A Deadly Paradise (9 page)

“Enzo lives in Paradiso. Years ago, there was a pasta factory outside the town and he worked there. When the factory closed, he stayed on in the village. He mainly lives on his old-age pension and money that I give him. My mother says he just uses my money to buy drinks, but I don’t care. He’s family.”

“And Elena, what does she think about you giving him money?” Cenni asked.

“She’s with me. To quote her, ‘He likes to drink, so what?’”

“I’m with you both so far—your uncle drinks, my grandmother drinks, so what? But why do I need to know all this?”

Piero sighed loudly. “Yesterday I left something important out when we were discussing the Jarvinia Baudler case.”

“
Si,
” Cenni said. He kept his eyes on traffic.

“Six months ago, she received four anonymous letters, poison-pen stuff. They were mainly about her sexual activities, with a string of quotations from the bible. One said that it’s better to lose a part of one’s body than for the whole to be thrown into hell. The reference was to having her clitoris removed, like they do to women in Africa. It added that if Baudler didn’t stop doing what she was doing (I don’t think the writers even knew what that was), they’d remove it for her. It was ugly stuff, Alex, and when I read the letters, I was ashamed.”

“Why should you be ashamed?” Cenni asked, knowing already where Piero was headed.

“Because Enzo was involved.”

“I guess I understand. Is there more?”

“Yes. I have a good friend in the carabinieri in Par-adiso. We went to school together and he knows Enzo very well. He usually calls me if he thinks Enzo is getting into more trouble than usual. By luck, Baudler turned the letters over to Gianluca, and he called me. One of the neighbors directly across from where Baudler lived had seen Enzo slip the letters under the front door. Gianluca said it was best if I talked to my uncle to find out what was going on, and he also agreed not to show the letters to anyone else in the carabinieri. Gianluca and I were very close in high school, and Enzo would take us both to the football games.”

Cenni knew the story immediately. The rest of Europe was quick to criticize Italians for their faults, as they perceived them: corrupt, duplicitous, and even, on occasion, lazy. The latter contention Cenni thought particularly contemptible, considering the contributions Italians had made to the world in the course of two thousand years. It was the old maxim: what have you done for me lately. But they rarely give us credit for our virtues, he reflected, the primary one being loyalty to family and friends.

“So how did it turn out?” he asked. “And why don’t you think I should call your uncle in for questioning? I’m assuming you don’t think Enzo murdered the German.”

“Absolutely not! He didn’t even write the letters. A few of the old-age pensioners who hang around in the café were responsible. The worst of them, a retired cara-biniere, started the letter-writing campaign. They bribed my uncle with drinks to slip them under the German’s door. After I spoke to Enzo, I went to see each of the three men individually and scared them shitless. The policeman—he was the one who wrote the letter about removing her clitoris—died two months ago from a heart attack. Listen, Alex, I know what Enzo did was wrong. I know what I did in not telling you was wrong. But I didn’t want him dragged into a police station and to have his face splashed all over the dailies. The shame would kill my mother.”

Not that old bird.

“Where are the letters now?” he asked, turning to look at Piero.

Piero signed, even louder this time. “You’re not going to like this, Alex. We burned them. Gianluca and I decided they were too nasty to keep in a file.”

“And Baudler. What’d you tell her?”

“That the person who’d written them had left town, and that she wouldn’t be getting any more letters. We also told her that the law required us to keep them on file, so we couldn’t return them.”

Cenni pulled into one of the larger gas stations along the highway.

“I need a coffee, and I want to think about this.”

After two coffees for him and an apple tart for Piero, they came to an understanding: Piero would never do anything like this again, at least not without first consulting Cenni. “Once something like this gets out, you’re a target for anyone who needs a favor.”

Then they talked about damage control. In the cara-binieri, only his friend knew about the letters, and Piero said he’d stake his life on Gianluca’s discretion. Cenni was more of a cynic, but he was comfortable with the knowledge that Gianluca had just as many reasons to stay quiet as Piero.

“How many other people know about the letters besides Enzo and his two pals?”

“Normally, I would say at least their wives. But in this case, I don’t think so. The ringleader was a widower. The other two were very embarrassed—and ashamed—and each of them insisted on being interviewed alone. There’s Baudler, who’s dead, and the woman she was living with at the time, who’s since disappeared.”

