Il Pane Della Vita (36 page)

“I don’t see anything like a note here. It probably blew away. I’m going to climb the rocks and look above the falls.”

“You mean where they found the body? That’s a good idea. He probably still had it on him. It could have been in his pocket. The police probably never looked in there.”

When Brother Salvatore stepped on the rock above the falls, he looked down to see that Brother Bruno had left his spot and gone to rifle through his backpack. “Are you checking for water? I could really use a bottle.” He watched Brother Bruno throw the backpack down. “What are you looking for?”

Brother Bruno looked up at Brother Salvatore, and let his eyes follow the path around the bushes that would get him there.

Before he could take his first step, Brother Salvatore called out. “Are you looking for this?”

The sun glinted off the polished blade.

“It’s not really your weapon, I know,” said Brother Salvatore. “I remember Brother Alonzo taking time to polish up this beauty last night. How did it end up in your backpack?”

“You tricked me into coming
up here. There’s no note here, is there.”

“You know, it might be funny to see the look on Brother Alonzo’s face when he finds out that this fil
leting knife ended up here too. He would be livid.” Brother Salvatore leaned over the top of the falls and let the knife drop straight down into the deepest part of the pond.

Brother Bruno pulled off his hiking shoes and socks and stepped down a few rocks into the shallow end. Brother Salvatore watched him methodically step from one stone to another until he was over the deep chasm. Then he dove in head first.

Brother Salvatore took off. He hoped if he headed down the mountain at full speed, he would be well down by the time Brother Bruno recovered the weapon and started to follow him. Brother Bruno would have to don his socks and shoes or would not be able to keep up the pace.

Sister Angela and Father Rafaello saw the dust exploding down the side of the mountain toward them. Fro
m behind the trees ahead, they caught a glimpse of a man, half running and half sliding over the mix of dead leaves, soil, and rocks. When Brother Salvatore saw them it was too late. He slid past them and was down several steps before he came to halt on a grassy knoll.

“He’s there!” he yelled back at them, half crying. “Don’t go up there,” he called back.
“He’s armed.”

“You have to stay with Sister Angela, Brother,” said Brother Rafaello,
spinning around to continue his hike. “I’m armed too. I have a Bible in my backpack. That’s why it’s taken so long to get here.”

Sister Angela started to go down to Brother Salvatore. “Are you injured? Has he hurt you?”

“No. I tried to throw his weapon into the falls, and he went in after it.”

“Oh my, you’ve ripped your robe. I suppose you’re going to need that Thursday-night money you’ve saved to replace it. Let’s get you down to the monastery so you can wash your wounds.”

“It’s Brother Bruno,” he told Sister Angela.

“Yes. He stole my red-striped
bag. I want it back.”

“You knew?”

“Yes, he broke into my room last night. I don’t think Gina wrote the note to lure Brother Pietro to the falls. I think Brother Bruno wrote it and took it back after he killed him.”

“I hope they catch him. I’m worried about Father Rafaello.”

“I believe Father Rafaello will be fine. He’ll talk to him and calm him down. That man could tame a rattlesnake.”

“But Brother Bruno is armed with a fil
leting knife.”

“As a last resort, Father Rafaello is armed too. I hope we can get dinner tonight. Poor Brother Alonzo is all out of fi
lleting knives.”

“It’s Thursday night tomorrow, Brother Alonzo has canceled our trip to Avalle because Bassi can’t drive us. You could drive, couldn’t you? Brother Pascal sometimes drives the monastery car, but he doesn’t want to go there and remain sober. You, on the other hand…”

“What? Am I too old to drink? What about your habit?”

“You can still
dance. I’ll dance with you. We could dance with you all at once. First I’ll have to see if the robe still needs mending after it’s cleaned. That will take a week. Then I won’t have so much money so they’ll have to let me borrow from my allowance. It’ll work out.”

“And once you get behind…”

“I do have parents, Sister. My parents will send me what I need.”

“How old did you say you were?”

“We’re finally to the road. It’s much faster going down, isn’t it? I’ll bet the police are already at the falls and that Father Rafaello won’t even have to take out his filleting knife.”

Neri called the office to tell Brother Pascal that the police had brought Brother Bruno up
to the parking lot and taken him away. They were bringing Father Rafaello with them and should be at the monastery to drop him off in about a quarter hour. Brother Pascal informed Sister Angela and Brother Salvatore as soon as they walked in the front door. When he saw Brother Salvatore, he rushed to get his first aid kit and followed Brother Salvatore to his cell.

Sister Angela ran into Brother Alonzo on her way to the stairs.

“Did you bring back my fileting knife?”

The nun looked sad. “No. I didn’t have one. Brother Pascal gave one to Father Rafaello. If he used it on the culprit, you might not get it back for a long while.”

Brother Alonzo’s lips curled.

