Light in the Shadows

by Linda Lafferty

  “And what else was behind that door?”

  “We don’t know, sir. There is reason to believe there were other people involved. Other people in the warehouse, at any rate.”

  “But the police report doesn’t mention them, does it?”

  “No sir.”

  “And the police were not the ones who blew out the back wall of the warehouse, were they?”

  “No sir.” The tall man began to shift uncomfortably, if imperceptibly.

  “And the police do not have the painting, do they?” The improbably low voice was thundering.

  “No sir.”

  “And we have no idea where it is, do we?” The thunder dropped to a whisper.

  “No sir.”

  “Well, find out!” Thunder again. The little man was breathing harder now. “Or in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ I will have you disemboweled, Fra Filippo Lupo, before the assembled brotherhood of our blessed order. Do. You. Understand.”

  “Sir. Yes sir.”

  The small man’s voice was suddenly calm, almost gentle. “I have taught you everything I can. You have been like a son to me. Use what you have learned and find what happened to the painting. And what happened behind that locked door.”

  Fra Lupo dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

  “Sì, Gran Comandante Pantera. It shall be done as you have ordered.”

  The thin lips opened once more.

  “Dismissed. Walk with the Lord.”

  Chapter 8

  MONTE PICCOLO

  They found Professor Richman at home in his own bed. Almost.

  Professor Aristotle Rafael Richman was, in fact, in bed. But not quite his own bed. He was currently ensconced in newfound style in the owner’s suite in the villa overlooking Monte Piccolo, where the art history seminar was being held. When he had first arrived, Professor Richman had been given what he considered a less-than-satisfactory room in the dorm-like annex where new students were housed. He had glumly accepted his assigned room, since he would only be there for a single semester. But he was certainly much more pleased with his current accommodations.

  The conte—the count, who owned this villa and rented it out for art history seminars because he couldn’t figure out any other way to pay for the upkeep of the vast, drafty building—had graciously moved to another room so the professor could recuperate in cordial surroundings. When the conte made the offer—expressing his deep embarrassment on behalf of his country that such a distinguished guest should have been subjected to such an unpleasant experience—Richman thought recuperation in comfort sounded like an excellent idea. He returned the conte’s gracious smile with one of his own and moved right in. His new life was on a more acceptable track.

  When Lucia and Moto burst into the room that morning, the professor was sipping a deeply satisfying cappuccino. Lucia wanted to run and hug him out of sheer relief, but the cappuccino was in the way, and Professor Richman was not giving it up until he had finished the last drop.

  Lucia’s rush of affection stalled, and there was a brief awkward moment when the professor wiped a bit of foam off his lips, gestured toward Moto, and said, “I don’t believe I have met your friend.”

  It took Lucia a moment to realize that they didn’t know each other. Moto wasn’t in the art history seminar, and Professor Richman wasn’t in the bars at night. Two separate parts of her life in Monte Piccolo.

  Lucia made a quick introduction.

  The two men eyed each other. Moto reminded the professor of too many careless students who never finished their assignments and never seemed to care. Students who flaunted a youthful energy that they smugly knew the professor had left behind long ago.

  Facing the professor’s piercing look, Moto dropped his eyes, blushed, and stammered. Something in the appraising glance reminded Moto of his father, though no two men could possibly have been more different. He mumbled that he had to go and slipped out of the room.

  Lucia and the professor were alone together again. Out of danger now, but bound by what they had been through when they hugged each other in the dark while a maniac with an axe tried to break through a door and get at them. They’d faced death together and survived. But now they were alive, life continued, and here in the elegant room and the dappled morning sun, they didn’t quite know what to say next. Inextricably bound and at a loss for words.

  The professor wriggled his shoulders and settled a little more deeply into the great mound of pillows on the enormous bed. The bandage on his head wasn’t very large. The doctor had done a fine piece of work on the gash in his scalp, delicate needlework despite all the time lost while Professor Richman and Lucia were locked in the dark and then coated with dust.

