Cold Tuscan Stone (19 page)

“And the third?”

“That one is a bit more curious.” He shifted the papers in front of him on the desk. “Canopo came in one day by himself and opened this one, his wife did not sign any of the documents. It is also a checking account, but separate from the other. Of course the widow will have access to it now. After doing the required paperwork.” Conti ignored implied criticism delivered with emphasis on the word “required.” “She likely knows about it,” the manager added.

Conti raised an eyebrow. “When did he open this third account?”

“About a year ago.” He checked the papers. “No, I'm sorry, eight months ago. Every few weeks he made deposits. No withdrawals have been made on the account since it was created.”

“Do you have copies of the checks deposited?”

The man again consulted the paper again and gave Conti a sheepish look. “No checks, it was always cash.”

***

“The phone's ringing, I have to go.”

Detective LoGuercio snapped the cell phone closed and walked quickly to pick up the telephone that sat on one corner of his bare desk.

“LoGuercio.”

“Detective, this is Sergeant DeMarzo.”

“Yes, DeMarzo, no problems with the American, I hope.”

“No, sir, none at all. On the contrary, he has settled into his hotel for the afternoon. He told the woman at the front desk—”

“Woman at the front desk?”

“Yes, sir, I've gotten to know her well and she told me that when Montoya picked up his key just now he asked if the room was made up, since he was planning to work there on his computer for a few hours.”

“That should make it easy for you, DeMarzo.”

“Yes, sir, it's why I was calling. My wife was going to pack something for me this morning, but the baby spilled her food on the floor, then my mother-in-law called, and—”

“Do I really need all this domestic information, DeMarzo?” LoGuercio was a bachelor, and ate his breakfast at a bar near the police station. Nothing ever spilled on the floor.

“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. What I meant to say is that I haven't had anything to eat since breakfast, so I wondered if I could get a quick
panino
. There's a small bar just down the street from the hotel, and—”

“Of course, go ahead, since he's holed up in his room.”

“Thank you, sir, it will only take a few minutes, then I'll return to the lobby of the hotel. There is no other way out for him than through it.”

***

Rick stood up, watched the leaves blowing around the empty swimming pool outside his window, and slipped on his wool overcoat. He was a good translator, but for some of the more knotty phrases he still needed his English-Italian dictionary, at least to be sure that there wasn't some nuance he might have missed. He hadn't yet found an online edition he trusted. There was nothing like paper and ink, even in the electronic age. But sure enough, he'd left the thick book in the trunk of the rental car, parked in the back of the garage next to the hotel.

Putting his computer on sleep, he descended to the main floor, walking quickly past the front desk and out to the street. He pulled his collar around his neck when he felt the wind coming down from the main square, a river of cold flowing past him and out of the city through the stone gate. Reaching the end of the hotel façade, he turned right and started up the ramp into the garage, squinting to adjust to the gloomy space. Two small bulbs hung from wires in the cement ceiling, enough barely to make out the various cars parked on either side. He walked to the end of the row, found his rental, and reached into the left coat pocket for the keys. He found his GPS and shifted to the right pocket, pulling out the keys. The trunk popped open easily, and fortunately its small light helped him find the dictionary wedged into one corner near the jack. He slammed the trunk shut and headed back toward the street. The cold wind was now hitting him directly in the face, and he lowered his head.

As he turned up the street a dark red Opel drove up from the right and braked directly in front of him. Rick froze in his tracks, clutching his dictionary as if it were his wallet. The driver's side window lowered slowly, and Rick saw a dark-haired man dressed in a leather jacket. He wore sunglasses and had a stubbled face which in Italy could be either fashionable or sloppy. The man looked vaguely familiar, but then his was the type of face Rick passed a dozen times a day on the street. He looked Rick up and down, the gaze pausing briefly on the boots and the dictionary.

“Signor Montoya, I think you are expecting me. Get in please, I have something to show you.”

