Death Of A Sad Face (A Serafina Florio Mystery) (3 page)

“She departed suddenly and without references.”

Serafina digested the words. “Your secret is safe with me. And the valet, the one who was dismissed?”

“Roberto? Tall, handsome, a little flighty but graceful enough. Considered himself better than the rest of us. He spoke only with Cecco. That’s all I know. He wasn’t here long.”

“Thank you. I wonder why he left?”

She shrugged. “There were words, I can tell you that. And shouting.”

“Do you know where he may have gone?”

She shook her head.

Serafina thanked her for her information and returned to the main floor.

The footman appeared with Serafina’s cape. As she swung it round her shoulders and fastened her gloves, something on the floor caught her eye. It whirled like dust in the wind. What was it, a piece of material or her imagination? She bent to examine it—a long silky thread, the color of a ballerina’s gown.

“Is this yours?” she asked Lucia, holding up the thick filament.

The baroness shook her head. “Pink’s not my color.”

Serafina laid the strand between two pages of her notebook. It curled in on itself, guarding its own secret.

Under A Gibbous Moon

Late Wednesday evening October 28, 1868

Teo’s eyes had trouble adjusting to the dark so he looked back at Donna Fina’s door, and that was a mistake because his heart squeezed when he realized he was really leaving. He took a few steps forward trying and steady himself.

Suddenly out of the sky, a flying creature appeared, disguised as a man. It had huge black wings and wore a mask and slammed him to the ground and took the wind right out of his mouth. With one mighty claw, he lifted Teo and shook him and set him on his feet, not asking him if he was hurt or anything. The beast breathed heavy and sweat beaded onto his bushy brows, but he didn’t fool Teo, not one bit. He knew him, all right—it was the specter.

“Forget what you saw, boy.”

Teo didn’t know what to say, but he nodded.

“You saw nothing, remember?”

Teo nodded harder, faster. “Sure, mister.”

“What did you see?” the specter asked, removing his mask and sticking his ugly face close to Teo’s.

“You?”

The creature slapped him. “What did you see?”

“Nothing?”

“That’s right. Now, remember that.”

He lifted Teo by the neck and dragged Teo with him. “Do I know you?” the specter asked.

Teo remembered the shoes the specter wore from long ago when he mended them at his father’s shop. They were strange shoes for a man or for a creature, all soft and made of fine leather and a girly color, too, his father had said.

But Teo shook his head and whispered, “No, you don’t know me, I never seen you. I don’t see you now, and I didn’t see nothing,” and Teo looked straight ahead when he said it so the specter wouldn’t see the lie on his face.

“You’re the shoemaker’s son.” And the monster shook Teo and twisted his collar, gagging him. The specter wore strange clothes, too, and he walked too fast and dragged Teo along with him.

“Let go of me, beast!”

The specter didn’t answer, but pressed Teo’s neck harder, and Teo couldn’t speak, and he neither looked right nor left, but after a while he got the shakes, so he knew for sure it was the specter put a spell on him.

He tried to remember what Falco had told him about getting rid of specter curses: squeeze your eyes shut and spit twice over your left shoulder, cross your wrists and point the first and last fingers of both hands toward the ground and pump them fast, up and down, until the spell melts into the earth. Teo worked his hands and fingers just so, but the beast wouldn’t let go. He had Teo in his fiery clutch, and they flew low over the ground, so Teo screwed himself up and said, “Where are we going?”

“No questions.”

Then Teo thought that since he was doomed anyway, he might as well try to wrestle free from the specter’s mighty hold. So when the beast least suspected it, Teo called him a bad word and wrenched himself upward and spit into his face.

The phantom clutched his eyes and Teo tore himself free and did his feint and dodge and ran fast, jumping into a ditch and hiding behind a prickly pear.

His ears burned and his head pounded, but he didn’t move. Only when he saw the grizzly thing coming after him, he ran to the hills, but the creature scooped him up and shook him out like he was a wet dog.

And then the specter thrust something hard and hot at his head and Teo’s nose filled with a sour smell, and his heart stopped when he felt the metal pressing into him. It was a gun, the cold nose of a gun.

