Dying on the Vine

EIGHT

FLORENCE proper has a population of four hundred thousand. Include its surrounding sprawl, and you get a metropolitan area of a million-and-a-half. Arezzo proper, by contrast, holds fewer than a hundred thousand souls. And being a walled city, there is essentially no sprawl, no “metropolitan area.” What you see is what you get. You can walk from one end to the other in half an hour. Try that in Florence.

Despite its disadvantage in size, it has no lack of artistic and architectural splendors, among which is the elegant, sloping, thirteenth-century Piazza Grande, with its striking trapezoidal shape, its grand fountain, and the beautiful old palazzos, towers, and loggias that surround it. In Etruscan days it had housed the central market; in Roman times the staid, august offices of provincial government. But when Gideon and Julie arrived there after finding a parking space (not easy), it was anything but staid. A flapping red, green, and white banner stretched between fifteen-foot posts proclaimed FESTIVAL DI TUTTI I VINI DEL VAL D’ARNO in giant letters. Behind it, the square was crisscrossed with the multicolored tents, tables, and umbrellas of vendors. The happy, patently bibulous crowds made it clear that the winemakers had been unstinting with their tastings.

They’d been shooting for an arrival time of three o’clock, the start of the grape stomp and of Gideon’s “ornamental” responsibilities, but with the parking difficulties they’d run into they were late. John and Marti, traveling in a separate rental car, were doing a little touring on the way to Figline and were skipping Arezzo altogether. They planned to show up at the Villa Antica a little after six. In the US it would have been rude to arrive at dinnertime, but in Tuscany in late summer, dinner would still be an hour or two—or three—off.

“Gosh,” Gideon said, as they hunted for the stomp, “I sure hope we haven’t missed it.”

Julie responded with one of her looks. “Yes, I know you’d be just devastated.”

They didn’t have to search long to find the signs for La Gran Pigiatura Dell’uva Del Val D’arno—the Great Valdarno Grape Stomp—which was under way in a downslope corner of the square, where six contestants drenched up to their hips in purple liquid were stomping away in half-barrels full of grapes that had been set up on a stage, with the resulting pulpy fluid flowing sluggishly through hoses into ten-liter jars. Over a loudspeaker someone was accompanying them with a jazzy, Dean Martinesque version of the drinking song from La Traviata interspersed with jokey, encouraging comments. As they watched, a bell sounded, and each stomper gave way, as in a relay race, to a replacement who had been standing in back of him or her. In front of the stage were two dozen rows of folding chairs, most of which were empty because the audience was on its feet, cheering on their favorite teams with much noise and gesticulation.

“They’re awfully excited about this, aren’t they?” Julie said as they stood at the rear of the viewing area.

“I’m guessing there’s a little wagering going on,” said Gideon.

“And your guess,” said a voice behind them, “is, as usual, on the mark.” They turned to see an apple-cheeked, pleasantly plump, merry-eyed woman beaming delightedly at them.

“Linda!” exclaimed Julie with a happy little squeal, and much hugging all around ensued.

“Sorry I’m late for the stomp,” Gideon said. “I was looking forward to judging.”

“Amazing man,” Linda said to Julie. “He managed that with a perfectly straight face.” And to Gideon: “Don’t worry about it. Nico’s come to the rescue. I asked him to take over for you.”

“A wise decision. He’s more ornamental than I am.”

Linda smiled. “Well, maybe a little more, but you make up for it in gravitas.”

“That’s true,” Gideon agreed.

Nico was the baby of the Cubbiddu family, a movie-star-handsome twenty-six-year-old. And now Gideon spotted him at the microphone to the rear of the stage. It was Nico who was doing the singing and the patter. That he sounded like Dean Martin came as no surprise; he was cut from similar cloth: effortlessly charming, happy-go-lucky, ridiculously good-looking (if just a tad lounge-lizardy), totally laid-back, and perhaps a little too fond of the vino. A lock of black, oily hair even dipped roguishly down over his forehead—possibly on its own, but more likely with a little help.

