A Deadly Paradise (28 page)

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.

There was no light at the top of the stairs, and he cursed himself for a fool. He should have remembered the door. It was heavy black oak, with a massive iron bar on the other side. “Jesus Fucking Christ! I’ll never break through this by myself,” he cried, a supposition that proved correct when he injured his right shoulder slamming against it.

“Alex, where are you,” Elena called from below.

“Here!” he shouted back frantically. “Grab a log or anything we can use as a battering ram and get up here.”

“Let me!” a voice said from behind him. It was Antonio Salani, the Questura’s wrestling champion
.

Four whacking body blows later and the door came off its hinges. The bolt held.

“
Presto, andiamo!”
Cenni yelled, bursting into the storage room. The door leading to the balcony was wide open, but he saw only empty space and green hills in the distance.

THEY FOUND ANITA Tangassi huddled in a corner of the balcony, sobbing quietly. A few feet away, Lorenzo Vannicelli was lying on his back, legs splayed, arms by his side, his head covered in dirt. He’d been knocked cold by a large pot of rosemary and thyme. Elena, who arrived on the scene carrying a particularly large log, knelt beside the unconscious man to check his pulse and his breathing.

“He’s out for the count, but very much alive,” she announced in triumph. “Shall I cuff him now, or wait for him to wake up?”

“Cuff him now,
prego!”

Elena looked up to see who had spoken. Signora Cec-chetti was standing in the doorway.

Book Five

Paradise Regained

1

THE NEXT FEW hours were engraved in Anita’s memory, more so even than the day she found Bianca’s body. Maybe that terrible memory was finally fading. The woman officer, Inspector Ottaviani, whom she’d disliked so much the first time they met, helped her down the stairs to the kitchen and sent Signora Cecchetti across the square to fetch some grappa. She and Signora Cecchetti made her drink two shot glasses before they’d let her talk.

Inspector Ottaviani even held her hand for a short time, while she apologized for not seeing her come into the square. “We were afraid he might try something; he was so cocksure yesterday, and he said a few times that you’d previously tried to kill yourself. We thought we’d covered all our bases.”

Anita gasped! “Kill myself? That’s a mortal sin! I would never. . . .”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Signora Cecchetti said reassuringly to Anita. And to Elena, she said, “Everyone knows the quickest way from Anita’s apartment to the pink house is to cut across the olive grove behind my house. Messy, though, especially after a rain,” she added, looking down at her shoes. “You parked your car next to the wrong olive grove.”

Elena thought briefly of ordering Signora Cecchetti home, but decided against it. The signora was under the impression that Alex had deputized her, and it was hard to fault someone who’d just ruined her best suede pumps fetching the police.

Anita continued, “He phoned late this morning and said lightning had struck my chimney last night. Bricks were raining down onto his garden, and I had to come to assess the damage immediately. I knew it’d rained briefly around eleven. I’d even said a prayer it wouldn’t ruin the festival, so I assumed there had been lightning also. Why would he lie?” she asked.

“Humph! Why wouldn’t he lie?” Signora Cecchetti retorted.

“Signora, I don’t want to ask you to leave, but I will if you aren’t quiet,” Elena said, finally asserting her authority. She continued with Anita:

“What happened when you got upstairs?”

“While we were climbing the stairs, he asked how many pills I’d taken last night. He asked me the same question when he phoned in the morning. He said I looked very fit and must have slept well. It bothered me, all those questions about the sleeping pills, especially since he was the one who gave them to me. And when we reached the top floor, he said I should go out on the balcony and check the damage. Lorenzo knows I’m afraid of heights, so I thought it strange that he was sending me out alone. As I opened the door to the balcony, something made me turn around. Maybe I heard him slide the bolt. We looked at each other for a moment, and he smiled. I knew he was going to kill me.”

“Because of what you knew about Baudler’s murder?” Elena prompted.

“I don’t know anything about
her
murder. It was because of the money. He’s the only family I have. He gets everything if I die.”

THE SAME MOROSE Anita Tangassi from whom they’d had to pry information eleven days earlier became a bounteous fountain of information. Cenni, who had joined them after making sure that Lorenzo Vannicelli was safely on his way to Perugia with nothing more than a headache and a lumpy forehead, directed the questioning after that, but first he asked Signora Cecchetti if he might escort her home. For some reason, she took hints from him better than from Elena, and she left quietly after getting Anita to agree to stay with her that night.

Anita told them everything she could remember about Orazio and Lorenzo, her mother and Monsignor Lac-rimosa, and even about Bianca’s mother and the men she had entertained before her murder.

