Good Blood

EIGHT

While the consiglio met in the gallery, Gideon and Julie sat at a wrought-iron table in the breakfast garden, a flagstone-tiled patio overlooking the formal plantings and classical statuary of the three terraces that made up the rest of the island. The crescent-shaped terraces nestled, each one within the curve of the one above, and descended in measured, eighteenth-century perfection from the rear of the villa down to the shore.

They had meant to stroll the attractive, well-kept paths, but when Vincenzo’s “man” Clemente appeared with a pitcher of iced coffee, two frosted glasses, and a tray of anise and poppy seed cookies, a pleasant, jet lag-induced laziness got the better of them and they stayed where they were, sitting in the warm breeze from the lake, inhaling the thick, lush scents of oleanders, camellias, rhododendrons, and citrus, chatting about nothing, and half-dozing.

A white peacock strutted up and down in front of them, showing off its tail feathers for a while before concluding that neither one of them was a likely prospect for love, and at one point a pint-sized monkey with a body no bigger than a fist scrambled up onto their table to balance on the edge and scowl at them like the outsiders they were. Contemptuously turning down an anise-flavored cookie but deigning to accept a poppy seed one, it briefly scolded them, stuck the sweet in its mouth for safekeeping, hopped down, and scuttled irritably off.

“Cute little fella,” Julie said, smiling. “Kind of crabby, though.”

“Marmoset,” Gideon said. “Family Callithricidae, genus Callithrix, species jacchus flaviceps. ”

“I knew that.”

“The most primitive of the New World monkeys. They lack opposable thumbs.”

“Aw, is that why he was so crabby?”

Other than these island fauna, and the venerable, elephantine Clemente, who lumbered back twice simply to pour their coffee for them, the only sign of life they saw was a drab, narrow-shouldered woman in sneakers who came around the side of the villa from the back, smoking a cigarette and pulling her thin sweater around her despite the day’s warmth. When she saw them, she turned on her heel and went quickly back around the corner.

“I’m afraid we spoiled one of the maids’ break times,” Julie said. “What do you say we take that stroll after all, and leave the tables to the staff?”

“You’re on,” Gideon replied. “Just let me gather my strength for a minute.”

But they were still gathering their strength five minutes later, when Vincenzo and Phil came out to find them. Vincenzo offered a curt, pro forma invitation to the three of them to stay for dinner, but they declined and went back to Stresa with Colonel Caravale in the police launch. Squalls were dancing over the lake, so they were inside, sitting knee-to-knee on the U-shaped, cushioned bench in the tiny cabin. After a little small talk about the weather, conversation flagged. Caravale was terse and preoccupied, and his glowering, thuggish looks hardly invited socializing. With his ostentatiously decorated military headgear, grim black uniform, epaulets, Sam Browne belt, and holstered sidearm, he could have been a corrupt police chief in some tinpot republic. If nothing else, he looked as if he’d be a good man with a rubber hose or an electric prod.

“You speak English extremely well, Colonel,” Julie said, searching for something to say.

He turned from the window he’d been staring through. “I’d better, signora. This is a tourist region. A lot of the people I have to deal with here don’t speak anything but.”

“Victims or perps?” Phil asked.

Caravale gave them a brief smile. “A little of both. There are English courses at the academy, signora.” He touched the brim of his cap and went back to looking out the window.

“But you speak it so idiomatically,” said Julie, who was hard to deter when she wanted to get someone talking. “Where did you learn? Surely not in a class?”

“No, I learned in Connecticut.” He turned toward them again, more fully this time, and with an air of resignation. Apparently these Americans weren’t going to let him think in peace.

“My father was a supply master in the Italian Army. He was captured in 1942 and spent the rest of the war at a POW camp in Colorado. He had a wonderful time, he couldn’t say enough about America. So after the war, before I was born, he went back and lived in New Haven with my aunt and her family for five years, until he came back home to get married. Later, he sent me back there every summer but one from the time I was twelve until I was seventeen. I still visit with my own children every few years. And so now I speak Italian with a Connecticut accent, and Connecticut with an Italian accent. Nobody understands what the hell I’m talking about.”

It was a joke-Caravale’s English was excellent-so everyone laughed, but then the conversation died again, until Phil spoke up with the air of a man who’d just come up with a terrific idea. “You know, Colonel, I was just thinking. Dr. Oliver might be able to help you out on this case.”

“Oh, really?” Caravale’s stiffened slightly, which Gideon, an old hand at this, correctly read as a danger sign.

Not Phil, however. “Oh, yeah, absolutely. He’s famous. They call him the Skeleton Detective, you’ve probably heard of him, he-”

“I’m a forensic anthropologist,” Gideon put in quickly. He knew enough about policemen to know that they did not always-well, just about never-welcome unsolicited “help” from unknown outsiders, particularly nonpolicemen, particularly nonpolicemen who were foreigners. Even solicited help wasn’t always gratefully received. Besides, that wasn’t what he was here for, and anyway, what did he know about kidnapping?

“I wouldn’t be of any use to you in something like this, I’m afraid,” he said to Caravale. “In forensic anthropology it’s mostly skeletal material that we deal with. We-”

“I’m aware of what forensic anthropologists deal with,” Caravale said shortly. “Believe it or not, we have them in Italy too. As a matter of fact, I myself worked with one on a case involving bones several years ago.”

“Really?” Julie prompted politely when he showed no sign of continuing.

“That’s right, a local doctor came upon the headless skeleton of a little girl in the woods near Baveno and contacted us. So I called our expert-our forensic anthropologist-in Rome and talked to her before doing anything. And at the site I took pains to have my men follow her instructions to the letter. We did everything: photographs, drawings, layered excavation with trowel and brushes, sifting the soil into buckets, everything. It took us six hours, but we recovered every scrap of bone there was and sent it off, numbered, bagged, and cross-recorded, to the criminalistics lab. They said it was the most thorough job they’d ever seen.”

“Did you ever catch the killer?” Julie asked.

“Unfortunately, no, but I have good reason to believe that the perp”-a quick, wry glance at Phil-“was a red fox that had been seen in the area.”

“A red-?”

“The skeleton was that of a rabbit,” Caravale said impassively. “I understand it was a source of amusement at the laboratory for some time and is now something of a legend there.”

Julie and Phil made sounds of commiseration but Gideon was annoyed at the undertone of reproach. Whose fault was it that the thick-jowled Caravale, let alone this Italian doctor of his, couldn’t tell the difference between a human child and a rabbit? To be fair, though, it was far from the first time he’d run across a physician who didn’t know animal bones when he saw them. It really wasn’t surprising. Differentiating human from nonhuman bones wasn’t part of any medical school curriculum that he knew of, and why should it be? But for cops it was a different story.

If you’d taken the session I put on at the International Conference on the Forensic Sciences when it was held in Rome a few years ago, Gideon thought but didn’t say, you’d have taken one look at the pelvis, or a scapula, or any long bone, and saved yourself five hours and fifty-nine minutes of work.

“There are some fairly simple ways to differentiate animal and human bones,” he contented himself with saying. “I can recommend a book or two if you’re interested.”

“I don’t think so, thanks, not today.” The launch thudded gently against the Stresa dock and came to a stop. Caravale was the first to stand. “However, if any further skeletons turn up, I’ll be sure to call upon you.”

“Do that,” Gideon said. “Just make sure it’s sometime in the next week.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Caravale. He made a formal little bow to the three of them, grunted his good-bye, and pulled himself up onto the pier.

“Well, that certainly went well,” Phil said brightly.

Gideon made a grumbling sound deep in his throat. “Let’s go get some lunch.”