“No.” She said the word with short, bullet-like emphasis. “At first, he left the country—was chased from Italy, in truth. I did not reconnect with him until many years later, but when I did, I asked him about the broken promises. He was still very bitter.”
“About losing his love, you mean, or losing the paintings?”
She turned to face me and I was struck by the rigidity of her jaw, how her mouth formed one hard line.
“Nicolina?”
“With Rupert, how would you know? I did not. I still do not. I only know that when he wants something, he goes after it.”
“He would feel very wronged—who wouldn’t?” I looked away—my turn to stare at the wall. Maybe Rupert would have felt very hurt and angry at first but I’d never known him to hold a grudge. Or at least I hoped not, since I had yet to mend the rift between us.
We sat in silence for a moment, deep in our own thoughts, and then I couldn’t take it any longer. My mouth opened and I uttered the one thing neither one of us wanted to say: “And now the painting is missing and Maria is dead under mysterious circumstances and you think that Rupert may be responsible.”
“Yes.”
“Nicolina, no. Rupert may be a conniving little low-life weasel in Saville Row tailoring but he’s a good man—sometimes—and no murderer.”
Nicolina was on her feet in an instant towering over me with that hard light in her eyes. “You do not know him, Phoebe. I have known him off and on all my life and believe he is capable of anything. What he will not do himself, he makes his ex-MI6 man do for him. You know this. You know he is very dangerous—both of them are very dangerous.”
“I know him, too, but differently from you. We have been friends for years. To kill a former love just to acquire a painting? No, never!” The words hung before me as if solidifying midair.
“People have killed for less.”
She held my gaze.
“Yes, they have,” I said after a moment. “Well, okay, I do know that people have killed for much less and that Rupert never fails to miss a trick.” And how well I knew it. Hadn’t I been there for the attempted Raphael heist, the Etruscan debacle, the Goddess hunt? “But murder, no. That I can’t accept.”
“Accept what you will, Phoebe, but I will tell you this: we have learned that a phone call was made to the house the night Maria left the villa and met her death. Should we discover evidence that places Rupert on or near the site of Maria’s death on that day, I swear he is a dead man. I will kill him myself.”
5
Nicolina was definitely capable of killing somebody. Hadn’t I witnessed her impressive markswomanship when she gunned down a hit man on the streets of Rome? Still, killing an assassin was one thing, executing a friend something else again. Could she do it, would she do it?
I stood in the center of my room after Nicolina had taken me there, oblivious to the carvings, the inlaid furniture, the silken brocades, the tiny perfect Venetian canal landscape in greens and blues on the wall, even the folder of paintings on the table. For a moment I even forgot to breathe. Rupert could be a swine—that I knew too well—yet he had also saved my life upon occasion, even though it was often he who had put me in danger in the first place. And Evan, his “driver,” that powerful and talented right-hand man, had I ever seen him kill? Never.
Nobody was black or white. Rupert was a man capable of great generosity while simultaneously attempting to steal something from under my nose. He’d saved my life at least once. Our relationship was complex. We’d become close even though I wanted to throttle him more times than I could remember. He lied, he cheated, and he stole, but I believed his heart was still bigger than his greed. I cared about him and for Nicolina, too. Where did that leave me?
True, Rupert wasn’t speaking to me at the moment but only because I had outwitted him for once. At some point he was bound to get over his pique, providing he lived that long. Yes, he had the formidable and enigmatic Evan to protect him, but I was convinced that Seraphina might be equally dangerous in her own way and Italy was her territory, after all.
I strode to the window and opened the shutters a crack. Down below on Venice’s liquid street, the rain had stopped and the canal had taken on a shimmery glow. Rupert was out there somewhere. For once, I wished I still had the special phone Evan had rigged for our private communications, even if those calls tended to come with an array of special features like detonating devices and tracking chips. Evan was a techno-wiz and endlessly inventive with app creation. Now I just wanted to find out their side of the Maria story, warn them, perhaps. And would that betray Nicolina’s confidence? Maybe that didn’t matter. What really mattered was the truth.
