Death In Bagheria (A Serafina Florio Mystery) (27 page)

A Wild
M
an

“N
ot one m
istake,” Teo said, coming into the room. “The priest gave Totò a medal.”

Serafina kissed her son. “And what did the sacristan say?” she asked.

“She told me I am a great surprise. I can ring the altar bells tomorrow.” Digging into the pockets of his pantaloons, he turned to Teo. “Show me that trick again, the one where you throw three bones in the air and roll the other two but catch them before they hit the ground.”

Serafina could see the worry on Teo’s face as the boy stood there watching Totò dig, probably wondering why he’d ever lent his knucklebones to the likes of Totò, and Serafina didn’t blame him, not one bit, even though, to give him credit, Teo’s face showed nothing. He folded his arms and leaned on the wall with as little expression as possible, shooting her a glance as he chewed his lip while Totò kept digging in his pockets, not coming up with the knucklebones.

Totò ran fingers through his curls, a sure sign that something was amiss, and without looking at anyone, ran up to his room. She could hear his footsteps pounding on the floorboards before disappearing, the slam of his bedroom door. He’d lost the knucklebones, Serafina felt sure, and she twisted her hands, watching Teo’s impassive face as he stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs for Totò to return. Knucklebones could be replaced, but not hand-carved ones from a dead father. The footsteps returned on the landing, thumped down the stairs.

“I know where I left them,” he said, his face red, a worried look in his eyes. They had been sticking out of his pock
et, he explained, whe
n he threw his cassock on and made a bulge on one side, so, in order to get a passing mark for appearance, he’d thrown them onto the worktable in the sacristy—“just in time, too, before the sacristan saw that I brought knucklebones into a holy place.” But luckily, she hadn’t noticed, he told them, just kept working her way down the row of altar boys, chiding one for his scuffed shoes, scolding another because his surplice was crooked. He looked at Teo and at Serafina.

“They’ll keep until tomorrow morning, I’m sure. After all, they’re in a sacristy.” But when she looked into Teo’s eyes, she realized that wouldn’t do, not at all, and they’d need to go back to church for them, even if it meant they’d be late for supper.

“All right, better get them now before the custodian picks them up.”

“But run or you’ll be late for supper,” Renata called out.

Rosa and Loffredo had gone to their homes to freshen up, and Serafina decided she could use the time to think, so she sank into Giorgio’s old chair and put her feet up.

She must have dozed because the next thing she knew, Loffredo was tapping her shoulder. “It’s time for supper,” he said, his voice gentle, his hand cupping her cheek. Vicenzu, Tessa, Rosa, even Renata were gathered around, staring down at her, and with an effort, she swam up through the confusion of sleep. “I dozed.”

“Teo and Totò aren’t home yet. They’ve been gone almost an hour,” Renata said. “I’ve made your favorite, pasta con le sarde, and it will be ruined if we don’t eat now. We’ll have to start without them.”

Serafina sat up, squinting in the bright candlelight. What if someone recognized the boys as belonging to her and kidnapped them? “We must get them.”

“You’re an alarmist, Mama,” Carmela said.

“They’ll be fine,” Vicenzu said. “What could happen to them in a sacristy?”

It was the best meal they’d had in days. Vicenzu and Loffredo did most of the talking, drifting from chemicals and medicinals to the apothecary shop and business in general, Loffredo alleging that the only business booming was the embalmer’s. Treachery, he told them, was on the rise. They were eating the dessert, Rosa digging in with gusto, when Serafina heard the front door close and hesitant steps coming toward them.

Serafina held a hand to her heart. “They’re back, thank the Madonna. Did you find the bones?”

Teo nodded, red-faced, from running, no doubt. Both boys sat without their usual chatter, hands in their lap, a fine film of water breaking out on both their faces. After Assunta brought their plates and poured water into their glasses, they ate with their heads down, shoveling in food.

“Tell us what happened,” Serafina said.

“He’s the one that wanted to stay,” Totò said. “I kept saying we’d be late.”

Teo’s face, if anything even redder than before, shot up. “Did not. You wanted to hear it, not me. I was hungry.”

“Wanted to hear what?” Rosa asked.

“The
strega
shouting, he means.” Totò grinned.

“Totò, that’s not nice,” Renata said.

