“On a shelf in the water garage.”
“We didn’t see it when we came in.”
“It’s there, inside a big box labeled ‘cleaning solvent’ where it’ll be safe until we need it. Now back to everyone’s resumes…”
“There’s not enough being done to get Benedetta back! We’re doing everything we can to…”
“What? Stay on television?” snapped Dr. Gugliemoni, who was losing patience with the Amendolas. He glared at the couple. “We’ve noticed.”
Signora Amendola whirled on the physician and snarled, “You can zip it! You have no idea! It wasn’t your daughter who was kidnapped by Catholics!”
Lydia waded into the fray. “Can you and your husband shut up and let us get on with the business at hand? It’s bad enough that the police are now suspicious of you and your inconsistent statements.”
Mateo held a hand up. “Okay now, we need to stick to the agenda. This entire meeting is about getting your daughter back.” Then he looked around the room. “Whose resume have we missed?”
“You don’t need mine, I’ll continue as always.” The doctor waved his hand.
“And I can’t try for a position,” Lydia said.
Greta waved a paper in the air. “Mine.”
“What’d you come up with?” Mateo asked her.
“I think it looks very professional. I’m using my childhood friend Miriam’s work history. She was a nanny for an orphanage in Switzerland.”
“Do you know anything about babies?”
“I’ve looked after my baby sister, so I think I can pass an interview.”
“Does your friend Miriam know you’re borrowing her work history?”
“No. I know the dates she worked there, and I’m familiar with some of the staff because I visited her a couple of times. I look a bit like her.”
“What contact information did you use? It needs to be untraceable.”
“The number is for my new burner phone, and I listed the mailing address of an empty duplex next door to my house. It’ll be easy for me to check the mail every day.”
Another parishioner asked, “Can you ace an interview about child care?”
“It’s the best I could do for a fake identity. I’m an insurance actuator, and the new shelter doesn’t need one of those.”
“You did good Greta…I mean, Miriam,” Mateo said. “Submit it and surf medical sites for things like what to do if a baby has a fever.”
“I’ll get right on it,” she said.
Mateo stood up as people moved to leave. “Good work, everyone.”
“But…” came the outcry from the Amendolas.
“Just stop talking, you two!” Mateo raised his voice to be heard over the couple. “You’re already seeking a court order to get into Porto delle Donne, and we’re all keeping our eyes open. Now, let’s just focus on getting someone hired at the new shelter.”
“Where are you getting this information on her building progress?” Lydia asked.
“Me,” another parishioner spoke up. “The city transferred me. I’m now a file clerk with city planning. Genero Tosca is project manager for the Scortini Palazzo renovation, and he thinks the place can start taking in women in March.”
As always, for secrecy, the exodus from the safe house was slow. The faithful left in ones and twos from front and back doors as well as the water garage so neighbors wouldn’t see an entire group leaving the quiet house. When the last person had departed, Mateo locked up the lower chamber and climbed the stairs to call Benjamin. He took his phone out and watched it do a quick update as he moved above ground within range of a signal. Four voice mails appeared in his inbox, and before he tapped the icon, Benjamin called.
“I almost had Giselle!” The connection was bad, but he sounded excited. “She was driving some futuristic car. You should have seen it. It’s really cool and incredibly fast.”
“How’d you know it was her?”
“I was canvassing a small town, and people who knew her pointed her out as she drove past. Some flashy guy and his wife were even calling after her by name.”
“Where is Giselle now?”
“She hopped on a jet to Iceland.”
“This connection is bad, it sounded like you said Iceland.”
“I did. You were right. They don’t call the Veronas jet setters for nothing.”
“How do you know she’s not bound for Venice?”
“Airport employees told me.”
“A stroke of luck!”
“I struck gold! They told me the town and the names of the art collectors who just bought one of her sculptures. She’s on her way there to install it.”
“Follow her!”
