Sailing to Capri (18 page)

Whatever the weather, Dopplemann always enjoyed his bike ride home, out into the country lanes that led up and around a hillside, past a hamlet consisting of three small houses and a couple of barns, then on another couple of miles to a dead end and the tumbledown single-story building with a sagging tiled roof and a stout wooden door once painted green
but now weathered gray from the wind and the rain and snow. One window was boarded up with a slab of fiberboard and the other was just big enough to let in some light. A wobbly chimney tilted east, like a tree in the prevailing wind.

A large dog, a mix of shepherd and Lord knows what else, came bounding toward Dopplemann as he propped his bike against the once-white stucco wall, then ran his hands through his wet hair. He bent to pat the dog, curbing its boisterousness. The dog was the one ray of light in his drab world. They had been together for three years now, and the shepherd guarded the tumbledown cottage as if it was a ducal palace. Not that there was anything to steal but it kept the vagrants away.

The two disappeared inside and soon a trail of smoke sputtered from the chimney and the smell of eggs frying in rancid lard stung the air. Dopplemann, aka Mann, was home.

Montana drove the rented car quickly and efficiently through Munich’s clogged traffic until it finally petered out into suburbia and then into still-wild countryside. The road became narrower and the gravel turned to rutted mud. Dopplemann’s cottage came into view through the now heavy rain washing over the woods green. Montana thought it looked like an illustration from “Hansel and Gretel”; all it needed was a woodcutter in lederhosen and a hat with a feather in it and he could be in a Grimms fairy tale.

As he parked, the door of the cottage flew open and a large dog ran at him, teeth bared in a growl that showed a healthy pair of fangs. Montana stayed inside the car as Dopplemann followed his dog.

“Who are you?” Dopplemann called when he was near enough.

Montana let the window down an inch or two. “A messenger from Bob Hardwick, Herr Dopplemann.”

Dopplemann stopped dead in his tracks. His hissing voice lowered to a growl, like the dog’s, he said, “Bob Hardwick is dead.”

“This is a message from beyond the grave.” Montana watched for a reaction. He did not get one. Dopplemann’s face was inscrutable. “I have something for you from Bob. A gift. And an invitation.”

Dopplemann hesitated, obviously torn between telling him to get lost and curiosity. Then, bidding Montana to wait, he led the dog back into the cottage and shut it inside.

He walked slowly back, looking like a man heading for the gallows, reluctant and terrified yet unable to run away.

Montana got out of the car to meet him. “Don’t worry,” he said in German, “it’s a gesture of goodwill from Bob. I hope you’ll recognize it as such and tell me you accept.”

Dopplemann seemed to have gained control of his feelings. He took the envelope, opened it and scanned the invitation. Not a flicker of surprise, concern or fear crossed his face. Montana thought he would make a great poker player.

“Bob Hardwick always recognized a man’s weaknesses,” Dopplemann finally said. “He knew I would have to accept.”

Montana nodded. He didn’t know Dopplemann’s story yet, but he would find out. “Obviously you’ll need some financial help in order to get to Monte Carlo. I’ll ask the lawyers to for
ward you an advance on your hundred thousand dollars, but your travel expenses will be paid.”

“Thank you,” Dopplemann said quietly. Then turning on his heel he went back into his house and closed the door.

Driving back to Munich, Montana wondered what had happened in Dopplemann’s past that had left him, one of the great scientific brains, isolated, barely eking out a living. He called his Munich contact and arranged to meet him for dinner at a restaurant that was light-years away with its ample good food and elegance from Dopplemann’s eggs fried in stale lard in his dilapidated cottage. Montana would learn more about Dopplemann from the contact. Tomorrow he would take a plane to Málaga on Spain’s Costa del Sol. And the final link in the chain of suspects.

Rosalia sat quietly in the noontime silence of her hilltop home. Her eyes were half-closed, but she was aware of the scents of the star jasmine that grew in abundance over the white walls and of the lavender hedge beneath it. She glimpsed a hummingbird hovering over an orange hibiscus flower and saw the fountain spatter as another small bird took a quick cool bath. She saw all these things and smelled them, but she did not hear them because Rosalia was deaf.

It had come upon her suddenly. One month she could hear quite well, the next she heard sounds as though they were coming from a great distance: “Down a long tunnel,” she’d told her doctor, mystified, expecting to hear him say it was merely some kind of virus that would disappear in time. But it was not and it had not, and within a year she was completely deaf. She had
learned to adjust to her disability, though now she went out less and less. The biggest sadness was that, despite a hearing aid, she was no longer able properly to hear the voices of her family and retained them only in her memory, though she had become an expert lip-reader. And the biggest tragedy of all was not hearing her four-year-old granddaughter, whose voice was pitched too high for her even to catch the sound. But the two had learned early on to communicate and understood each other perfectly.

Still, Rosalia preferred to stay here, where she was safe, and also happy, where everyone understood about her deafness and where she was able to explain it carefully and calmly to the guests at her small pretty hotel, known as La Finca de los Pastores, the Ranch of the Shepherds.