“Nico’s got this well in hand,” Linda said, “and I could use a break. I’ve been working our booth since noon. What would you say to some coffee?”

She walked them up the slope to the long, colonnaded stone porch of the famous Vasari loggia at the top of the piazza, where the food vendors had set up. There were pushcarts offering panini; pizza; plates of sausage, peppers, and onions; and various sweets: arancini, cannoli, gelato. At one end of the porch was a permanent-looking espresso bar with half a dozen tables in front of it. It wasn’t getting much business, and the white-coated barista stood with his arms folded, his chin on his chest, and his mind seemingly a million miles away.

“Un cappuccino, per favore,” Gideon said, giving him Julie’s request, “e due espressi.”

It was like watching one of those “living statues” that one sees on the streets of big cities, who stand utterly motionless until a dollar is put in their offerings box, whereupon they spring robotically into action for a minute or so. The barista jerked to life at the splendid, gleaming baroque apparatus of polished levers, spouts, and tubes that was his espresso machine. Julie’s cappuccino came first. Levers were pulled, hisses were heard, and the air was filled with the thick, smooth aroma of good Italian coffee as jet-black espresso sluggishly flowed from a spout into a bowl-sized cup, covering the bottom by an inch or so. A seemingly unmeasured splash of milk was more or less flung into a metal pitcher, held under another spout, and jiggled and rotated until it was heated to a steaming froth, then poured into the cup, which it filled precisely to the point at which the stiffened froth was higher at the center than at the rim but was kept from overflowing by its surface density.

The barista looked sharply up at Gideon. “Cioccolata?”

“Si, per piacere.” For Julie a cappuccino wasn’t a cappuccino if it didn’t have chocolate on it.

With a flourish that would have done credit to a circus ringmaster, the barista sprinkled powdered chocolate onto the froth and went to work on the two espressos, which were briefer, simpler operations, but no less grandly handled. All three were placed on a tray and handed to Gideon.

“They look great, thank you.”

The barista replied with a dignified half bow and Italy’s fits-all-purposes response: “Prego.” He then used a cloth for a quick polish of the equipment and sank once again into reverie and immobility, awaiting his next customer.

Gideon smiled as he brought the tray to the table. There wasn’t any shortage of espresso bars back in Seattle, but if you wanted the full-scale spectacle, the true drama and excitement of coffee-making, you had to come to the mother country itself: la bella Italia.

Linda dealt with her espresso in the Italian manner, dumping a spoonful of sugar into the little cup, stirring, and then throwing her head back and tossing the three ounces down in a couple of gulps, the way a thirsty barfly handles a double-shot glass of whiskey. Gideon preferred his straight and drank it more slowly, four sips in all. Julie, as usual, made more of production of her cappuccino, holding it up to her nose and inhaling, sighing, stirring the foam and chocolate into the coffee, lifting the cup to her mouth with both hands and taking one minuscule sip at a time, her eyes closed with pleasure.

While she drank, Linda talked a little more about Nola and Pietro. “It was a relief when their bodies were finally found, of course, but none of the boys have really accepted that it happened the way they said—that babbo killed her. I mean, nobody’s criticizing the Carabinieri—the lieutenant, Gardella, his name was, did a really thorough job; they all did—but the boys simply can’t make themselves see their father as a murderer.”

“I’m having a hard time myself,” Julie said.

Gideon said nothing. He’d have liked to tell Linda that he had his own doubts, having examined Nola’s bones himself, and that he had the lieutenant rethinking things as well. But Rocco had specifically asked him not to discuss that, so he kept it to himself.

Rocco hadn’t, however, asked him not to talk about the case in general, and after all, the three of them were old friends who had shared a good many confidences, so . . .

“What about you, Linda?” he asked.

“What about me what?”

“Do you see Pietro as a murderer?”

