A Deadly Paradise (11 page)

“Someone’s been into my periwinkle dishes,” Tangassi exclaimed while examining one of the boxes. She spent the next ten minutes kneeling on the dirty floor, unwrapping each dish from its protective covering and holding it up to the light. Elena spent the same ten minutes making strangling gestures behind the signora’s back, while the commissario devoted his time to examining the back door. The spider web that had covered it the previous day had been rent in two and the bolt was open. Someone besides the police had recently visited the murder site.

16

SIGNOR VANNICELLI ARRIVED promptly at three o’clock, as Elena had instructed. Even though the door was unlocked, he waited for Elena to let him in, and that pleased her. As she told Piero later that evening, “He has respect for the police.” Anita Tangassi had annoyed Elena just enough to make Signor Vannicelli appear cooperative, even before he demonstrated it.

Lorenzo Vannicelli, the neighbor who’d discovered Jarvinia Baudler’s body, was a retired science teacher. He was sixty-five, of medium build, with dark wavy hair and a pleasant manner; and, as Cenni was to find out in short order, he also headed the
Rifondazione Comunista
party in Paradiso. It wasn’t that
il professore
advertised his politics to whomever he met at the moment he met them, but rather that they crowded into his every sentence, whether he wanted them to or not.

While Elena was in the kitchen setting up the recorder before the interview began, Cenni asked Vannicelli to accompany him to the cellar to show him where he’d found the body. The cellar was on two levels: the larger level, the one in which Jarvinia Baudler had been killed, occupied the length and width of the house, with a stone stairway at the front end which led to a cave located under the street. The lower level, the cave, had once been part of the catacombs that ran under the streets of the old part of Paradiso. It had been sealed off from the main tunnel in the early part of the last century.

“The bank is in this part of the town, and I’ve often thought how easy it would be to get into the bank’s vault with some quiet explosives by going through the catacombs. But then maybe I watch too many films,” Vannicelli said, forgetting for the moment that Cenni was a com-missario in the civil police.

“Do you know for sure that the bank has its vault in the basement?” Cenni asked. “Nowadays a good many banks have their vaults on the street floor, although I don’t suppose it would be that difficult to get to the street floor from the basement, but then you’d still have to blast through the vault door. I really think it’s easier to just come in through the street, a lot less digging. And at one or two o’clock in the morning, who’s looking out their windows?”

“Signora Cecchetti!” they both said simultaneously.

“Good point that, about going in through the front door,” Vannicelli said when they’d stopped laughing. “I’ll have to remember it.”

“Try to wait until I’ve retired,” Cenni responded. “Otherwise I might have to remember this conversation.”

Their discussion about where Baudler had been killed was more serious and at one point quite testy. Cenni asked Vannicelli about Signora Cecchetti’s assertion that Anita Tangassi had killed her mother and maybe even her uncle.

“The police are all Fascists under the skin,” Vannicelli responded in anger. “You can’t help it, can you? We’ll shake you all out of your trees as soon as we’re really back in power.” Mixing his metaphors, Cenni thought. He never took offense at such talk; it was, after all, just talk. The Left in Italy, with its hundred or so parties, couldn’t even agree on a name, let alone policy. And besides, he himself had voted
L’Ulivo
in the last election.

“I wouldn’t let Inspector Ottaviani hear you talk like that. She might take offense,” Cenni responded. “Let’s just say that Signora Cecchetti is a gossip, and I want to put her insinuations to rest.”

“Anita was with me when it happened, out in the garden. We were cutting some basil. We both saw her mother, Marta, fall. She suffered from vertigo and shouldn’t have been out on the terrace. Her doctor had warned her often enough, but she was a fanatic about cleaning.”

“And the uncle. What’s that all about?”

“Orazio ate some bad mushrooms. He was always out in the woods looking for new varieties. He fancied himself a naturalist and was convinced that he could distinguish edibles from those that were poisonous. He had some strange theories, as well; he claimed it was possible to develop an immunity to even the most lethal mushrooms if eaten in minuscule amounts over a period of time. And he would search the woods for hallucinogenic mushrooms. He took far too many chances. I’m the one who found his body. He’d been dead for at least twenty-four hours. The cara-binieri found a basket of little brown mushrooms of the genus
Galerina
in the cellar. There was a postmortem, and the finding was death by misadventure, or, more specifically, death by the toxin
amanitin.
All of this is documented, by the way.”

