“A last one? I thought you were going to be writing – and smoking – all through the night?”
“I’m trying to cut down. Bad habits, you know?”
She stared at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I mean it, I’m serious,” he said. “One cigarette after lunch, one after dinner, a third for emergencies. But I try to resist that third one.”
They went out into the darkness of the night, crossed the road leading from the Hotel Veliero and leaned over the balustrade that gave onto the ocean. The sea was gradually calming down, the waters retreating to allow the beach to emerge again. They could just make out the gravelly grey strip appearing from underneath the white foam of the waves as they walked along the pavement, like they had done that morning. When they’d left the hotel’s lights behind, they could distinguish the million stars in the sky, the Milky Way wrapped up in its opalescent cloud.
It was only on the way back that Guido broke the silence.
“A penny for your thoughts.”
“Just some silly idea of mine,” said Giò, startled. “I was thinking at dinner that it’s weird – despite the fact Margherita died suddenly only last night, everyone seemed more relieved than anything. Our mood tonight was so much better than it was at dinner yesterday.”
He shrugged, took a last puff of his cigarette and put it out in an outdoor ashtray.
“Frankly, my dear,” he said, quoting one of the most famous lines in cinematic history, “I don’t give a damn.”
10
Limoncello Tales
“And what’s that?” Francesco asked, pointing at the colourful shutters of La Farmacia dei Sani.
Giò grinned. “Just what it says,” she said. “A pharmacy not for the sick, but for healthy people who consider food and wine their best medicine.”
“It doesn’t look like one of those awful health food stores,” said Simone, looking at a long row of prosciutto and salami hanging from one of the wooden beams.
“Not at all,” laughed Giò. “It’s more of a delicatessen. Here you’ll find all sorts of local delicacies, from herbs, spices and chillis, to pasta sauces, cheeses and salami. I’m glad it’s open on a Sunday morning.”
The group of writers filled their bags with all sorts of goodies. The pleasant shopkeeper, her sweet smile softening her square face, helped each of them, explaining every single item they pointed at and sharing a plethora of recipes for each ingredient. Alberto bought a few bottles of the Aglianico Red he’d enjoyed so much the previous evening, supplied to La Farmacia dei Sani by the small local producers. He’d had some on his shopping list for a long while and beamed with happiness at the unexpected opportunity to tick that item off.
“Giò, where are you taking your guests for lunch?” the shopkeeper asked.
“We’re just having an aperitivo at Leonardo’s, but we’ll be back in Maratea for a proper dinner one evening this week.”
“If you want to have a walk around town, you can leave all your bags here. We’re open till half past one.”
“That’s an excellent idea, I’ve been buying things as if there’s no tomorrow,” laughed Vittoria.
“Then, Mum, we can buy some more, too,” Francesco said, picking up a bottle of Limoncello.
A few minutes later, they were walking briskly up the paved alleys taking them to the upper part of the village. Stone houses, ancient wooden doors, terracotta pots with the first flowers of the season enchanted them, and every now and then a small side alley opened on to a view of the sea, the gulf embraced by the mountains.
Simone walked next to Annika, who was panting slightly from the climb.
“You made a splendid choice to spend the next few months here, it’s a gorgeous place.”
Annika laughed. “I’m no longer so sure. I’m supposed to lose weight, but I keep finding all sorts of food here that’s far too tempting.”
“I don’t think you should lose any weight,” Simone said, looking at her with admiring eyes.
“I love you for saying that.” Annika laughed again and Simone’s cheeks turned bright red.
“Giò, what are you doing here?” An elderly woman with a slim figure, rebellious white hair and deep grey eyes suddenly appeared beside the group from a steep alley.
“Hello, Gran, have you just been to Mass?”
The woman nodded. At Giò’s greeting, all her companions could easily make out the strong family resemblance between the two women.
“I did, but there’s not much going on, really.”
Giò introduced Granny to the whole company and Guido invited her to join them for the aperitivo.
“At my age, I’d better stay away from certain foods,” Granny said.
“Don’t believe her!” admonished Giò. “She eats all sorts of food, as long as she’s cooked it.”
“Well, that makes all the difference because I can pick and choose every single ingredient. It’s so important… but why don’t you come over for a cup of coffee after lunch?”
“There are nine of us,” laughed Annika.
“Then I’ll just have to use the Moka pot three times. Well, I do have a larger one, too, but as I never use it, I’m not sure the coffee would be too good from it…”
“OK, we’ll come.” Giò stopped Granny before the old lady could bore her companions with the entire history of all the Brando family Moka pots that had appeared and disappeared over the years. “But for now, we’d better go, before Don Anastasio leaves the church and demands to know why we weren’t at Mass.”
“On the contrary, you’re safe. It’s Rosario who closes the church, but he will hang around for a while yet. Don Anastasio was in an awful mood – there were less than 40 people this morning for Mass.”
“Who’s Don Anastasio?” asked Erminia.
“The local priest,” Giò answered coolly, “who cannot accept that the clergy no longer has complete power over the lives of the congregation.”
As they parted company with Rosa Brando, Valentina said to Giò, “It was very sweet of your granny to invite us for coffee.”
