A Deadly Paradise (21 page)

“DOTTOR CENNI, THIS is a surprise, and a pleasure. What can I do for you?” Reimann asked when Cenni was shown into his office.

After Cenni described the reason for his visit, Reimann seemed agitated. “We have an important delegation arriving shortly, and I’ll be busy seeing to them and their security. Perhaps we can do this at another time, maybe next week.”

“I intend to have someone under lock and key by next week, so I’m afraid it will have to be today,” Cenni responded, not attempting to hide his annoyance. “Carlo tells me you’ve been calling him daily for reports, so I assume this means you’re as anxious to get Baudler’s murderer behind bars as we are. I also want to talk to anyone in the embassy who worked closely with Baudler when she was here: secretaries, clerks, assistants—and the ambassador, of course.”

Reimann jumped on Cenni’s mention of the ambassador immediately. “That’s not possible. He has a full round of meetings today, and throughout this week. Equally important, he had been here for less than a month when Jarvinia retired. In fact, he was the person who insisted that she retire. In a position of that sort, normal retirement age is sixty-five. She had received waivers for ten years from the former ambassador. The incoming ambassador refused to grant her another.”

“I assume, then, there were some bad feelings there,” Cenni countered.

“On Jarvinia’s part, lots of bad feelings. Certainly none on the ambassador’s part. He was just doing his job.”

“In Italy, we think of Germany as a country that never bends the rules, yet Baudler managed to
break
them, and for ten years. How did she bring that off?”

Reimann looked up at the frescoed ceiling before answering. “She was very good at her job, so exceptions were made by the former ambassador. When he left, things changed. And rightly so, she was seventy-five; her health was deteriorating. It was time for her to leave.”

“So she didn’t blackmail someone to keep her job?” Cenni said and watched for Reimann’s reaction.

He didn’t blink. “You mean the papers that she stole from the embassy. No, she just took them for spite. Who was she going to blackmail? The German government?”

Cenni decided to go a bit further with this line of questioning before revealing that the police had found the letter concerning the counterfeit pounds. He wanted to see how long Reimann would continue with the story that the papers Baudler had removed from the embassy were embarrassing to his government but nothing else.

“Why not?” Cenni responded. “If she had information your government didn’t want publicized, letting her stay in her job, a job that you say she was very good at, was a small price to pay. Let’s say the new ambassador decides to call her bluff; only Baudler’s not bluffing.”

“I think, Dottor Cenni, that perhaps you’ve found the letter we’re looking for.”

Cenni responded, “Letter, a single letter. When we spoke on Wednesday, you said ‘papers’.”

“Force of habit, I suppose. I should have said letter.”

“You also told me that you didn’t know what was in the papers. Do you know what’s in this letter?” Cenni asked, confident now that Reimann was lying.

“I do. The ambassador informed me just yesterday of its contents. He also gave me permission to tell the Italian police, on the assumption that you’d get the letter translated if you ever found it.”

“Nice of your ambassador,” Cenni said sarcastically. “Letting me run myself ragged looking for the murderer while you’re sitting on information that could have helped. So what was in this letter?” he asked.

“I think you already know, Dottor Cenni,” Reimann responded.

Cenni noticed that their agreement to address each other by first names had gone by the boards, at least as far as Reimann was concerned.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Cenni said, taking his billfold out of his jacket. “One very small piece of paper. Certainly not the cache of documents we were looking for. And I take it you’re now telling me there is no cache, just this piece of paper.”

“That’s correct,” Reimann responded, reaching out for the letter.

“Sorry, Dieter. This is evidence in a murder case. But I have no problem discussing its contents. So tell me. If this letter is just an innocent piece of paper, why is the German government so anxious to get it back?”

“You obviously know what it says, so you must know why we don’t want this letter published in the papers. It’s an embarrassment. It brings back memories of the war, which we’re all trying to forget, Italians included. Don’t forget, Italy was our ally, until it switched to the winning side.”

Getting personal!

