Murder in Chianti

by Camilla Trinchieri

  Aldo came out first. He was a big man in his late forties with a round, jovial face and a wine-barrel paunch. He was wearing tan slacks and a bright leaf-green T-shirt with the purple logo for his wine on it. He waved back at the car. “Who would have thought we’d have a murder on our hands today, eh, Salvatore?”

  A dark-haired man in a tan shirt and jeans stepped out of the passenger seat. A black nylon jacket was tied around his waist. “The murder is in my hands, Aldo. Yours have to make good wine.”

  The maresciallo walked toward the house, recognizing the man out front from his last visit to Bar All’Angolo. He had assumed then that he was just another American tourist, a man who’d held no interest to him. Now he saw the man as loose-limbed, big-shouldered, at least two heads taller than himself, on the short end of sixty with retreating gray-brown hair. He did not have the open, optimistic face he observed on so many Americans. Kind, naive faces bad at spotting danger. People who kept their wallets or cameras within easy reach of a thief and then came to the carabinieri with hope in their eyes. Hope the maresciallo was rarely able to reward. This man’s face was closed off, though there was intelligence in his eyes, which were the color of steeped tea leaves. Had he only discovered a body this morning, or did he have something more to do with it?

  The officer was somewhere in his forties, at the most five-six, with a full head of hair black enough to seem dyed. A stocky, muscled frame and a chiseled face, handsome, with large liquid eyes, thick lips, an aquiline nose. A face Nico had seen before but couldn’t place. The man was smiling.

  “Salvatore Perillo, Maresciallo dei Carabinieri. I should wear uniform, but no time.” Up close, Nico saw that Perillo’s hair had too much shine to be dyed. Perillo offered a hand. “Piacere.”

  Pleasure it’s not was on the tip of Nico’s tongue, but he stopped himself. He conformed to Italian politeness and shook the hand. “Nico Doyle.” Perillo’s grip was strong enough to crunch bone. Nico squeezed back.

  Perillo nodded as if to acknowledge a tie, then took back his hand. “I have questions, but forgive, my English not so good.”

  Before Nico could explain, Aldo stepped between the men and said in Italian, “Nico’s Italian is good. Italian grandmother, Italian American mother and Tuscan wife. Accent American.” He grinned, seemingly happy to impart information the maresciallo didn’t have. Nico recognized the same proud tone Aldo used to explain the mysteries of wine-making to the busloads of tourists who came to his vineyards.

  The fact that Nico was pretty fluent in Perillo’s language didn’t seem to affect the man one way or another. “And the father?” Perillo asked in Italian.

  “Irish,” Nico answered in Italian.

  “An explosive combination, I’ve been told.” The maresciallo’s Southern accent was strong.

  “You’ve been told right.”

  “I usually hear the truth when I’m in civilian clothes. With the uniform, not so much.” Perillo looked down at the dog sniffing at his heels. “Is that blood on his paws?”

  “Yes, the dead man’s. The dog led me to the body.”

  “Yours?”

  Nico found himself answering yes.

  Perillo bent down and scratched the dog’s head. He got the one wag for his trouble. “What’s his name?”

  Toto was the first idea that popped into Nico’s head. No good. And they were wasting time. “I call him OneWag.” He used English words for the name. To say the same thing in Italian would have required too many letters. “I’ll show you the way now.”

  Perillo eyed him for a moment. Nothing showed on his face, but Nico suspected the maresciallo was surprised he’d taken the initiative. “Yes, please lead the way. My brigadiere will stay here with the car. Is it far?”

  “About three kilometers into the woods.”

  “Ah, the woods!” Perillo’s glance went down to his own feet. He was wearing brown suede boots that looked brand-new. “At least it hasn’t rained.” He gestured toward the woods. “Please. I will ask questions as we walk.”

  “Maybe it’s faster,” Nico said, not used to being on the receiving end of an interrogation, “if I explain and then you ask questions.”

  Perillo seemed amused by this. “The Americans are prisoners of speed. Tuscany, the whole Italian north, is closer to the American way of thinking, but I come from Campania.” They started walking, Aldo trailing behind them, OneWag running ahead. Nico was surprised Perillo was letting Aldo tag along. The fewer people on a crime scene, the better, but again, he reminded himself, it wasn’t his investigation.

