Cold Tuscan Stone (11 page)

The last question was directed to an earnest young woman with glasses who had approached as he was talking, and she curtly told him that his appointment had arrived. Zerbino turned to Rick.

“I'm terribly sorry, but I really must not keep this person waiting. Please take your time in seeing the rest of the museum; it is at your disposal. And I hope you will give my warm greetings to Beppo. I trust he is well.”

“He is, and I will certainly give him your regards. Thank you for your time.”

Zerbino gave a stiff hand to Rick and hurried out of the room, followed closely by his secretary.

Rick knew the trick well, it was one his father still used to perfection in his diplomatic work. You tell your secretary to come and get you after a specified time, allowing an escape if the situation requires it. But at least Zerbino had given Rick about twenty minutes of his time and had told him a bit more about those wacky and mysterious Etruscans. To begin with, they sure liked funerary urns. Rick walked along the shelves that lined the room, his eyes moving from one urn to the next. He came to a space and read the card that stood in the place of the missing piece. It had the date, a scribbled set of initials, and the notation that it was on loan to a museum in Germany. He continued to walk around the room, thinking how similar these urns were to the one he had seen in Beppo's office in Rome.

Rick was not close to becoming an Etruscan scholar, but he was convinced after wandering these rooms that Beppo's urn was from Volterra. He was also starting to understand why Erica had opted for the Mannerists over the Etruscans, not that those were her only two choices. At that point he came to another card, telling him that the urn that had been in that spot was now undergoing restoration. Into the next room he strolled. Amazing: more funerary urns.

He instinctively reached to his pocket to check the time, but realized his cell phone was at the front desk. Perhaps it was time to start wearing a watch again. Fortunately a bored museum guard sitting in a corner was able to give him the time, and he saw he still had a couple hours before his appointment with Donatella. He walked up the stairs, passed a large statue of the museum's benefactor sitting in his ecclesiastical robes, and began to work his way through the rooms of the second floor. Here the institution seemed to be reluctantly changing its image from one of a 19th century museum to a modern one. Some rooms still had the old wood and glass cases filled with small artifacts and even smaller cards identifying them, while others had their pieces featured in a more dramatic display, with hidden spots and back lighting. As sometimes happened to him in museums, even the best ones, everything was starting to look the same, but he wanted to see what his guidebook described as the most famous work in the building. When he got to it, he found it displayed in a position of honor in the center of the room, enclosed in a softly-lit glass case. The boy, his straight arms stiffly at attention, was all legs and body, wire thin and tall. It looked as if the sculptor had created a normal body, and then begun to pull on the clay, slowly elongating the figure, and could not bring himself to stop. The result was a haunting, almost snake-like bronze sculpture which stared at Rick with a faint smirk. Try to figure this one out, it seemed to be saying in a voice that echoed back almost two and a half millennia.

There wasn't anything that could top that. Rick walked briskly through the next rooms and perused the Greek items on the top floor before taking the elevator back down to the
piano terra
. The woman pulled his cell phone from one of the cubby holes behind her desk and exchanged it for the plastic number. When he left the building he brought the phone back to life, turned right, and headed down the street toward the hotel. The man with the bicycle followed in the same direction.

***

The car drove slowly down the narrow street, the strolling pedestrians moving even more slowly to the sides when they saw it was a police vehicle. It was a small show of defiance to the authorities that involved little risk, and Conti was used to it whenever he drove through a
zona pedonale
. Landi's shop was a short walk from the police station, but he thought a demonstration of force, even if it was only the dark blue armored Fiat, might help get some answers. The sergeant parked in front of the shop and Conti got out and stepped into Galleria Landi, watched by the people on the street. He knew that customers would hesitate to come into the shop while a police car parked in front. The girl behind the counter was clearly uncomfortable with the appearance of the commissario, but he could not tell if her discomfort was due to his car's effect on business or something else. His appearance, he knew from experience, often brought out the worst fears in people, especially when he was a reminder of someone's death.