“And then there’s that one in the drink. Brother Salvatore threw it in the pond to keep it away from Brother Bruno. Brother Bruno dove in after it, and Brother Salvatore ran halfway down the mountain because he was afraid Brother Bruno was going t
o come after him. I thought you had locked all the knives away. It’s a blessing we didn’t put you in charge of the guns.”

She opened the door to the stairs and stepped inside. When she made it to her room, she immediately turned on the shower. Before she could disrobe, she ran back into the sitting room. She turned on her laptop and went to her email. There in the box were the personnel papers describing Brother Bruno’s background.

The two detectives ate
dinner in the
sala
. Although she knew he would continue to moan about his knives for days, Sister Angela was happy that Brother Alonzo had found something to help him prepare the fish. Morena told him that they would have a diver out the following day to look for the knife at the bottom of the pond, but it did not seem to make the chef any happier.

Brother Salvatore still had a slight limp where he took
off some skin on the side of his leg on the slide down. When he heard about the dive the next morning, however, the limp disappeared. Would they let him go too?

The abbot stood and everyone stopped to say a prayer for both the victim and the perpetrator. Then they poured the wine the detectives brought them and toasted to a successful case. After the dinner and wine, Sister Angela, Father Rafaello, Morena, Loria and Brother Salvatore all retired to the library.

Sister Angela handed each a copy of the notes provided by Busto Sistemi. “It looks like I have to bring everyone up to date since the investigation’s conclusion happened so quickly after my return. We’ll get to these notes after a few comments about the history of those involved.”

“I guess you should start with the victim,” said Fa
ther Rafaello, pouring himself a coffee from the carafe that Brother Alonzo brought in.

When Brother Alonzo shut the door behind him, Sister Angela began. “Brother Pietro has been a hermit her
e for nearly twenty years. Before that, he was Father Teo, vicar of San Mattia, a church in the town of Salvi. But he was in San Mattia for less than two years. I went to Salvi just a week ago, but I couldn’t figure out why he moved here so quickly. I suspect it was because he carried a lot of baggage—baggage that came in waves and eventually buried him with guilt and pressure.

“
Who we knew as Brother Pietro started out as Dante Russo, a young senior executive at Busto Sistemi. He was a favorite of Lauro Fabri, the president and chief executive officer, who nurtured him as his successor. Russo visited the family mansion in Campofiore often and attended large parties there. Slowly, he and Fabri’s daughter, Ciana, got to know each other, but Fabri made sure his protégé knew that his daughter was off limits.”

Then the nun
continued with the sad story of Ciana and Russo as told to her by Gina. The nun had talked so long she took a sip of her coffee. “Gina wanted to see her father. She told people she didn’t remember him and needed to know what he was like. One day, she discovered letters among the papers in her grandfather’s office. Lo and behold, the letters were from Bishop Emeritus Trombetta—I had a feeling he was more involved than he revealed. Gina read them and found out that Russo had settled in a monastery near Collinaterra. When she and Nico came here, she started to look for him.

“
Days after Brother Pietro’s death, her grandfather also died. Gina had to return to Campofiore to take care of Fabri’s affairs at the same time she was grieving over her father’s loss. The big clue she gave me was that she knew an older man who wasn’t much younger than her father when she was seventeen. The man worked for her grandfather. Gina had a crush on him. He came round the mansion and sat with her in the garden. She said she was attracted to his mesmerizing eyes, green with yellow flecks. Years later, a much older man walked by Brother Pietro’s garden while she was sitting at the table there. He wore a monk’s habit like the hermits, but he also wore his cowl up, even though it was sunny outside. He looked at her and nodded. She recognized the green eyes with yellow flecks. She told me his name was Rocco DePollo. Since Mr. DePollo had worked for her grandfather’s company, I went to Busto Sistemi, and the chief was kind enough to provide me with these notes on the former employee.”

“Brother Bruno doesn’t have green eyes,” said Brother Salvatore. “They are golden-brown. I know
. I walked to the falls with him.”

“He had contacts,” said Morena. “Sister Angels had Renata go on a search for
contacts, and she told us he had the case in his cell. Draco and I didn’t make him take out the lenses. We figured he would remove them when he got too uncomfortable and would have to ask someone for drops or something at that time.”

“Father Rafaello, did you know Brother Bruno’
s background? You said you picked him because of his experience.”

“Yes. His resume included Busto Sistemi
as one of the companies he worked for. I checked what we knew of him again and noticed that no one could have verified that because he didn’t provide his real name. We’ll have to do without before we take in anyone else who doesn’t give us verifiable information first.”

“I’m afraid there are several places that we in the
Church have to close loopholes,” said Sister Angela. “But that said, shall we look at these notes now?”

