She opened the glove compartment, dug through the jumble of screwdrivers and pliers and cigarette packs, a girlie magazine and a pint bottle of booze, until she located a pad of paper and a ballpoint.
She wrote the note in Italian, keeping it simple and to the point:
My name is Pagolo. I murdered an American man named Dickens. I hit him in the head with a wooden bat. I left the weapon and the victim’s body in an open grave in the Bellomo olive orchard. I was paid to kill Dickens by someone at Albion International. Payments were wired to my bank account.
As she was pulling out of the grove, her phone shrieked with another alert from her security camera. Harper pulled over, drew the phone from her purse, and watched Gerda exit the hotel room. For at least an hour, Gerda had been lying in wait and hadn’t triggered the motion sensor once in all that time. Who could say what she’d been doing for so long? Napping on the king-size bed, or perhaps doing jumping jacks out on the balcony?
It took almost two hours and several wrong turns, but Harper eventually found her way back to Bari, then cruised around the waterfront until she located the Polizia, which she’d noticed earlier in the day walking to Bari Milling Works.
She pulled into the no-parking zone directly outside the state police office. She turned off the engine, then poked around in her purse, dug out a safety pin, and used it to attach the note to the front of Pagolo’s white jersey.
“After I kill you,” he said, “I will chop you up and throw the scraps into the sea.”
His English had improved greatly in the last hour.
Harper climbed out of her seat, stood on the sidewalk, and honked the horn on the Jeep, holding the button down, making one continuous blare for over a minute until an officer came stomping out of the building to investigate the commotion.
He walked over to her, a young man, handsome and tall with a gleaming head of black hair, and he asked her what she was doing.
“Qualcuno ha risolto un caso di omicidio,” she said. She wasn’t positive she’d gotten the tenses right, but what she meant to say was that someone had solved a murder case.
Harper walked away from the confused officer, and though he called out for her to stop, he didn’t come after her, which was a great relief, because she felt suddenly exhausted and simply wanted to get back to the hotel and teach the bartender how to make a blue glacier martini.
“As I said, Gerda, I’m not a rich man, but I am building a profitable business. It will take time, but I believe I’m on the correct path.”
Gerda finished adding the last column of figures on her phone’s calculator, then switched it off and closed Manfred’s ledger with its lined pages full of antiquated, handwritten accounting.
It was eight o’clock in the evening, and through the glassed-in walls of his office, she could see his workers dumping crates of olives into a metal tub, then guiding the fruit through the milling process. Trucks were still lined up at the loading dock, with their beds full of olives. A buzz of talk and machinery, the clang of metal drums, the tremors in the floor from the giant whirling centrifuges. It was a busy display of industry at odds with the figures in his ledger.
She scooted back from Manfred’s office desk and looked at him across its broad wood surface. Propped in front of her was a photo of a younger, damaged Gerda. For a girl so young, she’d known far too much about the follies of the world, the deceits and betrayals of humankind. It was only through sport that she had managed to survive.
“You have a great many debts,” Gerda said. “And you are about to assume even more.”
“Yes, but with a respectable season this year and the next, I will be able to unburden myself of much of that debt. Surely you understand one must invest today to reap the rewards of tomorrow.”
“A great many debts,” Gerda repeated. “And even with the rosiest projections, including abundant harvests, no breakage of equipment, labor costs staying exactly at the same level, my calculation suggests it will take at least ten years to clear yourself of these liabilities. And what if one year the harvest fails? What about drought or fires or other acts of God? Where are your contingency funds? I see none.”
“You’re being very pessimistic, my love.”
“I’m being sensible and levelheaded. This is who I am.”
“And I love you for it. It is one more thing that makes you a perfect match for me. And yes, yes, it is true, I may be something of an idealist. I have great hopes, great aspirations. I have always set lofty goals, and I have always managed to clear the bar no matter how high it was raised.”
“Yes, yes,” Gerda said. “You achieved great things, you won gold medals. And yes, I loved to watch you flying over the bar, so graceful, so strong, such a fine-looking body.”
Manfred rose from the visitor’s chair and came to her, lured by her flattering words.
“But can you afford diamonds, Manfred?”
That stopped him halfway around the desk. He peered at her.
“Diamonds?”
“The finer things in life. The beautiful things. I do not see these numbers adding up to diamonds. I see Sparsamkeit. Thrift, frugality, Pfennigfuchserei.”
“Is it really diamonds you want? Beautiful things you cherish? This is not the Gerda I have known. Our love is not about jewels or euros, it’s fueled by our desire for one another. I thought we shared this belief. Was I wrong?”
The workmen out on the floor had begun to sing. It was a song Gerda had never heard before, a manly, rousing melody with the heavy beat of a military marching band or perhaps a soccer tune.
“Love has value, yes, of course,” she said. “Sexual satisfaction is wonderful and has its place. But there are other considerations before a marriage bargain can be struck.”
In truth, she felt disheartened by the paltry profits she’d seen in Manfred’s ledger. And now her mind was set upon by dark memories of her impoverished childhood, her beastly father, Max, her mother warning her again and again to avoid the mistake she had made in marrying such a pitiful man—an Olympian who, after he had accomplished his dreams of athletic glory, had no dreams left.
