by TG Wolff
He pointed to the stone façade looming over us. “We are here. The Lion is one of Rome’s most exclusive hotels.”
I’d done my homework. “It’s hosted dignitaries, celebrities, more than a few presidents. The queen. What were a group of ag geeks doing in a place like this?”
“Shall we go inside?” Carlo led the way, nodding to the doorman who granted us entry. He spoke in rapid Italian. I caught a word here and there and the name of our target. Isabella D’Onofrio.
D’Onofrio embodied the opulence and luxury of Il Leone. She had a gravity-defying figure. Her impressive chest, swaddled in antique lace, entered the room well ahead the rest of her. The dress hugged her narrow waist and graciously flared to accommodate hips built to cradle a man. She was in a class with Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, and Sofia Vergara.
Her face. Yeah, she had a face but, yikes, the body. I’m straight and I had a hard time keeping my eyes off her. Carlo? He tripped over his tongue on the way into her office.
“Buon pomeriggio, signora Matta, signor Giancarlo.”
Carlo turned the charm to high and the two were off in a rhapsody of fluid Italian I couldn’t decipher. D’Onofrio left her desk for one of three full-size filing cabinets. This woman was old school. Sure, there was a computer on her desk, but the drawer of the file cabinet she pulled out was full. This was a woman who believed in print. Back at her desk, she opened the file and began reading. Carlo glanced at me. He saw it, too. D’Onofrio continued her monologue as she extracted a thick manila file.
I stood up, drawing D’Onofrio’s attention to me. “Parle inglese?”
I crammed in a few phrases in the sleepless hours on the plane. Where is the bathroom? Do you speak English? Did you kill my husband? Just the necessities.
“Yes, of course, signora Matta. I understand your company is interested in the Feed the World summit we hosted last year.” D’Onofrio smiled, humoring me.
I hate being humored.
“I’m interested in Mr. Gavriil Rubchinsky. He had a large policy with our company and our protocol is to thoroughly investigate the circumstances of all unnatural deaths. Is that your file on Mr. Rubchinsky?” I pointed to the opened folder with my chin.
D’Onofrio pulled the file closer, a selfish child determined to keep a toy for herself. “No, not of him specifically. I keep a file on each corporate function. It helps to tailor our services upon their return.”
“Such an elite venue for a summit on world hunger.” The juxtaposition of a meeting to solve third-world problems in a place where a cup of coffee cost twenty dollars smelled fishy.
“Thank you, we do try.” D’Onofrio sat taller in her chair, folding her hands over the file as she graciously accepted the compliment I didn’t give. Whatever. As long as she told me what I needed, I didn’t care.
“Scusi,” Carlo said, fading into a corner on a pretense of taking a call. He turned in a slow circle as he spoke, discretely photographing the room for future reference.
I kept D’Onofrio’s attention on me. “Did you coordinate the event?”
“The CEO of a sponsor, AgNow! made the request personally with our president and we were happy to accommodate. Mr. Winston is a frequent guest, a generous man.”
Buford Winston. Again! My fingers itched to give the old cowboy a lesson in how to choke a weasel. D’Onofrio preened as she spoke about Winston, making me wonder how generous blow hard Buford had been with the generously proportioned D’Onofrio.
“Sounds as though this was an important conference for you.” A soft growl rumbled in the back of my throat.
D’Onofrio sighed. “It was. Such a shame.”
It wasn’t a sigh of grief or sympathy. It was self-serving regret associated with having one’s personal plans inconvenienced by a little thing like a man’s death. My upper lip curled, exposing my canines. “Gavriil Rubchinsky’s death didn’t fit into your program?”
D’Onofrio’s face stilled as her hazel eyes locked on mine. She instantly appeared a decade older and twice as formidable. Or maybe it was her hands curling into claws. “Signor Rubchinsky was out on the street and carelessly stepped in front of traffic. Easily explained. But Francisco Thelan, his death was distasteful.” She shook her head, returning to her cultured façade. “But he is not your concern. What can I tell you about signor Rubchinsky? I apologize for rushing you but pressing issues must be seen to.”
