Treachery in Tuscany, page 20
I finished my gelato and walked a little faster. My phone rang as I crossed the piazza, heading toward the convent. “Alex!” I said. “I’m glad it’s you. I should’ve called you earlier.”
Though he tried for initial pleasantries, I detected something ominous in his voice.
“Are you all right?” I asked, thinking first, as I always did, about his health.
“Nothing wrong with me,” he said, “but I’m afraid there’s something very wrong here. Bianca came back, and—Jordan, this is all so terribly confusing.”
“Bianca’s back? Isn’t that a good thing?” I said before it hit me. Bianca would have come back for one reason, only. She had returned to tell the Moretti family everything.
And that was exactly what she’d done.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how it all happened, but Angelica is beside herself. The very idea that Raffaele has a family in another part of Italy, that he’s deceived everyone for many years, and Sophie was his daughter”—Alex’s heightened emotion was not like him, but he had witnessed Angelica’s reaction to this shocking news. How upsetting it must have been to him—to everyone at the villa.
“I’m so sorry, Alex. It’s hard to believe,” I said.
He waited a beat. “Jordan, you didn’t know about this, did you?”
I hesitated, but I had to be truthful. “Not until yesterday,” I said. “I couldn’t tell you, not on the phone. I saw Raff at the police station. That’s how I found out.”
He didn’t reply immediately, but then he said, “I’m going to stay here a while longer. For Angelica. Rob and Ambra have asked me to stay.”
“Of course you should,” I said.
Before we ended the call, I asked if Bianca was still at the villa. Alex said she was clearing out all of her things. He had no idea where she was going.
I was sure I’d never have the chance to ask her any questions about Sophie.
“So cruel,” Alex said. “So very cruel.” I suspected he was talking about Bianca, the cruelty she’d shown in revealing Raff’s treachery to Angelica. Like hitting Angelica with a brick.
But Alex could have meant Raff, who had left so much heartbreak in his path.
* * * * *
Paul had texted once, earlier in the day. Apparently, he’d spent the afternoon making and receiving calls to and from Paris and the States. He would come by for me at six-thirty, he said. “I want to show you a sight you should not miss. Please be sure you will be warm.”
I checked the time as I approached the convent, glad I’d have a chance to unwind—more than two hours—but also feeling the electric anticipation of being with Paul again, something new and thrilling and confusing, too, because in a couple of days we’d leave Florence, and what then? Could I be satisfied with calling it an exciting, lovely fling and letting it go at that?
Just outside the entrance, Ivonna passed by on her Vespa and waved. She pulled her motorscooter around to the side of the convent, and, since I’d followed her on Sunday, I knew she’d be coming through the garden and entering the building near the breakfast room. I retrieved my room key from the office and went to meet her.
She used the stepping stones that led around the fountain but did not continue into the maze of hedges—or past that into the property I’d discovered on Sunday. Outside the French doors, where I waited, Ivonna stopped to clean off her boots. “So much mud!” she said. “What a rainstorm last night! Were you awake when the storm came?”
“I wasn’t here last night,” I said.
Ivonna winked, surprising me, for she was typically so formal. “He is very handsome, Signora.”
What could I say? I gave a little laugh. “He’s quite charming.” I told her I wasn’t expecting to be at the convent tonight, either. My uncle was in Tuscany, I said. He wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, at the earliest.
When she finished wiping her boots on the grass, also using a tissue she’d pulled from her backpack, we went inside. I stopped at the vending machine for a bottle of water and bought one for Ivonna, also.
“How much longer will you be in Florence?” she asked.
“We’re scheduled to leave on Friday,” I said, and I felt a stitch in my chest, knowing then that what I’d been thinking had just become more real.
She thanked me for the water. “You are kind. I will miss you,” she said.
“I’ll miss you, too,” I said. “I’ll miss Florence—everything about it.”
A minute later—maybe more than a minute because the elevator took a while—I was on my floor. A couple of turns, and I came to the hall with all the guest rooms, mine at the other end. Luigi had opened an access panel and was shining a flashlight into the mechanical shaft. I hadn’t seen behind the access panel next to my room, but one would expect the mechanical shafts to be similar in their contents. I noted that this one was located next to number 11, the room that belonged to Varinia and Carlo Santoro.
I greeted Luigi. He smiled and nodded, always a pleasant man, but I could see he was distracted. I wished I knew how to tell him that I was an architect and the pipes and ductwork and wiring, especially in historic buildings, were all interesting to me. He didn’t seem to be bothered by my curiosity, so I moved closer. He focused the beam of his flashlight on the narrow section of floor just inside the large rectangular opening. A long moment—both of us studying what we were seeing—and Luigi looked back at me. His expression told me what I had no trouble understanding: These muddy footprints are not mine. Who has been here?
Chapter 36
“Do you know if there are any plans—blueprints, architectural plans—of the convent?” I asked Ivonna, trying to curb my impatience. I had waited so long for the elevator that I finally ran down the hall and took the stairs. Then I’d had to wait for Ivonna to finish a phone call.