“I’m at the Reims airport returning the car. I’ll get on the next flight to Paris, then connect to an Icelandair flight to Reykjavik.”
“Stay on her.”
“Will do.”
“Do you need money?”
“No. I used our debit card for the tickets and hit the ATM. I’ve got plenty of cash, although when you get the bill for this car you’ll need to sit down.”
“No worries on money. Did she have the Russian skinhead with her?”
“I didn’t see him.”
“Better and better! You’ll have one less person to kill in Iceland.”
Luigi arrived at headquarters feeling refreshed after a relaxing day at home with Gladys. Maybe there really was something to slowing down and letting the woman he loved pamper him occasionally. The criminal department was crowded. On his way past Bruno’s desk, he was greeted with a friendly, “Eh, Luigi, take a cookie. Homemade.”
“Grazie. I thought the place would be empty for a few days. What’re you doing at work?” Luigi asked as he took a cookie.
“Same as everybody else. I needed a break from the family. They’re all in town, and it’ll be quiet here. The city should be quiet until New Year’s Eve.”
Luigi unlocked his desk drawer, took out his secret files on the Scortini murders and Benedetta’s case, and began adding new information in code about Nejla landing in Maine and Benny’s pregnancy. He’d returned the files to his desk and was in the process of writing a list of things to follow up on when he heard Inspector Laszlo bellow, “Lampani!”
He found the big man sitting in his hotbox of an office and, without asking, dragged one of the old wooden chairs over to the window that was open a crack, but not nearly enough to make the choking heat bearable.
“Mind if I open this a bit more?”
“Please do. The heat’s been on all morning.”
“You should ask maintenance to check your thermostat settings.”
Laszlo’s black eyes were intimidating, but the corners of his mouth twitched in an effort to avoid smiling. “Always subtext with you. You’re saying…what? Someone’s purposely over-heating my office?”
“I’ve suspected it for some time now. Someone’s trying to cook you.”
“Murder by roasting me where I sit, eh? Who knows, maybe it’s the same person who’s trying to send you to rehab by cutting off your Pocket Coffee habit.” The smile came and Luigi could see the big man was in a good mood.
“Anyway, here,” Laszlo said as he pushed a brightly colored gift bag across the desk. “A little something I thought you’d like.”
Luigi was touched. They’d never exchanged gifts. From the bag, he pulled out a packet of caramel coffee candies.
“Go ahead, get addicted to these. And they’re sugar-free so you can keep your welterweight classification.”
“I don’t box anymore.”
“I thought you still sparred down at the gym.”
“Grazie, this is very thoughtful.”
“But now that I look at you, you could stand to put on some weight. You’re looking a little skinny these days.”
“The damned headaches kill my appetite.”
“Still having them?”
“With depressing regularity.” He unwrapped a candy, popped it into his mouth an
d bit down. Instead of offering sweet espresso, it instantly clung to his teeth and filled his mouth with the medicinal tang of saccharin. He wanted to spit it out, but it was welded to his molars. He offered one to Laszlo, who waved it off and turned to his computer screen.
“Speaking of depressing, the French police are going to announce today that they have enough evidence to charge Bernardo Vitti with conspiracy to murder Giselle Verona and her ‘art teacher.’ That’d be Markus Shevchenko.”
“Conspiracy? That’s a pretty weak case, and even if it sticks, he’ll just get a slap on the wrist. They’ve already had him in custody for over a month. Any lawyer could get him off with time served.”
“Apparently they got some evidence on a cell phone.”
Luigi didn’t say a word but raised his brows.
“They recovered the phone from the hit man who was found dead in the barn, Miguel Turrion. And my contact says the girlfriend knew his phone password. The jealous type, she checked his messages whenever she could get away with it. They promised to tell her if he’d sent any recent messages to another girl, so she supplied his password. They found a plan for murder laid out in great detail between Bernardo, Miguel, and the dead hit man who shot himself… Felix Montand.”
“Enough detail to nail Bernardo—who was at a café in the next town—with conspiracy?”