I took the folder of paintings and opened them under a lamp, studying every detail until my eyes hurt. So many elements that didn’t add up, especially in the Bartolo, which was atypical for this artist of the Sienese School. In all my years of art and textile study, never had I seen a painting like this. I had once studied Domenico di Bartolo with interest because his use of textiles had been extraordinary. Though he had worked primarily in Siena, he was also believed to have traveled to Florence, and now apparently to Venice also. This was a commission, as they all were. His Marriage of the Foundlings drew striking similarities to the Contini piece and I wondered if he had been commissioned to do this one based on his fame there. I pulled away and rubbed my eyes. Nothing to do now but let it brew in my subconscious for a while.
I scanned the room, my eyes landing on my suitcase. Along with my battered carpetbag, which traveled with me everywhere, I had brought an equally beat-up roller. That’s all. I tended to travel light and yet somehow a smaller Vuitton carry-on now sat beside them like an interloper. Not my bag or my style but by now I knew Nicolina’s tendency to give me things I didn’t know I needed or necessarily want. Whatever lay inside that bag was probably way above my budget, or deadly, or both.
Reluctantly, I lifted the bag onto the inlaid bench—mosaic, probably late fifteenth century—popped the lock, and stared down at mounds of folded tissue paper. A familiar tingle hit my spine. Anything of a textile nature did that to me and I recognized carefully tended fabric when I saw it. Unwrapping the contents revealed a long black silk dress, a velvet hooded cloak, black stockings, tall leather boots, and a short black leather jacket in the biker style, all from an Italian couture house I didn’t recognize. I stared. Was I to masquerade as Little Black Riding Hood now? Maybe a Jane Eyre dominatrix? Baffled, I let the silken folds drop to the bed. Since I was wearing jeans, black trainers, and a green turtleneck to pick up the colors in my kelp garden wrap, presumably I was not dressed for elegance, whatever the occasion.
The jacket, however, was something else again. Nicolina knew my history with outerwear, considering I had stuffed a bloody postcard inside my last leather jacket and then dunked the thing in Jamaica’s Rio Grande. Perhaps she offered this one as a replacement gift?
I left the clothes strewn across the bed and turned away. Then I had a thought. Returning to the carry-on, I reached inside, felt along the lower edges, and found what I sought. My fingers sprung what I knew to be the mechanism that hid an X-ray-shielded false bottom and soon I was pulling out a handy little Magnum pistol and several rounds of ammunition, the perfect accessory for a woman who travels apparently. Pack it right below your toothbrush, yes, ma’am.
Well, damn. I stared at the thing. Nicolina and her guns. She always carried them and expected me to, too, as much as I rebelled against the idea on principle. However, principle had taken a bit of a hit in the past few years to the point where I had taken firearm lessons with a former policewoman along with a side of martial arts training. Though I objected to violence, that didn’t mean I planned on being a victim anytime soon. I took the thing and carefully set it down beside me on the bed. I’d leave the extra ammunition where it was for now.
Next, I whipped off a text in code to Max: Here in Venice. Weather mixed. Nicolina says hi. Max would get the point: something was goi
ng down in Venice and it wasn’t the weather. Besides, Nicolina would never say hi.
I checked the time: 10:15 in the UK. Max would either be watching the news or tucked into bed, his phone left downstairs on the kitchen counter as usual. He never took to sleeping with his devices. No one I knew seemed to have quite the same relationship in bed with their phone as I did. That said a lot about my lack of sleeping companions. In any case, I wouldn’t hear from him tonight.
Sighing, I gazed around. Obviously I needed to knit, my sleeping pill of choice and as soothing to me as hot chocolate and a lullaby. I was far too buzzed to sleep and yet the villa had gone quiet as if everyone had retired early. Now I wished I’d taken Nicolina up on her nighttime vino offer since wine inevitably made me sleepy, but no decanter and glasses had been made available. Apparently I was lucky to have access to water, which presumably I could fetch from the en suite bathroom.
