Page 20 of Palazzo
“Have I been cleared now?” she asked, worried.
“No, you’re still implicated, but they don’t think you’re the prime suspect, and they don’t have enough evidence against you to win a case. Luca may be what they’re looking for. I just don’t want it to be you, and have you become his victim.”
“I don’t see how this could happen. And why me?”
“Because you’re related to someone who is capable of it, even if you’re not, and you could have planned it with him. I hope he has a rock-solid alibi for that night. He was at a casino earlier in the evening, with a friend, before the fire.” The police chief had shared the information with Gian Battista confidentially, and none of it sounded good.
—
Luca made light of the police questioning him in Saint-Tropez. He acted as though he thought it was amusing, but the police were less than amused. Luca was haughty, cocky, and rude to them. They asked him who he had been at the casino with earlier on Friday evening, and he said he couldn’t remember. They asked him about the silver flask, and he said it had been stolen out of his pocket at the casino that night. They hadn’t gotten the fingerprints yet, and they hadn’t fingerprinted Luca at the station, since he hadn’t been accused of a crime so far. They let him go after questioning him for an hour.
Luca went out to dinner that night with the group of people he was staying with. They went to the Gorilla Bar in the port for drinks first, and visited friends on various yachts. They knew most of the people there. It was a rich man’s playground, and Max Bayard looked uncomfortable all evening. They eventually went to Club 55 at Pampelonne Beach for dinner, and dancing afterwards at Les Caves du Roy, and got back to the house at foura.m. One of them had bought cocaine at the nightclub, so they all shared it and finally went to bed at seven.
Luca was sound asleep at nine when two detectives showed up. His host, Max’s friend, went to wake him. Luca staggered out of hisbedroom, still drunk from the night before. They had come to fingerprint him and had permission from a judge to fingerprint everyone in the house, to see if they got a match for both sets of prints on the flask found at the scene. Max looked panicked when one of the other guests came to wake him.
“Is it a raid, because of the cocaine?”
“No, some dumb thing about a fire in Venice,” the housemate told him. “They’ve got an order to fingerprint all of us. They’re talking to Luca now.” Max nodded and was speechless with fear. The whole thing had been Luca’s idea. Since he was part owner of the palazzo, he said he would collect a third of the insurance money and he had promised to give Max part of his share. It would give both of them easy free money they could spend on whatever they wanted. Luca was convincing, and Max had agreed. Luca said they’d never get caught. And since the palazzo was being sold, they could keep the insurance money and the new owners could do the repairs. Luca had called it “gravy” with the sale, a bonus. But setting the fires was more complicated than Max had expected, although they had gotten into the house easily with Luca’s key, and there was no alarm, just as he had said. They had to leave the burning oil-soaked rags, but they’d gotten away with no problem. Max had burned his arm when they set the fires. He put on a long-sleeved shirt before he joined the others to be fingerprinted. They all looked rough after the drugs and alcohol the night before. They were a sorry-looking group the next morning, but none of them looked like criminals. Just a sleazy bunch who had partied hard all night, which wasn’t unusual in Saint-Tropez.
The usual wild bunch of badly behaved rich boys gave the localpolice a headache all summer, but rarely with serious offenses, mostly with drugs and drunk driving, the occasional stolen vehicle, or women claiming they had been drugged, date-raped, or coerced into having sex with them, which the police were taking more seriously now. Or one of the hookers they brought with them shoplifted a bathing suit from a store, which the men paid for to avoid prosecution. The arson case in Venice was the most serious one they’d had in months.
The two detectives took the prints and left, and everyone went back to bed for the rest of the day to sleep off the revels of the night before and start again that night.
Olivier insisted on flying back to Rome with Cosima, although she said it wasn’t necessary, but he could see that she was shaken by the events of the weekend. They arrived in Rome that evening. Allegra wasn’t home yet when he accompanied Cosima back to her apartment. He’d called the Hassler to reserve a room and postponed his meetings in Florence for another day.
“You didn’t need to come with me,” Cosima said, embarrassed, and he opened a bottle of wine for them, to settle their nerves. He knew she was going to have her hands full with the insurance company, the police, and the future owners of the palazzo, and getting the house as cleaned up as possible before they returned.
“I know you can do it all on your own,” he said. She was a proud woman. “But a little help never hurts.” He smiled at her. “Your attorney did a good job, convincing them to let you go home.” He could tell from her tone when she spoke to him that she knew the lawyer well.
“He’s always been there for me. He and my father were closefriends. He handled everything for us when they died. He’s been like a father to me.” For the flash of a moment, Olivier wondered if he was something more to her as well. Olivier had seen her whole face soften when she spoke to him on the phone, and she sounded very familiar, even intimate, to Olivier. He wondered if there was more to it, but didn’t know her well enough to ask, and didn’t want to be presumptuous or intrusive. “He’s very well connected with local government here in Rome, and some very high-up politicians. His family is powerful in the Vatican, and he knows important people in Venice too.”
“He sounds like a good man to have in your corner,” or your bed, he wondered, and felt guilty for what he was thinking. He had no idea why he thought it. It was pure instinct, but he had an odd feeling about her lawyer. She looked pensive as she sipped her wine. She was worried about her brother, and the fact that she was under investigation about the insurance. Nothing like it had ever happened to her.