  “We have a different approach,” Perillo was saying, “although in this case, you are correct. Time brings heat, flies, maggots. I’m sure it was a very unpleasant sight in the first place, one perhaps you are not eager to repeat and therefore wish to be over with. Best to deal with it quickly. As for understanding the story behind this death, I fear speed will not be possible. Our investigations are not like on Law & Order or CSI. And so tell me, Signor Doyle,” Perillo said, addressing Nico using the formal lei, “what facts are you so anxious to remove from your thoughts?”

  “A few minutes after seven this morning, I heard a single gunshot. It sounded fairly close by. I assumed it was some hunter who couldn’t wait for the season to start. But it could be the shot that killed this man.”

  “We will see. No need for you to speculate.”

  “Of course.”

  “Please continue, Signor Doyle.”

  “Please, call me Nico.”

  “For now, let us keep up the formalities.”

  They stepped into the woods. There was no path. Nico was grateful that OneWag led the way. Under different circumstances, the walk would have been a pleasant one. The morning silence was now broken by bird chatter, the dark underbrush splotched with the sun breaking through trees. A light breeze ruffled the leaves. While Perillo kept his eyes on the ground, careful of where he placed his new suede boots, Nico explained that he’d been led to the body by the dog’s desperate-sounding yelps. “I thought he was hurt.”

  “Where were you when you heard the dog?”

  “On the balcony, having breakfast.”

  “If the body is three kilometers into the woods, you have very sharp ears.”

  “OneWag has a very sharp voice. It was early and quiet. It’s possible I was on alert because of that gunshot. Just one—that surprised me. When I heard the yelps, I followed them and saw the mess. On my way back, I found a patch of wet ground and some pinkish water. My guess would be that the killer washed some blood off there. I don’t remember where it was, exactly.”

  “We’ll find it. Did you step in it?”

  “Yes. You’ll want my boots.”

  “Indeed,” Perillo said, looking at Nico with renewed interest. OneWag’s barking stopped Perillo from going any further.

  “It’s just there,” Nico said. “In the clearing behind those laurel bushes. The dead man’s at the far edge.”

  “Stay here, both of you, and hold the dog,” Perillo ordered. He squared his shoulders and walked ahead with a determined step.

  The maresciallo was first overtaken by the thick metallic smell of blood and the frenzied buzz of the flies. And then he saw the body at the edge of the clearing. He shrank back a step, closed his eyes and crossed himself. It was indeed an ugly sight. What had he said earlier? Time brings heat, flies, maggots. I’m sure it was a very unpleasant sight in the first place. He regretted his pompous tone. It was an unpleasant trait that always surfaced with strangers. What Signor Doyle had discovered was a gruesome act of hate. The dead man’s face and half his brain blown away, spread across the grass like pig fodder.

  Who was this poor soul? What had he done to deserve such violence? Certainly not a local, not with those shoes. Perillo took off his new boots, his socks. He had forgotten shoe covers. Bare feet were easily washed. He took out rubber gloves fr
om his back pocket and slipped them on.

  Slowly, he walked in a wide arc below the man’s legs, trying to remain on clean grass. He circled the legs and stopped near the man’s hips. Perillo reached into the pocket. It was empty. He leaned over the body and tried the other one. It had nothing that would tell him the identity of this poor man, but deep inside he found a hard object. He pulled it out, careful not to move the body, and studied it in the palm of his hand. With some luck, it would lead him to some answers. Luck and hard work.

  Perillo slid the object into an evidence bag and took out his cell phone. He punched in the number of headquarters in Florence.

  Nico bent down and tucked OneWag under his arm, receiving a lick on the chin for his effort. Aldo waited a few minutes before tiptoeing forward.

  “Oh, my God.” Aldo’s knees buckled as he peered beyond the bushes.

  “I did warn you,” Nico said.

  Aldo backtracked slowly, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “You think he got shot in the face so he wouldn’t be recognized?”

