Model Under Cover--Dressed to Kill

by Carina Axelsson

I laughed, but I could feel my colour rising again. I’d heard Italian (okay, so he was half American, but still) guys were huge flirts, and so far, Lucas seemed to be bearing that out. “Come on, I’ll get you a Coke with a lemon slice in it. That’s always good for stomach trouble.” We got our drinks and walked to a far corner of the store. I noticed Sebastian watching me, but I avoided making eye contact. He’d spent time with Francesca uninterrupted, and now it was my turn to spend time with Lucas – he was important to the case after all. I was wondering about the best way to ask him about Ugo’s visit this morning, when he brought it up himself.

  “Listen,” Lucas whispered as he leaned in close to my ear. “I wanted to tell you what happened after you left this morning. Someone else – the third person, now – told me that if someone called Rinconi came looking to sell antique tarocchi cards that I was to inform him as soon as possible. He offered to buy them immediately – and at any price. He seemed quite desperate to have them.”

  “This third person,” I said carefully, “was he wearing dark clothes, bracelets and a gold watch?”

  Lucas was adamant he couldn’t reveal his clients’ identities, but I could see by his reaction that the description had rung true.

  I couldn’t believe it! How did Ugo know about the cards? And why say someone called Rinconi would be selling them? Rinconi was Elisabetta’s last name. And of course he knew Elisabetta was dead.

  “But unlike the other two people,” Lucas continued, “this third person asked me specifically about three antique tarocchi cards. It can’t just be coincidence…”

  No, I thought, it can’t.

  I had to see Ugo as soon as possible and get some answers out of him. He was definitely holding back some information from me. But what? And why didn’t he tell me – especially as he was the one who’d asked me to solve this case?

  “By the way, I’d be interested to see any other cards your…godmother might have…” His eyes were curious. Did he still think I’d stolen them?

  I decided to play it cool. “There are no others. But thank you, Lucas, for telling me about the third caller. And I promise that if I decide to sell the cards you’ll be the first know.”

  He smiled, and I tried to the stop colour rising in my cheeks again by asking another question. “By the way, you didn’t happen to notice anything especially unusual about my cards, did you? Besides that they’re old and possibly famous?”

  He shook his head. “No. They looked to be in good shape, no strange marks or, worse, tears – that can really hurt the value of a card. But just let me know when you’d like me to look at them again. Or, I could tell you more over dinner and maybe show you around Milan a bit?” He saw the doubt in my eyes and quickly added, “Of course, if you’ve been feeling sick then you’re probably not hungry or in the mood to sightsee. But maybe we could go out for a drink or something?”

  He’d been flirting with me earlier, but still his question caught me by surprise.

  In the event it was easy to back out. I told him I had to work tomorrow and that it was better I had a good night’s sleep; my agency would probably drop me like a hot potato if I had to cancel again tomorrow.

  Lucas totally understood and we made tentative plans to meet up the next day – to talk about tarocchi. If he was hoping this would lead to more than just tarocchi, well, I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

  “At the very least, though, why don’t I walk you home?” Lucas had just asked this question when Sebastian suddenly appeared at my side.

  “Axelle, I’m going to take Francesca home quickly. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Actually I do, I thought. I wanted to ask him if driving her home had anything to do with the case, but with Lucas standing in between us I kept my thoughts to myself. Instead I said, “Don’t worry about me, Sebastian. Lucas has just offered to take me home.” I smiled at him.

  Sebastian looked annoyed. “I can come right back…”

  “Don’t worry,” Lucas said smoothly.

  Ignoring Lucas, Sebastian quietly said to me, “If that’s how you want it…”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  “Have fun.”

  “You too.”

  I made plans to meet Lucas again fifteen minutes later. I hadn’t seen Ugo, but I had to speak to Alessandro before I left.

  He was surrounded by people; it was difficult to get close. But I was certain he’d seen me – though he’d quickly averted his glance. What was that about?

  I pushed my way towards him. “You again?” he asked. He had a drink in one hand and was clearly enjoying himself.

  “Yes, I’m here with friends. I saw you and just wanted to know how you’re getting on.”

  “Not well. I miss Elisabetta. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “I know, it must be very hard for you,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “I guess it’s good to keep yourself busy.”

  “Sure,” he said impatiently.

  “I noticed you were limping earlier. What happened? Are you okay?” I tried.

  “I twisted my ankle going down some stairs. Nothing major.” He was watching me. “How about you? How are you doing?” He crushed some ice in his teeth as he waited for me to answer.

  “I’m well, thanks. Work is going great – but I hardly have to tell you how busy Milan can get.”

  He pushed his long blond hair behind his ears and leaned close to me. “What about Elisabetta?” he whispered in his sing-song, accented English. “Have you heard anything else about her? I still haven’t figured out where she had to go on Tuesday night – have you?”

  I shook my head. “But why is it so important to know what she was planning on doing?”

  I saw my question took him by surprise, but he hid it well. “For sentimental reasons.” He pulled back and watched me again for a moment. “Anyway,” he said, his manner suddenly brisk, “keep me posted, all right?”