The text from Lester Albion earlier in the day, his offer of diamonds, had sent her head whirling. Were her feelings for Manfred a childish error in judgment? Was she about to surrender her future to a man whose financial prospects were as precarious as her father’s had been? Was she about to marry a duplicate of Max?
It was true that Manfred was more ambitious than her father, but Manfred’s business was quite unstable, depending as it did on the vagaries of weather and many unforeseeable market variables. And he had zero capital to fall back on in times of need. Olive oil was a valuable commodity this season, but what about the next season and the one after that?
On the other hand, Albion’s future was secure and prosperous, and he was among the wealthiest men on the planet and would no doubt remain so. But what of her distaste for him? He was a weak man. Physically, he repulsed her. Were these conditions she could overcome? Could she learn to see beyond his unappetizing appearance and his juvenile behavior and come to relish or at least tolerate his touch?
As though he had seen into her mind, Manfred said, “There is someone else, isn’t there? Another man who has stolen your affection.”
She felt a hot flush darken her face.
“My god, there is,” he said. “You have found another. It’s in your eyes.”
He trudged back to the visitor’s chair and sunk into it and slumped forward, head dropping.
“How long?” he said without looking up. “How long has this infidelity been occurring?”
“There is no infidelity.”
He raised his head and implored her with his hazel eyes. “No?”
“It’s true I have received romantic propositions. Men have made their feelings known. But I have never acted on any of those entreaties. I have been loyal to you, Manfred, faithful and true. But this . . .” She tapped the ledger. “There is no villa in these pages, no children, n
o maids or cooks or housecleaners. There is grueling work. There is only scarcity here.”
“Such things take time,” he said. “Nothing great is achieved easily or overnight. You know that, Gerda. Look how long you worked for your own success. Years and years, but you didn’t shrink from the struggle, you battled on through injuries and disappointments, you triumphed in spite of all your difficulties. All good things require work. You and me together, we will blend our souls, blend our energies, and we will succeed. I’m certain of it.”
“These numbers scare me. They should scare you too.”
“Don’t do this, Gerda.”
“I’m speaking the truth. There are choices to be made for all of us. Marriage is a decision that shapes our fates forever. I have made a promise to myself that I will never be destitute again. I would rather live without love than live as a pauper.”
“This is because of your father and what he did to you. His terrible abuse of your body. The pain he caused you, the poverty he subjected you to.”
“What?”
“I understand, Gerda. I do. But I assure you, I am not Max.”
“How did you know this? I never told you about my father. I never told anyone.”
Manfred opened his mouth, then shut it. A fine dapple of sweat had sprung out on his forehead. Gerda watched him hunting for the right word or phrase, some way to escape this panicked moment.
“You told me, sweetheart. Many years ago, we were walking home from a biergarten in Berlin. We weren’t yet intimate then, just good friends. You were drinking beers and I guess you don’t remember. You told me about Max and the horrors he forced on you.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re lying. I’ve never told anyone those things. Never. I’m certain of it.”
“You were drinking,” Manfred said. “You were perhaps drunk.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“All right, then, how would I know of such a thing unless you told me? How, Gerda?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The only possibility was too staggering to imagine.
At that moment, one of the workmen arrived at Manfred’s office door and tapped on it timidly.
Manfred called out for the man to enter.
“What is it, Roman?”
“It’s Pagolo, sir.”
“What about him?”
“È in prigione.”
“In jail? Has he been fighting again?”
“Nossignore, it is murder. They say he has killed a man and left his body in the groves of Bellomo.”
Manfred shot Gerda a helpless look as he headed toward the door.
“This is not finished, Manfred. Far from it.”
He swallowed deeply.
“I know,” he said and stole past her and left.
Out on the plant floor, the singing had ended, but the machinery continued to wash and grind and crush the olives into plum-colored paste, and the walls and floors of the entire building continued to rumble as though a locomotive were passing close by.
Or was that the shuddering of Gerda’s heart?
THIRTY-FIVE
Bari, Italy
Wednesday morning, Harper had breakfast in the hotel’s rooftop restaurant, sitting on the terrace in the mild sunlight, a view of the waterfront and the promenade below, with the silvery blue Adriatic stretching to the misty horizon.
Adrian arrived and sat, and she pushed the plate of pastries his way.
Naff noticed something in her face, squinted at her, inspecting her features as if perhaps he could see the blood banging in her temples.
“You must’ve stayed after I left.”
“Too long,” she said.
“I see that.”
“Thanks, Naff, you look swell too.” Harper blew on her espresso, had a sip, set the cup down, then took a cautious bite of her cornetto semplice.
“Hey, those blue glaciers are tasty, and I don’t even like martinis.”
“Too tasty,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Had my share of rocky mornings. Luckily these days, at my advanced age, I usually nod off before I can get seriously hammered.”
Harper had another sip of espresso.
“Completely understandable,” he said. “Not every day you dig up a corpse. Turn a murderer over to the cops.”