Villa Rosa

Thursday morning, October 29, 1868

Outside, Serafina found a bench, and struggling against the wind, wrote down everything she’d learned about the butler’s death and the Lanza household. Then she walked down the street, nodded to the guard who opened the gate to Rosa’s villa.

A maid took her cape and ushered her into a room with a high ceiling in which frescoed angels flew. Three walls were lined with books, and the fourth had large windows facing the piazza’s gardens. Beech logs blazed in the hearth, and Serafina stood in front of it, warming her toes and glancing admiringly at the view.

Not yet dressed for the day, Rosa sat, short and round, behind an elaborately carved mahogany desk blending in nicely with the rest of the gilt furnishings.

Serafina knew enough not to interrupt her friend while she counted her coins. “At your ledger, I see. Must be hard work, biting into all those gold pieces.” A few years ago, Rosa repented of her sins, sold her business—a high-class house overlooking the sea—and moved into the vacant villa next to Serafina’s. But the erstwhile madam continued to play a role managing the brothel’s financial affairs for a handsome fee—when she wasn’t too busy helping Serafina solve mysteries.

“Your timing is perfect. I’ve finished this minute.” Rosa swept the pile of money aside. “Sit. Why are you here, to tell me about the dead butler?” She rang the bell.

A moment of pure friendship, Serafina thought, fishing in her pocket for a linen. They met as children and had been through so much together.

As Serafina blotted her face, she told her friend about her visit with Baroness Lucia. “Not my case, and I won’t become involved.”

“Nonsense, you’ve already sunk your teeth in deep.”

The maid appeared.

“My friend needs to grow her brain,” Rosa said. “
Dolci
for her. Perhaps I could manage a crumb. Tell cook to surprise us.”

After the maid departed, Serafina said, “I’ve been her midwife for ten years. Can I help it if she confides in me? But I did remind her that this is Colonna’s case.”

“That miserable inspector.”

“So of course, I’ll let him handle it.” Serafina told Rosa what she’d learned at Villa Lanza. “What I can’t understand is Lucia’s reliance on the butler. Several months ago, she let the housekeeper go without references, and the butler became her sole advisor.”

“‘Advisor’? Is that what they call it? Sometimes I think you were born yesterday.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just what every schoolgirl in Sicily knows.” She leaned closer. “They say Cecco’s the father of her latest, and the housekeeper was having an affair with the baron when she suddenly departed, her belly distended.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I didn’t run a brothel for nothing. Oh, yes, I made a good living. Tessa’s secure—what am I saying—Tessa’s great-grandchildren will have untold wealth. But more important, I know everything about everyone. How do you think I survive?”

The maid returned with a silver tray piled with cups, saucers, and a large cake. “From cook: orange cassata with ricotta filling.” She began serving.

Serafina’s corset pinched just thinking about more food. “A tiny wedge for me, but cream in the latté.”

“Saving your appetites for tonight?”

Loffredo was visiting relatives in the south, and Serafina must admit, she missed him terribly. “He’s away. But I know something you don’t.”

“Such as?”

“The Lanza butler was an orphan.”

“So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“If we’re going to find the killer, we must dig into the victim’s past. Who were his enemies? More important, who were his friends?”

“Nonsense. At the heart of murder is lucre, mind me.”

“Often that’s true. But sometimes it’s love, a love gone feral.”

The madam stared at Serafina. “You’ve gone round the twist. And don’t explain, I don’t want to know.”

“So much for your detecting skills.” Serafina dug into her reticule and brought out her notebook, opened it to the coiling thread she’d found in the baroness’s villa, and placed it on the desk.

Rosa examined it, pulled at it, watched it stretch. She shoved a large piece of cake into her mouth and said through the morsel, “What am I thinking?” She rang the bell again.

When the maid appeared, she said, “Get the laundress.”

Serafina sipped her latté. “Why would a baroness risk such behavior with a servant? We all know that husbands can keep a mistress or two, but let a wife of any class so much as look at another man and she risks the end of her marriage, the loss of children, position, social ostracism. Why are you looking at me like that?”

They were interrupted by a knock, and the laundress, a squat woman with a red face, waddled into the room.

Rosa showed her the thread.

“Not from my laundry room, I tell you.”

“Of course not. But from where? Who would wear such a fabric?”

