“Is it ever?” I turned to Elio. “Could we see the boys’ room?”
“Subito.” He selected a key from a wooden hook board and led us to the elevator, which was no bigger than a broom closet, and we crammed inside along with Glenda’s lit cigarette.
“Like anchovies in a can.” Glenda shot Elio a barracuda look. “With a shark.”
I batted away a feather and brushed ash from my shirt. This trip was not going to be a remake of Gidget Goes to Rome.
We arrived on the third floor, and Elio led us to the room Veronica and I had shared years before.
He unlocked the door, and I walked through the living area, kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom, alternating between remembering old times and taking stock of the boys’ things. My heart half broke when I saw one of the boy’s retainers and a Tex Willer comic book.
Glenda stretched out on a futon couch in her feathered fur coat and kicked up her “Fly Me” shoes. “See anything odd, Miss Franki?”
She was talking about the room. But still.
I ran my hand along the buffet. “There’s almost nothing here.” David and the vassal were gadget guys, but apart from some travel adapters I didn’t see a single device. “Did Enrico happen to notice whether they were carrying laptops when they left?”
Elio rested his hand on the dining table. “The maid said their computers were here when she brought breakfast, so it is possible that the police confiscated them this morning.”
Because I’d been a cop, I knew it was standard procedure in missing persons cases to search computer hard drives for clues. “The police didn’t tell you what they took?”
“Under Italian law, hotel staff is not allowed to know what police remove from a guest’s room.” He put his hands into his pockets. “But the maid mentioned another item that I do not see.”
“What’s that?”
“A narrow cloth bag about sixty centimeters long.” He gestured a length of about two feet.
Fortunately, Italians used their hands when they spoke, or I would’ve had no idea how long the bag was. “Like a tripod, or something?”
“I cannot know.” He hesitated. “But she said it looked like a weapon.”
There was an empty feeling in my abdomen as though my stomach had been confiscated. David and the vassal wouldn’t have had a weapon. But if the police had taken the bag, it was evidence.
But of what?
A crime that had been committed against them?
4
You sure you not under arrest-a?” The thirty-something officer at the Questura Centrale asked Glenda and me for the third time while a squadron of policemen gawked on.
I stared at the stuccoed ceiling seeking inner calm. I’d already explained the reason for our visit in perfect Italian, but as local men were wont to do, he insisted on showing off his English.
“Like I said,” I practically growled, “we have committed no crime.” I held up my PI license. “I’m a private investigator from the United States.” I pointed at Glenda. “And she’s my associate. We’re here for information about missing American college students.”
He sized me up, shifted his gaze to Glenda, and looked her down and up again.
Never one to disappoint an audience, my esteemed associate held out her cigarette holder and opened her coat, revealing a sexified Southern Italian peasant outfit that seemed tailor-made for dancing the strip tarantella.
I collapsed onto a bench to wait out the consequences, which included (but were not limited to) a collective gasp followed by exclamations of “Madonna” and “Mamma Mia,” whistles, gestures aimed at the heavens, a few wipes of the brow, and a hat toss.
And I thought I’d been so clever when I’d talked her out of the sleuthing suits by arguing that she didn’t want to misrepresent her profession at a police station.
The questioning officer, whose white gun belt had gone askew in the ensuing chaos, shifted his stance and looked at me. “She no work-a for you?”
A realization struck me like a police baton. He thought Glenda was a prostituta—and I was her madama. And given that she had thirty-five or so years on me, I resented the assumption. Moltissimo. “Officer Mongelluzzo, I need to speak with your supervisor.”
He put his hand on his hat and recoiled as though I’d slapped him for indecency. “You wan’ to speak-a with Commissario Boccadifuoco?”
After I’d heard the inspector’s surname, I wasn’t so sure. Boccadifuoco meant “mouth of fire,” and I was in no mood for any more lip. But this wasn’t about me, it was about the boys, so I womaned up. “This instant.”
He made a tch sound with his tongue and the roof of his mouth, which in Italy was a definitive “no.”
My blood boiled hotter than a pasta pot, and while I was trying to keep a lid on it, a buxom woman who looked to be around forty burst from an office in a chic police pencil skirt and a cloud of musk perfume.
“Oh!” She pressed her hands together. “Ma che è ‘sto casino?”
Based on the rather heated way she’d inquired about the noise, I ID’d her on the spot. “Commissario Boccadifuoco?”
She sized me up much like her male counterparts. “Sì?”
“Sono Francesca Amato, investigatore privato. Potrei parlarle di un caso?” After I’d introduced myself and asked to speak to her about a case, I thought I saw recognition in her gaze.
“Follow me, please.”
Her English reply was ice water in my boiling pot. No matter how well I spoke the language, Italians could always sniff my American out.
She reentered her office, and when I turned to close the door to Officer Mongelluzzo’s worried eyes, my eyes took on a worried look of their own.
A barista from a nearby bar had entered with caffè on a tray, and an older officer took one of the cups, bowed with a flourish, and offered it to my open-coated associate.
The last thing I needed was Glenda all jacked up in a puny peasant outfit with a roomful of policemen as a captive audience. “Go easy on the
