A Deadly Paradise (22 page)

She stole from petty cash!

She stole umbrellas from the cloakroom on rainy days!

She stole other people’s lunches from the common refrigerator!

She had an affair with the former ambassador’s wife! (Cenni pursued that one briefly, but it went nowhere. Just a rumor, he decided.)

She was forced to retire because she stole confidential papers from the embassy files!

The last rumor was of definite interest.

Herr Bauer, Baudler’s replacement as cultural attaché, had adored her. “There was absolutely no one like Jarvinia. The Da Vinci show she mounted in the embassy is still being talked about. The German Institute would never show the papers or drawings publicly, not even in its own exhibit room, and they absolutely refused to lend them to any museum, not even to the Metropolitan in New York. Too fragile and too valuable, they always said. Yet Jarvinia wrapped them around her little finger. I’ll never be able to follow in her footsteps.”

Not unless you’re into blackmail!

He had better luck with the embassy’s office manager. Herr Greenwald was discreet and proper, but also curious, a bit too curious to stonewall effectively. “I always wondered how Jarvinia managed to stay on so long,” he said in reply to one of Cenni’s insinuations. “National self-interest is the only reason to permit someone of retirement age to stay beyond the age of sixty-five, but not for ten years! Was that it, do you think, that she was blackmailing someone? I knew there was something—”

Cenni jumped in, ready with his little white lie. “We know, of course, that she was blackmailing your government over those counterfeit pound notes that were shipped to the embassy in 1945. What I need from you are copies of the receipts.”

“But I don’t have them. I never did!” Herr Greenwald responded, flustered. “You’ll have to get them from Herr Reimann,” and he immediately picked up the telephone receiver.

“Don’t bother calling Herr Reimann,” Cenni said. “I’ll stop by to see him on my way out.”

BUT ON HIS way out, Cenni breezed past Herr Reimann’s office without so much as a glance inside. He’d heard enough for the day about Jarvinia Baudler. She had been an amazing woman, and he tended to agree with Signora Galassi that the only real surprise with respect to her murder was that it was so long in coming. He was beginning to feel a bit too cocky, and he decided to talk himself down by tallying what he actually knew versus what he thought he knew. A disgruntled clerk was not totally reliable. Even if Baudler had eaten other people’s lunches, so what. But the story about Baudler’s affair with Dieter Reimann was important, and it rang true; so just to be sure, he decided to visit Baudler’s former secretary a second time before he left the building. He asked her point-blank about the affair, but she evaded his question:

“I don’t get paid to check on people’s personal lives.”

“That’s true,” Cenni responded. “And nobody likes a gossip. But if they did have an affair, I want to know. This is a police matter, so I suggest you respond truthfully, Signora.”

“In that case, the answer is
yes,
they had an affair.”

“How did you know?”

“Anyone who was around at the time was aware of it, but that was ages ago. He acted the fool, if you must know. I don’t think Jarvinia cared one way or the other, although I think she used him to get things.”

Cenni pounced on her last statement. “What do you mean, used him?”

Signora Angelli’s desk was in the hallway outside Herr Bauer’s office, and she looked around before answering.

“Favors, that kind of thing.”

“What kind of favors?”

“Herr Reimann can approve passports, have visas issued: the types of thing a senior security officer can do.”

“Do you have any specifics?” Cenni asked.

“I can’t even remember the year. It was a long time ago. I heard her asking him to reissue a friend’s passport. She said it had been stolen.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know. He noticed the door was open and shut it. I never heard any more about it.”

“And the visas?”

“That one is easy, and probably most people around here know about it. Right before she retired, she asked for a visa for a friend, a woman who lived in South Africa.”

“Did she get it?”

“For sure, or she would have been in one of her foul moods on the day she retired.”

“And she wasn’t?”

“Just the opposite: on the day of her retirement lunch, when she stood up to thank everyone, she referred to it openly. Too openly, I thought.”

“What did she say?”

“She thanked him for all the goodies he’d given her over the years. I had to suppress a laugh when she said that. Then she added
And for this one in particular,
and she held up one of our passport envelopes. I assume the visa was inside, attached to the passport.”