“The French officials feel confident. Giselle’s from an old and well-respected family, and they don’t want to be accused of looking the other way when hit men try to bump off the country’s aristocracy.”
“Uh-huh,” Luigi said.
“I know you’d like to extradite Bernardo, but they’re prosecuting him now, and the other two are dead. They score points in the court of public opinion just by charging him.”
Luigi got up. “Thanks for keeping me informed.”
“I figured you’d go ballistic when you found out about the information on that phone.”
“I’m light years beyond that.”
“I’m not going to ask how.”
Luigi gave him a little wave with his bag of saccharine rubber cement and headed back to his desk to do some research on Nejla. He sat down, unlocked his drawer, and found his Benedetta file missing. Only the Salvio file was still there. He slid the drawer closed again with a casual sleight of hand and locked it. Everyone was going about their usual business, and unless someone was standing next to his desk, they wouldn’t have seen him open and close the drawer. He felt the flower of a headache bloom behind the bridge of his nose.
He thought fast. The person who took that file was either off reading it or making a copy while he was in with Laszlo. Good luck deciphering my code for numbers, names, verbs, and nouns he thought. He was betting that they wouldn’t risk keeping it, but he’d come back sooner than they’d anticipated. He snatched up the candy bag, went straight to the hall, down the steps, and to the main reception desk where he emptied the caramels into their candy dish and made small talk with the desk sergeants about their holiday. He fished in his pocket for his tin of aspirin tablets and chewed a couple.
After five minutes, he went to the restroom. Then, wanting to give the mole more time to get the files back into his desk without anyone seeing, he walked down to the vending machine, bought a cup of coffee, and joined a conversation about the frigid, soggy weather and global warming while the machine spurted premeasured nondairy creamer, hot water, and instant coffee syrup into a fragile Styrofoam cup. He noticed a tasteful sticker someone had stuck on the front of the vending machine that showed the earth buried in cups and read “Enjoy drinks from something you don’t throw away”. Then he noticed the ceramic cups on a hotel tray next to the trash can and wondered if this was the work of some of the pope’s youth brigade? He felt guilty when he reached for his Styrofoam cup.
When he finally returned to his desk, he set his coffee down and unlocked the drawer. Benny’s file had reappeared. He’d just settled back into his chair to ponder who within his ranks was an anti-Catholic Scortini-loving Amendola conspirator when his cell phone rang. He glanced down at the display. It was the court clerk.
“Pronto,” he answered.
“Bad news. The Amendola’s attorney showed up in court and she had a child welfare advocate with her. I don’t know how, but that lawyer has got some sort of clout. She got the judge to approve the court order. She and the advocate just left here on their way to police headquarters. I heard them say they plan to be inside Porto delle Donne this afternoon.”
“I appreciate the warning,” Luigi said, pushing his chair back. He heard, “Sorry I couldn’t do more” as he clicked off the call, reached under his desk, pulled out a battered nylon file bag, and shoved his Scortini and Benedetta files inside. Then he relocked his drawer and left headquarters.
The instant he was outside on Piazza San Marco, he called Kate on her personal number and stood bracing himself against a frosty gust that promised rain.
“Pronto, Luigi.” She sounded perturbed.
“I’m on my way over to get Benny. Her parent’s lawyer…”
“I know,” she said. “I just got a call from their child welfare advocate. They’re on their way with the police to serve a warrant and search the shelter from top to bottom.”
“Goddamned slow day! There’s nothing doing in this city today, so the cops are available. Goddamn!”
“Don’t worry about it. I’d anticipated something like this and have been creating a duplicate of my daily records listing Paloma still in residence. We can take care of ourselves.”
Luigi thought of what these women had done in self-defense when Salvio’s hit men had started killing their staff and said, “I don’t doubt it. I can’t be seen there, it’s not my case, but maybe you can dial me when you answer the door and let me hear what’s happening.”