“True, but this letter doesn’t reveal anything new. It might embarrass the Swedish government, but embarrass Germany? I doubt it. There’ve been half a dozen documentaries made on the counterfeit pounds. My brother even tells me the English made a TV series—”

“Private Schulz,” Reimann interrupted. “Very funny, although as a German I shouldn’t admit it.”

“There’s something else involved beyond the fact that Hitler counterfeited money during the war. How come Baudler found this paper in the embassy? It’s addressed to Count Molin at the Banca Centrale Venezia, and it was sent from a Swedish bank.”

“Obviously, I wasn’t here during the war, but as you’ve already implied, we’re an efficient people. I assume a copy was sent to someone in the embassy and it was filed, as everything gets filed. And Jarvinia found it. She snooped a lot.”

“And the money. Where did that wind up?”

“With Count Molin at Banca Centrale, where else? You should check with the bank in Venice, but I suppose they’re embarrassed to admit accepting counterfeit money,” he added, snidely, Cenni thought.

“I’ve already checked with the bank. It denies receiving the money. And just to be sure, the Finance Police are going through their books while we’re speaking. Our Finance Police can sniff out a single euro of unpaid taxes. If the bank received ten million pounds from Sweden, we’ll know about it soon enough. My own suspicion right now is that the money was diverted to Rome after Count Molin was killed—perhaps to the German Institute, which continued to function throughout the war. Baudler was a well-known expert on Renaissance art, and very quick-witted. Perhaps she discovered that the money was used to make questionable purchases of art for the German government
after the war.
That would be more than an embarrassment. And as we both know, she wasn’t above blackmail.”

“What do you mean? Who else was she blackmailing—” He stopped in confusion.

“Besides the German government, you were going to say. Frau Baudler had quite a few scams going. She was blackmailing Molin’s daughter, promising
not
to reveal to the world that the count had worked with the German occupation. And in a complete turnabout, she was paid by Count Volpe, a cousin of Molin’s, to publish the letter. Two for the price of one, three if you include the German government. And let’s not forget the girlfriend from South Africa. I think she had something on her, which is where you can help.”

Reimann was relieved that Cenni, at least for the moment, had dropped his insistence on tying the German government to Baudler’s murder and was only too ready to help indict the Venetians or the African, when Cenni’s cell phone rang.

Cenni looked at the number. It was Elena, and he excused himself to take the call outside. Elena never called him on his cell phone unless it was important.

When he returned, he was smiling broadly.

“Something good?” Reimann asked, hoping that whatever it was, it would let him off the hook.

“Very good. We’ve traced the license plate of the man who’s been visiting Baudler. You,” he added.

“Is that all?” Reimann sounded relieved. “I often visited Jarvinia. We were friends for nearly twenty-five years. You could have saved yourself the trouble and just asked me.”

“You could have saved me the trouble and just told me,” Cenni responded. “You were such great friends, apparently, that you visited the house the day after she was killed. Holding a séance?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“One of our local farmers—thanks to the EU, we still have local farmers—saw your car parked Thursday evening on the unused road that runs behind the pink house. He also identified the man he saw climbing over the hedge and going into the garden. Described you down to your galoshes, Dieter. We knew someone had gone through the back door; it was left unlatched. Where did you get the key? The landlord told us it’s been lost for years.”

“Jarvinia asked me to take an impression on one of my visits. It’s an old lock but a very common one. I had two keys made in Rome. I kept one.”

“Why didn’t you lock it afterward? It was a dead giveaway that someone had been inside.”

“It opened the door but wouldn’t lock it again. Believe me, I tried!”

“We also knew that someone searched through the woodpile. It was restacked so neatly, I thought it might have been you. Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Obviously not. You have it in your billfold.”

“So you’re planning to stick to the story that the letter from the Swedish bank comprises the full extent of the papers you say were stolen from the Embassy?” Cenni asked, wanting Reimann’s denial on record.

“Yes, I am. Now I’m going to offer my apologies. It’s noon and I have a meeting. About your request to talk to staff, I don’t see how that’s possible. I shouldn’t have to remind you, Dottor Cenni, that this embassy does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Italian police.”

