A deadly paradise, p.23
A Deadly Paradise, page 23
If the Germans wanted closure so much, he’d give them closure and make everyone happy, at least everyone on the Italian side of things.
Nothing would make Ettore Hyppolito happier than to secure Leonardo’s drawings and notes for the Vatican Library’s permanent collection. Perhaps a gift from the German Institute to the Library? The ambassador could make the announcement on Thursday at Baudler’s service: a gift from the German government to the Italian people, in Baudler’s name, for all her years of service to culture. The Germans might protest a bit when Cenni made this suggestion, but he was sure that if it were put delicately, they’d appreciate the tradeoff. If the British were to learn that the Germans had used counterfeit pounds after the war, they’d want restitution, and at current rates.
What would Elena think of such a maneuver, he wondered? Doesn’t matter, he decided. One woman’s blackmail is another man’s diplomacy. It was a simple matter of returning to Italy what had belonged to her all along. The Greeks need someone like me to get them back the Elgin marbles, he decided, as he dialed Reimann’s number.
15
ANITA’S HEAD HURT dreadfully, and Lorenzo had given her some pills to help, some kind of herbal remedy. Two or three before bed with a glass of wine, he’d suggested. A glass of wine always helps before retiring. She definitely needed to take them tonight. Since the murder of her tenant, Anita had taken just the one, two nights ago. It had worked beautifully, stopping the ache in her head and sending her into a deep sleep for ten hours, an entire night without a single visit from her mother. She had no idea what the pills were, or where Lorenzo had gotten them, but she was determined to get some more. But not from her doctor. The last time she had asked for pills, he’d said she was an addict. What does it matter, she thought, so long as I sleep? Tomorrow, she’d call around in Perugia and find a pharmacy that would help her, or maybe she’d call Dottor Ubaldi in Rome. He was always so concerned about her health.
For as long as Anita could remember, she’d had problems sleeping, although her memories didn’t go back beyond the age of six, when she began primary school. Her first day at school was etched in her memory. She wore her favorite dress of pink tulle. Her mother had said “No,” that “it was a party dress and not appropriate,” but she had cried until she got her way. The other children stared and stared, and at first she thought it was because they liked her dress, but even after she had covered it with a blue smock, and she looked like everyone else in the first grade, the children continued to stare. Signora Taccini gave her a seat at the front of the classroom, and when she’d asked Anita to recite the alphabet Anita could only get to the letter G. The other children, who had attended infant’s school and already knew the alphabet, laughed. Even her teacher laughed, and Anita re-fused to go back Her mother let her stay home for a while, but then the police called at the house. When she returned to school, Lorenzo came with her and he spoke to Signora Taccini. None of the children laughed at her after that, and Anita made very sure that they would never laugh again. From that day on, she led her class, particularly in mathematics, in which she excelled.
Until Bianca came to Paradiso, Anita never had any friends. Bianca was two years younger, but Anita had seen her standing alone in the schoolyard, and she went over and spoke to her. They became friends right away. Bianca had a father, but he was always away from home, and Anita had no father. They loved playing dolls together, but Anita had just the one doll, an old Raggedy Ann, which some-one had given to her when she was a baby. Monsignor Lacrimosa said dolls were idolatrous, and her mother agreed and refused to buy any others. Anita was desperate for a real doll; she wanted one with hair that grew right out of the doll’s head, and it was because of the doll that she’d found Bianca’s body. Anita had the idea that they should try to set the doll’s hair with bobby pins, and when Bianca didn’t show up at school, Anita went looking for her.
The only time that Anita spoke to anyone about that day was to the police immediately afterward. For years, she refused to talk to anyone, including her mother, and she never told the police that she’d picked up the doll and washed the blood from its hair before returning it to Bianca. Bianca would have liked that. She talked to her mother only once about that day, just months before her mother’s death. And, finally, this year she’d told Dottor Ubaldi. She had been sitting across from him in his consultation room, and, out of the blue, she began talking about that day, even to telling him how she’d washed the blood from the doll’s hair. When she’d finished, he got up from his chair and came around the desk. He knelt down beside her and wrapped her in his arms, pulling her tight to his chest. It lasted just briefly, but some times at night if she thought about that moment, she’d hug herself and pretend it was his arms and his strength.