This really is happening
, thought Rick. He looked down at the book in his hand and toyed with the idea of leaving it at the hotel desk, but decided he didn't want to miss this chance. It was what he was here for. He walked around the car, opened the door and ducked in, tossing the dictionary into the back seat.

“My dictionary,” he explained, as the car surged ahead in first gear.

The man threw him a strange look and turned his eyes to the street. “I don't think you'll need it.”

Sergeant DeMarzo was smiling down at his sandwich on the counter next to the glass of mineral water. Yellow cheese oozed out the sides, its golden color contrasting nicely with the dark grill marks on the toasted bread. It had been a long time since his morning
cornetto
, and with the baby carrying on he probably hadn't digested it very well. Just as DeMarzo picked the sandwich up and opened his mouth, the red car sped past the front of the bar and started up the hill into the center of the city.

Rick looked over at the man. “Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

“What is it you're going to show me?”

“You'll see that too.”

The driver stared straight ahead and Rick decided he wouldn't get much out of him, at least not during the drive. There would likely be someone at the other end, wherever that would be. One thing for sure, this was not the voice of the man who had called him outside the church. The car turned onto a narrow street which ran around the outside of the main piazza, passing the building which housed Polpetto's office, while the driver kept his eyes tightly on the road. Just ahead a small boy stepped out of a doorway, causing the driver to honk and curse under his breath. At the corner the car turned onto a bigger street, though still not wide enough for two lanes of traffic. It dropped steeply down to one of the city gates, and suddenly they were outside the walls. The views changed from solid gray stone to trees swaying in the wind. The road went past rows of small houses, the spaces between them widening as they drove farther from the city itself. After a few minutes the scenery was mostly woods and fields, with an occasional house tucked back off the road. Leaves of tall trees further reduced the waning afternoon light. Fifteen minutes later the car slowed suddenly and pulled off the pavement onto a dirt road. The maneuver was so fast that Rick barely had time to look around. I am not going to remember any of this, he thought. The Opel rolled to a stop at a clearing and the man turned off the engine and got out of the car. Rick opened his own door and stepped to the ground.

They walked to the front of the car and looked down into a deep ravine. In New Mexico it would have been called an arroyo, though here in Tuscany there was considerably more vegetation than in the American Southwest. Rick glanced around and noticed other tire marks in the soft earth around where the car was parked. The clearing was small, bordered on two sides by trees which rustled softly, their leaves holding on as long as they could before the cold dropped them into a dry carpet on the ground. The man stood silently and then pointed down into the ravine.

“Down there is where we are going. Follow me carefully, I wouldn't want our American buyer to break a leg.” His laugh had the cackle of a heavy smoker. Rick thought it better not to mention his rock-climbing experience.

There was a path, though it would have taken Rick a while to find it himself. It started steeply and then ran parallel to the ravine edge before cutting back in the other direction. As they descended the trees closed in on them, making the path even harder to see. The man had shed his sunglasses and now he pulled a dark metal flashlight from his coat, but didn't turn it on until they reached the bottom of the ravine. Here the ground was somewhat clear, probably due to water which ran through the ravine during rain storms, tearing up any plants that tried to grow. After walking about fifty feet the man climbed up one side of the gully and stopped, pointing his flashlight at some bushes. Rick wondered what was going on, but then noticed that the bushes seemed out of place, their color slightly different from the rest of the vegetation. The man stepped forward and pulled them aside, revealing wooden planks crudely nailed together to form a door. He slid the door to one side and bent down to squeeze into the small opening.

Rick followed, but once inside he could see only the circle of light formed by the flashlight moving around the floor. He stood still and watched as his guide found what he was looking for with the flashlight, a wooden table directly ahead of them. The man walked to the table and the sound of a switch brought a pale light to the cave. Under the table was a row of automobile batteries that connected by ground wires to four pole lamps lighting the low ceiling. Rick noted that it was flat and even, carved by human hands rather than formed by nature. Rick lowered his eyes, immediately noticing the reason for their descent into the cave. Along the far wall were three large rectangular niches, each about four feet wide and three feet tall. One was empty. In the other two were Etruscan burial urns which looked strikingly like the one Rick had seen in Beppo's office.

