The Bitter Taste of Murder

by Camilla Trinchieri

  Perillo leaned forward. “He was poisoned.”

  She blinked once and widened her eyes. In fiction, it was women who poisoned their victims. “I hope it didn’t hurt.”

  Perillo didn’t know exactly how much Mantelli had suffered. He said, “It was quick,” hoping she wouldn’t ask for details. “I know this is a very painful time for you, but I do need to ask some questions.”

  Loredana wiped her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt. “It won’t bring him back, but go ahead. His wife can wait.”

  Daniele quietly took his notebook and pen out.

  Perillo sat up very straight, the posture he considered proper for important questions, refusing Daniele’s suggestion it might intimidate. “Were you with Signor Mantelli Tuesday afternoon and evening?”

  She tossed her hair over the other shoulder. “He was supposed to come back here with me after we had lunch. We liked to nap together in my room.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  The smile disappeared. “No. Peppino drove me back here. Mica said he had work to do, that he’d pick me up at eight for dinner. I’d convinced him to take me to Ristoro di Lamole again. It’s my favorite restaurant.” A wistful expression came over her face. “I love to watch the sun go down from up there. He changed his mind.”

  “Where did you dine instead?”

  “Il Falco, near Castellina. The food’s fine, but it has no view at all. I was really disappointed and told him so.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why I bothered.”

  “Do you know why he changed his mind?”

  “He wanted to see someone there.”

  “Did he?”

  “Not that I know, but I spent a lot of time in the ladies’ room. Some idiot bumped into my back just as I was about to drink from a full glass of red wine. On the way to clean myself up, I did see his wife in the back room, but I know he didn’t want to talk to her.”

  “How long did you stay in the ladies room?”

  She shrugged. “I took my time. Tried to get the stain out and made a mess of my dress. I redid my makeup. Smoked a couple of cigarettes. He didn’t like my smoking. Maybe half an hour.”

  “Where did you go after leaving the restaurant?”

  “To his house. He gave me a bathrobe to change into, then tried to fry me some leftover spaghetti, but he made a mess of it. I took over.” She looked at Perillo with a defiant pout. “I can cook when I have to.”

  “Was he not feeling well?”

  “He was fine. He’s too proud to admit he needs glasses. Was.”

  “What did he drink at the restaurant?”

  “Well, to start, he ordered the usual. A whiskey and a bottle of red wine he didn’t touch. Mica believed a wine critic had to keep up appearances. A bottle of white wine for me. When I came back from the ladies’ room, he was finishing off a fresh glass of whiskey.”

  “Did he normally have only one?”

  “The doctor said that was all he could have. He’d finished eating, and I think he ordered the second one because I took so long to come back. Mica wasn’t a very patient man.”

  “Did you stay over at the villa that night?”

  She took her long hair in both hands and started twisting it. “I usually stay for a couple of hours. We make love, and then he takes me home.”

  “Is that what happened Tuesday?”

  “No. As soon as I finished eating, he asked Peppino to bring me back here. He said he was tired, but I think he was mad at me for ruining my dress. He’d bought it for me.”

  “Was anyone else in the house besides Peppino?”

  “It’s a big house, but I don’t think so. Mica has always been very private about the villa. That’s why he didn’t want me staying there. If he had to meet someone, it was always somewhere else.” She looked at Daniele, then at Perillo, without speaking. Then she said, “Why would anyone want to hurt Mica?”

  “We will find out, Signorina,” Perillo answered. “I promise.”

  “I don’t believe in promises.” Loredana stood up. “It doesn’t really matter who hurt him. He’s gone.”

  “I do need to ask you one more question,” Perillo said, getting up from his seat.

  She frowned. “What now?”

  “Signor Mantelli’s laptop was not in his home. Do you have it, by any chance?”

  “No. I use my iPhone. He bought it for me.” Her lower lip trembled. Perillo feared another outburst. “He was always so generous to me.” Loredana tossed them both a smile and headed for the door.

