temptation in florence 04 - expected in death (3 page)

Carlina bit back a smile. Apparently, nature had invested everything into the shape and not so much in the mind. Another difference from his mother, whose clever eyes now surveyed the room like a General taking stock and finding his subordinates lacking.

The family was fully assembled – next to Uncle Teo, his Olga and the amazing Ugo, Benedetta's three children Ernesto, Annalisa, and Emma were already seated. Emma's husband Lucio was just picking up her scarf from the floor before sitting down again. The Frenchman Leopold Morin helped Benedetta fill the plates before passing them around the table. They had become a couple in the last months, and it made Carlina happy to see a small smile of intimate friendship pass between them as they worked together. Then she noticed the empty chair. “Where's Mama?”

Benedetta placed a steaming plate in front of her. The aromatic smell of the tomato sauce filled the room. “She'll be down in a minute. She said we shouldn't wait because she wanted to finish her piece first.” A disapproving sniff accompanied the words.

Garini leaned closer to Carlina. “What piece?”

“Oh, Mama has picked up knitting as her new hobby.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I'm surprised. It sounds an altogether too mundane hobby for your mother.”

“Don't be fooled.” Carlina's voice was dry. “It's not as if Mama has taken up ordinary knitting.”

Garini slanted her a glance. “Please explain. What is un-ordinary knitting, then?”

“Knitting on a large scale.” Carlina enjoyed the look on Garini's face as she picked up her fork and started to eat. “She has plenty of projects - knitting sweaters for statues, covering up three hundred year old olive trees in colorful outfits, creating a warm scarf with a million little pompoms for the national library here in Florence . . .”

“A scarf for the national library?” He sounded stunned. “You're kidding.”

“Absolutely not. And don't get her wrong. It's Art with a capital A, and she plans to become famous, like that architect who covers whole buildings in fabric and gets away with it. What's his name again?”

“Christo.” Ernesto grinned across the table. His red hair shone like a beam of light.

“Thanks, that was it. Christo. Mama thinks she's the next Christo, but, to say it in her own words, she's 'interpreting' knitted material instead of fabric. At the moment, she's making a cape for David.”

Garini frowned. “Who's David?”

Carlina gave him a mocking smile. “The one and only David, my dear. Michelangelo's statue.”

“A cape?” Ernesto asked. “That's new, isn't it?”

“Yes. At first, they wanted to do a pair of trousers for him, but then, they figured that such a garment would take away too much of his beauty; besides, they might have gotten the reputation of being a bit too . . . inhibited, something to be avoided at all costs, so they came up with the idea of a cape that would swirl with the wind around his shoulders, to emphasize his stern marble beauty in stark contrast to the softly knitted material. I'm quoting her, by the way.” Carlina chuckled.

Garini blinked but as usual, he wasn't diverted by side issues. “Who's they?”

“Mama's knitting club. She organized a club of friends to knit with her because it takes too long to knit the whole artwork by herself.”

Garini closed his eyes for an instant. “Amazing.”

Olga dropped her fork with a sharp sound onto her plate. “Fabbiola always was amazing, as you call it.”

A sudden silence fell. Olga's tone had been venomous, and though the words as such were innocent enough, the meaning was clear.

Uncle Teo frowned and gave Olga a surprised look.

Right on cue, the door opened and Fabbiola waltzed into the room. “I'm sorry I'm late. I had to recover a dropped stitch in David's cape.” Her gaze fell on Olga. “Oh, no.” She pivoted on her heels and walked out the door again without another word.

Benedetta jumped up. “Fabbiola! Are you not eating?” She shouted to be heard by her sister who had probably reached the staircase by now.

“No, thanks. I'm not hungry anymore.” Fabbiola's voice faded, then a door closed.

Chapter 3

The next afternoon, Carlina was tidying a drawer at the bottom of one of Temptation's cleverly constructed wall displays. She was humming to herself and enjoying the soft May breeze that came from the wide open store doors, when a familiar voice behind her said in sepulchral tones: “Do you also have cheap underwear for an unfortunate woman who will never have a man in her life?”

Carlina jumped and turned around. “Francesca! I didn't hear you coming in.” She hugged her friend and looked at her affectionately. “You don't only look like a pixie, but you also walk like one.”

