Game of Mirrors (12 page)

“How could she have known?”

“Probably the guy who lends his Volvo to Arturo—the neighbor, Miccichè.”

It seemed a fair bet.

“I’ll go now and get the car.”

Unexpectedly, Augello showed up.

“Did Lucia stand you up?”

“Are you kidding? We’ve got a date at eight thirty. I wanted to tell you something. After I called you at the restaurant, Lucia started talking again about La Lombardo. She said that Liliana was really upset after she got that phone call. And when the manager didn’t want to give her the day off, she made a big scene.”

When it was time, Montalbano went out of his office, grabbed the keys that Fazio had left with Catarella, and went out to the parking lot. When he saw his car there, he stopped to look at it. Todaro had done an excellent job.

He drove off towards Marinella.

And the whole way there he never stopped wondering why Arturo and Liliana had disappeared.

Arturo had left first, then Liliana. The person who called her at the store was probably Arturo himself.

Maybe to warn her about some new and dangerous development.

Montalbano was driving so slowly that when he had to stop before turning into the driveway, his engine stalled.

He started it back up but botched the maneuver as the car lurched forward through the air and then stalled again, spanning the road crosswise.

A pandemonium of horn blasts and insults ensued.

Montalbano didn’t even hear them.

He just sat there, immobile, hands on the steering wheel, goggle-eyed.

He’d remembered.

It was right here, in this very spot, that the shot had been fired at his car, when he’d made the same driving
mistake the evening when he was returning with Liliana after eating arancini at Adelina’s house.

And he’d mistaken the sound of the shot against the body of the car for a stone bouncing up.

At last he successfully made the maneuver and turned onto the narrow lane.

Total darkness reigned in the Lombardo house.

His appetite was gone. Grabbing a bottle of whisky and a glass, he went and sat outside on the veranda.

They had shot to kill.

They had aimed correctly.

They hadn’t counted, however, on the car suddenly lurching forward and up.

And they had no intention of shooting him. If it was him they had wanted to kill, the man with the rifle would have to have been on the other side of the road.

Therefore, they’d tried to eliminate Liliana.

There could be no doubt about this.

The revelation had a rather curious effect on the inspector. The shock, incredulity, and bewilderment were very short-lived, all things considered, because immediately, like an air bubble released by the stone that had kept it long imprisoned at the bottom of the sea, a full awareness, an absolute certainty rose to the surface of his mind: namely, the fact that he had always suspected Liliana not only of not being what she seemed to be, but also of hiding within herself the answers to almost all the questions that had been besieging him over the past few days.

At any rate, the confirmation he’d just had gave him a different perspective on everything that had happened until then.

He now had to reexamine the whole picture from the start, from a different perspective.

Because it was no longer a case of little white lies,
shows put on for the viewing public, and lost scoops, but of attempted murder.

The qualitative leap was considerable. It dispelled the playful atmosphere that had characterized his relationship with Liliana.

It was possible that by getting others to think she was his girlfriend, she was seeking help, or protection.

But how should he now proceed?

Should he wait for Liliana to come back home, which she was bound to do sooner or later? Or should he go out looking for her? And what would he say once he found her?

Should he interrogate her? And on the basis of what concrete facts?

He needed help. There was no point in asking Mimì, at least not that night. He rang Fazio.

“Sorry to call so late. Have you finished eating?”

“Just now.”

“Feel up to coming over to my place?”

“I’m on my way.”

Twenty minutes later, Fazio was knocking at the door. He’d come running. No doubt his curiosity was eating him alive.

“Did you notice if the lights were on at the Lombardos’?”

“No, it was all dark.”

Montalbano sat him down on the veranda and told him what he’d just remembered.

Fazio seemed disturbed by it all, but his wisdom gained the upper hand.

“Chief, my conclusion is that it’s not clear they wanted to kill her for any direct involvement in anything. It might be they wanted to take revenge for some offense committed by one of her men, Arturo or her husband.
A proxy vendetta
.”

“That’s possible. But it’s clear that she’s the one we should be working on.”

“What do you think you’ll do?” Fazio asked with a dark expression on his face.

“I called you here because two heads are better than one. In my opinion, the first thing we should do is find Liliana.”

“I agree.”

“But how? She’s probably with Arturo, but we don’t really know.”

“We could check all the hotels in the province.”

“We might just be wasting our time.”

“What if we sent out an all-points bulletin to all the stations on the island?”

“I think that’d be another waste of time. No, we need to track her down right away. If they tried to get her once, you can be sure they’ll try again.”

As the inspector was saying these words, something suddenly occurred to him.

