“I understand Crystal has returned bearing information that’s got the Gypsy man released,” Victoria said.
“The Gypsy man has a lame right hand, and the murder, according to the police, was done by a right-handed person.” I told them all I knew about the adventures of Shirley and Crystal. “Have you heard for sure that he’s been released?”
“Tessa says they let him go.” Victoria realigned her cutlery, a mildly irritating quirk, especially since, most of the time, she only moved it a millimeter or two. “I’ve been wondering if Shirley would think it too strange if I asked Crystal to go with me to San Gimignano one day,” she said. “To the medieval torture museum.”
I must have gasped audibly, because Victoria quickly added, “Here’s my reasoning. I already told you it’s an area of interest for me because of my bookshop. I like to stock what sells, and I’ve learned that people don’t want to know about the clean air and verdant woodlands of medieval times. They want to read about the gore. Man’s inhumanity to man. Of course, there are things going on today that are as bad or worse than anything they thought of back then, but people are blind to that.”
I nodded and said, “Teenagers, especially, faced with the reality of growing up and dealing with the hard, cruel world—leaving the cozy simplicity of childhood—are drawn to the dark side of man’s nature. That’s part of the fascination they have for the Gothic thing: vampires, the occult, witchcraft.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Victoria seemed delighted that I understood. “I think perhaps they actually
need
to deal with the dark side of life.”
“Maybe you should talk to Shirley, first. Right now, she’s just glad to have her little girl back, with hair that’s faded down to a medium pink.”
“Right. She probably doesn’t want to take any chances, but I found out there’s a bus one can take from Florence to SanGimignano. It’s not a long ride.”
Geoffrey said nothing until the meal was almost done. He seemed enclosed in his own world, but when our coffee arrived, he finally spoke up. “So no-ow we haaf a real mystery on our hands.”
“Have you a solution?” I asked.
“A lot of people had motives, I think.” Geoffrey harrumphed a couple of times. It seemed to me he was making a concerted effort to speak clearly, each word emerging from his mouth in its own little package. “And a lot of us could have had the opportunity, too.”
“Geoffrey and I talked about it. It must be someone in our group. Don’t you think it had to be?” Victoria peered at me over her glasses.
“If we include Cesare and Gianni in our group,” I said.
“Gianni?”
“Amy’s new love. I have no reason to suspect him, but Lettie and I were talking about it this afternoon and we decided to put him, and Cesare, on our list of suspects.” I poured a lot of milk into my coffee. “Lettie and I decided we could scratch you and Geoffrey off the list, and Amy and Tessa, people we know were together at the time of the murder and can vouch for each other.”
“Can’t do that,” Geoffrey said. “What if the two are in it together?”
“Oh, dear. Did you have to say that?”
Before we parted, back at the hotel, I reminded Victoria and Geoffrey about the memorial service tomorrow morning at 10, and Victoria suggested that a shared taxi to the church might make sense since it was a twenty to twenty-five minute walk.
“If we leave here by cab about thirty minutes before, we should be in plenty of time,” I said.
“See you half-nine, then,” Geoffrey said, as he turned toward the elevator.
Half-nine. Funny, the way the English say things. Half-nine. Nine-thirty.
I liked half-nine better. It sounded . . . pithier.
———
There was a bar tucked in beside the restaurant off the lobby, and I saw Tessa at a table by herself. She looked exhausted and defeated, clutching her drink glass in both hands. “Mind if I join you?” I asked.
“Please, do,” she said. “I’ve been given a brief reprieve. Captain Quattrocchi is interviewing Achille right now, so my translating services aren’t needed—for a few minutes at least.”
“I thought Achille was out with Beth.”
“They’re back,” Tessa said. “I think you may be next, Dotsy. He has to talk to everyone again, you know, and this time he’s going into more depth. Has to.”
“Has Ivo definitely been released?”
“Yes, but Quattrocchi didn’t let him go until about two hours ago. He didn’t want to at all, but he had to. The coroner, the prison doctor, and every medical authority Quattrocchi could find tried to trick Ivo into using his right hand. Quattrocchi grilled the coroner for an hour, and the prison doctor examined Ivo’s hand six ways from Sunday.”
