Although it was the time agreed by everyone to meet up on the patio and go to the church, only Agata Galli, dressed all in black, showed up punctually. She couldn’t stop looking at the clock, visibly annoyed, waving her dark umbrella with a beautiful decorated silver grip. Chase came over to keep her company, exchanging a few words about the weather and the seasons. Unfortunately he immediately regretted his good intentions.
“Your Italian should be better, mio caro. How long have you been working here?” Agata asked.
“I’ve been in Tursenia since last July, so it’s been eight months,” he replied.
“It’s not good, caro ragazzo. You must aim to speak perfect, fluent Italian, no matter if you’ve only been here for few months. I was in Germany and France for a while, during the Second World War, and I immediately learnt their languages.”
Chase remembered what his mom would say about old people: “Always show respect, especially if they are war veterans.” Even if it was the petulant Agata Galli.
Suddenly, Chase saw a weird shadow darkening the sun. It was like a big bird flying over their heads. Moreover, at the same time he sensed an almost imperceptible hiss coming from the sky, as if something was falling down. He had just a split second to lift his head up to react.
A huge flower pot was plunging down towards the old woman. Chase shoved her out of the way with a sudden forceful push, sending her crashing onto the ground. He prayed that she wouldn’t break any bones. But, even if she did, it was much better than dying. The vessel smacked against his shoulder, slightly changing its trajectory.
“Dear God, that hurt!” Chase thought. His shoulder was smarting a bit, but he ignored it. He tried to spot someone above him, on the balcony that overlooked the patio, but he couldn’t see anybody. Then he hurried to the old lady, who was still on the ground, trembling like a leaf. She was trying not to betray her fear; she was too proud to show it. Chase stooped towards Agata, and offered his hand to help her get up.
“Are you ok?” he asked her.
She looked at Chase as though he were the culprit.
“Sì,” she abruptly said and, with difficulty, stood up without any aid. Chase glanced up again to pinpoint where the pot had dropped from. There was an empty spot along the bloom-filled balcony – which was the exact same spot where the heavy flowerpot, now lying shattered on the ground, used to stand.
“Santo cielo, I nearly ended up in the grave with my poor son!” she exclaimed breathlessly and still upset.
Chase brushed down the lady’s clothes, then dusted himself down too. Had the killer smelt a rat and attempted retaliation, maybe? The shards of the flower pot were scattered on the ground, as well as soil and large purple flowers. It appeared that the killer - even if he or she still seemed quite unexperienced - already had a personal signature: throwing heavy things from above their chosen target.
It was only few moments before a figure materialised in front of them. It was not the first time that Gloria had appeared out of nowhere.
“What the… Signora Agata, are you all right?” she cried, seizing a broom and a large dustpan. “Ramona, come here, quickly! Get a glass of water or whatever!” she shouted, then began cleaning up eagerly. The speed and energy Gloria showed while she was sweeping the pottery shards were remarkable.
Ramona appeared in a flash holding a glass, but she spilt most of the water in it due to her shock when she arrived at the scene. In fact, it took only an instant for her to catch Agata’s eye and realise that something bad had just happened to her.
Rachele, Simone and Marco were right behind her, attracted by Gloria’s screams.
“What happened, Grandma?” Rachele frowned, spotting Gloria cleaning up the shards, then approached Agata. She turned back to seek some answers on Simone’s face, but apparently he had still not realised what was going on.
All the fear Agata was feeling disappeared into thin air as soon as Rachele tried to hug her. Agata backed away, firmly rejecting her granddaughter; her face became a mass of disgusted wrinkles contracted into a frightening expression. She began holding her arms outstretched to keep Rachele away from her as far as possible.
“You. You must never speak to me!” she grabbed her umbrella and pointed it to Rachele, who took a step back and put both hands up in front of her face to protect herself. Rachele was now even paler than usual, her eyes wide open in distress. “Go away, you wretched demon! You killed your parents and now you’re trying to kill me. You’re out of your mind! You’ve always been out of your mind because of the stupid drugs you take. Get out, get out, you despicable person!” Agata had started off whispering but ended in yelling.
Doctor Conforti ran to his fiancée straight away, and Rachele could only turn to him and hug him, speechless. He covered her head with one hand as his defensive instincts cut in. However, he was not in a defensive mood for long, as he immediately turned into Agata.
“Enough, Signora Agata,” he shouted authoritatively. “I don’t know what happened here but you can’t accuse Rachele anymore. She was upstairs with me! How can she be involved with what’s going on here?” His voice was firm and decisive, although he betrayed his distress.
“That’s the point, Doctor Conforti. The pot fell down, right, Signora?” said Ramona, standing up for her employer. “I remember that pot, it was on the balcony upstairs. You could easily reach the balcony from Rachele’s room and push it down. You’re covering up for her!”
Marco was staring at the scene fixedly. He still had no idea what was going on, and tore his eyes from the quarrel to his wife, who was disappearing around the corner with the dustpan full of broken pottery and soil.
“Calm down everybody!” Chase interrupted. He was representing the police at that moment. Nevertheless he had to repeat his command twice and raise his voice, as the first time no one took any notice of him.
