Death in the Dolomites (16 page)

“What time was it?”

“In the morning, I don't remember exactly. Ten, eleven.”

“How did the meeting go?”

A twisted smile came over Peruzzi's face. “Well, I've dealt with Umberto many times, from when he first got into real estate until now. His style of doing business is not one I share, but he would probably tell you that times have changed. Perhaps he's right. But you asked how our little meeting went. He was more insistent than ever, and the fact that he came here to my home, rather than calling, surprised me somewhat. But he got the same answer as Muller.”

“We think that the murder took place on your plot of land.”

The old man stared at Luca and nodded his head slowly. “That saddens me. I hope it is just coincidence, given its secluded location, off the main road. I know it's been used for unsavory activities over the years, but never murder. Very sad.”

Rick shifted in the wooden chair. “Does your nephew have any preference as to who should buy the land?”

Peruzzi's eyes bore into Rick, and then softened. “The decision is mine, Signor Montoya, not my nephew's.”

“Have you made that decision?”

The man did not reply, but the silence, combined with the tired look on his face, were answer enough.

Rick felt a nudge. “Riccardo, we should be on our way back to Campiglio, and let our host get back to his reading.”

“I am in no rush to see you leave, Inspector, but I'm sure the investigation calls.”

“What are you reading?” Rick said. “If you don't mind me asking.”

The man glanced down at the book. “Not at all. I often read the classics, but I must confess that I have a taste for novels of the American West.” He held up the book, a paperback. The cover showed a sheriff's star, a smoking bullet hole cut through one of its points. “I thought you might be familiar with it, Signor Montoya.” He inclined his head and looked at Rick's cowboy boots.

Rick laughed. “It's not an author I know, Signor Peruzzi. Though as you have noticed, I did spend many years in the American Southwest.”

“You did? What part?” It was the most energy the man had shown since they'd entered his room.

“New Mexico.”

“Where Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid?”

“That was to the east of where I lived, but yes, sir, the same state.”

Peruzzi settled back in the chair and slowly closed his eyes. “I can just picture the tumbleweed and sagebrush.”

***

They separated outside the Campiglio police station. Luca went in to see if anything had come from the lab, and to make contact with his office. Rick started the walk to the hotel to check his email. They would meet at lunch after separately mulling over the case, but from the mostly silent drive back over the mountain Rick sensed that Luca was as stumped as he was. There were some suspects, a few motives, and a lot of alibis, but no obvious trail that could lead them to the murderer. He knew from conversations with Uncle Piero that this was the critical point in an investigation. They needed to catch a break now, or the trail could go cold, perhaps permanently. He took a deep breath and started up the hill. The trail may be going cold, but the temperature today was not. He looked at the sky, watched a few wispy clouds floating between one mountain and the next, and knew it would be a good afternoon to be skiing after all. There were worse ways to spend a few hours than out in the snow with a beautiful woman. If only he had some progress to report to Cat.

The main street he was on continued to the gondola station, but Rick stepped onto the smaller one, without sidewalks, which took him up to the hotel. His boots sloshed through snow that was beginning to melt despite the shade from tall fir trees on either side of the pavement. The road bent to the right, but opening on the left was a narrow pathway, barely wide enough for a car. A few fresh footprints ran up its center, as well as others that had been filled with the snow of the past few days. At the end of the road, about thirty meters distant, he could see a metal gate in a stone wall. While he could not read the writing that was written on the arch over the gate, there was no question in his mind what was beyond it. This was the town cemetery.

Rick had been fascinated by cemeteries since childhood when he'd been taken to visit family graves, a tradition shared by both the Montoya and the Fontana sides of his family. Many of his favorite family stories he'd heard for the first time while standing quietly in front of a grave marker. They were often stories that had made him laugh, like learning about an uncle in New Mexico who had been treed by a bear for three days, or his Italian great-grandmother who never, even on her deathbed, revealed her recipe for mushroom soup. Each story was like shining a flashlight into a corner of the family attic. Now he found it hard to pass a cemetery without going in to see if it might reveal something, even if he had to imagine it for himself.

The metal gate creaked as it opened as Rick stepped carefully inside the walls. Gravestones of different sizes poked out of the snow, closer together than they would be in the States, but then space was at a premium here. Standing guard behind the graveyard loomed the town church. The regular lines of its rectangular side wall were broken by a pointed bell tower at one end and the curved stones of the apse at the other. Rick walked the narrow paths that separated the graves, their snow tamped down by recent visitors. Flowers, some more withered than others, adorned a few of the graves, placed in metal vases set into the stones, often next to an oval black-and-white photograph of the departed. Rick walked slowly, reading the names and studying the photographs, wondering if the people buried under the frozen ground had been consulted on choosing which image would be used. The faces in the photos were stiff and frowning, as if saying they would rather be somewhere else. All but one—a smiling young woman whose color photo matched the bright plastic flowers set in the vase next to it. A few flakes from the recent snows had stuck to the photo and to the petals of the flowers. Rick brushed the gravestone with his hand to better read the name and date. After a few moments of thought he stepped back and noticed the gravestones on either side. The parents had died only a few years after their daughter. A slow death caused by grief? Perhaps this was one story he did not want to know more about.

He was turning to leave when he looked back at the side of the church. Its flat surface was broken by a door and two windows, but his eye went to a series of colorful frescoes. He walked closer to get a better view. Most of the wall's paintings were of saints and biblical stories, what would be expected, but at the top, just under the eaves, a striking procession marched the entire length. Thanks to the protection of the roof over the centuries, its figures had more vibrancy than in the lower scenes, but it was the theme that got Rick's attention. On the far left, on a crude throne, a crowned skeleton sat playing a bagpipe. The macabre king was accompanied by two other skeletons playing long, thin horns. Rick could almost hear the shrill music the three instruments produced. Moving toward the king of death, if that's what he represented, ran a long line of ornately robed figures: the lord, his lady, the cardinal, the merchant, the knight, the soldier—continuing to the end of the wall. Each of the living was being pulled along by a grinning skeleton, their partners in the dance of death, moving steadily toward an inevitable meeting with the skeleton king. The
dansa macabra
. Rick thought of Cam Taylor and shuddered.

