Juliet (36 page)

Seeing my fluster, Malèna fished out a bottle of something homemade from beneath the counter—she didn’t even have to look—and poured a hearty slug into my water glass. “Here,” she said. “A Marescotti special. It will make you happy. Cin cin.”

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning,” I protested, feeling very little desire to taste the cloudy liquid, never mind its ancestry.

“Bah!” she shrugged. “Maybe in Firenze it is ten o’clock—”

After dutifully gulping down the foulest concoction I had tasted since Janice’s attempt at brewing beer in her bedroom closet—and hacking out a compliment, too—I at last felt I had earned the right to ask, “Are you related to a guy called Romeo Marescotti?”

The transformation in Malèna when she registered my question was
almost uncanny. From being my best friend, leaning on her elbows to hear my troubles, she snapped upright with a gasp, and brusquely corked the bottle. “Romeo Marescotti,” she said, taking away my empty glass and wiping the counter with a whiplash swipe of a tea towel, “is dead.” Only then did she meet my eyes, and where there had been kindness a moment ago, I saw only fear and suspicion. “He was my cousin. Why?”

“Oh!” The disappointment fell heavily through my body, leaving me oddly light-headed. Or maybe it was the drink. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Now, I thought, was probably not the time to tell her that my cousin Peppo had suspected Romeo of being behind the museum break-in. “It’s just that Maestro Lippi, the artist—he says he knows him.”

Malèna snorted, but at least she looked relieved. “Maestro Lippi,” she whispered, circling a finger around her ear, “talks to ghosts. Don’t listen to him. He is …” She searched for an appropriate word, but found none.

“There’s also someone else,” I said, figuring I might as well have it all shot to pieces once and for all. “The Head of Security at Monte dei Paschi. Alessandro Santini. Do you know him?”

Malèna’s eyes widened briefly in surprise, then quickly narrowed. “Siena is a small place.” From the way she said it I knew there was a smelly rat buried somewhere in all this.

“Why,” I went on more quietly, hoping that my questions would not further rip open an old wound, “do you think anyone would go around saying that your cousin Romeo was still alive?”

“He said that?” Malèna studied my face intently, more incredulous than sad.

“It’s kind of a long story,” I said, “but the bottom line is that
I
was the one asking about Romeo. Because … I am Giulietta Tolomei.”

I was not expecting her to understand the implications of my name in conjunction with Romeo’s, but the shock on her face told me that she knew exactly who I was, ancestor and all. Once she had processed this little curveball, her reaction was very sweet; she reached out to pinch my nose.

“Il gran disegno,” she muttered. “I knew there was a reason you came to me.” Then she paused, as if there was something she wanted to say, but which she knew she shouldn’t. “Poor Giulietta,” she said instead, with a sympathetic smile, “I wish I could tell you he was alive, but … I can’t.”

…

WHEN I FINALLY LEFT
the espresso bar, I had forgotten all about Janice. It was therefore an unpleasant surprise to find her waiting for me right outside, leaning comfortably against the wall like a cowgirl killing time until the saloon opens.

As soon as I saw her standing there, beaming with triumph because she had tracked me down, it all came back to me—motorcycle, letter, tower, argument—and I sighed loudly and started walking in the other direction, not really caring where I was headed as long as she didn’t follow.

“What is it with you and Yummy Mummy in there?” Janice was nearly tripping over her own feet to catch up. “Are you trying to make me jealous?”

I was so sick of her at this point that I stopped in the middle of Piazza Postierla and spun around to yell at her, “Do I really have to spell it out? I’m trying to get rid of you!”

During all our years together, I had said plenty of nasty things to my sister, and this was nowhere near the worst. But perhaps due to the unfamiliar turf it hit her right between the eyes, and for a brief moment she looked stunned, almost as if she was going to cry.

Turning away in disgust I resumed walking, laying some distance between us before—once again—she came stumbling along in my wake, her stiletto boots twisting this way and that on the irregular stone pavement.

“Okay!” she exclaimed, arms flapping for balance, “I’m sorry about the bike, okay? And I’m sorry about the letter. Okay? I didn’t know you’d take it that way.” Seeing that I neither replied nor slowed down, she moaned and kept going, still not quite able to catch me. “Listen, Jules, I know you’re pissed off. But we really have to talk. Remember Aunt Rose’s will? It was bo—
ow!”