“But that’s what everybody calls her. And anyway, the voices were getting too close; we had to hide so she wouldn’t see us.”

“What voices? Hide where?”

The two boys looked at each other for a long moment, and Serafina realized she’d get only a disjointed story from her son when Loffredo spoke.

“Tell us what happened from the beginning, no tall stories, now; we’d just like to hear what it was that detained you. It may be important. So far, we know that you heard angry words between a man and a woman—was it Sister Genoveffa?”

They nodded.

“So who wants to tell us from the beginning, from before you hid. Just the simple story. We promise not to be cross or fearful.”

Everyone in the room was silent while Teo told them that they found the knucklebones right where Totò said they’d be, on the workbench. They were leaving the sacristy when they heard loud voices, a man’s and a woman’s, and they were arguing.

“It sounded like they were coming our way from inside the church—”

“From the altar,” Totò c
orrected.

Teo continued. “And we wanted to run, but the voices were getting too close, and it sounded like someone was throwing things, and we were afraid because the man said, ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t.’”

“So that’s when we hid,” Totò said. “We ran into the cabinet where they keep the cassocks, you know the one.”

“It was dark in there, and we heard them coming closer,” Totò said, making a face. “And it was hard to breathe.”

No one made a sound. Finally, Serafina said, “Did you hear anything else that the man said?”

“He was a wild man, Mama, he kept talking and talking,” Totò broke in.

“Teo?” she asked.

“The man said that he’d loved her all his life, and ‘you have, too,’ he said, and the woman—well, by now I knew it was the sacristan—she cried out, ‘Don’t touch me!’ and the man said he would if he wanted to, and they were coming our way, and I was so afraid they’d open the door, and I held Totò’s face against my shirt so he wouldn’t talk anymore, and we hid in the cassocks, and they slammed against the closet. I thought we’d be caught out, but then we heard a dragging sound, and the sacristan said, ‘Get away from me,’ and then we heard, ‘Get away, you beast,’ and then we heard boxes falling and feet running away from us, and that’s when we bolted out of the closet and ran and didn’t stop until we got home.”

Teo sat back and closed his eyes. Serafina had seen that look from him before. He was lost in his suffering again, and she couldn’t help herself, she got up and went to him, and he hid his face as he did two years ago when they stood on that horrible dock in Messina.

She looked up. “I’ve got to see Genoveffa.”

Loffredo and Rosa stood. “We’re coming with you.”

Vicenzu got up. “Me too.”

“Me too,” Carmela said.

Serafina shook her head. “Renata, Carmela—you stay here with the children. And tonight, Teo and Totò, it’s your turn to wash the dishes.”

“But what about Tessa? She should w
ash the dishes—she’s a girl.”

Serafina stared at him. Totò began clearing the plates.

Part Three

March 25-27, 1870

A Moving
Sh
adow

V
icenzu held his lan
tern high as they walked through the sacristy, looking for Genoveffa, but all the same, Serafina tripped on the overturned boxes littering the landing. “The place is a mess,” she whispered to Loffredo. They heard the outer door slam, and Rosa clutched Serafina’s arm. Serafina thought she saw a shadow moving in the corner and stepped back, bumping into Loffredo, who whispered, “It’s all right. We’re here, right behind you.” They waited a moment. “Must have been the wind. I don’t hear steps.”

Vicenzu op
ened the cabinet in the corner, held his lantern out, and looked inside. “This must be where Teo and Totò hid.”

Rosa sniffed, peering in at the cinctures and the surplices, touching the vestments hanging from a pole and crammed in together. “Why didn’t they start shouting back? That’s what I would have done, not hidden in here. It smells too much like priests’ feet.”

“They’re children, and they were frightened.”

Just then, there was a loud thud, like a window closing, and Rosa grabbed Serafina’s cape and froze.

“Sorry,” Vicenzu said. “Dropped this box.”

Turning around and lifting her lantern, Serafina found some candles on the workbench and lit them for additional light, placing them into the candelabra. In the corner she saw a rack containing small red cassocks and white surplices waiting for tomorrow’s Mass. Rosa picked up the holder and walked out of the sacristy’s main room and into the hall.

“Something’s not right,” Serafina whispered to Loffredo. He kissed the top of her head, patted her shoulder. She felt her son’s eyes on them and turned to him. He shrugged, gave her a slight smile.

