To Die in Tuscany, David Wagner [best novel books to read .TXT] 📗

pushing the cart. On it this time were three plates filled with salad leaves of different types, but all of them green. Again the drawer opened, and out came a soup spoon and a fork. He poured olive oil into the spoon followed by a dash of vinegar, salt, and pepper, then stirred the spoonful with the fork before adding it to one of the salad plates and gently tossing the greens to give it a slight coating. The process was repeated for the other two plates before he placed a salad first in front of Betta, then the two men. They all took bites.

“Just what we needed after that meat course,” said Betta. “And exactly the right amount of dressing.”

“Like with a good pasta,” DiMaio said. “Just enough to coat it without losing the taste of the greens.” The three pondered this bit of gastronomic wisdom before he changed the subject. “There was something else that came out of my conversation with Florio. It was when he ran his kidnapping theory by me, and I thought about what insurance Somonte might have had on himself. After I left the gardens, I called Pilar and she confirmed that her father had a policy, and his wife was the beneficiary. In fact, Isabella Somonte had insisted that her husband be insured. I would guess not a small sum, either.”

“From the little contact we had with her,” Rick said, “that would seem very much in character.”

“Exactly. No great surprise there. But something else occurred to me, Betta. Could he have had any insurance on the Piero drawing?”

Her fork stopped in midair. “O Dio, why didn’t I think of that?”

“I’m sure you would have, Betta. Your mind’s been on other things.”

“Rick, it should have been one of the first things I checked. Often the thieves contact the insurance company directly and a deal is cut to the advantage of both parties. The artwork is returned, the thieves get paid, and the company is relieved they don’t have to pay the full amount on the policy. Naturally, we don’t approve of such arrangements.” She took a drink, but of water, not wine. “How can I find out what company insured the drawing?”

DiMaio held up his hands defensively. “You’re getting ahead of things, Betta. Pilar didn’t know if her father even had a policy on the drawing, but she said that if he did, it would likely be with the same company he used for the rest of his insurance.” He pulled his small notebook from his pocket and flipped through the pages. He tore one out and passed it to Betta. “Here you are. Seguros Suarez in Madrid.”

She glanced at the paper and stuffed it into her pocket. “We have a woman in the office who deals with insurance companies in these cases. I’ll call her after lunch. Fortunately, she’s a friend and won’t ask me why it took so long to get the name.”

“Come on, Betta, we’ve barely been here two days. And you’ve been busy working various angles to the investigation.” She was sending off signals that Rick had come to recognize from similar situations, when she talked to him about the frustrations of her work. The perfectionist in her was not mollified by assurances from him those times, and it wouldn’t be now. Better to change the subject and get her thinking about something else—preferably something else related to the case. “Have you changed your thoughts about Vitellozzi, after meeting with him a second time?”

It seemed to work. She pondered the question. “There was something he said that, thinking about it now, was very curious. He talked about taking the long view, meaning that he’s surrounded by works of art that have been in the collection for centuries and will still be in it centuries from now. He mentioned some priceless object that had been misfiled in a museum for decades and suddenly found. He implied that what is important is that the drawing turn up eventually, even if it is after we have all left the scene.”

“So that makes you think he has it stashed somewhere,” Rick said. “Why don’t we steal down into the basement tonight when everyone is at the reception?”

“That’s not a bad idea, Rick.”

“I was joking, Betta.”

Betta pushed at the leaves in her salad before spearing one on her fork.

“Did you hear that, Betta?” asked DiMaio. “Riccardo was joking.”

Betta held up an empty fork. “Why don’t you get a search warrant, Alfredo?”

“Based on Vitellozzi telling you that the collection will outlast him, and he hopes the drawing turns up someday? That would get a good laugh from the judge.”

She concentrated her attention on the plate, carefully cutting a slice of lettuce.

* * *

“That explains it,” said Betta after Rick filled her in on the encounter between Pilar and Alfredo at the police station. “Perhaps we were a bit too quick to assume that he would step away from his professional persona to become involved with someone connected to his investigation.”

“He did become involved, Betta, but something soured the relationship. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk about it, but he wasn’t hiding the fact that it’s over between them. We may never know if it was Alfredo or Pilar who caused things to go awry.” A college student passed them, talking loudly on his cell phone. “Betta, you didn’t tell Alfredo about your conversation with Pilar yesterday.”

“Maybe it was just as well I didn’t, given the way he’s feeling about her. It’s not relevant to the investigation.” She stopped in her tracks. “But it may explain something that we couldn’t figure out.”

“What’s that?” he said after returning to her side.

“You remember the slap in the cathedral?”

“It is etched in my memory.”

“Well, Lucho told you this morning that he knew more about what the old man was doing than anyone in the company. Pilar understood that, and pressured him to spy on her father. But there was one secret Lucho may have known that he didn’t pass on