So it was to my sedative of choice that I turned. I took my carpetbag and pulled out my beloved Melancholy wrap with its comforting lengths of green and mahogany silk that I had added only the night before. Oh, how lovely. Yes, this would do.
For a few moments the feel of the yarn in my fingers soothed me and I was ready to happily dive into those stitches until sleep tugged away. Or so I thought. The moment I thrust my hand in my bag to retrieve the second needle, my comfort was replaced by a stab of panic: I could not locate that familiar stick of polished wood! Alarmed, I emptied the bag onto the bed and pawed through the balls and skeins, my overnight kit, the change of undies and extra sweater, but came up empty. Absolutely no second needle. Somehow it had slipped from my bag and was gone.
My sense of loss was as powerful as it was ridiculous. I felt agitated the way one might when they realize a critical prescription had run out and some dreadful symptom was about to inflict itself. I stood up and began pacing the room, seized by the knowledge that, without knitting, I would probably obsess over Rupert and Nicolina until my body collapsed in a shaking heap. I needed vino, badly needed vino. I could honestly say that, without knitting, I could be driven to drink.
Pushing the door open a crack, I peered into the hall. Everything was dark and quiet. Presumably Nicolina had retired to mourn in private while Seraphina was either comforting her friend or asleep. Or something. What did it matter? I wasn’t doing anything clandestine, unless locating a glass of nighttime vino was considered socially unacceptable in an Italian household, which I strongly doubted.
Still, no lights were left on downstairs, which meant I must use my phone light for navigation purposes. I padded downstairs as quietly as I could with the intention of heading straight for the salon where I had last seen the decanter. The place was much larger than I thought—room after room branched out on either side of the long hall but most rooms appeared to be locked. Working from memory, I proceeded down the long dark hall trying doors until I reached a room on the right-hand side where I was certain Zara had delivered us hours before. The door opened easily and I beamed my light toward the low table. Empty. Someone, presumably Zara, had tidied up after we’d gone upstairs.
Now what? I wasn’t an ordinary guest in a hotel but an interloper in a house of mourning. I’d go straight for the kitchen and pour my own wine. I headed toward where I assumed a kitchen would be in a Venetian villa—somewhere at the back of the house—and I was right. As soon as I shoved open the tall wooden door, my phone light caught the gleam of chrome and porcelain. I was about to flick on the light switch when I caught a sound coming from below.
For a moment, I just stood listening. There was no way in hell anyone should be down in the cantina this time of night when the residents had retired for the evening and the place was dark. No, this was not right.
Retracing my steps, I bounded upstairs to my bedroom and knocked on all three of the doors. “Nicolina, Seraphina, Zara, get up! There’s someone downstairs in the cantina!”
I expected a flurry of doors to fly open or, at the very least, a cry of alarm. Nothing. “Hello?” I tried again.
Finally, a door squeaked open at the end of the hall followed by a light switching on, and there was Zara wrapped in a long mauve robe stomping toward me as if she wanted to shake out my molars.
I took a step back. “Where’s Nicolina and Seraphina?”
Stopping a foot away, she asked me something in Italian to which I shrugged. Turning, she marched up to one of the doors and knocked on the oak imperiously. “Contessa Vanvitelli?” No answer.
In a moment, she was storming inside the room, me at her heels. Not only was there no Nicolina, but her bed hadn’t been slept in.
Zara swung around and pushed past me out the hall across to another door where she repeated the process. No Seraphina, either. Standing in the middle of the elegant room, Zara peppered me with a battery of Italian.
“Excusi, me no speak Italian.” The things we say when stressed. “But there’s someone down in the basement—the cantina. Comprendo? Maybe Nicolina and Seraphina? We must look!”
She stared at me. “Cantina?”
“Downstairs!” I pointed downward and stamped my foot for effect.
Realization dawned. Zara straightened her bony shoulders and hurried off down the stairs without another word. I hesitated only long enough to return to my room and grab the gun.