In the hallway leading to the main altar, boxes were overturned, broken candles and wicks and wafers strewn on the floor.

“She wouldn’t leave it like this.”

Ahead, Serafina could see the votive light hanging high above the main altar, and they entered the sacred space as if they were priests about to say a high mass. They walked around to the front, heading for the main aisle. Bowing toward the altar along the way, Serafina felt the comfort of Mary’s Son as they hurried down the steps. She opened the rail, the creaking of its hinges loud in the gloom, echoing off the marble floor and stone sides, the arched ceiling, the stained glass of the Duomo. Blood pounded in her ears, and she peered down the main aisle: nothing. But as they walked down a side aisle toward the open door of a confessional, she felt the presence of death even before she saw the body lying on the floor.

Too
Q
uiet

F
or Serafina, the shock
at first sight of Genoveffa’s body surrounded the event like a halo. Walking toward it, she tried to fix on the familiar, sucking what small comfort she could from the mundane—a glove discarded on a seat, a prayerbook and candle forgotten on another chair, crumpled paper on the floor.

Too qu
iet, the figure on the floor, so full of life a few hours ago. The nun lay on one side, curled, almost fetal, her neck wrenched so that the head faced upward. The tongue protruding and thick, gave her face an almost comic grotesquery. The flame of Serafina’s candle flickered, fell upon Genoveffa’s open eyes, bloodshot, staring up at nothing.

She didn’t know how long they stood looking down at the poor woman, Loffredo close to Serafina, before he bent to touch Genoveffa’s hand. “Still warm,” he said. She saw a strand of mahogany hair sticking out of the nun’s coif and tucked it back in. Part of her headdress had been torn off, strewn around who knew where—she’d find it later—and the neck was exposed, showing purple marks around the throat. Genoveffa’s two hands were raised together, a suppliant gesture, legs bent at the knees, feet inside the open door of the confessional, as if she’d been struck down at the moment of absolution.
Go and sin no more.

Turning to her son and Rosa, she said, “Get the priest and Colonna, or whoever is on duty. Run!” Looking at Loffredo, she asked, “Throttled?”

He stood, nodded.

The dead woman’s rosary caught the candlelight. Serafina ran a hand over the beads, sliding off into a serge skirt: the crucifix was missing. Screwing up her nerve, she stepped over the nun’s feet and into the velvet-draped confessional. An age since she’d been inside. Like a torture chamber, there was not enough air. Her candle died, and she shuddered in the dark, smelling the breath of sinners, the stale odor of regret. Lightheaded, she knelt, scanning the floor and kneeler with splayed fingers until she found something wedged into a corner and yanked it—a crucifix. She walked out and placed it next to Genoveffa, then stood leaning against Loffredo. Her mind was numb.

At once, a sharp noise, like the clap of wood on wood, broke the stillness. Serafina looked up and saw a shadow moving in the choir loft toward the back wall and stairs.

She and Loffredo raced down the aisle and out to the narthex, almost reaching the door to the loft when it burst open.

Loffredo grabbed the figure who emerged, a thick man with wild eyes, wearing a bandana and dressed in black.

Writhing, cursing, throwing punches, he struggled to free himself from Loffredo’s grip. As he did, Serafina, who stood behind the man, snatched his sleeve with all her might, trying to hold him, but she was no match for him, churning as if he were possessed.

Breaking free, he threw a punch that grazed Serafina’s cheek. As he backed up toward the Duomo’s front doors, they opened, and Vicenzu, Colonna, the priest, and Rosa stood in surprise, the man stumbling for a moment before righting himself and bolting away.

“Stop him!” Loffredo shouted, as the man knocked into Vicenzu, throwing a fist to his stomach. Vicenzu doubled over. The killer ran around the corner and disappeared.

“Genoveffa is dead … strangled … side aisle by the confessional,” she said to the priest.

To Vicenzu and Rosa, “Show Colonna the body, then, quickly, meet us at home. Got to go to Bagheria.”

“But why?”

“To stop the madness!”

Loffredo shouted over his shoulder to Colonna. “Preliminary autopsy—asphyxiation!”

They ran to the back of the Duomo in time to see the man standing in his wagon, his bandana canted to one side of his head, his furious whip driving the mule on, the cart careening down Via Serpentina toward the sea.