Dying on the Vine (A Gideon Oliver Mystery) Page 22

  Gideon had politely declined. He had no desire to encounter another ossobuco or anything like it. With plans for the day that were neither pressing nor particularly attractive—he had to read a dissertation submission from a PhD candidate in physical anthropology, on whose advisory committee he served—he made what was for him a rare decision and decided to sleep in. So after Julie left at seven thirty, he went back to their canopied bed, leaving the windows wide open for the fresh morning air and the lulling smells and sounds—browning leaves, twittering birds—of the Tuscan countryside in fall. They were more lulling than expected, so when his cell phone jogged him awake a little after nine, he just groaned, muttered, pulled the pillow over his head, and went back to sleep.

  It was ten when he finally got up, the latest he’d slept in years, and he felt great; he was beginning to think that John might have a point about the benefits of dozing half the morning away, after all. Only after he’d showered and shaved, did he remember the phone call. But first things first. He went yawning to the door to retrieve the tray with the pot of coffee and canister of hot milk (cool by now) that waited outside for them every morning, took it into the sitting room—not quite as grand as Franco’s, but grand enough, with its frescoed ceilings and tapestried walls—squeezed himself into an interesting but not overly comfortable settee that had been made from the prow end of a gondola, and checked his phone. The message was from Rocco, saying he’d already gotten the autopsy report and that if Gideon was interested he should return the call.

  This prompted a few (but not too many) feelings of guilt. Here he’d been snoozing half the day away while the intrepid lieutenant was hot on the case. Well, why not? he asked himself. Rocco’s working; you’re on vacation, but it didn’t help. With a sigh he poured himself a cup of espresso, which still had a little warmth to it, decided against the cold milk, and dialed the number.

  “You already have the autopsy report? You guys are fast.”

  “You ain’t heard nothing yet. The lab report just came through too.”

  “Wow, that’s amazing,” said Gideon, amazed in truth. “You only found the guy yesterday morning. What did you do, hold a gun to their heads?”

  “Yeah, well, I guess Conforti leaned on them a little. Anyway, here’s the upshot. It was a cocaine overdose, all right, which they say was—well, let me read you what it says in the lab report. ‘Primary cause of death was acute cocaine intoxication with related factors contributing . . .’ Blah blah . . . let me see. . . . Umm . . . the rest is more blah blah, a lot of zero-point-x-milligram stuff.”

  “What about the manner of death? Did they make a determination? Homicide? Suicide? Accidental . . . ?”

  “Undetermined.”

  “So, can you can keep working on it?”

  “Oh yeah. Like you said, one way or another, it’s gotta tie in with everything else, so I’m just treating it like part of the Cubbiddus’ murder investigation. And Conforti’s cool with that.”

  “Yeah, it’s all related to the coke. Wait a minute. . . . Yeah, here it is: ‘While the blood cocaine levels found in the deceased are certainly within the potentially lethal range, they would in most cases not be fatal in themselves to an individual whose tolerance had been raised by habitual usage. In this instance, however, it is probable that the early-stage hypertensive cardiovascular disease and pulmonary emphysema’—I think that’s what it says; I’m translating as I go here—‘found in the deceased were contributing factors. These conditions are well-established concomitants of cocaine ingestion.’ Does that tell you anything you didn’t know before?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither. Okay, stay in touch, buddy. If anything comes up at your end that might be important, you’ll let me know?”

  “Absolutely.”

  • • •

  WHEN Gideon went to the high-ceilinged, flagstone-paved old refectory a few minutes later hunting for breakfast, he found it deserted but with plenty still on the buffet table from the Vino e Cucina send-off meal, a bigger, more varied one than usual. He helped himself from platters of cheese and ham sliced so thin you could see through them, and cut a couple of chunks from a loaf of cakey, flour-dusted Italian bread to go along with them.

