Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [26]
‘Paola,’ he said when she answered with her name, ‘things got away from me.’
‘So did a rombo cooked in white wine with fennel.’
Well, at least she was not angry. ‘And baby potatoes and carrots,’ she went on relentlessly, ‘and one of those bottles of Tokai your informer gave you.’
‘I wasn’t supposed to have told you that.’
‘Then pretend you didn’t hear me say I know who you got them from.’
Perhaps he was not going to get off so lightly. ‘I had to meet the son of that woman who died last night.’
‘It wasn’t in the paper this morning, but it’s already in the online version.’
Brunetti was not comfortable with the cyber age, still preferring to read his newspapers in paper form; the fact that a newspaper such as the Gazzettino now existed in cyberspace was to him a cause of great uneasiness. ‘What will become of people who are exposed to the Gazzettino twenty-four hours a day?’ he asked.
Paola, who often took a longer and more measured view than did Brunetti, said, ‘It might help to think of it as toxic waste we don’t ship to Africa.’
‘Assuredly. I hadn’t considered that. I’m at peace with my conscience now,’ Brunetti said. Then, curious to learn how the story was being played, he asked, ‘What are they saying?’
‘That she was found in her apartment by a neighbour. Death was apparently caused by a heart attack.’
‘Good.’
‘Does that mean it wasn’t?’
‘Rizzardi’s being dodgier and more noncommittal than usual. I think he might have seen something, but he didn’t say anything to the woman’s son.’
‘What’s he like, the son?’
‘He seems a decent man,’ Brunetti said, which had certainly been his first impression. ‘But he couldn’t disguise his relief that the police aren’t showing any interest in his mother’s death.’
‘Is it you who isn’t doing the showing?’ she asked.
‘Yes. He seemed bothered that I wanted to speak to him, so I had to pass it off as a procedural formality because we were the ones who received the call.’
‘Why would he be nervous? He can’t have had anything to do with it.’ Hearing her speak so categorically, Brunetti realized that he too had dismissed this possibility a priori. The world offered a cornucopia of variations on the theme of homicide; wives and husbands killed one another with staggering frequency, lovers and ex-lovers existed in a state of undeclared warfare; he had lost count of the women who had killed their children in recent years. But still his mind stopped short of this: men don’t kill their mothers.
He let himself wander off in pursuit of these thoughts. Paola remained silent, waiting. Finally he admitted, ‘It could just as easily be nothing. After all, he’s had a terrible shock, and after I talked to him, he had to go back to the hospital to identify her.’
‘Oddio,’ she exclaimed. ‘Couldn’t they have found someone else?’
‘A relative has to do it,’ Brunetti said.
For a few moments neither of them spoke, then he pulled them both away from these things and said, ‘I should be on time tonight.’
‘Good.’ And she was gone.
The best way to get to the rest home was to walk past the Questura: the map in his brain offered other possibilities, but they were all longer. He could go by and pick up Vianello to come along with him, so that he could tell him about Niccolini and how the presence of the other man had stopped Rizzardi from telling him whatever it was he had wanted to say about the autopsy.
He pulled out his phone and dialled Vianello’s number, told him where he was and that he would pass by to get him in five minutes or so. The sun had passed its zenith, and the first calle he turned into was beginning to lose the warmth of the day.
As he walked alongside Rio della Tetta, Brunetti was cheered, as always happened when he walked here, by the sight of the most beautiful paving stones in Venice. Of some colour between pink and ivory, many of the stones were almost two metres long