Authors: Grace Brophy
“That’s too bad,” Cenni said, shaking his head sympathetically. “You may not be aware of this, but the tax laws require you to keep records of where you go, when, and at what price. I wouldn’t want to see you in trouble with the Finance Police,” he added, again in a non-threatening voice.
“YOU KNOW, ALEX, everyone at the Questura thinks of you as Mr. Nice Guy. They should only know how you blackmail witnesses to get what you want,” Elena said as they were walking back to the hotel.
Alex stopped in his tracks to reply. “We’re the police and we have a job to do. I gave Signor Baldi every chance to assist in a murder investigation. I even promised to keep his name confidential. Like every other job in the world, we need results. Hopefully, they’re honest results. If witnesses refuse to honor the law, it’s hardly blackmail to use the law to change their minds. Frankly, Elena, I don’t care if Baldi is cheating on his taxes, particularly when the richest man in Italy, our former Prime Minister, has made it into an Olympic sport. But if threatening a visit by the Finance Police gets me what I want, then I’ll threaten every time.” He added, “It also works every time.”
7
THE FONDAMENTE NOVE is the point at which the
vaporetti
leave Venice for San Michele, Murano, and the northern lagoon. The long waterfront with its half dozen waterbus stops and its numerous cafés, tobacconists, pizza stands, gelaterea, and bank machines is never quiet, and at rush hour in the mornings and evenings it’s a wall of travelers, at least half of whom are busy grabbing a quick bite and a coffee on their way to work or a quick bite and a grappa on their way home from work. Cenni, who had a passion for seafood tramezzini, particularly shrimp-and-egg, rarely found any worth the cost of indigestion in landlocked Umbria. But in the small café on the corner of
Strada del Buranelli,
which serves hundreds every day
,
he found nirvana
.
He ordered three shrimp-and-egg and a square of pizza for Elena as they waited for the boat to Murano to dock.
Elena was anxious to talk about their visit to Signor Baldi, but first she found it necessary to point out that “even Piero doesn’t eat three sandwiches for lunch.”
“You’re sure about that, are you!” Cenni said. “How often do you and he have lunch together?”
“Figures,” Elena said, making a face. “So, what about the information we got from the driver? Are we ready to make an arrest? Can we go home tonight?”
“No, to both your questions. The driver says they got to Paradiso early and drove around. At four o’clock he parked in front of the pink house. He also says that Juliet Mudarikwa was the only one to go inside, that Marcella Molin stayed in the car. According to him, Juliet rang the bell a few times before she finally let herself in with a key. She returned to the car less than fifteen minutes later carrying a small suitcase. Less than fifteen minutes to find Baudler, go down to the basement, argue with her, batter her to death, mutilate her, find a suitcase, pack it, and leave? The African is quite tall, but she’s also slight, maybe 130 pounds at best. Baudler was a large woman, tall, and weighed over 200 pounds. After killing her, Mudarikwa would have had to drag her over to the steps and then do the rest. And don’t forget the blood, Elena. The postmortem said ‘little bleeding.’ It didn’t say ‘no bleeding.’”
He paused when he saw the waiter go by. “
Scusi,
another coffee,
per favore.
”
“We also know,” Cenni continued, “that Baudler returned home at precisely three thirty, so we know she was inside when Juliet Mudarikwa let herself in with the key. If Baudler was alive when Juliet arrived, why didn’t she answer the door? We know from the garage man that she was expecting someone at four. Let’s assume it was Juliet. Murdering another human being is hot, messy work. So, again, how could Juliet have done all that and returned to the car, as the driver said,
looking cool as a cucumber?”
“So why did she lie about not being there?” Elena asked. “If she’d left the house as soon as she found the body, she’d have witnesses to prove she didn’t do it.”
“You’re assuming she saw the body. Unless she went to the top of the cellar steps, she couldn’t know that Baudler was lying dead below.”
“Yeah,” rejoined Elena; “then what was she doing in someone else’s house for almost fifteen minutes? I doubt she was sitting on the couch waiting patiently for Baudler to return. She must have checked things out.”
