Elena called to them, “Girls, come in now, it’s late.”
“I’ll tuck them in,” he said.
She began to clear the dessert from the patio table. “It should come from you that you’re going.”
The girls’ room was immaculate. In Villa Shibui clutter was a dirty word. Their toys were deposited nightly into a white chest decorated with small yellow Teddy bears.
Jesper sat on Elizabeth’s bed and spoke to both of them. “Daddy’s going to America for a few days.”
There was a collective “No!”
“The time will pass quickly, and when I come back, what shall I bring?”
“Presents?” Victoria asked.
“What a ridiculous question. Of course, presents. Now, mind your mother, you hear? And remember, your daddy loves both of you.”
Later, under white bedding, in a bedroom of white furniture, a white rug laid over bleached floorboards, and French doors overlooking the dark sea, Jesper reached for his wife.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
“You’d better be.”
“How about one last poke and moan?”
“My God, you’re such a romantic.”
2
Jesper and Elena took pains to ingratiate themselves to the town of Filarete by retaining the gardener who had tended the property for many years and the housekeepers who had worked for the previous owners. The husband-and-wife housekeepers, Giuseppe and Noemi Pennestrì, were particularly important to the couple because they knew everyone in town and could put in a good word about the Americans. Their duties involved cooking, cleaning, and food-shopping while the Andreasons were in residence, and looking after the empty property the rest of the year. According to his in-laws, Jesper paid them more than the going rate and he liked to push a folded twenty-euro note into Giuseppe’s shirt pocket as an extra something whenever he saw him. Giuseppe told his wife he found the gesture somewhat demeaning, but he said nothing because, after all, twenty euros was twenty euros.
When they arrived for work this morning, Giuseppe drove through the open gate.
“Why’s the gate open?” he asked his wife.
“Maybe they forgot to close it last night.”
“Jesper is leaving today for America, you know,” he said.
“I know,” Noemi replied. “Elena told me. She’s not happy.”
“Wives are always disappointed in their husbands.”
She chortled at the comment. They’d been married for forty years. “You’re right, for once in your life.”
They drove down the white-pebbled drive lined by tall cypresses, past mini-groves of olive, fig, and lemon trees taken from elsewhere on the estate and artistically replanted by a renowned landscape architect from Florence who had further interrupted the two-hectare expanse of meadows with dry-laid walls of dolomite limestone. As a paean to Elena, the architects maintained the original Mediterranean character of the house together with its master-suite addition, although the white stucco was redone smoother and more refined, and the new, energy-efficient windows had modern white frames. The new shutters were the palest of greens, redolent of the first leaves of spring, and a new red-tiled roof was done in the ancient Roman design of imbrex and tegula overlapping ceramics. From its traditional exterior, it would be impossible to know that the interior design favored Jesper’s wholly different California-modern aesthetic.
Noemi rang the bell while Giuseppe, grumbling at the threshold as he always did, removed his shoes. “One little speck of dirt on the floor and Jesper goes crazy,” he groused, “and it’s me who’s got to clean it anyway.”
She rang the bell again, and then a third time.
“See if they’re in the back garden,” she said, sending her husband into fits because now he had to re-lace his shoes.
He came back and told her that no one was there.
Jesper’s Mercedes and Elena’s Fiat were parked in the usual spots outside the barn.
“Maybe her parents picked them up.”
“Probably,” Giuseppe said. “Just use your key and let’s get on with it.”
Inside, she called out, “Buongiorno!” Then, “Elena, Jesper?”
“They’re not here,” Giuseppe said, walking into the living room. “The girls always come yelling when they are.”
“Your shoes!” she scolded.
“Christ, woman, do you ever stop?”
The two of them got to work, Noemi in the kitchen and Giuseppe in the lounge, pushing the vacuum cleaner. She called out to him, and he just about heard her over the machine. He switched it off and yelled, “How in God’s name am I supposed to hear you with the Hoover on?” he shouted.
“Something’s strange,” she said. “Come here.”
He appeared in his stockinged feet. “What?”
“They didn’t have any breakfast, not even a coffee.”
“You made me come for that? Her parents probably took them out for breakfast.”
“But not even a coffee?”
He waved her off with both arms. “Would you let me get back to work? I’m supposed to wash the cars today.”
An hour later, Noemi called Giuseppe to the master bedroom. With lunch simmering on the stove, she had gone upstairs to make the beds.
“Both their phones are charging on their night tables. Who goes out without their phones?”
“I do,” Giuseppe said.
“You don’t have a mobile phone,” she said. “The only person on the planet. I’m worried. Something’s not right. I’m calling Senora Cutrì.”
Giuseppe watched his wife make the call and he saw her face darken.
“They’re not with her,” she said, sitting on the bed. “She has no idea where they are, but she is terribly worried.”
“So, what do we do?”
“She’s coming over right now. She asked if we looked on the beach.”
“I’ll do that right now.”
Leonora Cutrì arrived a few minutes before her husband, Armando, who drove separately from his law office in Palmi. The Cutrìs, like the housekeepers, were in their late fifties, but their wealth had them looking much younger. Leonora was regal in appearance, her long black hair elegantly streaked with