  Perillo stopped her with, “One last thing. Brigadiere Donato here will type out our conversation, but you will need to come to the station in the morning to sign your statement. I also have to ask you not to reveal to anyone that Signor Mantelli was murdered. The prosecutor in this case doesn’t want the media to know. Only you and Signora Severson have been told.”

  “Well, there’s no two without three, is there?” Loredana tossed them both a smile. “I have to get ready for my lunch with his signora. You know what’s funny?”

  “What is?”

  “She was on her way out, but now, here she is, still his signora. I could laugh until I cry.” Loredana gave them a little-girl wave. “Ciao, ciao.”

  Watching her go, Daniele regretted his earlier assessment of her. He felt pity for her. “She’s going to tell, isn’t she?”

  “I think so, but is she well?”

  “I think she’s . . . if you’ll forgive me, I think she’s a fragile woman.”

  Sensitive Daniele always understood more about people’s emotions. Perillo, thanks to his painful youth in the streets of Pozzuoli, had worked hard to shut down his own sensitivity. Sometimes being corrected annoyed Perillo, but he was grateful Daniele made up for what he at times lacked. “Of course, she’s grieving. She just lost her lover to murder. It is also clear Mantelli wasn’t always good to her, but Loredana Cardi does have a strange way of expressing grief.”

  “Signora Severson called her a lost lamb.”

  “Or she’s a skillful actress.” The disappointed look on Daniele’s face made Perillo regret having voiced the possibility. “I’m sure you’re right. She’s just fragile.”

  “I could be wrong,” Daniele admitted reluctantly. “The owner here stopped me in the hallway and told me not to believe a word she says. He mentioned that accidents can be made to happen, and that we should give her a good look.”

  Perillo raised an eyebrow.

  “I couldn’t tell you in front of her.”

  Perillo checked his cell phone for the time. “Damn it. It’s late. Ivana is making us both Pasta alla Norma.”

  Daniele’s stomach groaned. He loved Signora Perillo’s cooking. “We could eat quickly and then come back?”

  “Excellent idea, Dani. Tell the owner we’ll be back at three. After that, you’ll go to Il Falco and talk to the maitre d’, and I’ll tackle Aldo Ferri. It’s going to be a busy day, and we’ll need all those Pasta alla Norma calories.”

  “You aren’t waiting for Capitano Tarani?”

  “I’ll stop for good food, but not for someone taking our job away. You, Nico and I make a great team—we’ve proved it once and we can prove it again, damn it! By the time the capitano gets here, we might already have solved the case.”

  Walking to the car, Daniele tried to calm the maresciallo’s anger by asking, “Isn’t Pasta alla Norma a Sicilian dish?” As far as he knew, Signora Perillo stuck to cooking from her and Perillo’s home region of Campania.

  “It is Sicilian, but it’s a good one. Penne with eggplant, salted ricotta, tomato sauce, basil, and a little garlic.” Perillo kissed the fingers of one hand. “Divino!”

  Now, for a more important question. “Maresciallo, shouldn’t you check your cell phone?” The earlier phone call could have been from Capitano Tarani.

  “I wa
s just about to,” Perillo said. “The thought of food always distracts me.” The truth was he’d completely forgotten about the call. He looked at his phone. “Good. Not Della Langhe or Capitano Tarani.” He pressed the callback button. “Ehi, Nico. Sorry, but I was in the middle of telling Signorina Loredana her boyfriend was murdered. Her reaction was interesting, to say the least. I’m not saying it was a guilty one. Just a little crazy.” He filled Nico in on what she’d told them. “What’s your news?”

  Nico told him of Diane Severson’s private visit to Aldo and what Aldo had relayed to him. “I had his permission to tell you.”

  “I hope you would have told me anyway.”

  “Yes, but this way I feel better.”

  “That’s right. You are a kind man, like my good brigadiere here. A good trait, but it can get in the way of a murder investigation. Thanks for the news. Now we know who made Mantelli’s laptop disappear. Ciao.” He clicked off.

  “Signora Severson took it,” Daniele declared as he swerved to avoid a pot hole.

