temptation in florence 05 - seaside in death

by boeker, beate

  “What's this about a gun?” Fabbiola asked. She pulled her flowery cushion from beneath her back and started to knead it with nervous hands. “Who had a gun?”

  “Aunt Violetta had one,” Garini replied. “In her room.”

  Aunt Violetta rolled her eyes. “And why shouldn't I have a gun in my room?”

  Benedetta stared at her with wide eyes. “But why should you? Were you expecting trouble? Did you know there would be a murder?”

  Aunt Violetta snorted. “Don't be ridiculous. I'm a helpless old lady in a wheelchair, and when we set out for our vacation, I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten to pack it.”

  “So that's why we had to go back,” Carlina said, understanding dawning in her voice. “And that's why you refused to share what you had forgotten to take.”

  “Of course I didn't tell you,” Aunt Violetta shook her head. “A nice discussion that would have caused! But I never go anywhere without my gun.”

  “Your husband's gun,” Garini interrupted.

  She waved a nonchalant hand. “Never mind the petty details. When he died, I inherited everything, and that included his gun.”

  “Not a gun, you don't,” Garini said. “You have to register it in your name if you want to keep it.”

  Aunt Violetta sighed. “All right, all right. But who sticks to the rules all the time? I bet even policemen don't.” She waited a minute, but when Garini didn't rise to the bait, she added. “Omar can confirm that I always take it along when we go on vacation. There's nothing extraordinary about it.”

  Omar nodded.

  Garini ignored him. He was still waiting for the day when Omar would contradict his overpowering stepmother. He already knew that Violetta's gun wasn't the murder weapon, but he needed to clear something up, and he hoped that Aunt Violetta wasn't going to mislead him with a made-up story that would only delay the investigation. “When did you last shoot it?”

  Their eyes locked.

  Without blinking once, Aunt Violetta said, “I've never used it in my whole life.”

  Darn. The police records had been clear on that point: The gun had been used within the last week.

  Omar jumped from his hammock with an athletic grace few people would have been able to imitate and came to stand next to Aunt Violetta.

  Garini looked at him. He liked Omar. In spite of being so wholly dependent on Aunt Violetta, he had managed to keep a certain dignity that spoke for quite a bit of character. Garini wondered how different Omar would be if he wasn't mute. It's difficult to judge a man who can't express himself easily. “Is there anything I should add to Aunt Violetta's statement?” he asked.

  Omar nodded, then pulled out a little notebook, scribbled something onto it, and gave it to Garini. It said, “I practiced with the gun just before we left.”

  “Where?” Garini asked.

  Omar wrote, “In our garden.”

  Aunt Violetta's hand shot out and took the notebook. When she'd read the terse words, she shouted, “Don't you dare make a case against Omar, Garini! He's the most peaceful man I know. Do you hear me?”

  “Ah,” Benedetta said with a faintly malicious smile, “it's interesting to see your change in attitude as soon as your own son is threatened.”

  “Be quiet,” Aunt Violetta hissed. “Garini, listen.”

  Garini suppressed a smile. “I'm listening.”

  “Omar here didn't have anything to do with the murder.”

  “I see.” He kept his voice dry.

  Aunt Violetta looked daggers at him. Then she rapped out with a harsh voice, “Have you found the bullet yet? The one that killed that . . . that useless manager?”

  “The bullet has been found,” Garini confirmed.

  “Ha!” She straightened. “And what about it? Is it from my gun?”

  Garini shook his head. “It's not.”

  Aunt Violetta dropped back onto her sun lounger with such a sigh of relief that the whole structure narrowly avoided collapsing. “There you go. My gun is completely unimportant.”

  Garini looked at her and was inclined to agree, but he wasn't going to let her know that anytime soon.

  “When will I get it back?” Aunt Violetta asked.

  He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “As soon as you get a license.” Then he turned to kiss Carlina. “I've got to go.”