She thought about it. “Well, there were some rumors about Nola’s having an affair, and babbo was, you know, very Italian, very . . . theatrical. Not exactly cool-blooded. Sometimes life with him was like living in a Puccini opera, nothing small-scale about it. He didn’t get mad often, but when he did, boy, you didn’t want to be anywhere within range. And—and this is the main thing—he was an extremely, and I mean extremely, old-fashioned male, straight out of the nineteenth century. It took him years to get over the fact that I wanted to keep my maiden name and not become signora Cubbiddu. Heck, I’m not sure he ever really did get over it.”

She smiled. “And you notice I’m calling him babbo, not Pietro. When I first got here I tried calling him by his first name, but that sure didn’t last very long—not coming from a daughter-in-law and a foreigner as well. It was a slur on his honor—those were his own words. He had his rules about how the family should act toward the padre, you see, and you had to follow them if you knew what was good for you.”

She paused, remembering. “So if he found out she was cheating on him? Then yes, I could see him killing her. And himself too, for that matter, yes. A normal person would maybe choose divorce, but babbo? Not an option. ‘Family above everything, except honor,’” she said. “That was his motto.” And then, in an acid undertone: “Or so we used to think.”

“Were they true?” Julie asked. “The rumors?”

Linda shrugged. “I doubt if anybody really knows. Honestly, Julie, the whole thing was so awful that everybody just wanted it to be over. I don’t think anybody wanted to know. What would be the point?”

Interesting, Gideon thought. The same words Rocco had used when asked the same question.

Linda’s expression, sober for the last few minutes, suddenly brightened. Seeing it happen was like watching the sun break through on a gloomy day. Her face was transformed. “Well, well. Here’s my hubby,” she proclaimed with transparent pride as Luca came charging up the steps to the portico.

Like Nico, Luca was a good-looking guy, but in a different way: a bigger-than-life type, expansive and spontaneous, more rough-cut than either of his brothers, and, in general, much like their father in personality. He was earthy, generous, opinionated, blunt, honest, and always ready to laugh, which he did loudly and lengthily. There had been times when Gideon had expected him to break into the big dance from Zorba the Greek at any minute, but so far he never had. Luca was great fun to be with for a few hours, but any more than that and Gideon needed to get away to someplace where Luca didn’t suck up all the air and take up all the space. Now, as he strode toward them with a giant grin plastered on his face and his arms spread wide, Gideon thought for a moment that he was going to try to gather Julie and him in at the same time in one of his bone-crushing hugs, but he settled instead for two separate ones, first Gideon, then Julie. Gideon’s was accompanied by a wince-inducing back-thumping, which he returned in full measure, but Luca got the best of it. He was an immensely powerful man, about an inch shorter than Gideon’s six-one, but far thicker in the chest and shoulders. Then on to Julie.

“Luca, honey,” Linda suggested sweetly as her husband wrapped his arms around Julie and swayed back and forth with her, “you might want to let her go now. It’s possible she might want to breathe.”

“Ah, she loves it,” Luca said, “and why wouldn’t she?” He finished with an explosive vacuum cleaner of a kiss to her cheek: mmwaaak! Julie, who wasn’t really that keen on being engulfed by large males (happily, she made an exception for Gideon), smiled politely. There wasn’t much else you could do when Luca Cubbiddu decided he was going to hug you.

He had barely signaled to the barista for an espresso and sat down when Nico showed up as well, fresh from his grape-stomp responsibilities. Brushing back that Superman forelock from his forehead (to which it immediately bobbed back) and giving them his raffish but inarguably appealing grin, he welcomed Julie and Gideon. “Hey, pallies, long time no see. How’s it going?”

Like his brothers’, Nico’s English was first-rate: fluent and casual. That had been their father’s doing. Pietro had never learned English himself—even his Italian was rudimentary—but he’d understood that if the boys were to compete in the increasingly globalized business of wine, English would be a necessity. He had seen to it that they learned it as children and learned it well. Since then their travels—trade shows, expositions, conferences—had given them an idiomatic ease with the language. To Gideon they all seemed as comfortable in English as they did in their own tongue, and he’d heard them chatting in it even when there were no Brits or Americans around.

