Into the Killer Sphere (6 page)

“Arguing about what?” Chase went on.

“About my grandmother changing her will. My father was out of his mind. He started saying to her that nobody deserved that money, especially not the maid, Ramona. He yelled that Ramona was just a
gatta morta
, so instead of giving money to her, it would be better to give it to Tursenian dogs.”

Chase frowned at Angelo, who promptly enlightened his friend.

“
Gatta morta
is like playing dumb.”

“It’s when a woman is apparently calm, quiet and very shy but in fact she ends up having things arranged exactly as she wants,” Doctor Conforti added.

“
Gatta
is the feminine of cat, that’s my father’s pun. But he was serious, to be honest,” Rachele ended.

“Oh, I get it now,” apologised Chase. It seemed that he was helped with his Italian by all the present company, murder suspects included. He tried not to suffer from wounded pride and went on with his next question to Rachele.

“You’re not worried about the fate of your inheritance?”

Rachele smiled at her fiancé, revealing the girl she was before becoming addicted to drugs.

“I don’t care about the money. Money can’t ever buy the sort of happiness I have now with Simone.”

“And what about your aunt, uncle and cousins? You never mentioned them,” Angelo wondered.

“Because they’ve nothing to do with it,” she immediately replied. “I owe everything to them. They’ve always stood up for me and believed in me. Aunt Gloria played my mother’s role when she passed away, while Uncle Marco took me to San Patrignano when Dad and Grandma thought my destiny would be to take an overdose and drown in the bath, sooner or later. I haven’t been a good example for my cousins, but they’ve always shown me love and forgiveness. They live ten minutes’ drive from here, luckily. I don’t know how I’d have ever got through without them.”

Simone’s horse-like muzzle twisted slightly, but he
forced himself to just nod to her, nothing more.

Chapter
6

“So you’ve found the murder weapon,
ragazzi
? You’re such an unbeatable team
,
” Fortarrigo Lorenzetti said, handing another beer to Angelo and Chase.

They couldn’t say no to Fortarrigo; Chase’s neighbour could be a pain in the neck sometimes, but he was a good man after all. He truly liked Chase, and he often treated him with a fraternal sense of protection, as if Chase would easily fall prey to the scams and fraud typical of the “Italian spirit”, to quote Fortarrigo himself.

Fortarrigo was a man of medium height, sturdy enough to hide his love handles and belly fat, and with a pronounced forehead and tight and inexpressive eyes. He was a spontaneous and silly guy, generous and affectionate at the same time.

Fortarrigo had spotted Chase and Angelo exchanging a few words of greeting near his home that afternoon. He didn’t waste time and dragged them to his house for a drink.

Outside in his tiny garden with the comfy lawn swing (it was cold, but not enough to keep a Londoner and a smoker indoors), Angelo and Chase perhaps let themselves give away too much confidential information about the Galli case. Fortarrigo was the kind of fellow who used to tell tall tales, but luckily he was not a gossipmonger. What he was told would remain between the leaves of the oleanders planted by his new bride. Chase was pretty sure that the ‘private and confidential’ message had registered in Fortarrigo’s little forty-year-old brain, still stuck at the adolescent stage.

“You said it,
bello
. We found the murder weapon,” Angelo confirmed.

For once in a lifetime, the clumsiness of the police had proved valuable. A piece of wood was missing from the base of the glass sphere, and the wood type matched the sample found in Piero’s hair.

The sphere must have been used to strike Galli; the blood had been cleaned from it before it was put back in its place.

“The question is, who used that sphere to kill him? It must have been on impulse,” Chase said.

“Well, Cangi was telling me that he’s working on something, and he says
‘you will never believe it’
,” Angelo added, fumbling with his brand new smartphone, the latest model released in the market.

“I’m so curious, guys!” Fortarrigo exclaimed, then started explaining his point of view about the case. He felt like a detective himself from being in their company.

“I truly believe the culprit is one of the six persons you’ve questioned,” he proclaimed. Angelo nodded at Captain Obvious.

“It seems that the murderer is quite familiar with the house, and Galli trusted him. It remains to be seen if the chandelier was a red herring or if it’s something we have not yet taken into consideration properly.”

As the talked, Carlotta, Fortarrigo’s wife, came down to the garden. She looked pretty nervous and moved jerkily, making her long, light brown hair swing here and there. Chase did not understand how a guy like Fortarrigo, who was always cheerful and generous, could have married someone like Carlotta, who was deeply selfish and never satisfied. Her morbid jealousy had separated many friends from Fortarrigo; last but not least even Giulia, the girl who lived one floor above Chase’s place. Even though she was a good friend of Fortarrigo, Giulia would definitely have never fallen in love with him. However, Carlotta was so jealous of Giulia and Fortarrigo’s friendship that she forbade her husband to have anything more to do with her.

Carlotta burst into the garden and started inspecting the few pieces of furniture, her aquiline nose turned up, apparently seeking something.

“
Amore
, do you know where my oil paintbrushes are? I can’t find them anywhere, I bet you’ve hidden them somewhere!” she said, annoyed.

“
Tesoro
, they’re where they’ve always been, in the grey cupboard along the corridor,” Fortarrigo quietly replied.

A few moments later, her voice thundered out from the corridor, “But I cannot find them!”

Fortarrigo disappeared and Angelo and Chase heard only the noise of an opening cupboard door. Then he came back in the garden, showing them an ironic sneer.

“Wish you were like my aunt Fiamma,
mia cara
: she always knew where everything was, in every house she was familiar with. Even in mine. I bet aunt Fiamma would have known about your paintbrushes,” Fortarrigo called to his wife.