“Ha.” Francesca pushed her short hair away from her forehead until it stood up on end. “I wish I
were
a pixie. Don't they have magical powers? I'd conjure up a nice man for myself and I'd be happy.”

Carlina frowned. “That bad?”

“Yes, that bad.” Francesca flicked a finger against a lace bra as if she didn't want to see it. “Remember Alfi?”

“Alfi?” Carlina bit her lower lip. “Should I know him? I'm sorry if I don't recall--”

Francesca waved a careless hand through the air. “Oh, no, don't worry about it. I might not have mentioned him to you after all because I have a new rule: I've decided to wait for two months before I tell anybody about a new guy in my life.” She sighed. “Because most don't last that long and that saves me from the humiliation of confessing to my friends that another one bit the dust.”

Carlina looked at her petite friend with concern. Usually Francesca was bubbly and happy with as much will power as lung power – which she had in abundance due to her job as an artistic glass blower – but today, her shoulders were slumping forward and an air of dejection enveloped her.

“What did Alfi do to you?” She touched Francesca's cheek. “Should I go and tell him off?”

“No. And his name is not Alfi.” Francesca gave such a deep sigh that it sounded as if it came from the bottom of a well.

“No?” Carlina scratched her head. “Didn't you just say--?”

“I can't pronounce his real name, that's why I called him Alfi,” Francesca explained. “To keep it simple.”

“I see.” Carlina tried to sound as if it were standard procedure not to know the name of your boyfriend. “Is he foreign?”

“He's Japanese.” Francesca sighed again. “He is – I mean was – the teacher at my Japanese language course for beginners.”

“Hold on.” Carlina lifted both hands. “Since when have you been learning Japanese?”

“Since January,” Francesca said. “But I won't go anymore.”

“Why did you start to learn Japanese in the first place?” Carlina was intrigued. Francesca was a passionate glassblower, with a passion so consuming that she had little time or interest for anything else.

“I've got so many Japanese tourists at my store, and I thought it would be nice to talk to them. At least a bit. Usually, they arrive by bus and have about three and a half minutes before rushing out again, but these three and a half minutes are quite intense.” She grinned for the first time that morning. “Anyway, I thought it would be cool to say a word or two that they would understand.”

“Wow. That's impressive.”

Francesca looked at the tips of her high heeled shoes as if she had never before seen their bright green hue. “And I also thought that successful businessmen would join in the course and that this might be a clever strategy to get to know some.”

“And did you?”

“No.” Another well-deep sigh came from Francesca. “Alfi was the only man in the course. We went out a few times, and he was so wonderfully exotic and polite and . . . oh, well, I thought this would lead to something, but yesterday, he told me he would go home for the festival of the cherry blossoms or something similar to see his wife and kids.”

“Bummer.” Carlina swallowed. What could she do to help? She took Francesca by the arm and dragged her to another shelf. “But to answer your question: Yes, I do have the right underwear for you. Look here: It's black with interesting, slightly translucent stripes, so you'll look hot and sexy if you're checking yourself out in the mirror, but it doesn't scratch or pinch or crawl into places where it has no business to be. Underwear that makes you happy, so to say.”

Francesca eyed the filmy black bra without enthusiasm. “I doubt it'll help.”

“Sure it will help,” Carlina said. “There's nothing to make you feel better like underwear that feels as if it belongs to you like your skin.” She grabbed the matching panties. “Here, take them. They're on the house.”

Francesca shook her head. “That's kind of you, but I didn't come here to--”

“Of course you didn't.” Carlina smiled at her friend. “But I've never seen you this down before, and it's all I can offer you at the moment.” She thought a moment and remembered that Francesca enjoyed eating with her family. “I'd also invite you to dinner at home to take your mind off things, but the atmosphere is a bit strained at the moment. Maybe we can go out together one of these days?”

Francesca shook her head again. “I've got a glass blower training coming up. It's in Venice.”

“Well, how about afterward?”

Francesca shook her head. “I won't have time this week at all. The evening when I return, I've got a special dinner invitation by the town council. It's a project where they're putting together artists and craftspeople of different trades to see if we can inspire each other.” She put her head to the side and sighed. “Thank God I still love my job.”

