Deep Midnight

Page 44

“If I had come from a war zone, I’d want to stay,” Lynn said.
“She’s probably attached herself to someone,” Anna Maria commented. “Poor girl. Maybe she will find her dream.”
Raphael stood up suddenly. “I’ll call Roberto.”
He left the table. Anna Maria shook her head. “Suppose, Jordan, that the contessa is an evil woman?
We have no proof. You left her palazzo and went to the police. The police went to her palazzo. They found nothing. There has been graffiti in Venice. Tourists come in, and they don’t want to leave. How can you prove anything there?”
“I can’t,” Jordan said. “But I believe that somehow the severed head in the canal got into the water because of the contessa.”
Raphael slid back into his chair. He looked at Jordan. “Roberto called in sick today. I tried his home and got his answering machine.” He passed a piece of paper to her across the table. “Here’s his home number, if you wish to try later.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.” She pocketed the paper in her jeans. “And!” She said suddenly,
“Tiff Henley is still missing.”
“Well, I’m afraid that will prove nothing,” Anna Maria said. “Tiff has been known to swear she’ll be at a function, and fly to Zurich the same day. I’m afraid that Tiff isn’t at all dependable.”
“The other cop I met, Alfredo Manetti, said that he would look into Tiff’s disappearance,” Jordan said.
“That’s good,” Anna Maria told her. “That will make you feel better, yes?” Raphael was still flipping through the book. “I wonder how many disappearances happen without anyone knowing each year. In Venice, the government has long been concerned about the buses coming in. People sleep on them ... they haven’t enough to eat. When they leave, it is hard to have a real count of people. And some who come in ... they are from very poor areas. They have no relatives, or their relatives are fighting to survive, and no money to spend on searching for those who may be lost. They must think that their family members have found rich Venetians, they are backpacking with other students. Maybe they have found an American, or a wealthy Japanese or German businessman.”
“Raphael!” Anna Maria said with a sigh.
He looked up at her. “Remember when Carlotta stopped by for her costume? She told us that it was very strange around the church that had been so vandalized. She heard noises, and saw shadows at night.”
“Shadows, in Venice, at night, imagine that!” Lynn teased.
Raphael made a face in her direction. He shook his head, staring at Jordan. “I work my fingers to the bone. She sells a marionette and makes a fortune!” Jordan decided not to tell them that she saw shadows and heard noises.
“I think that you are all being far too ...” He paused, searching for the word he wanted in English for Jordan’s benefit. “Skeptical! That’s it, skeptical! Jordan is right?there are bad people out there. And look how many people have seen ghosts. Or believe in spirits. And as Father Vesco once said at mass, if we believe in the power of God, or a force of good, there is also a force of evil. To the Chinese, yin and yang. Who is to say that someone has not believed himself a monster, and then gone about doing evil to people who would not be missed?”
“Raphael, you will get Jordan upset,” Anna Maria protested again with a sigh.
“I’m not upset at all,” Jordan said. “I’m glad that Raphael understands why I am so concerned?especially about Tiff.”
Lynn looked at Anna Maria. “It is better that we admit things happen. Then Jordan doesn’t feel like a fool.”
“Maybe you are ... putting egg in my face?” Anna Maria said.
“No, no?egging you on, I think,” Lynn said.
Anna Maria nodded. “I do not like the contessa.” She hesitated and gave a little shiver. “It is ridiculous, but I think ...”
“Yes?” Jordan persisted.
“If evil is in people, then evil is in the contessa. Whatever money she gives, no matter that she is a benefactor of the arts.”
As Jordan was listening to Anna Maria, amazed by her confession, she straightened. Where she sat at the table in the trattoria, she could see clearly out the glass door just behind the counter with the cash register.
She was sure that she saw Ragnor. Not many men were so tall, and though there were many light-haired Venetians and tourists, few were as blond as he.
She rose, kissing Anna Maria on the cheek. “You do have great instincts!” she told her. “The contessa is evil, I’m convinced, and I’m glad that others feel it. I think even Cindy knows it, she just pretends that it isn’t true because of Jared. Excuse me, please, all of you. I think I just saw a friend.” Raphael started to protest, but she was already out of the trattoria. She rushed out to the street.
It was definitely Ragnor. He was in the calle, about a block before her. She started to follow, then stopped dead in her tracks.