“Apparently there’s no way he could have killed Meg with that knife,” I said.
“Apparently.” Tessa retreated into silence, and I asked the waiter for a cappuccino. He didn’t seem to understand me, even after I repeated it two more times. Tessa lightly touched my hand and muttered, “They never drink cappuccino after dinner. It just isn’t done.
I changed my order to an espresso, remembered I’d already had enough caffeine—an espresso would have launched me into orbit for the rest of the night—and finally settled on a glass of wine.
“I had a nice talk with Amy today,” I said. “She told me a good bit about her family and showed me a picture that was taken, I’m sure, before you knew her.”
Tessa nodded.
“She told me she visited your home, occasionally, when you were in college together, but did you ever visit her family?”
“No.” Tessa sipped her drink. “I hardly ever visited anyone from school, because I needed—wanted—to go home every chance I got. My mom had to take care of my brother, twenty-four seven, poor woman. So when I came home, I relieved her a bit so she could go out shopping.”
“What a lot of patience that must have taken.”
“Dad wasn’t much help. He was in the military—gone from home a lot—plus, he considered child care woman’s work.” Tessa snorted. “That’s why my mother never learned English, you know. She never left the house long enough to learn. Funny thing is, I guess I owe my job to her. If she’d spoken English to me at home, I’d never have learned Italian. As it is, I learned both languages from babyhood.”
“What sort of handicap did your brother have?” I immediately wished I’d phrased that better. I took a big gulp of my wine. “I mean, was it from birth? Or . . .”
“Yes. From birth. There was an accident when he was born.”
A cold chill ran all over me. Was it possible that Tessa’s mother had given birth in the hospital where Meg worked? That Tessa’s mother and her baby had been the victims of one of Meg’s careless screw-ups? Hadn’t the note Amy dropped in the Milan airport said: “crushed the baby’s skull”? But regardless of the events surrounding the birth of Tessa’s poor little brother, if Tessa had felt compelled to seek revenge, she would have done something before now.
“My dad is marrying again. Did you know that?” Tessa pulled me out of my reverie. “He’s retired, he’s moving to Italy, and he’s marrying a woman I can’t stand. I just hope Mama can’t see through the clouds.”
Marco Quattrocchi charged into the bar with a gruff, “May I see you now, Mrs. Lamb?”
So we were back to last names again.
To Tessa he said, “Mrs. Lamb
ed andiamo per una passeggiata.
”
Tessa looked at me, her face devoid of any expression. “He says the two of you are going for a walk.”
I ran to keep up as Marco Quattrocchi tramped down the sidewalk that ran eastward from our hotel to the Duomo. He took my elbow at crossings but said nothing for a full three blocks. I stayed as quiet as a kid being escorted to the principal’s office, but I’d done nothing wrong, so why did I feel I had to cower?
“I had to let him go,” Marco finally said. “I guess you have heard that already.”
“Yes. I heard you really gave him the third degree before you let him go.”
“The third degree?”
I explained what that meant.
“Of course, I did! Of course I gave him the third degree. I would not have let him go at all if I had any way to hold him. You know why? Because I will never see Ivo Ramovic again, that is why. I told him not to leave the area, but he is already in Milan or Rome by now, I am sure. He was probably gone within the hour. Finding a Roma is not like finding a dentist. They do not have addresses. They are not officially even here.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I said.
“I have to think about it like that. What I have now is the murder of a tourist from America, and a group of possible suspects and possible motives and . . .” He stopped and turned to me. He lowered his voice. “There is a strong possibility that I will have to arrest an American, or a Canadian, or a citizen of the U.K. for the murder of an American citizen. Do you know what that will involve with the embassies . . . possibly extraditions . . . it makes my head hurt to think about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The American Embassy is not fun to work with. I avoid it whenever I can.”
Ahead of us was a gelateria bustling with customers.
“Have you had dinner already?” Marco asked. “Would you like a gelato?”
I nodded.
“I am sorry. I forgot your diabetes.”
“It’s okay, one gelato won’t hurt.” I asked him to get me a cone with one scoop of strawberry. “What are you having?”
“Nothing. I do not want any.”
