by Dick Rosano
“Yes, I see,” she replied, jotting thoughts down on a napkin. “Perhaps I can make up some recipes that include pasta in the preparation, more than just adding it as a side dish,” she continued, still doodling. And then, just as quickly, her attention would veer elsewhere and she would be ruminating on matters to do with tubers, dogs, and oak trees - - and thieves.
“Ah, I know,” Stefano broke in, “How about…,” and they continued in this way for some time while drinking coffee and nibbling at the biscuits in the bowl on the table.
It was inevitable that the taboo subject would have to be raised.
Looking up at her husband with sadness in her eyes, Rita said, “But what about the tartufi?” as she laid the pen down on the table. It was a gesture full of meaning, as if today's market would give her nothing to jot down on her list of new menu possibilities.
Caffé Revello that morning was lightly traveled, with people coming in for a short cup of espresso and then wandering back out again as quickly as they came. Tourists were more in evidence since this place was on Piazza Cagnasso and the visitors to Alba had just discovered it two days earlier during the Palio, and now continued to return. Locals liked Caffé Revello exactly because it was out of the way, not on one of the main piazze like Risorgimento or Savona, but these same citizens of Alba knew they would have to share the tables with tourists for a brief time each year around the Palio.
Stefano looked at Rita, then away, past her shoulder and into the street beyond. He would regret not having the truffles, too. Maybe not as much as his culinary wife, but as a restaurant owner. When he glanced back at Rita, she was still looking at him, waiting for his answer.
“Non so,” he said, “I don't know,” and their conversation died. It was as if touching the taboo subject had killed their fun.
Chapter 51
Confessions
Paolo didn't follow the early morning routine of his aunt and uncle. As usual, he slept into the mid-morning hours, and Rita sent Nicki to bang on his door.
“Wake up, sleepy head,” she called through the door. Hearing two voices through the wood, she stepped back expecting to be surprised. Surely not the brunette from last night, she thought.
Paolo pulled the door slightly ajar and greeted Nicki with a sheepish grin. Of course, she couldn't let him escape without full disclosure, so she had no qualms about pushing him gently to the side to see who his new friend was. Nicki's face brightened when she saw who was sitting on the bed brushing her hair.
“Lucia! So nice to see you here,” Nicki added with a friendly chuckle, recalling the young lady from the café the previous weekend who shared a bottle of Moscato with Paolo.
Paolo knew that Nicki would just push her way in and take up too much space in his romantic little nest, so he gently nudged her back from the door, smiling and thanking her for waking him, and quietly pressed the door closed in Nicki's grinning face.
From behind the door, Nicki reminded him of the plans to have lunch together at Vincafé.
“Lucia is welcome, too,” she chatted conspicuously through the closed door, knowing that this would force Paolo to bring her and face the chiding of the table for doing so.
Nicki skipped away with newfound pleasure and a great story to lead into the day.
Rita and Stefano were waiting on the terrazza of La Locanda Cortiletto d'Alba just before noon, reading the morning newspaper and waiting for their friends to join them. Nicki came first, and could barely contain her glee. She was bursting to tell them that the table would have to be set for one more, but when she was about to blurt it out, she saw Rita's eyes go wide.
Nicki threw a glance over her shoulder and saw Paolo and Lucia descending the steps together. Turning back around, she saw approving looks from Stefano and a somewhat more reserved, motherly approval from Rita. Spinning back once more, she greeted Paolo and Lucia warmly, and everyone was fully aware that Nicki would have some fun with this all day.
“Rita, Stefano,” Nicki began, linking arms with Paolo's partner, “This is Lucia. We met her last week at the café. Remember?”
“Si, I remember,” said Stefano, perhaps a bit too cheerfully, as Rita elbowed him in the ribs and shot him a stern look.
“Buon giorno,” said Lucia, acting a bit shy knowing that she was the object of all this attention. She was as pretty at Nicki, but not as bold, so she looped her arm through Paolo's for support.
