Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13)

by Todd Borg

Street said, “It sure is easy to tell the tourists from the locals.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The tourists come out with groceries, and the locals don’t.”

  As I said it, two young women came out. They each wore a lightweight coat, open at the front, revealing black cocktail dresses. They both had on high heels, and they carried nothing.

  “Maybe they live in apartments behind the shop or up above,” Street said. “The shop owner could be the landlord.”

  “I don’t think those girls live there,” I said. “I think that’s where they work.”

  Two men passed each other in the doorway, one going in and one going out. No groceries.

  Street looked at me. “You think the men without groceries are buying something else there? In apartments above the shop?”

  “More money in that than selling groceries or simply renting apartments.”

  Street grinned. “There’s your leverage if you need it.”

  “Yup,” I said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Professor Drago came out fifteen minutes later. His shirt was tucked in a little more neatly than before.

  “It’s only been fifteen minutes,” I said. “Not much time for amore. Just a job to get done.”

  “Aren’t you the romantic,” Street said. “You know, some men and their prostitutes fall in love and get married and live happily ever after.” She pointed at another young woman who was approaching the shop. This one carried a bag that was just big enough for, perhaps, stiletto heels. Her coat was buttoned up, but the lacy hem of her red dress was visible. “Like that girl,” Street said. “She’s probably got a girl-next-door personality that would make a great wife.”

  “Pretty rare,” I said. “But if she looks like you in turquoise underthings, amore and a marriage proposal will come fast.”

  “What if her john found out that she studies bugs for a living?” Street said.

  I put my arm around Street. “That would be the delightful bonus that would make her irresistibly exciting. Just so long as she doesn’t let her john look inside her laboratory fridge.”

  We followed Drago back the way we’d come. I was about to approach him at his door, but he was too quick. He stepped in through the doorway and shut the door before I could get there.

  Street and I trotted up to the door and knocked.

  I expected him to open the door immediately, but he didn’t. We waited.

  I knocked again.

  We waited some more.

  The door finally opened. A woman in her sixties looked out. She was short and wide and had jet-black hair with inch-long, chalk-white roots. She wore a frumpy black dress like something a hotel maid might wear. But she was quite beautiful.

  “Buon giorno,” Street said. “Parli inglese, per favore?”

  “A little,” the woman said.

  “Grazie,” Street said. “We’re looking for Professore Giovanni Drago, please.”

  “I am his wife,” the woman said. “What do you want with him?”

  I spoke. “I’d like to speak with him, please.”

  “What about?”

  “My name is Owen McKenna, and this is Street Casey. We’ve come here from Lake Tahoe.” As I said it, I realized that many people around the world don’t know that name. “California,” I corrected. “Two people have referred us. One is his former student.”

  “And what is his name?”

  “Her name,” I said. “Antonella Porto.”

  “I do not know this name. Professore do not know this name.”

  “I understand. I still hope you’ll help us. Our question is about the Medici family. Antonella told us that Professor Drago was the man to talk to.”

  I heard the sound of a car coming to a stop behind me. A door opened and closed. A woman in her mid-thirties trotted up in an obvious hurry. We stepped aside as she said some fast words in Italian, two of which were ‘Ciao mama.’ The older woman opened the door farther to let the younger woman in. They kissed cheeks. The mother looked at me again.

  “The professor will want to talk to us about the Medicis,” I said. I tried to make it sound like I was referring to something significant.

  She shook her head. “Professore is busy man. Important things. No time for question.”

  “This is very important,” I said. I raised my voice loud enough that Drago could probably hear me from inside. “Please let the professor decide if he wants to talk to us. He will, trust me.”

  At that, the professor appeared behind his wife. He said something, and she moved away. He looked at us with distaste.

  “I already told you that I’m busy. You are persistent to the point of displeasure. Please go away.”

  “This won’t take long. I’m an investigator from the United States. I’m pursuing a murderer who, I believe, is motivated by something that connects to the Medicis. Special information, perhaps. We don’t really know.”

  The man’s face took on a cold look. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this kind of nonsense.” He began to shut the door.

  I put my foot in the opening.

  “I would like you to make time, please,” I said. “This murderer has killed three times, and we have reason to think that he is planning more murders. Your help could save a life or two.”

  “So you say. I’ve heard ridiculous things about the Medicis before. Each time it turned out to be a false story perpetrated by treasure hunters who think they can track down a missing work of art with my help. I simply don’t believe you.”

  “Give me ten minutes to convince you,” I said.

  “Sorry.” He tried to shut the door again. “Please move your foot or I will call the police.”

  “There are lives at stake. If you don’t help me, I will consider ways to pressure you.”

  “I have a strong constitution. I don’t succumb to pressure.”

  “What about your recent walk to the little food shop? Do you want that kept private?”

  The man’s face colored, and he looked very sad. It made me feel terrible for bringing it up. I had to remind myself that it was in service of stopping a killer.

  The professor spoke in a soft voice. “Please allow a man a vice or two if they don’t harm anyone.”

  “Would your wife agree that there’s no harm?”

  “My wife knows.”