From her seat behind the computer, she frowned. I tried to clarify. “Drawings of the building. Construction drawings.”
“The building is very old,” Ivonna said.
I didn’t expect to find plans from the fifteenth century, but I’d hoped there might be as-built drawings, done when renovations had taken place. Clearly there had been a few renovations over the period of five centuries.
Her expression changed suddenly, her eyes widening. “There is a book in the library that might have pictures.”
I sighed, and I’m sure I sounded disappointed. “Where is the library?”
She must have read my mind because she said, “I do not mean the big biblioteca for the city. No, I am thinking of our library on il primo piano.” She gave a little laugh. “We call it our library though it is really a very small reading room, with only a few books. But I know of a book that one of our own Sisters wrote about how Convento di Santa Francesca Firenze survived the flood of 1966. Do you know of that terrible flood?
“I’ve heard stories.” Mostly, stories about the important art that was lost—thousands of paintings, frescoes, and sculptures, destroyed by water or mud. From all over the world, volunteers—“mud angels” they were called—flocked to the city to help in the rescue effort.
“There was so much damage to the convent, but many donations came in, and we were able to repair.” Again, a smile. “I do not mean that I was alive when it happened. I was not, of course. My mamma was very young, herself, but my nonna has told stories, and Sister Assunta, also. She showed me the book, and I remember many pictures.”
Pictures weren’t the same as floor plans, but they might be useful. I asked Ivonna if she could show me to the reading room. She wasn’t able to leave the office, but she told me how to locate it and said, “The room is never locked, and you will have no trouble finding the book.” She gave approximate measurements with her hands—an oversized book.
The small reading room, on Alex’s floor, was furnished as one might expect to find in an elderly grandmother’s house, complete with a profusion of doilies that I imagined the nuns crocheted. I sniffed the musty air, though the room looked clean—no visible cobwebs or dust. The smell became stronger when I reached the two shelves of books. Most of them looked old enough to have survived the 1966 flood, which might have accounted for the odor. Only one book was eleven by fourteen. I pulled it out, felt a surge of satisfaction that this had been so easy, so far, and sat down at a round table that was covered with a crocheted tablecloth.
It didn’t help that I couldn’t read Italian, but the photographs were instructive—many photos of the flooded grounds and building. Others showed the construction work in progress, and not just in the basement, which must have contained at least four feet of water, judging from the “before and after” pictures. It seemed the flood—and the subsequent donations that Ivonna mentioned—had offered an unprecedented opportunity. The large central skylight was installed, perhaps an after-the-fact of a roof damaged beyond repair. But the pages of the book that intrigued me most were the parts about the installation of new mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, contained in two mechanical shafts that ran vertically through all the floors.
And yes, there were a few drawings. Three pages of drawings.
I took the book to Ivonna and asked if I could get copies of pages, making the drawings larger. She was happy to oblige. Moments later she returned to the counter with my book and spread out the copies for me to approve. As I examined them and concluded that they were as sharp as we could get, Varinia Santoro came into the office, carrying her drawstring bag that apparently held clean laundry. Ivonna produced her room key. Staring at the drawings I’d had Ivonna copy, Varinia said nothing. Nothing to me, not even grazie when Ivonna handed her the key. She blinked several times in rapid succession as she regarded the elevations, a section showing the vertical shaft, and a couple of detail drawings that showed how the components fit together. I had the distinct impression that she knew exactly what they were.
Ivonna’s smile was amused, as she watched the hasty retreat of the tall, big-boned Varinia, decked out in a flowing caftan that seemed highly inappropriate for a trip to the laundromat. “A very unusual woman, and her husband, also,” Ivonna said. Peculiar was the word that came to my mind. Before I could add a comment, Ivonna leaned on the counter and said, sotto voce, “She has only once allowed the housekeeper to clean their room.”
“Did the housekeeper say there was anything odd about what they had in the room? What was so secretive?” I asked, also in a stage whisper.
“Signora Santoro wanted only the sheets changed and the floor swept. She would not let the housekeeper clean the bathroom.”
I asked how much longer Varinia and Carlo were staying, and Ivonna said they were scheduled to check out on Friday. Friday, the same day Alex and I planned to leave.
I thanked Ivonna for the copies. A thought struck me at the door, and I turned back. “Did anyone else ask to see this book? Recently, I mean.”
Ivonna thought about it.
“It was some time ago, many months. I have worked at the convent two years, and I had not been here long. Some members of a historical society met with Sister Assunta, and they took this book for a while. I think they wanted to make it available for people to buy online—because it was fifty years since the flood.”
In the reading room, before I replaced the book on the shelf, I checked the Amazon site on my phone and keyed the title into the search box. There it was. This book had come out last year as an e-book.