My tablet was readied for notes. “Mr. Rubchinsky attended a reception here on the night of his death.”
“Yes. AgNow! sponsored a grand reception. A popular band played. Tickets were sold with proceeds going to a charity led by Mr. Winston. Mr. Rubchinsky attended, as did most of the scientists and leaders attending the broader event.”
“Did Mr. Rubchinsky stay for the entire event?”
“No. The security film showed he left near nine in the evening. The band was soon to take the stage and a crowd had gathered, but Mr. Rubchinsky was seen leaving on his own.”
“What happened after he left the hotel?”
“I am afraid all I have is speculation. We know he exited to the right on foot. Shortly after he was out of the camera, ambulance and police arrived.”
“When did the other man, Francisco Thelan, die?”
“He has a policy with your company? No?” D’Onofrio stood. “I have other commitments I need to attend to. I hope my answers have been useful.” With the skill and dexterity of a politician, she had us out of her office, down the hall, and standing in the public atrium, shaking her hand.
Carlo and I stood under the fresco ceiling in silence as D’Onofrio hurried across the atrium, disappearing through French doors.
“Oops,” I said, fingertips to my cheek. “I left my purse in her office.”
“I will wait for you here.” Carlo took a position leaning against an embroidered Queen Anne chair with a clear line of sight to those French doors. “Women and their purses.”
With the same casual demeanor, I returned to the hallway, to the office. The middle cabinet, second drawer, was ruthlessly organized. The file I wanted was labeled AgNow!
When you have limited time to accomplish a task, the key isn’t to move fast. It’s to move precisely and efficiently. A drowning man who flails about only drowns himself faster. It’s the man who can stay calm and put energy to work for him who survives.
Using the tablet, I photographed every page. D’Onofrio was blessedly OCD. The file included the police reports for both Gavriil and Francisco Thelan. Handwritten reports from hotel security staff and witness statements. Newspaper clippings. Sure, all were in Italian, but I had Carlo John Carlo.
The closing leaf of the file had a thumb drive clipped to it. The Italian scrawl on the sticky note was easy enough to decipher—security footage. I returned the rest of the file and closed the drawer, keeping the space neat. I trusted Carlo to keep D’Onofrio away, but shit happens. Better to be prepared.
The middle desk drawer contained a rubber-banded stack of identical thumb drives. It was the work of five seconds to pocket the original and replace it with a blank.
The door handle turned.
“Isabella? Dov’e’—” The uniformed man frozen in the doorway was still waiting for his pubes to grow in. I turned on the waterworks. The long hair of the wig veiled my face as I sobbed with grief. Remember my mother? At my funeral? Nailed it.
“Scusi. Scusi.” He froze in the doorway. A deer in headlights.
I sniffled like a pig rooting for truffles. “I…I j-just need a moment. Un momento.”
“Certamente…scusi…” And he was gone.
Luck shined on me by sending a man. A woman may have felt the need to console me. But a man? Tears make them run faster than the bulls of Pamplona.
Sucker.
Leveraging the “distressed woman” cover, I snatched a tissue from D’Onofrio’s desk and left the office with my head down, sniffling and dabbing my face.
Carlo
had his own cover. His lips were locked on D’Onofrio’s. He dipped her low, so low she had no choice but to wrap her arms around his neck to keep from falling.
I walked toward the door, crossing Carlo’s line of sight. A twitch of his brow acknowledged me. He didn’t rush the kiss, but then maybe it was an Italian thing. They didn’t rush meals. They didn’t rush down sidewalks. Why would they rush kisses?
Carlo brought D’Onofrio upright, holding her when she swayed. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen, her eyes wide with, ahem, admiration. She threw herself onto Carlo. His mouth belonged to her as he staggered backwards, his hand finding purchase on a high chair back.
Hot damn! I swallowed a shocked gasp. I couldn’t see Carlo’s face, but his wide arms and broad stance said he’d been blindsided.
I cleared my throat. “Mr. Giancarlo? I believe you are on my time.”