  “Your daughter, then.” I hated to say it.

  Drago narrowed his eyes. “You would do something as cruel as telling her?”

  I knew that I wouldn’t, but he didn’t know that. I said, “It would make me have contempt for myself, but I’m trying to catch a murderer. If you have information that can prevent more people from dying, then it would be worth it.”

  Drago stared at me, hate and disgust in his eyes, as he thought about it.

  “You are vile.”

  “If you talk to me, I think that you will find that my overall intentions are good. In the big picture, I mean no harm. And I am not a treasure hunter. But if I have to hurt one stubborn person to save the life of another innocent person, I’ll do it.”

  The professor’s jaw moved back and forth as he took a deep breath through his mouth. “I don’t have much time.” He spoke directly to Street as if I weren’t there.

  “Thank you,” I said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  He turned and walked inside. We followed him into what seemed like the center of the apartment, a small, elegant, circular atrium with a spiral staircase that rose at the room’s perimeter. Natural light came from a ring of windows three floors above. At the atrium’s center was a white marble fountain with a sculpture of a nude woman, languorous in her pose as she bathed in burbling water.

  With the base of the staircase at noon on the atrium’s layout, the room had three arched doorways at three, six, and nine o’clock. The man walked past the fountain and through the doorway at three o’clock.

  As we followed him, Street said, “You speak impeccable English. You must have spent time…”

  “I
went to Oxford,” Drago interrupted. “Took my doctorate in Renaissance Studies. I came back home to spend the next forty-five years helping the Italian government understand just what an astonishing collection of art they possess. Even most Renaissance scholars and aficionados don’t comprehend the depth and breadth of artistic innovation produced here in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”

  The room we entered had a sitting area and what looked like an old harpsichord in the corner. The top had a classic design made of inlaid wood around the perimeter. There were two windows, very tall and narrow. They looked out at the Pitti Palace in the distance.

  “Have a seat,” he said, still talking to Street as if I weren’t in the room. He gestured toward a formal grouping of chairs with straight wooden backs designed to be uncomfortable. Drago sat in a chair next to a small table with a glass and a pitcher that was dewy with condensation. He poured some water into a glass and took a drink. He did not offer us water. My threat had made him give us some time but nothing more. Drago checked his watch, a large gold chronograph with three small, separate faces. The big watch dwarfed his bony, arthritic wrist. When we were all seated he said, “Tell me about this murder.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  “There were three murders. One was a woman named Scarlett Milo who believed she was targeted for death. She asked me to investigate. She was shot and killed as I was meeting her. The second woman was Darla Ali. I never met her, but we linked her to the first.”

  “Both women,” Drago said, his voice low. “But it doesn’t sound like it was any kind of sex crime.”

  I shook my head. “No. The third murder was a young man named Sean Warner.”

  “You must have developed some possible reasons for why these people were killed,” he said.

  “Yes, but on the basis of flimsy speculation. The two murdered women were both focused on the Italian Renaissance and the art it produced. In San Francisco, California, this would not be unusual. But in Lake Tahoe, this is highly unusual. Although it would be hard to explain just how unusual to a person who lives and breathes the Renaissance every day.”

  Drago looked out one of the windows. He sighed.

  As I described the situation, it sounded ridiculous to me, and I wondered if I was so desperate to find justice for Scarlet Milo that I’d flown a quarter of the way around the world on a silly whim.

  “As Scarlett Milo lay dying, she scrawled a note to me. The writing was hard to read, so we’re not sure what it says. But it originally looked to me like it said ‘Medic’s BFF.’”

  “What does BFF mean?”

  “I don’t know about acronyms here in Italy, but in the States, BFF is often an abbreviation for Best Friend Forever. It’s used primarily by younger women to refer to close friends, especially when they are texting each other. I did some research on what a medic’s best friend forever might be and came up with nothing of substance.”

  “And you think this has something to do with the Medicis of the Renaissance,” Drago said. “Why?”

  “Scarlett Milo had many books on the Italian Renaissance. And in Darla’s apartment, there were four pictures of artworks done by Italian Renaissance artists, Raphael, Michelangelo, Botticelli, and da Vinci. It’s obviously not much of a connection. But Tahoe is not a place where people focus on Renaissance art. That two of them ended up murdered makes the Renaissance connection more possible if still unlikely. So when I looked again at the note the dying woman wrote, I thought that instead of ‘Medic’s BFF,’ perhaps the woman meant to write Medicis BFF. Of course, if she did mean to write Medicis, then we had the question of why a dying woman would refer to a powerful family from five hundred years ago and six thousand miles from Tahoe.”

  Drago moved his hand through the air as if waving away cigarette smoke. “Conspiracy theories abound everywhere. It is people like you and these women who died who keep such crazy ideas alive.”

  His dismissive manner irritated me. “It is because of the women who died that I’m tracking it down,” I said. “Whether it is something real or just a crazy idea is what I intend to find out.” I took a deep breath as I looked at Drago. It would do me no good to show anger.

  “I made a photocopy of the note the dying woman wrote,” I said. “Humor me, please. Maybe looking at it will give you an idea.” I pulled it out and handed it to Professor Drago.