  “Breaded like a Kentucky Fried Professor,” Richman tried to joke, to show how well he was doing, but Lucia wasn’t laughing. She picked up a folded newspaper from the bed and waved it.

  “It says we weren’t there!”

  “No,” he said, trying to soothe her. “I read it very carefully myself. It doesn’t say we weren’t there. It just doesn’t say that we were there. It neglects to mention us at all.”

  “It says Te-Te was alone all day in spiritual meditation. That he had given orders that he was not to be disturbed. No visitors.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And at the hospital they said you were never there.”

  “Also exactly the way I would want it to be. Embarrassing, really, as a visiting professor, to be pistol-whipped and rushed to the hospital. Makes me seem careless.”

  “But . . .”

  “And besides the newspapers—which I’m certain had reasons of their own—there is apparently someone else who very much wants our presence to be turned into an absence. Literally. Someone represented, as you might recall, by a man with an axe. I don’t know who and I don’t know why and I don’t want to find out. I am very glad to have that little adventure over and done with.” He gestured at the room and the sunlight. “Certainly this is much nicer, isn’t it?”

  And when she didn’t say anything, he went on, “Do you really want to rush off to your friendly local carabinieri and tell them that you—not ‘we,’ just you—were witness to a murder and you’d love nothing more than to be dragged into the maw of their investigation?”

  And when she still didn’t look convinced, he added, “We were innocent bystanders at someone else’s accident.”

  And maybe because the bandage was a real one, even if it was small, and maybe because Lucia did instinctively hate the carabinieri, she let it drop. Besides, she was impressed by his spirit. He seemed to be handling the events—murder, kidnapping, explosion—better than she was. And he was nearly three times her age.

  She pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down.

  “I think it’s real.”

  He raised an eyebrow. And winced. He was going to have to give up his quizzically raised eyebrow for a while. It pulled on the stitches.

  “The painting,” she continued. “I think it’s real. A Cara—”

  “Don’t say that name.” He cut her off. “That man was cursed. His name is cursed, and I don’t want to be part of his story. Not even at this far remove.”

  She started again.

  “I think the painting is . . . what Te-Te said it was.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He was your zio, or whatever he was, but he’s nothing more than an old—”

  “Stop that!”

  He could see she wanted to smack him, but the bandage and its magic seemed to hold for now. Her face relaxed and she lowered her voice.

  “I’m serious.”

  So he was serious too.

  “You saw those faces. There is no way that Michelangelo Mer—” He stopped himself. “Call him Michele. There is no way Michele ever painted those faces.”

  She nodded. “Maybe. But that night. That night in the dark. The way the moonlight fell, I couldn’t see the faces. But there was something.” She lifted her hands and twisted them gently as if she were tryi
ng to shape something out of the air. “I could feel those people in the painting.” He was listening. “You don’t have to see someone’s face to know he’s real. I couldn’t see much in the moonlight, but I could see enough.”

  Professor Richman couldn’t disagree with that. She’d seen what she’d seen.

  And her certainty was a force.

  “I could feel those people,” she insisted. “They were real. Even in the dark.”

  “And the faces?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone painted over the originals. Cara—Michele’s faces. I don’t know why. I don’t know who. All I know is what I saw. What I felt.”

  Professor Richman thought for a moment, then pointed across the room.

  “Open the drawer. There. The desk. Manila envelope.”

  The desk—complete with painted cherubs and gold leaf—looked old enough for Caravaggio to have written letters there.

  Lucia handed him the envelope and he opened it.

  “This,” he said, “must be for you.” He handed her a folder labeled “Bacio di Giuda.” Judas Kiss.

  The folder held only a single sheet of paper, covered in scrawled handwriting.

  Professor Richman shrugged. “I couldn’t read a word of it.”

  Lucia translated as she went. It wasn’t easy, but there wasn’t much.