Conti had talked to her the night of the murder, and was convinced she had told him everything she knew. It was Landi he now wanted to talk with, and he could see from her face that she sensed it. But the face today was different. In their previous encounter it has shown shock, disbelief, even some anger; all the usual emotions that appear immediately after getting jolting news. Today the news had sunk in, and her eyes showed sorrow and fear. Canopo had apparently been a friend as well as a colleague, and she had passed the night with little sleep.

“Signor Landi is not here at the moment, Commissario. He is…”

Conti waited a few seconds and said, “Yes, Signorina? He is where?”

“At the workshop. He's been spending more time there since…”

She couldn't seem to finish her sentences today, so he helped. “Since Canopo's death. I would certainly expect that without a workshop manager, Signor Landi would have to spend more time over there.” He spoke with as gentle a voice as he could; no use getting the girl more upset than she already was. “I'll go there. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“No bother at all, Commissario.” She smiled for the first time.

As Conti walked toward the door he noticed a stone carving of a reclining figure, on one of the many shelves. He picked it up and looked back at the girl, who was stuffing a tissue into her skirt pocket.

“Those are very popular with the tourists,” she said before he could speak, apparently getting her tongue back. “The figure represents a deceased person at a banquet, and the pedestal on which the man reclines is the cover of his own funerary urn.” He studied it from various angles “It is of course smaller than the original,” she added, “but very realistic for a copy, don't you think?”

He nodded, replaced it on the shelf and walked out to the car.

“To Landi's workshop,” he said to the driver. “You remember where it is.”

Conti settled into the seat and tried to remember where he had seen a similar piece. In the window of one of the many other tourist shops around town, no doubt. They drove from the totally pedestrian center of the city to an outer band with a few cars, soon pulling up in front of the tall doors of the workshop.

The large room had not changed from his last visit: the same layer of dust on the floor and the same sullen stares on the faces of the workers. Also the same noise, though some of the machines were being turned off as he walked in. From the look on Landi's face it was evident that the girl had called ahead. He wore a long white coat, to protect his suit from the dust of the room, and he rubbed his hands together in an attempt to get them clean.

“Commissario. So good to see you.”

Conti ignored the lie and shook Landi's offered hand.

“I just wanted to ask you some more questions, Signor Landi, if it is not inconvenient.”

“My time is yours.” He looked around for a place for them to sit, but stone dust covered the few vacant chairs. “Would you like to go outside where there is less—”

“Here is fine, I only have a few questions.” Conti moved to a corner to get out of the earshot of the workers who now turned their eyes back to the tables. “Did Canopo act differently in the days or hours just before his death?”

“As I told you before, Commissario—”

“Signor Landi, you don't have to preface your answers with ‘as I told you before,' just be indulgent to an old policeman and answer the questions to the best of your ability.” He looked at his watch, an old trick he used to make people answer quickly without doing too much thinking. The policeman is in a hurry.

“Of course, of course, I'm sorry.” Landi looked over at the men who appeared not to have heard the exchange. “Well, Canopo was a very intense worker. Not overly serious, mind you, he was always in a good mood, but he took everything seriously. He worked even harder after his daughter was born, no doubt wanting to do the best for her, and it was then that I thought he could become something more than just a skilled craftsman. Over the last few years he lived up to my expectations and was doing very well for himself.” He gave Conti a worried look, as if expecting another dressing down. “I hope I haven't strayed from your question, Commissario.”

“No, not at all. Go on.”

“That's all, really. I didn't notice anything different in his behavior in the days before his death.”

“What was his normal work schedule?”

“The workshop opens early and closes at five every day, so after the workmen left he would usually come to the store and stay until it closed at seven.”

“Weekends?”

“Saturday he was at the store, this place is closed on weekends.”

“Any travel, business or otherwise?”

