Murder in Chianti

by Camilla Trinchieri

  “I did. Six hundred and twenty-three euros in cash with a fifteen percent discount. Eight twenty in credit cards, full price.” Proving her mother wrong gave her the boost she needed. “The carabinieri came by this morning.”

  Irene raised an eyebrow, waiting for more.

  “They showed me the bracelet and asked if it came from our store. They said he was dead and they wanted to know what he looked like. He must be the man they found dead in Gravigna.”

  “Of course. His face was shot off.”

  “I expected you to be upset.” Her mother’s face had gone white when she’d told her that the man who bought the expensive bracelet had asked if Irene Crisani was now the owner of the shop, claiming he was an old friend of hers. Rosalba has answered with a simple “Yes.”

  “People get killed all the time for one stupid reason or another.” Irene refolded a napkin. “Did they ask about the video cameras?” She had pressed the delete button on both tapes with a stomach-wrenching combination of joy and anguish.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “That one was being fixed and we’d erased the tape in the working camera at the end of last week. They’re bringing in an artist from Florence to make a sketch of what I remember of his face. What should I remember?”

  “Whatever you want. He’s dead.”

  As soon as Nico and the maresciallo entered the restaurant, they were greeted by a woman in a flowered dress and espadrilles. “Ciao, Salvatore. It’s been forever.”

  “I know, Angela, I regret. Too much work.” He kissed her cheeks and introduced Nico.

  “Piacere.” Angela shook hands with Nico. She was in her forties, with a fleshy, round face and smiling gray eyes. A frown appeared on her face when she noticed OneWag looking up at her. He had no collar, no leash.

  “He’s an angel of obedience,” Perillo said.

  “We have a cat.”

  Nico had forgotten that every Italian restaurant had at least one cat. “I’m sorry.” He picked up the dog. “I’ll leave him in the car.”

  Perillo stopped him. “Rocco eats with us. Don’t worry, Angela. He’s under my tutelage.”

  “But my cat isn’t. If he gets his eyes scratched out—”

  “I’ll arrest her.”

  Angela’s smile came back. “Good idea. She can have her kittens in jail.”

  “Again?”

  Angela shrugged. “What can I do? Romilda is a nymphomaniac, and my mother refuses to have her fixed.” She picked up two menus and led them to the garden. “Take that last table in the far corner. I’ll take Romilda upstairs.”

  Perillo took the menus. “Thank you, Angela, you are indeed an angel.”

  Nico and Perillo sat down facing each other. A baffled Nico held on to OneWag. “Why did you insist on the dog? And his name isn’t Rocco.”

  “He is an Italian dog. He should have an Italian name. The one you chose is also impossible for us to pronounce properly. Call him what you wish, of course, but for me he is Rocco. I insisted he stay with us because he needs reassurance you will not abandon him.” Perillo had taken care of many street dogs as a kid. He had identified with their need to be loved. “It is clear to me that he is a wise dog. If he disobeys, you may put him back on the street. He knows this. Put him down and command him to stay. See if I’m wrong.”

  Curious, Nico put the dog down on the dirt floor. “Stay here.”

  OneWag looked up at the man, undecided on what to do. The words were new to him, and so many different smells and bits of food on the ground called to him. But the low voice called too. This man who fed him and did not kick him wanted him to do what?

  Nico leaned down and patted the ground. “Stay.”

  OneWag curled up underneath the chair. Gestures, he understood. And now the word “stay.”

  Nico sat up, surprised. “You’re a dog expert.”

  “No, just on strays.”

  “You’ve owned many?”

  The American was looking at him with an honest, unsuspecting face. He was waiting for an answer. Perillo looked down at the menu. Good, Angela was serving la peposa tonight. Domenico Doyle, a man whose help he sought. Should he tell him? “No,” he said out loud in answer to Nico’s question and his own. “I never owned one, but there was an abundance of strays back in Pozzuoli.” He did not add that this meant both dogs and humans, sleeping on the streets, eating food from garbage cans, stealing anything they could get their filthy hands on. Years of it. He could still pick a wallet from a pocket without being caught. He’d tried it just a few weeks ago, to see if he still had that ability, and put the wallet right back without Daniele noticing.