“The house,” Alex replied, “has four floors. Maybe she was upstairs packing her suitcase? To your question, ‘why did she lie about being there,’ let’s see: she’s black, she’s African, she’s living with another woman in an iffy situation, she can’t show a visa for how she got into Italy, and she was Baudler’s live-in lover at one time. There’s also the possibility that Baudler was blackmailing her or that she and Baudler were blackmailing the Venetians as a joint venture. That’s a whole laundry list of reasons for her not to get involved with the police.”
“Are you just going to let her go, then?” Elena asked, annoyed that a perfectly good suspect was getting away.
“Juliet Mudarikwa knows a lot more about Baudler and her blackmailing schemes than she let on when I questioned her a few days ago. The evidence suggests that Baudler didn’t start blackmailing the Venetians until she ran into Marcella Molin in Venice a few months ago, but she was blackmailing her own people for years, usually for small favors. Maybe she decided to branch out big-time when she had a girlfriend to support. And maybe the girlfriend knew what she was doing. Juliet Mudarikwa may still be our best lead to finding Baudler’s killer. Sorry, Elena, but Piero will have to spend the night alone. We’re definitely on for tomorrow.”
8
UNTIL THEY BOARDED the vaporetto for Murano, it had been the perfect June day—too perfect, in fact, to be grilling witnesses in a murder investigation. But just a few minutes out into the lagoon, dark clouds appeared on the horizon. “A storm is moving this way,” Elena remarked casually, unaware that the rapid change in weather had wrought a similar change in her boss’s mood.
“I’m going out on the deck to get some fresh air,” Cenni said, without inviting Elena to join him.
That was fast, she thought. Most times she could tell when he was in a mood, but this one had come on quickly. She stayed in her seat and unwrapped the tourist book that she’d purchased from a small shop on the waterfront. Two women in their twenties, also carrying guidebooks, were sitting in front of Elena, and they started discussing Cenni after he left the cabin. Elena understood English quite well, so she caught every word:
“It’s the same one who was sitting in the café. Shit, but he’s gorgeous!”
“Shssh!” the second one said, “The woman from the café is right behind us.”
“She can’t understand us. They were talking in Italian.”
“Are they married, do you think?”
“Definitely not. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and she is. I checked when we were leaving the café.”
“Do Italian men wear wedding rings?”
“I don’t know, but those two don’t look married.”
“How do you look married?” the second one asked.
“Funny!” the other one said. “He got up and left her abruptly. In the café he seemed to be lecturing her. They probably work together,” she concluded.
Astute, particularly about the lecturing.
“Did you notice his eyes? Violet blue.”
“Like Elizabeth Taylor.”
“The color maybe, but there’s nothing feminine about that stud. Did you catch the body! He’s like a human version of a panther! Grrrr!”
“Restrain yourself, Joanne. He’s Italian; you’re from Detroit. No future in it!”
“You never know. Come on, I’m going out on the deck. Maybe we can pick him up, at least for dinner tonight. Italian men are supposed to go wild over American women.”
Elena watched the huntress and her friend go out the cabin door. Nice-looking women, but not a blonde hair between them.
Good luck, ladies,
she said to herself before opening her book to the section on Murano glass.
When the boat docked at Murano Colonna, the two women were the first ones off. When Elena met up with Cenni on the deck where he was waiting, she asked him if the two American women had spoken to him. She could see them with their heads together, laughing, as they headed up the
fondamenta.
“Yes. They wanted the name of an inexpensive restaurant in Venice for dinner tonight. They asked me where I go.”
“And . . . ?” Elena asked.
“I don’t know any restaurants in Venice, but I warned them to stay away from the tourist areas. Nice women, but a bit silly. One of them giggled the whole time the other one was talking to me. You were probably right when you called me a curmudgeon. I haven’t a clue how to talk to women of that age, and I hate it when they giggle.”
BEFORE THEY STARTED up the
fondamenta
to look for a man who might have information from sixty years ago, an expedition that Elena thought senseless, she mentioned that she wanted to buy a gift for Piero, and maybe one for his mother. “I have to keep in her good graces,” she said, “or she’ll snatch him back.” Cenni looked at her in surprise. He hadn’t realized that once a
mammone,
perhaps always a
mammone.