The finca had been in Rosalia’s family for generations, a poor place, barely more than a barn where the animals were kept, with a small living space above. In the old days, food was cooked by the shepherds in an iron pot in the big stone fireplace where the abandoned early spring lambs were also kept warm and hand-fed to save them from certain death. Land came with the finca, almond orchards and citrus and chestnut, and way beyond, in the foothills of the mountains, were forests of cork. All this was considered worthless when the family eked out their living hauling baskets of almonds or oranges onto the backs of their donkeys and selling them at the local market.

Those days were long gone, of course, but Rosalia still remembered those weary donkeys and their panniers filled with
the fresh green-shelled almonds. She remembered the overwhelming fragrance when the almond trees blossomed, so strong it took your breath away, and the scent of orange blossom too, the kind that when you were young you planned to make a wreath out of and wear in your hair if you were lucky enough to marry in the spring. But even by then the finca had fallen into disrepair; it was no longer habitable and the shepherds were gone. Year by year it grew more dilapidated until finally the roof fell in and the winter rains and wild animals took over.

When she was seventeen, Rosalia had left her village for the coastal city of Málaga where she had apprenticed herself to a chef at the best hotel, and where she’d also met Bob Hardwick and fallen in love. But even true love had not been able to conquer the differences between them, and when Bob had left to seek his fortune elsewhere, she had not gone with him. It was her choice and she knew it was best for her.

She’d met an older man, Juan Delgado, who ran a small café. She married him and had three children but helped out cooking at the café. He had died quite suddenly, leaving her with no money and no home of her own, and she had no choice but to pick up her children and move back to the village she came from, and into the old Finca de los Pastores, which had come down to her through a series of deaths in the family.

In the beginning and with the help of her neighbors, she and her three children rebuilt a small part of it, just a couple of rooms, hauling, carrying, cementing. It was hard, bitter work, but at least they had a roof over their heads. In between times
she worked at the village café, earning just enough to feed her small family, grateful for the charitable villagers who passed on their children’s outgrown clothing to hers.

As she added a couple more rooms, she began taking in a few passing travelers, cooking for them in the evenings. Over the years she’d become famous for her cuisine, and with her guests’ encouragement and much hard work, plus hard-won loans from the bank, she had built up the finca into a perfect Andalusian country house. Her tumbledown inheritance was now a delightful small hotel, patronized by people who enjoyed its elegant simplicity. Like her, they loved the gardens and the forested hills sheltered by towering mountains; they loved the absolute peace and quiet, and they loved the good wines from Rioja and the fine sherry from Jerez, especially the chilled amontillado, and the wonderful food that Rosalia continued to cook. Many returned year after year to be greeted by Rosalia’s eldest daughter, Magdalena, who now ran the hotel.

Rosalia lived in her own house, linked to the finca by an arched arcade. A wall surrounded it, leading, as usual in Spain, into a flowery courtyard with a shaded columned patio, where Rosalia now sat, enjoying the peace. Except her mind was not peaceful because at the back of it still was Robert Hardwick. Her Roberto.

She had learned of his death via a newspaper article only a couple of weeks ago, and when she read it, it was as though a part of her life had finished with his. She had always fantasized she might see him again, that one day he would walk back into her life—big and brash, overwhelming her with his male presence, and she would show him her world and he would tell her
about his. Rosalia sighed. It would never have worked. Roberto would not have understood her “burying” herself away in the countryside, though he would have admired her business acumen in running such a fine hotel. And she would never have understood his world, flying on his private plane to meetings in New York or Caracas or Sydney.

The heavy wooden gate crashed open, and her granddaughter, Isabella, always known as Bella, skipped through. Bella was wearing a sugar pink, black-spotted flamenco dress. Its stiff ruffled skirts were edged in black silk, and she wore the strapped black flamenco shoes with small heels that real flamenco dancers wore. Her cloud of dark curly hair fizzed around her pretty face and her round brown eyes sparkled.

“Abuelita,
grandmother,” she called. “This is my new dress for the
feria.”
She spun on her heels, flouncing out her taffeta skirts. “Do you like it?”

Reading the child’s lips, Rosalia hastily mopped her tears with a lace-edged handkerchief that, like all the finca’s linens, smelled of their homegrown lavender. “But it’s gorgeous,
guapa,
and so are you. You’ll be the hit of the
feria.
You’ll ride in the finca’s cart pulled by two oxen with wreaths of flowers around their horns, and your mother and father will ride alongside you on their brave chestnut horses, shiny from all that brushing. You will help brush them, won’t you?”

“Oh, I will, I will, I promise, and I’ll polish the silver stirrups and the ornaments for the horses’ heads …”

Bella was so excited, she flung herself into her grandmother’s lap, beaming up at her. Her face changed to a look of concern.
“Abuelita,
are you crying?” she demanded, shocked.
She had never seen her grandmother cry; nobody cried here at the finca except herself when she fell or didn’t get her own way, which it had to be said didn’t happen too often either. She patted Rosalia’s cheek tenderly, her brown eyes glossy with worry.

“It’s allright, Bella,” Rosalia said, smiling, “they were tears for an old friend who died. I’m crying because I’m sad for him.”

“I see,” Bella said, though she did not see at all, since death had not entered her life yet. And then she heard her mother calling and with a final kiss for her
abuelita,
she skipped off again, slamming the gate behind her as she always did, making Rosalia laugh. Bella always made her feel good. She wished Roberto could have known her.