Murder in Chianti

by Camilla Trinchieri

  Despite the cooling evening, the three men sat on Nico’s balcony, listening to the crickets. Perillo had shown up wearing jeans, a blindingly white starched linen shirt, his leather jacket and his new suede ankle boots. Daniele had tried on two pairs of slacks and the three dress shirts his mother had given him before he left. After long minutes of uncertainty, he’d decided on black pants and his favorite dress shirt, a striped blue one. Seeing him in the parking lot, Perillo had whistled his approval. The “Dani bloom,” as Perillo had dubbed it, followed.

  Nico and Perillo smoked, wineglasses in hand. Nico stuck to his white, Daniele and the maresciallo with the first bottle of Villa Antinori Toscana. As the breeze shifted and smoke came his way, Daniele pushed his chair a little farther and tried to ignore the smell. The sky was dark early tonight, the moon having disappeared behind a thick screen of clouds. The swallows were safely asleep in the balcony rafters. The bottle of red was half-empty. The only thing left in the small bowl of olives and Parmigiano Reggiano was a thin sheen of oil.

  The pasta timer rang, calling for the cigarettes to be put out, the glasses gathered and the three men and one dog moved inside.

  Perillo poured a glass of red and handed it to Nico. “Time to switch color. You’re in the land of the Super Chianti, Nico, not at some fancy New York cocktail party.”

  “How do you know anything about New York cocktail parties?” Nico asked as he drained the penne.

  “Television, where else?”

  “I planned to switch for the pasta course.” He had always preferred red, but its high tannin levels upset Rita’s stomach, and so white wine was all they drank on Saturday nights when he wasn’t on a case. Now in the evenings, his first glass was always white, a tribute of sorts. Nico poured the penne back into the pot, added the hot sauce, mixed well, and let the pasta cook in the sauce for a couple of minutes. After placing a mug filled with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano on the table, he served his guests directly from the pot.

  “Buon appetito.”

  “Bravo,” Perillo said, after taking a couple of bites. “This is tasty.” He managed to keep the surprise out of his voice. He lifted his glass in a toast. “To Italian American cooking.”

  Daniele lifted his glass. “Very good, Signor Nico.”

  “Cut the Signore. My name’s Nico.”

  Perillo winked at Daniele, who dropped his head to hide his cheeks. All three dug their forks into the penne. The smell wafting down from the table had OneWag’s stomach turning somersaults, but in the past few days he had learned optimism. Something was likely to come his way, and so he curled himself at Nico’s feet. With optimism came patience.

  The three men ate in silence for a few minutes, too hungry to interrupt their enjoyment of good food with talk of murder.

  “His picture will be in the paper tomorrow,” Perillo said finally, his plate empty. “I put in an appeal for people who knew him to come forward. So far, I’ve gotten nothing from the Gravignesi, but maybe people in the nearby towns know something.”

  “Won’t people be too scared to talk?” Daniele asked. His plate was empty too and he looked longingly at the pot that still had some pasta in it. “They might be worried about becoming implicated in the murder.”

  “Maybe, but some are going to want to show off what they know,” Perillo said. “They’ll start talking amongst each other, and someone will be happy to bring the information to us. I’m friendly with the locals, thanks to my Sunday cycling jaunts. People don’t see me as a menace. I’ve shut my eyes to a few things, which always pays off. Information will eventually come to us—if not directly, indirectly.”

  Nico tore off a piece of olive loaf and gathered up what was left of the sauce on his plate. “Maybe we’ll find out what enemies Gerardi left behind when he took off for the US.”

  Daniele watched Nico’s swiping with envy. His plate still had sauce waiting to be scooped up, but his mother had insisted it was impolite. “Did you know that’s called ‘making the little shoe’?”

  “Thank you, no, I didn’t.” Nico had known that, but why disappoint? He pushed the olive loaf toward Daniele. “Help yourself, and there’s plenty more pasta in the pot. There’s only salad and fruit after that.” He waited until Daniele and Perillo had refilled their plates to ask, “Did you get ahold of the prosecutor?”