“After Monsignor Lacrimosa died, my mother decided to sell Lorenzo’s house and give the money to the church. Lorenzo was very angry, so I held off doing anything after my mother’s death. But a few months ago, I asked him to pay rent, not a whole lot, just 200 euros a month, and he absolutely refused, so I decided to sell. I was afraid to tell him, but my realtor must have told Jarvinia, and Jarvinia must have told him. He screamed at me on the balcony that I’d die just like my mother had, and for the same reason. That’s when I picked up the pot and hurled it at him. I’ve been working with dumbbells to tone my muscles for the last six months. I guess it’s helped.”

“He told us he was in the garden when your mother fell from the balcony. Is that true?”

“I was in the garden alone, pruning the roses when my mother fell. I have no idea where Lorenzo was, although he told the carabinieri he was working in his basement when it happened. From what he said today, he must have pushed her.”

“What can you tell us about the poisoned mushrooms that your uncle and the priest ate? Do you think Lorenzo was responsible for that as well?” Cenni asked.

Cenni and Elena discussed Anita’s answer to the last question at length, after they’d returned to Perugia. Elena, who rather liked using scientific terms, even those she didn’t fully understand, said it was linear momentum: Anita began to talk and couldn’t stop. Cenni was more inclined to think of it as Catholic guilt, and that they had served as her confessors.

“My mother poisoned them both. She confessed to me shortly before she died, and I’d been thinking for years that she jumped because of my lie about Monsignor Lac-rimosa. Now I know it isn’t so, that Lorenzo pushed her. I’m glad I didn’t kill her. Maybe now I’ll sleep at night.”

2

IT WAS NOT until five days later that Cenni visited the prison. Vannicelli was still denying everything through his lawyer and had lodged a complaint against the police for assault and false arrest. He continued to insist that it was Anita who’d killed Jarvinia, and that it was Anita who’d tried to kill him. Emilio Feduccia, the public prosecutor, was not happy.

“You know, Alex, it would be so much easier for all concerned if he would just confess. You’ve given me enough so I can move for a preliminary hearing, and I have an excellent chance of winning if we go to the Assizes; but why take the chance, not to mention the wasted time and money? And Carlo’s got some idea that Bertinotti will come down from the heights to rescue Vannicelli. I wonder where he picked up such a ridiculous notion.”

As prosecutors go, Emilio was one of the good ones, so Cenni agreed to help. He also wanted to close the case in his own mind. Why did Vannicelli kill the German and then mutilate her in such a brutal way? He had theories, but the proof is in the telling. He visited the prisoner carrying a promise of fifteen years, possibly ten if there were extenuating circumstances. “He’ll be close to eighty when he gets out,” Emilio said, “and only a danger to himself.” What Cenni realized as soon as they sat down together was that Lorenzo Vannicelli wanted to confess, he simply hadn’t been given the chance. Cenni started off by expressing his assumption that they both knew he was guilty. A confession was merely a formality to tie up loose ends:

CENNI: “I was rather impressed at how well you covered your tracks.”

VANNICELLI: “If you were so impressed, how did you find me out?”

CENNI: “You left your prints on the firewood and various other places. We also have a witness who saw you climb through the basement window shortly before three-thirty and come out the front door carrying your cat at four-thirty.”

VANNICELLI: “My lawyer says your witness is Enzo. Who’s going to believe the town drunk over its science teacher?”

CENNI: “Enzo cleans up very well. And he’s very sure about the times. His nephew gave him a new watch for his birthday. And then we have all those official statements you made trying to implicate your cousin in Jarvinia’s death and in the deaths of her uncle and her mother. We checked all your statements, and not one of them is true. Don’t worry, they’ll believe Enzo!”

VANNICELLI: “I went in after my cat. Of course my prints are there.”

CENNI: “On the murder weapon?”

VANNICELLI: “I don’t believe you can lift fingerprints off unfinished wood, and besides you never took my fingerprints before my arrest.”

CENNI: “You can get latent prints off most things these days, even human skin. As for your own fingerprints, weren’t you in the National Service?” Securing Vannicelli’s prints from National Service records could’ve taken weeks, or months. Cenni had pilfered a dirty glass, from the twenty or so that were sitting in Vannicelli’s sink, while Elena had distracted him by talking about his cat, but that was not for Vannicelli’s lawyer to know.

VANNICELLI: “I could say I helped Baudler to stack her wood.”

CENNI: “Just the one piece?”

VANNICELLI: “How did you know Tommaso had been to the vet?”

CENNI: “Signora Cecchetti.”

THE MENTION OF the ubiquitous Signora Cecchetti seemed to exhaust Vannicelli. All the fight went out of him. The murder had happened exactly as Cenni had theorized, but still it was good to know for sure. They had been fighting over their cats and Baudler always seem to get the best of him, so when he’d heard Tommaso crying in her basement, he decided to get him out by going through the window.

