Treasure Hunt (12 page)

“I wanted to, but then I let myself be talked into it—not so much by his words but by his obvious enthusiasm. So I decided to let him in on the secret challenge, and he immediately lit up like a match. I even sent him on the treasure hunt in my place.”

“Really! He must be so happy! He so admires you!”

“How did you meet him?”

“Through Carlo, his father, who’d been a friend of my husband’s at the university and a fellow traveler in his political adventures.”

“Were you—”

“Before you finish your question, I can tell you there’s never been anything between the two of us. My husband invited him to lunch not long after I’d first come to live in Montelusa, and that was when I met Arturo, who was a little boy at the time. And the spitting image of Harry Potter. Whom he still resembles.”

“What’s his mother like?”

“His mother died while giving birth to him. He was more or less raised by his grandparents.”

“Is he in love with you?”

“At first he had a childish crush on me, of the obsessive kind, then, as he grew, it changed into a sort of cross between romantic love and physical desire. He’s very dangerous, you know.”

“Come on! Harry Potter?”

“Just listen. Only about a month ago, I happened to find myself alone with him. I’d gone to Carlo’s place for dinner, but when I got there he hadn’t come home yet, and so I waited for him in the living room. Arturo, who doesn’t live with his father, arrived a few minutes later. He sat down beside me on the sofa and started to talk to me, every so often stroking my shoulder with a trembling hand. It was hypnotic. Five minutes later—”

“He had his hands all over you.”

“Wrong. And you know what? It was me who was about to put my hands all over him.”

“Really?”

“Really. You have no idea how powerful the energy of desire emanating from his whole body is. It’s an irresistible sex appeal. Every time his fingers grazed my shoulder I shuddered all over. I was able to control myself because I kept reminding myself I was twice his age, which is a pretty stupid reason. Anyway, he sort of frightened me. Fortunately then Carlo arrived.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

“Who, Arturo? No, not that I know of. And I don’t think that he . . . I think he’s very shy with girls. And he doesn’t seem to have any friends. At any rate, it seems like you also found him pretty interesting.”

“Yes, very interesting. He said he lives here in Vigàta.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you ever been to his place?”

She giggled.

“Never. If I had, it would have been a disaster.”

“Do you know what part of Vigàta he lives in?”

“No.”

“What does he do, other than study philosophy?”

“No idea. I can find out, if you like.”

“No, no. I may be curious, but not so curious as to pry into his private life.”

“End of subject?”

“End of subject.”

“So I can go now?”

“Why?” asked Montalbano, bewildered.

She didn’t answer, but only put her arm on his shoulder, pulled him towards her and kissed him on the lips.

“When you called me to invite me to dinner—since I know it certainly wasn’t because of my, so to speak, feminine graces—I wondered what you wanted from me. And now I realize that it was because you needed some information about Arturo.”

“But it was you who got me to talk about him.”

“Yes, but you’re a clever one, Inspector Montalbano.”

“You’re pretty shrewd yourself.”

“Anyway, now that you’ve got your information, I’m no longer needed, and so I can go. Isn’t that right?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Explain.”

“It’s true that I wanted some information about Arturo, but that wasn’t the only reason I invited you. Normally when I want to know something from someone, I summon them to the police station, I don’t invite them to dinner.”

“Well, by inviting me to dinner, I guess you were mixing business with pleasure, no? I supposedly being the pleasure?”

“Why are you using clichés? They lead you to false conclusions. In fact you’re not the ‘pleasure.’”

“Not even?”

“Let me finish. You’re a beautiful woman and a friend whom I trust very dearly and like to spend time with every now and then, talking and laughing . . . It’s not a relationship ‘for pleasure,’ and I think to call it that is to diminish it a great deal.”

“The only blot in your little speech is that ‘every now and then.’”

“Give me a break, Ingrid, you’re not going to tell me you wish you could see me every day!”

“If the two of us ever became lovers and were always together, day and night, I think one of us would end up killing the other.”

“You see? You’re starting to get it. The truth is that by getting together now and then, the way we do, we’re able to comfort each other.”

Ingrid made a bewildered face.

“I really can’t see myself as a charity worker, I’m sorry.”

“And me, yes?”

“Not on your life!”

“And yet that’s the way it is. We give each other mutual comfort.”

“Comfort for what?”

“For loneliness, Ingrid.”

Out of the blue Ingrid started crying uncontrollably. This time it was Montalbano who embraced her and held her tight. After barely five minutes, however, her bout of melancholy had passed. She was like the sparrows in the rain that shake it off and a minute later they’re dry again.

“Did I ever tell you the story about that member of parliament who asked me to go to bed with him?”

“That doesn’t seem to me like such an unusual proposition.”

“Right, but he wanted us to get dressed up first—he as a priest and me as a nun.”

