The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore

by Dan Andriacco

  “No, Jeff, he’s probably reading a Sherlock Holmes story.”

  On the pleasant memory of that zinger, I fell asleep with Jeff’s light still on.

  The bed was fine, but the continental breakfast was a bit of a downer. There was nothing wrong with the self-served food provided by Signora Belisamo - croissants, Nutella, yogurt, fruit, coffee, and the like - but the other guest who joined us at the table put a damper on the morning. She was in her early twenties, blond, about my height. If she’d been wearing makeup it would have been smeared. I could tell that she’d been crying.

  As soon as she gave us a mouse-like “good morning,” it was obvious that she was an American. That made it easy for me to start a conversation with, “Where are you from?”

  By drips and drabs I got it out of this rather plain young woman that her name was Amber Kidwell, that she had just earned her master’s degree from an art school in Illinois, and that she had a job lined up with a museum in Savannah, Georgia, starting in mid-June.

  “I like your cameo,” I said, pointing to a necklace that hung a bit incongruously over her ancient Grateful Dead T-shirt.

  She started bawling.

  I looked at my husband. “Jeff, do you want to get the maps and stuff ready for our day?”

  He had a mouthful of Nutella-smothered croissant. “I’m still - ” I glared. “Oh, sure. Right. I’ll be right back.”

  “No hurry.” This girl needed help.

  As soon as Jeff had gone, taking an apple with him, I said to Amber, “Tell me about it, dear.”

  “My boyfriend - or maybe he’s not my boyfriend - disappeared without a word. Oh, I’ve been such a fool!”

  His name was Roberto. Presumably he had a last name, too, but Amber didn’t know what it was or where he lived. They’d met in the Museum of the City of Rome and things had moved quickly. He’d proclaimed his undying love for her, practically moved into her room at Sogni d’Oro, and given her the cameo necklace as a gift. It was a locket, and she’d planned to put his photo inside, but he never gave it to her. “And I haven’t seen him since he left here on Sunday. I should have known! I was nothing more than a fling for him. But he was so charming.”

  Yes, Italian men are that. Not well known for their fidelity, however.

  “Oh, you poor dear!” I moved my chair closer and put my arm around her. Here I was all of thirty, married four days, and I was acting like her mother. “Men are such a trial.”

  I thought of my own somewhat tortuous path to marriage. Jeff is the communications director for St. Benignus College, a small Catholic institution in our little town of Erin, Ohio. I’d been a reporter at The Erin Observer & News-Ledger when we’d met. I kept taking him out to lunch, allegedly to talk about stories. I guess I was being too subtle. It took him forever to get around to asking me out. For weeks all I got out of him was calls pitching story ideas. I was on the verge of taking matters into my own hands when he finally cracked and saved me the trouble. After a mere five years of dating, not dating, and sort of dating, we had ended all that nonsense with a beautiful wedding.

  “You didn’t have a fight?” I asked Amber.

  She shook her head, bouncing her blond hair. “No, everything was fine when he kissed me goodbye on Sunday morning.” I suspected he wasn’t on his way to church at the time.

  “Did he seem different - moody, depressed, secretive, anything like that?”

  “No more than usual. He was always a little mysterious. That was part of his charm. He kept telling me he was a poor photographer but he was about to come into some big money.” She gave a rueful chuckle. “I didn’t believe it even then. Maybe he didn’t believe it himself - or maybe he did. I just don’t know.”

  Something about this missing photographer was nagging at me, a feeling that I should be remembering something.

  “If I knew where he lived, I’d march over there and give him a piece of my mind,” Amber said.

  My bet would be that he’d have a perfectly logical explanation and seduce her all over again.

  “Well, since you don’t know where he lives, you might try the ‘plenty-of-other-fish-in-the-sea’ approach. Rome is full of men. Just be more careful next time. Have you ever thought of maybe wearing a little makeup, just a hint of color here and there?”

  We were deep into practical advice along those lines when Jeff returned wearing his backpack and St. Benignus College baseball cap. The only thing missing was a sign saying “TOURIST!” But he looked really cute.