He’d found Tommaso injured and bleeding and also found the traps that Baudler had placed around the cellar. Three of them. He set the cat down on a pile of old newspapers and started going through boxes to find any kind of cloth in which to wrap Tommaso’s leg. He accidentally broke two dishes, and Jarvinia, who’d just returned home, heard the noise and came down to the cellar.

“We were standing by the woodpile when I accused her of cruelty to cats. ‘You call that overweight scavenger a cat. He’s almost as ugly as you are,’ she said and laughed at me. And she wouldn’t stop. She said Anita was planning to sell my house, the house I was born in. ‘You’re nothing but a hanger-on,’ she taunted me. I picked up a log from the top of the pile and I struck her. I wasn’t thinking about it, it just happened. She gasped and stood there with this amazed look on her face, clutched her chest, made a gurgling noise, and fell over. She landed on the woodpile, and I knew she was dead.

“I panicked. All she ever talked about was how important she was, a mover and a shaker in the world of art and culture. If it had been anyone else, someone ordinary, the police might overlook it, just mark it down to an unfortunate accident, but she was the German cultural attaché. I knew I had to cover up what’d happened to Tommaso, and the blood he’d left everywhere, so I pummeled her with the same log a few times, but she scarcely bled at all.”

He was unable to meet Cenni’s eyes and twisted his chair to the side. “I remembered the letters and the physical threats, and that she’d shown them to the police. Enzo had delivered the letters. He’s the town drunk and worthless. Nobody cares what happens to him. I knew what I had to do. I dragged her body over to the stairs to cover up Tommaso’s paw prints.” He looked away again. “You know the rest.”

He continued, “I’d just finished cleaning up, putting the broken dishes back in the box, collecting the traps, when I heard someone moving around upstairs. I held my breath for what seemed like an age, until I heard the door slam and a car pull away. I shoved the traps into my side pockets and one down my shirt and carried Tommaso in my arms. When I left the house, there was no one around. I hid the traps in my basement and called the police to report her murder.” He stopped puzzled.

“But if Enzo was on the bench . . . how did he see me climb through the basement window? You tricked me!”

Fair enough! I did trick you, but not about this.

“
Calmati,
Signore. When you climbed through the window, Enzo was indulging in a bottle of grappa at the bottom of the garden. He stole it from Anita while she was serving a customer. At four-thirty, he retired to the bench, for a nap. That’s when he saw you leave the house. I suppose you could call it poetic justice. Your plan was to implicate Enzo in the murder, and it’s Enzo’s testimony that will put you away for life.”

In the end, Lorenzo Vannicelli had collapsed into a feeble old man, begging for mercy. Cenni responded that not charging him with the murder of Marta Vannicelli or the attempted murder of Anita Tangassi was mercy enough.

HE HAD LIKED Vannicelli. Now he had to question if the objectivity that he demanded from all those on his staff had eluded him. From the beginning, he’d gone easy on the man—hadn’t even taken his prints—perhaps because they had similar views on politics and religion, or because he liked the man’s sense of humor. It was due to luck, and not any skill of his, that Anita Tangassi was still alive. He’d been completely mistaken in Lorenzo Vannicelli. The man hadn’t even asked for Tommaso!

3

Cenni and Elena were driving to Assisi the day after Lorenzo Vannicelli’s sentencing to investigate rumors of a perfectly preserved body found under the rubble of a building damaged in the 1997 earthquake.

“You never told me, Alex. What convinced you that Vannicelli was the killer and not Anita, even before we talked to Enzo or you’d gotten confirmation on the fingerprints from forensics?”

“Vannicelli said that people in town thought Anita might have murdered Bianca Lanese—”

Elena interrupted, “But at one point, weren’t you thinking along that same line?”

“Gossip is mother’s milk to Signora Cecchetti. If anyone in town had accused Anita of the Lanese murders, she would have known about it, and instead, she completely denied it. When it comes to gossip, Elena, women rule.”

Elena refused to take the bait.

“You’ll never guess what Piero told me last night,” she said, not actually intending that Cenni should guess. “Anita Tangassi is getting married.”

“That’s nice,” Cenni said. “I’m not surprised. She’s a good-looking woman. How did that come about?”

“Enzo told Piero that she’s marrying her doctor, from Rome. Enzo says he’s an expert on Anita’s condition and travels all over the world giving lectures. He’s been treating her for close to two years. She sold everything in Par-adiso and vows she’ll never return. They plan to adopt children—at least five, Anita said— and all of them with physical disabilities. She can afford it, marrying a famous doctor, and with more than a million euros in her own pocket.