by Beate Boeker
“My name is Frani,” the caller said on the phone. “I'm the psychologist at Sollicciano and in charge of the prisoners here.” The clipped tone spoke volumes about the man's attitude.
Garini cringed in anticipation of Frani's next words. “Is everything all right?”
“No, Commissario, nothing is right, nothing at all.” Frani's voice sounded grim. “Ever since you brought Fabbiola Mantoni-Ashley to us, this prison is not what it used to be.”
“What happened?” Garini heard his own voice coming out sharper than he'd wanted.
“Nothing much, Commissario, if you don't count the fact that Signora Mantoni-Ashley asked with vehemence to be allowed to knit.”
“You can't let her knit,” Garini interrupted. “That's too dangerous. The victim was found with a knitting needle inside her.”
“I'm aware of that, Commissario.” Frani's said with acidity. “Because I do read the files that tell me about my inmates, but when the matter was explained to her, she said she had to occupy herself somehow. However, when we suggested several activities, she refused them all, saying it was all too boring. Instead, she organized a prison a cappella choir.”
Garini blinked. “A what?”
“A choir that sings without instruments. Because they aren't allowed to have instruments, she chose this style of music.” Frani's voice was dry. “She has now organized the inmates according to pitches and is busy composing songs.”
Stefano shook his head. He had not expected that. “It could be worse,” he said with relief. “I mean, singing isn't a bad occupation, is it?”
“It all depends,” Frani said, “because Mrs. Mantoni-Ashley has taken existing melodies from popular songs and changed the texts in a way that would make you feel very uncomfortable if you could hear them.”
“Oh.” Garini swallowed. Having a probable mother-in-law in prison was bad enough. Having her compose songs that defamed the police was even worse.
“I just thought I'd let you know. She's training them now – four-part harmonies.”
“I didn't know she could sing.”
“She can't.” Frani's voice was dry. “At the moment, a hooker and a drug dealer are competing for the soloist parts. I'll thank you to take her off my hands before they ask for a public performance.”
“I'm doing all I can.” Garini finished the conversation with an ugly feeling deep inside his gut. The flooding of his apartment, the fight with Carlina, and the arrest of Fabbiola against his instincts – it all worked together to make him miserable. When the phone rang again, and he recognized Uncle Teo's number, he groaned. Probably the patriarch of the family was going to throw in his weight to make sure that he released Fabbiola immediately. If only he could do so.
He suppressed the impulse to let the phone ring and answered with something of a snarl. “I'm truly sorry about the situation, but I can't release Fabbiola. I promise I'm doing all I can to collect enough evidence to clear her, but I can't work miracles.”
“I'm sure you'll soon find a solution, my boy,” Uncle Teo's soft voice took the wind out of his sails. “And I can imagine how difficult life is at the moment. Is Carlina giving you hell?”
“No. I mean--, yes.” Garini found it difficult to deal with this sudden understanding when he'd prepared himself to encounter fierce opposition. Really, the Mantoni family was completely unpredictable.
Uncle Teo sighed. “I have faith in you, Stefano. You'll get her out. Besides, she might be safer in prison than at home.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, obviously, the murderer wants Fabbiola to be the culprit. If she had not been arrested, maybe the murderer would take other steps to get her out of the way.”
Garini led out his breath slowly. He had not considered that. In his shame and haste to uncover more clues, he had not stopped to think clearly. Madonna, he really had to get a grip and stop being blinded by emotions. “Would you tell Carlina about this possibility?” he asked. “I'd appreciate that.”
“Sure.” Uncle Teo said. “But I'm calling for another reason. I know that you're very busy trying to find clues and that you don't have time to go house hunting. I may have an apartment for you and Carlina.”
Garini suddenly realized what Uncle Teo was doing. He wasn't giving him hell like the other members of the family. He was putting a carrot in front of his nose. “Do I understand that you're offering the apartment on the condition that I get Fabbiola out of prison?”
