078 The Phantom Of Venice (2 page)

“I’ll be glad to come!” she said warmly. “And don’t worry, Tara, you’ll bear up, I’m sure of that. Just think how happy your dad would be to know you’ve come all this way for his sake!”

This time it was Tara who squeezed Nancy’s hand.

As their plane circled in for a landing, the scene below was almost like a map. They saw part of the Eastern shore of the Italian boot, bordering the Adriatic Sea. The shoreline was indented by a vast shallow bay, or lagoon. This was protected from the sea by a thin sandy strip of shoal or beachland, called the Lido, which stretched across the mouth of the bay like a chain. Inside this chain, on the blue-green waters of the lagoon, floated the island city of Venice.

They debarked at Marco Polo Airport just outside the coastal town of Mestre. From here they rode a bus across the double railroad-and-car bridge, which extended out over the lagoon for five miles, to the nearest tip of Venice.

Thus it was from the bus window that the two girls had their first glimpse of the lovely city rising from the water, the
Serenissima,
or Most Serene, as Venice was called centuries ago, when she was an independent republic and a great maritime power.

“Isn’t it beautiful!” said Tara. “Just like all the pictures I’ve ever seen of it. But I still don’t understand why they built Venice on water.”

“From what I’ve read,” said Nancy, “they hadn’t much choice. Rome was crumbling, and Italy was being invaded by barbarians. The only place people could take refuge was on the marshy little islands out in the lagoon. And their settlement gradually turned into Venice.”

“When you think of it like that, the result seems almost like magic!”

The bus left them on the car-landing, called the
Piazzale Roma,
just across the Grand Canal from the Santa Lucia train station. The place was a beehive of activity. A
vaporetto,
one of the steam launches that serve as public buses in Venice, was unloading passengers, prior to leaving on a return trip down the canal.

Tara said that her travel agent, for reasons of economy, had booked her into a
pensione,
or boarding house, rather than a hotel. “It’s in the San Polo district,” she said, fishing out the address.

“Oh, good! We’re in San Polo now,” said Nancy. “That’s the first district on the Right Bank of the Grand Canal. We might even be able to walk it from here, if we had no luggage to carry.”

In the end, the girls hired a gondola, which soon deposited them on the narrow quay in front of a pink-stuccoed house with a sign over the door,
Pensione Dandolo.

The motherly landlady, Signora Dandolo, welcomed her new guest with a warm smile and readily agreed that Nancy could leave her suitcases in Tara’s room while the two girls went on to the home of Tara’s late father.

“Ah,
si!
That is only a few minutes’ walk from here!” Mrs. Dandolo told them after hearing the address. “My son, Zorzi, will show you the way!”

The lively ten-year-old proudly escorted the two
pretty
Americane
to their destination, a stately but rather narrow, yellowish-brown building that looked about two centuries old.

“Grazie tanto, Signorine!”
the boy exclaimed when the girls tipped him. “Any time you need a guide, please to call on Zorzi!”

“We’ll remember!” Nancy promised.

Inside the vestibule, Tara rang a bell under a small card bearing the name,
Sra. Angela Spinelli.

Moments later, the ring was answered by a Venetian quite different from anyone either girl had expected. Nancy caught her breath and her heart skipped a beat as their eyes met.

The young man who had just opened the door was, beyond question, the most gorgeous man she had ever seen!

The young man’s hair was dark and curly, his eyes a rich greenish-amber. When he smiled—and he was smiling now as he regarded the two pretty girls standing on the doorstep—he revealed gleaming, even white teeth and a dimple at each corner of his mouth.

“Si . . . ?”

His questioning voice as he looked at them sounded, to Nancy’s ears at least, as melodious as Luciano Pavarotti’s. He was not quite as tall as the average movie hero—perhaps five-nine or five-ten, at most—but his slim figure was beautifully proportioned, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and his chest and bare arms, revealed by his open-necked,
short-sleeved knit shirt, were smoothly and gloriously muscled.

His smile gave way to a throaty chuckle, and Nancy became abruptly and embarrassingly aware that she had been staring at him, and so had her girl friend.

“Ah,
si! Ma certo!”
he exclaimed to Tara. “You must be Signorina Egan!”