The laundress worried the snaky remnant between two fingers, shuffled over to a window. Serafina and Rosa followed her. In the morning light, it took on a fiery glow.

“Perhaps a clown’s costume?” Serafina asked.

The laundress hunched her loaf-like shoulders and shook her head. “The raveling from one who prances on a stage or flies through the air.”

When the laundress closed the door and the two of them returned to the desk, Rosa handed back the thread and notebook. “Take it with you tonight. Pinch the gown from a dancing bear and compare threads.”

When Serafina made no reply, Rosa said, “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about the circus.”

“Don’t be silly. The children look forward to it. And my family needs to laugh together.” She told Rosa about the tiff she’d overheard late yesterday between Maria and Teo, but the madam gave her a blank look. Serafina knew Rosa had an eye for the main chance, yet did not fully comprehend the altercations, the conspiracies, the intrigues that were daily occurrences in a large family.

“Speaking of forgetting,” Serafina said, “we haven’t finished with the baroness. I said she’d be ostracized for the behavior you allege.”

Rosa held her nose aloft and trumpeted, “You’re forgetting one small detail: her family is the one with the money.”

Serafina gazed at a point in the room.

“There goes your mind off that cliff again.”

“Just chewing on your words. And if the baron found her out, what would he do?”

“It depends,” the madam said. “But consider: if he has all the trappings of wealth and title, the ability to come and go whenever and with whomever he pleases, why would he risk a scandal? Lawyers would become involved, that’s a given, and when they do, all parties lose.”

Serafina had to agree with that. “In addition, he drinks.”

“Well, there you have it.”

“But could the baron have killed Cecco or arranged for his death?”

A Sprung Sofa

Serafina sat on a sprung sofa, waiting for Guardian Angel’s mother superior. The nun was a lifelong friend of Serafina’s dead mother and someone who’d helped Serafina in the past. Soon a wizened figure in black sailed into the room, veil flowing.

After dispensing with the usual exchange of news, Serafina asked Mother Concetta about the Lanza butler.

“Cecco? An orphan loved by all,” she said.

“No enemies?”

Concetta narrowed her eyes. “I mourn his death. Not unexpected.”

“How so?”

“A man so perfect unwittingly makes enemies.”

“Can you be more specific?”

The nun fingered her beads for a while. “When a boy becomes a man, we no longer suit his needs. But Cecco was a difficult case.”

“How so?”

“He wasn’t interested in tilling the fields or in carpentry or smithing. Whatever we tried, we couldn’t find an occupation for him. Oh, he was strong and tall, quick to learn, but none of our usual friends wanted to take him on. Too handsome, I suspect.”

There was something the nun was withholding. Serafina could feel it in the way the woman looked down at her hands. “That’s all you have to tell me?”

She straightened her wimple. “He had a wanderer’s heart.”

“And?”

“Just like your mother’s, your tongue persists.”

Serafina smile was wistful. “Who were his friends?”

“Cecco was a friend to all and had a special gift for knowing what others needed. He bound all wounds, quelled disturbances, dispelled intrigues. The other children flocked to him.”

“Then why couldn’t Cecco work here as a helping hand, a counselor, as Carmela did?”

The nun appeared not to have heard the question. She continued down her own track. “Perhaps ‘happy’ is the wrong word. Show me an orphan, and I’ll show you a sad face.”

Mother Concetta stopped talking. She seemed to be smoothing the rough edges of a memory. Soon she squirmed, withdrew a linen from her pocket, and wiped her brow. “You won’t give up, will you?”

Serafina made no reply.

“There was a boy. So lithe were his limbs; he’d run and tumble, an acrobatic magician. He idolized Cecco. For weeks, they’d be inseparable. Then the younger boy would ignore Cecco, and a heavy silence ruled the orphanage.”

“Can you be more specific?”

The nun glanced at the crucifix listing on the wall. “In the end, we had to separate them. We sent Cecco away. That’s all I’ll say.”

“Sent him where?”

“Barco’s circus.

“Why not the acrobat friend of his?”

“Cecco was older, you see, so he had to leave. And when he departed, the younger boy was relieved at first, and the house breathed again. His elation, however, soon turned to despondency. We feared for his soul.”