  Nico had wondered about that himself. “He may have had ID in his pockets.”

  “You didn’t look?” Aldo’s hands kept kneading his handkerchief.

  “I know not to mess up a crime scene.”

  Aldo looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back. Seventeen Germans coming for a wine tasting and lunch, and forty Americans busing in from Florence for dinner. It’s going to be a hard day.”

  “The hard day’s mine, Aldo.” Perillo walked through the laurel bushes with his suede boots and socks tucked under his arm. “This murder makes it a good day for you. You have a much better story to tell your guests than how wine is made.” His tone was jovial, his face anything but. “Regale them with a few details, they’ll be thirsty for more, and you’ll sell some extra bottles. Go home and enjoy a few glasses of your Riserva. It will erase the ugly sight you insisted on coming here to see.” He turned to Nico, who was staring at his bare feet. “Blood and suede is a disastrous combination, Signor Doyle.”

  Aldo asked, “Did you find ID on him?”

  “No. He was wearing white athletic socks and gold running shoes, which makes me think he’s an American, although I might avoid telling that to your guests. He was also wearing a gold Breitling watch, worth around five thousand euro.”

  “That eliminates robbery as a motive,” Aldo said.

  “Possibly, if he was the kind of man who went around without a cell phone, wallet, credit card or driver’s license,” Perillo said, “although one can be robbed of many things besides expensive accessories. Their life, for one.” He turned to Nico. “Thank you, Signor Doyle, for being my Cicero on this terrible occasion. I am sure your expectations of Tuscany did not include a gruesome death. I do request that you give your boots to my brigadiere, who is by the car. I also need you to come to the station in Greve this afternoon for a deposition. At that time, I will take your fingerprints and a DNA sample.”

  “My fingerprints are on my residence permit, and I didn’t go anywhere near the body.”

  “I don’t doubt your word, but nevertheless. The DNA requirement is fairly new and meant to eliminate confusion. A good idea, for once. We Italians often make more confusion than is strictly necessary. As for your fingerprints, it will save time. It takes a while for the carabinieri to gain access to residence permits. Leave the dog with me, please. He may have picked up something of interest in his paws and fur. The technical team and medical examiner are on their way. Don’t forget, Signor Doyle. At four o’clock. The signage in town is clear. You won’t have a problem finding the office.”

  Nico glanced at the dog, who looked back with a sharp tilt to his head as if he knew something was up. “I don’t have a leash for him.” He was having a hard time letting him go. “I could stay here until they come.”

  “We cannot have you stay here while we do our work. Lay aside your fears. We will treat him with hands of velvet.” Perillo undid the nylon jacket tied to his waist and lay it flat on the ground. “Put him here.”

  Nico did as he was asked. Perillo quickly zipped up the jacket around the dog, tied the sleeves and lifted the bundle up. OneWag peeked out of the opening and barked at Nico.

  “Go home, Aldo. You too, Signor Doyle.”

  Nico gave OneWag a quick scratch behind his ear and turned to go. The dog barked louder.

  “Try to forget what you have seen here. It is not representative of our beautiful country.”

  Nico could not help thinking of all the Camorra killings he had read about in Perillo’s neck of the woods, but the maresciallo was right about his expectations of Tuscany. They did not include murder or a stray dog.

  TWO

  It was eleven-thirty when Nico arrived at the restaurant with his pan of roasted tomatoes. At noon, Sotto Il Fico—Under the Fig Tree—would open for lunch.

  “Buongiorno,” Nico said.

  “Not for everyone, I hear.” Elvira, Tilde’s mother-in-law, was at her usual armchair in the back of the narrow front room, which held the bar and a few tables. The draw of the restaurant was its large hilltop terrace, which held a huge sheltering fig tree and a serene view of a patchwork of perfectly aligned grapevines below. Elvira was wearing one of her seven housedresses—she had one for each day of the week. Today’s was white with red and pink checks. She was a widow with crow-black dyed hair, a corrugated face that made her look older than her sixty-two years, a small, sharp nose and piercing water-blue eyes that didn’t miss a single trick. Rita had nicknamed her “the seagull” for the way she seemed to hover around people, looking for tidbits to snatch up.