“Y-y-yes, I am. And this is my . . . my friend, Nancy Drew.”

A thrill ran through the teenager from River Heights as his lustrous eyes rested on her—for only a brief moment, but long enough to notice her attractive face and figure.

“Delighted to meet you both, Signorine! Please to come in!”

As he led the way from the tiled vestibule up a dark, well-worn flight of stairs, the young man went on, half turning as he spoke,
“Mi perdonate
for not introducing myself. I forget my manners. I am Giovanni Spinelli, but you must call me simply Gianni!”

He pronounced his nickname like “Zanni.” Nancy suddenly realized that this was Venetian dialect, which meant that Zorzi’s real name therefore was “Giorgio.”

The stairway led to a second-floor apartment with a cluttered and disorderly, but cheerful, lived-in look. The furniture and carpeting seemed old and worn, but there were gay, colorful touches all about in
the form of batik drapes, oriental cushions, sculptured ornaments and wall paintings.

An attractive blond woman in her late thirties emerged from the kitchen in response to a volley of Italian from Gianni. As he gestured toward Tara, the woman rushed up to her and, with tears in her eyes, embraced the American girl emotionally. “Ah,
mia poverina!
To think that we must meet at last under such unhappy circumstances! I am Angela, of course, Angela Spinelli, your father’s dear friend! He loved you so much and spoke of you so often and so fondly!”

It was obvious from the moisture glistening in her own eyes that Tara Egan was deeply moved. She introduced Nancy to Angela, who in turn explained that Gianni was her younger brother. She begged the American girls to join them in a meal of pasta, but upon learning that they had already lunched aboard the plane from Rome, she contented herself with serving them caffe espresso and dainty little almond-flavored Italian cookies.

“And now,” Signora Spinelli said when her two visitors had been shown the proper hospitality, “I know that the time has come that we must talk about your father, my dear Tara, even though this will pain us both. No doubt you will wish to know the unhappy facts concerning his death.”

Tara could only nod and bite her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

“What I can tell you will not take long,” Angela
went on sadly. “Rolf, your father, was returning home late one night in a hired gondola. Suddenly a shot rang out from the
fondamenta,
one of the quays or stone curbs that they were passing. This is what the gondolier reported later to the police, you understand? He said the noise startled him, and he looked to see where it came from, so at first he did not notice what was happening to your father. But then, from the corner of his eye, he saw his passenger toppling overboard. As he turned in horror, he saw your father fall with a splash into the water!”

“B-but didn’t he try to rescue Daddy?!” Tara exclaimed.

“Oh yes, of course, my dear! He rowed around and around, searching everywhere. But in the dark it was not easy to see, and although he spent much time looking, he says your father did not appear again above water.”

Tara Egan burst into tears. Gianni, who had not taken a chair and was hovering about the room while the others conversed, rushed to comfort her.

“Please! Do not weep, Signorina! It is most painful to Angela and me to see you grieving so! Believe me, we are ready to do whatever we can to help!”

As he spoke, Gianni stroked Tara’s arm and hand. Until now, the smiling, handsome young man had seemed so vain and cocksure that Nancy was startled by his sudden change of manner and his tender concern for Tara Egan.

Aloud, Nancy said cautiously. “May I too ask a question about Mr. Egan, Signora?”

Angela Spinelli flung out her hands.
“Ma naturalmente!
Of course you may ask,
cara!
You are a friend of Rolf Egan’s daughter, and the two of you have come here together to learn what happened to him. What is it you wish to know?”

“Are we to understand that he was—shot to death?”

Angela shrugged her shoulders expressively. “As to that, who can say, my dear? The gondolier reported only that he heard a gun go off, or rather, what
sounded
like a gun going off. He cannot even be sure it
was
a shot.”

“But if Daddy wasn’t hit, why else would he have fallen overboard?!” Tara hastened to protest.

“Please do not be offended,
cara,
when I tell you that the gondolier said Rolf had been drinking
vino
that night, perhaps too much
vino.
The police say that he was probably tipsy and that is why he fell overboard. Or if there was, indeed, a shot, then the noise may have startled him and caused him to lose his balance—which, again, could explain why he fell into the water.”