It occurred to me that a carabinieri officer might feel silly licking an ice cream cone in public, but surely he could eat a dish of gelato without sacrificing his dignity. Maybe he was too upset to eat anything. After raising four boys and trying to keep a husband happy for thirty years (albeit unscessfully, apparently) I have some feel for what a man’s ego requires. I changed my order to two scoops of strawberry in a dish and, while Marco paid for it, I picked up two spoons.
“Did Ivo have a lot of money on him when you arrested him?” I asked.
“Almost nine hundred Euros.”
“Did you take it away from him?”
“Of course. Do you think we would let him keep it?”
“But after you let him go . . . I mean, how do you know it wasn’t his money, legitimately?”
“Because he admitted he took it from Meg Bauer’s room.”
“So he admits he was there?”
“He did, after we had questioned him for several hours. He said he got into the room using the card he had earlier stolen from Mrs. Hines’s . . .”
“Waist pack?”
“Yes. He said he found Miss Bauer lying near the bathroom door in a pool of blood. He said the contents of someone’s purse lay scattered on the bed, and there was a wallet with a lot of money in it. He grabbed the wallet and ran out. He does not remember if he closed the door or not, but he still had the room card in his pocket when we found him.”
“And the wallet?”
“He had thrown it in a trash box behind a restaurant. We have it now.”
“How about the purse?”
“We have not found it.”
I handed Marco a spoonful of gelato. He ate it and smiled. The gelato seemed to cool him down a bit. I saw his eyes relax. “People expect a lot of you, don’t they?”
“A lot more than stupid idiots like us can live up to.” He let me refill his spoon. “Dotsy, do you know what people think about us? About the carabinieri?”
“No,” I said, happy I was Dotsy again.
“They think that we are all in the Sicilian Mafia, they think that we are all gangsters, they think that we are all below average in intelligence. I, for one, am not from Sicily. I have lived my whole life in Tuscany.” Marco drew his hands to his chest. “I am not in the mob. I am honest, and I deal very severely with anyone who I discover is not honest.”
I smiled, but I could have cried for him.
“I may, however, be below average in intelligence,” he added.
We both laughed. Marco had the eyes we used to call bedroom eyes. My knees felt weak.
His face turned serious. “I will tell you who
is
in the mob. Cesare, Tessa D’Angelo’s fiancé. Did you know that?”
“I’ve heard it suggested.”
“I have to ask you some questions, now.” He found a small table on the sidewalk outside the gelateria and pulled out a chair for me. He leaned forward in his own chair, his hands tucked between his knees. “How long did you sit in the lobby in front of the elevator?”
“I already told you. I was there from a little after five until a quarter to six or so. Lettie, Lucille Vogel, and I tried to catch the elevator about that time, but apparently it was being held on the third floor. Oh! I have something you might not know.”
I told him about Lucille Vogel and the mysterious transaction Lettie and I had seen in the train station. While I was at it, I filled him in on Amy’s version of the Bauer family inheritance.
“Do you want to come to work for me? You would be a good detective,” he said. “Another thing. When did Mrs. Hines go up in the elevator? You did see her go up, did you not?”
“Oh yes, with a pot of flowers. It was a few minutes before . . . it was about five thirty, I guess.”
In other words, I thought, Beth could have reached her room in time to kill her sister, toss the knife out the window, and call the front desk in an ersatz panic. I felt like a traitor—as if I had just convicted Beth. Lettie would hate me.
“Marco, who do you think it was? I know you don’t know yet, but you must have some idea.”
“I do not know. I really do not. The obvious first choice is, of course, Beth Hines. She had the motive, actually two motives considering what you just told me about Meg getting all of their mother’s money, and she had the opportunity. She would have known exactly where to find the knife; it was
her
knife. But there is a lot we still have to learn.”
“Don’t you think it would have been hard for Beth to have committed a very bloody murder at five thirty and clean up fast enough to invite the folks from the front desk up at five forty-five?”
Marco tapped his forehead and winked at me. “I know that Meg Bauer had a lot of enemies. She was apparently a very careless and . . . uh . . . unfeeling nurse. I keep discovering all these little connections . . . possible motives.”
“Yes. And tonight Tessa told me her younger brother’s handicap was due to a problem with his birth, and it struck me . . . what if Meg was the nurse? Of course, what are the odds of that?”