  Perillo gaped at him. “How the hell did you know?”

  “She would want to find out where her husband hid his money.”

  “Good thinking, Dani.” Perillo was pleased his brigadiere was clever as well as sensitive, but he couldn’t help being a bit annoyed with himself. Fifty was looming just ahead of him. Was his mind slipping? “Of course, I suspected that too, but Loredana could have also taken it. Or even Peppino. Well, we’ll invite Signora Severson to explain herself tomorrow morning. For now, Pasta alla Norma.” He reached over and honked the horn, startling a dog on the side of the road.

  Daniele gave the maresciallo a quick, questioning look.

  “A honk to life, dear Dani.”

  As soon as Nico opened the gate of the cemetery, OneWag ran ahead to Rita’s grave site. Usually, he followed Nico to the water fountain to gulp down some running water while Nico took one of the empty glass vases lined up on a stone shelf, and filled it with water. Today, quenching his thirst could wait. He had spotted a friend and rushed over to say hello.

  Nelli picked up the dog and moved further up another aisle, hoping Nico hadn’t seen her standing in front of his wife’s grave. She buried her face in OneWag’s neck to cover her embarrassment.

  Startled, Nico stopped halfway up the path, the vase of pink peonies held tight against his chest. “Nelli,” was all he could say. He had stopped himself from adding, “What are you doing here?” Her presence in the cemetery made him feel awkward.

  Nelli straightened up and showed her face to Nico, still holding the dog tight against her chest. She hadn’t stopped to think that he might show up. It was foolish to have come here, hoping that standing in front of Rita’s grave, looking at her photo, would give her some insight into the love Nico still felt for her. “Please, let him go,” she had whispered to Rita’s smiling face, as if it was Rita holding him captive.

  “Ciao, Nico. We seem to have picked the same time to pay our respect to our loved ones.”

  He nodded.

  “Those are gorgeous flowers,” she said as he walked to Rita’s grave. OneWag squirmed and she put him down. He lay down next to Rita’s grave, his ears at attention.

  Nico bent down and placed the vase next to Tuesday’s flowers. “They’re Luciana’s darlings. Whatever I pick, they’re her darlings. If she could, she would keep them all.” He looked up. “Who are you visiting here?”

  “My cousin,” she lied. All her relatives were Panzanesi and buried in the Panzano cemetery.

  “How is Zio Peppino? Mantelli’s death must have been a shock for him. And a tragedy.”

  “Yes, it’s very sad. He keeps repeating to my mother how good Mantelli was to him, how he didn’t deserve to die. I imagine he’s also worried his wife will sell the villa. He’d be devastated if she did. Taking care of that place has been his whole life.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t.” Nico took last week’s still-perky anemones and added them to the peonies. He leaned back and surveyed the flowers. “They don’t look very good together, do they?”

  “Pink and purple complement each other,” Nelli said. “They just need a little rearrangement. May I?”

  He straightened up. “Please. You’re the artist.”

  Nelli walked over quickly, her heartbeat rushing, and knelt. She removed the anemones and carefully inserted them one by one between the bushy peonies, making sure they didn’t get crowded out. She hoped Rita would forgive her intrusion, but helping felt good.

  Nico watched. The combination of flowers now looked wonderful. His awkwardness faded. Nelli making Rita’s resting place more beautiful somehow brought together his wife and this woman he admired. Had they known each other, he was sure they would have been friends.

  Nelli looked up at Nico. So did OneWag. “What do you think?”

  Nico smiled. “A work of art. Thank you.”

  Nelli smiled back. “Exaggeration is an Italian trait, not an American one.”

  “My mother was Italian.”

  “That explains it, then.” Nelli stood up. Nico held out his hand to help her. She took it briefly, then used both hands to pull down her paint-splattered shirt. She had been unsuccessfully painting clouds, a new obsession of hers, when the need to express her feelings for Nico to his dead wife overwhelmed her. “Ciao, Nico. Ciao, Rocco. See you around.”

  “Sure. Thanks again.”

  “One thank-you is enough.”