Uncle Teo gave a dry cough. “I wouldn't quite phrase it like that. But in case you don't get her out, the proximity to the Mantoni family might become difficult.”
Garini sucked in his breath. How delicately Uncle Teo had phrased this. Putting it bluntly, he could forget Carlina if he didn't find Olga's killer. He had deluded himself into thinking that his job wouldn't interfere with their relationship, had even closed his eyes to the tension Fabbiola's arrest had created, but of course, the old man was right. Under no circumstances could Carlina continue to share her life with the man who was responsible for putting Fabbiola behind bars. It felt as if the ground opened up in front of him. “I see.” His throat hurt.
“Think about it,” Uncle Teo said, “and when you've got a free minute, I'll take you to see the apartment. I think it would be a solution to all the problems you face.”
“All right. Thanks. I'll be in touch.” Garini hung up and put his head into his hands. The solution to all my problems. Yeah, sure.
He sighed and turned back to the reports he had been reading when the psychologist from Sollicciano had called. More than two hundred tourists and at least fifty percent of the inhabitants of Florence had seen suspicious people at the crucial time on Monday at the San Niccolò Tower. A dangerous looking Arab armed with a machine gun, a hunchback with a sinister look, an innocent looking boy with a whip, a tall woman with a fur coat and high heels but pajamas underneath, a giant with white hair, and a man with tattoos all over his face were some of the more fantastic sightings. Garini sighed again and pushed the files to the side. What utter crap.
He closed his eyes and reviewed all the facts again in his mind. Everything pointed to Fabbiola. But there had to be a crack somewhere. He just had to find it. He had to. His instinct led him to Ugo, Olga's son. Inheriting a million was powerful stuff. And it wasn't as if Olga had been an easy mother to deal with. If Carlina was right and he had just fallen in love, this might have been the trigger. No doubt Olga liked her son to be a mammone, a boy who spent his life underneath his mother's heel, never moving out, never starting a family of his own. Dammit, Carlina had been right. She had given him an important clue. But still, he would prefer her not to meddle. She was underestimating the danger. He pressed his lips together, remembering their fight. How could she accuse him of being a macho, when he only wanted to keep her safe? After all, hunting criminals was his job. She wasn't trained for it. If he had been a pilot in dire need of help, she wouldn't have walked in and wouldn't have tried to fly the plane herself without the slightest idea of what to do. Why didn't she get it into her head that being an investigating officer wasn't a sort of hobby anybody could take on? He wasn't overprotective or trying to hedge her in. He was just trying to save her from the consequences of sheer lunacy. Why didn't she see that?
He shook his head and forced himself to keep on reading. Maybe in the middle of all this nonsensical stuff, he would find the one thing that would solve the riddle. He just had to keep on looking. He just needed one little inspiration. Was that too much to ask?
But by eleven o'clock at night, he knew he had to stop without having glimpsed anything that looked promising. His eyes were gritty, and he realized that he had repeatedly turned the pages without taking in a single word. Damn. Cervi would not leave him working on Olga's case much longer. He expected him to close the file and only left him at peace because he thought that he was wrapping up all the paperwork involved in arresting a murderer. But he couldn't go on; he had to rest, just a few hours. Time to go home. He froz
e in the middle of the movement. Home, at the moment, was Carlina's apartment. He didn't feel that he was welcome, not after the fight they'd had. Damn. It took him ten minutes to compose a text message that would not sound as if he had given up on their love but would still let her know that he wasn't coming home. “Working late. Don't wait for me. Miss you.” Then he went to his own apartment, dragging his feet as he went upstairs, but when he entered his bedroom, he had to hold his breath. The wet ceiling and mattress had started to smell, and the musty atmosphere made him gag. Besides, there were new wet patches on the ceiling. No way.
He turned on his heels and booked himself into the hotel next door, feeling like an outcast in his own home town.
