Liquid Desires (26 page)

Zuin handed the postcard back to Urbino without comment. Urbino knew little about Zuin except that he was Novembrini's dealer. But then he remembered what Novembrini had told him about his dealer during their talk at the café on the Grand Canal—that Zuin had mixed feelings about Flavia.

Zuin's eyes suddenly lit up with a broad smile as he looked toward the entrance.

“So what are you and Papà cooking up between you for a poor defenseless girl?” said a petite dark-haired woman who had just come into the room with a bounce in her step.

She kissed Zuin on the forehead and straightened his pocket square. Then she kissed Novembrini, tugging playfully at the hair at the nape of his neck. She was the young woman who had joined Novembrini at the café on the Grand Canal.

She smiled brightly at Urbino as Zuin introduced her as his daughter, Tina. Zuin's face shone with pride. Novembrini, with almost a challenging look at Urbino, drew her aside.

“Now don't you forget to deliver that naked girl to Urbino's little palace when this shindig is over, Mr. Zuin,” Eugene said when he and Urbino were leaving a few minutes later.

On the way to the Danieli, where he would leave Eugene, Urbino was abstracted as Eugene went on about
Nude in a Funeral Gondola
. Urbino realized that he now had another piece to try to fit into the puzzle of Flavia's life—Tina Zuin, the daughter of Novembrini's dealer, who appeared to be on more than just friendly terms with the artist. Zuin obviously doted on his daughter. Urbino couldn't help but think of the contrast between Zuin and Brollo. Lorenzo had seemed, throughout his conversation with Urbino, strangely detached from Flavia, as if he hadn't cared about her at all.

Tina could be the reason why Massimo Zuin hadn't liked Flavia. Had this been the source of the “mixed feelings” that Novembrini had mentioned? Most likely, however, Zuin didn't have any mixed feelings about his daughter's friendship with his star artist.

After depositing Eugene at the Danieli, Urbino went to see Violetta Volpi.

5

Dressed in a lemon-colored linen tunic, Violetta Volpi was alone under the ivy-covered pergola behind her studio when Urbino was brought out to the garden by her maid. She was planing a wooden panel, her bracelets jangling. Out here in the sun and in the reflected light from the Grand Canal, her brown hair was vivid with red highlights. Her full-bosomed body, now close to sixty, gave off a wave of voluptuousness that must have been powerful in her youth. The not unpleasant pungent aroma that her perfume failed to mask was even stronger this afternoon, perhaps encouraged by the sun.

Violetta interrupted her work to look at the Dalí postcard. She gave it only a glance and then put it on the wrought-iron bench and continued her work.

“One of my niece's favorite paintings,” she said in her throaty voice.

Urbino watched Violetta as she continued to plane the panel that she said she was going to use in a new series. She was a resourceful and even unpredictable woman. Not only was she planing the panels herself and filling in the knotholes with sawdust and glue, but she had even glued the various pieces of wood together. Once again, as on his last visit, Urbino felt that Violetta was using her work as a way of putting a barrier between them, of making it difficult for him to see how she was really reacting.

“Did you use pyrene for the glue?” Urbino asked her.

She shot a quick look at him from her light green eyes.

“You know something about these things, I see. No, not pyrene, but an old concoction that works very well. I've got my own recipe for it.”

She laughed, as if at a private joke.

“Cheese and lime?”

“You
do
know what you're talking about. Yes, cheese and lime, but if you want the exact proportions, forget it! How do you know so much about art materials, Signor Macintyre?”

Urbino explained about his courses in art restoration. Violetta nodded her head as she bent over the panel. Urbino brought up Dalí's
The Birth of Liquid Desires
again.

“
I
introduced Flavia to Dalí,” she said, putting aside the plane and inspecting the panel. “When she was about twelve. We went to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and I gave her a tour of all the paintings. She loved the Surrealist paintings best, and was particularly fascinated by Dalí. She preferred that Dalí”—she nodded over at the postcard on the chair—“to the other one. She met Peggy Guggenheim once. Miss Guggenheim told her some anecdotes about Dalí and the painting. A most interesting woman. Did you know her?”