“Fine, pally,” he said amicably, “how about you?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Hey, who’s tending the booth?” Linda asked.

“Gianni and Ettore are there now,” Luca said. “We just wanted to say hello. We’ll go back in a minute and give them a hand wrapping up. There won’t be that much to load back up in the truck. We moved a lot of wine.”

“Yeah, it helps when you’re giving it away,” Nico said and went to the bar, coming back with Luca’s coffee and for himself a glass of Moscato, a golden, mellow, afternoonish kind of wine.

“No, I mean we sold a lot too,” Luca said. “It was a good festival.”

Nico sat, took a long swallow, sighed, and stretched, looking worn out. “Lot of work, though. I’m beat.”

“You’re beat,” Luca said. “How do you think I feel? And about three hours from now, Vino e Cucina gets going. Whew. It’s like it never ends.”

Linda laughed. “You know you love it, honey.”

“I thought the class started tomorrow morning,” Julie said.

“The class, yeah, but there’s an opening reception at seven tonight. You two will be there, I hope. And your friends.”

“Actually,” Gideon said, “John and I haven’t signed up, Luca, so—”

“Oh, please, tonight’s different. No cooking demonstrations, I promise. No lectures. Just some good wine and a few simple appetizers, and a chance for people to mingle. And a few introductions. I’d really appreciate it if you came, Gideon. You’d be a—”

“Cultural ornament,” Gideon said. “I know.”

“Well, that too, definitely, but I was thinking more of an extra body to help out in the kitchen with the heavy labor.” As it often did, a burst of bluff, hearty laughter followed his comment.

“Oh, well now, that’s different, Luca. Of course I’ll be there.”

Nico stood up and finished his wine with a single gulp. “Luca, my man, what do you say we head back to the booth and flog another case or two of Villa Antica plonk to the unsuspecting masses?”

Luca responded in kind. “Watch it, baby brother, you’re speaking of what I love most in the world.”

Linda cleared her throat, loudly and meaningfully.

“Second most, that’s what I meant to say,” Luca amended. He bent to plant a kiss on her forehead. Eyes closed, smiling, she tilted up her face to receive it.

“We’ll see you two later,” Luca said to the Olivers.

“Ciao, pallies” Nico said.

“I’ll be along in a while,” she called after them, and then to Julie and Gideon, with a long sigh: “I really love that man, did I ever tell you that?”

“Really? You’re kidding us,” Gideon said. “I would have thought from those flushed cheeks and shining eyes that you couldn’t stand the guy. Hey, I’m going to get a cappuccino for myself. Watching Julie drink one always makes me want one of my own. Linda?”

“You bet. Don’t tell anyone, though. Having a cappuccino at any time of the day other than with breakfast incurs the wrath of the purists.”

Julie declined, holding up her cup to demonstrate that it was still half full.

Gideon went back to the counter, put the barista through his motions again, and returned with the brimming cups. While he’d been getting them, Linda had gone to one of the colorful little pushcarts and brought back a cardboard carton of zeppole, the sugared, donut-hole-like fritters originally from Naples, but now a fixture at every Italian street fair from Rome to San Francisco. She lifted the lid as he set the coffees down in their saucers, bit into one, and offered them around.

Julie took one. “Linda, a couple of minutes ago you said you used to think Pietro put family above everything. What was that about? If it’s none of our business, just—”

“No, no, that’s okay.” She and Julie had shared many confidences over the years and, in any case, she was one of those cheerfully open, talkative people who didn’t need any coaxing when it came to retailing inside information that more guarded people would keep close to the vest.

“Well, here’s what happened. Last summer, a couple of months before he died, babbo got this amazing offer from Humboldt-Schlager to buy the winery, lock, stock, and barrel. We’re talking megabucks here.”

“Aren’t they a beer company?” Julie asked. “Are they into wines too?”