“Why are you accusing each other like this? We have an inquiry in progress and none of you are in custody yet. That means something, doesn’t it?”
Agata turned suddenly to him.
“You still don’t get it! She’s the killer. She’s killed every member of her family. You must arrest her, now!” Agata stamped her foot just like a child having a tantrum would have done.
Chase raised his eyebrows; there was no pleasing her. And he had to be patient, again.
“Come on, people! Everyone knows she did it!” the old lady insisted, talking to her audience.
Rachele’s sobs were rending the air, while the reassuring face of Gloria, back from her garbage-clearing mission, peeped out from the fur-trimmed collar of her coat. She came up to Agata and, linking arms with her, took her towards her husband’s car.
“Dear Agata, you’re so stressed, poverina! You need to focus on Piero’s farewell to pay him his last respects. Nothing else matters now. You should rest your mind as well,” she said, then turned to her husband. “Marco, let’s go to the church, we’re late. Give the kids a call; tell them we’re coming.”
Marco finally awakened from his trance. He nodded a greeting to everyone, gently touching Rachele’s hands and showing her his sympathy. Gloria, on the other hand, threw only a glance at her niece before turning her back and heading to the car. Rachele replied to her with louder sobs. Chase couldn’t decipher their nonverbal dialogue; he didn’t understand women. He had never understood them, even when they spoke, let alone when they didn’t.
Speaking or not, Chase couldn’t take his eyes off Gloria. She’d been the only one able to keep calm and react quickly, separating the grandmother and the granddaughter.
Gloria became aware of Chase’s gaze at her.
“Sorry for this unpleasant scene,” she sighed, having put Agata inside the car, and closed the door. “As you can see we’re all exhausted and stressed. It’s a tragedy that my mother-in-law just cannot swallow without it being misinterpreted, none of us can. I hope she can bear it.”
After having said this to Chase, she turned her back to him without even waiting f
or his reply. Not that he had anything to say.
Rachele and Simone quickly returned to the house as soon as Gloria had borne Signora Galli away. Chase heard their voices coming from inside, the front door being open, but his knowledge of Italian wasn’t adequate to allow him to understand what they were saying. However, it seemed that Simone was impatient with his fiancée because she couldn’t stop crying.
Chase couldn’t believe his eyes: an attempted homicide against Agata Galli had just happened in the same house where her son had died, using the same object-falling-down technique. And despite a little verbal fencing, no one looked particularly worried. Only Signora Galli had showed a hint of fear since she had been the target of the murderer. No one had pointed a finger at anyone else, apart from Agata blaming Rachele. Everybody had realised that the murderer was probably hiding amongst them, yet no one looked particularly agitated. No one had talked to Chase or alerted the police, asking for protection. Indeed, they went straight on with their plans: Piero’s funeral.
Just before getting into the car with Marco, Gloria and Agata, Ramona rushed to Chase. Still panting, she had enough breath only to say one sentence to him.
“You gotta find the evidence, please. She deserves to go to jail.”
Then she ran back to the Audi and closed the door.
Chapter 9
Chase hated tangling with his friend. No matter how Chase worded what he said, Angelo always came up trumps in the end. It was something Chase’s mother used to complain about when he was a kid and his family was visiting with Angelo’s due to their fathers’ friendship.
"These Italian country children are too exuberant, they never say thank you or please. They’re very impertinent. Gigliola should rebuke that Angelo of hers more often, and his daredevil of a brother,” she used to say. Chase was regretting the fact that Angelo’s mother hadn’t paid any attention to his mother.
“I repeat, mate, you ought to monitor the entire perimeter of the house, put someone on every suspect’s heels. What do you mean, attending the funeral will be enough?” Chase moaned on the phone.
“They’re coming here, all of them, right? So, we can keep an eye on them here at the church. Everything’s fine, Chase. I don’t know what you’re so upset about. All of them were already on our suspects’ list, right? So, nothing new,” replied Angelo quietly. Chase took a deep breath and bit his tongue because he was not in the habit of letting Angelo hear the only things he really understood in English: obscenities.
"Are you crazy or what? They just tried to kill the old lady and you've got nothing to say. What if Agata’s killed on the way to the church?" Chase challenged.
"So you're saying the murderer is inside the same car as Signora Galli? Why didn’t you tell me so if you knew it?"
Angelo could be really annoying when he applied himself. Not least because Rachele, whom the other woman suspected, was in another car.
“Never mind,” Chase growled.
Angelo stayed silent for a while, so long that Chase thought that perhaps he’d been cut off.
“Did the murderer want to kill Agata, in your opinion?”
“I don’t know, big boy. It was a pretty extreme action. Either the murderer is losing control or it was a threat. Not a slight, veiled threat, I must say, it almost flattened her.”
“Look,” Angelo cut him short, “I’ll keep an eye on them. You stay there, if you don’t mind. See you later.” And he quickly hung up.
Chase remained alone in the garden, in silence, the wind hissing into his ears. He decided to snoop around to kill time until they got back from the funeral. He didn’t believe the murderer would act in such a crowded place as a church, especially during the funeral of a relative (or employer, in Ramona’s case). That would be too foolish.