“Sweet? Oh no, there’s nothing sweet about her. She must have heard about Margherita’s death and wants to know more.”
Startled, Valentina shook her head. “Oh no, more talk about that awful woman.”
“These are my biscuits with lavender and raisins,” said Granny, pointing to the different silver trays, “these are rosemary and lemon, and these are my puffs with vanilla custard.”
“Did you bake them all yourself?” Erminia asked.
Granny nodded modestly. Giò laughed at her.
“And are you the granny who helped Giò prepare the bocconotti on Friday?” Guido asked mischievously.
“Oh yes, I am,” Gran answered nonchalantly. “Not that she needed my help, mind you. She’s such a passionate cook, she can defrost almost any kind of food. And you should see the wonders she can perform with a microwave.”
Giò flushed as all her companions roared with laughter at her.
“Do you all want coffee, or would you like to try my Limoncello?”
“Both, please,” said Guido eagerly.
“Guido’s right, it’s unfair to make us choose, Gran.”
“Don’t you need to go back to work this afternoon?”
They all nodded, and Erminia added, “We thought an aperitivo would just be a light meal, but it ended up being more than a full lunch, which has made me feel a little sleepy. But yes, we’re supposed to go back to work once we’ve returned to the hotel.”
“Then I’ll serve you the Limoncello first, and the coffee later.”
“We’re in your trusty hands.” Guido winked at Granny, who without hesitation winked back at him before disappearing into the kitchen. She came back with a painted ceramic tray on which stood ten icy thimbles and a frozen bottle containing a pale yellow liquid. Silently filling nine of the thimbles, she only gave herself a small drop.
“This is my Sunday treat, I love the smell of it.”
And then they were all breathing in the pungent and refreshing aroma of lemon.
“It’s the Mediterranean through and through,” said Alberto.
“It’s creamy,” said Annika, tightening her lips to enjoy the taste a little longer.
“This is my version with a little condensed milk, a special treat.”
“Excellent.”
“I thought I’d better treat you well, after all you went through yesterday.”
Oh, here we go. Giò shook her head, looking at her granny gravely. The old lady pretended not to see her granddaughter’s expression and continued leveraging her fragile appearance and innocent, sympathetic expression.
“Ah, that hideous woman,” said Francesco, banging his thimble glass back on the table more loudly than he had meant to. Valentina sighed. The lighthearted expression that had been on her face all morning disappeared in seconds.
“Not really a great loss, for us or the rest of the world,” Simone said bluntly, for once seeming to forget about his shyness. Vittoria and Erminia nodded in agreement, while Granny’s eyebrows rose as she flinched in surprise.
“You must be thinking badly of us,” Annika explained, “but, you see, that wicked woman, Margherita Durante, was part of our group a few months back, and she managed to alienate every one of us.”
“I didn’t know you knew her, I thought you just happened to be in the same hotel.”
“No, we knew her, and since I had asked her to leave our writing group, I suspect she came here on purpose to stir things up.”
“That’d not only be very mean of her,” said Granny incredulously, “but also such a waste of time and money. I mean, isn’t she supposed to be a famous author with a rather busy schedule?”
“You’re right. In fact, she told us she had some business to conduct in Maratea, and apparently she brought it forward to coincide with our retreat. But the most wicked part of it is that we had no idea she would be coming at all.”
“And what kind of business did she have in Maratea?”
Annika shook her head, as did all the others one by one.
“We have no idea, we weren’t that curious about it. Maybe you spoke to her some more, Guido?”
“No,” he replied after some consideration. “She told me about her social life, all the presentations she was going to host during a long Italian tour, but she never mentioned her engagements in Maratea.”
“And the people she was supposed to meet, didn’t they come to the hotel or contact the carabinieri?”
“I don’t think they ever came to the hotel,” Giò replied. “Not sure if they got in touch with the carabinieri, though.”
“Yes, maybe they called in at the carabinieri station directly,” Gran said as if thinking aloud, “though I would have expected them to show up at the hotel at least to enquire what had happened.”
“Maybe they didn’t want to intrude,” Alberto said.
“That’d be strange,” Gran replied, shaking her head. “In Maratea, we love to intrude.”
Alberto looked at her, half amused, half in amazement.
“Don’t think badly of us, but nothing ever happens in a small town, and so if something unusual does happen, we tend to be rather…”
“Nosy, just like my granny!” Giò interrupted.
“I hope you will excuse my granddaughter,” said Granny. “She’s lived in London so long, she’s lost touch with the reality of a small town, where people look after each other and need to be alert to changes going on in the community, to bad things happening. They must be on their guard against any evil approaching.”
“Or you might simply call all this hypobole ‘gossip’!”
Granny waved her hand in front of her nose as if to whisk away a little mosquito, and then went on, asking all of the questions the carabinieri had already asked, but in such a delicate, intriguing way that Giò’s companions felt compelled to reply, sharing rich details they hadn’t disclosed to Brigadiere Rossi. She asked about Margherita’s food allergy, if she had been concerned about her food on their previous meeting, if she used to carry an EpiPen with her.