***

Detective LoGuercio stared at the papers on the desk in front of him but read nothing. His thoughts were on choices—his own. Most Italians took government jobs for secure employment, decent pay, and a steady pension after retiring as young as possible, but he had joined the police in search of excitement. He soon found that the excitement came in brief spurts between long days filled with boredom and routine, regulations and forms. Palermo had its edgy side, as would be expected, but he never felt truly challenged. Then came the assignment to Volterra, and shortly after, the offer. Again he asked himself it had been a mistake to accept. He tried to get his mind back to the file in front of him when the phone rang.

“LoGuercio.”

“This is DeMarzo, sir. I…I can't locate the American.”

LoGuercio leaned forward in his chair. “That's impossible, you called me only fifteen minutes ago to say he was locked in his room with his computer. What happened?”

The sergeant spoke in short bursts, gasping for breath. “I finished my sandwich quickly and walked to the hotel, ready to sit in the lobby to wait for him. When I got there the girl at the desk, she's the one—”

“Yes, yes, the one who's been helping you, go on.”

“Yes, sir, well she told me that Montoya had left the hotel a few minutes earlier with his coat on. He didn't drop his room key, he just walked out the door.”

“Did she see which way he went?”

“No, she doesn't have a clear view of the street. I rushed outside and covered a few hundred meters of the street in both directions. Nothing.”

“His car?”

“Still in the hotel garage.”

LoGuercio looked up at the yellow ceiling of his office, trying to decide what to tell the man to do. “I'll put men on the gates of the city. You start walking around the main streets near you to see if he appears. If not, go back to the hotel and stay there, he will have to return some time. Call me immediately if he turns up. He can't have gone very far. If you're lucky he just went out to buy a newspaper or some shaving cream.”

“Or something for his computer.”

Like a new hard drive. “I doubt that.”

He hung up, breathing heavily. You wanted excitement? Now you have it. Where would Montoya have gone, especially after telling the desk he was going to stay in his room? If it wasn't just a quick decision to play tourist, someone must have called him. Who? The more pressing question going through LoGuercio's head was something else. How long should he wait before telling Conti?

***

“
Ecco
,” said Rick, trying to stay as calm as he could. He walked over to the first urn while the man leaned against the table, the flashlight now back in his pocket. As he watched Rick he pulled out a cigarette and lit it, the smoke adding to the stale odor of the cave. The urn was at chest height so that Rick could reach out and run his fingers over the stone decoration. The surface was relatively clean, like it had been recently rubbed with a cloth. Particles of dust clogged the tiny recesses of the design, and given its intricacy, there were many nooks for dust to have collected over the centuries. At first Rick thought it to be a battle scene, but then he noticed a large bear on the left side of the panel, reared up and facing the spears of the hunters. Would the dead man have really killed a bear? An Etruscan Davey Crockett? Rick was not aware that any bears lived in this part of the peninsula, but perhaps the man had traveled further north for sport or as a soldier. Or it may have been the depiction of some legend or myth. Whatever it portrayed, it made an exciting bit of bas-relief theater, drama about which the toga-wearing Etruscan sculpted on the lid seemed blissfully blasé. He reclined in the typical banquet position, as if saying “Yes, I killed that bear in my lifetime, now I can brag about it to everyone in the afterlife. What does a dead guy have to do to get some more wine around here?” Rick moved to the next niche.

The theme on this one was clearly classical, even if the figure on top had the same relaxed demeanor as his neighbor. It depicted a chariot carrying a man clad in a flowing robe followed by another man on foot wearing light armor. The chariot, with ornate decorations on its side and wheels, was pulled by four strong horses. Above the scene loomed a winged figure, a deity of some sort, looking straight into the face of the charioteer. Contrasting the flowing lines of robes, wings, and horseflesh, regular stone blocks of a temple ran across the top of the urn and bent around the sides. Rick was so intent on studying the stone that he almost jumped when the man spoke.