and needed to get on with it.