Mozzarella Most Murderous (19 page)

“Now we’ve got to find Nunzia,” she announced. “Maids usually have a master key.”

“Come on, Carolyn,” I protested. “You want to get a nice woman like Nunzia into trouble? And what is this
we
? I’m on the verge of giving birth. I can’t be searching the room of some wild-eyed, high-ranking murderer from Rome.”

“I’ll search the room,” she promised. “You can stand out in the hall to see that nobody catches me at it.”

“Absolutely not,” I said firmly.

“I’ll give you the rest of my cake,” she offered.

I shook my head.

“I saw you eyeing it, Bianca. Wouldn’t you like some more?” She held up the plate. “See, there’s more than half left. All you have to do is cough and walk away if you see someone coming.”

 

Bianca didn’t ask
Nunzia for the master room card, as I’d suggested. Instead she introduced us, and as I was shaking hands with Nunzia, who had been standing in the open door of a room she was about to clean, Bianca picked up the card from the cleaning cart and slipped it into the pocket of her maternity blouse. Then she gave Nunzia a hug and hustled me off. “It takes her fifteen or twenty minutes to do a room,” said Bianca. “That’s how much time you’ve got to search the general’s room before I have to get the key back to the cart.”

The general had a suite on the tenth floor, which I entered while Bianca stood outside eating my chocolate cake. His bed hadn’t even been made up yet. What if the maid for Ten and Eleven showed up with her cart? I considered my options and decided that I’d pretend to be dressing, buttoning the last button or something. She’d think I was the general’s mistress and pay me no mind.
Thank goodness the Italians are so amorous
, I thought. Given Sorrento’s reputation for sensuous liaisons, no maid would doubt that the general had been entertaining a lover. After all, he’d done it before.

This region was the home of the famous sirens of mythology, fish or bird women—the stories don’t agree—whose irresistible songs lured sailors to their deaths on the rocks of islands. When the canny Ulysses plugged his sailors’ ears with wax and had himself tied to his mast, the siren Parthenope was so crushed by her failure to add him to her list of trophies that she threw herself into the sea and washed ashore at Naples. If the maid caught me, she would think of me as a siren luring the general into sexual disaster with my siren song. The only problem with that scenario was my singing voice, which was unlikely to befuddle anyone. These were my thoughts as I scanned all the surfaces for the red leather notebook. It wasn’t in sight.

Then I quickly pulled out drawers, but they had nothing but hotel literature and rules in them. He hadn’t unpacked. Over on the luggage stand I spotted a heavy leather suitcase.
Goodness
, I thought.
Nobody carries those anymore. They’re too heavy.
But the general did, and his was locked. How was I going to get it open?

Coughing. Good heavens, Bianca was coughing. I darted over to see if the maid was coming, but what I saw was my friend disappearing down the hall with an exaggerated pregnant waddle, cake plate in hand, while two men strode toward this door from the elevator. I ducked back, afraid they had seen me. Quickly closing the door and locking it, I looked around desperately for an escape route. Maybe they weren’t coming here. I headed for the balcony and was in the act of trying to climb over the railing into the side cactus garden when they hauled me back. They certainly didn’t look very friendly. Why hadn’t I thought to put on the security chain? And how did they get past the locked door?

Maybe they were criminals. Burglars. Just like me. A hysterical giggle rose in my throat as they snapped at me in Italian. As if I understood a word they were saying! I gave them as blank a look as I could manufacture, considering that I was terrified. Maybe they’d take me for some mentally retarded person who had just wandered in. I tried a bit of nonsensical babble, while smiling at them. What a really bad idea this had been, and I hadn’t found a thing! The red notebook was probably in that locked suitcase. In fact, he’d probably left it in Rome. Or burned it. Why hadn’t I thought of that and stayed safely on my balcony, eating my chocolate cake? In the meantime, my arms had been twisted up behind my back by a short man, as the taller one shoved me toward the door.

