Murder in Chianti

by Camilla Trinchieri

  Aldo. Had he told Perillo everything he knew about Gerardi? Perillo seemed confident that they would find out more, but unpleasant actions and events often managed to stay buried.

  Nico brushed his teeth, washed his face and, after peering at himself in the cracked mirror, decided to forgo shaving. After last night’s drinking, what he really needed was a long, brain-clearing run. He’d gone out in far worse weather, but this morning he had work to do. Perillo was going to be dealing with Della Langhe and whoever showed up in his office to tell him what they knew about Gerardi. Daniele had to reach into the annals of his computer to dig out what he could about Gerardi and the land Aldo had wanted to buy. Nico had assigned himself the job of eavesdropping and questioning Gogol. Roberto Gerardi’s photo was in the paper this morning, and the sooner he got to Bar All’Angolo, the better.

  OneWag lifted his head from the bedsheets and watched as Nico dressed quickly in jeans and a long-sleeved polo shirt. “Come on, you lazy mutt. We’re off.” The dog jumped from the bed and scampered over to the adjoining room. He sat at attention in front of his empty food bowl.

  “It’s whole wheat cornetti this morning.” Nico slipped on his parka and opened the door. A blur of orange and white streaked by him.

  The Ferriello wine shop/dining room was a large, handsome beamed room that gave out to a sprawling covered terrace facing a well-tended lawn and, beyond that, an olive grove. Perillo’s shoes squished—he had managed to step into a puddle as he’d gotten out of his car—across the smooth, polished floor, leaving a trail of wet footprints. He had come alone in civilian clothes, although this was an official call that technically required a uniform and another carabiniere to act as a witness. Throughout the years, he had learned to bend the rules. He also wanted Aldo’s wife to feel his was a friendly visit.

  On the terrace, a couple was seated at a table well away from the dripping awning edges. Above them was the drumming sound of rain. Perillo watched as Cinzia poured them two generous glasses of a Ferriello red. What had brought these two foreigners here for a wine tasting at nine o’clock in the morning, and in this weather, was beyond his comprehension.

  Cinzia walked toward him with a teasing smile on her face. “Ciao, Salvatore.” She was a petite, slender brunette originally from Rome, with sparkling eyes and a pretty face. She stepped inside the room and Perillo followed.

  “Here for a wine tasting?” She waved the open bottle. “They’re having a Chianti ’15 vintage.”

  “Too early for me.”

  “An espresso, then?”

  “Gladly.” He sat on a barstool in front of the counter at the far end of the room. Cinzia went behind the counter and into a small kitchen partially hidden by a wall of shelves filled with photo albums of the wine dinners they’d hosted for scores of tourists throughout the years. Perillo peered. The older ones showed a thin, eager-looking Aldo, a long-haired Cinzia by his side.

  “Aldo hired Gerardi twenty-four years ago, at your suggestion. Is that right?” Perillo asked, remembering what Aldo had said the previous night.

  “Wrong.” Cinzia lowered the flame on the stove and placed a small moka over it. “I hired Robi.”

  Perillo noted the more intimate name, Aldo having called him Roberto.

  She came back to stand behind the counter, the sparkle in her eye gone. “I can’t stomach Robi’s death. And the way he was killed. Shooting his face off like that, wiping out his identity. That’s pure hate.”

  “Maybe. It could also have been to serve the killer, gain him time while we blundered about trying to find out who the victim was.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t blunder.”

  “We don’t usually, but this time . . .” Perillo shook his head. “How did you meet him?”

  “I was having lunch with a friend from Rome at Hotel Bella Vista in Panzano, where she was staying. Robi was our waiter. The only one in the place, and most of the tables were taken. He handled the crush beautifully. And the women were lapping him up. That was important. My friend was so smitten, she ate every meal at the hotel during her week’s stay.”

  “You must have been smitten too, if you hired him.”

  The moka stopped gurgling. Cinzia slipped back into the kitchen. “Sugar?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve had my limit today.”