“What was his reaction?”

“Not comfortable. He was sitting across from me, and he definitely squirmed. He and the ambassador, who was sitting next to him, exchanged what I’d call
knowing looks.
”

“Did Herr Reimann’s wife know about the affair?” Cenni asked, hoping for a second strike.

She looked at him blankly. “I honestly don’t know. They always seemed friendly enough when they met at a function. If I had to go by her demeanor, I’d say
no.
”

Cenni thought for a moment, and spoke again:

“Signora Galassi says—”

“Melina! I wouldn’t put too much stock in what she says. She hated Jarvinia for twenty-five years, if it’s possible to hold a grudge that long. Did she tell you about her umbrella, and the missing veal cutlet sandwich?”

5

ELENA WAS IN a bad mood, and Cenni got the brunt of it when he called her from Rome. “Now Carlo wants me to take this new officer around, introduce her to the
boys
and help her get settled in. At least ten men in this building are sitting on their backsides doing absolutely nothing. ‘Introduce her to the
boys.’
Luckily for him, he didn’t ask me to introduce her to the
girls
or, so help me God, Alex, I’d have punched him.”

“I can’t leave that man alone for half a day,” Cenni responded. “Don’t do any more training, and I’ll talk to Carlo when I get back.”

“So what do you propose I do with her?” Elena asked, not ready yet to be pacified.

“Have you tracked down the driver of Molin’s car?”

“I just told you that Carlo has me training this new officer.”

“Elena, you need to think out of the box. Sit her down at a desk with a telephone, a pad, and the Venice phone book. If she can’t figure out how to get started on a simple job like that, no amount of training is going to help. I need you to do something else for me.”

“All right, then, tell me,” Elena said.

“Take these two names down: Alberto Lacrimosa and Orazio Vannicelli. The first was a priest in Paradiso and the second was Anita Tangassi’s uncle. Both of them died of mushroom poisoning some time around 2000. Find out everything you can about what happened, including police reports, pathology reports, the works. Also, see if you can find out where Anita Tangassi was at the time they died. Lorenzo Vannicelli told me she was out of town. And what’s happening between you and your pillar of salt?”

“Signora Cecchetti? What do you mean?”

“Lorenzo Vannicelli and Anita Tangassi are more than distant cousins. What’s the relationship there? I thought I asked you to do this before,” he added, before hanging up.

CENNI STILL HAD one more thing to do before leaving Rome, but he’d put it off most of the day to avoid the avenging housekeeper. When he finally got the Partisan priest on the line (“Out of bed since dawn,” he told Cenni), he provided a name.

“Serge Cattelan is the man you want. Headed up a unit of Resistance fighters when he was just a lad. He’s a fisherman out of Murano. If anyone can tell you what happened in ’45, Serge can.”

When Cenni asked for his telephone number, he was hard put to believe the answer. “You’re serious! He doesn’t have a telephone! How do you communicate with him? Oh, I see, by post.”

Cenni had no intention in this lifetime of ever spending another night at the Hotel Da Mula, and he asked himself why he was even trying to solve the mystery of Molin’s death some sixty years after the fact. The connection to Baudler’s murder was a slight thread. Even worse, he might be turning into one of those cops who sticks his nose into places where it’s not needed, a trait he distinctly disliked in some of his colleagues. If Serge Cattelan doesn’t have a telephone because he likes his privacy, he’s safe from me.

That’s when his cell phone rang.

“
Pronto!”

“Nice, very nice!” Cenni said when Elena had finished speaking. “Make sure you keep her on our team, and say thanks from me. And Elena, reserve rooms for the two of us tomorrow night in Venice, and don’t book into a cheap hotel. Find us something along the Grand Canal. Maybe the Hotel Danielli!” That’ll set Carlo off into apoplexy, Cenni thought.

