Death of a Serpent (24 page)

Carlo’s eyes widened at the sound of his twin’s name in his mother’s mouth. He reached inside his coat pocket, and told Scarpo, “We found two letters from Carmela hidden in Gusti’s mattress.” He handed both to Rosa.

After putting on her spectacles, Rosa began to read, using a finger to follow the words, mouthing them in a whisper, then summarized the contents aloud. “Dated a year ago October, before any of this sorry business. She told Gusti about Achille, her lover. Life was good, she said. She missed their talks, told her to guard her valuables.”

She passed the letter to Serafina who looked at the writing. “Yes, that’s Carmela’s hand, the letters so rounded, just like a child’s.” Her eyes filled, and she handed the letter to Carlo.

“And the second one?”

“Dated March 15, this year.”

Dearest Gusti,

My apologies for not writing sooner, but for the last few months, my life has been in sorry disarray.

Achille left to join Garibaldi and his men, promising him extra coins, but since he never was paid for his service in 1862, I am doubtful that this will be the case. In any event, I doubt I’ll ever see him again. No matter. Good riddance. Yes, we were happy, but he’s chosen his life. I care no more for him.

And now for the special news: I carry his child.

No coins jingle my pockets so after Achille departed, I walked until I came to the orphanage. As you know Mother Concetta is a good friend of
Nanna
.

Concetta has made a place for me. I care for the young children. My days are full, and I am happy. One of the little ones reminds me so much of Maria. How I do miss my family:
Nanna
, my father, my brothers and sisters, even, if you can believe it, my mother, although I never could live in my home again, not with her in residence. And of course I long for our talks and laughs.

In answer to your question, take great care. Do not become friends with her. We know her to be like the weather, fair one moment, foul the next.

Ever your friend,

Carmela

Serafina grabbed the letter. When she finished reading, she stared into the distance, lost in thought.

“We know
who
to be like the weather?” Rosa asked.

Serafina shrugged. “Her letter raises questions, answers nothing.”

“Oh, Gusti, you and your closed mouth,” Rosa said.

A knock on the door. Gesuzza returned, bringing a cart of food. Serafina smelled dark mocha, coffee, ricotta, orange sauce and heavy cream. She tasted bile.

“From cook,” the domestic said. The bottom shelf held trays of pastry—
sfinci, cannulicchi, cassateddi, minni della Vergine, pagnuttella
; and on the top shelf, large cups with caffè latté, the milk frothy, the drink steaming and topped with bits of chocolate and powdered sugar.

“Couldn’t eat,” Serafina said. “My stomach and head are like rocks.

“Nor I,” Carlo said.

“Scarpo?” Rosa asked.

He held up his hand.

Rosa said, “Tell cook, she’s such a comfort in our hour of need. Perhaps later. We’ll take the latté. Close the door on your way out.”

Serafina accepted a cup. “I want to bring up what’s on everyone’s minds. You may have heard it in the street, too, Scarpo. We need to face it.”

“Stop talking like an
avvucatu
.” Rosa sipped her caffè.

“The rumor in town is that Don Tigro is behind these murders.” Serafina took a few sips of her caffè. “They say he wants Rosa’s business. The deaths of Gemma, Nelli, Bella do not bear the mark of the don. But we know from Scarpo that you pay faithfully.”

“Each month,” Rosa said, wiping foam from the top of her lips.

“But these last killings smack of his style—the slipper stuffed into Gusti’s mouth, a body hanging from the rafters of a cheap bordello.” As she spoke, she saw Gusti’s face, distorted, Eugenia’s bare feet hanging overhead, dirty and with toenails chipped.

Scarpo and Rosa shook their heads. “We’d know,” Scarpo insisted. “La Signura pays. Every month I give him the money. His thugs, they come around for it. And, before the don strikes, there’s a warning. He likes the world to know. That’s his way.” He took off his bandanna, swiped his forehead, and finished his caffè. “The rumor?—created to comfort the crowd because no one explains these deaths. They are the work of someone sick in the head because of a woman or the work of the devil, such like that, but not the work of the don.”

Carlo downed his coffee, looked at Serafina. “Ask him yourself. You’re going there this afternoon to see Elisabetta. Put it to him then.”

She nodded. “Before we continue, there’s the matter of the lock. It’s missing from the back door. Where are the keys?”