  She poured two cups and set them on the counter. “I enjoy looking at a handsome man. No sin in that. I convinced Aldo to hire him because men like to be the wine buyers, but women have veto power. We were also both exhausted. I’d come up with the idea of hosting lunches and dinners for tourists. We started offering simple Tuscan specialties—a platter of salami, crostini, then panzanella or ribollita. But the main attraction still had to be our wines.” She drank down her coffee and wiped her mouth with a napkin. Perillo did the same. “The idea really took off. There were only four of us at the vineyard. We needed extra help just for the events. Buses were bringing people in droves from Siena and Florence.”

  “Did you know anything about his love life?”

  “Robi liked to brag a lot about his conquests, but I didn’t believe him. I think he was just a lost soul who needed to feel important. He loved the attention the tourists gave him, which worked well for us.”

  “Did he talk about anyone in particular that you can remember? Parents, friends, a girlfriend?”

  “When I hired him, he told me both his parents were dead, and that he had a sister he wasn’t close to. A few weeks before we found out he’d been siphoning off our wine, he said he was getting engaged and showed me a pair of earrings he had bought in Florence—two coiled silver snakes with tiny green eyes. I guess they were pretty, but snakes give me the shivers. I asked who she was. He wouldn’t tell me because her parents didn’t know yet. I wondered if he was making the whole thing up. For all I know, those earrings could have been his sister’s.”

  “You weren’t curious?” His wife wouldn’t have let the matter go until she’d found out who the girl was. He often thought she’d have made a very good carabiniere. He’d once been tempted to enlist her help but stopped himself in time.

  “I didn’t ask questions. My only interest was that he show up on time and do his job well, which he did until he got it into his head to start stealing from us. If I come up with anything that might help, I’ll call you. Now I have to get back to those two Belgians and try to unload a case of Ferriello Chianti ’15 vintage.”

  Perillo got off his barstool. His shoes had stopped squishing. The damp was all in his socks now. “Thanks, Cinzia. I appreciate it. And thanks for the coffee.”

  The café was noisy and crowded, with no seats available. The doors were shut to keep out the slanting rain. The smell of coffee, hot butter and damp clothing filled the room. Nico opened his rain jacket and, after lowering a dry OneWag to the floor, raised a hand in salute to Sandro and Jimmy. They were too busy behind the counter to look up. Breakfast was going to have to wait.

  OneWag went off on a hunt of his own, sniffing between legs to find choice tidbits of flaky cornetti, fallen sugar from the ciambelle. Paper napkins with drops of spilled jams or custard he licked carefully. Paper was not part of his diet.

  Nico leaned against the wall and scanned the bar for signs of Gogol, just in case the news had brought him out before his usual time. It hadn’t. The place notably was filled with locals this morning. It was either too early for the tourists or they had shown up and left, finding Bar All’Angolo already packed with locals. Nico knew only a few of them by name. Luciana the florist was standing next to the counter with her Enrico, master of the olive loaves. Sergio the butcher, who looked at least forty, was telling the couple he was too young to have known Gerardi. Enrico gently reminded him that twenty-two years ago, Sergio was twenty years old.

  Sergio was quick to rebound with a smile. “I thought he had left town thirty-two years ago!”

  Beppe, the son of the new
spaper vendor, was in a corner nearby, telling a small pack of students that he had known right from the start the dead man was a Gravignese.

  “Why were you so sure?” asked a pretty girl with tiger-striped leggings that matched her backpack. “Are you psychic?”

  The attention made Beppe stand taller. “I guess I am.”

  “Is the killer here now?”

  Beppe shifted his weight back and forth as he glanced around, unsure of what to say. “I can’t tell. It’s too crowded.” He smiled at the girl, hoping she accepted the excuse. “Maybe he is.”

  “Maybe he’s up your ass!” The girl and her companions laughed loudly.

  Beppe’s eyes went wide with surprise and hurt. The girl started to say something else, surely something equally mean, but a distant honking of the bus sent the students running en masse out of the café. Beppe retreated into a corner and started playing with his phone.

  Not a fighter, Nico thought. An assessment, not a criticism. He’d only learned to fight back bullies thanks to his fist-happy father, the only good lesson he’d ever gotten from the man.

