“She had poor Bruzzone wrapped around her little finger.”
“Poor Bruzzone? The man is a murderer.”
“In America we have an expression about someone being thrown under the bus. I’m not sure if it works with a literal translation into Italian.”
“I get the image. She definitely threw him under the bus down there just now, as if the murder was completely his idea.”
“Maybe it happened exactly the way she recounted it.”
“Or perhaps she was just trying to get a lighter sentence.”
They looked up when DiMaio entered the room holding his pad of paper. “There was a bus accident?”
“It’s just an expression, Alfredo.”
The inspector dropped the pad and sat down behind his desk. “Were you able to hear everything?”
“Perfectly,” said Rick. “Even with just the audio, our sense is that she didn’t come off as the weaker vessel, led astray by an evil criminal mind.”
“Same with the body language.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. “I just heard downstairs that Bruzzone is conscious and talking, so it will be interesting to compare his version with hers. But after hearing her, my guess would be that she was telling the truth. I already checked to see where she was at the time of the murder and confirmed she was visiting her mother in Milan.”
“Very convenient for her,” said Betta. “The dirty work of covering up her original crime is done by Bruzzone when she’s nowhere near Urbino. You have to think she planned it that way.”
DiMaio rubbed his neck with both hands. “I’m not sure what I think. I finally managed to have a good night’s sleep, but now I could use a few days of just petty crime. This case has been exhausting.”
Rick glanced at Betta before speaking. “Alfredo, I have to ask you. There is something we—”
The policeman raised his hands to fend him off. “I know what you’re thinking, you two. What happened between the inspector and a certain Spanish person key to the investigation?”
Rick smiled. “You’re reading our minds, Alfredo.”
DiMaio had settled back into his chair. “When she was ushered in here, I was sure I could mix business with pleasure. Would it hurt to have a close relationship with someone who could give me firsthand information about the victim of the crime? Understanding the victim is always a first step in finding out who would have a motive to kill him. Basic police procedures. But two nights ago I found that having a special relationship actually worked against it. When I dropped her at the hotel I made a simple request. Routine really. Had she been just another suspect in the case, there would not have been a problem. I simply asked her to show me her airline ticket so I could confirm that she was in fact not in Italy when her father was murdered.”
“Oh, my.”
“Oh, my, indeed, Betta. She exploded, saying, ‘Don’t you trust me?’ She even raised her hand and was ready to slap me but had second thoughts and pulled it back.”
“Assaulting a police officer?” said Rick. “You would have had to arrest her.”
Betta shook her head. “Crime of passion. Never would have held up in court. And it may be a trait of Spanish women that they slap people when they don’t get what they want.”
“I think I recall hearing that,” Rick said. “We’re sorry it didn’t work out, Alfredo.”
DiMaio shrugged, and a grin wrinkled his cleanly shaved face. “As am I.” He took a drink of water from a cup on his desk. “She called me from the airport yesterday.”
Betta and Rick spoke at the same time. “Really?”
“She was actually quite pleasant. She thanked me for solving the case, and I pointed out that it was you, Betta, who put it all together. She sent regards to you both.”
“That was kind of her,” said Betta.
“She also asked me to pass on regards and thanks to you, Rick, from Lucho Garcia.”
“But—”
“They were on the same flight. Signora Somonte had flown back alone a few hours earlier.”
Chapter Thirteen
“So it was a forgery.” Commissario Piero Fontana studied the red color of the wine in his glass as he contemplated the significance of what he had just been told. “It makes everything fall into place, doesn’t it?”
“Not exactly a forgery,” corrected Betta. “More just a fake. A very clever idea, since most sketches from that period, even those done for important paintings like this one, have been lost or simply thrown away. Artists always did studies for something they were going to paint, and it was safe to assume that Piero della Francesca drew various sketches for the painting in Sansepolcro. There may even be an actual drawing of the soldier’s face somewhere, but I’m sure Tucci did her research to be sure there wasn’t before she created one herself. She has to be quite an artist.”
Being a policeman, Rick’s uncle was more interested in motive than art history. “If the donation had been completed to the museum in Sansepolcro, the sketch would eventually have been examined by specialists, am I correct?”
Betta nodded. “It’s standard procedure for museums to allow scholars and other experts to study works in their collections.”
“You’ve gone to the heart of the case, Zio,” said Rick. “Eventually, it would have been exposed as a fake, and the reputations of both Bruzzone and Tucci would have been destroyed, and likely they would also have been charged with a crime. Bruzzone could have told the police that he was duped, but their relationship apparently involved more than just art fraud.”
Piero took another drink of the wine, a deep red Cesanese di Olevano Romano from the hills southeast of Rome. “And the staged attempt on him was a diversion, but a very believable one since he used the same gun used to murder the Spaniard. Very clever indeed, but by doing so he was digging himself in deeper and deeper. How many times have