“DePollo worked for Russo,” said Loria. “I see that. He had good reviews, but when Russo was moved up to senior vice president, he got rid of DePollo
. The reason given was that he was not a good programmer. Why the change?”

“I think they always say that when they fire someone,
” said the abbot. “Farther down, the ECO has added a postscript of some sort. ‘There’s no record of DePollo ever being hired back by Busto Sistemi, but Fabri hired the man as a personal assistant after Russo left the company.’ Russo must not have trusted DePollo. I have a feeling the victim thought he was a spy for the man in charge.”

“You don’t think Fabri sent him here to get Russo back after his daughter’s death, do you?” asked Sister Angela. “
Fabri was the only one who could have told DePollo where Russo ended up. Did Fabri actually send his assistant here to kill him? DePollo must have been angry, but Fabri was furious with Russo. I sure wish Fabri were still alive to answer that question.”

“We might find out m
ore when we interrogate DePollo,” said Morena.

“Without these notes, I had to make sure we had the right gu
y. Last night I discovered my computer file of notes had been erased. I set up my red-striped bag in my sitting room and told Brother Bruno that the computer file didn’t matter because I not only kept handwritten notes in my bag but also expected an email about a former employee from Busto Sistemi last night. Brother Bruno returned while I pretended to sleep. He checked my laptop, but the email didn’t arrive until sometime this morning. Then he took my red-striped bag.”

“I’m not sure where that falls in the police procedure booklet, Sister,” said Morena. “But you can work undercover for us anytime.”

The group relaxed.

“Why don’t you tell them what happened at the
falls today, Brother Salvatore?

“Brother Bruno told me
he thought he had seen the note we wanted. We surmised that Gina had written a note to lure Brother Pietro down to the falls, but that was before we knew about the camera and before Sister Angela had eliminated Gina as a suspect. So when Brother Bruno said he would take me to the place where the note was, I believed him. But when we got to the falls, I suddenly had a feeling he might be trying to hide something. After all, he could have stolen the murder weapon, Brother Valente’s knife. So I told him to search on the other side of the tiny pond, and I scanned the area on the first side. I forgot what he said, but while he was looking for the note on his side, I reached into his bag and found the knife. Right when I finished, he asked me to toss him his bag. I did. Then I climbed to the top of the falls, and when he tried to follow me, I asked him if he was looking for the knife. I dropped it over the crest of the falls. He dove into the pond at the bottom and that gave me an opening to run. I figured he would find the knife and then come after me. I guess he just stayed there and kept looking for it because the police and Father Rafaello arrived while he was still there.”

“You did a great job, Brother Sal
vatore, but real detectives aren’t daredevils,” said Morena.

“I know. I didn’t go with him to catch him doing something. I kind of liked him and
hoped he was telling me the truth.”

“In your defense,” said Sister Angela. “When you were coming down the side of the mountain, I definitely didn’t see a daredevil. You
r instinct was to run, and that was the right one.”

“One last item,” said Brother Salvatore. “Why do you suppose Brother Bruno included the pipe bomb, or whatever it was? It wasn’t necessar
y. The cottage blew up before the firework even went off.”

“I wouldn’t
be here if that thingamabob hadn’t gone off. I guess Brother Bruno knew the Church well enough. He figured they would send an expert who specialized in spiritual phenomena instead of murders. I also believe Father Sergio actually assumed that’s who he sent. Conveying that type of investigator to Santo Velo would delay any real examination of the scene and give the culprit time to get away.”

“But s
ay you deemed it a real miracle,” said the monk. “Wouldn’t that have made him mad too? He would be seeing his nemesis, Russo, promoted again, this time on his way to sainthood.”

“
You’re right. Brother Bruno would have lost either way.”

Sist
er Angela sipped on an orange fizzy as she watched the monks slowly wind down on their drinks. The monks needed a Thursday night in Avalle to prove the monastery had not changed.

“You don’t get drunk if you drink and then dance real hard,” said Brother Salvatore, moving his feet like he was going to run again.

Brother Alonzo didn’t move from his seat at the table. He just watched.

“Aren’t you going to dance, Brother Alonzo?”
asked Sister Angela.

“No. I don’t dance.”

“Are you still angry about your knives? At least the diver found the one in the pond. I’m sorry the police took it with them. Maybe I can get Father Rafaello to buy you a new one.”

Brother Valente waltz
ed by the table. “Hey, Brother Alonzo, you laughed at me for loving my knife and now you’re moping around about yours.”

“It wasn’t even your knife, Brother. You fell in love with
my
knife. You didn’t even take care of it. You’ll never get that one back.”

“Now boys,” Sister Angela said. “This is supposed to be a fun night.”

“Who told you that?” asked Brother Alonzo. “Hey, Brother Salvatore, I see you’re miraculously cured of your injury. You can get up and make us breakfast tomorrow. The only one having fun is twinkle toes, still refusing to grow up.”