Carlina shot another look at Stefano. He didn't look as if he believed in anything the Mantonis had ever said. How she wished she had the same confidence as Ernesto. If anybody asked her, the judgment was still out on the case. Her own conviction that Ernesto hadn't done it was only grounded in her knowledge of his character, but Stefano hadn't grown up with Ernesto as she had. Besides, the Mantoni family had done its fair share to drive him to exasperation with all their lies and crazy ideas. Then again, he was a good judge of character and used to seeing below the surface. A shiver went down her back. Where was this going to end?
Emma turned her head and discovered one of the garden chairs in the shade. She went to it and sank into it with her usual grace. “It's way too hot for all this police business,” she said. “Can someone get me a drink?”
“I'll be right back.” Lucio hurried away.
Emma looked at her brother. “Everything I know, Ernesto?”
He nodded. “Everything.”
“All right, then.” She leaned back into the light-green chair and crossed her legs, then moved her foot with the high-heeled sandal up and down.
The family drew closer around her.
Emma looked at Garini. “Do you want to record my statement?”
“Yes, please.”
Emma waited until everything was in place, then she contemplated her carefully pedicured toe nails with a meditative look.
She's enjoying her place at center stage. Carlina looked at Stefano. And he knows it.
“I woke up on the night of the murder.” Emma began.
At this instant, her husband appeared behind her with a tall, pink drink in his hand. He handed it to her, then noticed the expectant silence. His gaze fell on the blinking light on Garini's recorder, and his eyes widened. With sudden dismay in his face, he turned to Emma. “Are you sure this is wise, cara?”
She gave him a reassuring nod. “Ernesto told me to.”
Lucio looked at Ernesto. “You did?” The surprise in his voice was more condemning than anything else he could have done.
Carlina flinched.
Benedetta shot forward. “You needn't look so surprised, Lucio! My son didn't kill anybody at all! The truth won't hurt him!”
Nora's eyes widened. She wasn't yet used to the sudden turn-arounds in the Mantoni family and to their unfathomable ability to say the direct opposite of what they had claimed five minutes earlier with exactly the same conviction.
Garini, however, didn't even blink.
“The truth won't hurt him,” Emma repeated, still in her meditative mode, but then she destroyed the effect by rolling her eyes. “That'll be a first. Telling the truth is a very dangerous concept, Mamma.”
“Oh, come on, Emma,” her brother said. “Stop behaving like a drama queen and spit it out.”
Emma ignored him. “I woke up in the middle of the night,” she repeated.
“Yeah, you already said so.” Ernesto cut in.
This time, she gave him a reproving glance before continuing. “I went to the window.” She pointed toward the hotel. “Our room is at the end of the first floor, and the window is the one that you can see from here. I can't see the pool, but I can hear a lot of what's going on there on a silent night.” She paused for effect. “It was a silent night.”
Ernesto gave an impatient sigh.
Lucio frowned at him and placed himself behind his wife, a protective hand on her shoulder.
They look as if they're posing for an oil-painting. The owner of the manor and his beautiful wife. Carlina pushed the thought away.
Emma continued, drawing out the words, “While I was standing at the window, breathing deeply,--”
Ernesto narrowed his eyes. “Why did you breathe deeply?”
Emma dropped the languid act and shot him a furious look. “The night air was soft and sweet, that's why. Now stop interrupting me like you did when you were a five-year old, will you?” Having effectually silenced her little brother, she turned to Garini and continued. “I heard voices.”
“Voices? Several?” Garini asked.
“Two of them.”
Chapter 14
The Mantoni family held its breath and drew closer.
Satisfied with the effect of her words, Emma fell silent and contemplated her swinging foot again.
Benedetta stamped her foot. “Now speak up, Emma. Did you recognize those voices? Who was it? What did they say? Come on! We don't have all day!”
Emma gave her mother the same look she'd given Ernesto. “The voices started low at first, but they quickly got louder. I leaned out of the window as far as I could, but I couldn't see anything because the pool's around the corner of the building.”