“My brother has always been a problem and hard to manage, but he’s not a criminal. I don’t think Luca would even be capable of what they suspect us of.”
“I hope not,” Olivier said sincerely, not quite as convinced as she was of her brother’s innocence. Trying to sell his shares in the family business behind his sisters’ backs was certainly dishonorable, though not criminal. “Do you have anything to eat here, or do you want to go out?” he asked her. She wasn’t hungry, but he thought she should eat something. She looked worn out by what she’d been through for the past few days.
“It will be a terrible scandal in the press if they press charges,” shesaid softly, her mind fixated on the arson fire at the palazzo. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, and how ravaged the palazzo looked now.
“Hopefully, it will never come to that. They’re obliged to investigate something like this thoroughly. But if Luca’s innocent they’ll look for other explanations for the fire.” Olivier had no doubts about Cosima’s involvement. She seemed like the most honest woman he’d ever met, and his admiration for her had grown even in the past few days with her in Venice, seeing how graciously she handled the police suspicions and the firefighters checking through the debris. She was a decent person in a bad situation, and he was glad to be with her, and to get to know her better. In a crisis, he got to know her faster than he would have otherwise. He liked everything he discovered about her, even the things she didn’t tell him. He still had the impression that she was a woman with secrets, but not criminal ones.
He finally convinced her to go to a trattoria he knew in Trastevere, the more bohemian section of Rome, like the area around Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, where young people went for a simple meal. It was easy to get lost in the crowd there and go unnoticed.
Olivier talked about his travels and his factories to distract her during dinner, and asked Cosima questions about her grandfather. She was an endless source of information about the social history of Rome and Venice, and had grown up surrounded by it, until her parents’ deaths. After that, she was too busy with the business to have any social life at all. Olivier had done the same with his own business, always chasing success, and had sacrificed other things for it. He thought it was worth it, although at times he questioned that now. Approaching fifty, what mattered to him had subtly changed. Atthirty-eight, she was too young to have experienced that yet, and was still set on her path at full speed, protecting her business and trying to make it grow within the parameters her grandfather had established.
“I’m the first woman in my family who ever worked,” she shared with him over dinner of pasta alla primavera, while he ate spaghetti vongole, his favorite, with clams. “I’m not sure my father would approve,” she said shyly, “and I know my grandfather would be appalled. But someone had to do it, and Luca wasn’t capable of it, and never wanted to be in the business. He even said it as a boy. My father thought he could change his mind, but I don’t think he ever could have. Luca has wanted to be a playboy all his life,” and he had achieved it. It didn’t enhance Olivier’s impression of him.
“My son Max is always looking for the shortcuts, the fast track to success and get-rich-quick schemes too. There are no shortcuts. Hard work is what pays off in the end.” Olivier and Cosima had both learned that lesson and accepted the personal sacrifices they’d had to make. He was sorry to see her hit a bump now and have to deal with arson at the palazzo and the investigation, which put the spotlight on her. She didn’t deserve it, and it was a headache she didn’t need. He hoped the police would move on quickly, find the real culprit, and leave her alone. After all she’d been through and was carrying, a business, a sister with a disability, and a spoiled profligate brother, she had enough on her plate without this. His own life seemed easy by comparison.
Cosima looked exhausted by the time she got home, and she could see the lights on in Allegra’s windows. She knew the police wanted to interrogate her too, but assumed they would drop their suspicionsof Allegra quickly when they saw that she was in a wheelchair. She was unlikely to have set the palazzo on fire, and too naïve and innocent to plan it. Cosima and Luca were their main suspects for now.
“I guess I’ll go to Florence tomorrow,” he said hesitantly. He hated to leave her. “But I can be back in a few hours if you need me. Don’t hesitate to call if something comes up,” he said, and meant it.
“I think the investigation will take some time. Gian Battista doesn’t seem to think they’re going to come to any rapid conclusions, and I told the police everything I know.” Olivier had that same odd feeling when she said her lawyer’s name again. There was an unspoken intimacy about the way she said it, almost as if they were married. He told himself he was probably wrong. He had gathered that her lawyer was the same age as her father, which put a thirty-year gap between them, or more. It made his suspicions seem less likely.
Olivier took her upstairs and left her at her apartment. She was going to check on her sister and make sure she had gotten home safely. She said that Allegra didn’t mind traveling alone, but it always worried Cosima, who mothered her probably more than she should, she admitted. She had said that Allegra hated to be fussed over, and liked fending for herself, and did it well. “I’m too much of a mother hen,” Cosima said, smiling at Olivier. “It’s a good thing I never had children. I would have driven them crazy.”
“I do the same with my boys. Basile, my youngest, thinks it’s funny and indulges me. Max hates it and thinks I’m trying to control him when I give him fatherly advice. As a result, he’s always secretive about his life. Basile is an open book. He’s just a big friendly guy. He wears his heart on his sleeve and says whatever he thinks or feels. He’s uncomplicated to deal with. I enjoy that a lot.”