What she told her mother was a different story, and in a different tone. They’d been arguing, as they usually did before one of Anita’s trips to Rome, and her mother had accused her of being secretive and closed. Anita screamed back that she knew plenty of secrets, and she did too. She told how Bianca counted the men who came to her mother at night like other people counted sheep. “One of them was your precious priest and the other was your crazy brother, and just about every other man in this town, including the carabinieri. Paradiso hypocrita,” she’d said in her best school Latin, taunting her mother. Her mother had gasped, “But not Monsignor Lacrimosa,” and Anita had taunted her further. “More times than Bianca could count. She was only seven, you know, and had to stop at a hundred.” She had laughed at the pain on her mother’s face.
That’s why Anita’s mother visited her every night in her sleep, because she had lied to her. Monsignor Lac-rimosa had gone to the Lanese house just the once, to threaten Bianca’s mother with excommunication if she didn’t stop receiving men. Not that Bianca knew that word. What Bianca actually told Anita was that the priest had called her mother “an occasion of sin.” Bianca knew what that meant, as she’d just made her First Holy Communion. It was Orazio who came every night and broke furniture and threw things. But Anita’s mother wouldn’t have cared if it had been Orazio; she hated her brother.
Anita was still considering how many of the pills she should take, when her telephone rang. It was after ten o’clock, and no one in Paradiso ever called after nine. She picked up the telephone gingerly and broke into a smile when she heard his voice. Dottor Ubaldi. He’d just returned from a conference abroad and had seen an article in one of the Rome papers about the German’s death. He’d called to ask if she were all right.
On her last visit to Rome, he had warned her about taking too many sleeping pills, and she decided that tonight she’d try his remedy instead, an aspirin and a warm glass of milk. It was a night meant for dreaming.
16
CENNI SPENT TEN minutes waiting in line to pay his admission fee so he could gain access to the streets of Paradiso. It was the Sunday after the feast of Corpus Christi, and Paradiso was celebrating the festival of flowers. Lines were long, the sun was hot, tempers were flaring, and the woman directly behind him had asked twice if he would mind holding her child while she looked for wipes in her carryall. A commissario in the Polizia di Stato shouldn’t have to wait, or pay, but Cenni had decided not to identify himself to the man at the front gate. He had no desire to announce himself or his intentions to anyone but Baudler’s murderer; even on a day like this, news of a senior detective’s arrival in Paradiso, all the way from the Perugia Questura, would spread like wildfire.
It was not the sort of day on which to arrest anyone, and Cenni had considered waiting until evening for the tourists to go home, but he was afraid that Baudler’s murderer had a pathological conviction of invincibility. He’d seen the signs yesterday, and he had to be careful. A neighbor might drop a careless word or indicate by a sideways glance that the killer was no longer safe. Signora Cec-chetti was not the only person in Paradiso who saw and remembered things, and Cenni feared that the killer might strike again.
Yesterday, Cenni had promised Lorenzo Vannicelli that the police would give him advance notice if they planned to arrest Anita so he could be on hand to assist her. He had also promised Vannicelli that an arrest, when made, would be quiet and dignified: the police would not come at Anita with sirens whirring or officers brandishing guns. He never made promises he couldn’t keep.
Vannicelli had expressed extreme guilt when he realized it was due to his unwitting slip of the tongue that the police now viewed Anita as the prime suspect, and he was quick to point out that Anita was a special case, deserving special consideration. “She’s suffered enough without having the neighbors looking on as she’s led away in handcuffs. Her mother was my cousin, but she was a fool like most women. It was that priest who stirred her up. Every time Anita did something that Marta thought in the least improper, she’d run to him for advice. Marta spent more time in confession and at the rectory than she ever did at home with Anita. If she could have, she’d have left her money to the Church, but thanks to Garibaldi we have laws to prevent that kind of thing. I’m glad Anita poisoned that frock-wearing hypocrite. It would have been more fitting, though, if she’d laced his communion wine with cyanide.” At the end of his diatribe against the priest and his idolater, he added, “You need to be very gentle with Anita. She’s tried to kill herself once, and I worry that she might try again.”