  The angry edge in Perillo’s voice made Nico curious. “Why did you choose to become part of the carabinieri?”

  “Where I come from, I had three choices. I could be a man of the cloth, a man of the Camorra or a man of the law. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in killing people. I didn’t believe in the law back then, either, but it was by far the better choice. Besides”—Perillo’s face broke out in a grin—“I liked the uniform.”

  Nico recognized the pat answer. “Do you believe in the law now?”

  “Do you?” Perillo asked, wondering how Nico had lost his job.

  “I took an oath to uphold the law, but sometimes the law as we have worded it is imperfect.” He had indeed broken the law and been fired for it. The law had deemed his actions wrong, but in his mind, what he had done was right. “Sometimes, the law does not take into account the despair suffering can bring. Sending a guilty person to jail isn’t always the right answer, and too many times, the innocent end up there.”

  “Good. I see we think alike. The real reason I became a carabiniere? The jokes. There are thousands of them. A ship goes down at sea and the entire crew drowns. Surprisingly, two carabinieri survive. ‘How come you didn’t drown like the rest?’ the rescue crew asks. One answers, ‘We’re not allowed to drink on the job.’”

  Nico laughed.

  “One more for you. Why do the carabinieri smile during storms?” Perillo waited. Nico shrugged. “Because they think the lightning is a series of camera flashes. Now, let’s order before I tell any more dumb jokes.”

  Nico sighed. “When I was growing up in the States, we had Polish jokes. Sometimes, you need a little laughter.”

  Perillo raised his arm and called Angela. “Nico, you trust me to order for you?”

  “Please do.”

  Angela strolled over, her eyes on OneWag asleep under the chair. “You were right. He’s the picture of obedience. Bravo, Rocco. Now then, gentlemen, what do your stomachs desire tonight?”

  “A bottle of your house red—”

  Nico lifted a forefinger. “Excuse me, but I’d like to start with a glass of white wine first.”

  Perillo looked at Angela apologetically. Asking for white wine in Chianti was almost an insult.

  Nico noticed the look. “I’ll switch to red for the main course.”

  “Good.” Perillo continued his order. “A platter of your crostini—you pick the tastiest ones—and la peposa for both of us. We’ll see if we have room for dessert later.”

  “What’s la peposa?” Nico asked.

  “Ah,” Angela said, “you’re in for a delight.” She pulled out a chair and sat down.

  Perillo sat back, satisfied. He had ordered the dish for a specific reason. One of many admirable traits he had discovered in Americans was their curiosity about his country, and Angela never missed a chance to tell the story of la peposa.

  “It’s a historic meat dish,” she began. “Chianina beef cooked in red wine with lots of pepper kernels, garlic, rosemary and sage, served on toasted bread to soak up the sauce. It was invented in my hometown, L’Imprunéta, where we have been making the best terra cotta tiles in the world since the Middle Ages
. The work was hard, and the men had to stay by the burning furnace all day, so they came up with the idea of cooking their lunch next to the tiles. Not only will it fortify you, but you will be eating an exquisite dish that fed the men who built Brunelleschi’s cupola for the Duomo of Florence. Without la peposa, who knows if the cupola would still be with us after almost seven centuries?”

  “Thank you, Angela,” Nico said. A fun story with perhaps some truth to it. “I look forward to eating history.”

  “And we both need fortification,” Perillo said. “You’ve heard about the murder?”

  Angela’s hands clasped her cheeks and she stared at Nico with wide eyes. “Oh, holy Jesus, are you the one who found him?” Her voice was loud, and some diners turned to look at Nico.

  “It was the dog who found him first,” said Nico quietly, not enjoying the attention.

  “But I have to find out who killed him,” Perillo said.

  “Of course you do,” Angela snapped. “It’s your job.”

  Perillo laughed. He could always count on Angela for a put-down. And he always deserved it.

