“So, what can I do for you, signora?” Montalbano repeated.
“My husband is away at sea, sailing on a container ship as first mate. We stay in touch through letters and postcards. Before leaving, he always gives me a list of his ports of call with arrival and departure dates, so he can receive my letters when he goes ashore. We also sometimes call each other with our satellite phones, but pretty rarely.”
“Has something happened?”
“Well, Giovanni embarked a few months ago on a rather long voyage, and after three weeks had gone by, he still hadn’t written or phoned me. This has never happened before. So I got worried and called him. He told me he was in good health and had been very busy.”
Montalbano was spellbound as he listened to her. She had a bedroom voice. There was no other way to define it. She might say only “hello,” and immediately one imagined rumpled blankets, pillows on the floor, and sweat- dampened sheets smelling of cinnamon.
And the Spanish accent that came out when she spoke at length was like a spicy condiment.
“. . . a postcard from him,” said Dolores.
Lost in her voice, Montalbano had become distracted, his mind indeed on unmade beds and torrid nights, with perhaps some Spanish guitars playing in the background...
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” he said.
“I said that the day before yesterday, I got a postcard from him.”
“Good. So now you’ve been reassured.”
The woman did not reply, but pulled a picture postcard out of her purse and handed it to the inspector.
It showed the port of a town that Montalbano had never heard of. The stamp was Argentinean. On the back was written :
You couldn’t very well say the captain was an expansive sort. Still, it was better than nothing. Montalbano looked up at Dolores Alfano.
“I don’t think he wrote it himself,” she said. “The signature looks different to me.”
She took four other postcards out of her purse and passed them to Montalbano.
“Compare it with these, which he sent me last year.”
There was no need to resort to a handwriting expert. It was glaringly obvious that the handwriting of the last postcard was fake. And falsified rather carelessly at that. The old postcards also had a different tone:
“This last postcard I received,” Dolores continued, “brought back the strange impression I had after calling him on the phone.”
“Which was?”
“That it wasn’t him at the other end. His voice was different. As if he had a cold. But at the time I convinced myself that it was because of the distortion of the cell phone. Now I’m no longer so sure.”
“And what do you think I should do?”
“Well . . . I don’t really know.”
“It’s sort of a problem, signora. The last postcard wasn’t written by him, you’re right about that. But that might also mean your husband didn’t board the ship for any number of reasons and then had a friend write to you and send it so you wouldn’t get worried.”
Dolores shook her head.
“In that case, he could have telephoned me.”
“True. Why didn’t
“I did. As soon as I received the card. And I called him twice after that. I even tried again before coming here. But his telephone is always turned off, nobody answers.”
“I understand your concern, signora, but...”
“So you can’t do anything?”
“No, I can’t. Because, you see, the way things are today, you aren’t even in a position to file a missing persons report. Who’s to say whether the situation isn’t other than what you say it is?”
“But what could the situation be, in that case?”
“Well, I dunno. For example . . .” Montalbano started walking on eggshells. “Mind you, this is only a conjecture, but maybe your husband met somebody . . . You know what I mean? . . . Somebody who—”
“My husband loves me.”
She said it serenely, almost without intonation. Then she took an envelope out of her purse and withdrew the letter that was inside it.
“This is a letter he sent me four months ago. Please read it.”