ANITA, THE HYPOTHETICAL poisoner, awoke that Sunday morning from a deep and lovely dream to a magnificent June day filled with flowers and celebration. It was L’Infiorata, and the streets were crowded with tourists, oohing and aahing over the flower paintings that carpeted the streets and squares of Paradiso—although not Piazza Garibaldi, which was still cordoned off by the police. The chalk drawings of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints were filled in during the pre-dawn hours with sheaves of wheat, dried grasses, aromatic herbs, and thousands and thousands of flower petals of every color and size, gathered from every garden and field located within one mile of Par-adiso. Lorenzo said L’Infiorata was nothing more than a capitalistic occasion for café owners to charge three euros for a coffee that the day before had cost ninety cents. And every year, he’d point out to whoever would listen that the festival is not even celebrated on the actual feast of Corpus Christi. “Why is this if not to make money, which is hardly a Christian endeavor?” he would ask caustically.
Anita disagreed, although never directly. Lorenzo didn’t like it when people disagreed with him. She’d always loved the day of the flowers, and the excitement and the parties, and the anticipation of winning prizes, and the early morning procession with the priest holding the Blessed Eucharist on high for all to see. She particularly loved paintings executed with poppy petals. When she was thirteen, she had participated with the children’s group. They painted the blood of Christ in a golden chalice made out of mustard seeds, and Anita spent an entire week from morning until late evening gathering poppies in every field surrounding Paradiso. Her children’s group won first prize that year, and her mother, who was very proud, took Anita out for pizza that night to the local café. It was the best memory Anita had of her mother. This L’Infiorata will be the best one ever, she thought, still gently dreaming. She’d finally gotten rid of Jarvinia Baudler. When the phone rang, she smiled, thinking it might be Dottor Ubaldi again, but it was Lorenzo, and, as usual, he was calling with bad news.
SIGNORA CECCHETTI WAS humming as she piled her hair high, using her very best combs. Her life had changed dramatically in just twelve days, and it was all due to Jarvinia Baudler. She blessed herself and said a small prayer for the German’s soul. First the policewoman had come calling and stayed a full morning, listening to her stories and taking notes. And then the very handsome commissario from Perugia came to visit, not on police business but to check on her well-being. And this morning, she had gone outside to water her plants and Enzo had passed by in a suit and a tie. Instead of ignoring her or hissing at her, as he so often did, he stopped and wished her a very pleasant day. He has a distinguished profile, she decided. And, finally, Anita stopped to compliment her on the quality of her geraniums and to advise her to cut across the olive groves if she wanted to get to town in a hurry and avoid the crowds. Maybe she’s forgiven me for being her mother’s best friend. It would be nice to have a friend I can talk to, she thought, as she watched Anita cross the square and ring Lorenzo’s bell.
ENZO WAS SITTING on the church pew in the belvedere, thinking so hard that he didn’t notice Anita and Lorenzo go into the pink house. To anyone who knew Enzo, he was dressed to kill. His hair was combed, his suit was pressed, his shirt collar was clean, and he wore a red-and-blue silk tie, a Christmas gift from his nephew Piero. Even more of a surprise to anyone who knew him, he was sober, and it was already close to noon. Yesterday, he had met Elena and her boss, the one who got Piero his promotion, and they’d talked for more than thirty minutes. He’d confessed to being in the square at the time of the murder. He couldn’t remember everything he told them, as he’d been drinking, but Elena was coming back today to take his statement, and he had promised himself last night that he wouldn’t disgrace Piero any further. He might even have to act as star witness in a trial, and for that he’d surely have to be sober. Elena and Piero had offered many times to take him to AA meetings, even let him live with them, if he would stop drinking. Maybe it was doable, the word that Elena always used. Elena said everything was doable if you set your mind to it.
