Marcia Talley - Tomorrow's Vengeance

‘Hutch, do Raniero and Filomena Buccho know about this?’

‘Unavoidable. The researchers contacted them both, first individually and then together. Just so you know, there’s going to be no blame attached to the Buccho family. It’s impossible to say what Adriano Buccho knew when he bought those paintings back in fifty-eight, of course, but we’re convinced that Raniero and his sister had no idea that the paintings were stolen. It’s just their rotten luck that both Ysabelle and the paintings ended up in the same museum at the same time.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it. The last thing Raniero needs right now is another charge hanging over his head.’

‘Has he been arrested for Masud Abaza’s murder, then?’

‘Not yet. He’s back at work, but his sister expects him to be carted away in handcuffs at any minute.’

‘Too bad.’ After a beat, my brother-in-law added more jauntily than the turn in our conversation warranted, ‘And if he needs an attorney, you have my number. I’ll have a referral for him.’

Because we were celebrating Izzy and I ordered wine with our crab cakes in the dining room that day. Filomena hadn’t been on duty when we came in, but she showed up at our table, chilled Sauvignon blanc and corkscrew in hand. ‘Susanna said you asked for wine. How nice! It is a special occasion?’

Uh oh, I thought, this might be awkward, but Izzy dove right in.

‘It is,’ Izzy said. ‘As you may have heard from the Baltimore Art Gallery, I’m getting my paintings back.’

‘Oh! I am so very glad.’ Filomena set the wine bottle down on the table and started to remove the seal. ‘You must believe me when I tell you, my brother and I, we had no idea. No idea at all.’

‘Did your grandfather buy any of my father’s other paintings, Filomena, maybe at another sale?’ Izzy’s voice cracked. ‘ Abba had so many.’

Filomena jammed the point of the corkscrew into the cork and began twisting. ‘I know what the lawyer said, Mrs Milanesi. But when my father died there were only those three. The boy with the dog, the still life with the water jug and lemons, and that nice one of the girl holding a bowl of cherries.’ She extracted the cork. ‘That was my favorite.’

‘Only three?’ Izzy asked.

Filomena scowled. ‘You don’t believe me?’

Izzy cheeks flushed and she apologized. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way.’

‘There were only the three. I swear to you that. If my father had owned more than three, I would have sold them all, and Raniero and I would have no trouble paying for the restaurant. You see?’

I did see. Hutch had told us there had been a lot of interest in the Piccio sale. Clearly, another buyer or buyers had purchased the rest of Giacomo Rossi’s paintings from Vittorio Piccio. If Izzy had the scrapbook, Hutch could supplement the data he was entering about the paintings in the international databases by including indentifying photographs. But even with the inventory, the scrapbook and the databases she’d have to wait for the paintings to surface again, which might be years, or even never.

Filomena screwed the bottle into a pewter bucket filled with ice. ‘You call me if you need anything else, OK?’ She turned to leave, thought better of it, and turned back. ‘I am so happy for you, Mrs Milanesi. It is not right what the Nazis did to your father.’

Izzy went home to take a nap while I trotted over to Spa Paradiso for a good long soak before it was time for me to show up in the memory unit. I’d promised Nancy I’d look at her drawings, not that she’d remember, but a promise was a promise. I eased into the hot tub until the water was up to my chin; the bubbles danced, exploding all around me, tickling my nose.

Now that the question of Izzy’s paintings had been settled, my mind wandered back to whoever had murdered Masud Abaza. Had the murderer died in the Blackwalnut Hall fish tank? Or was his killer still at large? What was Safa’s role in all this? Did she say something to Masud that inadvertently set into motion a chain of events leading to his murder?

Nor was Masud’s slate squeaky clean. Why hadn’t he reported Raniero’s jiggery-pokery with the meat supplier?

I closed my eyes, relaxed my limbs and focused on my mantra – kerim, kerim, kerim.

The jets had shut off automatically and the water had grown as tepid as my brain so I climbed out of the hot tub, dried off and headed to the locker room to get dressed.

When I arrived at the memory unit Nancy was busy, sitting happily with Eric in the lounge watching television. On the screen Richie Cunningham was making out with Fonzie’s girlfriend. This wasn’t going to end well, I thought with a grin. I hadn’t seen Happy Days since I was in college, so I sat down for a minute to reminisce and – guilty – liberate some Hershey’s Kisses from the candy bowl.

At the break, WBAL reported about the lack of progress in the Abaza murder. While I watched, sucking on a chocolate, a picture of Masud filled the screen.

‘Look, at that,’ Nancy said, waving a finger badly in need of a manicure. ‘That’s the man from the garden.’ She smiled and patted Eric’s knee. ‘He looks like Frank.’

Except for their abundant salt-and-pepper hair, I didn’t think Masud looked the least bit like Jerry. But… hadn’t Nancy mentioned seeing a man in the garden before? And Lillian had heard noises over by the trees… What if it wasn’t her ‘babies’ she heard ‘squabbling?’ I had to draw Nancy away from the television while she appeared to be alert and relatively lucid.

I would tell Paul later that the Devil made me do it.

The television, I knew, was controlled by a remote kept out of residents’ reach in the nurse’s office. With Nurse Heather as a willing co-conspirator we switched off the TV.

‘Oh, no!’ Heather cried. ‘The cable seems to have gone out.’

Eric rose stiffly to his feet. ‘Fuck that,’ he said.

‘Nancy,’ I said, materializing at her elbow. ‘Weren’t you going to show me your drawings?’

Back in Nancy’s room I easily found the portfolio Mindy had mentioned resting on the bookshelf next to a basket of postcards that Nancy – or one of her family members – had been saving.

Mindy had been right. The pencil drawings were perfection. I recognized Nancy’s dog, Rosco, the Buddah in the garden and a magnificent tulip poplar. For the poplar, she’d used the sides of the paper to draw closeups of its four-lobed, heart-shaped leaves and its distinctive tulip-shaped blossoms. There were seven drawings of the tree in all, but one in particular captured my attention. Standing under the umbrella of its branches, pressed up against its slightly furrowed bark, a couple stood, locked in an embrace. The woman’s back was to the artist, while the man’s head was bowed. His hair had been meticulously rendered – Nancy’d drawn every strand – and it certainly could be Masud, but in spite of the detail, the couple was too far away to identify.

Holding the drawing I wandered over to the window and pulled the drapes aside. In a corner formed by the hedge of the Tranquility Garden where it met the wall of the secret garden the dementia patients used stood a lush tulip poplar, a twin to the one in the drawing in my hand. A perfect spot for a rendezvous, I thought, tucked out of sight of anyone except the patients here in the memory unit. If they noticed any hanky-panky, who were they going to tell? And who would believe them?

I leaned forward, propped my elbows up on the sill, laced my fingers and rested my chin on top of them. ‘The garden’s really beautiful at this time of year, don’t you think so?’

‘I love gardens,’ Nancy said. ‘But Frank does the weeding because my knees are so bad.’