  It was apparently written by Zio Te-Te—Father Antonio—who had traced the painting back to the family that had given it to his tiny church. Many generations back. Before there even was an orphanage. Back when the Catholic Church was much more powerful in this Catholic country and even such a tiny chapel had a strong congregation.

  The name of the family was a blot. Conte de . . . something.

  “How did you get this?”

  “Curious, isn’t it? Especially when you consider that we apparently weren’t even there.” He held up the large manila envelope. In sprawling, crude letters, it was addressed to “Il professore americano, Monte Piccolo.”

  There was a long silence. The professor waited with pedagogical patience. Lucia suddenly understood. “The children! The orphans!”

  “Exactly. Remember all that whispering and scurrying when we got there and started looking for Zio Te-Te.”

  She gave him a tight smile. “If you want to broadcast something to the world, all you have to do is try to keep it secret from the children.” She shook her head. “That must be how they knew.”

  “They?”

  “The men who”—she raised her hands in a helpless gesture—“stole the painting, killed Te-Te. They . . .”

  She stopped. Then started again.

  “One of the children must have been bragging that the ‘professore americano’ was coming to look at the painting. That’s what brought those murdering thieves to the chapel. And now . . .”

  She paused again and the professor finished the sentence.

  “Now the children sent this to me because they want me—the famous professore—to prove your Te-Te was right, so they can be famous. Or rich.”

  “Or maybe they loved Te-Te.” She gestured at the newspapers. “These guys are making him look pretty foolish right now.”

  She carried the single page with Te-Te’s research over to the window and studied it in the sunlight.

  “OK,” she said at last. “After Conte Whatever, I think it says ‘Villa Cesarina.’ I’ll look for that. That all happened”—she looked back at the scrawled document—“almost two hundred years ago. But families like that don’t disappear. I’ll find them.”

  “You mean, we’ll find them. I’ll be up and around in a day or two. We can do this together.”

  “I thought you were finished with this ‘adventure.’”

  He thought a moment.

  “I’m finished with murder and pistol-whipping, thank you. But this is research. That is my specialty, you know.”

  She shook her head. “No. You’d just be in the way. I’ll do the digging.”

  “Now really, my dear young lady—”

  She held her hand up, with a smile that looked no less dangerous for being sincere. “Stop right there. If you call me ‘my dear young lady’ one more time, I will forget all about your heroic efforts that got you smacked in the head and I will give you a matching smack.” She reached out and gently, but firmly, traced an X on the undamaged side of his forehead. “Right there.”

  Then she leaned over and kissed him lightly right where she had marked the X.

  “I’ll report back as soon as I find the conte.”

  She was halfway to the door when he said, “Wait!” She turned. “If I can’t call you ‘my dear,’ I think I shall have to call you ‘Lucy.’”

  “That’s what they called me in grade school,” she said, “and I hated it. I’m Lucia now.”

  He made a sad face and she laughed.

  “All right,” he agreed. “I will call you Lucy only in private. Never in front of anyone else.”

  She took another step toward the door and then turned back. “And if you ever say ‘I love Lucy’ . . .” She drew an X on her own forehead and pointed to him. They were both smiling when she closed the door behind her.

  Chapter 9

  MONTE PICCOLO

  “Did she really slam the door in your face? Literally? Precision in language is absolutely vital, my—” Professor Richman cut himself off.

  Lucia raised an eyebrow and nodded. “OK, then. To be precise, she closed the door firmly. Very firmly. In my face.”

  “Tell me exactly.”

  Deep breath. “Te-Te’s notes said the painting came from Villa Cesarina. Villa Cesarina was easy to find. And it has belonged to the same family—the Counts and Countesses dei Marsi—for just about forever. The current owner is the Contessa dei Marsi, an old biddy who had a nasty battle-axe—her maid or companion or whatever she is—guarding the front door. I gave her my nicest smile and said I needed to talk with the contessa, and she told me that the Contessa dei Marsi isn’t receiving any visitors. I told her I had found the contessa’s name in Father Antonio’s papers, and that’s when she got unpleasant. She said the contessa had never spoken to Father Antonio. They were very sorry about his unfortunate death—‘unfortunate,’ that’s what she called it, the bitch.”

