“When was this brought here?”
“This morning, as I said. A bill for one hundred seventy-seven thousand lire, from the Mulone printing works. Incidentally, Inspector, could you give me back the keys to the office?” “Do you need them right away?”
“Right this instant, I guess not. But I’d like to start showing it to people who might be interested in buying it. I want to sell the apartment too. I’ve already figured that the funeral alone is going to cost me over five million lire between one thing and the next.” Like mother, like son.
“With the proceeds from the office and the apartment,” said Montalbano in a fit of malice, “you could pay for twenty funerals.”
o o o
Empedocle Mulone, owner of the print shop, said yes, the late Mr. Lapecora had indeed ordered some stationery with slightly different letterhead from the old one. Signor Arelio had been coming to him for twenty years, and they were friends.
“How was it different?”
“It said ‘Import-Export’ instead of ‘Importazione-Esportazione.’ But I advised him against it.”
“He shouldn’t have made the change?”
“I didn’t mean the letterhead, but the idea of restarting the business. He’d already been retired about five years, but things are different now. Businesses are failing. It’s a bad time.
And you know what he did, instead of thanking me for the advice? He got pissed off. He said he read the newspapers and watched TV, and so he knew what the situation was.”
“Did you send the package with the printed matter to his home or his office?”
“He asked me to send it to the office, and that’s what I did, on one of the weekdays when he was there. I don’t remember the exact date, but if you want—”
“Never mind.”
“The bill, on the other hand, I sent to the missus, since I guess Mr. Lapecora can’t very well make it to the office now, can he?”
And he laughed.
o o o
“Here’s your espresso, Inspector,” said the barman at the Caffe Albanese.
“Toto, listen. Did Mr. Lapecora sometimes come here with his friends?”
“Sure! Every Tuesday. They’d talk and play cards. Always the same group.”
“Give me their names.”
“All right. Let’s see: Pandolfo, the accountant—”
“Wait. Give me the phone book.”
“No need to call him on the phone. He’s the elderly gentleman sitting at that table over there, eating an ice.” Montalbano took his demitasse and went over to the accountant.
“May I sit down?”
“Absolutely, Inspector.”
“Thanks. Do we know each other?”
“You don’t know me, sir, but I know you.”
“Mr. Pandolfo, did you play cards with the deceased very often?”
“Often? We played every Tuesday. Because, you see, every Monday,Wednesday, and—”
“—Friday he was at the office,” said Montalbano, completing the now familiar refrain.
“What would you like to know?”
“Why did Mr. Lapecora decide to go back into business?”
Pandolfo looked sincerely surprised.
“Go back into business? When did he ever do that? He never talked about it with us. But we all knew he went to the office out of habit, just to pass the time.”
“Did he ever mention the maid, a certain Karima, who used to come and clean the office?”
There was a darting of the eyes, an imperceptible hesitation that would have gone unnoticed had Montalbano not been keeping the man squarely in his sights.
“The man had no reason to tell me about his cleaning woman.”
“Did you know Lapecora well?”
“Whom can you say you know well? Some thirty years ago when I lived in Montelusa, I had a friend, a smart man, bright, witty, sharp, sensible. He had it all. And he was generous, too, a real angel. If anyone was in need, they could have anything he owned. Then one evening his sister left her baby boy with him, not six months old. He was supposed to look after him for two hours or so, maximum. As soon as the sister left, the guy picked up a knife, chopped the baby up and boiled him in a pot with a sprig of parsley and a clove of garlic. I’m not kidding, you know. I’d been with the man that same day, and he’d been the same as always, smart, polite. So, to get back to poor old Lapecora, yeah, I knew him, all right, enough to see that he’d really changed over the last two years.”