  “He was off to a reunion of the Five Star Party, probably kissing ass. I spoke to Barbara, his secretary, a woman I admire and respect. She knows how to listen, often makes good suggestions. I asked her to advise the American embassy in Rome that we had a murdered Italian American on our hands.”

  Nico clinked his wineglass against Perillo’s. “I hope you kept me out of it.”

  Perillo wiped his lips with a paper towel. “I thought it best.” Nico was now a friend. He didn’t want to embarrass him by having the embassy look into his career. “Barbara will hold off telling Della Langhe until the morning, since he told her he could be disturbed only if it was a national emergency, and in her opinion the Garrett/Gerardi murder is only an international blemish.”

  “And so it is.” A grateful Nico poured more wine into their glasses. “Let’s drink to the three of us finding the murderer.”

  Daniele raised his glass, happy to be part of the three, but worried about the consequences of not calling Della Langhe. “Won’t we get into trouble?”

  Perillo drained his glass. “Oh, tomorrow he’ll call screaming. I might have to temporarily lose my phone.”

  Nico picked up the empty pasta plates and, followed by OneWag, put them in the sink. What little was left in the pot he scraped into the dog’s bowl, which earned him a grateful tail swish. “I hope the American embassy won’t start breathing down your neck.”

  “I think the Americans have bigger problems than one murdered dual citizen to deal with these days.” Perillo opened the second bottle of wine. “By the way, we didn’t find a computer or a cell phone among Gerardi’s possessions.”

  “He must have had at least a phone. You need to find that.”

  “I am certainly aware of that.”

  “Sorry, you’re right. Old habits.” His partner had always complained he liked to state the obvious. Nico dressed the salad of fennel, olives, arugula and slivers of aged Asiago cheese with lemon juice and Aldo’s olive oil.

  Perillo did his dismissive hand wave. “I’m not going to waste my time—our time,” he corrected, “guessing whether the phone was lost or stolen. We have to find it. The murderer must have communicated with him.”

  “Even if we find the phone, it’ll have a password,” Daniele pointed out.

  Perillo shot him down with a look. “Pessimism gets us nowhere.”

  Daniele said nothing. Perillo obviously had no idea how long finding the password would take.

  “I went to the hotel and got the missing shirt back,” Perillo said. “The manager is too young to have known Gerardi, but Cesare Rinaldi, the hotel bartender, is a local in his eighties. He certainly could have. I asked him if he’d ever seen Gerardi before his stay at the hotel. He said no, but he could be lying. When I confirmed Garrett was Italian, Rinaldi didn’t even ask his name, which I find odd.”

  “Listening and not asking is part of a bartender’s trade,” Nico said.

  “Rinaldi did also make that point.”

  “And he might not have wanted to get involved,” Nico washed his hands and tossed the salad with his fingers. It was the best way to ensure all the ingredients were mixed well.

  “Could be,” Perillo admitted.

  Nico washed his hands again and dried them. “I looked up Gerardi and his wine company on the Internet.”

  “I was planning to go online after dinner tonight,” Daniele said through teeth he realized were clenched. The Internet was his domain. “I had too many things to take care of.” He stole an accusatory glance at his boss.

 
Perillo ignored him and poured more wine in each glass. “What did you find out?”

  “The company’s website shows pictures of its buildings, its vineyards, the list of its wines, the usual stuff, but no history of the place, which is unusual. The other winery websites I took a quick glance at all had founding histories.” Nico brought clean plates and the salad bowl over to the table. “Luckily, he was written up several times in the California newspapers. Serve yourself, please.” He sat down. “Gerardi’s story is one everyone likes, especially in the States. According to the articles I found, he arrived in Napa with very little money. After a few months working part-time with other immigrants at various vineyards, he was hired full-time by a small Italian American vintner, John Delizioso.”

  “Delicious.” Perillo savored the English word. Repeated it. “An improbable name,” he added in Italian.