He turned and walked back between the stones, avoiding the path that held the grave of the girl. He crossed himself, as he always did when leaving a cemetery, and closed the gate carefully behind him.

***

Lunch began with a local specialty that Rick was looking forward to tasting, a dish not found on menus in other regions of Italy.
Canederli
were bread dumplings, the local equivalent of the
knödel
popular on the other side of the Alps. They were held together by egg and cheese, with more flavor added through herbs and bits of
speck—
smoked and cured ham. The dumplings arrived at the table bobbing in bowls of steaming meat broth, which Rick and Luca sprinkled with cheese. As tasty as they might be, there were not many first courses in Italian cuisine that could not be improved with
parmigiano reggiano
.

“Flavio doesn't know what he's missing,” Rick said to Luca as he cut into one of the dumplings with his soup spoon. “But he told us not to wait.”

“I doubt if he's going to skip this meal. He'll probably dine with the comely diplomat. Look at her table.”

Rick turned his head and noticed that an extra place had been set at Lori's table. “I see what you mean.” He poured more wine into their glasses. “I'm not sure if he would approve of our choice of wine, so it's just as well.”

“The wine is more than adequate, Riccardo. And now that this wonderful
primo
is taking the edge off our appetite, we can return to the business at hand. Let me begin with what I learned at the station. The blood in the field is confirmed as that of our victim, so it is virtually certain that he was killed there. This brings in the question of how the body was transported from the murder scene to the gondola base. Concerning the autopsy, the only new information from it regards the murder weapon.”

Rick glanced up from his broth, spoon in hand. “You know what the weapon was?”

“Not precisely, but the forensics people are almost sure it was a bottle. The wound was smooth, and there were specks of paint.” He noticed Rick's frown. “I know, paint on a bottle doesn't sound right, but they seemed to be convinced. And there was something else. Grooves, or at least some kind of wavy pattern in the glass of the bottle, made a distinct impression on the skull.”

“A bottle with grooves?”

“I have some men going over what was picked up in the field and along the road, when we first searched the area. The bottle could have been tossed away by the murderer as he drove from the field.”

“It could have been something Flavio sells. Here he comes, we'll ask him.”

Flavio walked toward them, dressed in jeans and a sweater, waving off the waitress. “Lori went up to change. I'll, uh, be having lunch with her.” He sat down in his chair and squinted at the bottle.

“Don't say anything about our choice of wine,” said Rick. “Luca has some serious questions for you regarding the investigation.”

Flavio turned the wine bottle so that the label was facing away from him before giving Luca his full attention. “How can I help?” He listened to the explanation of the autopsy report and snapped his fingers. “That's easy. It's a prosecco bottled and marketed for the holidays. People pay extra for the same wine when it comes in a fancy bottle with grooves and painted decoration.”

“Isn't there a parable in the Bible about new wine in old bottles?”

“There is, Luca, but it doesn't apply here. I can give you a list of wineries that produce holiday prosecco, but I'm not sure it will help much. It's sold everywhere, and wine shops don't keep track of who buys which bottles. A whole case, maybe, but a single bottle, there's no way to trace it.”

“What kind of person would buy one of these bottles?” asked Rick.

“Could be anyone. Come the holidays, even people on a tight budget tend to buy a nice bottle or two of wine. It's the best season of the year for my business.”

Luca finished the last of his dumplings. “Well, I can at least have the sergeant check the wine stores in town to find out if anyone bought any in large quantities.”

“This hotel bought a case from me, if I remember right. In fact…” He got up from his chair and walked out of the dining room, allowing Luca and Rick to finish their broth. He returned with a bottle and placed it on the table with a flourish. “Exhibit A, the only one left after
capo d'anno
. There are other wineries that do the holiday bottles, but this is the one we sell.”

More pear-shaped than straight, the bottle was made of dark green glass with surface grooves wound around the widest part to the base. The glass was thicker than in normal bottles, adding to the weight. The decoration, holly and Christmas balls, looked like they had been painted by hand.

“Very fancy,” Rick said, running his fingers over the bottle. “I can see why these would sell well at holiday time.”

“And it's a very good prosecco.”

“We would expect nothing less, if you are distributing it, Flavio.”

Luca tapped on the table next to the bottle, thinking. “A bottle is not the kind of weapon someone would normally bring to a crime scene if he intends to commit murder. Unless there is some strange statement that our criminal wants to make, it is more likely that the bottle was a weapon of opportunity.”

“But,” said Rick, “there had to have been a reason to bring the bottle there in the first place. And it had to have been the murderer, since Taylor was heading out to ski and not likely to be carrying a bottle of prosecco. So it was to celebrate something, or at least to give Taylor the impression they were driving up there to celebrate. So two possibilities: They were there because of the land or it was just a coincidence that the murderer and victim were on that plot of land.” He looked at the faces of the other two men. “I can see that you agree with me that it's not a coincidence.” He paused while the waitress cleared their soup bowls and replaced them with clean plates. “That would point to Melograno, since Taylor was dealing with him on the loan.”

Luca repositioned the plate in front of him. “There were other people who knew about the loan. They could have gotten Taylor up there on some other pretense, to make it look like Melograno did it. How about Lotti from across the hall? The sister could have told him.”

“The sister could have told anybody,” said Flavio.