“But-”
“But how did we manage to find the right dentist? That was no problem. You see, I was already ninety percent sure I knew who those bones came from.”
He looked from one to the other of them, saving the last, longest look for Phil. His expression composed itself, flipping from self-satisfied to grave. “They are the remains of Domenico de Grazia.”
Phil’s mouth opened, shut, and opened again. “Domenico de-”
“Your uncle. The old padrone. The father of Vincenzo de Grazia. I’m sorry.”
TWELVE
They got powdery, lukewarm coffee from a vending machine on the porch of the office building-an expansive Caravale paid for them all-and took it to a shaded picnic table beside a tiny corral in which a pot-bellied, sad-eyed donkey stood in a corner and quietly snuffled its dinner from a nose bag.
It was the limp that had been the final clue, Caravale explained. That, and the age of sixty or more, and the “small, gracile” description, and the ten-year length of time it had lain in the gravel. Put together, it all pointed to Domenico.
Phil was shaking his head. “I don’t get it. This is nuts. Sure, Zio Domenico had a limp and all that, but he drowned in a boating accident on the lake. I came for the memorial service. Are you saying he didn’t drown?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Caravale said gently. “I was with the force then, but I was only a lieutenant. I wasn’t the investigating officer, but I remember the case. Your uncle liked sailing. We used to see his boat on the lake sometimes, but he was never out for very long. The day he disappeared he’d left early, and when he didn’t come back by late afternoon, everybody began to worry. It wasn’t a good day for sailing; the wind was rough, the water had a chop to it. So they started a search for him. The boat was found the next day, overturned in shallow water, across the lake, off Porto Valtravaglia. The conclusion seemed reasonable enough: an unfortunate accident. But Domenico, he was never found. So it was never completely settled.”
Phil’s eyes were on the paper cup that he was turning round and round in his fingers. “So if this is true, somebody actually killed him. I’m sorry, but this is really hard to believe.” He looked up, almost challengingly. “Everybody loved the guy. Everybody.”
“That’s what I would have said,” Caravale agreed.
“Not quite everybody, I guess,” Julie said.
Gideon was beginning to wonder what Caravale was doing there. This was an unexpected development, yes, but there was no reason for him to have jumped in his car and driven right out to tell them about it. It could have waited until morning. It could have waited longer than that.
“Uh, Tullio, is there something I can do for you?” he asked.
“Well, yes, maybe, now that you ask. Naturally, I told Vincenzo about it,” Caravale said. “He asked me to come out to the island again to talk with the family-another goddamned council, I’m afraid. The boat will take me up at three.”
“And?”
“And I was hoping you might come along with me.”
“Me? Why?”
“They’ll ask questions about the remains. I don’t know how to answer them.”
“But what can I tell them? Wait till I’ve had a serious look at them and know something-tomorrow, the next day.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me today.”
“Well… sure, if you like, but I don’t know what I can tell them.”
“A lot more than I can,” Caravale said. “Can you meet me at the police dock in Stresa at three, then? An hour from now?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Damn,” Phil said, “I’d really like to be there too. I still can’t believe it. And I’d like to see Achille, see how he’s doing.”
“Come, then,” said Caravale. “I’m sure they’d be glad to have you.”
“Can’t.” Phil shoved away his untouched coffee. “I have to get the group up to the oratorio in an hour. It’s on the schedule. And then there are things to see to-getting the bikes ready-”
“Oh, go ahead,” Julie said, “you belong with your family at a time like this. I can see to things here. Heaven knows we’ve been over everything enough times.”
“Yeah, but-”
“Go ahead, let me earn my pay.”
He gave in with a reluctant but appreciative sigh. “Thanks a million, Julie.”
“You’re not getting any pay,” Gideon observed.
She laughed. “Let me earn my keep then.”
Caravale looked at his watch and stood up. He seemed relieved. “Good. I’ll see you both at three, then.”
The drive to Stresa would take no more than ten minutes, which gave Phil and Gideon three-quarters of an hour before they had to leave. Phil immediately began to go over logistics with Julie. Lax and slipshod in his personal affairs at home-he could be counted on to be at least twenty minutes late for any appointment-he ran his tours with a near-fanatical attention to detail, and Julie lasted about five minutes before exploding.
“I am a park ranger, you know? I deal with bears, and cougars, and drunks, and hostile bikers. I think I can probably handle anything that comes up here. So get lost, I’ll take care of things.”
Gideon smiled. She was cute when she was angry, and even cuter when she was making believe she was angry.
Phil jumped up immediately. “Sorry, I get a little carried away.”
“I’ll say,” Julie muttered.
“Just let me change,” he told Gideon, and ran off to the platform tent he was sharing with three of the other men.
Thirty minutes later he emerged. “Sorry about that, thought I ought to shower. I was getting a little grungy.”
They stared at him for a full ten seconds before Julie spoke. “Shower, and put on clean clothes, and shave off your beard, and-” Her eyes narrowed. “Did you give yourself a haircut?”
“I just trimmed it a little,” he said with one of his gawkier shrugs. “You know, to show some respect.” He squirmed under their continuing scrutiny. His face was pink. “So I cleaned up. What, is this a big deal? Gideon, come on, let’s go already.”
The consiglio, for reasons Gideon couldn’t fathom, was held in a stuffy, windowless little room in the otherwise spacious and elegant villa. He had seen paintings by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters on the walls of the corridor outside-he recognized Titian, Rubens, Velazquez, or at least their schools. But this grim little room seemed to have been chosen for ugliness and discomfort. Surrounded by tiers of gloomy family portraits, some competently painted, mostly not, and hemmed in by the living members of the de Grazia clan, he sat on an amazingly uncomfortable, hard-backed wooden chair, feeling very much the stranger at an intimate family gathering. Lighting came from a single antique hanging lamp that had been converted to electricity and now bore four unpleasantly glaring, candle-shaped bulbs. The seats, some of them chairs, some heavy chests, but all of them looking every bit as uncomfortable as his, had been arranged along all four walls, leaving a five-foot square of scarred, planked wooden flooring open in the center.
Including Gideon, there were eleven people in the room, necessarily shoulder to shoulder. On his immediate right was Phil, and on the far side of Phil a slender, soft-spoken woman whose name Gideon hadn’t caught when Vincenzo had made a round of pro forma introductions. Phil had briefed him earlier on who would probably be there, but if she’d been mentioned, Gideon didn’t remember it.
Directly across from him sat old Cosimo de Grazia in his old-fashioned suit and starched white shirt, buttoned to the top but without a tie this time. Eyes closed, he sat lost in thought or in dreams, with his veined, mottled hands clasped on the silver lion’s-paw-and-tea-bud knob of his cane, his goateed chin resting on his knuckles, and Bacco asleep and snoring between his feet. In the chair beside him was a rumpled, portly, bespectacled man of Cosimo’s age who sat with an unlit, half-smoked cigar clenched between his teeth. This, according to Vincenzo, was Dr. Gianluigi Luzzatto, who had been Domenico de Grazia’s physician and closest friend and was still Cosimo’s doctor, though otherwise retired from practice. He had been making one of his twice-weekly visits to Cosimo, who had been refusing for two decades to see a younger, more up-to-date physician, and he had been invited to the consiglio by his patient out of respect for his longtime relationship with the de Grazias. It wasn’t strictly by the book, but Vincenzo had always allowed Cosimo some extra latitude in matters of family protocol. Like Cosimo, Dr. Luzzatto wore a dark, old-fashioned suit, including a tie and even a tobacco-ash-spattered vest. Unlike Cosimo, he somehow managed to make them look as if he’d been sleeping-and eating-in them for two days.