Mozzarella Most Murderous (21 page)

“I believe you had the opportunity to interview this lady,” murmured the general, patting my shoulder. “Did you do that?”

“We can do it immediately,” said Pagano with alacrity.

“But there is no need now,” said the general. “I have done it myself. Signora Blue has been most helpful, a very useful source of information. This case has been ongoing since Sunday, and Signora Blue, a foreign civilian, has given it more attention and developed more theories than any of the authorities in whose hands it has rested. So what assistance is it that you propose to offer, Captain Pagano?”

“Whatever you ask for, General,” said the captain, who had begun to look as if his collar were too tight.

“Very well then,” said General Bianconi. “You will provide four men of lower rank to keep those who are in some way involved in the crime from leaving the hotel without my permission. Your men will relieve officers of the state police.”

“At once, sir.”

“Lieutenant Vacci, you may stay and act as my secretary.”

“Yes, sir,” said Flavia Vacci, not looking particularly excited with her new assignment.

“And you, Captain Pagano. I understand you have been investigating the breakfast buffet here at the Grand Palazzo Sorrento.” The general looked at his watch. “Perhaps it is not too late for you to see what the hotel offers for lunch, since that seems to be your area of expertise.”

The captain’s face turned red, I had to stifle the giggles, and the general, patting my shoulder again, told me that I was free to go to my room.

I was quite exhilarated after my session with General Bianconi and his session with Captain Pagano. And pleased. Captain Pagano had received his comeuppance, and I felt that I had contributed substantially to the investigation, which was all the more satisfying because the general’s own daughter, whom I had liked so much, was the victim. Poor man, I remembered him saying that he’d hoped she would marry and provide him with grandchildren. It was hard to imagine the general, who was somewhat intimidating, bouncing a baby on his knee, much less burping one and having it spit up on the shoulder of his beautifully tailored suit. Industrial espionage must pay well. No, industrial espionage was not the right term for the government searching out evildoers in industry.

Ah well, I had been helpful. That was the point. He’d had his aide write it all down, unlike Lieutenant Buglione, who hadn’t wanted to investigate anyone. I suppose if I’d suggested that a maid killed Paolina, he might have looked into it, but not when my suspicions landed on a general or a rich industrialist. Probably Ruggiero Ricci practiced industrial espionage in its proper sense of the phrase. After all, Jason had said that the meeting was just an excuse to pick the brains of the conferees.

The elevator, for which I had been waiting, arrived, and Hank stepped out. After we greeted one another, he apologized for his conduct the night before, and said, “I hope I didn’t offend you, Carolyn. I’m one of those people who forgets his manners when he’s had too much to drink.”

It occurred to me that if Sibyl had heard him bragging about his sexual prowess, she would have been even more offended than I. But then, if Hank was talking that way to reassure himself that she wasn’t interested in Jason—well, I could hardly blame him for being jealous. I had been. Obviously, I had to forgive him, which I did.

He had been holding the elevator door for me, and I was about to get on when I remembered. “Hank,” I said urgently. A couple tried to get past me and through the door, so I stepped back and pulled him aside. “I wanted to warn you.”

“Warn me?” He looked puzzled.

“Yes, about Ricci. You shouldn’t make any deals with him.”

“Why not?” he asked, even more puzzled, frowning, in fact.

“He’s being investigated by the general and his aides for industrial crimes, even suspected of planning to deal in drugs.”

“He
makes
drugs,” Hank pointed out.

“I meant bad drugs, illegal drugs. You know. It would be terrible if he used your containers to transport them and you got arrested.”

“I see. Did you tell the general—”

“Of course not. I know you’re just interested in the toxic waste, but you can’t control what Ricci does with your containers once he’s bought them. He could take the toxic waste out and put in heroin or something.”

Hank looked quite upset at the prospect. “Thanks for the heads-up, Carolyn. That would be embarrassing. To be caught in Ricci’s mess.”

