his business trips to the different towns in the province, had girlfriends galore in each place, like those sailors who supposedly have a woman in every port. This drove her mad with jealousy. And she warned him: If she could ever prove that Angelo was cheating on her, she would kill him.
In the first letter, in fact, she claimed she had followed Angelo in her car all the way to Fanara, and she asked him a precise question: Why had he stopped for an hour and a half at Via Liberta 82, seeing that there was neither a pharmacy nor a doctor’s office at that address? Did another mistress of his live there? Whatever the case, Angelo would do well to remember: Any betrayal meant sudden, violent death.
When he finished reading the letter, Montalbano wasn’t entirely convinced. True, these letters proved Michela right, but they didn’t correspond to the Elena he thought he’d met. It was as though they’d been written by a different person.
And anyway, why would Angelo have kept them hidden in the trunk of the Mercedes? Did he not want his sister to read them? Was he perhaps embarrassed by the first part of the letters, which told of his acrobatics between the sheets with Elena? That might explain it. But did it make sense that Elena, who was so attached to money, would murder the person who was giving her a great deal of money, if only in the form of presents?
Without realizing it, he grabbed the telephone.
“Hello, Livia? Salvo here. I wanted to ask you something. In your opinion is it logical for a woman to kill a lover who lavishes her with expensive gifts, just because she’s jealous? What would you do?”
There was a long silence. “Hello, Livia?”
“I don’t know if I would kill a man out of jealousy, but if he woke me up at five o’clock in the morning, I certainly would,” said Livia.
And she hung up.
He got to work a bit late. He hadn’t managed to fall asleep until around six, after tossing and turning with a single thought lodged in his brain—namely, that according to the most elementary rules, he should have apprised Prosecutor Tommaseo of Elena Sclafani’s situation. Whereas he didn’t feel like it. And the problem set his nerves on edge just enough to prevent him from sleeping.
One look at his face sufficed to tell the entire police station that this wasn’t a good day.
In the closet there was somebody else in Catarella’s place. Minnitti, a Calabrese.
“Where’s Catarella?”
“He stayed up all night working at the station, Chief, and this morning he collapsed.”
Maybe he’d taken Angelo Pardo’s computer home with him, because there was no sign of it anywhere. The moment the inspector sat down at his desk, Fazio came in.
“Two things, Chief. The first is that Commendator Ernesto Laudadio came here this morning.”
“And who is Commendator Ernesto Laudadio?”
“You know him well, Chief. He’s the man that called us when he got it in his head you wanted to rape the murder victim’s sister.”
So His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III went by the name of Ernesto Laudadio! And while he was earnestly lauding God, he was busting his fellow man’s balls.
“What’d he come for?”
“He wanted to report a crime committed by persons unknown. Apparently last night somebody tried to force open the victim’s garage door, but thecommendatorefoiled the plot, firing two rifle shots at the unknown man and chasing him away.”
“Did he injure him?”
Fazio answered with another question.
“Are you injured, Chief?”
“No.”
“Then thecommendatoredidn’t injure anyone, thank God. Would you please tell me what you were doing in that garage?”
“I’d gone there earlier to look for the strongbox, since both you and I had forgotten to look there.” “That’s true. Did you find it?”
“No. Then I went back later, because all at once a small detail came back to me.”
He didn’t tell him what this detail was, and Fazio didn’t ask.
“And what was the second thing you wanted to tell me?”
“I got some information on Emilio Sclafani, the schoolteacher.”
“Oh, good, tell me.”
Fazio slipped a hand in his jacket pocket, and the inspector shot him a dirty look.
“If you pull out a piece of paper with the teacher’s father’s name, the teacher’s grandfather’s name, the teacher’s father’s grandfather’s name, I’ll—”
“Peace,” said Fazio, removing his hand from his pocket.
“Will you never rid yourself of this public-records vice?”
“Never, Chief. So anyway: The teacher is a repeat offender.”
“In what sense?”
