Liquid Desires (23 page)

“I imagine so, but that's for him and Mirko to work out if it ever turns up.”

“You know, Urbino,” the Contessa said, slowly picking off some brown leaves from a zinnia plant, “I'm beginning to breathe a little more freely—about Alvise, I mean.”

Urbino stirred uneasily in his chair.

“Both Violetta Volpi and Brollo consider it ridiculous that Alvise—or anyone other than Brollo himself—was Flavia's father,” the Contessa went on. “And Novembrini said that Flavia never even brought up the topic with him. I agree with Lorenzo Brollo. This idea about Alvise started somehow with Ladislao Mirko,” the Contessa said with an air of forced confidence, making Urbino feel increasingly uncomfortable. “Flavia trusted him. Adolescent bonds are almost impossible to break. He might have been able to get some power over her by planting that lie in her pretty little head. Drugs will drive people to do anything, and if he was in love with her—or whatever you want to call it!—it might have been his way of getting some kind of revenge when she wanted to be nothing more than his friend. Of course, there's Annabella Brollo and her strange comment about how a mother should know the father of her own child. Somehow, though, I think that if you spoke with Annabella she would say that it was Violetta who poisoned the girl's mind just as Violetta said about her.”

The Contessa got up and went over to the fountain with a statue of the flutist of spring by Antonio Bonazza. She took out a lace handkerchief, dipped it in the water and, after wringing it out, applied it to her temple. When she turned back to Urbino, tears were in her eyes.

“I'm so ashamed of myself,
caro!
All I seem to care about is Alvise. You must find me a monster! It's Flavia I should be thinking about—and the person somewhere out there who killed her for whatever twisted reason! Now that we know that none of that drug was found in her system, it's become even more clear to me that she didn't commit suicide. I don't know what's the matter with the substitute prosecutor and Gemelli!”

“I don't think Gemelli is quite so sure about suicide anymore.”

“What is he waiting for? Does he want you to make a fool of yourself or—or worse?” she said, glancing nervously at his eye. “He should be looking into what Lorenzo Brollo or Violetta Volpi have to gain from Flavia's death. It's obvious from what you've told me that both of them are afraid to show any guilt even though they
say
that they believe she committed suicide. I ask you! Is that normal? They should be ravaged with guilt.
I
think they're afraid to show it because one—or both—of them are guilty in a worse way.”

“I agree with you, Barbara.”

“So go after them!” she said, as if she were talking about foxes on a hunt.

“That's exactly what I'm doing.”

Footsteps sounded on the pebbled path. A few moments later the Contessa's maid, Rosa, came into the
giardino segreto
.

“Milo has returned, Contessa.”

With a quick glance at Urbino, the Contessa got up.

“
Grazie
, Rosa. Could we go back to the house, Urbino?”

She gave him her arm and, with Rosa hurrying ahead of them, they walked in silence back to the house. While the Contessa was talking to Milo, Urbino went to the balcony outside the
salotto verde
to join Eugene and Occhipinti. The birdlike man stared at Urbino's bruise but didn't say anything.

“I guess the time has come to drag me back to Venice!” Eugene said. “I won't be leavin' without regret. It's not just all the peace and quiet and fresh air. It's the Countess. She's a mighty fine woman. We've enjoyed our confabs. Your ears were probably burnin' back in that little palace of yours, Urbino!”

“Eugenio loves to talk, yes,” Occhipinti came close to chirping. “I've learned many new English words.”

“Listen to him!” Eugene said. “There's nothin' he can learn from me! He's always spoutin' that English poet! He even taught me some. How did it go, Sylvester? ‘Dust and ashes, dead and done with'—then something about Venice.”

“‘Venice spent what Venice earned,'” Occhipinti finished for him.

“By the way, Signor Occhipinti,” Urbino said. “I thought I saw you in Venice yesterday in the San Polo quarter.”

“I don't know what you mean,” Occhipinti said, eyes blinking behind his round spectacles. Perspiration gleamed on his bald head. “I haven't been in Venice since last week. You're not trying to blame your bruise on me, are you? Ha, ha! Eugene said they were much younger men than me. I don't even have the energy to walk Pompilia these days.”