“And Signora Tangassi? Where was she when all this was happening?”

“Anita was in Rome, in the hospital. That also is documented.”

“I’m sorry if I offended you, Signor Vannicelli. Any time the police are investigating a murder, we’re also dealing with rumors, vendettas, insinuations, what have you. We’d like to ignore the busybodies of the world, but in murder cases we don’t have that luxury.”

At the end of Vannicelli’s interview, he and Cenni were friendly enemies. Vannicelli answered all questions concerning his part in finding the body of Jarvinia Baudler willingly, without hesitation.

“I heard Tommaso crying close to four-thirty, which is when I crawled through the window and found her body. I took Tommaso home and called the carabinieri from my house, about five o’clock, give or take a few minutes.” Concerning the way she was dressed, he was very specific. “Whenever I saw her in the square or outside watering her plants, she had on pants and sensible, low-heeled shoes. When I found her body, she was wearing a dress and high heels. I don’t think she wore those around the house. She must have been either coming or going.”

When Cenni asked why it was necessary to climb through the cellar window to reclaim his cat, he was very direct.

“When she first came to live here, we became friends. On the really hot evenings last summer, we’d sit out on the wall of the fountain to cool off and share a bottle of wine. She spoke beautiful Italian, was intelligent and very funny. I liked her. And then my cat Tommaso jumped her female, and the friendship evaporated. What she thought would happen to a female in heat in the streets of Par-adiso is beyond me, but she actually called the carabinieri to complain. And she was always throwing her weight around, claiming to be a diplomat, demanding extras, including discounts from the local stores. You name it. If I’d told her that Tommaso was trapped inside, she’d have made a huge fuss. I couldn’t be bothered, and her car was gone from the front, so I decided to climb through the window.”

“You must have had a shock,” Cenni said, letting Van-nicelli respond as he wished.

He frowned. “Very ugly that, very ugly! I hate seeing people humiliated and degraded, even bad people. Positioning her like that, sitting her up leaning against the stairs, with her dress wrapped around her waist and her legs spread apart, totally exposed, was degrading. I’ll help you if possible, although I don’t imagine there’s much I can do.”

“What about visitors? And the woman she was living with? Anything you can tell us there?”

“In the beginning she had quite a few visitors, mostly women; but after the black woman moved in, it was mainly the two of them. Occasionally I’d see a man visiting her. Not Italian. German probably, an older man. He drove a BMW. He was around less than a week ago, if I remember correctly. But you can always ask Signora Cecchetti. She keeps a ledger.”

“What about the black woman? Did they fight? Do you know when and why she moved out?”

“If I saw her outside the house and she was alone, she’d always smile and say hello. When she was with Baudler, she kept her eyes down and acted as if she didn’t see me. She seemed nice enough and was a real looker. It’s hard to figure out what she was doing with a woman in her seventies. I last saw her maybe three weeks ago. But I don’t think she was still living with the German. Before that, I hadn’t seen her in months. I was outside in the front pruning plants, and their front door was open. Their voices were loud, but they were yelling in English, so I had no idea what they were saying. The black woman got into a black Mercedes that was parked over by the belvedere. I didn’t get a good look at the driver as they left by the back road, but it was definitely a man. Oddly enough, she got into the back seat, not the front, as if he was a hired driver.”

“What about the back door? You have access to that from the back garden. Did you let yourself in yesterday or today, perhaps to look for your cat?”

“Tommaso has too much to occupy him at home these days to go wandering. I took the German’s cat home with me. Besides, the police boarded up the hole in the window, so there’s no way he can get in.”

“So you weren’t in here late yesterday or today?”

“No. And I was out in the garden today until I left for my doctor’s appointment. I would have seen if anyone went inside. Why, has someone been using the back door?”

Cenni didn’t reply, but he was convinced that Vannicelli was telling the truth.

“Have you seen anyone using the back entrance since the German moved in?”

“No, and if I had I would have warned them off. That road has been off-limits to traffic, car and foot, for more than ten years now.”

Cenni knew his next question would trigger an explosion, so he’d waited until the end of the interview. “About Signora Tangassi, is she the same woman who was involved in the murders of a mother and a child in 1978?” He had used the word
involved
deliberately.