“Nobody else? You’re sure?”

“Elena, but she’d never say anything. Oh, and one more. Baudler’s neighbor, the one who found the body. The German insisted to Gianluca that the neighbor must have sent the letters, for revenge. And Gianluca was present when she accused the neighbor directly. They’d had two fights about his cat jumping her cat. I told you about it.”

Cenni responded, “That’s a problem. You realize, of course, that the person who killed her may have cut off her clitoris in the hope of diverting attention to the letter writer. Fortunately, the person who actually wrote that letter is dead, or we’d
never
be able to cover this up.”

Cenni threw the car keys to Piero. “You drive; I want to think about this some more. Oh, and Piero, at stop signs. . . .”

Piero smiled broadly, hugely relieved to have absolution. “I know, at stop signs, stop. What about at red lights?”

THE TWO CARABINIERI who’d been guarding the square the previous day were gone, replaced by two junior officers from the Perugia Questura, when they reached Paradiso.

“Elena took care of that quickly enough,” Cenni remarked to Piero. “I hope it wasn’t your friend she replaced.”

“Don’t worry. She would have blamed you:
damned territorial
senior officers,
she’d have said.”

Elena must have heard the car pull up: she met them in the middle of the square.

“You here!” she exclaimed, when she saw Piero walking toward her. She looked from her husband to Cenni and back again, scrutinizing their faces, and then smiled. “This is very nice, two men to take me to lunch. I’m starved.”

“And our interviews?” Cenni asked.

“Not until two. Signora Tangassi claims a prior appointment with her realtor, and the neighbor has a doctor’s appointment. I thought it best if we begin as friends, so I didn’t insist that we meet at noon. And besides, I have some things to report first. A café at the bottom of the town serves decent pizza, or at least that’s what Enzo tells me.”

“You saw Enzo,” Piero interrupted. “Where?”

“Sleeping on that bench over there,” she said, pointing to the church pew that faced the view. “I gather from Gianluca that he starts drinking early in the morning, and by noon he’s ready for his nap. On nice days, he sometimes naps there to enjoy the view.”

Piero started to walk over toward the bench, but Elena grabbed his arm. “He’s gone home. I think he was embarrassed to have me see him in that condition. Don’t worry about it, Piero. He drinks a little. So what?”

The café Elena took them to at the bottom of Paradiso, located just inside the town walls, could have been any café in any small town in Umbria. A few scrubby plastic tables and chairs were distributed unevenly outside the café on a cement patio. Immediately inside the double glass doors was a display case filled with various types of panini, and one tramezzino (not shrimp and egg, Cenni noted), stale cornetti and assorted pastries (no apple tarts, Piero noted), and square slices of cold pizza to be warmed up in the microwave. Next to the food case was the steel-topped bar, and to the right of the bar was a gelato case with just the basic three flavors. The height of the summer season had not yet arrived. On the top of the bar to one side were opened boxes of candy bars—the box advertising Cenni chocolate was empty—and a large jar of peppermint sticks. At the other end were little wire stands filled with various types of lottery tickets, and behind the bar was the ubiquitous coffee machine. The patrons could also have been found in any café in any small town in Umbria. Two boys, fourteen or fifteen years of age, were in the back of the bar betting on two of the three slot machines; four pensioners, all male, were playing briscola at one of the tables set along the side of the bar. Two men stood behind the dealer, providing commentary on the players’ skill or lack of it. The briscola players looked up when Cenni, Piero, and Elena walked in, probably because Piero was in uniform. The boys at the slot machines were too busy losing their allowances to turn around.

Cenni, after one quick look in the food cases, wondered if alcohol had freeze-dried Enzo’s taste buds. The pizza on display was dried-out and unappetizing; the lettuce sticking out from the lone tramezzino was decidedly wilted.

“I think we go through there,” Elena said, pointing to an undecorated door at the back of the room.

This is definitely not like every other small-town café, Cenni thought, when they had passed through the door. It was just minutes after twelve, and the room, with ten or twelve tables, was already crowded with customers. Some of them looked like truckers, which explained the five or so large trucks he’d seen parked across from the restaurant in the public lot. Elena walked to a table in the corner of the large room, and Piero and Cenni followed.

