“Lea Barbero,” she gently corrected him, at which Phil looked immensely pleased.
She smiled, and he was aware of how attractive she must once have been. In her forties now, and looking her age, with weary eyes and mouth, and slightly bowed shoulders, there was still a pale, nineteenth-century kind of beauty that clung to her. She looked like the type of woman on whom swooning would look good. “I am too ’appy to know you, sir,” she said. “What you sayed about the bones. Very interesting.”
“Thank you. I hope it’ll be of some help in determining what happened.”
As he spoke, he realized with a shock why she seemed familiar. He’d seen her before, only a few days ago. Lea Barbero, in her crisp, pink-striped Oxford shirt, her fashionable, mid-calf-length khaki slacks and new-looking, open- toed leather clogs—Lea Barbero with her understated makeup and softly layered blond hair—was the drab, hunched woman in sneakers and old sweater that he and Julie had taken for a maid the other day; the woman that had turned and fled the moment she’d seen them.
He turned to look at Phil—he of the new haircut, fresh shave, and clean shirt—and realized that there was a look on his face that was totally unfamiliar, a cocky, jaunty, heylook-at-me expression that was wholly unlike him. Even his posture seemed different: he was practically strutting.
He looked, in short, an awful lot like a love-dazed peacock.
Son of a gun.
THIRTEEN
ITwas called the Napoleon Room because Napoleon was supposed to have slept there for two nights during the Italian campaign of 1797, and it was one of the more impressive rooms in the villa. The heavy canopy bed, easily big enough for four, was in a curtained alcove off the larger sitting room. The sitting room floor was inlaid marble, the walls and the high ceiling decorated with intricate stucco work. There were several de Grazia coats of arms, and cupids and angels peeped from around every corner. There were gilded mirrors and ornately framed landscapes on the walls, and from the ceiling hung an elaborate chandelier of Venetian glass. Over the white marble mantel there was a life-size, full-length portrait of Napoleon standing next to his horse. There were upholstered divans and chairs, console tables, commodes and cabinets, and directly under the chandelier an elegant, round, marble-topped table with four armchairs. There was room to spare for everything, and everything, even the elaborate prisms of the chandelier, looked as if it had been dusted within the last hour. Caravale had lived in four-room apartments with less space than this.
It was Achille de Grazia’s bedroom, and had been since he’d been six years old.
Three people were seated at the table: Vincenzo de Grazia, Achille, and Caravale. In front of Achille was a transcript of his statements earlier in the day. “Should I sign it, or should my father?” he asked.
“You,” Caravale said. “And initial each page. Read it first, though. Make sure it’s right.”
“Yes, sir.”
Physically, Achille looked better than he had when Caravale had seen him at the hospital. They’d been unable to do anything about a ferocious flare-up of acne, but he’d been thoroughly spruced up and now wore a soft-collared blue shirt, dress jeans, and a pair of buttery tasseled loafers, much like his father’s, that had probably cost the equivalent of half a month’s salary for Caravale. Otherwise, he seemed about the same—downcast, listless, docile, numbed...as if there were nobody inside.
From everything Caravale had been told about him, this was a striking departure from his usual bullying selfcenteredness, and it seemed to worry Vincenzo, who sat close to the boy, as if to prop him up if he should need support. Vincenzo even had his arm around Achille’s shoulders. Well, not quite around his shoulders, but over the back of his chair. Even so, it seemed to Caravale a noteworthy show of concern, considering whom it was coming from.
Achille pretended to read the transcript, but Caravale could see his eyes darting away from the print, as if on their own initiative. He signed it as requested.
“I would like to see it too,” Vincenzo said.
“Of course,” Caravale said. Above his head a stray eddy of air set the chandelier to tinkling.
Keeping one arm over the back of Achille’s chair, Vincenzo hungrily read the statements—muddled memories of the kidnapping itself, and a description of his days in the tent—while Achille leaned gratefully into him, like a puppy responding to his master’s closeness.
With a grunt, Vincenzo finished the transcript and slid it across the table to Caravale. “All right. I trust you’re finished with him and would have no objection if he goes away to school in Switzerland.”
“You mean right now?”
“In a few days.”
“Do you want to go away to Switzerland?” Caravale asked Achille.
“Of course he does. It was his idea. This terrible experience—”
“I’d prefer Achille to answer for himself. Do you want to go to school in Switzerland, son?”
Achille nodded. He looked like a four-year-old that had had a bad scare. “Yes, sir, please,” he mumbled. “I...I don’t want to stay here anymore.” A little firmness, a touch of the old Achille, crept back into his voice: “I’m not going back to La Sacca.”
“He was supposed to start in Switzerland next fall anyway,” Vincenzo said. “Saint Gotthard’s School in Bern. It’s a boys’ school, mostly for the sons of businessmen and government officials. Highly rated, with excellent security. Given what’s happened, they’ve agreed to take him early. They’ll send somebody from Bern to accompany him.”
“All right, I have no objections, as long as you understand that we’ll probably have to contact him later, and we might have to ask him to come back.”