“There you go again. Give an inch, take a mile! Anita wasn’t involved in any murders. She found the bodies, a horrific experience for a nine-year-old. And don’t you go talking about it to her, or I’ll use whatever influence the party has to get you written up. The Right was voted out of office this year, or didn’t you notice?”

“
Calmati,
Signore,” Elena said, turning off the recorder. “The commissario didn’t mean anything offensive by his question.”

Cenni still hadn’t figured out the relationship between Vannicelli and Anita Tangassi. He decided to send Elena back to visit Signora Cecchetti.

Before Vannicelli could walk out the door in a huff, he asked him one last question. “Signore, how are the cats?”

“Early days yet, but I think we’ll be having a litter in August. Shall I save one for you?” he asked, turning to look directly at Elena.

Book Two

The Sparrow and the Peacock

1

THE SPASM OF coughing stopped and Queenie returned to her previous activity, counting her money. The vineyards had been particularly successful in the past two years, and she reaffirmed her previous decision. She would sell to
Marchesi Antinori.
She no longer had the energy to oversee operations, and who knew better than she that absentee ownership never worked. She had tried it forty years earlier, and it had been a disaster. All employees steal money given the opportunity, human nature being what it is. And Italians are particularly skilled at it, given their extensive experience in cheating the government of taxes. Not that Queenie blamed them; she did the same herself. In October, she had rented the attic apartment to an American couple, the trusting kind who’d never dream that the Countess Molin, a descendant of the Medici, would cheat the government of a few hundred euros in taxes. But the euros add up no matter how many you may already have, and Queenie had always preferred addition to subtraction.

She laughed out loud thinking of the American couple, particularly the woman. They were so anxious to please,
delighted, so happy, thrilled,
to rent an apartment from a countess. Queenie helped it along, as she always did, playing the great lady to perfection, even inviting them to afternoon tea. That invitation alone ensured another two hundred euros a month for the tiny rooms in the attic, and although they’d looked a bit surprised when her realtor explained that the lease was written for five hundred euros less than the actual rent, they’d signed it quickly enough. The husband looked as though he might protest, but the wife grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. Queenie knew her pigeons.

Compound interest, rates of return, yields, relative risk, coupons, the vocabulary of investing was as music to her ears. When the doctors, four of them, told Queenie that her lung cancer had advanced, that with aggressive treatment and some luck she might last another six months, her greatest pleasure had become her greatest regret. So much money and property, accumulated with such devotion, and no one that she cared to leave it to. A sacrificial waste, she thought, taking another drag on her cigarette, realizing perhaps for the first time in seventy-seven years that she
really
would have to leave it behind. Even now as she lay encapsulated within a cocoon of pillows and bed hangings, she had daydreams of taking it with her, like the Pharaohs.

For a full week she had retired completely from the world, abed in her seventeenth-century four-poster with velvet hangings, legal and financial documents piled high around her. The first three days of that fateful week had been devoted to mourning, something no one would do when Queenie was dead. In the next three days she ran the household staff off their feet, not to mention her Italian bankers and American brokers, mailing and faxing and posting bank statements, financial reports, contracts, prospectuses, codicils, and testaments. On the seventh day, Queenie made her decision. She would divest herself of all her property, other than the Palazzo Molin. In his will, her father had affirmed over all other affirmations that the palazzo must stay within the family. Saverio Volpe, her do-gooder cousin on her mother’s side and her only remaining family, would inherit the palazzo unless she could find a loophole. Queenie had never begrudged spending money when the outcome was important, so she’d asked Carlo Fabretti, the wiliest lawyer in Venice, to devise a plan. And he had, a magnificent plan. After her death, Palazzo Molin would house a foundation to honor Queenie’s father for his bravery during the war. Saverio would have a difficult time getting that bequest overturned by the courts. Venetians love war memorials, and they love even more the drama of seeing one of their own get done out of money. The foundation would be the largest in the Veneto, and she would be the talk of Venice. She took a last skimpy drag on her cigarette, now burned down to the filter, and sighed with pleasure.

She fingered a long strand of natural pearls, perfectly matched, a family heirloom that appeared in Grazia Molin’s wedding portrait, painted in 1680 by Bombelli, and not worn since Queenie’s mother was a bride. She admired the delicate ovals of light and thought of Juliet, who loved the pearls and who always asked to try them on whenever they were out of the safe. Just this once, Juliet had begged a month ago when they had attended the opera, but Queenie had refused. The pearls were priceless, not for the likes of Juliet. All of Queenie’s lovers had had their price, and Juliet’s was higher than most. Of the scores that had passed through her life, some lasting weeks, others years, just two had loved Queenie. Queenie had loved only one in return.