Before going inside the villa, his instinct told him to explore the outside and the whole garden, just to be sure he hadn’t missed anything relevant. What had Ramona meant with that parting statement? Did she know something? Was she afraid of someone, or did she want to get things sorted out after the pot falling? Sorting out things was meant to be her specialty, after all.
The dogs started barking as soon as they spotted Chase approaching their enclosure. There were five, all some sort of pedigree hunting dog. There were five different little wooden buildings on one side of the pen which had to be the dogs’ kennels, although they actually seemed like miniature houses.
Every dog had a pretty, likeable snout and a coloured collar with its name on. Chase could only see the marks of the inscription on the metal but couldn’t read the names, as the dogs were moving too much: it was a merry confusion of barks, paws on the fence and wagging tails.
Despite Chase patting them, the dogs didn’t stop making a noise, so Chase left them and went on past the paved area and hedges, from where he could catch sight of the fruit garden.
It was a very nice place, the neatest area of the whole garden. There was a pail and a harvesting bin every two or three trees. Some ladders were placed here and there, either leaning against the trunks or between the trees. Chase walked around the garden, reaching the patio again: now the point of view of the place was different. And it revealed a surprise for Chase. While exploring it, Chase noticed a dark, hidden hollow below the small flight of stone stairs on the patio. Chase snooped within the corner and saw a wicker basket.
He decided not to touch it because he didn’t have any gloves with him, and made a mental note to bring a pair with him next time. If there was a next time, of course. He carefully moved the basket to inspect it using the corner of his blue shirt. His trousers already had a chocolate stain after all, so why not sacrifice his shirt too?
Inside he found muddy cloths, some shears, a pair of work gloves and other small gardening tools. At the bottom of the basket, he also found some glass splinters.
“They must belong to the chandelier,” he thought.
He entered the villa, heading upstairs. The main hallway was decorated with a series of pictures and lithographs of ancient and medieval Tursenia, while the bathroom walls were smooth and immaculate. The bedrooms were all finely furnished with nothing on the walls. It surprised Chase that all the rooms had been tidied except for Rachele’s, where chaos reigned supreme among boxes, bags and piles of clothes.
With the calm of solitude, Chase could fully appreciate Agata’s style of home furnishings downstairs. The whole house had already been checked out, by Inspector Mecci firstly, and more recently by Angelo. What neither had noted down in their reports was how the villa actually looked. There were little oil pictures, ornaments and display cabinets with cups, dolls, bells, photos from World War II, Masonry emblems and Partisan’s badges almost everywhere. Dusting all that stuff every day had to be a really big job for Ramona.
Even in the utility room you could recognise Agata’s hand but not in the library, which was Piero’s territory. Chase poked and pried everywhere but he found nothing relevant.
At the end of his tour he went back to the library. He had to move some furniture to get in, but finally he did it. The room looked like he had left it the day before: clean and in perfect order. Chase was about to sit down on an armchair when it occurred to him to double check if the sets of French doors were locked or not. The west ones were, but not the east ones. Thanks to that Chase was able to notice something very interesting just beyond the curtains.
A broom and a dustpan still full of shards and soil had been leant against a tree in the fruit garden. How could he not have noticed them when he was outside?
He grabbed his smartphone and browsed the latest photos in the gallery. While the thoughts were crowding Chase’s mind, his legs led him outside again, next to the dark hidden corner of the patio. Again he wrapped the corner of his shirt around his hand and took the shears from the basket, then looked at them against the light: they were deeply scratched.
“Interesting,” commented Chase aloud.
He hurried back into the house to find his phone where he’d lef
t it in the library.
“Now I need to talk with Doctor Conforti,” he sighed.
Guests arrived at the villa to commiserate with the Gallis. The house was more crowded than Chase expected, so it wasn’t easy to spot Angelo amongst all those people. However, he found him after a while and was asked to patrol the property, keeping a special eye on the suspects.
“There’re also some plain-clothes police officers around to help me out, but I don’t trust them. I trust you.”
Chase thanked Angelo for the friendly pressure he put on his shoulders, then they lost each other for about an hour.
Chase kept walking around the first floor of the villa observing the ritual of Tursenian public relations in high ranking society. All the guests talked quietly and showed off a certain elegance: women were fully bejewelled and not gaudy in their outfits, while men paraded shiny cufflinks, pretty tiepins, antique pocket watches and designer belts.
It seemed that none of the big names of Tursenia’s elite were missing. Chase met, among many popular faces, the mayor, Bracciali and other politicians or important people whom he often saw on the front page of La Gazzetta di Tursenia. All of them patiently lined up to exchange a few words with Agata; she touched every hand and talked to everyone, sitting on a chair and surrounded by a handful of women of her age.
When Chase finally caught Angelo again, he was on the patio devouring a sandwich.
“Any clues? Any news?” asked Angelo.
“You can’t stop eating, huh? You’re working, man. Get a grip!” Chase accused him.
Into the Killer Sphere Page 6