Paolo, too, showed a bit of shyness in this setting. He was self-assured in most things, but this awkward meeting in the hotel lobby seemed too much like bringing the girlfriend home to meet the family.
An uncomfortable moment passed, and it was Nicki who got them back on track. She wanted to make amends for embarrassing Lucia, so she stole her from Paolo and walked toward the door, telling her new female friend all about their adventures in Alba to date. Lucia was already more informed than Nicki realized, but she kept her silence and let Nicki continue.
The rest followed them out the door and, as Stefano whispered his compliments to Paolo, Rita cuffed her husband in the head.
Tomaso and Francesco were already seated in Vincafé when they arrived. The midday crowd was beginning to gather and Tomaso knew to arrive early and secure a table in the corner of the cantina below ground, or else the party would be dispossessed and have to find another place for their lunch.
A brief version of the morning surprise introductions was repeated here. Tomaso showed Paolo his unsuppressed approval, without letting on that he already knew Lucia and her father from the truffle business. “Paolo's found a very smart woman,” Tomaso thought to himself.
“Cameriere,” called Tomaso, “a bottle of Attilio Ghisolfi Barbera and one of Bongiovanni Arneis, per favore.”
That they would talk about truffles was undeniable; that they would wait till the meal had begun was the challenge. Many of the comments excluded background from their earlier conversations, since all at the table knew each other and the situation well. Paolo fed Lucia additional details about what the group had been doing, pointing out that Rita and Stefano owned a restaurant in Genoa, that they made annual visits to Alba to buy truffles for their menu, and that Tomaso was a trifolào of great standing in the city.
“Si, io so,” she said, “I know.” Tomaso grinned at the acknowledgement, and Paolo looked at him a bit miffed and confused.
“Lucia's father is a fine truffle hunter,” Tomaso pointed out, nodding his recognition in Lucia's direction. She smiled.
“His field is not far from mine,” Tomaso added.
Somehow this news both settled Paolo and unsettled him. He knew that he was with someone who understood the culture and traditions of truffles, but he also realized that his new education would probably be insignificant next to Lucia's.
“ Then you're familiar with the rumors of the truffle harvest,” Stefano said to Lucia.
“Si,” she said, and raised her eyebrows in mild horror. “Si, I know,” she sighed, “and my father is devastated. Fortunately, our family income had not been devastated.”
Tomaso explained to everyone that Lucia's father was an engineer who hunted truffles simply because his family had always done so.
“The traditions of the trifolài must remain unbroken,” he added, and Lucia nodded her agreement. Her brother would no doubt take up the tradition for her family; girls seldom became trifolài.
With each new revelation about Lucia's background, Paolo became more impressed. As he sat back to reevaluate her, Lucia glanced his way with a kind, yet slightly proud, smile stitched across her face.
While they ate, Tomaso opened the discussion of truffles. He pressed the point about thieves, and they all talked about how one person – or team – could pull this off.
“How would they know where the fields are?” Tomaso repeated. Stefano offered the opinion that truffle fields are revisited each year, so how can they remain secret forever. Tomaso reminded him that even subtle shifting of the location, something that is necessary every year, w
ould throw off the thieves even if they knew last year's locations.
“Besides, there is honor among trifolài,” he added. “We would not disturb each others' fields. Even the Albese who do not hunt for truffles would leave our fields alone.”
“Possibly,” Paolo suggested, “the thieves have abducted the truffle hunters' dogs while the trifolài are gone during the day. These cani da tartufo would lead them right to the truffle grounds.”
Tomaso approved of Paolo's theory, but pointed out the error in his reasoning was an error of culture and tradition.
“A truffle hunter's dogs would only work for him and they would not listen to someone else. Besides, most truffle hunters work at home, in their fields, during the day.” With a nod to Lucia, he added, “Some trifolài are highly educated, like Lucia's father, and they work elsewhere, but most of us would know if our dogs had gone missing during the day.”