2

“THE SPARROW” AND “the peacock” is what Queenie’s father had called them. She had been the sparrow, of course, Jarvinia the peacock. “Sparrow” was the nickname her father had given her, as he’d never liked her baptismal name of Marcella; and until he had called her best friend “peacock,” she’d been very pleased. She had been devoted to her father.

After Marcella was born, her mother had been very sick. Nannetta, who’d nursed Marcella when she was a baby and who’d stayed on, and on, told Marcella when she was seven that her mother had once tried to throw her into the Cannaregio Canal. She’d been crying for more than an hour when her mother lifted her out of her crib. Her father, who had been in the room at the time, thought her mother was finally coming out of her depression, and he watched with love as she walked out onto the
loggia
with their infant daughter. He stopped her just as she was about to fling Marcella into the canal. Her mother never did emerge from her depression, and Marcella never did learn to love her.

It was always, and only, Marcella and her father, until Jarvinia came along. Every Sunday, father and daughter would begin the day at the Caffè Inglese. Her father would drink a
caffè corretto,
and she would have a
caffè latte
and a cream puff. Afterward they would take long walks through Venice, and he would tell her stories about the families that had made Venice the greatest seafaring city-state in the world, pointing out the various
palazzi
in which they had lived and describing each of the buildings and its style of architecture in detail. He’d also talk incessantly about honor and Marcella’s obligation to keep Palazzo Molin and herself within the Venetian family. He had already decided that she should marry Saverio Volpe, her second cousin on her mother’s side. He would finish by reminding her that Palazzo Molin and the Molin family, with the arms of four doges on its escutcheon, were without equal. He never mentioned their Spanish blood or that Grazia, the Spanish upstart, had purchased her way into the Venetian nobility, and Marcella, wisely, never brought it up. Their walks were long and exhausting, and she loved them and worshipped him.

Their solitary walks ended soon after the peacock came into their lives. Jarvinia was one of several Germans at Marcella’s school, but she preferred to mix with Venetians. When Jarvinia first enrolled, when she was twelve, she wore a heavy brace and dragged her left leg at an awkward angle. She said it was the result of an automobile accident, but Marcella found out later that it was actually caused by polio. Other girls of Jarvinia’s age were ashamed of their smallest blemishes, imagined or real, but Jarvinia treated hers as a badge of privilege and if the other girls left her behind during their walks, she’d scream after them, “Hold up, you bitches.” Any other student would have spent days in detention for using foul language, but even the nuns seemed to favor Jarvinia. She wasn’t beautiful but she had something special and everyone knew it. So Marcella felt particularly sought-after when Jarvinia chose her as her best friend. They were both at the top of their class, but in different subjects. Marcella excelled in mathematics and the sciences, Jarvinia in languages and art. Art was Jarvinia’s grand passion.

When did the sparrow sense that she was losing her father’s love to the peacock? Probably not at first. Jarvinia charmed everyone when she wasn’t cursing them, and Mar-cella’s father was as easily charmed as the next man or woman. Then, of course, there was Jarvinia’s passion for the Tiepolo frescoes. No person of any importance ever entered Palazzo Molin who was not given the grand tour of America, Europe, Asia, and Africa by the Count. The four public rooms off the grand salon on the
piano nobile
were famous throughout Europe for their frescoed ceilings. Marcella was rightfully proud that they adorned the Palazzo Molin, but to herself alone she acknowledged that they bored her. There was no science in them, and thus no truth, and that irritated her. Jarvinia would gaze at them for hours and then talk to Marcella’s father about them at length.

Three days before Jarvinia’s thirteenth birthday, the doctors agreed that she could go without her brace once or twice a week, and the count decided to take his daughter and her best friend to a celebratory lunch at the Caffè Florian. Jarvinia was well developed, even at thirteen. She borrowed one of her mother’s outfits, including a pair of open-toed sandals. She wore a green straw hat with white peonies decorating the brim, and a green print dress, flared at the hem and cut low and tight across the bosom. She wobbled when she walked, and whenever she thought she was going to topple over she’d laugh and grab hold of the count’s arm. That was the day that the count bestowed the nickname “peacock” on her. It was also the day that both father and daughter fell in love.