“This was going to be their entry. Well, babbo liked the idea—he was thinking about retiring anyway—and even if the rest of us weren’t crazy about it, we weren’t dead set against it either. According to their offer, Humboldt would stay out of the internal management of the winery for at least two years with Franco as chief operating officer and also a member of the corporation’s board of directors. The rest of us would stay on in our present jobs at the same salaries we were getting from babbo. And we could keep on living here. Not a bad deal, really.”

“But,” said Gideon.

“‘But’ is right. Babbo took his time about signing, and Humboldt had second thoughts. About a week before he’s going to go up to the cabin, they change the terms. No jobs for the boys or for me, and no place to live either—we’d even have to clear out of our living quarters. No financial settlement either, just good-bye and good luck. And they weren’t open to negotiations. Take it or leave it.” She polished off her fritter and licked the sugar off her fingers.

“Yikes, that must have caused a little consternation,” Julie said.

“Well, it would have if we’d known, but we didn’t. As blunt and straight-talking as babbo was, apparently he didn’t have the nerve to tell us. We only found out a couple of months later when the whole deal went south for good and Severo finally let us in on it. He felt bad about keeping it from us, Severo did, but he’d been honoring babbo’s request. I don’t blame him. It’s a good thing babbo was already dead, though, or one of the boys probably would have killed him.” She began to laugh but cut it off and sobered. “Whoa, that was just a stupid joke. Not for one minute do I think any one of them would ever—I mean, those boys loved—”

“We understand,” Julie said smiling.

“Figure of speech, not a statement of fact,” said Gideon.

He was also smiling, but his mind was chewing over what she’d said. Rocco had said they hadn’t come up with any tenable motives for anybody but Pietro himself. Here, all of a sudden was a lulu of a motive, and three people—four, counting Linda—who shared it. There was a time when he’d have felt guilty and been embarrassed about having such thoughts about friends, but sad experience had taught him not to discount them. It didn’t stop him from hoping (and believing) that there was nothing to them, but Rocco would need to hear this all the same.

“They wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway,” said Linda, still a little defensive. “Babbo was making up for it by giving them big stipends, more than enough to live on when the sale went through—which it never did, of course—so nobody would have been exactly poor. Even Cesare was going to get one, the same as the other three.”

Julie frowned. “Who’s Cesare?”

Linda frowned back. “Who’s Cesare? Cesare, Nola’s son . . . Luca and Nico’s stepbrother. And Franco’s. You know.”

“No, I don’t know. I didn’t know Nola had a son,” Julie said. She glanced at Gideon, her brows knit: Did you know?

Gideon hunched his shoulders. “News to me.”

“How could you not know about Cesare?” Linda demanded, as if they’d been remiss in their study of Cubbiddu history.

“I don’t know how we’d know unless you told us,” Julie said, “and you never told us.”

“You mean you didn’t . . . Oh, wait a minute, that’s right; you didn’t meet him when you were here last time. He’d moved out by then, and there was no particular reason to talk about him.” She hesitated. “He . . . well, he wasn’t all that popular, to put it bluntly. He didn’t get along with the brothers very well, and he had . . . issues with Pietro too. I mean . . . you know.”

Gideon didn’t know, but he was suddenly interested. Issues with Pietro? “Like what?” Motives seemed to be popping up all over the place.

“Oh, it wasn’t anything that—”

“Come on, Linda, I’m curious too,” Julie said. “A step-brother—how does he fit into the picture?”

“Oh, all right,” said Linda, lighting up at the prospect of opening up another skeleton closet. She dabbed powdered sugar from her lips and paused a moment to order her thoughts. “Okay, now, you remember that the two of them, Nola and Pietro, came from Sardinia, which is another world to begin with, but you probably don’t know that the particular region they come from is Barbagia, which is the part—”

“The central interior,” Gideon said. “Nuoro Province, basically. Mountainous, isolated, poor. Depending on how you look at it, very traditional or very backward and primitive.”

“That’s the place. Interestingly enough, the name—Barbagia—is supposed to mean ‘barbarian’—”

“It does,” Gideon said. “From ‘bárboros,’ ancient Greek for the way foreigners were supposed to talk.”