“I do any needed business travel, Commissario. Wait, I did send him up to Florence a couple months ago to check on a client. Not much to it, it was a way to break him in, to give him experience with another part of the business. He did fine.”

“I'll need the names of whoever he saw up in Florence. And you have no idea who the man could be who stopped him on the street that day?”

“As…I mean, no, Commissario, I have no clue. I didn't know that much about his personal life, other than his immediate family. Perhaps it was some relative who appeared. He was from Sicily, was he not?”

Right, thought Conti, let's blame the mafia.

“Who's in charge of the workshop now? When you're not here.”

“That would be Malandro. I think you spoke with him the last time.”

“I did. Will Signor Malandro be getting a raise with his new responsibility?”

Landi glanced at the foreman, who was working at a far table, and turned back to Conti. “Yes, I suppose I will give him a higher salary. If I understand what you're implying, Commissario—”

“I'm not implying anything, Signor Landi, I'm just trying to get some questions answered.” Conti knew that Malandro and the other men had given the same alibi for the time of the murder: they were working here in the shop. It made sense, given their normal work schedule. But perhaps it was time to check those alibis more carefully, questioning the men again, one by one.

Back in the car, Conti pulled out his cell phone. “Sergeant, this is Commissario Conti. Is there any word on Canopo's bank statements?…I know what they told us…No, don't bother, I'll have to call the bank myself when I get back….Yes, yes, I'm on my way.”

They always want to know when I'm coming back to the station, thought Conti, and let out a small chuckle.

“Sir?” asked the driver.

“Nothing Sergeant,” he said. “I was just wondering if after I retire Signora Conti will always want to know when I'm coming home.”

The driver kept his eyes on the street and said nothing.

Conti put the phone in his pocket and glanced out the window at a patch of hills visible in the distance at the far end of a side street. Suddenly he remembered where he had seen that Etruscan reclining figure he had picked up from the shelf at Galleria Landi. It was in that shed with the other fake antiquities.

***

Villa Gloria, the country residence of Donatella Minotti, was about a twenty minute drive from Volterra. Rick steered his rental car through the narrow one-way streets before squeezing through the north gate and starting around the city's wall to the west. The Roman ruins appeared on his left. How many hours had it been since Canopo's life was ended there? It seemed like a week, but in fact the time could be measured in hours. Would Commissario Conti come up with the murderer, assuming he was correct that the death wasn't suicide? He seemed like an intelligent policeman, but as his uncle Piero had told him many times, luck plays a part in any criminal investigation. Would Conti get lucky? He slowed down as the car in front of him turned into the parking lot below the wall. Perhaps it was Herb and Shirley, returning for a bit more excitement before jetting back to Iowa.

He had almost made a complete loop, but just before coming to the Porta San Francesco, near his hotel, Rick took a sharp right turn and drove down the hill to the north. The road clung to a contorted finger of high ground that dropped off steeply on either side, slowly descending from the city's high promontory. It was easy to see why the Etruscans chose this spot to build the city. There were just a few ways to reach the hill, all of them difficult, and with its thick walls the town became virtually impregnable. The road cut sharply left and right as it worked its way down, passing a few buildings perched on small patches of flat land overlooking the deep gorges. Short, scrubby trees and sharp rocks were the dominant features of the area, giving it a wild and timeless look, but the harshness of the surroundings softened as the car descended to flatter land. He was coming into the valley of the Era River whose waters started near Volterra and flowed north before merging with the Arno and passing through Pisa to the sea.

The clouds that hung earlier over Volterra had thinned to only a few white wisps, and the temperature was warming as the afternoon progressed, creating a perfect fall day. This was a section of Tuscany that saw relatively little tourism. The map on the seat next to Rick showed mostly open land with few towns. Here the local economy was almost exclusively tied to agriculture, though at this time of year the earth was starting its long, rejuvenating sleep. The only movement he noticed in the brown fields was a lone pheasant hunter carrying a shotgun, following his dog through the dried stalks of corn, their ears long since harvested.