Carlotta whined something
in the distance, probably because she
did not like being compared to
zia
Fiamma.

Fortarrigo got back to talking about Galli’s murder again, as if no one had ever interrupted them.

“Do you think the murderer is a male? You said that Piero could trust
him,
not
her,
” he said to Angelo, who had only just realised what he had said.

“It’s a possibility. I mean, that sphere is quite heavy. Marco Galli seems like a decent person, while Doctor Conforti doesn’t seem to tolerate his fiancé’s family too well, maybe because of her father and grandmother’s harsh behaviour toward her,” Angelo replied after a sip of beer.

“In defence of Doctor Conforti, let’s say that he’s a man of science. If he wanted to kill Mr Galli he could have used poison or an injection of something. Potassium for example. Nothing too dramatic, you know,” Chase added.

However, while saying it he was not sure at all: Conforti’s nervousness could have hidden something. Maybe he was covering up for Rachele or the sympathetic Gloria. Even the maid, Ramona, was a tricky unknown. She had many reasons for shutting Piero’s rude mouth and pocketing Signora Galli’s money.

“I don’t think the murderer is a man,” Fortarrigo declared self-importantly while opening three more beers. “It’s a complicated crime and women are expert at making things complicated. They’re not very rational.”

He inclined his head towards the inside of the house, where Carlotta was still muttering.

Back home, Chase didn’t stop thinking about the investigation, probably just like Angelo. Doing something physical often helped him to relax and let his thoughts flow. Torn between yoga and strength-training exercises, he decided that he would follow his mood. He laid out the mat and the dumbbells.

Fortarrigo could have been right in his candid attempt to be accepted into ‘
The Sherlock Holmes Club’
. Since the tool used to cut off the chandelier had still not been found (and it could be anywhere), the murderer knew exactly where things were placed in the house. The killer had thrown the sphere at Piero Galli first, then had removed the traces of blood and put the glass ball back in its place, making sure that the side of the base, where the splinter of wood was missing, was turned to the wall to hide it. The photos shot at the crime scene were proof of that.

Chase had to admit that he would never have thought of tidying up the ornaments in a room where a chandelier had been dropped. To tell the truth, he couldn’t even remember the position of the few ornaments he had at home. Men didn’t care about that silly stuff.

He also had to admit that his Sun Salutation yoga position didn’t shape up properly due to all those thoughts running through his mind and the consequent muscular stiffness. However, his push-up series was great. He jumped into the shower and went straight to bed, but not before checking the position of the ornaments on the shelves in the living room.

Chapter
7

In a room full of reports, test tubes and microscopes, Matteo Cangi was waiting for his favourite Inspector.

“The good news is that we have reconstructed the way Piero Galli died,” he began, stroking his red beard and looking rather proud of himself.

“And what is the bad news?” Angelo asked. There was always bad news.

“Oh, I don’t have any. You guys usually bring that. You got any bad news for me?” Cangi replied naively.
That's just how Matteo was: a clever and brilliant scientist who often said meaningless things out of context. Angelo let it go and focused on Andrea’s ‘good’ news.

“As presumed, Galli was fatally hit in the neck a couple of times, at least. One of the blows broke his neck. The object used to kill him was very hard, and the impact with his head raised blood spatters like these, here.” He pointed out a white cloth hanging on the wall, stained by some kind of paint strokes.

“So, what’s the good news?” Angelo urged.

Cangi lifted his eyes up and sighed.

“Is it the sphere or not?” Angelo asked impatiently.

Cangi snorted. “You’ve been created without any theatrical sense. You just want to cut to the chase.”

Chase met up with Angelo and Matteo Cangi in the car park outside the police station, because of Chase’s reclutance to going inside. Even though Angelo had tried several times to convince Chase to set foot inside the station, there was no way to persuade him. Chase’s most extreme step forward was entering the lab where Cangi worked, but using the back door of the underground level only.

Chase was leaning on the bonnet of Angelo’s car while Matteo was playing with a sheet of paper.

“Your glass sphere supports our hypothesis,” Angelo said to Chase. “There was a missing fragment on the wooden base which matches with the splinter Matteo found on Galli’s head. No fingerprints along the entire item, apart from yours and Matteo’s.”

“Who else has touched the sphere apart from you and me this morning?” wondered Matteo.

“The forensic guys and Gloria,” said Chase, “but they wearing gloves, and so was Gloria.” Chase remembered Gloria’s outfit and the gardening gloves she hadn’t taken off inside the villa, like her hat and gardening boots.

“The murderer probably wore gloves as well, or cleaned everything up afterwards. I’d go for the first scenario, since cleaning everywhere would make the murderer lose a lot of valuable time,” Cangi concluded.

“What do you say, Chase?” Angelo asked, lighting another cigarette.

Chase replied with another question, and a grin.

“Do you think the murderer is a man or a woman, based on what we have so far? I mean, according to Matteo’s report that you haven’t showed me yet”. Chase emphasised the last few words and tried to reach the file Angelo was holding, but he was faster than Chase and moved his hand back.

“The reports are for police personnel only,” he winked. “Anyway, I don’t
think
, I
know
: science is never wrong,” Angelo said, turning to Cangi and waving a hand at him, like he was passing the speech baton to him.

“
Ecco
.” Matteo began explaining by rolling the paper into a ball. “I’m the murderer and you are Galli, ok? And the ball of paper is the glass sphere,” he said to Angelo. “If the murderer was a man, he would probably have struck Galli this way,” Cangi feigned the motion of throwing the ball of paper at Angelo, “hitting his head in the
parietal lobe
. Moreover, the impact would have been powerful enough to shatter the ball into a thousand pieces.”