  “Sure.” I watched as he quickly turned and joined the large group standing beside us.

  Some questioning! I hadn’t gleaned much, but his sudden limp made me wonder. As did his persistence in following up on Elisabetta’s whereabouts on Tuesday night. “Sentimental reasons” he’d claimed. Hmm…

  I suddenly felt hungry and tired. I’d been running on adrenaline all day and hadn’t had a proper meal since breakfast. I also had plenty of new information bubbling in my head. Around us the party was fizzling out. Many people had left and others were heading out of the doors. I looked at my watch. I had just enough time to get back to the flat before Mrs B started looking out for me.

  I waved goodbye to Ellie and she mouthed that she’d be leaving in a few minutes. Then Lucas and I headed out of the door and into the night.

  It was a short walk to the model flat. We quickly fell into an easy rhythm as Lucas led me down side streets and across quiet squares. Along the way he pointed out churches and buildings where famous people lived. Inevitably, however, the subject returned to the tarot cards. I asked him about the meaning of my cards.

  “Ha! It is not straightforward. To be a good reader you have to know the cards, but you have to have intuition, too. Good intuition is vital to bring nuance to the reading and also to foresee problems. Also, don’t forget that as you lay the cards out on the table a card’s strength and positivity can be made weaker or stronger depending on which cards are next to it. Even the way a card is laid – with the picture facing the reader or facing the person having the reading? – has an effect on the outcome…”

  “Wow. I had no idea there was so much to it,” I said. “I thought the pictures told a clear story. I didn’t know there was such detailed interpretation involved.”

  “Most people don’t realize that. It’s why good tarot readers have an almost magical aura around t
hem.”

  “Okay, but in general, what is the basic meaning of the cards I have? Surely every card has a sort of intrinsic meaning that remains the same no matter how it’s interpreted?”

  Lucas nodded. “Yes, absolutely. So for instance, we talked about the death card that you have, with the grinning skeleton.”

  “Yes…”

  “Well that card always refers to mortality. But, again, depending on the cards that are laid out next to it during a reading it can also be interpreted to mean a drastic life change of some sort – or even a fear of some kind. It doesn’t always refer to a death.”

  I nodded as I took in everything he said. “Okay…and what about that man who looks like a magician? Does he refer to magic or fortune?”

  “That’s actually called the magician card. He’s a kind of magician in that he is working with his hands and can seem to make something out of nothing. So the magician can also refer to manual skill.”

  Funnily, when I heard that I immediately thought of Falco and what Lavinia had said about him being very good with his hands – how he would draw and even sew his own clothes.

  “And what about the lady on horseback?”

  “She’s more difficult to interpret. The image has no obvious clue to the meaning. It would help if I had the other cards in the deck – then I might be able to figure her out by a process of elimination. But she could refer to a love of art or productivity, to various roles associated with medieval women. Something like a wife or mother, queen or heiress. I’m sorry I can’t be more precise…”

  We were standing outside my building now and facing each other. He was tall. I looked up and into those green, green eyes of his. There was an easy elegance in the way he dressed and styled himself that definitely marked him out as Italian – though to hear him speak English, you’d think he was one hundred per cent American. That’s the advantage of being both, I thought.

  His look was flirtatious, but his curiosity about the tarot cards was genuine. As we approached the flat, I wasn’t sure quite what he intended, but in the event he smiled, stepped back slightly and said, “I’m serious about helping you, Axelle. Let me know if I can, all right?”

  I was relieved not to have got into any kind of awkward romantic situation with Lucas. I thanked him for bringing me home and we confirmed our plans to meet again tomorrow. His insight was invaluable – I definitely wanted him to have another look at the cards. But in the meantime, I really needed to climb into bed and get a good night’s sleep. I had the feeling tomorrow was going to be another busy day.

  The main thing I would need to do was confront Ugo. I was sure he was hiding a missing piece of the puzzle and somehow I’d have to get it out of him. But when and how?

  I had my Cutie-Pie booking all day. But I also needed to move forward with this case and my instinct told me that Ugo was the key to that. I had to see him in person – and if the messages he’d left on my phone were anything to go by, he was curious about how I was doing…

  I quickly texted him saying that I was sorry I hadn’t called him all day but that I’d been working the entire time and hadn’t been alone for one moment (that much was true). I also added that I would contact him first thing in the morning – he just didn’t know that it would be at his house and in person!

  At 6.30 a.m. my alarm clock roused me from a deep sleep. I felt great and stretched lazily in my bed. I missed Halley, my West Highland White Terrier. At home she slept on my bed and in the mornings it was her cute little fuzzy face with its two black button eyes and wet black nose that woke me. Okay, sometimes her bad breath woke me, too, but, still, I missed her. I reached over and stopped the alarm. No time for online research this morning, I thought. I had to get up and go to Ugo’s.

  Last night after getting back I’d debated for some time before finally phoning Sebastian to ask him whether he could find out for me what time Ugo left his apartment in the mornings. The only reason I’d hesitated was because I definitely did not want him thinking I was just trying to find out if he was still with Francesca. In the end, though, I phoned, because a case is a case is a case, and with lives and reputations on the line, it had to come first.