Throughout the conversation, both Stefano and Tomaso noticed that Francesco remained very quiet. He was experienced and knowledgeable on the subject, and was not usually reluctant to throw his opinion into the debate. But he was silent today.
“Francesco, che é la problema?” his father queried, “what's the problem?”
Francesco didn't immediately respond and Nicki cast a dark look in his direction.
“Hey, Francesco, your father is asking you a question,” she prodded.
Francesco looked around the table and took a long gulp from the glass of wine before him. He began to respond, but did so looking down at the plate of food that remained largely untouched.
“Alfonso,” was all he could say at first.
The table grew silent and everyone looked at him.
“Che é cosa?” his father asked. “What is it?”
“Alfonso and I were drinking one night,” Francesco began his story feebly, “and he said he could write a program to find all the truffle fields.”
“That's ridiculous. What program?” Tomaso asked, his face beginning to take on a reddish hue.
“It uses GPS. In cell phones,” Francesco admitted. “It could track cell phones as they move around.”
“And…?” prodded Lucia.
“So he bet that he could find all the truffle fields by plugging in cell numbers from the trifolài… which I supplied him.” Francesco was staring down at his plate, his hands folded meekly on his lap.
“What!” his father burst out. “Why did you do that?”
“It was just a game,” Francesco said, to shaking heads all around. “We weren't going to do anything with it. But someone must have gotten his program…and the cell numbers I gave him.”
Tomaso stood up, started toward the steps out of the cantina, turned back, and sat down again. His energy was rising and he didn't know how to defuse it.
“Serpente!” he spat out.
Francesco explained that Alfonso boasted of inventing a way to find each truffle field. Francesco said he didn't believe him and Alfonso wanted to prove how smart he was. They were out drinking late at night and Alfonso's claim sounded like nothing but a manly boast. They made a bet, shook hands on it, and laughed about it afterwards.
But a few days later, Francesco and Alfonso realized that truffles began disappearing and they were scared that someone had stolen the program.
“We've got to do something,” Francesco reported telling Alfonso. “People depend on these for their livelihood.”
As far as Tomaso was concerned, this was no game. His own son, and that shiftless failed farmer that he called a friend, had set in motion a terrible theft of the region's most cherished treasure.
“Get up,” Tomaso demanded, standing and signaling to the waiter.
“You're going to take us to Alfonso right now, and we're going to settle this thing up with him.” Tomaso's words carried such anger that the “settling” could well include stringing Alfonso up from the bell tower.
Vincafe's owner happened by and Tomaso explained that they would be leaving the meal early, to hold the check for him and they would return later.
“Si, d'accordo,” said the restaurateur, surprised that an entire table would depart without finishing the meal. Tomaso assured him that it had nothing to do with the food, and that they would surely return.
With that, Tomaso grabbed Francesco by the shirt and dragged him out of the dining room and up the steps into the daylight, trailing a menacing silence behind them.
Chapter 52
Dark Secrets
Tomaso was so ashamed of his son's involvement in the truffle theft that he didn't want the rest of them to follow. Standing on the sidewalk outside the Vincafé, he tried to calm himself and explain to Rita and Stefano why they should stay behind. He put up his hand in a strained, but non-menacing gesture, to indicate that he didn't want to be followed.
To Lucia, Tomaso's words took on an apologetic tone, since he knew that her family was more directly affected by his son's actions. To Paolo and Nicki, he simply asked for their patience.
“I'm going too,” declared Nicki.
“No, mi'amore,” Tomaso replied with fatherly kindness. “I cannot let you do that. This is for me – and Francesco – to fix.”
They walked off toward the car that Francesco had parked around the corner, leaving the others to just stand and wonder how this would play out.
Francesco leaned back into the driver's seat, and nervously watched his father slide into the seat beside him. The heat from Tomaso's anger permeated the small confines of the car, and Francesco knew that this would only get worse.