But he was grateful for the opportunity to visit Serge Cattelan alone. He knew Elena thought his compulsion to solve a decades-old murder foolish, and he wanted to be alone for other reasons as well. He might stop and visit the house where Chiara’s mother-in-law had lived. Maybe one of the neighbors might know Chiara’s whereabouts.
“Not a problem,” Cenni answered. “I don’t need anyone to take notes on this one; it’s a long shot anyway. Why don’t you do some shopping, and we’ll meet back here in two hours. Is that enough time?”
“I could buy a house in two hours. But there’s a twelfth-century Byzantine church on the island. It’s described in the guidebook. Look for me there if you finish early.”
Cenni hesitated a moment. “Listen Elena, just in case it takes me longer than two hours, don’t wait for me. Go back to the hotel in Venice, and we’ll meet up for dinner at eight.”
On another occasion, Elena might have asked what he could possibly find to do on an island full of glass shops that could take more than two hours, but he was wearing what she’d once described to Piero as
that obsessed look,
so she agreed.
9
CENNI FOUND SERGE Cattelan taking the sun on the second-floor balcony of a house on Fondamenta Cavour. When he shouted up that Monsignor Dante Tirado had sent him, he was immediately invited up. Only later did he learn that the only fishing Cattelan had done in his lifetime was for his own table and for the occasional fish that he sent down to Rome, to his friend.
“Dante is senile, for more than five years now. I have no idea just how old he is, but I’d say ninety at least. I’ve never been a fisherman, but I suppose Dante connects the fish I send him with the work I do. Fishing for me is never work. It’s my passion.”
When Cenni asked why he refused to have a telephone, he looked confused at first and then laughed.
“Of course I have a telephone. I was wondering why Dante was sending me letters recently.” It turned out that Serge Cattelan had taught modern and classical languages at the
liceo
until his retirement twenty years earlier and that he still tutored students who were planning to go on to university.
“So you want to know about
La Resistenza.
You’ve come to the right person, dottore. Most of my comrades from those days are long dead. The Germans killed my father in 1944, so I took his place. The others didn’t think a boy of nineteen could do the job, but they were wrong,” he said proudly. “So Marcella Molin thinks she can crown her father king of the heroes by leaving money to a foundation? That’ll be a whole lot of money sitting around doing nothing, because it’ll never happen. A lot of us are dead, but there are still enough of us around to stop that atrocity.”
“You’re absolutely sure he wasn’t a partisan and he wasn’t helping the partisans?” Cenni asked, wanting to be sure he had it right. “Then why did the Germans kill him? The police report says he was found lodged between the pilings under the Fondamente Nove. No autopsy was ever performed. He’d been floating under the pier for some ten days when they found his body. Almost unrecognizable after the fish had gotten to him.”
“I’ll grant you the fish part, but what makes you think the Germans were involved?” Cattelan asked.
“The family reported that four Germans picked him up and took him away in a police launch. That was the last time he was seen by anyone.”
“Dottore, never believe everything you read in a police report. Not all the police in the lagoon were working with the Germans during the war, and lots of us in northern Italy speak German fluently. Not everyone in a German uniform was German. Take me, for example: I taught German for forty years at the
liceo.
”
“
You
were one of the four that took Molin away that night! Did you kill him?”
“
La Resistenza
killed him,” Cattelan responded quietly.
“Why? He was one of us,” Cenni said censoriously.
“Too many reasons to enumerate. But we picked him up when we heard from a reliable source that he was planning to assist the Germans to distribute counterfeit English pound notes through Italian banks. God knows, we Italians have very little to be self-righteous about. We were very quick to change sides when it suited us, and after the war a lot of our neighbors chose to forget their past. It’s not for me to judge why they did what they did, and for the most part our fight was with the Germans. But Molin had too much to answer for, and no excuses. He had position, money, education; he knew what he was about, all right. And what he was about was personal profit in wartime. We met in a warehouse, conducted a trial, and each of us cast our vote. It was unanimous for the death penalty.”
“Did you give Molin a chance to defend himself?” Cenni asked.
“He made his defense. As I said, the decision was unanimous.”
“How come this has never come out?”