“Right,” Linda said with a slight arching of one eyebrow in Gideon’s direction. “Anyway—”

“It’s because, to their ears, other languages sounded like bar-bar-bar-bar—babbling, in other words. They used the term a lot when they were naming places and peoples.”

Linda made a growling noise. “Hey, who’s telling this story?”

“The Barbary Coast, for example, although some authorities seem to think that’s because the Barbary pirates were Berbers, but—”

“Is he always like this?” Linda asked.

“Pretty much, yup,” said Julie. “He can’t help himself. Apparently, it’s in his DNA. You just have to ride it out. If you wait long enough, he runs out of gas. Or out of trivia; one or the other.” She smiled sweetly at him.

Gideon laughed. “All right, I can take a hint. And anyway, I’m flush out of both. It’s all yours, Linda.”

“We’ll soon see,” Julie murmured.

“Well, the reason I mentioned the name at all is because it’s still pretty barbaric in some ways. It’s the only place in Italy where there are still honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned bandits in the mountains, and the only place—”

“Where vendetta still exists,” said Gideon. “It—” He winced. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, won’t happen again.”

“All right, then,” Linda said a little suspiciously. “Well . . .” She threw a wary eye at him to make sure he was really giving up the floor. When she saw that he was, she settled happily back into her chair with another zeppola. “Now, if you ever want to hear a real-life Romeo-and-Juliet story, this is it. . . .”

Pietro Cubbiddu and Nola Baccaredda had been born in the neighboring ancient stone villages of Nuragugme and Dualchi. The two families had been involved in an on-again, off-again vendetta going back to the 1950s that had begun over confused back-and-forth accusations of sheep-stealing. There had been three murders over the years and at least a half dozen attempted murders. According to Pietro, when he had been christened, the priest had consecrated six bullets and put them in with his swaddling clothes for use in avenging his family’s honor, a not-uncommon practice in Barbagia at the time.

But the feud had died down about then, flaring up only occasionally in minor altercations, until 1985, when Nola’s then-husband, Eliodoro, had been ambushed and assassinated on his way to deliver a load of cheese to Nuoro, the provincial capital.

Soon after, Pietro’s older brother Primo had been shotgunned to death while tending his goats in their winter pasture. The Cubbiddu clan had made it clear to Pietro that it was now his solemn duty to put some of those six bullets to use, but Pietro had no wish to continue the feud—primarily because he had gone over to the dark side; he had met and fallen in love with Nola.

In 1986, they had shocked both families by announcing their upcoming marriage. Pietro was in his mid-thirties with three young sons. Nola, four years younger, had one child, Cesare, who was then an infant.

It was the couple’s hope that their wedding, like a union between foreign royals in old Europe, would end the bad blood and even bring the two families together. As a gesture, one of Pietro’s wedding gifts to Nola was the six bullets, still in the padded box in which they’d come from the priest. But it was not to be. Most members of both families—including the couple’s parents—stayed away from the church, and muttered threats hung in the air. And when Pietro’s oldest son, Franco, narrowly averted a nighttime roadside ambush (a row of flaming garbage cans suddenly blocking his way at a country crossroads, and two cars, each with several men in them, waiting alongside the road), Pietro and Nola concluded that it was time to leave. The family headed for Tuscany, the only place in mainland Italy with which they had any familiarity at all.

As it happened, Pietro had had a huge windfall a few months earlier: a government bulldozer had cut across his land without permission, wrecking his vineyard and much of his small, century-old olive grove. Fearing a suit, the government had quickly settled on 5 million lire for him—at the time the equivalent of three thousand euros. It was a fortune, ten times more money than he’d ever seen at once, and most of it went to buy an abandoned fifteenth-century convent, dilapidated and war-damaged, that he’d seen in the Val d’Arno, thirty kilometers south of Florence. It had been converted to a winery for a while in the early years of the twentieth century, and it came with a half hectare of withered, moribund Malvasia grapes. But the soil was fertile and the climate conducive to grape growing; this was Tuscany, after all. They had had to set to work at once, and work like dogs they did, joined by Luca and Franco, who were then in their teens.