A woman had joined him. A woman wearing a traditional, long, Venetian Carnevale cape. She wore a large hat that obscured her features, but no mask.
It was definitely the contessa.
She caught Ragnor by the arm. He turned to her. She said something earnestly. He lowered his head to listen.
As Jordan watched, he slipped an arm around the contessa, leading her down the next narrow alley.
For a moment Jordan stood very still, feeling the breeze against her cheeks.
Then she followed.
She reached the alley, but did not see them. She walked through the alley, coming upon the canal that stretched along the riva on the other side.
There was no sign of Ragnor or the contessa, but as she stood there, she was startled to hear slow music, and see that most of the people near her had paused, and now stood still by the canal.
A gondola was going by.
As well as being black, it was draped in black. There were bouquets of flowers strewn over the forward section.
Centered in the gondola was a coffin. Large, black, trimmed in gold. Drapings and flowers were over the coffin as well. A tall woman, dressed all in black, with a black veil, stood at the rear of the gondola, as if keeping guard over the coffin.
Behind the gondola followed others, all draped in black.
Jordan realized she was watching a Venetian funeral procession.
Next to her, a woman spoke softly in English, making the sign of the cross. “Poor Salvatore! Such a horrible end!”
“It’s so sad. He was the very best. Such a handsome, charming and kind young man,” replied her companion, a tall man with a German accent.
“They said it was an accident; he didn’t duck for a bridge,” the woman said.
The man made a guttural noise of doubt “He was a gondolier for years! He knew every bridge in Venice. He finds a head in the water and gives it to the police ... and then he dies.” Jordan stared at the couple next to her in amazement. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry for interrupting, but ... is that a funeral for ... Salvatore D’Onofrio?”
“Yes, terrible, isn’t it?” the woman said. “I went on so many wonderful trips around the city with him.”
“He has shown Venice to many, many foreigners,” the man said.
“And he ... he found the head in the canal.”
“Yes, and brought it to the police.”
“Then, the next day, he is killed by a severe blow to the head?and found in the canal himself. The body must have traveled.” The woman swallowed, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but... well, the body traveled.
It was caught in the motor of some water vessel ... and I’m afraid that Adriatic sharks had a way with him as well.”
“He was already dead when that came about,” the German man said, consoling them both.
“Thank you, thank you for the information,” Jordan said. She felt cold, cold beneath the shining warmth of the sun. As long as she lived, she would never forget the sight of the funerary gondola, draped in black, the flowers, the woman in her veil at the rear ...
Salvatore. It was Salvatore, who had been so worried about her.
Who had found a severed human head in the water ...
Kind, wonderful, gentle, handsome, his life ahead of him.
Salvatore D’Onofrio, a man who had known that there was danger in the shadows, a man who had warned her, taken her away, was dead.
As she stood there, the gondola passed under the archway of a pedestrian bridge.
Upon the bridge, watching as the funerary gondola poled by, was a man.
He wore the costume of the dottore.
Then, as the gondola passed, he looked straight at Jordan, stared for several minutes, raised a hand, and disappeared across the bridge.
CHAPTER 15
Jordan didn’t notice the note at first. When she returned to the hotel and opened her door she was intent only on making sure that nothing had been changed.
Her garlic cloves still lined the windows. In fact, the room reeked of them.
Her vials of holy water remained where she had placed them, right on the desk. She fingered the large silver cross around her neck. It remained in place.
She went next to her computer, checking her E-mail. She was elated to see that she had received another note from the cop in New Orleans. “Please come and see us at the house, whenever you can.” He left an address. She put through a call to him, but again, an answering machine picked up. She left a message. “Thank you so much, I would love to come see you.” She tried the number for Roberto Capo that Raphael had given her. Again, she was frustrated when an answering machine picked up. She left him a message. “Roberto, this is Jordan Riley. Please call me. I’m worried about you. Also . . . the gondolier who died recently of a terrible accident was the man who found the severed head in the canal. I knew him. He warned me about danger.” She hesitated. “There is something going on here, and you seem to believe me. Please, call me.” She left the name of her hotel, though he knew where she was staying, and her room number as well.
She was about to call Tiff when she saw the envelope that had been thrust beneath her door. She picked it up and found a handwritten message in a hotel envelope. The operator had written out what she had heard.