“Unfortunately not. I've heard that Flavia went back to the Guggenheim many times just to see that painting.”

She smiled and laid the panel down on the table, rubbing her hands together.

“If you make an impression on a young mind, it lasts forever. That's why it's important that the impressions be the best. But perhaps you're more conservative in your tastes. Perhaps you think that something like
The Birth of Liquid Desires
isn't suited for young people.”

“Is there any reason why your niece might have found that particular painting so interesting?”

Violetta Volpi laughed.

“I can see you don't know children! It's a limitation for an artistic temperament not to be around them. Thank God I had Flavia. The answer is simple. The painting is quite sexual. You've got two naked men in the painting and two fair maidens—and one of the men is in an obvious state of arousal.”

She looked at Urbino directly when she made this latter observation. He felt she was trying once again to provoke him into a criticism of Dalí.

“I saw the copy of the Guggenheim catalog you gave Flavia. It was among her belongings at the Casa Trieste. There's an inscription from you on the inside cover.”

“I gave it to her on her twenty-first birthday,” Violetta said with almost palpable sadness in her hoarse voice.

“The page that the Dalf plate is on was ripped out. On the other side is a Tanguy—
The Sun in Its Jewel Case
.” Since Urbino was speaking Italian, the title didn't carry any ambiguity. “Did your niece like the Tanguy as well?”

Violetta didn't answer right away.

“Not as much as Dalí.” Violetta now had a worried, even slightly angry frown on her face. “Since she was a child my niece had a terrible habit of ripping pages from books. I considered it a sacrilege. I would scold her, but she liked tacking things on the wall and putting them in a scrapbook she kept. If I didn't know that Flavia had that habit, I'd almost say it was Annabella who ripped out that page. She's a bit of a prude and has probably never seen a naked man in her life. Yes, Stefana?”

Violetta's maid told her that she had a phone call, and Violetta went into the studio. Urbino walked down to the low, wrought-iron gate between the garden and the semicircular water steps. Part of the terrace of the Guggenheim Palazzo could be seen on the other side farther down the Grand Canal beyond the Accademia Bridge.

The Volpis were obviously in the process of repairing the white stone wall that separated the garden from the Grand Canal. A pile of stones was stacked to the left of the water gate.

Urbino was about to turn away when he noticed that the gate was broken. It looked as if it had been pushed outward toward the Grand Canal. It could no longer be closed.

“A bit of vandalism, I'm afraid,” Violetta said, startling Urbino. “You know what high season is like here. People come up to our water steps in boats and try to come in. It takes much of the pleasure out of being here on the Grand Canal at this time of the year. They seem to have parties right on the steps. We find empty wine bottles and cigarette stubs all the time. The garden isn't as well lit as it should be to begin with and several of the light bulbs have blown out.”

When Urbino turned around to face Violetta, he noticed Bernardo Volpi looking down at them from a second-story window. Violetta followed Urbino's gaze.

“I see that Bernardo is finished with his nap. I'll have to see if he needs anything. I'll walk you to the door.”

As they made their way along the narrow hall flanked with
torchères
, Urbino told Violetta that Mirko had found Flavia's scrapbook at the Casa Trieste and had given it to him temporarily for safekeeping. This seemed the best way to explain the delicate situation. He said nothing about the mugging.

Violetta seemed stunned.

“
You
have the scrapbook? Lorenzo has been wondering where it is. You must give it to him at once! He'll be furious.”

“Of course I'll give it to him. I thought it might be safer with me than with Mirko,” Urbino added, feeling guilty as he said this, considering the mugging. “I confess that I looked through it.”

“I have no doubt that you did,” Violetta said coldly.

“There's a section of autographs. One of them is Alvise da Capo-Zendrini's. Do you have any idea how it got there?”

Violetta stopped and turned to him, breathing heavily.

“I am not the repository of all knowledge about my niece, Signor Macintyre—and neither is her father. I haven't the slightest idea how the Conte da Capo-Zendrini's autograph came to be in Flavia's scrapbook—if indeed it is there.”

