Jeff Carson - Foreign Deceit

“Sure. Can I take these belongings with me?” Wolf asked.

“They must-a be released with your brother’s body as soon as the paperwork is finished.” Vittorio scooped his brother’s cell phone off the table and placed it in the clear bag.

They thanked the pathologist and left.

“They don’t do many autopsies here in Italy?” He looked out the car window.

“If determined it is needed, then they will order the autopsy.”

“Do you think there should have been an autopsy?”

She shifted uncomfortably, then shifted the car, “I don’t know, it looks pretty cut and dry. Italians don’t do well with complications. If the shoe fits, they put it,” she said. They poot eet.

“Wear it.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

They sat in silence for a few moments as she drove.

“Look, I guess I’ll go sleep. I am dying here.” Wolf pressed his hand against his eyes. “Are you still with me tomorrow?”

“Yes, I will help you until the end of the week.”

He looked at his watch. It was 6:54 pm. Wednesday night. No pressure.

He dug into his backpack, filled his lip with a pinch of snuff, fetched a spittoon from his brother’s kitchen, and plopped down on the couch with a grunt. He pulled off his shoes. His entire body ached from a long, long day.

Then he thought of the laptop. He went into John’s room and found the charger, thankfully already hooked to an electrical adaptor, something that never crossed his mind until that moment.

He was presented a login screen. He sighed. Bernie? — their first dog. Nothing.

That was the extent of his hacking skills, especially in his current state of mind. Leaving the computer to charge, he returned to the main room feeling newly dejected.

He plopped down deep into the couch, settling his gaze on the hole in the ceiling, then to the chandelier above his head. He put down the spittoon and pulled a chair underneath the remaining chandelier. Reaching high up the center of the main chandelier trunk, he pulled down with his right arm. Then harder when nothing happened. Then harder still.

Finally he straightened his arm and sagged down, putting the entirety of his weight on the chandelier. With a crack, it jolted free from the ceiling, sending him in a sudden free fall. The chair sputtered sideways from underneath his feet, and he landed hard on his side, instinctually pointing his shins and forearms up to block him from a plummeting light fixture of yet undetermined weight. When nothing hit him, he rolled hard to his right twice and finally stole a look upward. The light fixture swayed violently side to side, hanging by two wires.

Just then a soft knock was at the door. He took stock of his injuries as he struggled to his feet. He’d have some bruises in the morning, but otherwise he was all right.

Opening the front door revealed yet another strikingly beautiful young woman. She stood outside with wide, timid chocolate eyes, and a puzzled expression. She had brownish blonde hair, chiseled facial features, and a slender athletic body. Her scent was flowery, all femininity, and she was dressed in a skimpy white tee shirt, flannel pants and slippers. She asked something unintelligible, and Wolf gave a blank stare in response.

“Who are you?” she tried in English.

“I’m David Wolf. Who are you?”

“I’m Cristina, I live upstairs.”

“Oh, I came to your apartment today, you weren’t there. I’m John’s brother. I was hoping to talk to you.”

“Are you okay? I just heard a loud noise.” She was excited, looking behind Wolf at the still rocking chandelier.

She didn’t speak English in an Italian accent. She spoke well, but not like Lia. His instincts, or what he’d learned from his love of spy movies, told him Eastern European.

“Yes, I’m fine. Will you come in? I’d really like to speak to you.”

She backed up a few feet with a look of horror on her face.

“Uhh, sorry. Here, I’ll show you my passport.” He hurried to his backpack leaning up against the wall, pulled out his passport, and brought it back to her.

“No, I can see that you’re John’s brother. You look just like him. I just don’t want to come in there. You can come up and talk if you want.” She turned and padded up the stairs.

“Okay, I’ll be right up.”

Her apartment was in stark contrast with John’s. While he went with the interior design of minimalist, six-month-stay, one stop at Ikea, whatever you can pack in a suitcase look, she was all about decoration and permanence. Every square inch on the wall was meticulously decorated in a way that took a lot of thought and creativity — pictures of her, her and her family, landscapes from exotic forests in countries he’d never seen, flowers on shelves, hanging dried flowers, books on shelves, and all sorts of other interesting things. It reminded him of the Pub in Points, though not to the same gaudy interior-of-a-ski-bar extent.

Ambient jazz was playing softly in the background. Pat Metheny , he noted. A few candles were lit and smelled like flowers. She looked to be in the middle of writing in a journal. She bent down and closed it, but not before he caught a glimpse of writing with letters of an entirely foreign alphabet.

She offered him a seat on a comfortable recliner chair. A patterned blanket draped on the back of it was reminiscent of Navajo designs he’d seen countless times in his grandmother’s house, but with more vibrant colors, and with flowers lining the edges of it.

She saw him looking at it. “It’s a traditional weaving from my home. I am from Romania.”

“Oh, okay.” He struggled to picture where exactly that was.

“It’s directly east of here. You travel to Venice and keep going east, through Slovenia, Hungary, and into Romania,” she said.

“Ah, I see.” A deep silence fell between them. “Were you dating my brother?”

She was staring at her hands in her lap. She began to shake. The beginning throws of a good cry, he recognized from recent experience.

“Y-y-y-yes. We have b-b-een seeing each other for a few months.” Her hair drooped across her eyes and she shook lightly. “Had been seeing…”

She lifted her chin and tucked her hair behind her ear, a bright smile lighting up her face. “We met on our balconies. He was sitting there on the computer, and I accidentally threw a cigarette on him because of the wind.” She burst into laughter. Wolf couldn’t help but laugh with her. “I heard him shuffling and grunting, and he poked his head out to yell at me. Then he forced me to go out with him as payment for ruining one of his shirts. It was a piece of crap T-shirt.” She smiled, then when into a fresh fit of tears.

He looked away and steeled his gaze on nothing in particular. They sat in silence for a few minutes.

“I have a few questions,” he said finally. “Firstly, do you think he killed himself?”

“You don’t think he did?” She looked at him with wet, wide eyes.

“No, I don’t. I just don’t think he was that type of person, and…there’s just something going on.”

“I have been thinking all along there is no way that he would do that. But then I kept thinking maybe I didn’t know him that well anyways, so then I wasn’t sure. I’ve been so confused.” She looked back at her hands.

“Well, I don’t think he did,” he said. “Do you do drugs Cristina? Did you and John do drugs together? Just tell me, I don’t care either way. I just need to know.”

“No,” she said quickly. “We don’t do drugs…didn’t do drugs. Not even marijuana. We talked about how it made us both paranoid, so that’s why we didn’t like it. Why are you asking?”