The elevator was gone by then, so he pressed the button and put me in the next one when it came.
Another good deed done
, I thought, and advised him to say nothing about what I’d told him to anyone from Catania. He promised not to, and I rode up to Eight, ready for a nice late-afternoon nap. I’d had a stressful day. And I hadn’t had lunch. Maybe I’d send for Room Service, although I shuddered to think what they might provide. Left over giant meatballs? A plastic duck sandwich?

 

“Carolyn, where the
devil have you been?” demanded my husband, who, much to my surprise, was seated with his laptop on his knees. “I’d have been trying to find you by now if our phone service hadn’t been cut off and all of us confined to our rooms.”

“No phones?” I asked, surprised. I’d been able to call Bianca this morning, although I wasn’t supposed to leave the room.

“Only Room Service, and cops answer the calls. Why aren’t you stuck in the room like the rest of us, or did you sneak out? I’ve been going crazy, cooped up here all day, wondering where you were.”

“Did you try sitting on the balcony? The view is spectacular.”

“Right, and the wind must be blowing thirty or forty miles an hour, which doesn’t tell me where you’ve been.”

“Well, I didn’t sneak out.” Actually, I had, but I wasn’t going to tell Jason that I’d been caught burgling the general’s room. “I’ve just returned from my interview with the general.”

“For all this time?” Jason looked amazed. “Mine took about five minutes.”

“Well, I had information for him.”

Jason groaned. “Carolyn, have you been accusing someone of killing the secretary?”

“Actually, she wasn’t a secretary. She was an undercover agent investigating the Ricci company. They’re doing all sorts of bad things, such as sending fake drugs to third world countries.”

“I might have known,” said Jason with disgust. “This is as bad a meeting as I can remember attending, and don’t tell me about the great location. If we can’t get out of the hotel, you’re not going to be doing any more sightseeing.”

I nodded glumly. That hadn’t occurred to me in all the excitement of helping the Italian government. “And Paolina was his daughter,” I added.

“Whose daughter?” asked Jason, closing down his computer program. “You want to try for Room Service? I didn’t get any lunch because the line was busy.”

“Me either, but if the hotel provided it, rather than Constanza’s chef, it was probably awful anyway. Poor Constanza. She’s going to be so upset when they arrest Ruggiero.”

“The sooner, the better,” my husband muttered. “Then we can go home.”

“No,” I said, “we can go sightseeing. You didn’t get to because you were stuck in Paris.”

“True, but I got a lot of good chemistry done.”

I glared at him, remembering the seductively scientific Sibyl.

“So whose daughter is she—Paolina?”

“The general’s. She worked as an undercover agent for him.”

“God,” said Jason. “He’s got a shock coming when he finds out that she was sleeping with everyone in sight.”

“He knows it.”

“You mean she was doing it for him?”

“No, not exactly.” I really didn’t want to talk about Paolina’s wild streak, of which Jason did not approve. Not that I did, but I had liked her. “You mustn’t mention the general’s investigation of the Ricci company,” I admonished Jason. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but since you’re my husband—well, shall we see if we can get something to eat?” I asked, to divert his attention from Paolina and my own activities.

We tried and had a hard time ordering from the policeman because he spoke little English. I really had no idea what would arrive, and it was pretty bad, a boring pasta in a watery tomato sauce, a cold, sliced duck salad, the duck probably left over from Paolina’s last supper, and some soupy ice cream of indeterminate flavor. Perhaps the general had ordered this meal specially to force one of us to confess, but more likely it was another production from the hotel’s Swiss chef.

Jason hardly seemed to notice. Over dinner he told me about an invitation he’d received from Adrien Guillot—to come to Lyon to give seminars, followed by a meeting that Guillot’s university was hosting in Avignon.

“You want to visit the Guillots?” I asked, horrified. “I can’t stand Albertine Guillot. Her dog urinated on our door this morning, and I slipped and fell right into it. Then we had an unpleasant confrontation at the desk downstairs and—”

“Okay,” said Jason. “So I guess you don’t want to go to the meeting with me.”