  Nico and OneWag watched Nelli walk down the gravel path to the iron gate. In that moment, Rita was forgotten.

  Perillo and Daniele didn’t get back to Il Glicine until four o’clock, thanks to a delicious leisurely lunch followed by a phone call from Capitano Tarani saying he was at the tail end of a murder case in Montespertoli and wanted to know if Perillo had any good leads. Perillo answered that it was hard to seriously interview people without letting them know that Mantelli had been murdered. He had, of course, told Signora Severson and Mantelli’s girlfriend. Della Langhe had objected to Loredana being told, but Perillo had insisted it was the right thing to do. Capitano Tarani agreed, which gave Perillo hope that they could work together well. Perillo added that he needed to know the contents of Mantelli’s will.

  “That’s for me to know,” was Tarani’s answer, followed by what sounded like a chuckle. “Don’t worry, Perillo. I’m in the habit of sharing. I’ll be with you tomorrow, or at the latest Sunday.”

  “How bad is he?” Daniele had asked afterward.

  “Too early to tell.”

  Now, Dario Terzini, the owner of Il Glicine, was sitting across from Perillo and Daniele under the green awning in the same white plastic chairs the two of them had sat in with Loredana.

  “Has Signorina Loredana come back from lunch?” Perillo asked.

  “She moved out,” Terzini said. He was a short, round, balding man, with an equally round face, a bulbous nose, thin lips and eyes set so deep it was impossible to know their color.

  A cartoonish face, Daniele thought, the kind that would have scared him as a child.

  “Did she leave an address?” Perillo asked in a brusque tone. He did not appreciate possible suspects slipping away.

  “La Vigna d’Oro.”

  “And where is that?”

  “The Mantelli villa.”

  No one had mentioned that the villa had a name. Calling it the Gold Vine made sense. Mantelli had made a lot of money with his wine expertise and perhaps the bribes, unless that story was the invention of an angry wife. Perillo lit a cigarette. It helped him think. Diane Severson and Loredana getting together was an interesting development. Had they been friends before Mantelli? Perhaps plotted his murder together? Did Diane think Loredana knew where Mantelli had stashed his money? These were possibilities. A lot to sort through. Nico would help.

  “As far as we know, Mantelli’s death was an acciden
t,” Perillo said. “But I am curious to know what led you to say we should take a good look at Signorina Loredana, apart from her beauty.”

  “She wasn’t in love. She was after his money.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Early in the afternoon each day, they went to her room to fuck. Why they had to do it here and not at his luxurious villa is a mystery to me. I was embarrassed for my wife, for my guests. This is a stone house, but we added the guest rooms only ten years ago when we got the idea of turning this place into a B&B. The walls separating the rooms aren’t thick. We could hear them. Animals. In the early afternoon, guests nap. We lost one couple because of them, but I made Mantelli pay for that extra room for a whole week in order for me not to kick his girlfriend out. The couple was only going to stay two more days, but after all that noise, a week’s rent was only fair.”

  Not liking what he was hearing, Daniele turned to look at the garden. A gray striped cat sat crouched underneath boxwood. He could hear chirping. Without thinking, he clapped his hands hard. The bush released two sparrows.

  Perillo was staring at him. Terzini too. He answered them with, “It was only fair.”

  “Not to the cat.” Perillo flicked his ash into Daniele’s Christmas present, which now sat on his knee. “Signor Terzini, you are telling me that they were passionate lovers, nothing more.”

  “I heard them fight last week up in her room. She was screaming at him. He made promises he never kept, where was the money she was supposed to get, the diamond ring. The screams turned into screeches. I knocked on the door to make them stop.”

  “You say them. Did he answer her?”

  “What I heard at the door was the sound of a slap.”

  Daniele flinched. “Did you go in to help her?”

  “The door was locked. I asked if she was okay. She told me to fuck off, so I did.”

  Perillo took a last drag of his cigarette. Was the slap heard by Terzini the first or one of many? Had Mantelli and Loredana’s relationship been an abusive one? That could be good motive for murder.