Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“More than before?” Bertie said, coming up behind him. “I wonder. Luca, I have to drag you away. Hello, Claudia,” he said, his voice cooler. “What a surprise.” He met her eye for a second, then backed away, turning to me instead. “I promised Luca a proper lunch. You must be famished,” he said to him, glancing at the table. “She’s the mother’s daughter, isn’t she?” He sighed. “Be lovely to pay a little attention to the living.”

“But this is traditional.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s perfect. Just right. The mother was like that too. And you never had a decent meal in her house.”

“Signor Howard,” the priest said.

“Oh, I know. Very bad of me. Anyway, come to lunch. Adam, you ought to get Grace home. It’s a strain, a thing like this.”

“She seems all right.”

“Mm. It’s all this holding herself together I don’t like. Much better to collapse with a good weep and get it over with. Much better in the end.”

Father Luca took my hand. “If you ever want to talk, I knew him very well.”

Bertie threw me a “What are you up to” look, then turned to the room. “Aren’t people extraordinary?” I followed his gaze to the crowd in suits and black dresses, idly talking, sipping coffee. “You’d think he’d had a heart attack.”

It was Giulia finally who found us, smoking out on the balcony, pretending there was more sun than there was. “You’re Adam,” she said simply, extending a hand. I introduced Claudia, who moved back against the railing, suddenly skittish, but Giulia nodded graciously. There was no sign of recognition, the engagement party scene apparently not known to her. Another relief, something already fading, no longer gossiped about.

“I saw you looking at me before,” she said.

“I’m sorry. It’s just, you look so like your father.”

“You think so? Most people think my mother.”

“Well, I never knew her.”

“No,” she said, suddenly embarrassed. “Well, the eyes maybe. Everyone says that.”

But her eyes had none of Gianni’s sharpness. They were soft, almost hazy, as if she had just taken off glasses and were trying to focus. “You went to San Michele,” she said, her voice flat, so that for a second I wondered if she resented it, felt it was an intrusion.

“The police asked me.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “I am so grateful. To see him like that-” She stopped herself. “I gave your mother some pictures. From his youth. They knew each other then, before-before the others.”

“Yes.”

“So it’s a romantic story. I didn’t know.”

“He never told you?”

She looked down. “We didn’t talk about it, no. Well, maybe he tried.” She lifted her head, clear-eyed, no longer soft or unfocused. “You know, it’s not easy to say this. I disagreed with him about this marriage. I thought he was bewitched.”

I smiled to myself. A word never used in conversation. Despite the perfect English, foreign after all.

“But now, I meet her and I see I was wrong. Not the fortune hunter. An affair of the heart.”

“Fortune hunter?” I said, thrown by the unexpectedness of it.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how to say it. You know, with my father there was always that danger, so it was natural-” She paused. “A mistake. I apologize to you.”

“No, I just meant-” But what did I mean? That she would appreciate the irony? That it was the other way around? I put out my cigarette, stalling. “I wish we’d met earlier.”

“Yes, I apologize for that too. Of course I had examinations, but that was an excuse, really. Anyway, I didn’t come. So that was the last thing he said to me. ‘Good luck with the examinations.’ ” She looked out at the canal, where a vaporetto was passing, catching the faint sun on its white roof.

“You’re going to be a lawyer?” I said, bringing her back to somewhere neutral.

She smiled. “In Italy? A woman? No. They let me study-well, because of my father. But in the courtroom? They wouldn’t like that so much.” This to Claudia, who gave a thin smile back.

“So what will you do?”

“Oh, it was to work with my father. Like a son, you know? He used to say that to me, ‘You’re my son.’ So it’s a good thing to know, law, to run the businesses. My father used to trust everybody, and of course they cheated him. So now his son is there, a lawyer, they don’t cheat so easily.” Not soft. Gianni telling me exactly what would happen at the trial he’d never have. She stopped, smiling shyly. “I’m sorry, it’s boring to talk about this.”

“No,” I said automatically. Businesses, not just land.

“We should go in. It’s getting cold,” Claudia said, folding her arms across her chest and starting for the door.

Giulia glanced into the room, still filled with people. “Yes, they can’t go until they tell me how sorry they are. It’s the form. Over and over, how sorry.”

“Who was the woman with you in church?”

“My grandmother.”

“Gianni’s mother?” I said, a nervous twinge in my stomach. A child killed-nothing was worse. Not just killed.

“No, my mother’s. She’s the only one left now.”

I opened my hand to indicate “After you,” expecting her to follow Claudia through the door, but she hesitated.

“Wait,” she said. “A moment. I don’t know how to say it. I want to talk more. Will you come to see me?”

“Yes, if you’d like.”

“It’s strange, you know, but there’s no one else. I mean, we’re not family, but we might have been. So it happened to you too, this death. Death-murder,” she said. “Murder,” she said again. “They won’t even say it. No one else will care the way we do. You’re the only one I can ask.”

“Ask what?”

“For your help.”

“My help?”

“To find the murderer.”

I stared at her. “But the police-”

“Ouf, Cavallini. Filomena’s husband, that one.”

“He’s still the police.”

“They’ll never find out. They’ll look and then they’ll stop.”

“But you won’t,” I said quietly.

“Never,” she said, her voice Gianni’s again, sure. “I can’t. I’m the son.” She looked at me. “And you.”

“The way she looks at you,” Claudia said later, in bed.

“Like a sister.”

“Ha.”

“Jealous?” I said, smiling at her.

“No, careful. One slip, you say, but who’s talking? The priest, then the daughter. I thought I would scream. I thought we’d never leave.”

I smiled again, but my mind was elsewhere, in the polished high room with the gilt furniture. Not a fortune hunter.

“But we did,” she said, putting a finger on my chest, bringing me back. “So it’s over, yes?”

The largest landowners in the Veneto.

“Everyone saw us. That was the point,” I said.

“Everyone saw us at the ball.”

When I got home, my mother was looking through the photographs, the brown envelope next to her on the couch. I turned on a lamp and went over to the sideboard to make a drink.

“Want one?”

She pointed to her half-filled glass on the end table.

“You know, I don’t remember wearing my hair this short,” she said, peering at a snapshot, “but I suppose I must have.”

“What businesses did Gianni own?”

“Oh, darling, I don’t know, a little of this, a little of that. Wines. He was always talking about that. Why?”

“Giulia mentioned the family businesses. I was just wondering what they were.”

“They own part of a bank. I expect that’s what she meant. And bits of things. He said it was safer that way, spreading out your chips.” She looked up. “Not munitions, if that’s what you mean. He wasn’t that.”