  Some locals he didn’t recognize huddled together over the tables, pointing to the two copies of La Nazione that the café provided. Others clasped tiny espresso cups, their free hands either placing food in their mouths or dancing in the air to emphasize a point. The voices were subdued rather than excited. No one seemed terribly sad or shocked by the brutal murder of one of their own.

  “I knew his father,” said one of the old men who, in good weather, always sat on the piazza benches. Somewhere in his eighties, he had a long, thin face with an equally long prominent nose and a surprisingly full head of fluffy white hair. Now, he sat at the center table holding the newspaper close to his chest. Nico changed position against the wall to hear the group better.

  Ettore, a fellow pensioner sitting next to him, reached for the paper. “Gustavo, let me see, let me see.”

  Gustavo held on. “He ran the gas station outside of Radda. A good man. Can’t say as much for the son.”

  “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” objected Nelli as she walked in, arms filled with posters for the children’s art show next week. “Hi, Nico.”

  Nico nodded in greeting. He didn’t want to call attention to himself, aware he was still considered an outsider.

  “You’re wrong, Nelli,” Gustavo said. “Once they’re dead, that’s the only time you can speak the truth. They can’t get back at you.”

  “Where’s the rest of the gang?” Nelli asked. Gustavo and Ettore were always with two fellow pensioners.

  “It’s raining,” Ettore offered.

  “They’re afraid of shrinking,” Gustavo said. “Ehi!” Ettore had grabbed the paper away.

  “I paid for that, so don’t mess it up.” Gustavo looked up at Nico. “I like a neat paper.”

  “So do I,” Nico answered. So much for remaining unnoticed.

  Ettore stared at the two photos: Gerardi twenty-two years ago and Gerardi now. “Poor Robi. He didn’t age so well.”

  “Can’t you read?” Gustavo pressed his finger at the article below the photos. “Cancer all over. Six months to live. Why kill him, I say.”

  “Maybe he didn’t tell his killer he was sick. I barely recognize him in the second photo.”

  Nelli dropped her pile of posters on the table, accidentally tearing a page of the paper. Gustavo let out a yelp.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll buy you another one.” She called out to Beppe, who was still in the corner entrance by his phone. “Do me a favor and get another copy of La Nazione. Tell your mother it’s for Gustavo. She’ll understand. And don’t get it wet. I’ll pay later.”

  Beppe rushed out, happy to have a task.

  Gustavo looked placated. “My wife used to iron the paper when it got wrinkled.”

  “Your wife should have been locked up in a madhouse.”

  “His house was the madhouse,” Ettore said. “Robi was a looker. Thought he was a rooster in a henhouse. I say a jealous husband killed him.”

  “Twenty-two years later, with him looking like that?” Nelli turned to Nico, who was still leaning against the wall like the proverbial fly. “That couple behind the column are getting up. Grab their chairs. I need to sit, and I bet so do you.”

  Nico had been too busy eavesdropping to notice. As he walked over to the chairs at the other side of the room, he wondered if Nelli wanted him out of earshot for a moment, then quickly dismissed the thought. He hurried, though.

  As they sat, Ettore peered at Nelli above his glasses. He was also somewhere in his eighties, with a shiny bald scalp, jowled cheeks and kind eyes. “Now, I recall that when you were a pretty girl of eighteen or so, handsome Robi conquered a corner of your heart, and maybe something more.”

  “You recall incorrectly. All of my heart was taken when I was sixteen by the man who became my husband—now ex-husband, thank the heavens. I will admit to not minding looking at Robi when the occasion presented itself, which wasn’t often. He was always off somewhere with his fiancée.”

  Gustavo grunted. “What fiancée?”

  “I never met her.”

  Gustavo looked around the room. “Did this fiancée have a name? Did anyone ever see her?”

  “I didn’t,” Nelli said.

  No one else answered.

  “If no one saw her, she didn’t exist.” A mischievous grin added more wrinkles to Gustavo’s cheeks. “It’s an old ploy to make women want you more. Used it myself in my younger days.”

  Ettore laughed, showing off all his gold crowns. “No woman wanted you.”