D’Onofrio lifted her head. The eyes of a hungry cougar bore into me, but she released Carlo. He turned to me and I had to bite my tongue to stop from laughing. His eyes were so wide that white surrounded the chocolate middle. His lips were sunset red, her lipstick color, matching the flush in his cheeks.
He regained his composure and returned his attention to D’Onofrio for a gracious ending. Taking her hands in his, Carlo kissed her knuckles. He said something, and she smiled. He stepped away and she began to take a step forward, but Carlo held up a hand, staying another assault.
He spun and left on wicked fast strides, grabbing my elbow as he passed.
I made it around the corner before I broke out in belly laughs. Tears made walking impossible. A glance at Carlo’s face increased the intensity. He appeared…affronted. Insulted. Accosted. “I, uh, really appreciate you taking one for the team.”
His brows quirked at the Americanism.
“What you did back there. Letting her eat you up. Did she leave bite marks?” I tugged at his collar. “Yep.”
Carlo slapped my hands away. “She did not leave marks.” He ran to a window and pulled his collar down. Three red lines streaked from under his jaw to his collar bone. His head snapped to me, his eyes wide with shock, his mouth in a perfect O. “She marked me.”
Carlo was obviously used to being the seductor rather than the seductee. His expression brought on a new bout of laughter. He scowled because he knew I wasn’t laughing with him. I was laughing at him.
Errant chuckles escaped as I tried to get on with business. “I need a computer and a printer.”
“I have a small office I use.”
“Perfect. We can stop at a pharmacy and get some disinfectant for those scratches.”
Carlo muttered in Italian as he led the way. Once and again he pressed his fingers to his throat, staunching the thin lines of blood pressing to the surface. “Black owes me.”
Carlo’s “small office” was a closet in his apartment. Size aside, it had a new laptop with a large flat screen, a commercial-grade printer, and all the accoutrements I needed. He connected my tablet, downloaded the images, and sent them to print. I was intimately familiar with the report on my husband. I took the time to make sure every word, every line was identical to the one I’d received and had translated. This one was old news.
I collected a small group of pages, stapled them, and handed them to Carlo. “Read the report on Thelan.”
“Francisco Thelan. Age forty-two. Next of kin is a wife and two children.” Carlo read the facts with the same enthusiasm he would a grocery list. “Colleagues noted he complained of not feeling well after the band started. About nine-ten to nine-twenty. A maid found him dead in the bathroom the following morning.”
The photos were brutal. Thelan died with his pants around his ankles in a pool of his own blood and feces. My best guess was he fell off the throne during a bout of diarrhea, smashing his head on the corner of the counter next to him. It wasn’t a pretty way to die.
Carlo flipped back and forth between two pages. “He was poisoned.”
I leaned over his shoulder, but the report was nothing but alphabet soup with a double helping of vowels. “Were they sure?”
“Si. A lethal dose of…”
He held it out for me to read. “Organophosphate.” English didn’t add sense to the fifteen-letter word. With my chemistry background, I understood what it was by classification. As far as what it did? I knew it didn’t go boom. “What is it?” I mused to myself, but Carlo took it as a question for both of us.
He brought up the internet and typed it in. The search engine returned hundreds of thousands of hits, but the front page told us enough. “Insecticides. Herbicides. Nerve agents.” He read the results as he changed the webpage language to English.
“What are the symptoms of poisoning?”
Carlo clicked on the third entry. “Moderate to severe symptoms include chest discomfort, heavy sweating, loss of muscle control. Involuntary urination and bowel movement.”
I straightened up to pace. “We have a man at an ag conference killed with an insecticide. Did they figure out how he was poisoned?”
Carlo returned to the printed pages. “It was in his drink. He must have carried it up to his room. Do you think Rubchinsky’s death is related to this man’s?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I wasn’t expecting there to be a second death. How could they be related? Rubchinsky was pushed into the street long before Thelan was killed.”
“Before he was found,” Carlo corrected. “The time of death set near ten. The notes indicate he likely ingested the toxin between eight-thirty and nine-thirty.”
“Which sandwiches the time Gavriil died. We need to watch the video, tracking both men.”