“How did you know they were at the pool?” Garini asked.
“I didn't. I only deduced that later, when I heard that the murder had taken place at the pool. The voices came from the direction of the pool. I'm sure of that.”
“Did you recognize the voices?”
The Mantoni family froze. In the oppressive mid-day heat, nothing moved, not even a silvery leaf on an olive tree.
“No, I didn't.”
A collective sigh went up.
Emma cocked her head to the side. “At least, not really.”
“What do you mean?” Garini's voice was calm.
“I could tell that one was young, and one was old.”
Garini narrowed his eyes. “How could you know that?”
She shrugged. “I don't know. I've tried hard to recall it, but that's the impression I've been left with. One young, one older. Fighting.”
“Men or women?”
“Men.”
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
Garini bent forward. “Emma, please try to remember. This could be very important. Why did you think that one of the two men was young and the other was older? What exactly made you think so? The choice of words? The timbre of the voice? The way they spoke?”
Emma's foot stopped swinging. With a frown, she stared into space. “I really don't know. I've tried and tried to recall the words, but it's a jumble.” She shrugged and looked at Garini. “Sorry.”
Carlina frowned. Emma's words sounded nonchalant, but Carlina sensed that her cool cousin had really tried to get to the bottom of her memory, only to find it elusive.
“What about the content? What did they discuss?”
Emma lifted both hands and spread them, palms up. “I don't know. They were angry and shouted something, but I wasn't close enough to understand individual words.”
“Not a single one?”
Emma shook her head.
Garini didn't take his gaze off her for one second. “Why did you think that the younger man's voice belonged to Ernesto?”
Benedetta started forward. She looked as if she was wanted to pounce onto Garini and beat him into pulp, but Leopold's hand shot out and held her back.
Emma straightened. “I didn't think that it was Ernesto!”
“Really?” Garini's tone was mild. “Then why didn't you tell the police about the voices you heard?”
Emma sniffed. “You know very well that Pucci was only looking for proof to convict Ernesto. I didn't dare tell him anything.”
Benedetta relaxed and nodded. “That's right. You couldn't tell Pucci anything, not even the smallest, itsy-bitsy thing. He was sure to misinterpret even the easiest facts.”
“Exactly.” Emma looked at Garini, her chin lifted in defense.
He looked at her. “Don't you think that you should have recognized the voice of your own brother?”
“That's just it!” Emma said. “I didn't recognize his voice! I heard the voice of a young man, that's all.”
“Would you swear that it wasn't your brother's voice?”
Emma hesitated.
Carlina closed her eyes. Damn. Why were actions so much more convincing than words?
“She couldn't have recognized my voice.” Ernesto looked at Garini like a little dog. “Because I wasn't t
here. I didn't fight with Rosari at the pool. I only came much later, when he was already dead.”
Garini looked at Emma, but his face didn't show what he thought. “What happened when you heard the shot?”
Emma flushed. “I didn't hear the shot.”
They all stared at her.
Benedetta blinked. “You didn't hear the shot? How's that possible? I mean, if you heard the voices, then you must have heard the shot. Surely it was much louder!”
“Yes, it was,” Carlina said. “It woke me, but I thought it was a fire cracker.”
Emma gave an elegant shrug. “Well, I didn't hear the shot. I couldn't.”
Her brother frowned. “Why couldn't you?”
“Because I was in the bathroom at the time.”
“No way!” Ernesto stared at his sister. “I won't believe for a single minute that you left in the middle of overhearing an interesting fight just to go to the bathroom.”
Emma looked at the tip of her swinging foot again, but she'd lost a bit of her poise. “The conversation wasn't all that interesting. After all, I didn't understand a word.”
Ernesto laughed. It didn't sound pretty. “Come off it!”
“I wasn't feeling well.” A defensive note had crept into Emma's voice. She looked at Garini. “That's it. The interview is over. I've said all I want to say.”