  “A good name for a wine company. The two men became very close, and the vintner sponsored Gerardi’s American citizenship. He was a good worker, and when Delizioso wanted to retire, he sold Gerardi the vineyard at a very good price. Gerardi expanded it, added different varieties of grapes and became rich. How rich, the Internet didn’t tell me. I did come across a speech he gave to the Napa Chamber of Commerce about a year ago. He was going to expand his company by buying land near Gravigna. He’d found an ideal plot and claimed he made a bid on it. We need to look into that.”

  “I’ll look in the land register,” Daniele immediately offered, “and see if any empty plots are for sale.”

  Perillo served himself a few slices of fennel. Salad, even with cheese added, was for rabbits. “Go ahead and look, but I haven’t heard of any land available for wine-making. The only land up for sale is the fifteen-some hectares that include the wood where Gerardi was killed. Aldo had the soil tested, and it’s not good wine-growing land.”

  Daniele drew the salad bowl close. “You could build a huge hotel on it.”

  Perillo shook his head. “Can’t. It’s marked for farming.”

  Daniele refused to give up. He’d been invited to dinner to put forward his opinions, and he would keep doing so. “I still think he could have been killed in that wood because he was trying to buy the land and someone else wanted it.”

  Perillo heard the anger in Daniele’s voice and softened his tone. “No, Dani. The experts who tested the soil decreed that it’s only good for hunting and picking mushrooms. No one is going to buy it to grow grapes.”

  “Experts can be bought,” Daniele countered. He didn’t enjoy the maresciallo’s condescension and hated the fact that any so-called experts would lie for money.

  “In his speech,” Nico said, changing the subject, “Gerardi made a big deal about how he missed Italy and his hometown, missed what he had given up by leaving. He was nostalgic, and yet he never came back until now. What kept him away?”

  “There’s not much vacation time when you’re running a vineyard,” Perillo said. “Just ask Aldo. You’re right, though. We need to find out what made him leave Gravigna, and what brought him back.”

  “Maybe the same thing that made him leave brought him back,” Nico said.

  “Could be.” Perillo refilled Nico’s glass. “The bartender at the Bella Vista said Gerardi talked a great deal about needing to heal here.”

  “That makes sense. He was riddled with cancer and wanted to live.” Daniele covered his glass with his hand. He wished the maresciallo hadn’t opened the second bottle. Too much red wine would affect Nico’s taste buds and maybe change the taste of the Venetian surprise he had in store. Plus, he needed to keep his own head clear and not make any dumb remarks.

  “You’re right,” Nico said, “but he must have known his cancer was too far gone for it to heal.”

  “Hope doesn’t give up that easily, does it?” Daniele asked.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Rita had held on to hope. Nico had steeled himself for the inevitable and only pretended he still had hope. “There are other ways of healing. Making peace with yourself is one. Asking forgiveness of someone you have hurt is another. Maybe that’s why Gerardi came back. He must have relatives here.”

  “If he does”—Daniele could feel his heart beat a little faster—“the registrar’s office will tell us.” The office was in Radda in Chianti. He would go there first, phone in whatever he found out, then stop by Rosalba’s shop. His thumbs started flying over his phone. Seconds later, he looked up with disappointment etched on his face. “They’re closed tomorrow. I could try getting into their files.”

  “Don’t,” Perillo said. “That’s illegal, and I don’t want to be responsible for leading you down the crooked path. Not everything gets resolved by using a computer. I’ll make a few phone calls in the morning and find an employee to open up for you. I’m also counting on the article in La Nazione to bring people to the office.”

  “Unless, as Daniele mentioned, they don’t want to get involved with the police,” Nico said. “I was always surprised at how many friends and relatives of the victim didn’t come forward voluntarily. They had done things that had nothing to do with the murder—most times not very bad things—but if any of that guilt was involved, they stayed away or lied.”

  “We also need to know if he had any family in the States. I couldn’t find any mention of a wife or children in the articles I read,” Nico said. “And if he wrote a will, we should find out what’s in it. If he did, it’s probably with a lawyer in Napa. The Napa police need to be told. His house and office have to be searched for links to anyone here. That goes for his computer too. Gerardi might have corresponded with his killer here. Someone needs to go to his house and office, get into his computer. That’s something for Della Langhe to ask the American embassy. That and how much money he had.”