“Actually two,” said Annika. “During our last retreat, she made sure at least some of us were familiar with where she kept them and how to inject her in case of an emergency.”
“And when you left her, she showed no signs of distress?”
They all shook their heads.
“Actually, she looked remarkably well,” Simone added instinctively.
“No, she wasn’t that well,” Vittoria corrected him.
Erminia explained to Granny that the hideous woman had not looked her usual self from the very moment she had entered the restaurant, but they’d had no reason to believe it was due to her allergy.
“There was no shortness of breath, or evidence that she would later go into anaphylactic shock. But to be sure, her health wasn’t as good as it had been last time we met.”
“And who was the last one to see her alive?” Granny went on, churning out question after question like a machine throwing out tennis balls on a training court.
“I guess it was me,” said Guido. “I was the only one who stayed on for a longer chat with Margherita.”
“I see, and she showed no sign of dizziness, confusion, or difficulty breathing?”
“Certainly not, or I wouldn’t have left her alone.”
“That’s important, it puts the whole thing in a different perspective. Do you remember what time you parted?”
Guido’s face held a funny expression, as if he was enjoying being quizzed. Or was he just pretending? He was a little hard to read. Behind his agreable nature, behind his sense of humour, was there a hidden part to this man that he had not yet revealed?
“Of course I do, it was around 10.30 when I left her, and she was alive and kicking then.”
“And she stayed at the table in the restaurant?”
“Yes, she had her manuscript on the table and said she was going to work on it.”
“The pathologist,” Erminia explained, “said that she could have died any time between 11pm and midnight.”
“Which most likely means around 11.30,” Giò intervened. “They can be so accurate nowadays.”
“And did you see if she had her bag with her?” Granny carried on.
Guido shook his head. “I’m afraid I took no notice at all.”
“Because we have a girl here in Maratea who suffers from a nut allergy, but she’s fanatical about always having her bag with her EpiPens inside to hand. Also she’s very alert to any warning signs of an attack coming.”
“I saw her bag,” said Giò. “It was on a chair next to where she was sitting. I guess she didn’t have time to reach for it.”
“And the man at the hotel reception, did he not hear anything?”
“Nothing at all,” Giò answered.
“With the sea and the storm raging outside,” said Guido, “I doubt he would have heard anything from the restaurant.”
Gran nodded in agreement, offering more Limoncello to Guido and Alberto while the others gently refused before continuing.
“And the lights in the restaurant stayed on all night?”
“Granny, stop sleuthing! The carabinieri have already asked all these questions. The waiter had told the receptionist that Margherita would be working in the restaurant, so he had to leave the lights on until she went back to her room and told him she had finished.”
“Which I guess she never did, so the lights stayed on all through the night.”
“No,” Alberto intervened, “I heard the police asking the night receptionist that very thing. He admitted that he’d been catching up on TV on his laptop, and then he must have dozed off for a while, but at 3am, he went to the restaurant to check if Margherita needed anything. Seeing no one there, he assumed she had gone back to her room while he was asleep. It was then that he switched off the lights.”
“So he didn’t see anything?”
“Nope,” Giò almost
growled as she could see her friends’ faces getting more and more concerned at Granny’s flood of questions. “Margherita’s body was on the other side of the table, perfectly hidden unless you were on that side of the room. I didn’t see her the next morning until I went to look out of the window on that side.”
“How convenient!” The words, although softly spoken, exploded into the room.
“What do you mean?” Annika finally asked.
“Nothing, really,” babbled Granny. “It’s just strange that a woman, aware of her severe allergy and knowing what to do if she should feel an attack coming, didn’t even try to reach for her bag. I would have expected to find her in full view, having either made a last attempt to alert the receptionist, or grasped her bag and pulled its contents out to find her EpiPen.”
Three things struck Giò simultaneously. One was the troubled expression on Alberto’s face. He wasn’t gazing at Granny; his stare was on Valentina, who looked pale and kept her fists tightly clenched on her lap. Secondly, Giò had been so distracted by all that had happened, she hadn’t realised that the woman with the wry smile she had met on Friday, at least before Margherita made her appearance, had completely vanished. Valentina was a worried woman now. And the third thing was… Gran’s words had jogged a memory, but Giò wasn’t able to grasp it – something she had seen on Saturday morning when she made her grisly discovery. Her brain had registered it, but not her conscious mind. The more she tried to grasp the memory, the more it eluded her.
Let it go and it will come back, Giò reminded herself.
Annika looked at her watch and exclaimed, “Golly gosh, it’s 3.30! The hotel shuttle driver will wonder where we’ve got to.”
“Is the driver waiting for you?” Gran asked.
“Yes, we said we’d rejoin him at half past three in Piazza Buraglia.”
“Well, you’ll be there in five minutes, and down south no one notices when you’re a little late.”
Annika smiled, relieved. “I love this relaxed place. I feel like I’m the master of my own time, instead of continuously rushing after it.” She stooped to kiss Granny’s cheek, and the old woman took the chance to whisper in her ear.
Peril at the Pellicano Hotel Page 8