“That's something to cling to,” Carlina gave her friend an encouraging nod. “And maybe there'll be an attractive craftsman at that town council dinner. Who knows?”

Francesca rolled her eyes. “Well, it's the second meeting for that project, and the first time, only three men attended. Two were not much taller than I am, and you know that I prefer hunks. The third was great, until I found out he was married with four kids.”

Carlina winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah.” Francesca sighed, then gave herself a little shake and looked up. “Why did you say things are strained at your home at the moment? Is it your mother?”

“No, for once, it's not my mother. It's Uncle Teo. He's courting a woman some thirty years his junior. Her name is Olga Ottima.”

Francesca gave a little shriek and took one step back as if a tarantula had appeared on the stone floor in front of her. “Olga Ottima? The one who works for the
Finanza
?”

Carlina blanched. “The tax authorities? Are you sure it's the same Olga Ottima?”

“Trim figure, small, fiftyish, turned out like a mannequin, likes purple?”

Uneasiness clenched Carlina's stomach. “Yes.”

“
Oh, Madonna.”
Francesca's eyes widened. “You have to get rid of her. Immediately.”

“Why?” Carlina tried to take a calming breath, but her throat had closed.

“Because she's a spy. She gets a special bonus if she finds out about people who have not paid their taxes correctly.”

Carlina frowned. “Can the government use spies? Isn't that illegal?”

“Not paying your taxes is illegal.” Francesca's voice was dry. “They say that Olga Ottima is one of the best agents at the
Finanza
.”

“Agents?” The word had a faint Russian ring that chilled Carlina to the core.

“That's what they're officially called,” Francesca said.

“But how do you know all that?” Carlina clutched the edge of a shelf as she leaned against it.

Francesca gave her a pitying look. “Remember the little holiday home we had down in the South of Tuscany, near Grossetto?”

“The one you sold last year?”

“Yep. Guess why we had to sell it.”

“Not because of Olga Ottima!”

“Oh yes, very much because of her. She became friends with my mother at a sewing circle and managed to get herself invited to a week at our holiday house. When she had learned how long we had it in our possession, she reported it to the
Finanza
.”

“But I don't see the problem. What exactly did she report?”

“Well, first of all, the house wasn't officially registered at all. My Dad had always been afraid that they would find the house with helicopters – they do search for illegal houses like that, you know – and had planted big trees all around many years ago, but the bigger problem was the fact that he rented it out to tourists whenever we didn't use it ourselves. He always asked for the rent in cash and didn't report it to the
Finanza
at all.”

“Oh.” Carlina swallowed.

“Yeah. And due to that malicious Olga, the
Finanza
made a totally exaggerated estimate of what my Dad had earned in all those years and asked for a fantastic sum. We had no choice but to sell the house in order to come up with the money.”

“
Madonna
.” Carlina rubbed her bare arms to get rid of a sudden chill.

“Don't even mention her name to my Dad. He would gladly kill her if he knew how to get away with it.”

Carlina swallowed. “Right.”

“And you say she has latched onto Uncle Teo now?”

Carlina nodded. “It sure looks like it.”

“But do you know what she's looking for?”

Carlina frowned and fiddled with the hangers to her left. “No. I mean, we all live together in the family house. It's Uncle Teo's property and of course, we all pay something to maintain and keep it, but I'm not sure in how far it's all officially reported.”

“How many apartments are there again?”

“Well, on the ground floor, we have Uncle Teo's apartment and Leo's. Though Leo is just now moving into Benedetta's apartment.” Carlina smiled. “It's really sweet to see their romance.”

Francesca grimaced. “Don't talk to me about romance.”

“Sorry. Well, on the floor above Uncle Teo there's Benedetta with Annalisa and Ernesto on one side and Emma and Lucio on the other side. Benedetta and all her kids on one floor, you could say. One floor above that, we have Mama.”

“She's got the whole floor to herself?”

“Not really. The apartment on the other side is sealed off from our staircase. It opens into the house next door. It's a long-standing agreement with the owner of the house next door and the tenant. Uncle Teo once explained it to me, but I forgot what it was all about. And on the top floor, there's just me with my little place.”