“I’ll do that. But if they get suspicious, I’ll hang up.”
“Deal.” He needed to get into a quiet place where he’d be left in peace, so he high-tailed it across Piazza San Marco to Caffé Florian and waved to Anna Rita, who nodded permission as he ducked into one of the elegant velvet salons that was roped off. At least here he could wait and listen in while savoring some of the best coffee in Venice.
It had been a busy morning for Raphielli. Before breakfast, she met with Tosca in the wing of her home that was under construction. Then a quick meal with Paloma, Alphonso, and Zelph before Alphonso walked her and Paloma to the shelter. Then she slipped over to the Aman. Gio had been in Palermo for Christmas but had flown right back to Venice to continue hunting whoever was hunting her. Or at least that’s what he said. She wondered if perhaps the danger was past and he was just keeping it alive so he could be near her.
He surprised her with a velvet gift box, and Fauve’s strident voice came back to her unbidden. He’ll lure you in…and discard you!
When she saw the diamond ring inside, it looked like the most beautiful lure in the world, so she closed the box and handed it back. “I can’t accept this.”
“Of course you can, and I want you to have it. I enjoy giving, and I’d like to spoil you a little. It’s your Christmas present.”
“How about you give me a back rub and tell me a story,” she said as she stripped her clothes off. “That’s what I really want.”
Gio complied, and she spent a leisurely two hours listening to his stories and being worshipped by him before eating a decadent naked lunch in bed. Then, because there’s no rest for the wicked, it wasn’t long before she was sitting in a boat with Primo while their driver, Drea, piloted her back to work, without the diamond. It was then that she got a call from Elene Buonocore, the mayor’s wife.
“Pronto, Elene!”
“Ah, my dear! I trust you had a lovely Christmas.”
“Oh, sì.”
“Bene, bene. I’m sending out invitations to our New Year’s Eve party. I know you’ll be inundated with invitations, but you must at least stop by.”
“I’d love to,” she said, and meant it.
“The what?”
“You’re expected to throw a ball—a proper masquerade—and you’ll need a carri di carnevale. I’ll loan you our boat decorators, or I’m sure Contessa Verona will loan you hers.”
“But…”
“No buts,” Elene said with finality. “We’ve talked about this. I know Salvio never would have allowed it, but now you’re the grand lady of Casa Scortini and there’s no more waiting. Make it happen on February thirteenth. I’ve spoken with the other hostesses, and we’re all holding that date. I’ll send you a list of who to invite. Only fun people that you’ll like.”
That made her feel better, but she wasn’t sold. “I…”
“My other line is ringing. Call me with any questions. Come to dinner before New Year’s if you can. Feel free to bring Cardinal Negrali again if you’d like.”
And then she was gone. Raphielli called Fauve and told her about Elene’s demand.
“Mais bien sur, Elli!” Fauve sounded thrilled. “Do it! Invite me and the whole gang!”
“Okay, I’ll have Dante prepare some rooms for you guys to come stay.”
“Maybe Gigi and Markus will be out of hiding by then.”
“But I don’t know how to throw a big fancy costume masquerade ball.” She hated the sound of her own whining.
“You don’t have to. You know the right people and that’s all you need.”
“I do?”
“You’re friends with a famous designer, an incredible interior decorator, and according to Giselle, your party planner is the toast of Europe. Plus, you’re rich. Throw a real barn burner!”
“A what?”
“Never mind, you’re not from the country. Hang up with me and call all three of them.”
“Okay, but I’m drawing the line at a carri di carnevale. My in-laws were killed riding in one this past summer, and I’d feel ghoulish creating a Carnevale party boat.”
When she hung up, she placed the calls, and all three women had accepted the jobs by the time Drea pulled to a stop in an out-of-the-way inlet only a few calles from Porto delle Donne. As Primo held out a hand to help her up, he said, “Raphielli, you need to work on your self-confidence.”
Surviving Venice Page 21