“Come on there, Sylvester. You've got a powerful lot of strength! By the way, Urbino, why are the two of you so formal with each other? It didn't take Sylvester and me all that long to get on a first-name basis. What's this ‘Signor Occhi' and ‘Signor Macintyre' all about anyway?”

“Your cousin is a very polite man, Eugenio. He inspires me. Young people today have thrown so much to the winds.”

“Urbino's only a few years younger than I am, Sylvester. Are you tryin' to tell me I was steppin' over the mark by bein' so palsy with you right away?”

Occhipinti clearly didn't follow what Eugene was saying, his answer only a shrug of his thin shoulders. The Contessa came out from the
salotto verde
, carrying a large woven-leather Bottega Veneta bag.

“We should leave. Urbino and Eugene shouldn't get back to Venice too late. Urbino, I must say you look marvelously restored in only a short time. You see how easy it is to pay me a quick visit? But let's go to the car. If we leave now, we'll have time to stop at the Ponte degli Alpini in Bassano del Grappa. Silvestro insists on buying Eugene a grappa at Nardini's,” she explained with a little smile. “Terrible stuff, that grappa, but maybe it'll attack the vestiges of that cold you have, Silvestro dear. Urbino and I can take a walk while you two indulge yourselves.”

The Contessa's face no longer looked as pained as it had in the
giardino segreto
, but was now softened with a little smile, as if she were in possession of a private joke.

21

On the drive from Asolo to Bassano del Grappa for their stopover at the Ponte degli Alpini, the Contessa commented on the scene outside for Eugene's benefit, but she seemed preoccupied.

“You know, Countess Barbara,” Eugene said as the Bentley turned into a narrow street off Piazza Libertà and continued toward the Alpine Bridge, the Ponte Vecchio of Bassano, “Urbino and I can just as easily take the train back to Venice. No criticism intended of your fine car, of course, or of Milo here. Besides, Milo told me he just returned from Venice. We wouldn't want him scootin' back and forth just for our convenience.”

“He loves to drive,” the Contessa said, as if Milo wanted nothing more than to be in perpetual motion and in someone else's service. “One of these days, Urbino,” she said quickly, reaching over to touch his shoulder, “we're going to take a motoring tour of Europe in true turn-of-the-century style.”

Parking was restricted in the area of the Ponte degli Alpini. The covered timber bridge itself was closed to everything except pedestrians and bicycles. Milo pulled the Bentley over on the street above the bridge.

The four of them got out and walked the short distance to the bridge designed by Palladio in the sixteenth century. Eugene and Occhipinti went into the wooden shop on the left. Nardini's was the oldest grappa distillery in Italy and carried the strong brandy in many flavors.

Urbino and the Contessa walked along the bridge that spanned the Brenta River. They went past the little houses with their fading frescoes until they reached the middle. Here, a point of vantage provided a view over the Brenta. Buildings, some with wooden balconies, lined the river, which came down from the foothills of the Alps and Monte Grappa. A strong Austrian flavor permeated the scene.

“Eugene is trying to enlist my aid in getting you to meet with Evangeline, you know. I told him that you always do exactly what you want. The worst thing was to try to pressure you, but what made your obstinacy bearable was that you usually ended up doing the right thing in the end. He was more than skeptical about that. ‘Maybe for
you
, Countess,' he said. ‘I can see he wants to please you.' Your ex—brother-in-law seems to think we have a much closer relationship in certain areas than we do. As he said last night, ‘He always did like older women. Maybe that was one of the problems with Evangeline.'”

She stood at the rail and gazed off at the mountains for a few moments before turning back to Urbino and gently touching his bruised eye.

“The bruise should go away in a day or two.
Poverino!
You don't know how you make me worry! I know you care more about having lost the scrapbook than having been hurt like this. It's such an infuriating loss, isn't it? To think we'll probably never know what was in it.”

Quite inappropriately, a shadow of a smile curved the Contessa's lips. It threw Urbino a little off balance.