“Cut the crap, Dieter! We’re talking murder here, and of one of your own people too. I’ll walk out the front door and make my first stop
Il Corriere della Sera.
How’s this for a headline?
Murdered German diplomat involved in counterfeiting
scheme for millions!
Let’s change that to billions; it’ll sell more papers. Or would you prefer:
German diplomat
tortured for war secrets!
And then, of course, there’s the headline about
how
she was tortured. You’d be out of this job so fast, your head would still be spinning when you begin your new job, cleaning toilets in Roma Termini.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Reimann gasped. “I’m not the only one here with a job to hold on to,” he said, returning the threat.

Cenni laughed. “But you’re the only one here who wants to keep his job. Believe me, Dieter, I dare. I can also wait at the embassy gates and invite any staff member not holding a diplomatic passport to headquarters for questioning. You have a number of Italians working in clerical positions. Let’s start with them and work our way up to the Germans. And before I forget. Let’s have that key you say doesn’t work. You’re still not in the clear for this murder.”

REIMANN CAPITULATED, AS Cenni knew he would. The rest of the afternoon was spent interviewing various members of the staff who’d worked with Jarvinia Baudler. She’d been something of a chameleon, he discovered.

Signora Angelli, her former secretary, gave him a dispassionate rendering of her character: “She was an egoist. If you didn’t get in her way, she was charming and generous—and extremely intelligent. Of course, her generosity never extended to giving anything of her own away or interfering with her own pleasures. If I wanted to leave early, and she had nothing for me to do, she’d always agree. Even if it were five days in a row. She cared nothing about protocol or rules. But when my mother was in the hospital and she had some letters for me to type, and I asked to leave early, she refused. That’s the way she was; but we rubbed along fine together once I accepted her limitations as a human being. She had plenty of those.”

Signora Galassi hated her. She’d been Baudler’s secretary for a brief two weeks when the German had first arrived at the embassy in 1980, until Baudler had her demoted for incompetence: “She said I couldn’t type and I couldn’t spell. My mother was German, so I speak it fine, but my spelling is not so good. Nobody else ever complained until she came along. I’m not surprised someone murdered her. She was a bitch! Herr Reimann’s wife died because of her. She had a stroke of some kind after she found out about their affair.”

“How did his wife know they had an affair?” Cenni asked.

“It was disgraceful. She was ten years older than Herr Reimann. Not only that, she preferred women to men, yet he still couldn’t take his eyes off her. She made passes at every good-looking woman who worked in the embassy. Most of them hated it, but they were afraid to complain, afraid of losing their jobs. She should have been fired years ago, and instead she stayed on when anyone else would have been made to leave. Catch them letting me stay on after I’m sixty-five.”

“How do you know Herr Reimann’s wife knew they were having an affair?” Cenni asked again.

“Because Jarvinia told her,” she replied.

“But how do you know this, Signora?” Cenni asked for the third time.

“Will you tell?”

“Not unless I have to,” Cenni responded conscientiously.

“I was filling in for his secretary, who was on vacation. Ever since the time
she
complained about me, that’s how they use me, to fill in for other people.”

“The wife,” Cenni reminded her.

“Herr Reimann’s wife called while he was on his other line. I could tell she was crying. She didn’t want him to call her back—‘I’ll wait,’ she said. I listened in . . .” She stopped in mid-sentence. “You know I could lose my job over this!”

“Signora, you have my assurance.”

“It was difficult, at first, understanding her because she couldn’t stop crying. But she said it over and over again:
‘How could you do this to me, Dieter? She’s a lesbian!’”

“Did she say how she found out, Signora?”

“That was the worst part. Jarvinia told her. She called her on the telephone. Four days later, Frau Reimann was dead, of a stroke or a heart attack. I’m not sure which.”

Once she’d started talking, Cenni had a difficult time getting her to stop. Every rumor that had ever circulated about Jarvinia Baudler—there had been plenty!—was tucked away in Signora Galassi’s memory for future use.

She stole office supplies!