Who
were
they? “Do you speak English?” I asked, forgetting for the moment that I had just been impersonating an idiot. Evidently they didn’t speak English because they muttered to one another in Italian. Were they kidnappers? Or secret agents of the Italian government? We rode the elevator down to the lobby. I’d made up my mind. As soon as we got into a populated area of the hotel, I’d scream as loud as I could and keep screaming.

The doors opened; I was hustled out. The doors closed, and I let out a loud shriek. “Help! Help!” I screamed. The two men just kept shoving me along. What was the Italian word for
help
? I’d read it in the American Express Italian handbook, but I couldn’t remember. “
Help
!” People were staring, but no one moved to rescue me. Italians must be as bad as New Yorkers in that respect. These two men could shoot me in the head and carry my body out the door, and nobody—wait, actually, if they wanted to get away from the hotel, they’d have taken the elevator all the way down to the road-level entrance.

By then my chance of rescue had passed because I was pushed through a door into a conference room. One of the men made some remarks in Italian to an older man in a very well-tailored suit. Possibly a designer suit.

“You are an English speaker, Signora?” he asked.

I nodded reluctantly.

“What is your name?”

Let him find out for himself
, I thought, and stood there silently.

“And what were you doing in my room?”

“How did you know I was in your room?” I retorted, now rather indignant with the treatment I was receiving. After all, I hadn’t stolen anything. Either these people were hotel security, or the older man was the general from Rome.

“My room is wired, Signora,” said the older man. “As soon as you entered, an alarm I carry went off. Who was the pregnant woman who ran away?”

As if I’d rat on Bianca! “I don’t know whom you’re talking about.”

“Why were you in my room?” he demanded again.

“I just got the wrong door.” I’d settled on this story while he was questioning me. “It’s rather upsetting to think that the room cards may open all the doors, isn’t it?” I said earnestly. “You should complain to the management.” I thought I was doing very well, handling myself with aplomb. If Jason hadn’t been so disapproving of my occasional involvement in detection, he’d have been proud of me.

“See if she has a card on her,” ordered the leader. The short, broad man with the mustache let go of my arms, took my purse, opened it, and extracted my room card. Of course, it didn’t have the number on it, so they couldn’t identify me that way. Then the one who had been shoving me hither and yon stuck his hand in the pocket of my blouse.

“Stop that!” I snapped. “How dare you be so—so familiar.”

He pulled out the card Bianca had taken from Nunzia’s cart. Oh dear. Nunzia would be discovering its loss just about now.

“My aide is not trying to be familiar with you, Signora. You are being searched by lawful agents of the Italian government.” Then he ordered the short man to take the cards to the manager and find out what they were and how I might have come by them.

Worse and worse
, I thought.
It must be the general. If he’d killed Paolina, he probably won’t hesitate to kill me, even though I made a big scene in the lobby.

“Have the local authorities lock this woman up, Marsocca.” He waved a hand. His aide nodded, handed the general a credit card slip from my handbag and a credit card, both of which had my name on them, and then pulled me toward the door.

The mention of local authorities was probably a code for, “Take her out and shoot her.”

“I demand to see a representative of the American government,” I said bravely. “Everyone in the lobby saw me dragged in here. You’ll never get away with this.”

“There are no representatives of the American government closer than Naples,” said the general.

I was now sure that’s who he must be.

“However, I’m sure Lieutenant Buglione of the local Polizia di Stato can call Naples for you.” Then he nodded again to his aide. “Take her away.”

“The local authorities know all about you, General,” I said, trying to slow my unwilling progress toward the door by going limp and dragging my feet, which is not at all a comfortable process. “That’s who you are, isn’t it? No matter how important a person you are in Rome, they know you met Paolina here secretly last July. I told them, and other people as well. Quite a few.” Ah, that caught his attention. “If you do away with me, everyone will know you came back to kill her Monday night. No one will ever believe it was suicide or an accident, not when—”

“Sit down, Signora,” said the general. “Pull up a chair for her, Marsocca. I think this woman may have something of interest to tell us.”

