A Venetian Reckoning (10 page)

Not without admiration, Brunetti
noted the skill with which she had evaded the critical question of whether he
would be willing to pay for the information in the first place and had simply
arrived at the point where the deal was already cut and only details remained
to be worked out. Well, all right.

'Tell me.'

All business now, Chiara finished the
last of the third roll, wiped her hands on a kitchen towel, and sat at the
table, hands folded in front of her. 'I had to talk to four different people
before I really learned anything,' she began, as serious as if she were giving
testimony in court. Or on television.

'Who were they?’

'One was a girl at the school where
Francesca is now; one was a teacher at my school, and a girl there, too, and
the other was one of the girls we used to go to grammar school with.’

'You managed all of this today,
Chiara?’

'Oh, sure. I had to take the
afternoon off, to go see Luciana, and then go over to Francesca's school to
talk to that girl, but I talked to the teacher and the girl at my school before
I left.'

'You took the afternoon off?'
Brunetti asked, but merely out of curiosity.

'Sure, the kids do it all the time.
All you have to do is give them a note from one of your parents, saying you're
sick or have to go somewhere, and no one ever asks questions.'

'Do you do this often, Chiara?’

'Oh, no, Papa, only when I have to.’

'Who wrote the note?’

'Oh, it was Mamma's turn. Besides,
her signature's much easier to do than yours.’ As she spoke, she picked up the
pieces of homework lying on the table and arranged them into a neat stack, then
placed them to the side and glanced up at him, eager to continue with important
things.

He pulled out a chair and sat racing
her. 'And what did these people tell you, Chiara?’

'The first thing I learned was that
Francesca had told this other girl the kidnapping story, too, and I think I
remember that she told a bunch of us the same story when we were in grammar
school, but that was five years ago.’

'How many years did you go to school
with her, Chiara?’

'We did all of elementary school
together. But then her family moved, and she went to the Vivaldi middle school
I see her occasionally; but we weren't friends or anything like that'

‘was this girl she told the story to
a good friend of hers?'

He watched Chiara draw her lips
together at the question, and he said, 'Perhaps you'd better tell me all this
in your own way.' She smiled.

"This girl I spoke to at my
school knew her from middle school, and she said that Francesca told her that
her parents had warned her always to be very careful who she spoke to and never
to go anywhere with someone she didn't know. That's pretty much the same thing
she told us about when we were at school with her.'

She glanced across at him, looking
for approval, and he smiled at her, though this wasn't much more than what she
had told them at lunch.

'I already knew this, so I figured I
better go talk to someone at the school where she is now. That's why I had to
take the afternoon off, so I'd be sure to find her.' He nodded. 'This girl told
me that Francesca had a boyfriend. No, Papa, a real one. They're lovers and all’

'Did she say who the boyfriend was?'

'No, she said Francesca wouldn't ever
tell her his name, but she said he was older, in his twenties. Francesca said
she wanted to run away with him, but he wouldn't do it, not till she was
older.'

'Did the girl say why Francesca
wanted to run away?’

‘Well, not in so many words, but she
had the feeling it was her mother, that she and Francesca fought a lot, and
that was why Francesca wanted to run away’ 'What about her father?'

'Oh, Francesca liked him a lot, said
he was very good to her, only she never saw him much because he was always so
busy.’

'Francesca has a brother, hasn't
she?'

'Yes, Claudio, but he's away in
school in Switzerland That's why I talked to the teacher. She used to teach in
the middle school where he went, before he went to Switzerland, and I thought I
could get her to tell me something about him.'

'And did you?’

'Oh, sure. I told her I was
Francesca's best friend and how worried Francesca was that Claudio was going to
be upset about their fathers death, being in Switzerland and all. I said I
knew him, too; I even let her believe I had a crush on him.’ She paused here
and shook her head 'Yuck, everybody, but everybody, says Claudio is a real
creep, but she believed me.’

'What did you ask her?'

'I said Francesca wanted to know if
the teacher could suggest how she should behave with Claudia’ When she saw
Brunetti's surprise, Chiara added, 'Yes, I know it's stupid, and no one would
ever ask that, but you know how teachers are, always wanting to tell you what
to do with your life and how you should behave.’ 'Did the teacher believe you?’
'Of course,’ Chiara responded seriously. Half joking, Brunetti said, 'You must
be a good liar.’ ‘I am. Very good Mamma's always believed it's something we
should learn to do well.' She didn't bother to look at Brunetti when she said
this and continued, "The teacher said that Francesca should bear in mind -
that was her expression, "bear in mind", - that Claudio had always
been fonder of his father than his mother, so this time would be very difficult
for him.' She twisted up her face in disgust 'Big deal, huh? I went halfway
across the city to get that And it took her a half-hour to tell me.'

'What did the other people tell you?'

'Luciana — I had to go all the way
down to Castello to see her - she told me that Francesca really hates her
mother, said that she was always pushing her father around, telling him what to
do. She doesn't like her uncle much, either, says he thinks he's the boss of the
family'

'Pushing him around in what way?'