I was shoving my feet into my sneakers as I climbed down the stairs, my phone in one pocket, the gun in the other. In seconds, I was at the top of the kitchen steps.
“Zara?” I called down. The light was on and I heard something like a grunt below. Holding the gun, I followed her down. Zara was standing beneath the overhead light, hands on her hips, glaring straight at the closed canal door.
Seeing me, she pointed at the tracks leading from inside the door straight through toward the canal. I got the picture: someone had taken the small speedboat, that someone probably being Seraphina and Nicolina.
Zara glared balefully at the gun, which I hastily lowered, at which point she assaulted me with angry Italian. “Hanno preso il motoscafo!”
“Well, don’t blame me,” I shot back. “I’m as in the dark as you. Is there another motoscafo? I’ll even take a regular scafo.”
Zara shook her head furiously. “No motoscafo e non stai prendendo la gondola!”
I wasn’t certain exactly what she was saying but I got the gist: no boat for me, not even a gondola. I pocketed the gun and dashed back up the stairs all the way to my room to grab the new jacket, suddenly fuming. Nicolina and Seraphina had taken off on some midnight assignation and left me behind stranded like an extra overnight bag?
What was worse is that I knew it had something to do with Rupert. I had defended him to Nicolina, clearly didn’t believe that he had anything to do with Maria’s death, and now my deadly countess would do what she felt necessary with or without me. That was just all wrong, grief or no.
I bounded back downstairs and straight down the hall to slide the bolts on the grand front door while Zara scurried behind me, barking in Italian. A beeping had begun as a little red light flashed from the panel on the wall.
“I’m going out one way or the other,” I told her. “You’d best deactivate the alarm unless you want the Venetian polizia here in a nanosecond.”
Zara tapped the code onto the panel and the beeping promptly stopped. I swung open the door. “Dove credit di andare?” she asked as I stepped out.
Of course I didn’t know what she said but I took a guess. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up.”
6
I had no idea where I was going, only that I had to move. Remaining locked in that villa of sorrows while my friends went off on some dubious excursion without me stuck in my craw. At the very least, a walk might burn off enough caffeine-fueled energy to allow me to sleep. Maybe, if I was extraordinarily lucky, I might even glimpse Seraphina and Nicolina zipping by in the motoscafo.
Despite the lateness of the hour, Venice was not sleeping. Though the villas along the Cannaregio were shu
ttered for the night, the restaurants and bars still percolated with activity. In fact, after I had navigated the barricaded edge of the canal that had apparently been damaged in a recent storm, I found myself striding along a wide brightly lit cement walkway that was clearly still open for business.
On the left, gondolas could be seen resting among a forest of mooring poles while a handful of diners lingered inside their plastic-screened restaurant patios huddled up to outdoor gas heaters. I envied them their cozy company, the laughter rising up over the tinkling glasses. In truth, I also envied them their pastas and grilled fish, dishes I could only imagine by their scent. I was starving.
Nicolina had said that the warehouse lay farther down the street, but without a number or any other identifying features, I couldn’t determine which was which at first. That is until I saw an armed carabiniere, an officer of the national guard, a kind of militarized police force that co-policed Italy with two other organizations, standing outside a nondescript door. Above loomed a large terra-cotta-painted building featuring rows of pointed arched windows reminiscent of Eastern influences. The building looked simultaneously welcoming and imposing and the uniformed officer did not look friendly. In fact, he looked quite out of sorts. I strolled by slowly, studying the warehouse.
“Move along, miss. This is a crime site,” the officer barked in English. It was goading to be recognized as a tourist so easily. Picking up my pace, I strode quickly past.
It had stopped raining and, though still chilly, the air smelled fresh and watery. With a sudden ping of excitement, it occurred to me that I was actually in Venice, Venice. And that I was alone, which was exhilarating because it meant that no compromise was necessary, that I could go where I wanted, walk anywhere I pleased—be a random voyager, in other words. As my younger self, I had been leashed by a tour group and had never felt prepared enough to stroll a city alone at night.
The Carpet Cipher Page 5