 

“I have been
interviewing visiting chemists, Riccis, employees of their company, employees of the hotel,” said the general, “and you, Signora, are the only person to impart any information on the death of Paolina Marchetti. I find that very interesting. How did you, an American, find out that the young woman who died met me here in July?”

“I asked,” I replied coolly.

“Whom did you ask?”

“Well, actually, I asked earlier if Paolina had ever been here before with a man. The person I asked thought so but couldn’t remember who, until you came this morning.”

He nodded. “And who was this person?”

Goodness, I don’t want to get Jill in trouble. They might kill her or arrest her.
“I really can’t say,” I replied. “Just someone at the desk.”

“You’ve talked to this person, presumably a hotel employee, several times about this subject, yet you can’t remember who it was?” He stared at me. I stared back. “Very well, here is a more pertinent question. Why were you asking about Paolina Marchetti?”

The general looked very grim, as if he thought I might have killed her. Of course that couldn’t be, since he was the murderer. “Because she was my friend.” As I said it, a rush of grief hit me; Paolina had been such fun. I’d really enjoyed our afternoon exploring Sorrento. I’d spotted a number of things I wanted to buy and had expected that she and I would shop the next day. And the dinner. As horrible as it was, we’d laughed heartily at the plastic duck and the giant, soggy meatballs. I felt tears rising and blinked them back.

He was eyeing me suspiciously from under thick, dark eyebrows, as dark as his hair was silver. “I see.” He frowned at me. “You had known the victim how long? A previous acquaintance perhaps?” The tone was sarcastic.

“No,” I admitted defensively. “We met the day before. We went sightseeing, and we had dinner together. I liked her a lot. We—we had a lot in common.”

“Indeed.” He looked highly skeptical. “An instant rapport. Is that what you are saying?”

Oh, these Europeans! They think you have to know someone for twenty years before you can be friends.
“And then I discovered her body in the pool. It was a terrible shock, and the—”

“What was it you had in common?” he demanded.

“Well, we both like the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She told me how she read it while she was in convent school, and I told her how I read it while—while my mother was dying. And I promised to send her the new Millay biography,
Savage Beauty
. And we liked to window shop. We were going to buy things the next day. And we hated the food here.” Again I choked up. “It’s so sad to think that her last dinner was that awful roast duck.” Why was I telling him all this? He actually looked rather upset. Perhaps because he now saw that I’d had reason to look for her killer. “And don’t think you’re going to get away with killing my friend,” I announced, staring right back at him. “The police here in Sorrento may be afraid of offending the Riccis and you because you’re a big shot from Rome, but you can’t get away with killing me too. I intend to see that you—”

“Enough, Signora,” said the general wearily. “I was neither the lover nor the murderer of the woman you knew as Paolina Marchetti. I was her father.”

“Her—” I didn’t believe that! Of all the nerve! Telling me that he was her father. Did he think I was stupid? “If you’re Paolina’s father, why did you have to meet her here secretly? Under assumed names?”

“Because she also worked for me,” he replied.

“Ha! Now I know you’re lying,” I retorted triumphantly. “She worked for Ruggiero Ricci. She was his secretary.”

“Yes,” he replied. “She was his secretary, and she was investigating his company.”

“Why would she be doing that?” I asked suspiciously, at the same time remembering the Mafia connection. “It’s just a chemical and pharmaceutical company. Isn’t it?”

“A very profitable one,” he said. “We’ve been investigating them for several years.”

“But what for?” I tried to think of what the old, evil Mafia father might have been up to, with or without Ruggiero’s knowledge. “Drugs! Were they refining heroin or something like that? Or making methamphetamines? That’s a chemical process.” Then I had a terrible thought. “Oh, my goodness. The radioactive waste! They weren’t making atomic bombs, were they? And selling them to terrorists? I assumed that it was medical waste, but—”

“You have a very lively imagination, Signora, but as far as we know, their profits were coming from watered down prescription drugs and substances labeled as prescription drugs that had no medical value whatever. These were packaged and then sold to third world countries.”