  Angela stood up and put the chair back in place. “No house wine for you tonight. I’ll open up a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino. It’s on us. I’ll bring it right away, plus some scraps for Rocco.”

  “Thank you,” Nico called after her, “but his name isn’t Rocco.”

  “Resign yourself, friend.” Perillo leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Now, let me tell you about Daniele’s theory and what the substitute prosecutor thinks.”

  “After dinner,” Nico said. A few diners were still openly staring and muttering to each other. “Let’s discuss the case on my balcony with a bottle of duty-free Johnnie Walker Black that’s been waiting to be opened since May.”

  Perillo grinned. “Excellent whiskey, excellent idea. A judicious amount of liquor will illuminate the brain and further cement collaboration.”

  For the next two hours, they shared opinions on the latest news from both countries while polishing off all the crostini, wiping the peposa plates clean, and draining their bottle of 2010 Brunello di Montalcino.

  SIX

  Daniele was in the barrack’s kitchen filling a plate with freshly drained bigoli and thinking of Rosalba. He dressed the thick noodles with olive oil, capers, a couple of smashed anchovies, pitted green olives and a coating of toasted bread crumbs. It was a dish his mother had made for as long as he could remember, a dish that had become his go-to whenever he was down. The maresciallo’s remark still stung. Rosalba might be rich, better schooled than he was, but he’d felt something special pass between them. He knew her smile had been for him, not the maresciallo. How old was his superior? Forty-five? Maybe beyond that. He was getting old. Daniele plunged his fork into the heaping mound of thick pasta strands and twisted. The maresciallo was jealous, that was it. Even before taking his first bite of the pasta, Daniele felt better.

  After his meal, Daniele went downstairs to the computer in the maresciallo’s office that only he used and now considered his. He knew he had to stay away from Rosalba until they had closed the case, but there was no harm in looking her up. He went to Google and typed in her full name. To his surprise, there was no trace of her on the Internet. Not on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter. Only Gioielleria Crisani showed up on a dull website with shots of the store’s display cases filled with jewelry and no one behind them. Had he designed the website, Rosalba would have been front and center, her smile bidding online searchers to walk into the store. The “About” page told him the store was run by Irene Castaldi, née Crisani, third-generation owner of Gioielleria Crisani, started in 1952 by her grandfather Tuccio Crisani.

  No wonder he couldn’t find her. Her last name was Castaldi, not Crisani. He went back to look for her on social media. Still nothing.

  Why was a beautiful girl like Rosalba trying to stay hidden? Maybe her parents were old-fashioned, afraid their beautiful girl might be found by sex-hungry men. Well, it wasn’t sex he was looking for—not right away, at least. A connection would be nice. He’d been assigned to Greve six months ago, and he still hadn’t found a girl he wanted to be with for more than five minutes. He would turn twenty in January. It was time he got a girlfriend.

  Daniele’s fingers flew over the keyboard to find Rosalba’s parents in the Radda in Chianti registrar’s office.

  Irene Crisani, born in 1975 and married Giorgio Castaldi in 1999 in the Basilica of Santa Croce.

  Rosalba Crisani, born in Milano in 1997.

  Damn! Rosalba was two years older. She’d never consider him.

  The night air had turned chilly, but Perillo wanted to smoke, and so the two men, stomachs full of excellent food, settled out on the balcony on two uncomfortable metal chairs. The three swallows were asleep, tucked in their usual spot between the beam and ceiling. OneWag was curled up at Nico’s feet, thanks to Perillo’s insistence that the dog deserved a roof over his head.

  Nico poured the whiskey into two glasses, handed one to Perillo and placed the bottle on the small table between them. “You had two theories for me.”

  “First the more probable one. It’s about the Tuscan who bought the bracelet. Daniele thinks he might have been a go-between.”

  “Possible, although why would the victim feel he needed a go-between? How much did the bracelet cost?”

  “Fourteen hundred. He paid with three five-hundred-euro notes.”

  “That’s a lot of money. If the Tuscan was a go-between, he must have been a friend of the victim.”