Gideon and Julie had heard this part of the story before, but Linda was rolling along in high gear, and they didn’t have the heart to stop her. Besides, they both liked listening to her smooth, gentle Tennessee accent.

The Cubbiddus had plowed their earnings back into the vineyard, and with time success had come. The enterprise had blossomed (Villa Antica was now the fourth largest of the valley’s seventy-something wineries), their sons thrived and grew into four healthy young men, and they lived without the fear of faida hanging over their heads, since no one in Barbagia knew where they were.

Yet all was not well in the Cubbiddu household. At the time of the marriage, Franco and Luca were still grieving for their mother, who had died from a kidney infection a few weeks after bearing Nico, and Nola’s intrusion into the family in her place was deeply resented. Nola, for her part, made an effort to win them over, but, like Pietro, she wasn’t endowed with much in the way of patience, and she soon gave it up, settling for the mutual disaffection, deep but in general peaceably constrained, that continued to the end. This rift had created an ongoing strain between husband and wife, and, to a lesser degree, between father and sons as well.

But it was Nola’s son, Cesare, who’d had the toughest time of all. When she and Pietro had married, Pietro’s two older boys were fifteen and sixteen. Cesare was a squalling infant, not yet a year old; the teenage Cubbiddu boys couldn’t have had less interest in him; at best, he was simply another intruder, but one who commanded a great deal more than his share of attention. And although Pietro treated the boy with kindness and generosity—he adopted him, he did his best to treat him no differently from his own sons—the underlying paternal pull was simply not there. Cesare had no doubt felt his isolation and by the age of four or so he had become a needy, manipulative, totally self-centered child. To Luca and Franco, by then into their young manhood, he was nothing but a hindrance and a pest.

“To Luca and Franco,” Gideon said. “Not to Nico?”

“That’s right. Well, you see, Nico is quite a bit younger than his brothers too, so as a kid he didn’t have much in common with them either, although of course the love was always there. Blood, you know; this is Italy. But Nico and Cesare—at the time, they were only a few months apart—well, they still are, of course, but as children, they couldn’t play with Franco or Luca, but they could play with each other. And they had no memory of ever not being brothers, which also wasn’t the case for the older boys. So there was a connection there that nobody else had with Cesare. You understand, I wasn’t there for any of this. Basically, I’m telling you what Luca’s told me.”

“Of course,” said Julie.

“Nico was the older one, the more secure one, so he sort of took Cesare under his wing, spoke up for him, took his side, that kind of thing. Made excuses for him. Baby brother playing big brother. And he still does; he still sees himself as Cesare’s protector. I have my doubts about how Cesare feels about Nico these days, but I do know that there’s still a genuine love there on Nico’s part. You wouldn’t think so from that loosey-goosey way of his, would you, but Nico’s a deeply affectionate guy. He’s never given up on trying to bring Cesare more into the family.” She shook her head fondly. “It’s kind of touching, really.”

“But apparently it hasn’t worked,” Julie said. “Bringing him more into the family.”

Linda paused to let another zeppola go down before continuing. “That’s right, Franco despises him, and Luca’s not exactly crazy about him either. Neither am I, for that matter. And this I can tell you from my own experience: ‘manipulative’ and ‘self-centered’ still fit him to a T. He’s always . . . I don’t know, hatching something for his own benefit, if you know what I mean. As far as I’m concerned, I’m glad we don’t see the little worm that much.”

She paused, hesitating, but decided she might as well finish the story. “And it doesn’t help any that he’s been into and out of drugs since he was fourteen. Marijuana at first, then other junk, then cocaine. Babbo paid for him to go to rehab three, four times, but it never took. His best friend died from it, from mixing cocaine and booze—”

“A lethal combination,” Gideon said with a shake of his head.