Rosa said, “I have a set. Scarpo has a set. Only two made by the smith.”

“Show me your keys.”

Scarpo pulled his from a chain attached to his breeches, found the key to the lock.

“Rosa?”

Rosa had been searching in her desk. Her arm was into the drawer up to the elbow. Her face was red. “Missing,” she said. “My keys, they’re gone! An accomplice within these walls.” Her face drained of color.

Serafina turned to Scarpo. “This afternoon, go to the smith. Change all locks, all doors. One set of keys.”

He nodded.

She turned her notebook to the first page. “Our best lead is the monk.” She read from the list they had made what, a week, ten days ago, quoting Scarpo, “There is one who keeps coming back, Signura, a stranger, he has a funny smell, not from around here. Pigheaded, too. Returns many times. Wears a brown cloak and hat.”

Scarpo nodded and set his cup on the desk.

“And we found strands of hair in Gusti’s hand,” Carlo said. “Show them, Mama.”

Serafina opened her book to the page where the strand was coiled and the fingernail dug into the paper. She turned up the wick on Rosa’s lamp. The four gawped at them.

Scarpo got up for a better look, put his head very close and nodded, still staring at the hair now gleaming in the light from the oil lamp. He picked it up, smelled it. “Has your smell, Donna Fina, now that it’s wedged into your book.” He sniffed again. “Could be the monk’s. Hard to tell.”

“Have you seen him recently?” Serafina asked.

Scarpo sat down, adjusted himself. “Last time I see him, he was begging near the fountain.”

“That’s where I saw him,” Serafina said. “Tessa’s seen him, too—”

“—talking to Gemma and Bella near the fountain,” Rosa said.

“Right. Carlo and Vicenzu go with us to visit Elisabetta this afternoon. They drive the carriage and can snoop in the don’s stables.”

“Could be Falco’s, too,” Serafina said.

“Will you stop it with Falco! Like a dog and a bone you are with that man.”

“Who is this Falco, anyway?” Carlo asked.

Rosa and Serafina glared at each other.

Laughing, Rosa looked at Carlo and winked. “Falco is an old friend of your mother.”

Serafina cut in. “An acquaintance from school. Now one of Rosa’s frequent visitors.”

“What do you know about this business. Harmless he is. Adds sparkle to the evening.”

“He’s the brother of Bella’s father. He handed over the business to Falco after Bella died.”

“Not to his sons?” Carlo asked.

“All killed in the war on the same day, I understand,” Rosa said.

“All on the same day? Impossible,” Carlo said.

“Battle of Milazzo,” Scarpo said. “Hundreds killed.”

“Falco gains the most because of Bella’s death.”

Serafina said, “And that puts him on our list of suspects.”

“But what about the other deaths? Two others killed before Bella. Why would Falco murder Gemma and Nelli?” Scarpo asked.

Carlo said, “He could have done. Could have started out with them in order to practice before he attempted the important kill, like dissecting frogs before tackling a cadaver.”

Scarpo flicked a piece of dirt from his suspenders.

“Inherited the gift of fantasy from your mother, you have,” Rosa said. She rubbed her fingers together. “But behind the story of Falco lurks the truth: in the end, murder is about money.”

“If the murders continue, and Falco is behind them, you’ll be ruined, and he’ll have control of the house.”

Rosa’s eyes widened. “The wizard for once is right.”

“For now, let’s say Falco is a strong suspect,” Serafina said. “We must be like jugglers. First, the monk, second, Falco. We don’t drop—” Serafina stopped. She stared at the sea.

“What?” Rosa asked, rolling her eyes.

Serafina said, “Falco could be the monk. An actor, Falco. And handy with a knife.”

“A story you make up as you go along.”

“No, I saw the carved figures in his shop last week. You see, don’t you, anyone can dress up as a monk. There are so many of them.”

“In Palermo we see them all the time,” Carlo said.

“And while I think these murders are the work of one man, Gusti’s murder could not have been committed without an accomplice, either living right here under Rosa’s roof, or someone who knows the house well—well enough to steal Rosa’s keys. And that points to one of the women.”

“Or to me or Formusa or the laundress or Gesuzza,” Scarpo said.

“And Fina’s right, anyone can dress up as a monk.” Rosa shook her head.

“It means we must catch the killer in the act.”

Silence.

Carlo said, “Forget the ragpicker, a false turn.”