  “Maybe even the one who killed him.”

  “Possible. As for why hire a go-between, our dead man might not have wanted to be seen. It would explain why he was out in the woods so early.” Perillo took a sip of his whiskey and smacked his lips with approval. “What’s the first thing you did when you were assigned a case?”

  “I always made my own list of the facts I had at that moment. Facts, no opinions or conjecture. They were written on the whiteboard, of course, but I liked to have the list with me at all times. When new facts came in, I’d add them to my list and tuck it in my pocket.”

  Perillo lit a cigarette. “You’re a methodical man.”

  Nico lifted the small pot of geraniums on the table and handed Perillo the under-dish to use as an ashtray. He laughed as he said, “I guess I thought that the facts in my pocket would eventually make their way to my head and illuminate me.”

  “The only facts I have are: A dead man’s face was blown off at close range. The pellets we found tell us the weapon was a twelve-gauge shotgun, manufacturer unknown since the killer took the casing with him. It’s the type of gun that’s probably owned by every hunter in Tuscany, which means most of the male population. Next up, a tanned Tuscan bought a bracelet with a mysterious date on it. And finally, a missing gray Panda that may or may not have been rented by our dead man. Every dumpster in the vicinity is being checked for bloody clothes, and so far, nothing. No autopsy report yet. No news about the fingerprints. This wealth of information I can certainly keep in my head.”

  “The killer must have been covered in blood. The best way to get rid of bloody clothes would be to burn them. Have you looked into unexplained bonfires in the area?”

  Perillo raised his arms in a gesture of despair. “Every day a farmer or a vintner is burning something, even if the wind is high and they risk burning acres of surrounding land. I have to call the prosecutor assigned to this case tomorrow morning. I dealt with him once before, when his seventeen-year-old daughter claimed her Morris Mini had been stolen while at a party in Greve. We found the car after two days, parked in the garage of the boy she had spent the night with. Della Langhe wanted the boy arrested for theft, but I spoke to his daughter, a nice girl, not one of those spoiled, the-world-owes-me-deference types like her father, and suggested that she would feel better about herself if she told Pappa the truth. She di
d, and Della Langhe has never forgiven me for knowing she slept with a boy she’d just met. He will not take kindly to my not having much to report. Besides, he thinks all Southerners are slow.”

  Perillo liked to talk. Nico was grateful for it, after so many evenings on the balcony with only sleeping swallows for company. “I had a few difficult district attorneys in my day. Beware of ones running for political office. If it’s a front-page kind of case, they won’t let the truth get in their way.”

  “Ah, then America is not so different.”

  Nico thought his country was very different—99 percent of its citizens paid their taxes, for one thing, but he went back to the subject that had brought them together. “Your case raises many questions.”

  “Too many.” Perillo flicked ash over the balcony railing. Nico’s vegetable garden was below. He didn’t like the idea of finding ash on his zucchini and pushed the terra-cotta dish closer to the maresciallo. “Please use this, if you don’t mind.” He leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his whiskey. “In your office, you wondered why the victim was in the woods so early in the morning. Now you think it might be because he didn’t want to be seen, but what was he doing there? Was he meeting someone? Perhaps the person he was going to give the bracelet to? Or was the bracelet incidental? Who could it have been for?”

  “A woman, of course.”

  “Nowadays not necessarily, but probably a woman. Someone who lives here, presumably. The date, a New Year’s Day twenty-two years ago, what does it stand for? The New Year? A wedding? A birthday? Why give this as a gift so many years later?”

  Perillo dutifully flicked his ash in the dish as a smile of relief crossed his face. His American friend was hooked on the investigation. “If he was meeting someone, the logical explanation for the place and time is that he didn’t want to be seen. But what if the person who was meeting him also wanted secrecy?”

  “Or maybe he wasn’t meeting anyone. Maybe he was hiding because he knew he was in danger.”

  “Too many questions for one maresciallo and a young brigadiere.” Perillo leaned back in his chair and hugged his elbows. “You will help, yes?”