“Yeah,” Harper said. “It was a long day.”
“You happen to bring that branch you were talking about?”
She slipped her hand in her purse and took out the withered stem and set it on the table. Alongside it she placed the black bug, which had expired overnight.
Naff picked up the branch and studied it.
“From Bellomo’s grove?”
“Correct.”
“And you think Bixel’s the mastermind, she put this scheme together, not Albion?”
“Certainly looks that way.”
“Where’s the proof of that?”
“Bixel was running Pagolo. I think this is her baby.”
“But how can you know that for sure? Bixel could be doing Albion’s bidding, and this is all about sabotaging Albion’s romantic rival. That makes more sense than Bixel taking out her daughter’s boyfriend.”
She shook her head, then regretted it. The headache flared.
“If it was just about Albion removing his rival, he would’ve had Knobel murdered. He wouldn’t concoct some elaborate plan like this. This isn’t about just sabotaging the guy, it’s about punishment. This is personal. Teaching someone a lesson. It’s hateful.”
“Hateful,” Adrian said. “Okay, let’s go with that. Then where does that come from, hate like that? Why would Bixel feel so strongly about this guy, she’d go to all that trouble and all that risk to torpedo her daughter’s beau?”
Harper shrugged. In some people hate seemed to float just below the surface every minute of the day. Bixel struck her as one of those.
She sipped her espresso. They were silent for a few seconds.
“All right,” Harper said. “I need to pick at this a little more.”
“So pick.”
“I’m wondering how Bixel manages all this without Albion knowing.”
“You just said it was Bixel, not Albion.”
“I know what I said. But I’m having trouble leaving Albion out of it. How does Bixel buy up all those family farms, put together this enormous tract of olive groves, then bring Dickens in to spread these bugs? Set up a dark pool to hide the sale to Knobel? Coerce Knobel to buy these groves? All that and Albion never gets wind of it? You work in the same building with them. Could she get away with that?”
Naff flicked a housefly off the tablecloth, watched it circle back and land just out of reach. “Sure, it’s possible she could pull it off. Far as I can see, these days Bixel is running the damn place. Albion’s even loopier than usual. This physical fitness bullshit, he’s fanatical about that. Spends most of his day in the gym.”
“Bixel’s certainly got motive,” Harper said. “If Gerda marries the boss, Bixel isn’t an employee anymore, she’s family. That’s a motive times ten.”
“True.”
Harper had another bite of the pastry, her headache fading.
“When Gerda and I were in the parking lot in Canena, I learned a couple of things from her.”
“Yeah?”
“Saw something in her eyes when we were talking. She didn’t know the reason she was shadowing me. She was out of the loop.”
“So?”
“Bixel wanted to keep track of me, okay, there’s that. Make sure I wasn’t going to cause more trouble for them. So that’s a reason to send Gerda out to tail me. But I was thinking, maybe Bixel was also trying to keep Gerda occupied, keep her away from Knobel, let things cool off between them while Bixel set her plan in motion. Gerda follows orders, does what she’s told. A lifetime of being coached will do that to someone, rob them of their autonomy.”
“So I ask again, Where’s the hate come in? Why does Bixel have that kind of
grudge against Knobel?”
“Why do people hate?”
“Question of the day.”
“Do you hate anybody, Naff?”
He drummed his fingers on the table, looking off at the sea, then shook his head.
“Not at the moment.”
“Well, then let me take a crack. A person hates because they were wronged. Hurt, betrayed, grievously fucked over. Something unforgivable was done to them. A wound that will never heal.”
“Okay,” he said. “Say Bixel was wronged, she’s pissed at Knobel, very pissed. That requires Bixel and Knobel to have some kind of history.”
An elderly couple had been seated at the table next to them. They had a small spaniel on a leash that the woman was holding. The white-haired woman was speaking to the dog in French while her husband opened a newspaper and began to read.
“Not hard to imagine they would have known each other for a long time,” Harper said. “We know Gerda and Knobel trained on the same Olympic team. That means they and their parents were probably in the same orbit for years. So Bixel and young Knobel had to rub shoulders. There’s at least some kind of history between them.”
“As evidence goes,” Adrian said, “there’s not much there. It doesn’t get us to why Gerda can love Knobel, but Bixel hates his guts.”
The waiter floated up to their table and asked if the gentleman was going to have breakfast.
Adrian glanced at his watch. “We’re going to need the check.”
The waiter nodded and left.
“What’s the hurry?” she said. “You just got here.”
“We have an appointment. Can’t be late.”
“What appointment?”
“Her name is Dr. Maria Mugnozza. She’s only got a few minutes between classes. Bring your branch and bug.”
The University of Bari Aldo Moro was a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel, and by the time they arrived, Harper’s headache was nearly gone, and she knew more than she ever needed to know about Aldo Moro, who’d been born in a nearby village and become Italy’s prime minister in the sixties before being kidnapped and held hostage by the Red Brigade for weeks. Eventually they shot him ten times and left his body in the trunk of a car in Rome.
When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2) Page 24