Carlina stared at her cousin. Ernesto was right; Emma would never have left in the middle of an interesting conversation . . . and shouting voices in the middle of the night were interesting, no matter how little you understood. Why had Emma gone to the bathroom? She tried to picture the events of that night in her mind. If Emma had woken up in the middle of the night because she had to go to the bathroom, then she would have gone there straight away. She wouldn't have stopped in front of the open window to draw deep breaths of the 'sweet night air'. She might have done that returning from the bathroom, but not before. Even that was a stretch . . . when had Emma ever talked about the beauty of nature? And why was she, who was hardly ever knocked off her poise, suddenly so cagey? What was she hiding?
Garini looked at Emma. “I'm afraid it isn't that easy. I still have a few questions.”
Lucio took a step forward and lifted a belligerent chin. “You've heard my wife. She has nothing else to say.”
“Oh, my God!” Benedetta started forward. “You're ill! My angel, my little girl!” She went to her knees in front of Emma and stared at the face of her eldest daughter. “Talk to me! Are you sick? Is it--?” She gulped. “Oh, no, don't say it's cancer. Please! I've already lost your father to that terrible illness, and--”
Like a genie out of a bottle, Fabbiola appeared behind the tight circle of Mantoni members who were by now all grouped around Emma's chair. “Your husband had an ulcer, not cancer, my dear sister. Let's not muddle the facts. What's going on here anyway?”
Before anyone could answer, Uncle Teo appeared. As he was too small to look over the shoulders of the other family members, he slipped into the inner circle like a little weasel and stopped in front of Emma's chair. His wrinkled face showed concern.
“Omar, push me forward,” Aunt Violetta's booming voice said. “I want to see what's going on here.”
Omar touched an arm here and there, a gentle smile on his dark face, and managed to push the wheelchair with this step-mother to the front row.
Right on his heels came the only family member that had been missing, Emma's younger sister Annalisa. Her red hair glowed in the sun.
“I feel like a queen in a theater,” Emma said. “Won't some more of you go down on your knees? I'd like that.”
“Don't joke, my darling.” Benedetta stroked her hand. “Now tell me the truth. Are you ill?”
Fabbiola harrumphed. “Of course not,” she said. “She's pregnant.”
For an instant, nobody said a word.
Then pandemonium broke.
Benedetta threw herself over Emma with a scream of delight and Uncle Teo pumped Lucio's arm up and down as if it was a sort of exercise to train geriatric muscles while Omar clapped the future father on the back. Fabbiola hugged the speechless Leopold because he was standing closest to her; Aunt Violetta jumped out of her wheelchair and buried Carlina in a monster hug underneath her weight, and Ernesto explained to a bewildered Nora with a low voice that this was just his family acting like usual.
Just two people didn't move: Garini watched the scene with an impassive face, and Annalisa was frozen to the spot.
Benedetta came up for air with a triumphant grin. “What a day!” she shouted. “First, my Ernesto finds a nice girl, and now, Emma is pregnant! Let's celebrate!”
Annalisa threw a startled glance at her brother.
Ernesto was still holding hands with Nora, his head close to her, murmuring something in her ear.
Carlina turned to Fabbiola. “How on earth did you guess that Emma is pregnant, Mamma?”
Fabbiola smirked. “I noticed that she'd been turning green around the gills when she came down to breakfast these last few days. It wasn't difficult to guess why.”
Garini looked at Emma. “So you were awake during the night of the murder because . . .”
She nodded. “. . . because I had to throw up. I woke up, ran to the bathroom, threw up, went to the window to catch some air, heard the conversation I told you about, had to run to the bathroom again, and when my stomach had finally calmed down, all was quiet outside. I felt like a rag, so I went back to bed without even thinking about that fight anymore.”
“How about you, Lucio?” Garini turned to her husband.