“Still,” I said, reconsidering, “the papal court was in Avignon for two hundred years. I’d like to see the papal palace. And then there’s the Albigenesian heresy to consider.”

“The what?”

So I had to tell Jason all about the new slant on Christianity that had arisen in southern France, and the Pope’s call for a crusade to put it down, and the French king and his knights riding off from Paris to attack various cities and fortresses in the south. “Southern France might have been a different country today if it weren’t for that crusade,” I said, finishing my explanation.

“So you
do
want to go?”

“I don’t know. How long would it be? I don’t think I could stand a couple of weeks with the Guillots.”

Jason sighed. “Then you don’t have to go.”

“Are you saying you don’t want me to?” I asked suspiciously. “I suppose Sibyl will be there.”

“I have no idea, and it’s obvious that I can’t win no matter what I say.” He stared at me as he finished off his melted ice cream. “Carolyn, you’re not going through menopause, are you?”

“Of course I’m not,” I snapped, insulted. Then I had to wonder if I was. I’d never distrusted Jason before. But on the other hand, I was only in my forties. It was too early for menopause.

Jason went to bed, and I sat down to write a column, but I didn’t get very far because I remembered a part of the Millay biography. Using food as a symbol for sex as it’s viewed in Christian cultures, she’d written a play about a society in which it was socially unacceptable to talk about food in public, and people only ate in private. The idea made me so uneasy that I didn’t want to write about food just then.

After I’d closed my computer, column unfinished, I thought again about poor Paolina. Had her obsession with sex led to her murder, or was it her investigation of crime? I’d better not mention that thought to my husband. He had enough objections to my own investigations. Of course, I wasn’t an undercover agent. I was just a nosy faculty wife and writer about food. I decided to go to bed and listen to the wind hammering against the balcony doors until I fell asleep.

Sleep brought me a terrible dream. The Christian Coalition or someone like that called for a boycott of my column because it said everyone knew what I was
really
writing about, and it wasn’t food. Then my book,
Eating Out in the Big Easy
, came out, and I was having a book signing when a crowd of angry ladies stormed in carrying signs about banning books on sex and chased me out into the parking lot, where the National Rifle Association, although how they got into it I can’t imagine, was hiding behind cars and taking shots at me. I had just narrowly missed death by dropping behind a Ford Explorer when a very loud explosion woke me up. The wind had blown the balcony doors open.

Trembling, I slipped out of bed and walked barefooted to close them, taking a fearful peek out onto the balcony to see if my enemies were out there, ready to storm our room. They weren’t, so I locked the doors, pushed a chair against them, and went back to bed. It was only 12:45 by the clock on the bedside table.

 

 

 

 

Two-tined forks were used in Europe during the Middle Ages to transfer meat from platter to diner; otherwise fingers were the means of transferring food to the mouth. The three-tined fork, along with good cooking, was brought to France from Italy by Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry IV, but Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, introduced the four-tined fork, which is still in use today.

Ferdinand was perhaps the city’s friendliest, least refined king. He enjoyed mixing with commoners and eating pasta on the street, which was done by taking the pasta in hand, tilting back the head, and dropping the long, dripping strings into the open mouth, a messy business. Still, having fallen in love with pasta, Ferdinand wanted it served every day at court.

His queen, Hapsburg princess Maria Carolina, who had been trying to Frenchify court manners, was appalled. She didn’t want the courtiers at her table dropping pasta into their mouths by hand, so to pacify her, the king ordered his steward to devise an implement that would get the pasta from table to mouth without use of the fingers. Thus, the four-tined fork was born. The courtiers loved it and pasta. Their hands may have stayed clean enough to please the finicky queen, but they did tend to splash sauce on the tablecloths. Ah, well.

Carolyn Blue,
“Have Fork, Will Travel,”
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