There was a sob in Signora Spinelli’s voice as she spoke, and she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. Despite her rather operatic manner and gestures, Nancy sensed that she had loved Rolf Egan very much and was as deeply grieved over losing him as Tara.

“What did the gondolier see when he looked toward
the sound?” Nancy asked gently. “Could he make out anyone on the quay?”

“He is unsure of that, also. He
thinks
he may have noticed something move—as if, for instance, someone had darted into a passageway between two buildings. It could have been a gunman, perhaps. But his attention was distracted almost at once by his passenger falling into the water, so he had no chance to see clearly. Besides, it was very dark along the canal at the place where the accident occurred, and the only light came from the gondolier’s own lantern.”

“And Mr. Egan’s body was never recovered?”

“Unfortunately not. The police assume that the current and tide carried it far out into the lagoon, perhaps even out to sea.”

Tara was sobbing softly now, and Gianni continued to comfort her with pats on the shoulder. Angela Spinelli looked at them. Nancy could see that she was proud of her handsome young brother, and it was not hard to understand why. With his dark good looks and sleek athletic build, a good many Venetian girls and female tourists were no doubt attracted to him. Nancy realized her own gaze was continually straying in his direction, and she could feel a tingling warmth spreading through her whenever she let her eyes linger.

It’s a good thing I won’t be seeing too much of this fellow, she thought, or I could easily wind up being Female Victim Number nine hundred forty-seven!

Nevertheless, Nancy’s feelings toward Gianni
weren’t totally positive. There was a certain glitter in his luminous dark eyes, and a feline grace to his rippling muscular movements which seemed to hint that he could be as cruel and heartless as he was handsome.

Looking back at his sister, Nancy said, “Tell me, Signora, wh—”

“Please! You must call me Angela.”

“Very well . . . Angela . . . what do
you
think happened to Tara’s father? Did someone kill him?”

“Ah,
mamma mia!
How can you ask me such a terrible question?! I simply do not know!”

“Did he have any enemies? Was there anyone who might have wanted to harm him?”

This time Signora Spinelli took longer to answer. At last she shook her head. “No . . . none that I know of.”

Yet Nancy, observing the expression that flickered over her face, strongly suspected that thoughts had just passed through Angela’s mind that might well have some bearing on Rolf Egan’s tragic mishap.

Tara, meanwhile, had stopped crying with a final convulsive sob. “Nancy’s good at solving mysteries,” she murmured tearfully. “In fact, in America, she’s quite famous as a detective.”

“Èvvero?”
said Angela with a look of surprise. “Then perhaps one day she may be able to explain to us all this terrible thing that happened to your
caro padre!”

But Signora Spinelli’s voice sounded far from hopeful.

Nancy slipped an arm around Tara’s shoulders and helped her pull herself together. Tara responded to her attentions and also flashed a grateful glance at Gianni. In return, the handsome Italian youth favored her with a dazzling smile calculated to melt the heart of any susceptible female.

“I . . . I suppose we’d better go over Daddy’s personal effects.” Tara asked.

“Si,”
said Angela. “Perhaps now would be as good a time as any.”

As they rose from their chairs, Gianni shifted his gaze from Tara and looked directly at Nancy. To her surprise, it was an arrogantly sensual glance—a smiling macho challenge, loaded with frank and open desire.

Nancy felt a nervous shiver pass through her. How could he look at her like that when just a moment ago he had been showing so much tenderness toward Tara? The vibes he was giving off seemed like a boast, almost a threat, that he could have any girl he wanted, whenever he cared to take her.

The boast or threat, whichever it was, left Nancy with a chill of mistrust.

Angela took Tara through the apartment, showing her Rolf Egan’s belongings. They were surprisingly few—a limited wardrobe of clothing, a drawerful of personal papers including an envelope of snapshots
taken over the years, and assorted art equipment, paintings and sketches.

Nancy, who had a keen artistic eye, found his canvases colorful and charming. They reflected Rolf’s adventurous, bohemian spirit and certainly showed a good deal of talent. Yet she doubted that any of them would bring very high prices if exhibited at an art gallery. She privately concluded that Rolf Egan had been a gifted commercial artist, but not a creative genius.