  “What will you do now?” Benedetta asked. “Are you going to arrest someone else?”

  “Not quite. I'll first talk to a few concerned people.”

  “You'd better start with the wife.” Fabbiola nodded sagely and lifted the cushion in a mute greeting. “When a man is killed, you should always check the wife first. Stands to reason.”

  Chapter 9

  Fabbiola is right, Garini thought as he was mounting the worn wooden steps in the old house on the outskirts of Forte dei Marmi where Signora Rosari was living. Commissario Pucci should have talked to Rosari's wife immediately. Maybe he had done so and had only forgotten to write the report?

  He shook his head. Pucci's boss, the raspberry, had obviously been forced to accept Pucci into the department and had had a difficult time getting him to work in any useful way. It was often done like that – if you couldn't get rid of people for whatever reason, you shifted them to an area where they couldn't do much harm – or good. Well, Pucci was out of the running for the moment, and that was sheer luck for Ernesto.

  Garini mounted yet another flight of rickety stairs. The plaster was flaking from the walls, and an intense smell of unwashed bodies and overcooked food hung in the stale air. He started to sweat and wondered how Signora Rosari managed to schlep her child and shopping upstairs all the time. Deep gratitude flooded him for his own life. The apartment he had only recently started to share with Carlina in the center of Florence was eons away from this world. He had not yet gotten used to that sudden surge of happiness when he opened the door returning from work.

  Finally, he came to a flimsy door that had a hand-written sign stuck onto it with a bit of yellowing tape. Rosari – the name was written with a ballpoint pen in crooked letters that showed little expertise in writing. He couldn't see a bell, so he knocked on the door.

  It was flung open immediately, as if Rosari's wife had been waiting right behind it. “Now what?” She glared at him. “Who are you?” Her bleached short hair stood up, held there by a ton of hairspray, but it wasn't able to gloss over the fact that there wasn't enough of it, so that a bit of pale scalp showed.

  In the background, a child howled.

  Garini showed his identification. “I'm Commissario Garini from the homicide department, and I'd like to ask you a few questions concerning the murder of your husband.”

  Her mouth tightened. “Ah. I was wondering when you'd come.”

  So Pucci hadn't talked to her. “May I come in?”

  She gave a terse nod and opened her door, then led the way to a small living room. The window stood wide open, but in spite of that, the air inside was hot and lifeless. Garini cast a quick glance around. The furniture was minimal and shabby without any chic. On the sideboard was the only bit of decoration effort he could see: A bit of lace sat underneath a pot with a dusty plastic flower. For some reason, it reinforced the overall effect of hopelessness instead of dispelling it.

  The toddler sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by grubby plastic toys. He howled with abandon.

  Signora Rosari picked up the child and caressed his head, then pointed with her chin to the sofa. “You can sit there.” Her words were almost drowned out by the hearty wailing voice of her child.

  Mercifully, the toddler discovered his thumb and stuck it in his mouth.

  The sofa was so old that the fabric on top had worn thin. In one corner, a metal spring poked through the flimsy material. In the opposite corner, an ominous stain decorated the fabric, but at least it looked dry. Garini placed himself on top of it.

  Signora Rosari took a seat in the armchair opposite him and arranged the toddler on her lap. Then she looked at him
with narrowed eyes. “What do you want to know?”

  Garini took the recording device out of his pocket and – in the absence of a table - balanced it on his knee. “First of all, I'd like to ask your permission to record this conversation.”

  She nodded and made a nervous move with her hand. “Go ahead.”

  He looked at her bloodshot eyes and on an impulse, he said, “I wanted to express my sympathy on the death of your husband.”

  She stared at him as if he had started to speak in Chinese, then she threw back her head and started to laugh. “I'm sorry,” she gasped. “It's just so funny.”

  The toddler forgot about his thumb and stared at his mother with an open mouth, his eyes wide.

  Garini wondered how much of her laughter was real amusement and how much was sheer hysteria. He decided not to say anything, so she would have time to compose herself again.

