Good Blood

Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

GOOD BLOOD

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2004 by Aaron Elkins.

Text design by Kristin del Rosario.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As usual, Gideon Oliver has had to turn for advice to his real-life forensic colleagues. I am happy to thank two of America’s most eminent forensic anthropologists, Stanley J. Rhine and Walter Birkby, for making the Skeleton Detective look smarter than he would have otherwise.

My dear old friend Harvey Sherman of Salomon Smith Barney, who is probably the world’s most honest and industrious stockbroker, cheerfully instructed me in the ins and outs of funny-money-finagling. Jean Blaurock of BankAmerica filled me in on wire-transfer details.

My new friend Paola Lucentini was a treasure house of information on Italian language and culture.

The Hotel Primavera that is described in the book is real, and I owe my thanks to its friendly staff for helping to make my research time in Stresa a pleasure.

Other Titles by Aaron Elkins

Gideon Oliver Novels

skeleton dance

twenty blue devils

dead men’s hearts

make no bones

icy clutches

curses!

old bones

murder in the queen’s armes

the dark place

fellowship of fear

Chris Norgren Novels

old scores

a glancing light

a deceptive clarity

Lee Ofsted Novels (with Charlotte Elkins)

nasty breaks

rotten lies

a wicked slice

Thrillers

turncoat loot

PROLOGUE

The Village of Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy, September 7, 1960

DOMENICO de Grazia was a gentleman of the old school, a refined and courtly patrician, a man of breeding, poised and self-assured. Many of the simpler folk, out of respect for his lineage and his impeccable bearing, still spoke of him as il conte, the count, although the nobility had been abolished more than fifteen years before. And some took their hats off when he passed, but this was a practice he gently discouraged.

Despite his reputation, Domenico knew himself to be a shy man, uncomfortable with intimacy and easily embarrassed. At this moment he was finding it impossibly hard to make the proposal that had brought him to the modest apartment of Franco and Emma Ungaretti. For half an hour he had sat in their living room making stilted small talk, while they plainly wondered, with many glances between them, what had brought him there. Emma was his niece, his brother Cosimo’s only child. Franco was her husband, whom Domenico employed, out of an admittedly grudging charity, as a part-time gamekeeper on the de Grazia estate.

It was not often that Domenico visited them, although once upon a time, and not so long ago at that, he had doted on Emma. But Franco Ungaretti he could barely force himself to tolerate. Emma was such a pretty, good- natured girl too; to think of the husbands from whom she might have had her choice...but that was neither here nor there.

With his second glass of Amaretto (which he detested) came the resolve he needed. He put down the glass and took a deep breath. “My children,” he said—and immediately regretted the choice of words, given the strange proposition he was about to make—“as you know, my wife has recently suffered a second miscarriage—”

Emma began to murmur something, but Domenico, determined to carry on now that he had gotten started, talked over her. “—and Dr. Luzzatto has told us she can risk no further pregnancies.”

More sympathetic murmurs, from both of them.

“Thank you, please let me finish. As you also know, the de Grazia family has maintained its holdings and its place in the life of our beloved Italy for over six hundred years, from the days of the Dukes of Piedmont.”

“Yes, Uncle,” Emma said.

“Good.” He patted her hand, but quickly drew his own back as if he’d touched a flame. That had been another bad idea. “I am sure you will both agree that there must always be a de Grazia to continue the heritage of our family, and to—and so forth.” He was already losing them. Emma looked confused and Franco was alternating between smirking at what he no doubt considered empty platitudes, and watching a bicycle race on the muted television set in a far corner. The set had been Domenico’s second-anniversary present to them a year earlier.

He decided to skip the middle paragraphs of his prepared speech. “I must have an heir,” he blurted. “In that regard I come to you—”

“But you have an heir, Uncle,” Emma said. “Your daughter. Francesca.”

Emma had many fine traits, but a piercing intelligence was not among them. “Francesca is the dearest of children, the darling of my heart,” Domenico explained kindly, “but I must have a male heir; someone to take my