CENNI TOOK HIS time walking up Via di San Giovanni. The main street of Paradiso is narrow and winding, and the flower designs restrict pedestrians to single file. The crowd was appreciative, and when someone stopped to talk or exclaim, the rest of the crowd had to stop too. He was surprised to see how much had changed in thirty years. When he and his brother had visited L’Infiorata with their mother, all the designs had had a religious theme. The larger paintings at the bottom of the town were as before; but as they wound their way up toward the Piazza Garibaldi, he noted that many of the paintings had social and even satirical themes, including one that was definitely irreligious: a stained-glass window showing a well-endowed Lady Godiva on horseback. But the mural that stopped the crowd in its tracks was twice the size of the others and featured Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione. It was difficult for the adults to get the children to move on, and he waited patiently until his cell phone rang.
“Dimmi,” he answered, less than politely. He’d been waiting for the call for more than an hour. “You’re absolutely sure,” he said twice, and then, “Thanks, Tahany, much appreciated.” It was the news he’d been hoping for.
Scusi, scusi, Cenni said, pushing past the crowds, incurring a vast number of dirty looks until he finally reached the entrance to Piazza Garibaldi. Two police barriers blocked the entrance, and a young officer, a rookie whom Cenni had seen around Perugia, was standing guard with his back to the square.
“Anyone come in or leave this morning, Sergeant?” Cenni asked.
“No one that I’ve seen, dottore, other than that old man who likes to nap on the church pew. He’s there now, and he’s all spiffed up. Must have a new girlfriend,” he said laughing.
Cenni smiled in appreciation and walked rapidly across the square. Enzo, as the sergeant had said, was sitting on the bench dressed to the nines. Cenni waved to the old man, but walked directly to Lorenzo Vannicelli’s house and rang the bell. He knew the routine; he’d done it a thousand times before, but he was still on edge. There was no answer, and after waiting less than a minute, he rang again, with more force. I hope he’s not among the crowd, he thought, or we’ll never find him.
Someone called his name, and he turned to see Signora Cecchetti standing in her doorway waving to him. Damn, he thought, I don’t have time for one of her childhood stories, but she was waving at him, and he couldn’t just ignore her, so he walked over.
“If you’re looking for Lorenzo,” she said, without any prefatory chitchat, “I saw him and Anita go into her house ten minutes ago. They were talking rather excitedly, and I thought maybe they were having an argument.” Cenni acknowledged her message with an expression that she would later describe to her sister as “one of outright horror.”
“Are you sure?” he demanded.
“I’m sure. The two of them went in together.”
Cenni raced across the square, but the front door was locked and, of course, he didn’t have the key. Elena had it, and she was sitting in an unmarked car a hundred feet below, on the dirt road that abutted the olive groves.
Signora Cecchetti had followed him across the square, and when he found her standing next to him, he pivoted her around by her shoulders and pointed to the black car parked between two large trees.
“Tell the officers in that car that I need them here immediately. I’m going in,” he said, yanking at the green iron planter that was attached to the outer wall.
She was looking at him in amazement, and not moving. “You’ve broken her pots,” she said staring at the geraniums now lying on the ground. “Anita will have a conniption!”
“Signora, I mean now. Move, pronto,” and he gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the car. “Run, don’t walk,” he yelled, as he simultaneously rammed the planter through the door’s window. The glass shattered on the second try, and he covered his hand with his sleeve, reached through the shards of glass, and slid open the bolt.
His first instinct was to check the cellars, and he took the stairs two at a time, but midway down he could see there was no one below. He groaned, remembering the sheer drop from the fourth-floor balcony to the valley below. He raced back to the first floor and up the steps to the second, stopping briefly to search the two small rooms, but they were empty. He went up the next stairway, which was steeper than the first. He looked quickly in the two rooms on that floor—both empty—and started up the third stairway, breathing heavily. His chest was on fire and he knew he was too late. More than fifteen minutes had passed since the cousins had entered the house.