  “I mean, that you're being so nice and all.” She still couldn't calm herself. “I thought you'd come up to me and ask me questions, like where was I the night my husband was killed, and how did we get on, and so on.”

  “I'm afraid I'm going to ask exactly that,” Garini said with an apologetic shrug of his shoulders. “I have to, you know.”

  Again, she giggled. “Oh, I understand.” Then she sat up straight and looked at him. “I like you, and so I'm going to tell you the truth.”

  He nodded. “That would be helpful.”

  “The night my husband was killed, I was here with my baby, like every night. But there was nobody else, and so I can't prove it.”

  She could hardly have been more convincing, but he had to try to get some more details from her. “When did you come home that night?” he asked.

  “Oh, around nine thirty. I'd had dinner at my neighbor's apartment.” She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder. “But we both have kids and no husband – I mean, no husband that counts, if you take my meaning – and she owns the newspaper booth at the corner, so she has to get up real early in the morning.” She shrugged. “I wish we had sat around all night, but that's just not true.”

  He looked at her and wondered if her friend had offered to lie for her.

  “How did you learn about your husband's death?”

  “From my friend who owns the newspaper booth,” she said. “She called me. Someone had seen the police coming to the hotel in the morning and had asked what it was all about. They told him that Alfonso had been shot, and within minutes, someone had told her.”

  “Why?”

  She blinked. “Why what?”

  “Why did they tell her?”

  “Oh, because she's the newsagent. She pays people to come to her first and then she passes on the news. That's why her newspaper booth is the most popular in town. She tells you everything before it's in the newspaper.” She winked. “And even the stuff that never gets to the newspaper.”

  Garini was glad that Signora Rosari's friend the newsagent had not offered to lie for her. He could just imagine that conversation.

  “What did you do then?”

  She leaned back and gave him a sunny smile. “I couldn't believe my luck.”

  “Your luck?”

  She held his gaze. “Oh, yes. You see, he wasn't much use as a husband, and he was being difficult about the divorce. A dead husband is so much easier to manage. And more respectable, too.”

  Garini swallowed. “Quite.”

  She beamed at him. “You remind me of him, you know.”

  He blanched. “I remind you of your husband?”

  She bent forward and patted his knee. “Oh, you needn't look like that. I mean in a good way. Before he turned all . . . all crooked.”

  “Maybe you could tell me more about your relationship from the very beginning.” Here was his chance to get to know the victim a little bit better. He knew it was crucial to learn about the man if he wanted to find his murderer.

  “All right.” She shifted the toddler to her other knee. “We met at the cinema. I was selling tickets there. I liked that job.” For a minute, she looked wistful. “But that's over now. Anyway, he went to see a movie with a bunch of other guys. I joked with the others, but he was kind of cool and withdrawn. Like a nut you had to crack before you could find the good stuff inside, you know?”

  Garini didn't know. He made a non-committal noise in his throat.

  “I set myself out to charm him, and well . . . I was quite good at that. Once.” She looked at him through her lashes.

  He didn't twitch a muscle. “And then?”

  “Then I got pregnant. Which was a mistake, of course, but I couldn't know that at the time. It seemed like such a good way to keep him by my side forever.”

  Garini felt a chill crawling up his back.

  “He agreed to marry me, and I thought all was great. But right afterward, things turned bad. He wasn't at home much. He didn't bring me any money, and he started to fool around with other girls as soon as I looked like an elephant.” She gently pulled at one of the curls on the toddler's head. “And you know, suddenly, I realized that he was a bad nut. I had managed to crack the shell, but I didn't like the inside.”

  Garini leaned forward. Now they were getting to the part that interested him – if she was speaking the truth. He'd have to ask some more people to get different angles on the victim's personality. “What was he like on the inside?”

  She considered for a moment, then she said, “He had one motivation only: To get rich fast. He was born very poor, you see, and that's why getting rich was his chief ambition.”