ON THE DAY that Jarvinia had overheard Marcella instruct Nannetta to address her as
contessa,
she had begun calling Marcella “Queen of the Adriatic.” Soon, she had shortened it to Queenie until all their school friends, and even Marcella, forgot her real name.

“So, that’s the full unbridled story, sex in all its lovely and unlovely aspects.” That was how Jarvinia wound up her lecture to Marcella on the glories and pitfalls of married sex. Marcella had just turned fourteen and Jarvinia, who was a month younger, knew everything there was to know about begetting babies. Marcella had used the word “beget” and Jarvinia had rolled around on Marcella’s bed laughing. “‘Beget’! Oh, my dear Queenie, there’s no begetting about it, just a whole lot of fucking.”

Queenie was horrified by Jarvinia’s description of the wedding night and said she’d refuse even if it meant never having babies. Jarvinia had laughed at her. “There’s more than one way to have sex, and it’s not always so gruesome. Do you want me to show you?” she asked, pushing Quee-nie down on the bed. Queenie held her breath. “Go ahead,” she said.

Jarvinia jumped off the bed. “You little hypocrite. You’re willing, so long as you get to play obedient victim. Go ahead yourself! I bet you do all the time, and you’d do it quick enough with Papa if he asked.”

The aftermath of that exchange was that the friends stopped speaking, but that didn’t stop Jarvinia from visiting the palazzo, the frescoes, or Queenie’s father. The count didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care, that his daughter was not speaking to her best friend. Queenie could hear them talking together for hours in the America room. Her father had decided that the frescoes needed refurbishing, and he was consulting his daughter’s thirteen-year-old friend as to the method. On Jarvinia’s fourteenth birthday, the count took her to the Caffè Florian, but this time for dinner. Queenie was left at home.

Felicia, another friend from school, also at the Florian for a family celebration, had seen them together and told every girl in the fourth form and even some of the nuns about it. Jarvinia walked around school as though she owned the world, and Queenie hid in the bathroom and cried. Felicia said that her parents were disgusted, that they’d almost chided the count for his behavior but decided not to. Of course they decided not to. The count was on the board of the oldest bank in Venice, and his business interests were considerable. Queenie tried not to hear Felicia’s stories, but how could she not?

The count had chosen a table lit by candles in a far corner of the main dining room looking out on San Marco. They drank champagne and Jarvinia spoke very loudly. She had taken off her brace and was wearing high heels. Felicia said Jarvinia looked ridiculous. “She could have passed for twenty in all that makeup. And she didn’t have her hair pulled back at her neck as she usually does—it was hanging down to her waist. She’s so vain about her hair. My mother said it’s probably dyed, just like her mother’s. Her mother lives with a man who’s half English and half German. My father says he’ll work for anyone with the right price and that her mother will do the same.” Everyone in school knew what that meant.

Queenie knew it was true about her father and Jarvinia. Her mother was in the hospital again, but even when she came home for a few odd months every year, she had no real presence in their lives. Queenie wondered sometimes if her mother even knew who she was. Nannetta hated Jarvinia, mainly because Jarvinia made fun of her.

It was Nannetta who told Queenie that Jarvinia had been to her father’s bedroom, four times. “She’s the devil’s spawn. We need a priest in here to fumigate.”

3

DEATH IS A waiting game, Queenie thought philosophically. The waiting is just more intense when you have a penciled-in appointment. She turned off the light, pushed aside some papers, and slid down under the covers. She couldn’t see the ceiling directly above her, but her favorite section of the America fresco was visible. Of the four frescoes, this had been Jarvinia’s favorite, the reason Queenie had chosen to move her bed into this room when she could no longer climb stairs. It had taken Queenie sixty years to understand why Jarvinia would gaze at it for hours, but she understood now. Jarvinia had imagined herself as the woman in the feathered headdress riding a crocodile, her passions wild and free in the natural, unfettered New World.

She stared into the fire at the other end of the room. Just a few flickering blue flames. The fire would die down soon if Nannetta didn’t bring in more logs. Jarvinia had always loved a ferocious fire. She had been the only person who could talk the count into building one in the America room. He was afraid smoke would damage the ceiling. Strange, she thought, how oddly we shape our destinies; he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. She pulled the covers up to her chin, knocking papers to the floor, and wondered if tonight she’d dream again of eating cream puffs at the Caffè Inglese.