“Oh, he slept through it all.” Emma made an airy move with her hand. “If I need him at night, I have to shout in his ear to rouse him.”
Lucio made a sheepish face. “I'm afraid that's true.”
“Emma!” Benedetta was gripping her daughter's hand like a lifeline. “When is the baby due?”
Emma blushed. “It's early days yet; that's why we didn't want to tell you. It's the sixth week now.”
Fabbiola turned around and looked at her daughter. “I think it's time for you to consider having babies, too, Carlina. You're not getting any younger. Emma is nine years younger, and see how she's overtaking you!”
Carlina kept a tight rein on her temper and met her mother's gaze without flinching. “You already have a grandchild, Mamma.” Thank God for that. She really had to call Gabriella and thank her younger sister again for taking that burden off her. “Little Lilly is now almost eight years old. Benedetta will never catch up with that, so you can relax.”
“Let's not have any negative thoughts on this beautiful day,” Benedetta grabbed her sister's hand. “I want us to celebrate!” Her gaze fell on Stefano's blinking recorder. “I say . . . are you still recording this?”
Garini nodded. “Emma's statement will be valuable help finding the murderer.”
Benedetta blanched. “Oh, Madonna. Is it possible that Emma's in danger?” Her voice rose. “And my grandchild? Will my grandchild be safe?”
Lucio drew himself up. “I'm still here, Benedetta. I'll protect my wife and baby.”
Benedetta stared at him. “But what can you do against a determined murderer? You're not trained to fight with desperate men!”
“Now please remain calm,” Garini said. “Hysterics won't help anyone.”
Benedetta flashed such a scorching look at him that it put the hot midday sun to shame. “It's easy for you to say so! You don't have a baby to lose!”
“That's just my point,” Fabbiola wagged her head and lifted her ever-present cushion like an accusing shield. “If he had a baby of his own, he might react differently. Carlina, I really think you should consider it. You're not getting any younger.”
That was enough. Carlina grabbed the recording device, switched it off, then took Stefano by the arm and pulled him with her. “All right, Mamma,” she said with clenched teeth. “We're off for a bit of sex. Don't disturb us, or you might risk your future grandchild.”
Thank God S
tefano came with her without resisting. She pulled him around the corner of the hotel, out of earshot of the assembled family, then stopped, her face hot. “Sorry about that. I just couldn't stand it any longer.” She looked at her dusty sandals, then gave him a fleeting glance. “I guess you have to go to the police station now, don't you?”
He looked down at her, a smile lurking in his eyes. “Not yet. Besides, you should never waste an excellent idea.” He took her hand and led her inside the hotel.
When Garini met Lampone in the late afternoon at the police station, they both said the same thing at the same time: “I've got plenty of news for you.”
Lampone laughed. It transformed his whole face. “You go first,” he said. “I'm sorry that Ambrosiano isn't here, but he already reported everything he learned to me, and I'll pass it on to you. He had to finish some work on another case.”
“No problem.” Garini took a minute to organize his thoughts, then he plunged into the details of Ernesto's and Nora's story as well as all the intricate details of how the Mantoni family worked. When he had finished, he leaned back and waited.
Lampone scratched his head. “It doesn't look good for that young cousin of yours.”
Garini didn't correct him about the relationship. Ernesto felt like a cousin. “I know.” His voice was even.
Lampone looked at him with his strange light-brown eyes. “He had a motive, no alibi, the means, and he was at the spot.”
“I'm aware of that.”
“And yet, you don't think that he did it, did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Garini frowned. He had to find the right words now, words that would convince Lampone, but he found it difficult to do so without losing his standing. How did you explain instinct? “Merely my understanding of his character.”
“How about the theory of an accident?” Lampone insisted. “It's not unreasonable to assume that they met and started a verbal fight. Then Rosari pulled the gun and Ernesto might have jumped at him, turning the gun against him by accident. Remember the strange entry of the bullet.”
temptation in florence 05 - seaside in death Page 17