  He took it. The look on his face was scornful as if, without even looking, he knew the note was inane or even gibberish. Drago pulled eyeglasses out of his shirt pocket and slipped them on. He held the note out in front of him and moved it forward and back to get it into focus. He squinted at the note, then lowered it to his lap. “There is nothing here to go on. Despite your speculation, this Best Friend Forever concept is meaningless in the context of a multi-generational family like the Medicis. I couldn’t even begin…” Drago stopped talking and frowned. He lifted up the note and looked at it again. In two or three seconds, his face reddened.

  I waited a moment. “What are you thinking?”

  Drago swallowed. “It’s...” He stopped.

  “From your reaction to the note, it appears that it does mean something to you,” I said. I looked at Professor Drago and waited. “Please tell us what you make of it,” I said. “If it is merely a conspiracy, as you referred to it, I’m eager to hear the details.”

  After a moment, Drago spoke. “Yes, it means something to me, although it’s nearly impossible to believe it is anything but a silly rumor that is hundreds of years old. It’s not a widespread rumor, so to have the rumor surface in America is startling.”

  Drago took a sip of water, swallowed, set the glass down. He rubbed his nose, pulled his glasses off and put them back into his shirt pocket, then spoke.

  “The long history of the Medici family - a family that controlled much of the business of Florence and actually ruled the city and the Catholic Church for many years - included several tantalizing stories that have never been substantiated. Scholars believe that they persist simply because they make good stories.” Drago gestured with Milo’s note. “This one - let’s call it the BFF rumor - is just like the other rumors. It has never been corroborated with any evidence. I personally looked into this rumor a couple of decades ago, and I believe it is complete nonsense.” He paused, staring at the note.

  We waited.

  “For you to understand this rumor,” Drago said, “I have to explain about one particular member of the Medici family, a young man who was on the periphery of the power center, a young man named Tommaso de’ Medici.”

  Professor Drago drank more water, then took a deep breath before he began talking.

  “In fifteen nineteen, Lorenzo Two de’ Medici and his wife Madeline De La Tour gave birth to Catherine de’ Medici. Catherine, you may remember from your history, was married off to Henry the Second in fifteen thirty-three. Henry, of course, became King of France in fifteen forty-seven, making Catherine Queen of France. After Henry died in fifteen fifty-nine, each of Catherine’s three sons ended up serving as king.

  “During the time of Catherine’s youth, there was talk that Catherine de’ Medici had a fraternal twin brother who was named Tommaso de’ Medici. If the rumors are true, Tommaso was given up to be raised by a distant cousin.”

  “Why would they give up one baby out of a pair of twins?” I asked.

  “We don’t know for sure. We do know that Tommaso had dark skin and full lips and looked of African descent, so his father was likely different than that of his half-sister Catherine.”

  “Catherine did not look like Tommaso?”

  “No.”

  “I thought you said they were twins,” I said.

  “Yes. Fraternal twins who were sired by separate men.”

  Street must have sensed my confusion. “It’s called superfecundation,” she said. “It’s a situation that is not uncommon and results in fraternal twins by different fathers.”

  I thought about it. “So Catherine’s mother Madeline must have had sex with two
men in a short period of time. Each fertilized one of her eggs, and the two eggs developed in the womb together as twins.”

  Drago nodded.

  “And,” I continued, “Catherine’s father was white and Tommaso’s father was black.”

  Another nod. Drago said, “I should point out that in Renaissance Europe, blacks occupied every social strata. Yes, there was discrimination. Some blacks were slaves, and certainly many blacks were treated very badly. But other blacks were merchants and professionals and artists. One, Benedict of Palermo, was made a saint. Saint Benedict is now the patron saint of African-Americans. So the Medicis were accustomed to dealing with blacks as friends and associates and, apparently, as lovers.”

  “No surprise there,” Street said. “We’ve had American presidents with black mistresses.”

  Drago made a faint smile. “For many of us Europeans, our favorite American president is Thomas Jefferson. That he kept slaves and defended their enslavement was certainly reprehensible. That he had children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings, does not detract much from his reputation but instead suggests he had a more expansive view of humanity than other men of his time. In some ways, he clearly thought that blacks were second class people. Yet he obviously felt they were worthy of his love, and he believed that Hemmings was acceptable and worthy as the mother of his children.”

  “Why do you think that Tommaso was given up to another family?” I asked.

  “We’ll never know. But the perspective of a Medici back then was probably similar to what a husband might think today. Which makes the likeliest explanation that Lorenzo couldn’t tolerate raising a son who was the child of his wife’s lover. The fact that her lover was black probably mattered less than the fact that another man had fathered Tommaso.”

  “What happened to the mother Madeline? Did she stay in touch with her son Tommaso?”

  “No. She died fifteen days after Catherine and Tommaso were born, on the twenty-eighth of April, fifteen nineteen, just six days before her husband Lorenzo died. The cause of death is thought to be the plague or syphilis. Catherine was raised by relatives much the way Tommaso was.”