who killed the boy
'You won't let that go, will you?' she asked entirely without
reproof.
'No/
'Probably wise not to she agreed.
'So you think he was murdered, too?'
'I always did
'Why?'
'Because I trust your feelings and because your feeling about it was so
strong
'And if I'm wrong?'
Then we're wrong together she said. She picked up her book, slipped a
bookmark between the pages, and closed it. Setting it down, she said,
'I can't read any more
The neither he said, setting Anna Comnena on the table in front of
him.
She looked across at him and asked, 'Is it all right if I don't wear
one of your shirts?'
He laughed out loud and they went to bed.
The first thing he did the next morning was to go see Signorina
Elettra, whom he found in her office. Her desk was covered with at
least six bouquets of flowers, each wrapped separately in a cone of
pastel paper. As he knew she had a
standing order for flowers to be delivered on Monday from Biancat, he
wondered if he'd got things wrong in thinking today was Tuesday or if
he'd somehow invented the events of the previous day.
'Are those from Biancat?' he asked.
She ripped two of the packages open and began to place dwarf sunflowers
in a green vase. 'No, they're from Rialto.' She stepped back from the
desk, studied the arrangement, then added three more sunflowers.
'Then it's really Tuesday?'
She gave him a strange look and answered, 'Of course.'
'Don't the flowers usually arrive on Monday?'
She smiled, lifted the vase, and placed it on the other side of her
computer. 'Yes, they usually do. But the Vice-Questore has begun to
cause quite a fuss about office expenses, so, because they're so much
cheaper there, I thought I'd get them from Rialto for a while, until
something diverts him.'
'Did you bring them all yourself?' he asked, trying to calculate
whether they'd fit in her arms.
'No, I called for a launch when I realized how many of them I'd
bought.'
'A police launch?'
'Of course. It would be difficult to justify taking a taxi,' she said,
snapping off the stem of a carnation.
'What with the economy drive and all,' Brunetti suggested.
'Exactly.'
Three of the other bouquets ended up together in an enormous ceramic
vase, and the last, asters, went into a narrow crystal vase Brunetti
could not remember ever having seen. When all three vases were placed
to her satisfaction and the papers neatly folded and placed in the
basket she kept for paper to be recycled, she said, 'Yes,
Commissario?'
'Have you managed to find out anything about the daughter?'
Signorina Elettra pulled a notebook from the side of her
/
desk and flipped it open. Reading from it, she began, 'She was taken
out of school two years ago, and there's been no j trace of her, at
least no bureaucratic trace, since.'
Taken out by whom?' 5
'Her father, apparently.' |
'How did that happen?'
The school records show that her last day of school was the sixteenth
of November.'