Their waiter gave Piero a worried look before reading off the lunch offerings from his order pad: four choices in pizza; Margherita, mushroom, basil, and four-cheese; two choices in pasta: penne alla primavera and ravioli with a meat sauce; and one meat entrée: coniglio alla cacciatore; for a side dish, green salad or potatoes roasted with rosemary. Pork or lamb were the usual meat entrées in small Umbrian restaurants, and Cenni hesitated before ordering the rabbit, although it was one of his favorite dishes.

“Ask one of those truckers,” Elena suggested, which he did.

“Can’t go wrong in here,
signore,
no matter what you eat. I stop for lunch whenever I’m in this part of Umbria. Food is good, plenty of it, and reasonable.” He pointed to his own dish of rabbit: “Delicious.”

They began and finished in complete silence. The rabbit was tender and young, falling off the bone. Cenni used all the bread, even Piero’s portion, to sop up the brown sauce. Piero ordered soup and ravioli, and Elena ordered a mushroom pizza and shared half of it with her husband.

“Coffee all around,” Cenni said when the waiter came to clear the dishes.

“And a tiramisu for me,” Piero added.

Elena frowned.

Cenni jumped in before she could say anything. “So, tell me what you have to report.”

She hesitated a moment, apparently thought better of what she’d planned to say to Piero, and launched into her report. “Really good stuff. The first person I interviewed, an old lady who lives across from the house, was at her sister’s the day of the murder and didn’t see anything. But every other day she’s like a pillar of salt in front of her window. She complained about all the strangers that went in and out, mainly women, but one older man in particular. Three times in the last month alone, she says she saw a black Mercedes parked in her spot. She took down the license number and reported it to the carabinieri.”

“Gianluca must have loved that,” Piero interjected.

“Gianluca is her major complaint. She’s mainly annoyed at him. He told her there’s no law against cars parking in any of the spots along the belvedere, and particularly in her spot, as she doesn’t
even
own a car. She took great exception to his use of the word
even.
She wrote it down and showed it to me. She thinks he was suggesting that she’s too poor to own a car. She wants to know if I can reprimand him. I promised I’d put a note in his file.”

“Elena, you didn’t!” Piero said.

“Keep’em happy, is my motto. Anyway, I couldn’t if I wanted to. He’s carabinieri, remember. I’m surprised Gianluca hasn’t wrung her neck by now.”

“Did you get the license number?” Cenni asked.

“I certainly did, and I had Marinella run it through the computer. Veneto plates. The owner is the infamous Mar-cella Molin.”

SIGNORA CECCHETTI, ELENA’S pillar of salt, had provided more than just information on the black Mercedes. Elena had called on her at ten in the morning and finally found her way back to the front door of No. 3 Piazza Garibaldi shortly before noon. What prolonged the visit was Elena’s agreement to reprimand Gianluca, the cara-biniere, or at least that’s how Signora Cecchetti had interpreted Elena’s response. The signora had been born in Paradiso and, as she loudly told Elena (she was deaf in her right ear), she would die in Paradiso. She knew everyone, and everything about everyone, and, if Elena hadn’t prevented her, she would have started at the beginning. Elena, of course, wanted to know what had happened in the square within the last few days, or weeks.

It took an hour, a coffee, and two biscotti for Elena to drag the signora back to the present day, but when she finally managed to do so, she got an earful. The German had been a Jezebel, and nasty to boot. She once gave Signora Cecchetti the finger, simply because of the few complaints she’d made to the carabinieri about the company she was keeping. “You have to remember,” she told Elena, “that she was living next door to a chapel. The things those women got up to in there were an offense in God’s eyes. I even spoke to the priest about it.”

Elena was tempted to ask about the priest’s response, but a digression of that magnitude would’ve taken too much time.

“The woman keeps notes,” Elena told Cenni. “She has it all written down, license-plate numbers, times of coming, times of going. It’s hard to believe she’s not the one in the morgue. And just one day a month she leaves her house for five hours to visit her sister in Spello, takes a taxi ‘for an exorbitant sum.’ What kind of luck is it that on the one day she’s out, the German is murdered? Otherwise, she’d have given us the name and address of the killer, maybe even a confession.”