“But don't feel too responsible,
caro
,” the Contessa continued, her words of comfort almost like a gentle chastisement. The shadow of a smile was still there on her lips. “I hope that Brollo's not too hard on you when he finds out—or Ladislao Mirko, for that matter.”

Urbino felt like a little boy squirming uncomfortably as he was being made to feel guilty.

“I'll give the police a call when I get back to Venice.”

To his surprise, the Contessa shook her head slowly and said, “I wouldn't do that if I were you,
caro
.”

“Why not?”

“Because of this.”

She opened her Bottega Veneta bag and reached inside. She took out Flavia's scrapbook.

“But, Barbara, however do
you
come to have it?”

The Contessa was smiling now without any restraint. It made Urbino feel good, despite his puzzlement, to see her smile.

“Because Milo went to Venice to collect it,” the Contessa explained.

“Milo?”

“Your housekeeper, Natalia, called La Muta a few hours ago. The police tried to get in touch with you at the Palazzo Uccello. They said they had found the scrapbook and were bringing it over. I told Natalia I would send Milo to get it from her. There was always the chance you and Eugene might stay until tomorrow, and I knew you'd want to have it. It certainly looks like the police are being accommodating. You must have impressed them with how important it might be. And I'm sure Corrado had something to do with it. He heard last night about your mugging and told me all about it when he called back with the information I asked for. He assured me that you were fine but that you were
‘molto turbato,'
as he put it, to have lost a book of some kind. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

Urbino now realized why the Contessa hadn't seemed surprised when he told her about the attack earlier—and why she had seemed so solicitous over the phone last night.

He took the album from her. The back cover and the edges of some of the pages were soiled. He opened it and leafed through it quickly.

“Anything missing?” the Contessa asked.

“I wouldn't know.”

“I wouldn't be surprised if Mirko took something out of it himself before he gave it to you,” the Contessa said. “I started to glance through it but decided to leave it for you. My fear was stronger than my curiosity. Go through it and let me know what you find, but don't spare my feelings. They're the least thing we should take into consideration. The truth above all,
caro
, but let it be a gentle one.” The Contessa gazed toward the mountains again. “I've been concerned for myself during the past two weeks, but I don't want the truth for only myself now, but for Flavia, too. What about
her?
If the poor girl was murdered, who did it, and did it have anything at all to do with Alvise? And if she killed herself, did I contribute to it by how I behaved toward her? I'm afraid there's no way that I'm not going to feel a blow from all this when the truth, whatever it is, comes out. I'm going to lose in some way in the end, I just know it.”

Despite the gentle warmth of the early evening, she shivered, but the next moment a smile was on her face again. She looked at Urbino and touched his arm.

“I trust you,
caro
. You can't change the truth but you'll find out what it is and be the one to tell me. Ah! there are Eugene and Silvestro.” She lifted her hand to the two men who had just emerged from Nardini's, both of them more red-faced than they had been a short time ago. “Go back to Venice with your ex-brother-in-law and continue your sleuthing, but be careful,” she continued, putting her arm through Urbino's. “It seems that those men who attacked you had nothing to do with Flavia since they discarded her scrapbook, but what do we really know at this point?”

Very little, Urbino answered silently, and perhaps a great deal too much as well. As he and the Contessa walked toward Eugene and Occhipinti, he hoped that Flavia's scrapbook would provide some insight into what had happened to her before her body surfaced in the Grand Canal beneath the flamboyant
Angel of the Citadel
statue with its erect penis.

“Sex and death,” Urbino said involuntarily, thinking aloud. When he said this, the image of Nicolina Ricci flashed across his eyes and he seemed to see something else flashing as well—not a face but words, brightly lit words. What were they?

The Contessa looked up at Urbino sharply. Eugene was calling their names and waving a Tyrolean hat he had somehow come in possession of. As the Contessa and Urbino were about to join the two men, the Contessa repeated what she had said earlier, but this time much more quietly.

“I trust you,
caro
.”

More than ever before, Urbino felt the weight of the Contessa's trust. It was very heavy indeed.