They got three fourths of the way through the second bottle, and when they got up because it was past two o’clock, Ingrid could barely stand up straight. Nor did Montalbano feel much like driving her back to Montelusa, since they would probably end up crashing into a tree or another car. In the end Ingrid came to bed with him and fell asleep in the twinkling of an eye. The inspector, on the other hand, spent an hour of hell with that woman lying next to him, her scent of apricot growing stronger by the minute. He only managed to fall asleep after getting as far away from her as he could, with half his body hanging over the edge of the bed and continually in danger of falling off. And he kept waking up every fifteen minutes. Finally at a certain point he went and lay down on the sofa in the living room. But it was too uncomfortable, and so a short while later he went and returned to the torture grill. Saint Salvo, burnt alive by the fires of temptation.

He was awakened some time after nine by Adelina making noise in the kitchen. Ingrid, however, didn’t move. He couldn’t even hear her breathing.

During her sleep she had uncovered herself and had a breast exposed and an extremely long leg sticking out from under the sheet. Montalbano dutifully covered everything back up.

He felt uneasy. It would be the first time his housekeeper saw a woman in his bed, aside from the few times Livia had been there—since Adelina, who’d taken an immediate dislike to her, normally stopped coming whenever Livia came to stay for a few days.

It was true that Adelina had made the bed a few times before when Ingrid had slept there, but making the bed was one thing, and finding a naked woman in it was something else.

He got up quietly and went to Adelina in the kitchen.

“Coffee’s ready,
dottori
.”

Still groggy from all the whisky he’d drunk and the restless night he’d just had, he drank two cups in a row.

“Shou’ I take a some a the young lady, or you take a ta ha yousself?”

Apparently upon arriving she’d taken a peek to see if he’d already gone out and seen Ingrid in bed with him.

Montalbano looked at her. And in the housekeeper’s eyes he noticed a glimmer, ever so tiny, of satisfaction. And he knew why. Adelina was pleased that he had been unfaithful to Livia, or at least so she thought.

For whatever reason, he felt obliged to explain things to her.

“You see, we had a lot to drink last night, and she was in no condition to drive. . . .” he started out.

But Adelina interrupted him with a wave of the hand.

“
Dottori
, wha’ you tellin’ a me fuh? You don’ need a ’splain a nuttin’ a me. You gotta do whatta you gotta do,
e basta
! Anyways, a pretty woman inna flesh allaways a better ’n’ a dolls you hadda before.”

Mortified, realizing he would never manage to explain the business of the dolls to her, Montalbano grabbed the cup of coffee and went to wake up Ingrid.

When he entered the station that morning, he had no idea that just a few hours later the dead calm would come to an end.

“Ahh Chief! ’Ere’s ’at kid come onna part o’ Signura Sciosciostrommi waitin’ f’yiz.”

Imagine Arturo ever wasting any time!

“Show him in.”

Montalbano didn’t even manage to sit down before the kid came in, so excited he forgot to say hello.

“I’ve figured it all out!” he proclaimed triumphantly.

“How’d you do it?”

“I realized that the place where they make lamb’s head could only be a tavern or something similar. So I asked around and found out that there’s a wine shop outside of Gallotta where they also serve food, and then I went there. But it was too late in the day to take a walk in the area. And so I went back at dawn this morning.”

“At dawn? Really?”

“I couldn’t sleep, I swear. Anyway, I started walking around at random and all of a sudden I came to a tiny little lake with water the color of the sky, and nearby there’s a ruin of a small house. I think both places correspond perfectly with the clues in the poem.”

“Well done. And did you come away with any impressions, any ideas that might be of use?”

The kid’s face expressed his disappointment.

“No, unfortunately.”

“So all we can do is wait.”

“So it seems. But I really don’t understand the meaning of this stage in the game.”

“Me neither.”

“If anything comes up, will you let me know?”

“Of course, since you’re in a position to save me time and effort.”

About an hour later, Catarella rang him.

“Chief, ’at’d be a Signuri Billiardo want’n’ a ripport ’is dissippearance insomuch azza owner of ’is car.”

“He wants to report his own disappearance?”

“Nossir, not ’is own as Signuri Billiardo ’isself, Chief.”

“Then whose?”

“As pertainin’ to ’is car ’at belongs ta him, Chief.”

“I see. A case of auto theft, then.”

“Azackly, Chief.”

“And you’re busting my balls over a stolen car? Put the call through to Fazio.”

“The probblem’s ’at Bigliardo assists on talkin’ t’yiz poissonally in poisson.”

“All right, put him on.”

“I can’t put ’im on, Chief, insomuch as—”

“—he’s on the premises? Then show him in.”

“Good morning,” the man said, coming forward with his hand extended.

Well dressed, about fifty, handkerchief in breast pocket, gold-rimmed glasses, salt-and-pepper hair cut extremely short, English shoes all curlicues, mustache with the ends waxed and curled up. He was so drenched in cologne that the room immediately filled up with a sweet scent that turned the stomach. The mere sight of him aroused such antipathy in the inspector that he just let the man’s hand hang in the air, without shaking it. He decided to deal with the matter in his own way.

“
Comment allez-vous?
” he asked the man.

The other looked at him as if he’d been kidnapped by Barbary pirates.

