The town nestled in a narrow valley surrounded on three sides by the Dolomites. Each side had its own sets of cabled machinery to transport the skiers from the town to the trails; only at the southern end did the mountains open. That was the only direction that Campiglio could grow, wedged in as it was by the peaks which gave it its livelihood. It was to the south, along the road to Trento, where the newest of the chalets and apartments were being built. The center that Rick surveyed had maintained its small-town feel. He looked down on an irregular carpet of roofs, some broken by chimneys emitting wisps of smoke. It was completely different from many of the resorts he’d skied in the Rockies, where high-rise hotels came right up to the trail bases. Above all, it was the quiet here that was most relaxing. The occasional call of one skier to another, or the scrape of a ski, was quickly muffled by an all-consuming silence.
A few hundred meters below Rick was the end of the trail, open and treeless, where ski classes formed up in the morning and families found each other at the end of a run. He could hear the clanking of the chairlifts as they swung around before silently following the cable back up the hill. It was lunch time, so the lift would not be getting much business until later in the afternoon. Two skiers shushed past him on the way to the bottom where they would slip out of their skis and clomp into town for the best meal of the day.
Rick knew that a steaming bowl of pasta tastes even better, if that’s possible, after a morning of skiing. And he had known all morning what he was about to be treated to in the hotel dining room: fettuccine with a mushroom cream sauce. Both he and Flavio had chosen it over the bowl of broth when the girl had appeared at their breakfast table to get their lunch preferences. A bowl of broth after a morning on the slopes? Not on your life.
From his vantage point he could see the roof of their hotel and managed to convince himself that he could smell the mushrooms simmering in the sauce. Flavio’s choice of a hotel had been a good one, but that would be expected from someone who grew up in the town. In addition to the food, the bonus was location, tucked quietly above the more congested parts of Campiglio, yet a short walk down to the action. And the family that owned it was so relaxed and informal they would have fit in perfectly in Rick’s native New Mexico. Well, perhaps native wasn’t the right word, since he was born in Rome, but Rick Montoya’s family roots were planted deeply on both sides of the Atlantic. He looked over the housetops of Campiglio and was reminded again how far he was from the American Southwest—in more ways than distance. Too many deep thoughts, he decided; this is a vacation. And it is lunch time.
***
After stowing his ski equipment in the storage room Rick climbed the stairs to the lobby in his loafers, found no messages, and walked into the wood-paneled dining room. There were about thirty tables, a few more than the number of rooms, a third of them now filled with hotel guests in ski pants and sweaters. Flavio was already at his place at their assigned table along the windows at the far side of the room. The table location was one of the advantages of knowing the owners, as Flavio had pointed out when they took their first meal. Rick was surprised to see another man sitting with him. The surprise was not that there was someone with Flavio, since his friend seemed to know half the people in Campiglio. It was the way the man was dressed. In contrast with Flavio’s ski outfit, the stranger wore a dark suit with a white shirt and striped tie—the first suit Rick had seen since driving into the ski resort three days earlier. The man looked as out of place here as Rick would have looked wearing ski clothes in a restaurant near his apartment in Rome.
A few years older than Rick and Flavio, probably in his late thirties, the man had a round face and a smile guaranteed to put anyone at ease. Rick remembered the game he played with his Uncle Piero, the policeman, when they had their weekly lunches in Rome. Each would guess the profession of someone at a neighboring table, stating the reasons. His uncle used his years of experience dealing with criminals and the general public, as well as a few detective techniques, to make his guesses. Rick used intuition and studied body language. Rick now guessed this man was either an insurance salesman or a mortician. Flavio looked up and waved Rick to the table with a characteristic scooping motion of the hand.
“Rick,” he said, “a good friend from Trento has just appeared and will be staying in our hotel. Meet Luca Albani. Luca, this is my American-Roman friend Riccardo Montoya.” The two shook hands and Rick took a seat.
“Luca, I