“Where is he?” is all Tomaso had to say.
“I don't know; I haven't seen him today and he isn't answering his phone. We can try his apartment, but he also has a warehouse outside of Alba.”
Tomaso looked at his son, almost surprised by his level of incompetence at this moment.
“And, if he's part of this grand theft, don't you think he'd use his warehouse to hide them?”
“Papa, Alfonso isn't the thief,” but Francesco knew his father wouldn't automatically buy into that excuse, so he set the car in gear and headed out of town.
They drove out of Alba to the refrigerated warehouse that Alfonso used to store the fruit that he sells to the markets and restaurants in the area. Francesco knew the area well, and also knew Alfonso's business; they had been friends for years. In fact, Francesco recalled a younger, introverted Alfonso who liked to tinker with computer programs and was not much of a farmer. Francesco wondered why his friend agreed to enter the family business instead of working in some office in Turin or Milan.
Throughout the ride, Tomaso remained resolutely quiet. It was probably better for both men, since words would come out in an explosion, and little positive would be accomplished.
Francesco pulled the car to a stop in front of the warehouse and they approached the broad double doors to the building. They were closed, but not locked, so the two men grabbed the handles and swung the doors open. Inside, the first room was small and furnished with a desk, a couple of chairs and some filing cabinets. A small laptop computer sat on the desk, its screen saver displaying alternating images of the Italian countryside. There were no sounds except for the pulsating rhythm of the cooling unit that maintained the refrigerator temperatures of the back room. A few lights were on, and the room seemed like it had been used very recently.
Familiar with the layout of the warehouse, Francesco strode across the office and pushed open the long, heavy rubber mats that hung across the doorway and separated the office from the chilled storage area. That room was dark, but Francesco knew where the light switch was. He turned to his right, reached across the flaps of the doorway to the metal-sheathed wall of this huge refrigeration room, and flipped the switch up.
The lights came on just as Tomaso stepped between the flaps. Both men looked at the room, which had some boxes of produce stacked around its perimeter. In the corner of the room was a chair, with Alfonso gagged and tied to it.
Francesco was startled
by the sight and rushed to his friend to release him. But as he drew close to Alfonso, Francesco let out a whimper of shock and fear. Seeing the streak of red that ran from Alfonso's temple down to his reddened collar, Francesco knew he had come too late.
“Mama santa!” Tomaso's shout echoed off the metallic walls of the room.
Both men approached Alfonso's unmoving body, examined the wound to the temple, and knew that it had been created by a gunshot.
“What is this?” Tomaso screamed. Realizing that his son was somehow involved in truffle theft and, now, murder, left him with nothing but curses to hurl at the room.
Francesco was shell-shocked and stood stock still in panic. His mind retraced all the things that had happened, and all the things that he and Alfonso had talked about, but he couldn't put his finger on what trail led to this ending.
Where was Lidia? Francesco immediately suspected Alfonso's girlfriend and looked around the room for evidence that she had been there. Finding none, he returned to Alfonso's lifeless body and searched for clues.
Again he found nothing. In fact, he found nothing at all. Alfonso's wallet, keys, gold ring, and cell phone were missing. Was this just a botched robbery? Had someone barged in on Alfonso, then killed him in a rage? That would have been more reassuring, in a sick way, but Francesco knew that this had more to do with the truffles than that. Otherwise, why would he be tied to a chair.
“Is this where the truffles were kept?” Tomaso asked.
“I told you, Alfonso didn't steal the truffles,” although Francesco was now beginning to doubt this.
“Humph,” Tomaso replied in disgust. “Was Alfonso killed for the truffles?”
“He would not have struggled, with anyone. Alfonso was a coward,” Francesco had to admit. “If there were truffles here, he would have invited the thieves to take them as long as they left him alone.”
This didn't solve the mystery, but Tomaso also realized that they could no longer avoid the police.