Another trip downstairs and outside, to the garden. I was surprised that no one else was there. Luck seemed to be with me. I had seen the old grilles along the wall at the foundation level, vents for the basement, but only at a distance. I studied one of the drawings I’d brought with me, the elevation that helped me judge which vent might be closest to the mechanical shaft that Luigi had been inspecting. Even with the aid of my phone’s flashlight I probably wouldn’t get a clear view of the basement area—or was it just a crawl space?—but the wheels of my mind kept turning, spinning out possibilities. Perhaps I could see enough to confirm that if someone managed to enter the basement through the vent, it might be possible to gain entry into the mechanical shaft.
I squatted in front of the old, rusty, decorative grille. The ground was muddy, and I wasn’t the first to be at that spot since the heavy rain. The footprints were not clearly defined, but I tried not to disturb them. Examining the grille, I drew in a sharp breath. The grille wasn’t attached. Screws should have secured it within the opening, but they were gone.
I removed the grille, set it against the building, and used the flashlight to illuminate the unfinished area. My heart began to thrum. I knew what I needed to do. I had to get in there. My experiences in tight, dark places came flooding back, and even if I could make myself go in, would I be able to squeeze through the rectangular space? I looked behind and around me again. No one else was in the courtyard, and maybe that was a sign. I took a long, deep breath and climbed through the opening.
The drop to the ground was about two feet. Once inside, I tried to think of historic buildings in Savannah with their old basements or cellars—nothing new to me, though I wouldn’t be checking out this kind of space alone, and we’d bring plenty of light with us. The smell was what I’d expected—musty. This was much more roomy than a crawl space. I could move around.
Though my light wasn’t bright, I was able to make out a metal enclosure, a little room with a door. I knew from the drawings that it enclosed the furnace, electrical panels, the ductwork and wiring that threaded through the vertical shaft, as well as water pipes affixed to the side of the shaft. All of this would be accessible only with a key—one of Luigi’s keys. The keys that were stolen when he was mugged.
I had what I needed. To be sure there was nothing more I could accomplish here, I made a sweep with my flashlight before I turned it off. I hoisted myself up at the opening, and scrambled through it.
I put the grille back in place. With my phone, I snapped several photos of the ground in front of the vent. Bending to make a closer examination of the footprints, I saw that the partial impressions were distinct enough to suggest they were made by a small shoe. Smaller than mine.
Just in time, I turned toward the French doors, which opened for two women I recognized from the breakfast room. Speaking in Italian—I was pretty sure it was Italian—they were deeply involved in their topic and barely noticed me.
My heartbeat was slowing—nearly back to normal. I headed to my room. Luigi had left the hall and locked the access door. But I’d seen the muddy footprints just inside the mechanical shaft. I had figured out how someone was able to enter the garden, the basement, and the mechanical shaft, to get to this floor. And I believed I knew who that someone was.
Chapter 37
“Jordan, that is all—quite extraordinary,” Paul said.
We were in the back seat of the car that had brought him to the convent, now headed south, away from the Arno. All that I’d discovered and concluded since we’d last texted, I simply couldn’t contain. I couldn’t stop myself, even knowing, as I did, that Paul was taking me to some special place and that, not the identity of jewel thieves, should be my priority tonight.
Paul’s slight frown indicated curiosity, though, not frustration with me, so I let it all spill out. “I’ve been wondering if Carlo could walk. I’ve seen his feet move—just enough to make me suspicious. But I couldn’t imagine why anyone who could walk would want to be in a wheelchair. Now it all makes sense. No one would guess that he’s the cat burglar.”
Paul’s response was an amused smile.
“You don’t believe me,” I said.
“I believe everything you have told me, Jordan. The man is small enough to climb up the vertical shaft, which would be too tight for most men, and his feet are small enough to make the footprints you saw in the mud and on the floor when the access door was open. But these things are, as they say, circumstantial.”
He was right. I had nothing concrete, just as I had nothing concrete to prove that Sophie had been murdered. Maybe I was looking a little downcast because he took my hand and gave a gentle squeeze. “And yet,” he said, “circumstantial evidence can be quite powerful.”
I thought of all the strange, suspicious behaviors the couple had exhibited, and I began to recap for Paul. The housekeeper could only enter the Santoros’ room when they were present and she was never allowed to clean the bathroom. What were they hiding? Varinia’s trip to the laundry hadn’t sent off bells of alarm until I realized that the person who entered the convent through the basement could not have missed getting mud on him—not just on his shoes, but on his clothing, as well. “Whoever climbed up the vertical shaft came out onto the hall through the access door, which is adjacent to the Santoros’ room,” I said. “Varinia was probably waiting, watching, and she may have wiped up mud that was left in the hall, but Carlo had locked the access door behind him, overlooking the mud that Luigi later discovered.”
A thought zipped through my mind, so reasonable that I couldn’t imagine why I was just now thinking it. I said, “Sophie saw something on Friday night, the night the police thwarted another burglary. What if she saw Carlo coming from the access door? It would be just five or six steps to his room, and maybe Varinia had their door open, but if Sophie had even a glimpse—no wonder Varinia tried to make her believe she was so drunk she couldn’t trust what she saw.”