The thumb drive contained video feeds from five cameras. Two covered the main atrium. Two covered the exterior entrance. One covered the interior entrance. Carlo arranged all five feeds on the large screen, took them all to seven o’clock, then set them in motion.
The night of the event, the opulent atrium was the place to be. Away from the business of guests checking in and out was a long buffet, four portable bars, and a dozen graciously spaced high-top tables. Signs pointed to the same French doors D’Onofrio has disappeared through. This was where the band had played.
“There’s Gavriil.” My husband stepped out of the elevator in his favorite brown suit. A woman stepped out with him, smoothing her skirt over her legs. He said something, laid a hand on her shoulder. She beamed at him.
Pardon my French but…who the fuck is the bitch with my husband?
Leaning in, I got close and personal with the woman. Over thirty. Dark hair. Nose too big for her face. She wore a black dress and black shoes. I looked for something remarkable about her because when I found this woman, I wanted to be sure I was kicking the right ass.
“Can you zoom in on the woman?”
“You’re in the way.” Carlo shouldered me aside. He froze all the images and maximized the one I wanted.
She had a small mole on her left cheek, under the corner of her eye. She wore a necklace with a charm. Her hand was covering it. Undoubtedly a habit.
Carlo set the screens back. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know yet.” I didn’t take my eyes off my husband. He wound his way through the clustered crowd to a group near the bar.
“There is Thelan.” Carlo pointed to one of the men in the group, drink in hand. Gavriil now stood next to him with the woman on his other side. Even with the two cameras, we couldn’t see all the faces. There were eight in all. Gavriil and the woman. Thelan. Four men. A small Asian woman a head and a half shorter than the rest. Her I recognized—Gavriil’s assistant at the university, Dr. Quili Liu.
The characters jerked like marionettes as the feed moved quickly through time. Drinks. Laughter. More drinks. More laughter. Appetizers. Enter a big man.
I slapped a hand on Carlo’s arm. “Slow it down. What’s blow hard Buford doing?”
Carlo mirrored my posture. “He is speaking to Rubchinsky. Neither
is happy.”
Both were pitched forward, two alpha males, unwilling to back down. The rest of the group shifted, glaring at Buford with narrowed eyes, tight mouths. They didn’t like what Buford was spewing, but no one said a word. The woman laid a hand on Gavriil’s forearm. His posture instantly stilled. His mouth moved one last time, then my husband turned his back on Buford. Buford made a parting comment before walking out of the camera shot. The group closed back in, but the easy, congenial body language was gone.
A waiter entered from the bottom of the screen, carrying a tray with drinks. He excused himself and handed one of the drinks to Gavriil. My husband spoke to the waiter, who shook his head and left to deliver his remaining drinks. Eight, then ten minutes passed. The characters in this little play all looked uncomfortable. Lots of heads down. Not much laughter. Liu spoke to Gavriil. He shook his head, set the drink down, and ran his fingers through his hair. I wished I could hear what was said.
The mystery woman put a hand on Gavriil’s arm and spoke to him. His hand went into his coat pocket and pulled out a room key. Oh, no he didn’t! He handed it to her! Son of a bitch! The woman walked across the foyer and was swallowed up by the elevator. She returned minutes later wearing a coat and carrying a canvas bag like you would use for groceries. She returned Gavriil’s key, and he walked her out the door. Center stage of one of the exterior cameras, he kissed her forehead. She said a few words and left.
Gavriil returned to his friends. The group was smaller. Liu was no longer present. They were also down a man. One of the men greeted him as he returned. Gavriil gestured with his hands in response, the way he did when he agreed or conceded the point. Liu reentered the scene, a pained expression on her face. My husband leaned down, bringing his ear closer to her mouth. He shook his head, they spoke briefly, then he left the table. She left at nearly the same time, going in the opposite direction.
“You keep your eyes on Thelan. I got Gavriil.”
Gavriil didn’t hurry. His gait was notably casual, relaxed. He exited the building. The camera angle limited the view to twenty, maybe thirty feet. Seconds after he left the frame, the people in the video abruptly turned. Gavriil was dead. Again.