“No, I cannot. I must find out more about him,” Serafina said.

Carlo gave her an elaborate shrug.

“We have guards, Signura, old Redshirts I trust,” Scarpo said. “Thick and plodding in the head, but good with the feet. For show, mostly, to scare away bandits on the road, but maybe they can help.”

“Ask them to follow this ragpicker. Ferret out what they can,” Serafina said.

Scarpo nodded.

“If you plan to catch him just before he kills his next victim, why follow anyone?” Carlo asked.

Serafina said, “You’re forgetting about forewarned and forearmed. We need to find out as much as we can about these suspects. What if the monk is two or three in a league? Or a gang of killers?”

Rosa clutched her chest.

Carlo threw up his hands. “Something else: I have an important test Tuesday morning and haven’t studied. I was hoping to take the train Monday afternoon after the autopsy.”

“You must. Don’t forget your father’s hopes for you. The three of us, Rosa, me, Scarpo, in Rosa’s office tomorrow afternoon. We haven’t much time. Today’s the third. Gusti’s and Eugenia’s deaths don’t change my mind about the monk’s schedule: he kills on the sixth or seventh.”

“A horror in my bones,” Rosa said. “Sneaks into my soul, it does, and Formusa’s latté doesn’t take it away. Fina is right. The killer will strike again with reckless purpose, uncanny focus, madness eating his mind. He is the one we call the monk, but the monk could be anyone—Falco, say, who has, he does, a history of acting. But whoever he is, the wild one must have help from someone inside, the
strega
who wore those earrings when Gusti was killed. Where are they?”

Serafina dug into her purse, put them on the desk beside the book.

They gleamed in the light of the lamp.

• • •

Serafina was silent on the short ride home. Beppe swung the gates open.

“This Falco?” Carlo winked.

“None of your business,” she said and stepped from the carriage, surprising herself with the venom of her anger. She’d done it again, smashed another platter of porcelain.

No speaking until they reached the path to the front door. Serafina forced herself to look at her son and her eyes moistened. “Carlo, forgive me, I know you were teasing. Usually I love it, but something’s wrong with me today.”

“No apologies. Hard morning.” He looked at the ground, brushed lint from his coat.

“You pay a visit to Carmela again?”

He nodded.

“Ask her about these.” She handed him the earrings, kissed him on the cheek. “Tell her.”

“Tell her what?” Carlo asked.

“Tell her how much we—”

“Need her?” he asked. His smile was crooked.

“Tell her how much I miss her,” Serafina said.

Tessa and the Monk

S
erafina looked up at the sky, grey and curdled. The bougainvillea stood by the side of the house, one or two withered leaves hanging from its branches. A few pansies bloomed. In another month they’d be gone. She heard a Scarlatti sonata coming from the parlor and glanced at the stone angel. “You’re the only one smiling today,” she said.

Serafina kissed Renata who stood by the oven stirring the sauce. She blew a kiss to Giulia who sat by the fire working in her book on a pattern of some sort. Were he alive, Giorgio would be there to kiss her and hang up her cape. She felt his presence by her side, usually reassuring, but today, inscrutable.

Totò ran to greet her. “Assunta took us to the gardens. I saw the white birds.”

“Your favorites, my precious little man.” Serafina kissed him. She reached over to kiss Tessa, who stood solemn-faced. “And Tessa, did you like the gardens?”

Tessa hung her head, arms hugging her waist.

“I’m ready to go home now,” she said, looking up at Serafina.

“You miss your mother.”

She nodded.

“Of course you do. You miss your bed and your doll. You can go home just as soon as we, just as soon as everything is settled and—”

“You mean as soon as you catch the killer.”

“Well, yes, that’s it, precisely. And it’s going to happen very soon.” Serafina brushed a wayward strand off the child’s face with her hands. “But today you want to be home. I know how you feel. Do you know how she feels, Totò?” Serafina’s forehead raged.

He shook his head.

“No, he wouldn’t, would he? He’s not as wise as you.”

“But he didn’t see him.”

“Him?”

“The monk. The one who talked to Gemma and Bella, the one I told you about. I don’t like him.”

“Let’s sit down over there.” Her heart raced as she walked with the children, taking each one by the hand over to the sofa on the far side of the room. Its cushions were deep, and a brisk fire crackled in the hearth. “Now, tell me, about this monk. Where did you see him?”