Chapter Twenty-Five #3
“There’s a black SUV heading up the driveway,” he said. “It looked like there were two men in it.”
“Stay in place and call back when you see them leave,” Gabriela said.
Rafer appeared in the doorway. “I just got a call from Jacko. He said we’re about to get company. Do we greet these guys at the door?”
“No. We don’t belong here. At the very least, we’re trespassing,” Gabriela said.
“And if they’re bad guys, my current arsenal consists of a personal knife and some gardening tools.
So, I say we hide and hope they go away.
It’s probably safest to stay in the cellar, unless you discovered a hidden passage behind a bookcase. ”
“I discovered a lot of unused rooms, and a single room used as a bedroom for someone who required very little in the way of creature comforts.” Rafer closed the door, flipped the switch on the light, and used the flashlight on his cell phone to navigate the stairs.
“The furnace is behind the stacks of hay,” Gabriela said. “We can hide there.”
Rafer flashed his light at the hay, and they moved into place. He tapped the light off, and they were in total darkness.
“This is cozy,” he whispered in her ear. “Do you want to make out?”
Gabriela almost burst out laughing. It was hard not to love Rafer. It was a shame he periodically drove her nuts.
There was the sound of scuffling on the other side of the cellar door. Muffled talking. The door opened and the light was flicked on.
Gabriela felt her heart skip a beat. Rafer pulled her down into a crouch and put his arm around her.
She could hear someone descending the stairs and crossing the room.
There was a rustle of clothes and the sound of something getting opened.
A man’s voice called out a question in Italian.
Someone answered from the top of the stairs.
There was more rustling, a lid slammed down, and the man crossed the room and climbed the stairs.
He shut the lights off and closed the door.
Gabriela heard more muffled talk and then there was silence.
“What the hell?” Rafer whispered to her.
“Wait for Jacko’s call,” she whispered back.
“Can we make out now?”
“No. You have no control. You’d have me down on the dirt and I might get spiders in my hair.”
“Good thinking,” Rafer said.
They stood in silence for ten minutes and Jacko called. “All’s clear,” he said. “I got a couple pictures of the car. Do you want me to pick you up now?”
“Not yet,” Gabriela said. “Stay in place until you hear from me.”
Rafer crossed the cellar and flipped the lights on. “What was that all about?”
“I’m not fluent in Italian but I know enough to get by,” Gabriela said, going to the freezer, opening it, and looking inside.
“The guy in the cellar asked the guy at the head of the stairs how much he should take. The guy at the head of the stairs told him to take half. He said Antonio wasn’t going to be happy to learn that this was the last of the sausage. ”
“Who’s Antonio?”
“I don’t know, but he must really like Cara Scalucci sausage,” Gabriela said.
“What else did they say?”
“The guy in the cellar said it wasn’t his bad. He was just a soldier. He didn’t make decisions.” Gabriela closed the freezer. “The leg of lamb is still here and half of the sausages.”
“Did you recognize the guy in the cellar?”
“No. And I didn’t recognize either voice. I got a pretty good look at the man in the cellar for a split second, but for the most part he had his back to us.”
Gabriela went to the garden supplies and grabbed the shovel. “Did you notice anything strange about the dirt behind the furnace?”
“Softer than the rest of the cellar floor,” Rafer said. “Slightly mounded. Doesn’t smell great either.”
“Exactly.”
He took the shovel from her. “I’ll do the digging. You can do the forensic examination.”
“Works for me.”
Fifteen minutes later they had enough exposed to make an identification.
“Not much left of him,” Gabriela said. “He’s been here awhile and there’s a lot of decay. The nails are the giveaway. The nails are intact. This is the ogre who lives here and never cuts his nails and sacrifices baby goats.”
“I don’t suppose he died of natural causes,” Rafer said.
“He has a bullet hole in his head.”
“Hard to see beyond the maggots. Now what?”
“Now we shovel the dirt back over him and walk away. We might want to come back here to take another look, so I don’t want to bring the police in just yet.”
“Okay, what’s your take on this? Do you think Antonio’s errand boys screwed the pooch and canceled their boss’s favorite sausage maker?”
“Highly possible, and I’d rather they didn’t discover that someone dug up their handiwork. I want to check into our hotel, grab a fast bite to eat, and do some research.”
Gabriela heard the special knock on her door. It was late but the knock was from Rafer, so she pushed back from the small writing desk in her hotel room and let him in.
“Pizza delivery,” he said, handing her a bottle of wine while he one-handed the pizza box. “Where do you want it?”
“Put it on the desk. Just push my laptop to the side. I’ve been downloading information from Marcella for over two hours. It’s good stuff. Where did you get the pizza?”
“There’s a pizza place down the street that sells about thirty different kinds of pizza. I was their last customer. They close at ten o’clock. Obviously, you work later than they do.”
Gabriela opened the wine and grabbed two glasses from the small hostess station.
“This is a pretty cool town,” Rafer said, helping himself to a slice of pizza. “They tell me it really rocks during ski season. And I like this hotel. Jacko did good.”
“He’s the fixer,” Gabriela said. “It’s what he does.”
“Did he send you the pictures he took of the car?”
“Yes, but they didn’t tell a lot. He had to take them on an angle, so I couldn’t see the license plate.
It was a fairly new black Jeep Avenger. Google tells me it’s currently the number one SUV in Italy.
” She poured two glasses of wine, handed one off to Rafer, and took a slice of pizza that was heavy on the cheese.
“Marcella was able to get a history of Castello Blanco, also known as Castello Cara Scalucci. Albert Scalucci, the sausage king of Milan, built Castello Cara Scalucci in 1932. It was to be a summer retreat from his city house in Milan. It was abandoned and pretty much forgotten during World War II, sitting hidden away in the meadow, surrounded by forest. When the war was over the Scaluccis left Milan, set up housekeeping in Costello Cara Scalucci, and opened a butcher shop in Valgenico. They had one son, Albert Jr. That ends the information Marcella was able to get from public records. The only other information on the Scaluccis is from an obituary and a newspaper article dated 1971. All three were involved in a horrific car crash. The two elder Scaluccis were killed. Albert Jr. survived but was badly burned and disfigured. Marcella traced down the butcher shop and found it was sold right after the car crash. It’s since had two more owners and is now a deli that carries Scalucci sausage for a few select customers.
The woman she spoke to at the deli didn’t know exactly where the sausage was made.
She said it was delivered once a month by a very old man who was very strange. ”
“Holy crap.”
Gabriela took a second slice. “Yeah. There’s a big gap between the car crash and now, but there’s a good chance that Albert Jr. retreated into the castle and grew old there, hiding from the world, caring for his goats, and scraping by with his sausage sales.
From the facts I have available, I think Albert Jr. must have been ninety-three at time of death. ”
“Not a happy story and not a happy ending,” Rafer said.
“I’m sending Jacko to the deli tomorrow morning to see if he can get a list of the sausage customers.”
“Why Jacko?”
“His Italian is better than mine, and he’s the fixer. He’s good at getting favors, special rates, privileged information.”