The rage so clouded his vision that first he nearly ran over a little old lady and then he barely escaped colliding with a truck. When he pulled up in front of Elena’s place, it was past one o’clock. He rang the intercom and she answered.
She was waiting for him in the doorway, wearing gym clothes and smiling.
“Salvo, what a pleasant surprise! Come on in and make yourself at home.”
She went in ahead. From behind, Montalbano noticed that her gait was no longer springy and taut but soft and relaxed. Even the way she sat down in the armchair was almost languid, nonchalant. The cheetah apparently had recently had her fill of fresh flesh and for the moment presented no danger. It was better this way.
“You didn’t forewarn me, so I haven’t made coffee. But it’ll only take a second.”
“No, thanks. I need to talk to you.”
Still the wild animal, she bared all her sharp, white teeth in a cross between a smile and a feline hiss. “About us?”
She was clearly trying to provoke him, but only in jest, without serious intent.
“No, about the investigation.” “Still?”
“Yes. I need to talk to you about your phony alibi.” “Phony? Why phony?”
Only curiosity, almost as though amused. No embarrassment, surprise, fear.
“Because on that fateful Monday evening, you could not have met your Luigi.”
That “your” he tossed in had escaped him. Apparently he still felt a twinge of jealousy. She understood and threw fuel on the fire.
“I assure you I did meet him, and we rather enjoyed ourselves.”
“I don’t doubt that, but it wasn’t on a Monday, because that filling station is closed on Mondays.”
Elena folded her hands, raised her arms over her head, and stretched.
“When did you find out?”
“A few hours ago.”
“Luigi and I could have sworn it would never occur to anyone to check.”
“It occurred to me.”
A lie. Said not to boast, but just to avoid looking like a complete nincompoop in her eyes.
“A bit late, however, Inspector. Anyway, what difference does this great discovery make?”
“It means you don’t have an alibi.”
“Ouf! Didn’t I already tell you I had no alibi? Have you forgotten? I didn’t try to make anything up. But you kept insisting: ‘Careful, if you don’t have an alibi, you’re going to be arrested!’ “What do you want from me? So in the end I got my alibi, just like you wanted.”
Shrewd, alert, intelligent, beautiful. Stray just one millimeter and she’ll take advantage. So now it was his fault that she lied to Tommaseo!
“How did you persuade Luigi? By promising to sleep with him?”
He couldn’t control himself. The thorn of jealousy was making him say the wrong things. The rabbit couldn’t accept being refused by the cheetah.
“Wrong, Inspector. Everything that I said happened to me on Monday actually happened to me the day before, on Sunday. It didn’t take much to persuade Luigi to move our first encounter up one day when he talked to Tommaseo. And I can tell you that if you want to interrogate him, he’ll continue to swear up and down that we met for the first time that goddamned Monday evening. He would do anything for me.”
What was it that made his ears perk? Some small detail, perhaps, some unexpected change in her tone when she said
“that goddamned Monday evening” had suddenly, in a flash, brought something to mind—an idea, an illumination that nearly frightened him.
“You, that evening, went to Angelo’s,” the inspector’s mouth said before the idea had fully taken concrete form in his head.
Not a question but a clear assertion. She shifted position, rested her elbows on her knees, put her head in her hands, and eyed Montalbano long and hard. She was studying him. Beneath that stare, which was weighing his value as a man, brains and balls included, the inspector felt the same unease as when he’d undergone his army physical, standing naked in front of the committee as the doctor measured and manhandled him. Then she made up her mind. Perhaps he’d passed the test.
“You realize I could stick to my story and nobody could ever prove it was false.”
“That’s what you think. The sign is still there.”
“Yes, but getting rid of it would have made things worse. That’s what Luigi and I decided. He’ll just say he forgot a book in the booth and went back to get it that Monday evening. He’s studying for exams at the university. I saw him at the station and mistakenly thought he was closing up. You know the rest. Does it work?”
Damned woman! It worked, all right!
“Yes,” he said reluctantly.
“So I can go on. You’re right, Inspector. That Monday evening, after driving around in the car for about an hour, I went to Angelo’s place, very late for our appointment.”