  “Salve.” Behind the short bar by the door, her son, Enzo, Tilde’s husband, reached for a grappa bottle. He had his mother’s angular face and black hair streaked with gray, and always wore jeans and a Florentine soccer team’s T-shirt. He poured grappa into a small glass and held it out. “Poor Nico. This will restart your motor.”

  So the news had already gotten out. “No, thanks, I’m fine,” Nico said.

  “I wouldn’t be fine.” Enzo drank the grappa in one swig. “No one’s ever been murdered in Gravigna.” He gave the grappa bottle a longing look but put it back on the shelf. “All over the world, people are killing each other for no good reason. This country is drowning in shit, and now there’s a murdered man in our woods.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t anyone you knew.” From what Nico had learned of the town, only Sergio Macchi, the butcher with two restaurants, was rich enough to afford that watch, and Sergio didn’t have the dead man’s belly.

  “Of course not.” Elvira turned her gaze on Nico. “I hear the dead American had no ID.”

  Nico walked up to her. “Who says he’s American?”

  “I do,” Elvira declared. “He was wearing gold sneakers and thick white socks. You can always tell someone’s nationality by his socks and shoes. Germans and Scandinavians wear brown or gray socks with sandals, of all things. Asian women wear little socks with drawings on them and feminine heels. The English, argyles and sensible leather shoes.”

  Nico lifted up his pan. “I’d better get this into the kitchen.”

  “I was hoping you’d changed your mind about that dish of yours. The tourists want Tuscan food, not something invented in the Bronx.”

  “Rita invented it, and she was Tuscan.”

  Elvira waved him away. “Go on, get yourself in the kitchen. Tilde thought you’d chickened out.”

  “I did not!” called a voice from the kitchen.

  “Ever since she heard about the murder, she’s been acting like she’s walked into a wasps’ nest.”

  “Mamma, she’s upset. We all are.” Enzo reached back to the shelf and poured himself another grappa.

  Elvira shook her head and went back to folding napkins. Nico sometimes marveled at the relationship between the two women. It wasn’t exactly a positive one, surp
rising considering how closely they worked together. Elvira owned the restaurant, and her contribution to the place was folding napkins from a rickety gilded armchair rescued from the dump—one that she would forever claim a Roman contessa had bequeathed her. When she wasn’t folding, she solved the crossword puzzles in the weekly Settimana Enigmistica, eyes ready to snap up at every arrival. Enzo, her forty-year-old son, manned the bar and cash register. When he was feeling energetic, which from what Nico had seen wasn’t often, he’d slice the bread as well. Tilde and Stella ended up doing the hard work, cooking and serving with part-time help from Alba, a young Albanian woman. Nico was only too happy to lend a hand.

  Tilde was in the kitchen, a long, narrow room with scarred wooden counters and walls covered from hip level to ceiling with worn copper and steel pots and pans. She was rapidly slicing mushrooms for her apple, mushroom, and walnut salad, a lunchtime bestseller. She pecked Nico’s cheek while spritzing the just-cut slices with lemon juice. “I heard. Sorry you had to go through that.”

  “You mean Elvira or the dead man?”

  That got a half smile out of her. “Both. Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Nico put the pan of tomatoes in a far corner. He didn’t need them until this afternoon. “Are you?”

  “The wasp bit me, but then it died.”

  Nico grinned. “I believe it. We all know you’re armored in granite, but it’s still only armor. Having a murderer nearby is scary. There’s nothing wrong in admitting that.”

  Hearing about the murder was horrible, but it was mention of the dead man’s shoes that had stuck a knife in her chest. It had been twenty-two years. Tilde had managed to almost entirely erase the thought of Robi, but now his drunken boast haunted her. I’ll return covered in gold.

  “Was the dead man really wearing gold sneakers?” she asked.

  “Yes, and a big fat gold watch.” Nico walked past the small window overlooking the dining terrace and saw Stella under the fig tree, setting tables. He waved at Rita’s goddaughter. “Ciao, cara.” He was hoping for her usual heartwarming smile but only got a nod. Understandably, the murder had gotten to her too.