  Curious about the mysterious fiancée, Nico interrupted from his seat behind the pillar. “I heard Gerardi was madly in love.”

  At that moment, Beppe darted in and dropped a plastic bag on Gustavo’s lap. Just as quickly, he darted back out.

  Nelli stood up and gathered her posters. “Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Robi was a slippery man.”

  “Who, then?” Ettore asked, perking up at the possibility of learning a gossipy tidbit he could take back to his wife. “Who was Robi in love with?”

  Gustavo took out the pristine newspaper from the bag and spread it out on the emptied table. “Himself.” He turned to the sports section. “Who else?”

  Nelli hugged her posters against her chest. “You’re turning into a nasty old man, Gustavo.”

  Gustavo shooed her away with his hand. “Always was.”

  “How about a cappuccino, just the two of us?” Nico suggested to Nelli.

  “Excellent idea,” Nelli said. “As far away from this meanie as we can get.” She kissed Gustavo on top of his head, then pecked Ettore on the cheek. “How you put up with him is beyond me.”

  Ettore shrugged as though it was beyond him too.

  Nelli walked to the table where Nico was sitting, dropped her posters on a nearby table and sat down. The rain had let up, and the place was now almost empty. The people who had gathered early at the café were now taking their talk of the murdered among their own to homes, offices, shops, workstations and all the vineyards of the golden valley.

  Nico went to the counter and ordered two cappuccinos from Sandro. “Did you know this Robi?” he asked casually as Sandro handed out his change.

  Sandro shook his head. “I’m thirty-two.”

  “But recently? Did he ever come in here?”

  “Not that I noticed. Jimmy, did you see him in here?”

  “Who knows? I don’t look at faces when I hand out coffee.”

  “Stop talking to Nico,” Nelli called out to Jimmy, “and I’ll take a ciambella with my cappuccino, please. Nico, you might as well order your cornetti. Gogol won’t show up today.”

  “Coming up,” Jimmy called. “But since when is Gogol afraid of a little rain?”

  “He isn’t. He’s gone mushroom hu
nting.”

  Nico brought the cappuccinos and the ciambella to the table. Two whole wheat cornetti were in the oven.

  “Do mushrooms pop out that fast when it rains?” Nico asked as he sat down.

  “Depends.” Nelli leaned over the table. “I made that up.” Her voice was low. “I think Gogol will probably be hiding in his room for a few days.”

  Nico lowered his voice too. “Why?”

  “I imagine he’s scared, now that he knows who the dead man is. He attacked Robi once. By the tower behind the church. It must have been a Sunday, because I was walking to church. Robi was a few feet in front of me, and yes, I was taking a good look at his nice ass and having impure thoughts I wasn’t about to confess in church. Just as Robi reached the tower, Gogol pounced on him, swinging a thick tree branch. I screamed. Of course. Robi easily stopped him. He wrenched the branch out of Gogol’s hand and threw him on the ground with a single punch to his chest. I asked Robi if he was going to call the carabinieri, begged him not to. He walked away without answering. He must not have said anything, because nothing came of it.”

  “Were there other witnesses?”

  “Not that I noticed. I was on my knees, trying to help Gogol stand up. The poor man was crying, hiding his face in his hands, shaking his head. He was very upset.” She would discover the reason days later.

  It was hard for Nico to think of Gogol as violent. He did live in a world all his own, but Nico had always instinctively sensed that violence did not enter into it. And yet, it had. The smell of warm cornetti hit his nose. He waited until Jimmy had placed them in front of him and walked off to ask, “Did Gogol offer any explanation?” He remembered what the manager of the hotel had told Perillo. Gogol, for the first time, appearing in front of the hotel where Gerardi had stayed, laughing loudly.

  “I asked him why he was angry with Robi,” Nelli said. “He wouldn’t answer. After I got him on his feet, I asked him again. All he said was ‘a river of blood.’ I suppose that’s what he was hoping for, a river of Robi’s blood.” There was no reason for anyone else to know, she thought.

  “‘A river of blood.’ Gogol quoted that to me yesterday. A line from The Divine Comedy, I think. Did you ask Gerardi about the attack?”