“What is it?” asked Fazio.

Montalbano looked puzzled.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Chief, I’ve known you too long not to be able to tell when you get a new idea. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that it’s quite possible that at this very moment, Liliana and Arturo are just a hop, skip, and a jump away from us, holed up in her house, sitting in the dark so that everyone will think there’s nobody there.”

“Yeah, but if we go and knock on the door, they won’t answer.”

“Who said anything about knocking on the door?”

Fazio understood at once.

“Be sure to wear gloves,” he said.

“Don’t make me laugh! My fingerprints are all over the house already, by the hundreds! Do you know how many things I must have touched the night I had dinner there? You’re the one who should wear gloves!”

To open the door Montalbano used a set of jimmies an old burglar had once given him. It took him very little time, and he didn’t make a sound. Fazio came in behind him.

As soon as they were inside, Montalbano sniffed the air. He could still smell the morning coffee. He pricked up his ears.

There wasn’t a sound. It was so quiet, in fact, that they should have been able to hear someone breathing.

“There’s nobody here,” Fazio said softly.

“Turn on the flashlight.”

The place looked pretty messy. The first door on the right led to the bedroom. And that room was really messy. The armoire was thrown wide open, and clearly some clothes were missing. Panties and bras were scattered across the floor and the bed.

“Liliana,” the inspector said, “must have come back here, packed a suitcase, and left.”

“So we can leave, too,” said Fazio, who didn’t like these little adventures of his boss’s.

“Lemme just see something first. Light my way.”

They went to the house’s extra room. The door was locked, but the inspector opened it with a picklock. There was a single bed and a small armoire inside. On a metal shelf were five computers and four printers.

“It’s too small for storage. He doesn’t keep his computers here,” said Fazio.

They went out, and the inspector relocked the door behind him.

They went back to the veranda and sat down.

“If nothing else,” said Montalbano, “we now know that Liliana has fled. And that it won’t be a brief absence of a day or two, but much longer. In fact it’s anybody’s guess when we’ll see her again.”

“After getting the phone call at work,” said Fazio, “she must have come back here on the bus, packed her bags, and cut out. But how? She couldn’t have set out on foot
with a suitcase in her hand. So did she take some sort of public transportation? A taxi or a bus? And if she took a bus, which one did she take? There are so many that pass on the provincial road—to Montereale, to Fiacca, to Trapani, to Palermo, to Catania . . .”

“We’re going to have to look into it.”

“I’ll take care of it, starting early tomorrow morning.”

There was no point in keeping Fazio any longer. The inspector saw him to the door and said good-bye.

Later, besieged by worries as he was, it took the hand of God to make him fall asleep.

At ten past seven, as he was about to leave the house, he got a phone call from Fazio.

“I talked to the taxi services. She didn’t call any. I can try the bus offices, but it’ll take too long.”

“Never mind. I’ll be coming to the office a little later, around eight thirty, nine. Wait for me.”

He set off like a rocket for Vigàta, but instead of going to the station, he headed for Via Pisacane.

Five minutes later he was knocking at Signora Tallarita’s door. As soon as the inspector saw her, he felt sorry for her. It was clear the poor woman was devastated and had been up all night, probably crying most of the time.

She recognized Montalbano at once.

“What’s happened to Arturo?”

She grabbed his arms and clung to them.

“We know even less than you, signora.”

The woman let go of him and started crying again.

“He’s never done this before, going off for so long without saying anything! He’s changed! Ever since he met that slut . . .”

She stopped and stole a glance at the inspector to see how he reacted to what had just slipped out of her mouth. Montalbano decided to lay his cards on the table. He didn’t have any time to waste beating around the bush.

“Are you referring to Liliana Lombardo?”

The signora’s eyes opened wide.

“How do you know about her?”

“
Cara signora,
we know everything,” Montalbano said in a tone worse than if he’d been the head of the CIA. “We’ve had an eye on her for a while.”

“The tramp! The hussy!” Signora Tallarita exploded.

“Now, signora, I want you to answer some questions for me. In your son, Arturo’s, interest.”

“You think he ran away with her?”

“It’s one of the possible scenarios.”

“All right, go ahead and ask.”

“You heard about the relations between Arturo and Signora Lombardo from your neighbor Miccichè, correct?”

Signora Tallarita gave him a puzzled look.

“Miccichè? What’s that poor man have to do with any of this? The guy’s already embalmed and in a casket!”

She was being sincere, clearly. Montalbano, too, felt
puzzled. He was convinced that the person who’d told her about it was Miccichè, but he didn’t let it show.

“So who was it, then?”