  The buffet also held an anachronistically modern, science-fictiony self-service coffee machine with about twenty different buttons one could press for espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, and just about every adaptation of coffee ever invented. Having had enough coffee to last him for a while, he hit the button labeled cioccolata calda and watched as a sludgy but wonderful-smelling liquid flowed steaming into his cup like brown lava. Next to this apparatus was a similar but smaller machine (only twelve buttons), with TUTTAFRUTA on the front and pictures of various fruit juices. Gideon tried the buttons for pineapple juice and grapefruit juice while the chocolate was going into his cup but with no luck, and he settled for orange juice.

  He took everything to a table beside a swung-open casement window that looked out on the garden, and ate, drank, and dreamed a few minutes away enjoyably. But after a time, after he’d gone back to the buffet table and returned with another hot chocolate and a slice of almond sponge cake, he began to replay his recent conversations with Rocco, especially the one at Il Cernacchino, where Rocco had told him about Cesare and shown him the crime photos.

  And a little later he lifted his eyes, and softly said, “I wonder . . .”

  • • •

  HALF an hour later, having followed directions from Nico, whom he’d run into in a hallway, he had found a farmacia on the town’s main street, which, as in half the towns in Italy, was Corso Vittorio Veneto. There he made two purchases, which he brought back unopened to Villa Antica. He got two glasses from the tasting room, went out to the back terrace with them, and sat down at one of the tables. He removed from the paper bag two half-liter bottles that held purple liquid. One them had Giorniquilla on a bright red background; this was the same cough medicine he’d seen Cesare guzzling. The other, identical except that its label was moss green, said Dormiquilla. He undid both screw caps and poured some from each into separate glasses. He sipped from one, then the other. Thought a minute. With his eyes closed, he switched the bottles themselves around enough times to turn it into a blind tasting. Sipped directly from the first bottle that came to hand, then from the other. Opened his eyes. Thought again.

  He got on his cell phone to call Rocco, but got a secretary instead: The lieutenant was out of the office. Could she take a message?

  “Would Maresciallo Martignetti be available? My name is Gideon Oliver.”

  Martignetti was available. “Hello, Dr. Oliver, what can I do for you?”

  “Make it Gideon, will you? I was calling Rocco to suggest that he have the lab run another couple of tests. Can I leave it with you?”

  “Let me get a pad. Okay, shoot.”

  “First, have them do an analysis on the cough medicine that was on Cesare’s nightstand.”

  “Okey-doke.”

  “Second, and more important, I’m assuming that Cesare’s toxicological screening didn’t include testing for cocaethylene, would that be right?”

  “I don’t know. Far as I know, they did the usual routine screening, the regular tox panel.”

  “Then they probably didn’t include it,” Gideon said. “They usually don’t in the States. So would you see if you can get them to test specifically for it?”

  “For what again?”

  “Cocaethylene.”

  “Co . . . You wouldn’t happen to know how to say that in Italian, would you?”

  Gideon laughed. “Hell, I can barely say it in English, Tonino. But they’ll know what I’m talking about. It’ll be spelled something like c-o-c-a-e-t-h—”

  “Gideon, hold on a minute, will you? The switchboard’s trying to get me.” He was back after a few seconds. “I’m sorry, there’s another call coming in that I need to take. Is there anything else?”

  “No, that’s it. You’ll let Rocco know? Sooner the
better.”

  “I’ll take care of it for you myself.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Not really, but I’ll sign Rocco’s name to the requisition; no problem. Appreciate the help, Gideon.”

  • • •

  “OKAY, Pino,” Martignetti said in Italian once Gideon had disconnected, “I’ll take that call.”

  On the line, the carabiniere at the switchboard had told him, was a man who identified himself as Philario Tognetti, representing Scacco Matto Investigazioni—Checkmate Investigations.

  The private-eye firm and the man were both familiar to Martignetti. Philario didn’t “represent” Scocco Matto; he was Scocco Matto: a one-man operation a few blocks south of the Arno, in the Oltrarno District. Philario was an ex-carabiniere, an old friend, never close, but a friend. They had gotten to know each other as rookies attending the Cadet Training School in Rome in 1992. But Philario wasn’t made for the work. He’d scraped through the academy by the skin of his teeth, then lasted only a year in the corps before resigning at the suggestion of superiors that he might be better suited to another line of work. There wasn’t anything dishonorable or particularly bad in his record; he just wasn’t up to the job. Mentally. Not to put too fine a point on it, his sewing machine, as the old saying went, was a little short of thread.