She must have twisted something, for when I turned around to look, Janice was sitting in the middle of the street, rubbing her ankle.

“What did you say?” I asked warily, walking back towards her a few steps. “About the will?”

“You heard me,” she said glumly, inspecting her broken boot heel, “the whole thing was bogus. I thought you were part of it, and that’s why I was lying low, trying to figure out what you were up to, but … I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

…

IT HAD NOT BEEN
a good week for my evil twin. For starters, she told me, limping along with an arm around my neck, she had discovered that our family lawyer, Mr. Gallagher, was not, in fact, Mr. Gallagher. How? Well, the
real
Mr. Gallagher had shown up. Secondly, the will he had shown us after the funeral had been nothing but fiction. In reality, Aunt Rose had had nothing left to leave to anybody, and to be her heir would have meant inheriting nothing but debt. Thirdly, two police officers had arrived at the house the day after I left, and they had given Janice hell for removing the yellow tape. What yellow tape? Well, the tape they had wrapped around the building when they had discovered it was a crime scene.

“A crime scene?” Even though the sun was high in the sky, I felt a chill. “You mean, Aunt Rose was
murdered?”

Janice shrugged as best she could, struggling to keep her balance. “God knows. Apparently, she was covered with bruises, even though supposedly she died in her sleep. Go figure.”

“Janice!” I barely knew what to say, except to chastise her for being so flippant. This unexpected news—that Aunt Rose might not have died peacefully, the way Umberto had described—closed around my throat like a noose, almost choking me.

“What?” she snapped, her voice thick with emotion. “Do you think it was fun sitting in that interrogation room all night and … answering questions about whether or not”—she could barely get out the words—“I really loved her?”

I looked at her profile, wondering when I had last seen my sister cry. With her mascara smeared and her clothes messed up from the fall, she actually seemed human, and almost likable, maybe because of the throbbing ankle, the grief, and all the disappointment. Suddenly realizing that, for a change,
I
would have to be the strong one, I took a better grip on her and tried to suppress all thoughts of poor old Aunt Rose for the time being. “I don’t get it! Where on earth was Umberto?”

“Ha!” The question gave Janice an opportunity to recover some of her zest. “You mean,
Luciano?”
She glanced at me to see if I was suitably shocked. “That’s right. Good old Birdie was a fugitive, a desperado, a
gangster … take your pick. All these years, he’s been hiding out in our rose garden while the cops
and
the Mafia were looking for him. Apparently, they found him—his old Mob buddies—and he just”—with her free hand, she snapped her fingers in the air—“poof, gone!”

I stopped to catch my breath, swallowing hard to keep down Malèna’s Marescotti special that was supposed to make me happy but tasted like heartbreak. “His name wouldn’t happen to be … Luciano Salimbeni, would it?”

Janice was so flabbergasted by my insight that she completely forgot about not being able to put weight on her left foot. “My-my!” she exclaimed, removing her arm from my shoulder. “You
do
have a hand in this shit!”

AUNT ROSE USED TO
say that she had hired Umberto for his cherry pie. And while this was true to a certain extent—he always did produce the most outrageous desserts—the fact was that she was helpless without him. He took care of everything, the kitchen, the garden, the general maintenance around the house, but even more admirably, he managed to convey a sense that his contribution was trifling in comparison with the enormous tasks undertaken by Aunt Rose herself. Such as arranging flowers for the dinner table. Or looking up troublesome words in the dictionary.

The true genius of Umberto was his ability to make us believe we were self-sustained. It was almost as if he had somehow failed in his endeavors if we were able to identify his touch in the blessings that came to us; he was like a year-round Santa Claus who only enjoyed giving presents to those soundly asleep.

As with most things in our childhood, the original arrival of Umberto on the doorstep of our American lives was veiled in silence. Neither Janice nor I could remember a time when he had not been there. When we occasionally, under the scrutiny of a full moon, would lie in our beds and outdo each other in remembering our exotic infancies in Tuscany, Umberto was somehow always in the picture.