  “Enjoy your day,” Amber said, standing up. “And thanks, Lynda. I feel a lot better now.”

  This was our Vatican day. We toured the totally awesome St. Peter’s Basilica, attended the papal audience at noon, and visited the Sistine Chapel, which no words can do justice. The way out of the chapel led us through a gift shop run by the Daughters of St. Paul. I wandered away from Jeff there and bought a cool Vatican shot glass with an image of St. Peter’s to go in my shot glass collection.

  A few blocks outside the walls of the Vatican, we found ourselves in front of the only kind of store where Jeff Cody is likely to actually spend money - a bookstore.

  “Hey, I can pick up a book for Mac,” Jeff said. “Let’s go in.”

  That was perfect for me.

  Sebastian McCabe is Jeff’s best friend and also married to Jeff’s sister, Kate. He’s an exuberant, larger-than-life character, amusing and aggravating, different from Jeff in almost every way. Although his day job is professor of English literature and head of the popular culture program at St. Benignus, McCabe is better known in several languages as the author of the popular Damon Devlin mystery novels. His books are old-fashioned mysteries in the manner of Agatha Christie or Ellery Queen. Jeff, on the other hand, labored for years without success to write in his favorite mystery subgenre - the hardboiled detective. I think he’s given up on that, though, now that his books about his adventures with McCabe have been published.

  McCabe’s ultimate hero is Sherlock Holmes. So naturally Jeff feels compelled to sniff at the sleuth of Baker Street. Thus my little deception - when Jeff wasn’t looking, I bought a paperback copy of Racconti di Sherlock Holmes, a collection with twenty of the short stories, for my night reading. If he knew what I was up to, he might feel that I was taking sides against him. I certainly didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but we were meeting McCabe and Kate in London next week and I wanted to be prepared for the whole Sherlock Holmes thing. Strangely, I’d never gotten around to reading the original stories, although I’d seen some movies.

  Guiltily, I paid for the book and looked for Jeff. He had a digest-sized comic book in his hand. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Dylan Dog. It’s Mac’s favorite Italian comic book. He calls it a graphic novel, but it’s a comic book.”

  We had dinner that night at Da Roberto, a crowded, noisy, and wonderful restaurant at Via Borgo Pio 62. Our waiter, Claudio, had lived in Cleveland for eleven years.

  “I have a little a surprise for you,” Jeff said over the gnocchi. He handed me a small box.

  Well, what woman doesn’t like surprises that come in small boxes? And when I opened it, I was overwhelmed.

  It was a cameo necklace. “You admired Amber’s, so I thought maybe you’d like one,” Jeff said. “I bought it at the Vatican gift shop while you were getting your shot glass.”

  “Oh, Jeff!” I started crying. First of all, it was a wonderfully romantic gift. I would always remember that he bought it for me on our honeymoon. Plus, I was moved that he shelled out for it. Jeff Cody has never been known to throw his money away. He still has the first dime he ever earned - and it’s probably grown to ten or twenty dollars by now through prudent investment and compound returns.

  “You can put my picture in it,” he said.

  When we got back to Sogni d’Oro, the place was in an uproar. I su
spected something was wrong when I saw the police car outside, a blue and white Alfa Romeo 159 with the words Polizia di Stato on the side.

  Inside, our fellow guest, Amber, was dissolved in tears once again and our buxom hostess, Signora Belisamo, was talking with a police officer in rapid Italian. He was about a foot shorter than me and kind of cute. They were going too fast for me to catch most of it, but I did get the word rovistato - ransacked.

  The officer, whose name was d’Annunzio, turned to Amber and spoke in heavily accented English with the air of one going over something one more time. “And you are sure that nothing was taken?”

  She nodded. “Absolutely. I told you, everything I brought with me fit in a duffle bag. After six years in art school, it’s about all I own.”

  Amber was still wearing the cameo necklace. In other circumstances I would have felt awkward; no two girls want to be dressed the same.