  He’d started Scacco Matto after trying a few other things that hadn’t worked out for him, and, as far as Martignetti knew, he’d made a go of it; he’d found his niche.

  “Hey, Philario, thanks for calling back.”

  “So what can I do for the mighty Carabinieri? Are you in need of the services of a good private investigator? I can give you a special rate.”

  Martignetti produced the required chuckle. “Actually, I just need a little information from you. I’ve been working on the Cubbiddu case, Philario”—he sensed a sudden wariness on the other end of the line—“and your name has come up.”

  “In what way?”

  “I got their financial records from their executor, and on them is a bill from you for twelve hundred euros that was received in October of last year, not long after their deaths. All it says is ‘for services rendered.’ You want to tell me what that was for, please?”

  “Ah . . . I’d like to help, but I don’t think I can do that, Tonino. It’s a matter of professional ethics. Whatever passed between signor Cubbiddu and me is privileged information. You know that.”

  “Of course. But Cubbiddu was your client?”

  “Ah . . . yes.”

  “And can you tell me what he engaged you to do?”

  “As I just said—”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to tell me what was said in confidence, but can’t you at least give me an idea of the work you were doing for him? This is a murder investigation, Philario, a double murder investigation. Any help you can give us would be very much appreciated.”

  He expected more hedging, but Philario came through. “He suspected his wife of cheating on him. I was engaged to find out if this was true.”

  “And was it?”

  “It was. It only took me two days to establish it.”

  “Did you get to tell Cubbiddu that before he died?”

  “I did. Called him on September second—maybe the third. And that’s it, Tonino, really. That’s all I can tell you. I shouldn’t have said that much.”

  “I only have one more question, Philario.”

  “Philario, I remind you again that your client is dead and it is his murder we are investigating. And his wife’s as well. Surely you can see that a lover of signora Cubbiddu would be a person of interest. I appeal to you as a citizen and as a friend.”

  Rocco Gardella had just come into his cubicle and, seeing that Martignetti was on the phone, started to turn around, but Martignetti waved him to the chair. “One minute,” he mouthed, holding up a single finger.

  “Yes, certainly, I can see that,” Philario was saying, “but I cannot . . . I’m sorry, we must end this conversation now.”

  Martignetti spoke quickly before he hung up. “I am not asking you to tell me anything that signor Cubbiddu told you in confidence. I am only asking what you told him.” Was there a difference when it came to privileged information? Martignetti doubted it. But he did know that splitting hairs was not one of Philario’s strengths. He heard a sigh at the other end and held his own breath.

  “Oh, all right. If I were to give you this information, Tonino—could my name be kept out of it?”

  Martignetti couldn’t help punching the air, a little gesture of triumph. Good old Philario, still the same guy, still not the brightest crayon in the box.

  “Absolutely.” He meant it too.

  “Very well. His name is Severo Quadrelli. Would you like me to spell that for you?”

  • • •

  “SOMETHING interesting?” Rocco asked when the call had ended.

  “I’ll say.” He told Rocco what he’d just heard.

  Rocco was as surprised as Martignetti. “What do you know: Quadrelli. Well, at least now we know why he didn’t want to turn the accounts over to us.”

  “Yes, and this makes him a lot more interesting, doesn’t it? We’ve got a hell of a motive now. What do you think the chances are that it was him?”

  “The chances of him killing them? Not too good. Yeah, he tried to put us off about the accounts, but in the end he let us have them, didn’t he? What did it take, five minutes? If he thought there was something there that could help us finger him as a murderer, he’d have used every lawyer’s trick he knew to keep us from ever getting them. No, I think he just didn’t want it to come out that he was diddling the wife of his old friend and employer.” He shivered. “Whoo. Now there’s an image I’d like to get out of my mind.”