'She didn't know. But that's what
Francesca told her, that her father always did what her mother said.' Before
Brunetti could make a joke of this, Chiara added, it's not like with you and
Mamma. She always tells you what to do, but you just agree with her and then do
what you want to, anyway’ She glanced up at the clock on the wall and asked,
'Where do you think Mamma is? It's almost seven. What'll we do for dinner?’ The
second question, clearly, was the one with which Chiara was most concerned.

'Probably kept at the university,
telling some student what to do with his life.' Before Chiara could decide
whether to laugh or not Brunetti suggested, 'If that's all the detecting you
have to report to me, why don't we start getting dinner ready? That way. Mamma
can come home and find dinner ready for a change.’

'But how much is it worth?' Chiara
wheedled.

Brunetti considered this for a
moment. ‘I’d guess about thirty thousand,' he finally answered. Since it was to
come out of his pocket, that's all it would be, though the information she'd
given him about Signora Trevisan's pushing her husband around, should it prove
true and should it apply to his professional life, might be worth inestimably
more than that.

11

The following day, the
Gazzettino
carried a front page article about the suicide of
Rino Favero, one of the most successful accountants in the Veneto Region.
Favero, it was reported, had chosen to drive his Rover into the two-car garage
beneath his house, close the door of the garage, and leave the engine running,
himself quietly stretched across the front seat. It was further stated that
Favero's name was about to be revealed in the expanding scandal that was
currently playing itself out in the corridors of the Ministry of Health.
Though, by now, all of Italy was familiar with the accusation that the former
Minister of Health had accepted immense bribes from various pharmaceutical
companies and in return had allowed them to raise the prices of the medicines
they manufactured, it was not common knowledge that Favero had been the
accountant who handled the private finances of the president of the largest of
these firms. Those who did know assumed that he had decided to imitate so many
of the men named in this ever-spreading web of corruption; had chosen to
preserve his honour by removing himself from accusation, guilt, and possible
punishment. Few

seemed to question the proposition
that honour was preserved in this manner.

The Padua police did not concern
themselves with such speculation as to motive, for the autopsy performed on
Favero's body revealed that, at the time of his death, his blood contained a
sufficient quantity of barbiturate to make driving, let alone driving into his
garage and closing the door, impossible. It was possible that he had taken the
pills after pulling into the garage. Why, then, was no bottle or package found
in the car, and why were no barbiturates of any sort found in the house?
Subsequent microscopic examination of Favero's pockets revealed that none of
them contained the least trace of barbiturate. None of this information,
however, was given to the press, and so Favero's death remained, at least in
the popular consciousness, a suicide.

Three days after Favero's death,
which would make it five days after Trevisan's murder, Brunetti arrived at his
office to hear the phone ringing.

'Brunetti,' he answered, holding the
phone with one hand and unbuttoning his raincoat with the other.

'Commissario Brunetti, this is
Capitano della Corte of the Padua police.' Brunetti recognized the name,
vaguely, and with the sense that whatever he had heard about della Corte in the
past had been to the man's favour.

'Good morning, captain, what can I do
for you?'

'You can tell me if Rino Favero's
name has come up in your investigation of the murder you had on the train.'

'Favero? The man who committed
suicide?'

'Suicide?' della Corte asked. 'With
four milligrams of Roipnal in his blood?'

Brunetti was immediately alert
'What's the connection with Trevisan?' he asked.

'We don't know. But we ran a trace on
all the numbers we found in his address book. That is, on all the numbers that
were listed without names. Trevisan's was one of them.'

'Have you got the records yet?'
Neither of them had to clarify that Brunetti meant the record of all of the
calls made from Favero's phone.

'There's no record that he called
either Trevisan's office or his home, at least not from his own phones.’

'Then why would he have the number?'
Brunetti asked.

"That's exactly what we were
wondering.' Della Corte’s tone was dry.

'How many other numbers were listed
without names?’

'Eight. One is the phone in a bar in
Mestre. One is a public phone in Padua railway station. And the rest don't
exist'

'What do you mean, they don't exist?'

'That they don't exist as possible
numbers anywhere in the Veneto.'

'Are you checking it for other
cities, other provinces?'

'We did that. Either they've got too
many digits or they don't correspond to any numbers in this country.' 'Foreign?’

They've got to be.'

'No indication of country code?'

'Two look like they're in Eastern
Europe, and two could be in either Ecuador or Thailand, and don't ask me how
the guys who told me know this. They're still working on the others,' della
Corte answered. 'And he never called any of those numbers from either of his
phones, either the foreign ones or the ones here in the Veneto.'

'But he had them,' Brunetti said.
'Yes, he had them.'

'He could easily call from a public
phone,' Brunetti suggested.

‘I know, I know.'

'What about other international
calls? Any country he called often?'

'He called a lot of countries often.'

'International clients?' Brunetti
asked.

'Some of the calls were to clients,
yes. But a lot of them don't correspond to anyone he worked for.'