  It turned out he was at his Pensione. He apologized for not walking me home and asked me if Moony-Eyes had been nice. And it turned out he knew from Francesca that Ugo worked out in the mornings at his home gym. He usually left his home at around nine.

  I had to get to my booking at nine, so I figured if I was at Ugo’s by 7.30 at the latest, then I’d have at least a good hour with him before I had to head off.

  I quickly got up and out of bed and put myself together. After yesterday, trousers – and not a dress or a skirt – would definitely be the key component of my #OOTD again. I pulled on a pair of old skinny white jeans – they were faded and soft and thin – a loose grey T-shirt, a studded pair of blue Converse high-tops, and a tiny black leather jacket. My rucksack completed the outfit. I had a quick breakfast and told Ellie I’d call her from the shoot. Then I ran to the metro station and caught a train to Moscova, the stop nearest Ugo’s apartment.

  Ugo was indeed surprised to see me. It was Maria who answered the intercom and I waited while she found him – she wouldn’t let me in without asking him first.

  “Axelle, is that you?” Ugo’s voice blared out through the loudspeaker.

  I assured him it was and he buzzed me through. I took the lift to the top floor where Maria was waiting for me at the door. She led me straight to his gym.

  I’d already decided to jump right in so I hadn’t even set my rucksack down before I looked at him and said, “Ugo, why were you at Professor Greene’s yesterday?”

  He was breathing hard, his legs and arms pumping as he worked on his cross-trainer. “I wasn’t—” he began.

  “Ugo, please,” I said, “don’t deny it. I saw you! I was there.” I was glaring at him.

  He hopped off his cross-trainer and wiped the sweat off his face with a towel. “So I did see you.”

  “Yes, you did. But I need to know what you were doing there; if I’m going to solve this case, I need you to be straight with me, Ugo.”

  “I was checking about some Renaissance art. Professor Greene is the best expert in Milan and I needed some advice.” He avoided looking me in the eye. I watched him as he went to a bench press and started lifting weights. He wasn’t unfriendly but he was definitely trying to brush off my questions.

  “Ugo, come on,” I said as I walked across the room and stood over him. “You’re keeping something back from me and I won’t stop until I find out what it is. So unless you want me to follow you around all day I’d start spilling the beans. Now. You asked me to help you find out what really happened to Elisabetta. Fine. But you seem to have your own theory – one you don’t want to share. Why not? What is going on?”

  “Nothing. I swear.” Ugo looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know more than you do.”

  “I don’t believe that, Ugo. And you know something else? If you’re looking for three antique tarot cards that belonged to Elisabetta, then you’re wasting your time at Professor Greene’s because I have them.”

  That finally surprised him. He set the weights down and looked up at me. “You do? Are you sure?” He looked confused. “But how can you have them?”

  “Come clean with me about everything and I’ll tell you. I ended up trapped in a tunnel yesterday because of this case, you know – it’s a miracle I escaped.” My anger was rising and I paced in front of him as I let him have it. “That’s the real reason I didn’t call you back yesterday. Someone is after those tarot cards – and it’s not just you.”

  I was really angry now. All of my frustration about yesterday’s wild-goose chase and my lack of solid leads bubbled to the surface. “I risked my life once to help you but I’m not going to do it again. And if you don’t tell me right now what is r
eally going on, then after I leave here I’m going straight to the police with the cards – and I’ll wash my hands of all of this. Is that what you want? Some friend of Elisabetta’s you are.”

  That last volley stung him. He rose up angrily and flung his towel down to the ground. “All right, I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “Everything you know?”

  “Yes, everything I know – but you have to promise me that it won’t go beyond this room. Please.” He took a deep breath and stood with his back to me, hands on hips.

  “First of all,” he said, “what I’m about to tell you is a rumour – and I’m not sure how much of it to believe. Elisabetta believed it – in fact, if there’s any truth to it, it might be why she was killed…but, again, I have no way of knowing. So, I’ll start at the beginning…”

  He motioned for me to sit in a leather armchair. Then he began. “At the time that Falco became seriously ill his business was in very, very bad shape. Basically, he was as close to bankruptcy as you can get without it becoming official.”

  “You already told me that.”

  “Esatto. Well, at that time there were a lot of rumours going through the Ventini atelier and one of them concerned the dresses from his last collection.”

  “And…?”

  “Well, the most spectacular dresses in that collection were embroidered with jewels – real ones. Like, I mean precious and semi-precious stones – rubies, sapphires, peridots, amethysts and many, many more. You see, Falco was very good with his hands. He could really sew!” I let Ugo know that I’d already found that out. “And in the lead-up to what turned out to be his last show, he was in the atelier until very late every night, either working alone or together with the seamstresses – for hours on end. He did this before every show. But for this collection he worked even longer hours than usual and regularly sent everyone home so he could work on them – especially the grand showstopper dress – alone. Granted, the dresses in his last collection had much more embroidery than usual, but, still…this caused some of the in-house jokers to suggest that he was probably exchanging the real stones for crystal and glass replicas…”