“And that stopped him for a while, but then he started thinking, ‘Well, I guess I better give up one of them, but do I really have to quit both?’ Unfortunately, it was the booze he gave up. He doesn’t even drink wine any more, which is pretty unique around here. But now he’s back on coke. Nico says it’s all because of stress, because Pietro threw him out, and maybe it is, but I don’t know. . . .” She shook her head. “It’s all just too damn bad.”

“He injects it?” asked Gideon

“According to Nico, he snorts it. He thinks it’s less harmful than injecting, less addictive.”

“About harmful I don’t know, but about addictive he’s probably right. You get a more immediate, more intense high from delivering it straight into the bloodstream.”

“Nico keeps thinking he can get him to quit, but . . . well, good luck to him, but I think it’s way, way too late. He’s already lost his cellar-master job. Doesn’t have a job at all, as far as I know. Lives on babbo’s will.”

“That’s really sad,” Julie said.

Linda nodded. “Yes, it is. But trust me, he’d still be a creep even if he wasn’t stoned half the time.” She drank the last of her cappuccino and set the cup down with a satisfied sigh. “Well, that’s pretty much the story, and I’d better head back to the booth to help out. Things are winding down here.” She gestured toward the piazza, in which the crowds had indeed thinned out. A general sense of fatigue now hung over it. Several of the booths were already being dismantled.

“Can I help?” Gideon asked. “Need some muscle?”

“No, thanks, we’ve got everything under control.” She pushed herself to her feet. “You know how to get to the villa from here?”

Gideon nodded. “SR69 to the A1, and then straight up to Figline.”

“Right. You’re in the same apartment you were in last year. Key’s in the door. Reception’s at seven. Totally informal; what you’re wearing is fine. With the weather so nice, it’ll be outdoors, on the garden terrace. Remember where that is?”

“Oh, I think so.”

“You won’t have any trouble finding it. Things haven’t changed since you were here last.”

“Wait, one more question?”

Linda paused. “Okay, shoot, but I need to run.”

“You mentioned issues with Pietro. Anything serious?”

Linda studied him for a moment, wondering why he was interested. “Well, not really, not until last year. Cesare took an offer to become assistant cellar master at this big winery right here in the valley—an old enemy of Pietro’s. It was a few months before you came the last time. From babbo’s point of view—after all the things he’d done for him, all he’d taught him about wine, yada yada—it was nothing short of treachery. He threw him out of the villa the day he found out about it, which is why he wasn’t here anymore when you showed up.

“How did Nola feel about that?” Julie asked. “Throwing out her son?”

“How do you think? But if anything, she was madder at Cesare than she was at babbo. I think down deep she thought the kid had gone out of his way to screw up a pretty decent situation—which he had—and what he got was what he deserved. At the same time, well, he was her son, and she and Pietro had some pretty good dustups about it. You could probably hear them in Florence. But there was only one padrone here, and it wasn’t Nola.”

“So Cesare must have been pretty ticked off at both of them,” Gideon said.

“Not as ticked off as babbo was at him. Babbo cut him out of his will, disowned him. Or rather, he was going to. It was the first thing he was going to do when he got back from the mountains. ‘You are henceforth no longer the son of Pietro Cubbiddu.’” She shrugged. “But of course, he never did get back, so Cesare wound up getting the exact same share as the brothers got—from the will, I mean. Which is a damn shame, in my opinion. Babbo probably turned over in his grave. Or he would have if he’d had one at the time.”

“Well, how—” Gideon started.

“No, I really have to go. Luca and Cesare will screw everything up without some responsible adult supervision. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.”

Julie and Gideon, still seated at the table, watched her leave. Then Julie looked at Gideon curiously. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“I suspect so. One more person with a reason to murder Pietro—to murder both of them, really.”

“That’s what I was thinking you were thinking, all right. I was thinking it too.”

“Great minds,” said Gideon. “Well, I’ll tell Rocco about all this tomorrow. I’m not sure how happy it’s going to make him, though. What do you say, shall we go?”

“Let’s take what’s left of the zeppole for John,” Julie said. “After a day out with Marti, he’ll appreciate them.”

“After a day out with Marti, he’ll need them,” Gideon said, picking up the carton.