The Savage Garden

however, he began to worry. Maurizio would have quizzed Gaetano closely; he would know that Gaetano had not let slip Maurizio's name to Adam. All Maurizio had to do was brazen it out, make no reference at all to Viareggio, and Adam would be hamstrung, left with nothing more than a broken chain of circumstantial evidence.

    This is what Maurizio should have done, so Adam was surprised when he showed up in the study soon after lunch. He entered from the library, shutting the door behind him. He also closed the French windows leading onto the terrace.

    Adam was at the desk, reading. He hadn't absorbed one word of the book. He had been praying for Maurizio to make just such a blunder.

    Maurizio lit a cigarette. 'Gaetano sends his apologies.'

    Silence seemed the best tactic.

    'Who was the man in the park?'

    So that was it. Seeking Adam out wasn't a blunder on Maurizio's part; it was an act of necessity. He needed to know if Adam was working alone. He needed to know just what he was up against.

    'I don't know. It was dark, I didn't even see his face.'

    Maurizio's eyes narrowed, studying him closely. 'I believe you.' He wandered to the fireplace and flicked some ash into the grate. 'I don't know what you think you know, but let me tell you how it is. I know Gaetano, of course I do. We all do. When he left last year, he asked me to help him in his business.' He gave a wry smile. 'No, he asked to borrow some money. I said no, and then I saw La Capannina and I said yes. I thought it was a good investment. And it is. The arrangement between us is very complicated. I'll be honest, it is not exactly legal. This makes him very sensitive. It makes us both very sensitive. I'm sorry you suffered because of it. But that's all it is—a business arrangement.'

    He had to hand it to Maurizio, it was a nice try, offering up an explanation that would allow Adam to walk away from the affair with a clean conscience.

    But he was beyond that now. He had changed. They had hurt him. They had scared him. No, they had made him piss himself with fear, thinking he was about to die.

    'You're lying,' he said. 'I know you're lying, you know you're lying. You killed Emilio, and when Gaetano saw what you'd done you had to buy his silence. Maybe you're still buying it. Did Gaetano tell you about his plans? He has big plans—money no object—your money, I imagine.'

    He was surprised it hadn't occurred to him before that the relationship was one of ongoing blackmail, that Gaetano had raised the price on Maurizio with La Capannina. It was a gratifying thought that Maurizio really had been paying for his crime for the past fourteen years.

    Maurizio's expression hovered somewhere between pity and amusement. 'Is that what you think? That I killed my own brother? Are you mad?'

    He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and approached the desk. He was no longer amused.

    'You come here and you tell me this? You dare to tell me this? I was there.' He stabbed his finger against his chest. 'I was there. I saw that German shoot Emilio. I saw him walk up to him and shoot him again in the head.' He made a pistol of his fingers and 'fired' at the ground. 'And I did nothing. Nothing. I watched. If doing nothing means I killed him, then yes—I killed him.'

    It wasn't the tears welling in Maurizio's eyes that unsettled Adam, it was the pistol-fingers he had pointed at the ground. That explained the bullet hole in the floor upstairs—a detail of the shooting Chiara had failed to mention to him, and which Adam had blithely taken as proof of Maurizio's hand in his brother's death.

    It was the cornerstone of his case—his only piece of hard, physical evidence—and Maurizio had whipped it away with one simple gesture. The whole ramshackle structure of the conspiracy he had built now came crashing down around his ears.

    'Well . . . ?'

    'I'm sorry,' Adam replied quietly.

    'You're sorry!?'

    'Yes.'

    Maurizio spun away from the desk, exasperated. 'Is that all you can say?'

    'I'll leave.'

    'Yes, you will.'

    'Now?'

    'Tomorrow morning, as you planned. I don't want to make a scene for my mother.'

    Adam nodded. Maurizio shot him a contemptuous look and stalked out of the room.

    He made his way upstairs in a daze, shaky and light-headed. He tried to marshal his thoughts but they scattered off in all directions like a rioting mob, leaving him to poke around in the ruins of his argument.

    He found himself in his room, unpacking then repacking the suitcases he'd prepared before leaving for the coast.

    Why couldn't he think straight? The close chain of his reasoning was usually the one thing he could rely on. Maybe he was in shock. Yes, that was it. Or concussed. The doctor in Viareggio had warned him he might be.

    He was right about one thing: Viareggio had indeed brought matters to a head, forcing a confrontation with Maurizio. He gave a quick and manic laugh. It was about the only thing he had been right about.

    At least it was over now, done with. He was in no condition to take the thing any further, even if he had