III
At six the next morning, he was back in the office and went through all the files left on his desk, but it was useless. Not a single clue ignited his tired brain. By nine o'clock, he was exhausted and welcomed even a call from Gloria with relief.
“A lady is asking to see you,” Gloria said with her usual bored voice.
“What about?”
“The murder of Olga Ottima.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“No.”
Garini suppressed a sigh. “All right. Send her up.”
Gloria made a strange sound in her throat. “I can't send her up. She asked you to go to her place. Like royalty, she was.”
“She asked me to come to her place? Did you note the address?”
“She said you knew it. She said to tell you that Aunt Violetta is asking for a visit.”
Garini suppressed a groan. Oh, no. Another member of the Mantoni family on a mission to pressure him. Then he sat up straighter. Maybe not. He really had to take the personal angle away from this investigation if he was to judge it clearly. Aunt Violetta had threatened Olga during her birthday party. She had said that she would find a “solution” for Uncle Teo. Was it possible that she had acted on it? Garini frowned. From all he had seen so far, Omar would do anything that Aunt Violetta asked of him. If Omar had indeed killed Olga, then Violetta was now in great difficulty. Her adored Fabbiola in prison, and her adored son the culprit. “I'm going to see her immediately.” He hung up and jumped on his motorbike to go to Aunt Violetta's villa, not taking Piedro on purpose. Let Cervi throw a fit; he didn't care. Who knew what Aunt Violetta was going to reveal? Maybe this was the light at the end of the tunnel.
Omar opened the door for him and inclined his head like a royal butler. The image of a lethal piece of beautiful wood came back to Garini as he looked at the dark face that gave nothing away. When Omar turned to close the door, Garini smelled a whiff of expensive aftershave. It reminded him that Omar may look and act like a servant but was also the beloved son and heir of Aunt Violetta.
Garini followed Omar into a living room at the back of the villa that looked strangely empty. But then he recalled that the wheelchair took up a lot of space which was probably the reason for the wide spacing of the furniture. Through the open French doors came sunlight and right in the middle of one broad shaft of sunlight sat Aunt Violetta on a sofa covered with faded brocade. Today, she was draped in a wide dress all in black that consisted of so many layers that her figure was camouflaged to the point of making him look for the person underneath all that fabric.
“Commissario!” It sounded like a bellow.
Garini inclined his head. “Signora.” He couldn't very well call her Aunt Violetta. By the daggers in her eyes, he could tell that this wasn't going to be a friendly call.
Omar sat on the sofa next to Aunt Violetta and leaned back, stretching out his long legs. However, for some reason he didn't look relaxed.
Violetta pressed her lips together and bent forward. “I have asked you to come to me because I want to know how you could have been so incredibly stupid to arrest Fabbiola for murder.”
Garini looked at her for a long moment. He could either take the official route and refuse to impart any information. Or he could spread out all the facts and see where it would take him. The latter approach was more likely to get her to talk – and to get her to let slip any clue he might not yet have heard about.
“Let me present the case to you by just listing the facts,” he said. “And then, you may judge for yourself.”
“Hold on.” She turned to Omar with a question on her face. He nodded, got up and came back with a hearing device that he handed to her. She fitted it onto her ear and fiddled with the regulator, then bent forward, her face serious. “Go ahead.”
“Olga Ottima upset everybody in the Mantoni family when she started to go out with Uncle Teo. First, because of the history with Fabbiola during their last year at school. Second, because she was an agent for the Finanza and collected information. Third, because she made poisonous remarks to each and every member of the family whenever Uncle Teo wasn't near. The family was in an uproar because of her.”
Aunt Violetta listened with an intensity that would have been flattering under any other circumstances. “Did she upset Carlina?”
For an instant, Carlina's angry face flashed through his mind as she had paced through the apartment after her confrontation with Olga. He could still hear her voice saying 'I'm going to kill Olga with my bare hands'. “Oh, yes, she did.”
Aunt Violetta pressed her wrinkled lips into one thin line. “Then it was bad. Go on.”