  Perillo filled his wineglass again and took a long drink. “Unfortunately, that will take time. You think this murder was motivated by money?”

  “Money, hate, unrequited love, revenge. All motivators. It’s good to rule them out one by one.”

  Daniele cleaned out the salad bowl with the last of the bread. “There’s something that’s bothering me.”

  Perillo snorted. “You’re lucky it’s only one thing. I’m bothered about everything in this case.” He drained his wine. “Go ahead, Dani. What is it?”

  “Why did Gerardi tell the Avis people he was going to Radda in Chianti, but then not stay there? It’s like he knew he was going to buy the bracelet in that town.”

  Nico took the empty salad bowl and the plates to the sink. “Could be he remembered the jeweler from the old days. I wonder how long that store has been around.”

  Daniele stood up. It was time to serve his Venetian surprise. “It was founded by Rosalba’s great-grandfather in 1952.”

  “So, you’ve been looking up Rosalba on that lump of plastic you love so much,” Perillo teased.

  Daniele would have blushed if his face weren’t already red from the wine. “I wanted to know how old she was.”

  “And?”

  “Two years older, unfortunately.”

  Nico gave Daniele’s sagging shoulders a pat. “It’s not a death sentence. Today, young people don’t care as much about age. Charm, looks and sexiness are what counts.”

  “And from the way Rosalba reacted to you,” Perillo added, “I’d say she thinks you’ve got all three. Now that we have two dead on the table, what’s the Venetian dish you’ve brought?”

  “What do you mean, two dead?” Nico asked.

  “That’s what we call empty wine bottles. We also say there’s a hole in the bottle. Come on, Dani, tell us what’s next.”

  Daniele took his bag to the small counter next to the sink. “Not a dish. A digestivo. Un sgroppino.”

  “That’s a new one to me,” Nico said with an edge in his voice. Every Italian after-dinner drink he’d ever been offered—Fernet-Branca, grappa, limoncello, sambuca—had all tast
ed like cough medicine. But he didn’t want to upset Daniele by not drinking. “What’s it made of?”

  “You’ll see.” Daniele unwrapped the three flutes he’d borrowed from the maresciallo’s wife. He’d promised he would replace them if they broke, but she’d waved him away, too happy arranging the yellow roses the maresciallo had bought her.

  Perillo hoped whatever it was had plenty of grappa in it. The day had been intense. He needed the jolt grappa always gave him. Grappa or the whiskey Nico had shared with him earlier.

  Both men and the dog—the men anxiously, the dog calmly—watched as Daniele dropped six tablespoons of lemon sorbet into a bowl. He popped open a bottle of prosecco and poured two-thirds of a cup of the sparkling wine into the bowl. “Some people add an equal amount of vodka, but my mother was always afraid I’d get drunk, so we make it this way.” With a whisk he used to foam up the milk for his morning cappuccino in the barracks, he blended the prosecco and sorbet together and filled the flutes. For that extra touch his mother insisted on, he wedged a slice of lemon onto the rim of each glass. “Ecco fatto!” He handed out the drinks and sat down.

  Nico raised his glass. “Thank you.”

  “To our health.” Perillo took a sip. Refreshing, but vodka would have made it a lot better.

  “A real treat,” Nico said after drinking. OneWag lay down on the floor, dropping his snout heavily on Nico’s foot. Dogs had a language all their own. “Anything left in that bowl?”

  Daniele had seen the dog’s move. “Enough for a lick or two.” He got up and placed the bowl on the floor. OneWag pattered over to the bowl.

  The opening notes of “O Sole Mio” broke the quiet. Perillo muttered, “Shit.” Daniele stiffened in his seat. Perillo took his time digging out the phone from his pants pocket. He squinted to check the number. Double fuck. He needed glasses.

  “Della Langhe?” Daniele whispered.