  “Hold it,” Martignetti said when the switchboard buzzed him. “Let me see if this is anything.” He listened a minute, then said “I’ll take it,” and replaced the receiver. “It’s the guy who used to be Pietro’s doctor—another possible lead from the account statement. There was a bill from him for a follow-up visit with the old man last August, a month before he went up to the mountains. I figured there might be something there.”

  “Right, go ahead and take it.” Rocco stood up to leave.

  Martignetti put his hand back on the phone but waited before picking it up. “Rocco, on this Severo thing . . . if it’s all right with you, I’ll go ahead and dig into it a little, see if there’s anything there, but you’re probably right; chances are this is a whole separate thing, no connection.”

  “No, I never said there wasn’t any connection.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, I didn’t.” He smiled. “Tonino, did you ever hear of the Law of Interconnected Monkey Business?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  GIDEON spent the rest of the day working on the four-hundred-page dissertation but failing to make it all the way through. By the next morning, he was only three-quarters through, and it had been a teeth-grinding slog the entire way. Full professor of physical anthropology he might be, but physical anthropology had a great many subdisciplines these days, in some of which he was as much at sea as the rawest grad student. And one of those subdisciplines was the subject of Angela Stark’s dissertation: Assessing the Extent of Genetic Admixture Between Modern Populations of Tatars, Kazakhs, and Karakalpaks in Northern Uzbekistan by Means of the Analysis of mtDNA, Y-chromosome STRs, and Autosomal STR Markers.

  “Angela,” he’d told her when she’d asked him to be on her advisory committee a year earlier, “I’d love to, but I really don’t think this one is for me. If I can’t understand what the title means, how am I going to understand the rest of it?”

  “Professor Oliver,” she’d said, “I already have Dr. Sherman and Dr. Spatz on my committee, and they know the technical side forward and backward. What I’m really asking from you is to keep me honest on the overall rationale, the big picture. The scientific method. Do my conclusions follow from the data? That kind of thing. I mean,
the two of them are great, just great, don’t get me wrong; but . . . well, they’re kind of, you know, not exactly ‘with it,’ if you know what I mean. Not that I’m criticizing . . .”

  He’d known it was his duty to defend his colleagues, but she was right. “Oh, the guy’s got a full six-pack, all right,” he’d overheard a student say about one of them—he didn’t remember which, but it fitted them both—“he’s just missing that plastic thingy that ties them together.” So he’d limited himself to a mild “Well, I wouldn’t say that.” And then a few minutes later he’d given in and taken her on. It was nice to have a student so concerned with proper scientific method. But now, sitting on the terrace with the thing on his laptop, he rued the day, as he’d known he would.

  It wasn’t that he thought the application of DNA research to anthropology wasn’t a tremendous breakthrough—he knew it was—or even simply that he was a bit shaky on the technology, or that he had to take frequent breaks from reading the dissertation because his eyes glazed over every few paragraphs. More than that, the stuff made him feel like a fossil himself. Although he was on the young side for a full prof, he was an old-school, low-tech scientist. His field, as he saw it, comprised human variability, population movements and relationships, growth and aging, evolution, locomotion . . . it was, in other words, what the word anthropology literally meant: the science of people. But over the last decade or two, as in so much of science, there had been a reductionist revolution. The new bright lights of the field didn’t seem to him to be people-studiers so much as chemists, physicists, geneticists, statisticians, mathematicians, and computer modelers, all more grounded and interested in these dry (to him) subjects than in human beings as such.

  Or maybe the whole idea of DNA depressed him because he knew that it portended the end of the usefulness of the forensic anthropology that had become so central a part of his life. What he’d been doing with Rocco was out of the ordinary. What forensic anthropologists did, by and large, was to assist the police in the identification of skeletal remains. But who needed someone to tell them that a particular set of bones had belonged to a white female of twenty-five to thirty- five, right-handed, five feet three to five feet six in height, who had suffered a broken ulna in childhood, and who had gone through at least one period of malnutrition during adolescence, when all they had to do to find out who she was was to take a DNA sample and enter it into the vast data banks of DNA that would someday—someday soon—be as ubiquitous as fingerprint records?