“One day, in the stairwell, I ran into Signor Nicotra . . .”

“Carlo Nicotra?”

“Him. And he tol’ me everything and said the whole town was talking about it and saying terrible things and that this woman was a bad one, and that she would ruin my son.”

She started crying uncontrollably again, as Montalbano was having trouble digesting her answer.

“Signora, one last question and I’ll stop bothering you. Do you know Signora Lombardo’s cell phone number?”

“N . . . no.”

It wasn’t true. The woman didn’t know how to lie.

“Signora, the more you hide the truth, the less chance there is for us to locate Arturo.”

This convinced her.

“All right, I know it.”

“Have you ever called Signora Lombardo?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Yesterday morning, when I saw that my son had spent the night out and hadn’t come home yet, I got worried; I started looking through his things and I found a little book with a lot of phone numbers in it.”

“And so you called her?”

“Yessir.”

“What time was it, more or less?”

“It was probably around nine in the morning.”

“And what did you say to her?”

“I asked her if my son had spent the night with her.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said no and hung up. The whore! The stinking slut! If I ever get my hands on her I’ll wring her neck like a chicken’s!”

When she’d calmed down a little, the inspector thanked her, promised he would keep her informed, and headed for the door.

Signora Tallarita wanted to see him out. Which meant that Montalbano was forced to go down one flight of stairs, wait a few minutes, then come back up on tiptoe.

This time he knocked on Miccichè’s door.

A woman wearing a small hat and pushing a tiny shopping cart came to the door.

“Whattayou want? I’m going out.”

“I’m Inspector Montalbano, police.”

He’d spoken softly, worried that Signora Tallarita might hear him.

“Wha’??” said the woman. “Talk louder, I can’t hear too good.”

“I can’t. I have a hoarse voice.”

Meanwhile Miccichè himself arrived in his wheelchair.

“Please come in, come in.”

The woman went out, grumbling about people wasting her time. The inspector went inside, closing the door behind him.

“I’ll just take up a minute of your time. Do you know whether Arturo took your Volvo last night?”

Miccichè made a worried face.

“Did something happen?”

“Arturo hasn’t been heard from. So, did he take the car?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have copies of the keys to the garage?”

“Yes.”

“Let me have them, I’ll bring them right back.”

Miccichè handed them to him.

“It’s number eleven, right?”

“Yes.”

The Volvo was there, in the garage. The engine was cold. It hadn’t been driven for several days. Which wasn’t a very good sign.

He brought the keys back to Miccichè, who seemed pleased to know that his car had nothing to do with Arturo’s disappearance.

The only hope was to try another hypothesis. Montalbano went to the mechanic’s.

“So, when’s Signora Lombardo’s car going to be ready?”

The mechanic gave him an embarrassed look.

“What, you mean the lady didn’t tell you, Inspector?”

“Tell me what?”

“Yesterday morning, around nine thirty, she called me to ask if the car was ready. I said I could have it ready by noon. And so she asked me if I could bring it to her house.”

“And did you?”

“Of course. She paid, and that was the end of that.”

“Was she alone?”

“She was alone. But I didn’t go inside the house.”

“Do me a favor. Give me the model and the license number.”

The mechanic gave him the information without any comment.

“So,” said Fazio, “she escaped in her own car. Maybe with Arturo.”

“I doubt it,” said Montalbano.

“Why?”

“When I drove Liliana into town yesterday morning, she was very nervous. I thought maybe she’d had a fight with Arturo. Whereas I now think she was nervous because she hadn’t heard from him. And when Signora Tallarita phoned her at the store, it confirmed her fear that Arturo had disappeared. Which threw her into a panic, to the point where she picked up her car and drove away. All
of which means that the two of them knew they were playing with fire.”

“But where could she have gone?”

“I have a vague idea. But if I tell you, I’m afraid Mr. C’mishner’s gonna want me to take that test again.”

Fazio gave a start.

“What test?”

“The mental health check.”

Fazio’s eyes opened even wider.

“When did you take it?”

“Don’t worry, it was only a dream I had.”

Fazio breathed a sigh of relief.

“Just tell me your idea. I’m not the commissioner.”

“In my opinion, Liliana ran to her husband.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You once said to me that Liliana and Arturo might have an arrangement and that the kid probably knew about the whole song and dance Liliana was acting out with me. So what if Liliana became Arturo’s lover based on an agreement she made with her husband? Or better yet, on her husband’s orders?”

Fazio thought about this for a minute.

“For what purpose?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But if that was the case, where would it lead us?” Fazio asked.

“The answer is easy: either into a dead end or onto a superhighway leading straight to the truth.”