“Ah, you mean you’re not French? Really? Hmph . . . !” said Montalbano, sizing him up very slowly.

“Excuse me for just one second,” he said a moment later.

He got up and went over to the window and opened it. He looked around a little outside, then came and sat back down behind his desk.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wanted to—” the man began, a little uncertain.

“Ah, if you’d be so kind, give me just one more second.”

He bent down, opened the bottom drawer of his desk, pulled out a memo at random, studied it for a long time, grabbed a pen, corrected two words, then put it back, and closed the drawer again. After which he looked at Billiardo with a far-off look in his eyes.

“You were saying . . .”

“I want to report—”

“Were you hurt?”

The man balked.

“Was I hurt? . . . No.”

“I’m sorry, I’d understood that you’d been hit by a car, Signor Billiardo.”

“Vilardo.”

He’d had his fun.

“So tell me.”

“I’m here to report the theft of my car,” he said, curling with two fingers the left-hand tip of his mustache.

“What kind of car is it?”

“An SUV, a—”

“You drive an SUV here in town?”

“Yes, sometimes, but I have two cars.”

“When was it stolen?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you report it immediately?”

“Because I thought my son Pietro had taken it without telling me, which he often does.”

Montalbano couldn’t resist the urge to perform a little.

“I’m sorry, let me get this straight. You have two cars and your son Pietro doesn’t have any?”

“Well, yes.”

“Does he live with you?”

“Yes.”

“How old is he?”

“Thirty.”

“A big baby, in other words.”

The man opened his eyes wide.

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you remember how one of our ministers defined these thirty-year-olds who still live at home? He called them ‘big babies.’”

Vilardo looked at him with increasing befuddlement. He was starting to have serious doubts about the inspector’s mental health.

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“You’re absolutely right, go on.”

“Where were we?”

“You were saying the big baby often takes your SUV.”

“Ah, yes. The only problem was that Pietro told me he’d gone to Palermo in a friend’s car.”

“All right. That seems good enough to me. Now I’ll send you to someone who will register your report.”

“Just a minute, Inspector. It was you I wanted to talk to, and for a specific reason. I wanted to tell you that yesterday I saw my car again, here in Vigàta, but only from a distance.”

“Are you sure it was yours?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“Could you see who was driving?”

“A man, but I couldn’t make out his features. On top of everything else, it was getting dark. But he wasn’t alone, because at a certain point I saw a head of blond hair appear from the back, as if a woman had been lying down on the backseat and suddenly sat up. But the man driving shoved her back down violently. Then a bus passed that—”

“Probably a couple quarreling.”

He picked up the receiver.

“Catarella? Come to my office and take Signor Vilardo to Fazio’s office.”

Less than an hour later, Catarella informed him, in a low voice, that there was a man at the desk whose name he hadn’t understood because the man was crying, saying he wanted to talk to the inspector.

The moment he entered, Montalbano instantly realized that the man—a wretched, poorly dressed fifty-year-old—could barely stand up. His eyes were red and swollen from weeping, and he kept wiping them with a dirty handkerchief. The inspector shot to his feet, put an arm around the man’s shoulders, and sat him down in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“Would you like some water?”

The man nodded yes. Montalbano filled a glass from a bottle on top of the filing cabinet and handed it to him. The man drank it all in one draught.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been running around . . . since early this morning, when it was still dark outside, and I’m so tired I could die.”

Two big tears welled up in his eyes, and the man wiped them away, looking slightly embarrassed.

“My daughter . . . my . . .”

His voice cracked and he was unable to speak.

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Giuseppe Bonmarito.”

“Listen, Signor Bonmarito, no need to force yourself, we’ve got all the time in the world. Just try to calm down. You can start talking when you feel up to it.”

“Could . . . could I?” the man asked, holding up the empty glass.

Montalbano got up, went back and filled it. Bonmarito drank half of it, took a deep breath, and began talking.

“Since yesterday afternoon, my daughter Ninetta . . .”

“Hasn’t been heard from?”

“Yes . . .”

For the moment, and for as long as he remained in a state of confusion, it was best just to ask him only questions requiring short answers.

“Has this happened before?”

“Never.”

“How old is she?”

“Just turned eighteen.”

“Does she have a job?”

“No, she’s a student. Last year of high school.”

“Does she have any brothers or sisters?”

“She’s our only child.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“A real boyfriend, no. There’s a boy who’s always running after her. But I think my daughter considers him just a friend.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes. And last night I went to see him, woke him up, in fact, but he said he hadn’t seen Ninetta since the morning. They’re schoolmates.”

“What time did she go out?”

“My wife said it was a little before six. She was supposed to go to the movies with a girlfriend and should have been back home no later than eight-thirty.”

“Have you spoken with this friend of hers?”

The poor man seemed a little revived now.

“Yes, I have. We waited for Ninetta till nine-thirty, before sitting down to eat, and when she didn’t turn up, I called her girlfriend and she told me that she and Ninetta had split up right after the movie, which was around eight o’clock.”

“Which movie theater was it?”