  It turned out, as the women explained after the agente of the Polizia di Stato had gone, that someone had broken into Amber’s room during the day and ransacked it, as if looking for something. She was shocked to find the mess when she returned to her room from a day of visiting museums and trying to mend her broken heart.

  “Why me?” Amber asked with a sniffle. She hadn’t taken my advice about the makeup. “I don’t have anything worth stealing. I don’t even have a boyfriend!”

  That was a non-sequitur, but she was upset. I put my arm around her and tried to give some comfort. By the time Jeff and I had children, this mothering thing would be old hat for me.

  “Does that happen a lot in Italy?” Jeff asked as we closed the door of our room a few minutes later. “I’d like to know whether I should hide my valuables.”

  “You don’t have any,” I said distractedly. I had a feeling I should be worrying about something other than being burglarized, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Later, while Jeff was reading his private eye novel, I dove into Racconti di Sherlock Holmes over on my side of the bed. If Jeff somehow got the idea that I was reading an Italian romance novel, well, I didn’t set him straight. Within a few minutes of starting “Uno scandolo in Bohemia,” I was utterly lost in Sherlock Holmes and his world. This was bad, very bad. How could I explain to my husband that I was captivated by this rather cold Englishman who he’d made up his mind to treat with indifference at best?

  Halfway through the second story, “L’uomo dal labbro spaccato,” I realized what had been bothering me. The word rovistato from Signora Belisamo’s conversation with the policeman shows up fairly often with the meaning of “overturned.” But how did I know that it also has the less common meaning of “ransacked”? Because I’d looked it up last night in the Italian-English dictionary on my smartphone, that’s how. It was part of a story I’d read in La Repubblica about a young man who’d been killed and his apartment ransacked. And he was a photographer - like Amber’s boyfriend! I couldn’t remember his name, though, and I’d thrown the newspaper away. I decided I’d better not tell Amber. She was already distraught enough, and I might be wrong. I tried to concentrate on Sherlock Holmes.

  We rose early the next morning and didn’t see Amber at breakfast. I was wearing my new cameo necklace over a white blouse with a scoop neck. An Austrian couple named Dieter and Mitzi, perhaps in their mid-fifties and far from newlyweds, chatted with us in excellent English. They’d already been to most of the iconic Roman sites on our day’s itinerary - the Coliseum and Forum, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, etc.

  When we stepped out of the B&B after breakfast, right away I noticed something that struck me as strange. There was a man squatting on the sidewalk across the street. He was short, swarthy of skin, and dressed in rags. And yet he looked familiar. Had he been there yesterday? I didn’t think so. “Jeff, I think that gypsy’s watching the building,” I whispered. “And he’s talking into a cell phone.”

  “Everybody’s talking into a cell phone,” my darling responded in an exaggerated whisper of his own. “This is Rome. And gypsies are everywhere. You’re just paranoid because of the robbery. Don’t let it get to you!”

  His first two statements were true; his third was not. That gypsy was definitely looking at Sogni d’Oro. And what if he wasn’t a gypsy? The second story I’d read last night, “The Man with the Twisted Lip” in English, was about a man who disguised himself and went out begging every day while his wife thought he was going into the City to do whatever it is that business people do in London. Maybe the gypsy look was just such a disguise. But I couldn’t very well tell Jeff that. He would ask me where I’d gotten such a crazy notion, and then I’d have to tell him about the Sherlock Holmes book I was keeping out of his sight. Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

  We started our day’s activities with a bus trip that eventually got us to the Pantheon, the largest surviving temple of ancient Rome. Once converted to a Christian church, today it is the resting place of the Italian kings Umberto I and Vittorio Emanuele II. Nearby we visited Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, a church built on top of a pagan temple. From there it was on to the Colosseo and, after lunch, the Foro Romano.

  “I wish I’d studied harder in that Roman literature class in college,” Jeff said. “One trip to Rome isn’t enough, is it?”

  I shook my head. “No way, sir. That’s why we’re going to the Fontana di Trevi next.”