6

ELENA’S NEWS HAD been the push he needed to get him back to Venice. Her recruit had found the driver of Molin’s Mercedes by calling the car services listed in the Venice directory. It took only five calls to find him. Molin always used the same driver and, when first asked, he’d responded that he’d been up and back to Umbria a number of times in the last two months, including last Wednesday. Sergeant Giachini was a new recruit, so Cenni could forgive her slip, and no doubt Elena would instruct her in the future to
never
mention the reason for the call unless asked, and not even then. When Molin’s driver realized that the police were calling about a murder investigation, he got cagey and stopped talking. He couldn’t remember if they’d actually gone to the house that day and, if they had gone to the house, he couldn’t remember the time.

Cenni decided immediately to handle the questioning himself. He also had unfinished business with the African. Her residency application was just about in order, but not quite, and
not quite
is sufficient reason in Italy to have an approval overturned. She had lied to him on his last visit. This time he expected she wouldn’t lie. And since he was planning to be in Venice, he might as well visit Serge Cat-telan in Murano while he was there.

This time he arrived in Venice by car, with Elena doing the driving. She was an excellent driver, and Cenni wondered if it caused any problems in her marriage. Good drivers hate being driven by bad drivers, and men hate being driven by their wives. Cenni was convinced that bad driving must be at least one of the reasons for the recent increase in divorce rates.

Elena, who had a parsimonious nature, was horrified at the 24-euro charge to park the car, and couldn’t stop talking about it, until Cenni ordered her to cease and desist, at which point she confessed that they were not staying at the Hotel Danielli.

“No rooms?” Cenni asked.

“Not exactly,” Elena responded.

“Not exactly, what? Do they have a problem with the police?” Cenni asked.

“Alex, we can’t stay there. A single room is more than 500 euros a night.”

“Don’t you think you deserve a good night’s sleep, and a good shower?” Cenni asked.

“More than 50 euros an hour to sleep! I’d be awake all night thinking about it.”

They were walking toward the
vaporetto
landings, and Elena steered him away from the No. 3. “We’re supposed to take the 42.”

Cenni groaned. “Tell me the worst!”

“It’s in Cannaregio. The woman on the telephone said it’s just a five-minute walk from Fondamente Nove, and there’s a view of the canal.”

“But of which canal?” Cenni asked, rhetorically.

THE CAR SERVICE office was in Cannaregio, just a short distance from their hotel, so Elena hadn’t chosen so badly after all. Cenni tested the mattress—firm—and the shower—hot and strong—and decided to forgive her this time. He couldn’t see the canal but assumed from the salt-scented air and the splashing sounds emanating from below his window that it was out there somewhere. On previous trips, he’d never visited the back streets of Venice and was surprised to find them empty in the middle of the day. When you get away from the tourists and the boats, it isn’t much different from the hill towns in Umbria, he thought. Wash was hanging out to dry, flowers tumbled over stone walls, red geraniums bloomed in window boxes along the back streets
,
and young girls played a game of jump rope in the summer sun.

“Ragazzi, tirate il Pallone,”
Alex called out to two boys who were kicking a football around a lamp post. He handed his jacket to Elena, did some kicks and starts, congratulated the boys on their footwork, and finally let them get back to their game.

“You’d make a good father, Alex. You should think about getting married,” Elena remarked. To herself, she thought,
I wonder what he’d say if every time I passed some girls jumping
rope I horned in.

Signor Baldi was waiting for them at the office with a pout on his face. “I just turned down a call to drive someone to Verona,” he complained. Cenni didn’t believe him, but he handed him his card and told him to submit a voucher, eliciting a faint smile. “Be sure to attach the customer’s affidavit,” he said and watched the pout return.

Cenni was a reasonable man, and he understood perfectly that no one wants to lose business by talking to the police, so he assured and reassured Signor Baldi before they began that whatever he told the police would be kept confidential, and his name, as the source of the information, would only be given to the investigating judge, and then only if he, Cenni, thought it absolutely necessary. But nobody ever believes the police.

“I really can’t remember,” Baldi protested for the third time. “I probably have the dates wrong and we weren’t even in Umbria on that day.”

“Perhaps you can check your records,” Cenni suggested looking around the office. There were some folders thrown willy-nilly on the top of filing cabinets, and loose papers stuck out of some of the cabinet drawers.

“I don’t keep trip records for regulars,” he said. “They pay me a monthly service fee. The countess is a regular.”