“I haven't shown it to the Contessa yet to authenticate it but—”

“Return the scrapbook to my brother-in-law immediately, Signor Macintyre! You are trying our patience in this as in other things. Lorenzo has told me about your insinuations about Regina saying something to my niece about the Conte da Capo-Zendrini. My sister was emotionally ill. Sometimes she could hardly remember details from the day before. Someone is misleading you—someone you may be too eager to believe instead of Lorenzo and me. And as for my niece having been murdered! Well, both my brother-in-law and I find that unthinkable! Whoever would have wanted to murder her?”

“I'm trying to find out, Signora Volpi. That's why I need your help—and your brother-in-law's. I know that Flavia was here on the Thursday evening before her body was found. Did she say anything about the Conte or her mother then?”

“I don't know how you found out that she was here, Signor Macintyre!” Violetta glared at him with burning eyes. “Neither my brother-in-law nor I would be pleased to discover that the police are sharing information with you. It is none of your business what occurred between my niece and me, I assure you. It was the last time we saw each other. I would prefer to keep it private.”

Urbino thought it best to drop the topic for now, and not to bring up how Violetta had gone to the Palazzo Brollo after she had seen Flavia.

They went up the staircase in silence. When they reached the upper hall, Urbino decided to risk one more question, wanting to bring up the argument that Mirko said he and Flavia had overheard.

“You were at Lago di Garda at the time your sister Regina drowned, weren't you?”

“Yes, I was,” Violetta answered, stiffening. “Why do you mention that sad occasion?”

“Ladislao Mirko said that he overheard an argument between you and your brother-in-law.”

Violetta turned to him, her light green eyes burning and her face flushed.

“Ladislao Mirko!” She came close to spitting out the name as if it were poison. It was in her anger that she reminded Urbino most of her niece—especially the Flavia who had stormed out of Caffè Florian. In animation Violetta's coarse features assumed almost an attractiveness that was a ghost of Flavia's beauty. “I wouldn't believe anything Mirko has to tell you. Surely you know he's on drugs! He can't tell day from night. If he has your ear, then you're being led astray. Good-day, Signor Macintyre.”

After leaving the Ca' Volpi, Urbino rang the bells of the people who lived on both sides of the Volpis. Most refused to answer his questions, but those who did said that they had heard and seen nothing unusual on the last night Flavia was known to be alive, although they remembered the violent thunderstorm and the shouts of carousing tourists.

And yet, as Urbino stood at one of the neighbors' windows and looked down into the Volpis' garden, he felt that he was looking at the site of Flavia's death. The water gate was broken. Violetta's explanation hadn't completely satisfied him. And Bernardo Volpi's bedroom had an even better view of the garden than Urbino did now.

There was also the pile of stones. Flavia's murderer could have picked one up and hit her in the head with it, stunning her, pushed her into the Grand Canal, and left her to drown. The stone could then have been tossed after her into the Grand Canal.

According to the chronology of Flavia's last night, she had left the Ca' Volpi to go to see Lorenzo. How could she have been murdered back at the Ca' Volpi? Violetta had gone to see her brother-in-law and arrived at the Palazzo Brollo after Flavia had left.

Where had Flavia gone
after
the Palazzo Brollo? What had led her to her death?

6

Urbino next went to the archives of
Il
Gazzettino
across from Caffè Florian to read through newspaper articles on Nicolina Ricci's murder. Something might be in them that had meant nothing to him before Flavia Brollo entered his and the Contessa's lives.

Flavia Brollo's name wasn't mentioned in any of the articles, but Urbino hadn't expected it to be. He pored over all the details of the blood-soaked sheets and the chaos of Nicolina's bedroom, the multiple knife wounds and the T-shirt stuffed into her mouth. He read the neighbors' testimonials about what a “good girl” Nicolina had been and the descriptions of how distraught her family was. Not until Urbino came upon two details, however, did he feel that he had finally found something. One was the way Pasquale Zennaro, who eventually confessed to the murder, was described as a “close friend of the family” and “almost an uncle to the slain girl,” a man who “at first seemed as disturbed as if it had been his own child.” Signora Ricci had said similar things about Zennaro.