Aaron Elkins - Dying on the Vine

Only Nico, sitting there shaking his head, showed anything close to emotion. “I did my best to turn him around. I never stopped trying. It wasn’t enough.”

“We know you did,” Franco said. “No one could have tried harder. But when it came to Cesare . . .” He finished with one of those says-it-all Italianate shrugs: Even with the best of intentions not every problem can be solved; life is what it is; what can one do?; one can only try; it was bound from the beginning to end this way.

Quadrelli nodded gravely “ Ad incunabulum ,” he observed.

Gideon suspected he was trying for ab incunabulis. From the cradle. His Latin was as shaky as his English.

“The thing is, you know,” Nico said, “he was just here, right in the conference room, talking to us, a couple of days ago. It’s hard to believe he can be dead.”

How many times had Gideon heard similar thoughts expressed? But he was alive only yesterday; how can he be dead today? As if death was a gradual phenomenon. It wasn’t. Half-dead was a figure of speech, no more. Death itself—not the illness or infirmity that might precede it—was an instantaneous phenomenon. The light was on; the light went off. The brain was getting blood from the heart; the brain wasn’t getting blood from the heart. The end.

“Talking to us,” Franco said with a snort. “That was some talk.”

“At least he was honest,” Nico said, but with little conviction.

• • •

Alittle later, during the predinner wine and apéritif hour on the terrace, Gideon joined Julie, John, and Marti. There, over a glass of 2004 Villa Antica Cabernet he sat for half an hour for more questions, many hypotheses, and no answers.

TWENTY-TWO

THEfollowing morning, the Vino e Cucina contingent departed early for a full-day tour of Tuscan wineries and food cooperatives that met Luca’s exacting standards, with meals at two of his favorite restaurants and an overnight stay in Pisa. John and Gideon had been invited along, and John, more and more bored with life in Figline and with no developments expected in the case for the next day or two, had decided to go. Well, not quite decided . He’d flipped a coin: Heads I go; tails I don’t , and it had come up heads.

Gideon had politely declined. He had no desire to encounter another ossobuco or anything like it. With plans for the day that were neither pressing nor particularly attractive—he had to read a dissertation submission from a PhD candidate in physical anthropology, on whose advisory committee he served—he made what was for him a rare decision and decided to sleep in. So after Julie left at seven thirty, he went back to their canopied bed, leaving the windows wide open for the fresh morning air and the lulling smells and sounds—browning leaves, twittering birds—of the Tuscan countryside in fall. They were more lulling than expected, so when his cell phone jogged him awake a little after nine, he just groaned, muttered, pulled the pillow over his head, and went back to sleep.

It was ten when he finally got up, the latest he’d slept in years, and he felt great; he was beginning to think that John might have a point about the benefits of dozing half the morning away, after all. Only after he’d showered and shaved, did he remember the phone call. But first things first. He went yawning to the door to retrieve the tray with the pot of coffee and canister of hot milk (cool by now) that waited outside for them every morning, took it into the sitting room—not quite as grand as Franco’s, but grand enough, with its frescoed ceilings and tapestried walls—squeezed himself into an interesting but not overly comfortable settee that had been made from the prow end of a gondola, and checked his phone. The message was from Rocco, saying he’d already gotten the autopsy report and that if Gideon was interested he should return the call.

This prompted a few (but not too many) feelings of guilt. Here he’d been snoozing half the day away while the intrepid lieutenant was hot on the case. Well, why not? he asked himself. Rocco’s working; you’re on vacation , but it didn’t help. With a sigh he poured himself a cup of espresso, which still had a little warmth to it, decided against the cold milk, and dialed the number.

“You already have the autopsy report? You guys are fast.”

“You ain’t heard nothing yet. The lab report just came through too.”

“Wow, that’s amazing,” said Gideon, amazed in truth. “You only found the guy yesterday morning. What did you do, hold a gun to their heads?”

“Yeah, well, I guess Conforti leaned on them a little. Anyway, here’s the upshot. It was a cocaine overdose, all right, which they say was—well, let me read you what it says in the lab report. ‘Primary cause of death was acute cocaine intoxication with related factors contributing . . .’ Blah blah . . . let me see. . . . Umm . . . the rest is more blah blah, a lot of zero-point-x-milligram stuff.”

“What about the manner of death? Did they make a determination? Homicide? Suicide? Accidental . . . ?”

“Undetermined.”

“So, can you can keep working on it?”

“Oh yeah. Like you said, one way or another, it’s gotta tie in with everything else, so I’m just treating it like part of the Cubbiddus’ murder investigation. And Conforti’s cool with that.”

“Yeah, it’s all related to the coke. Wait a minute. . . . Yeah, here it is: ‘While the blood cocaine levels found in the deceased are certainly within the potentially lethal range, they would in most cases not be fatal in themselves to an individual whose tolerance had been raised by habitual usage. In this instance, however, it is probable that the early-stage hypertensive cardiovascular disease and pulmonary emphysema’—I think that’s what it says; I’m translating as I go here—‘found in the deceased were contributing factors. These conditions are well-established concomitants of cocaine ingestion.’ Does that tell you anything you didn’t know before?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither. Okay, stay in touch, buddy. If anything comes up at your end that might be important, you’ll let me know?”

“Absolutely.”

• • •

WHENGideon went to the high-ceilinged, flagstone-paved old refectory a few minutes later hunting for breakfast, he found it deserted but with plenty still on the buffet table from the Vino e Cucina send-off meal, a bigger, more varied one than usual. He helped himself from platters of cheese and ham sliced so thin you could see through them, and cut a couple of chunks from a loaf of cakey, flour-dusted Italian bread to go along with them.

The buffet also held an anachronistically modern, science-fictiony self-service coffee machine with about twenty different buttons one could press for espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, and just about every adaptation of coffee ever invented. Having had enough coffee to last him for a while, he hit the button labeled cioccolata calda and watched as a sludgy but wonderful-smelling liquid flowed steaming into his cup like brown lava. Next to this apparatus was a similar but smaller machine (only twelve buttons), with TUTTAFRUTA on the front and pictures of various fruit juices. Gideon tried the buttons for pineapple juice and grapefruit juice while the chocolate was going into his cup but with no luck, and he settled for orange juice.

He took everything to a table beside a swung-open casement window that looked out on the garden, and ate, drank, and dreamed a few minutes away enjoyably. But after a time, after he’d gone back to the buffet table and returned with another hot chocolate and a slice of almond sponge cake, he began to replay his recent conversations with Rocco, especially the one at Il Cernacchino, where Rocco had told him about Cesare and shown him the crime photos.