  “And what did he do to get rich fast?”

  “He tried all kinds of things, but he wasn't able to hold any job. They always kicked him out. People didn't understand how hard he tried, and they said mean things about him . . . at least, that's what he told me. I believed it in the beginning. But then, he once worked for my friend when she was sick and replaced her at the newspaper booth, and later, everybody said that he overcharged them and pushed them into buying stuff they didn't want. My friend kicked him out and never asked him for help again, though she apologized to me.”

  Carlina experienced the same thing. She said he had pushed her into buying stuff she didn't want.

  “So I finally figured out that Alfonso believed he could always go through life in the fast lane. You know, overtaking others without working hard. In fact, he thought I was richer than I was and that's why he married me.” She cocked her head to the side until the bleached strands fell over her eyes. “It's possible that I may have mislead him just a tiny bit. But that was no reason to drop both me and the baby as if we had some sort of illness.”

  “When exactly did he move out?”

  She shrugged. “In January. He said it was time for a new start, with the new year beginning and all. I was sure he was seeing someone, but I never knew who she was.”

  “And then?”

  She shrugged. “I have an arrangement with my friend. I help her with her kids in the mornings, and whenever she has to catch up on sleep. She pays me a little, so I get along. Not well, but I had hoped that the divorce would make him pay.” A fleeting smile revealed crooked teeth. “However, that's all over. I won't have to worry anymore.”

  He made sure his face didn't show his surprise. “Why not?”

  “Because Alfonso took out a life insurance and put me in as the beneficiary.”

  “When did he do that?”

  “In December, just before Christmas. You see, he had this job as a sales man for insurance policies, but it was just like always – they kicked him out after a few weeks. However, in order to get the bonus and some practice when he started that job, he tried to sell a life insurance policy to me.” She stopped for an instant and inspected a broken fingernail. “I wasn't having any of that nonsense.”

  “Why not?”

  She gave a snort. “Because I've seen enough movies where the guy takes out insurance on his wife and then gets rid of her. By that time, I had cracked the nut wide enough to see how rotten Alfonso
was on the inside, and I was having none of it.” Her mouth tightened. “He said I didn't trust him. Too right he was. I didn't trust him at all. He then said he would prove to me how much he loved me by taking out an insurance policy for himself and putting me as the beneficiary. He really did that; he showed me the certificate. Then he asked me to do the same. But I knew his ways; and I didn't trust him one inch. So I refused. He said I was making his life difficult. Ha. He was making my life difficult. We had a big quarrel. He left just before Christmas and didn't even give a gift to the little one.” Again, she caressed the child's head. “He only came back once, in January, as I said, to get his stuff. I had already thrown it all into a box. I checked, but I couldn't find any cash.” She gave a wistful sigh. “I would have kept the cash.”

  “About the insurance,” Garini brought her back to the point that interested him most. “Are you sure that he hasn't changed the beneficiary on the insurance in the meantime?”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I called the insurance the very day he was killed. They confirmed that I'm still listed. I guess Alfonso forgot about it. He was like that, you know. Whenever he started a new project, he pretended that the past didn't exist anymore.”

  He looked at her. The death of her husband was the best thing that had happened to her in a long time. No alibi and a perfect motive. Commissario Pucci would have arrested her on the spot. But she'd pushed all the incriminating facts into the open without a second of hesitation which made her one of two things – either she was innocent in every sense of the word – innocent of the murder and innocent of how the world could work against you – or she was guilty and a master at deception. Somehow he couldn't quite believe in the innocence. Maybe Alfonso had met his match.

  She met his searching gaze with a limpid look.

  “Thank you for the information.” He got up and put the recording device into his pocket. “I'll be in touch if I need to know anything else. The police station will contact you as soon as the body is released.”

  She blinked. “The what?”

  “You'll have to set the date for the funeral,” he said. “But you can only do so when the police release the body.”