“On Monday morning, Fabbiola found a letter in her box. It was delivered by hand, and it asked her to come to the Tower San Niccolò by five o'clock. It also told her to eat the letter upon receipt.”
Aunt Violetta snorted in disgust.
“Fabbiola didn't eat it; she burned it. And she kept the appointment, because she believed that someone from her knitting circle wrote it. According to her, she went up the tower, didn't see anything or anybody as she was facing the wrong direction, then heard a shout, ran over to the other side of the tower, looked down, and saw Olga lying on the ground. She recognized her by her colorful raincoat. She got scared at that point, ran away, and told us she had been at home the whole day. However, later she was identified by a shop owner down the street, and finally, she told us the whole story as I'm telling it to you now.”
Aunt Violetta's mouth was working. “What a rigmarole.”
“When Olga was taken to the mortuary, they discovered a knitting needle inside her. It was the same size as one that Fabbiola was missing.”
“Che cazzo.”
Garini pretended he had not heard the swear word. At least she doesn't tell me anymore that I'm a fool. “Based on that evidence, I was ordered to arrest her.”
Aunt Violetta's milky eyes focused on him. “And do you believe that she did it?”
Garini slowly shook his head. “No. But she had the motive, the weapon, and she was on the spot. It's difficult to get her out of this one unless we can find an even better match for that murder.”
“Ah.” For an instant, the old woman stared into space. Then she asked, “Why do you think she didn't do it?”
“It's too organized. The . . . the psychology, for want of a better word, doesn't fit. Or maybe we'd better call the structure. The structure of the murder doesn't fit Fabbiola's character.”
Aunt Violetta nodded to herself. “I wasn't mistaken in my first impression of you. You're intelligent. Maybe a bit too crusty, but clever.”
Too crusty, my foot. Garini bent forward. “Actually, I'm glad you contacted me. I'm still trying to go back to the roots, back to what happened thirty years ago. To me, it seems incredible that Olga should harbor a grudge for such a long time. It's not normal.”
Aunt Violetta slowly shook her head. “You can't judge Olga by normal standards. She was crazy. I mean pathological.” Her gaze sharpened as she took in his skeptical expression. “Nuttier than a nutcake, if you want it in other words.”
Garini frowned. “She didn't seem like it.”
“That's why she was so dangerous. One didn't notice at first.” Aunt Violetta stared into space. “I once talked to Nico.�
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“Nico de Niro, Olga's boyfriend?”
“Yes.” Aunt Violetta nodded. “I knew his mother and ran into him at her house. I took him to the side and questioned him.”
I can well imagine that. “What did he say?”
“He said he was afraid of Olga.”
“Afraid of her?”
“Yes. She smothered him, wanted everything. He didn't have room to breathe. So he tried to finish the relationship three months before that dance night with Fabbiola.” A wheezing cough shook her body, then subsided. “But Olga would have none of it. She threatened to kill herself. He gave in and promised to stay with her. But when the weeks passed, he felt more and more under pressure. He couldn't call his soul his own anymore, he said. Then he realized that Fabbiola was interested in him. He knew that Fabbiola was strong and assertive, and he figured that she might be a good match to put against Olga. Besides, with school being over, they would not be forced to see each other every day, so he invited Fabbiola to the dance.”
“You mean he used her like a . . . a pawn sacrifice?”
“Exactly.” Aunt Violetta nodded. “But when Olga came to the dance and boxed Fabbiola to the ground, he realized that he had gotten in deeper than he could handle. So he decided to cut his losses and left town.”
Garini frowned. “Fabbiola said that Nico's mother always accused her of taking away her son. That doesn't fit to your story.”
Aunt Violetta lifted a withered eyebrow. “His mother had the same IQ as a flower. She never saw beyond her nose. Besides, Olga always made a point of being charming when she was around.”
Garini nodded. He had seen that side of Olga in action. “Are you still in touch with Nico's mother?”