“Anything else?” he asked as he raised his glance from the paper.
“Of course… right after he came inside, his telephone started to ring. You know these walls are not thick, and we can hear quite well what happens in the other apartments, particularly during the night, when all the other noises are eliminated. Anyway, he rushed out of his apartment, and I hadn’t heard him returning home. I wasn’t waiting for him, but at least until half past four in the morning, I couldn’t fall asleep, and I’m sure if he had returned, I would have heard him.” She sipped the coffee and placed the cup on the table. “Do you want more coffee?”
“No, thank you, I’m fine as I am, but I am taking another cookie,” he grinned cunningly. “That must have been the call of the assassin.”
“It was the girl if you want to have my opinion,” she toughened her expression.
Twisting his mouth, Maurizio wondered whether she might have some information about the girlfriend too. “Why would she do something like that? What could have been her reason to kill the man who loved her? If she weren’t interested in him anymore, she could have dumped him.”
“Hah!” she exclaimed, swatting her hand on the arm of the couch. “That woman is no fool, Claudio, on the other hand, was. I bet all I have that he included her in his testament so if he had died one day, she wouldn’t have been left without any money.”
“Have you ever met her?” Maurizio wondered at the ease with which she accused another person he wasn’t sure she’d ever met.
“I don’t need to. I know those girls who are working in these night clubs, are not looking for love. They are looking for the first fool to get money from and to have an easy life. Certainly, you have heard about those people, too!” her eyes widening as he was still hesitating in believing that possibility.
Indeed, Maurizio wasn’t excluding it, but it wouldn’t make any sense. “Mrs. Moretti, it’s not about this, or about what I believe, but Mr. Calvani has a son. For what I know at the moment, he’s the only heir and it’s probable thing that he preferred to leave everything to him, figuring out a different solution for the girl. On the other hand, he was still young and it’s also probable that he never thought about a testament.”
Maurizio tried to reason, but he had to admit that Claudio’s wealth could have been a good reason for killing him. Nevertheless, there wasn’t any evidence to sustain her hypothesis, so he needed to be very cautious with his allegations and also with the way he was going to move the investigation forward.
“Ah, Detective, I know you need to follow certain procedures, but perhaps you should listen to what the people around Mr. Calvani have to say. You certainly will ask around about what his life was like, and by doing so, you will find interesting information about him, this girlfriend of his and about the rest of the family,” she concluded with a smirk that revealed she knew more than she was willing to say.
“Tell me one thing, did you ever partake in a chat with any of the members of the family?”
“Before they divorced, I used to chat every now and then with the wife. Though she has always been a very reserved person, and our chats were mostly about general things happening in this building. She never let herself go into any sort of gossip,” she recalled. Her voice turned into a melancholic shade, betraying the fact that somehow, she missed her presence. “Mrs. Calvani was perhaps too good for a person like her husband. I was devastated when I discovered he cheated on her, and despite the fact that I couldn’t possibly know all the details of their relationship, I know she never gave him a valid reason to search for anything more. I cannot say whether it was the fault of the stripper who enticed him to the point that he couldn’t refuse her any longer, or because he was indeed looking for something completely different than the fine woman he’d married.” She took a short pause and looked down to her entwined fingers resting on her lap.
“What about their son?” Maurizio continued scribbling in his notebook.
She raised her shoulders. “What can I say? His sole purpose in life was to be noticed by his father. He loved him and would have done whatever, even remain living with him after the divorce just to have his attention...”
“But?” He raised his glance at her, sensing there was more to be said about their relationship.
“But since he met the girl, Mr. Calvani had time only for her. They spent together only the evenings before he left the apartment to reach her. He lost his mind completely for her, and there wasn’t anything to bring him back to his senses to take care of his son, who desperately was trying to get his attention.”
“Interesting,” He mumbled. “Do you recall any occasion when they argued?”
“Who, father and son?” She wondered with wide-opened eyes. “That was rare, but not impossible to hear. When Luciano reached the level of exasperation, the whole building could hear his screams against his father, who generally tried to avoid yelling back at him, promising more time to spend together during the weekend just to calm him down.”
“Did this ever happen? I mean, did they spend the weekends together, or did Mr. Calvani spend the time with the girlfriend?” Apparently, the victim behaved more like a teenager, rather than a responsible adult, but Maurizio was still a skeptic about