In a way I loved him more than I ever loved Aunt Rose, for he always took my side and called me his little princess. It was never explicit, but I
am sure we all felt his disapproval of Janice’s deteriorating manners and his subtle support of me, whenever I chose not to emulate her naughtiness.

When Janice asked him for a good-night story, she would get a brief morality tale ending with someone’s head being chopped off; when I curled up on the bench in the kitchen, he would fetch the special cookies in the blue tin and tell me stories that went on forever, stories about knights and fair maidens, and buried treasures. And when I grew old enough to understand, he would assure me that Janice would be punished soon enough. Wherever she went in life, she would bring along with her an inescapable piece of Hell, for she herself was Hell, and in time, she would come to realize that she was her own worst punishment. I, on the other hand, was a princess, and one day—if only I made sure to stay away from corrupting influences and irreversible mistakes—I would meet a handsome prince and find my own magic kingdom.

How could I not love him?

IT WAS WAY PAST NOON
when we had finally caught up on each other’s news. Janice told me everything the police had said about Umberto—or rather, Luciano Salimbeni—which wasn’t much, and in return I told her everything that had happened to me since arriving in Siena, which was a lot.

We ended up having lunch in Piazza del Mercato, with a view of Via dei Malcontenti and a deep, green valley. The waiter informed us that beyond the valley ran the gloomy one-way road Via di Porta Giustizia, at the end of which—in the old days—criminals were executed in public.

“Lovely,” said Janice, slurping ribollita soup, elbows on the table, her brief sadness long since evaporated, “no wonder old Birdie didn’t feel like coming back here.”

“I still don’t believe it,” I muttered, poking at my food. Watching Janice eat was enough to relieve me of my appetite, to say nothing of the surprises she had brought with her. “If he really killed Mom and Dad, why didn’t he kill us, too?”

“You know,” said Janice, “sometimes I thought he was going to. Seriously. He had that serial-killer look in his eyes.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “he felt guilty about what he had done—”

“Or maybe,” Janice cut me off, “he knew that he needed us—or at least
you
—in order to get Mom’s box from Mister Macaroni.”

“I suppose,” I said, trying to apply logic where logic was not enough, “he could have been the one hiring Bruno Carrera to follow me?”

“Well, obviously!”—Janice rolled her eyes—“and you can be damn sure he is puppeteering your little toyboy as well.”

I shot her a glare that she didn’t even seem to notice. “I hope you’re not referring to Alessandro?”

“Mmm, Alessandro …” She savored his name as if it was a chocolate caramel. “I gotta give it to you, Jules, he was worth waiting for. Too bad he’s already in bed with Birdie.”

“You are disgusting,” I said, not allowing her to upset me, “and you’re wrong.”

“Really?” Janice didn’t like being wrong. “Then explain to me why he broke into your hotel room?”

“What?”

“Oh, yes—” She took her sweet time dipping the last slice of bread in olive oil. “That night when I saved you from Gumshoe Bruno, and you ended up three sheets to the wind with the artmeister … Alessandro was having one helluva party in your room. You don’t believe me?” She reached into her pocket, only too happy to oblige my suspicion. “Then check this out.”

Pulling out her cell phone, she showed me a series of bleary photos of someone climbing up to my balcony. It was hard to tell whether it was really Alessandro, but Janice insisted that it
was
, and I had known her long enough to identify those rare twitches around her mouth as honesty.

“Sorry,” she said, looking almost as if she meant it, “I know this is blowing your little fantasy, but I thought you’d like to know your Pooh is not just in it for the honey.”

I flung the phone back at her without knowing what to say. There had been too much to absorb in the last few hours, and I had definitely reached my saturation point. First Romeo … dead and buried. Then Umberto … reborn as Luciano Salimbeni. And now Alessandro …

“Don’t look at me like that!” hissed Janice, usurping the moral high ground with habitual dexterity. “I’m doing you a favor! Imagine if you’d gone ahead and fallen for this guy, only to discover that he was after the family jewels all along.”

“Why don’t you do me another favor,” I said, leaning back in my chair to get as far away from her point as possible, “and explain how you found me in the first place? And what’s up with that stupid Romeo act?”