  You know the tradition: If you throw a coin in Trevi Fountain, you will return to Rome. I was taking a picture of Jeff standing in front of the fountain, tossing the coin behind him, when I felt a tug at my neck. For a brief moment I thought I was being strangled. Then the chain on my necklace broke. I lowered the camera and turned my head just fast enough to see a man in a blue shirt disappearing into the crowd.

  “Hey! Stop!” Jeff yelled, and tore off after the thief.

  I knew better.

  I sat down and waited for Jeff to return.

  He was panting when he came back. “The bastard knew the side streets. I’m sorry, Lyn.”

  I put my hand on my ample chest where the locket had been. My husband followed the hand with interest. “This is awful, Jeff. I feel violated. No wonder Amber was so upset.”

  To think of Amber was to connect the two robberies in my mind... and maybe the murder of Amber’s boyfriend... and the man watching our bed and breakfast. Where had I seen him before?

  I kept these musings to myself. Jeff already thought I was paranoid.

  “At least the necklace can be replaced,” Jeff said bravely. But I could see him mentally adding the unexpected cost to the day’s expenses.

  We agreed that there was no point in calling the police. Signora Belisamo had a different idea, however.

  “Polizia! Polizia!” she insisted.

  She made the call.

  The representative of the Polizia di Stato who showed up was of surprisingly high rank for a petty street crime. Ispettore Carlo Petrocelli, his business card said. He was dressed in a tailored suit, middle-aged, with a high forehead. He oozed charm and expensive cologne. This guy was no Columbo. I strongly suspected that he visited a mistress during the mid-day break when most businesses in Italy shut down. Many Italian men did, if they could afford it.

  “And did this cameo have a special value?” he asked.

  “It sure did.” I looked at Jeff, who was eyeing Petrocelli as if the inspector had cut in on his date at the prom. Marriage had not completely cured his sometimes-annoying, sometimes-endearing tendency to be jealous. “It was a gift from my husband.” I pointed at said spouse.

  Petrocelli’s eyes widened almost comically. “Marito?” he repeated. Husband?

  “Sì, marito!” What was so surprising about that? Judging by the statistics, I guess getting married is a bit old-fashioned, especially in Europe. But I’m an old-fashioned girl. I explained that I was a newlywed, una sposina. He looked even more puzzled. Something was ge
tting lost in translation here, even though we were speaking the same language. Maybe I wasn’t getting the Roman dialect as well as I thought.

  “This stolen necklace is a locket, sì?” Petrocelli asked.

  “Sì.”

  For about two seconds I wondered how he knew. But after a moment’s thought, I realized that there must be approximately forty-two million similar cameos around the necks of visitors to the Vatican.

  “Well, I hope there was nothing of sentimental value inside.”

  “No, nothing,” I said. “It was empty. I didn’t have a chance to put my husband’s picture in it.”

  The questions went on for a few more minutes. Did it have any distinguishing marks? Where did it come from? Could I describe the robber? Were there any friends with us who witnessed the robbery? As we talked I wandered over to the window and looked out. The gypsy was still there. Should I tell the inspector? What, and get the same skepticism that I’d gotten from Jeff? I just wished I knew why the man across the street looked so familiar.

  Petrocelli wrote down all my answers with great precision as if there were actually a snowball’s chance in hell that I would ever see my cameo again. It was great theater. But by the time the inspector left, I was worn out. We went to our room.

  “I’m going to take a rejuvenating shower,” Jeff announced.

  “Okay. I’m going to read a bit.”

  It turned out that Jeff thought his shower would be even more rejuvenating if I helped him. After a playful but brief discussion, he headed dejectedly for the shower and I picked up Racconti di Sherlock Holmes. I lay down on the bed and read “L’avventura dei sei Napoleoni” -“The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.” When I’d finished the story, I closed the book and sat up. I was getting an idea.

  The back story of the adventure, the part we don’t know until the end, is that a thief has hidden an especially valuable pearl inside a statue of Napoleon. Later, he steals and smashes a bunch of similar statues to try to find the one with the pearl inside. Sherlock Holmes being on the case definitely spoils his day.