  “Now, Lucy—”

  She held her hand up to stop him.

  “She said none of it had anything to do with the contessa or her family and they refused to be dragged into that unpleasantness. And that’s when she closed the door. Firmly. In my face. And locked it.”

  The professor sighed. “And then . . . ?”

  “Then? Then I wanted to kick my way into the house and grab the contessa by her scrawny neck—don’t bother to ask, I’m certain her neck is scrawny—and make her tell me where that painting came from.”

  “Lucy, my love. You would seem to be a woman of action.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “As evidenced by the fact that you’re not in jail. One doesn’t choke contessas. I’m not Italian, but I’m fairly certain that is a reasonable assumption.”

  There was a moment of silence. Professor Richman was out of bed today, sitting in a large armchair in a patch of sunlight that provided a little warmth in the wintry chill of the ancient stone building. Even the owner’s suite didn’t have very much in the way of modern improvements. Richman was wrapped in a robe with the family crest of the conte, who was apparently still happy—or at least willing—to give up his rooms to the convalescent.

  “So,” he said at last, “we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

  “Just like the carabinieri.” She handed him the day’s paper. “There’s a story on page twenty-something. Nothing new. Nothing at all, really. They’re still ‘investigating.’ No new clues about the murders or what happened to the painting. Some worthless theories. And a couple of cheap shots about the ‘fake.’”

  He glanced at the paper and set it aside.

  “No one’s getting anywhere.”

  After a moment,
she broke the silence. “I’m going to Rome. With Moto.”

  “Rome? Why Rome?”

  “To actually look at Caravaggios. And, yes, I said his name. I’m not playing that ‘Michele’ game anymore. He was a genius, cursed or not, and I’ll gladly be part of his story. And right now I need to stand in front of one of his paintings to be sure I’m right.”

  “I thought you were already sure.”

  “I’m sure what I felt when I was alone with that painting.”

  “Not alone. I was—”

  “You weren’t much company.”

  “Thank you for your kindness.”

  “As someone once said, precision is absolutely vital.”

  A moment of silence. Call it a draw. Lucia went on.

  “I know what I felt that night, but now I need to spend time with a real Caravaggio and see if I feel the same thing.”

  “And if you do?”

  “Then I’ll be cheerfully willing to go back and choke some truth out of that contessa.”

  “Sounds like an excellent plan. But that car of yours won’t make it to Rome.”

  There was no question about that, even though her car had, in fact, remained blessedly and amazingly free of parking tickets, just as Vittore—her umile servitore—had promised. Another mystery, but she was more than content to leave the depths of that one unplumbed.

  She laughed. “We’re taking the train.”

  Lucia hadn’t told the professor the entire truth about why she wanted to go to Rome. She certainly did want to stand face-to-face with some of the city’s Caravaggios. But she also wanted to see the warehouse where they had been held captive, where she had spent the night with the painting, where she had nearly died. She hadn’t mentioned that to Professor Richman. He wouldn’t have approved. Researching the painting was one thing. Chasing after the murder and mayhem that had swept them up was another.

  Yet another one of Moto’s seemingly endless supply of cousins was a Rome cop—uno sbirro—and had told him where the warehouse was. But when they got there, the entire block was closed off by police barricades. They were told by a guard that a building had been seriously damaged by an explosion as “part of a heroic police action.” Lucia knew better. It wasn’t the police who had blown out the wall of that warehouse and rescued her and the professor—and it certainly wasn’t the police who had taken her home, put her to bed, folded her clothes neatly, and locked her safely in her apartment.