An Extra Virgin Pressing Murder

  Nel Blu Dipinto di Murder

  by

  Candida Martinelli

  © Copyright 2003 Candida Martinelli

  ISBN: 1-932014-03-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author and publisher.

  Published by DLSIJ Press

  http://dlsijpress.com

  Easter Sunday: Friends and Family

  Pasqua: amici e famiglia

  "We'll stop for lunch in San Gimignano. My friends are meeting us there. They're looking forward to meeting you." Laura drove carefully along the highway that was taking us from Siena to San Gimignano. She hugged the right side of the road and let the speed-mad Italian drivers pass us by.

  "Will your fiancé be there?" I asked, full of curiosity about the man.

  "No, you'll have a chance to meet Tomaso and his family, tonight." Laura said hesitantly, "I thought it would be nice to see each other alone, first. To catch up."

  I reflected that Laura had not changed much since her troubled teens. She was the same medium height and build and she still wore her light brown hair long, pulled back from her attractive face. The only difference was that, now, she dressed stylishly, looking more Italian than American the longer she lived in Italy.

  "You didn't tell me much about Tomaso in your letters. What does he do for work?"

  "He's the Marketing Director of his family's textile firm. I've not seen much of him lately because of my work. I haven't wanted to see him." Laura added hurriedly, "I mean, I needed to concentrate on finishing the first draft of my new book. Archeology this time, in Tuscany. I didn't want any worries when you got here."

  "Or during the wedding and honeymoon?"

  "Yes, that too, of course!" Laura laughed nervously at her oversight, and then changed the subject. "I thought you wanted to travel more after retiring. Is your new home too comfortable?"

  "Quite the opposite, really. It's not turned out as I'd hoped. Your wedding invitation came as a welcome surprise. I feel as foreign in that retirement community as I do in Italy!"

  "Then stay here! I have plenty of room and I'd love your company."

  "Thank you, Laura, but the last thing you want after getting married is a house guest hanging around!"

  "You're wrong about that," Laura said seriously. "I really would love your company and advice. Besides, the property is very large. I bought this place because it has room to get lost from the world!"

  "You wanted to get lost from the world? I find that hard to believe, my globe-trotting friend!" I took a closer look at Laura. In a few years, Laura had gained a more mature expression about the eyes and mouth.

  "It was time to settle down. I didn't write you about this, but my health had started to suffer from the stress of the newspaper and magazine work. Too much travel, I suppose, and bad diet, and no personal life to speak of. So, I arranged two book deals and rented an apartment in Florence. I thought it would do me good to stay in one place for a while."

  "And did it?" I was worried. Laura had suffered during the past few years but had told me nothing about it. Distance had made us lose the thread that had kept us friends for so many years.

  "It did me good, for a while, but then I started to suffer from the pollution in Florence and the stress of city living."

  "Why didn't you tell me any of this before?"

  "I didn't want you to worry. You've done so much for me over the years." Laura paused and then said, "You've been more a mother to me than my own ever was. I don't know if I've ever thanked you properly for that. I want to thank you now, from the bottom of my heart."

  My heart was warmed by the gratitude. "It's been my pleasure, but I feel I've let you down these last few years. I wish you'd told me what you were going through. It's all because of that family of yours. I just know it is!"

  Laura said calmly, "I can't blame them for everything, but you're probably right, in a way. I pushed hard to get away from that situation and probably pushed myself into these health problems. But I'm doing better, now! I bought this property because it was quiet, healthy, self-supporting with the tourist cottages. I've arranged two more book deals and I have my other writing work. The first paying guests arrive in a month. Everything's going fine!"

  I thought Laura sounded less than confident, and there was no mention of her fiancé in the list of good things in her life. I was fighting a growing feeling of concern about Laura and her future husband. "You don't mind my being curious about your fiancé, do you Laura?"

  "Mind? I'd be disappointed if you weren't curious! Why do you think I invited you to come over early? I want your opinion of Tomaso. I trust your opinion."

  Independent-minded Laura needed my opinion of Tomaso? I was sure, now, that something was wrong. "Do your friends get along with Tomaso?"

  Laura said nervously, "They're very different. My friends are married couples and older than Tomaso."

  "Older than Tomaso? Older than you, too?"

  "Yes. Tomaso and I are the same age, but I get along well with mature people. Tomaso does, too!" Laura, the writer, stumbled over her words. "I mean they haven't known him for very long, or me for very long, actually. I trust your opinion more than theirs." Laura cut off any response by announcing, "We're almost at San Gimignano. You can see the town on top of the hill." She pointed to a wall in the distance punctuated by many towers.

  I watched the bucolic scenes passing the car window, but my mind was on Tomaso and Laura. She expected me to judge the man in the few short weeks before the wedding. I would do my best, as I always had for my protégé, but I sincerely hoped that Laura would find the answers she was looking for inside her own heart.

  *****

  "Bertha Fahey, she likes to be called Bert, I'd like you to meet Michela and Colin Whitehorse, and Aldo and Donatella Bianchi."

  Laura's friends greeted me warmly and had us sit down with them at the outdoor café in the main square of San Gimignano. They ordered refreshments for us, and we exchanged small talk about my flight from the States and our stays in Rome and Siena.

  "San Gimignano is famous for the towers, Bert," Colin Whitehorse said in British-accented English. "A family could hide away in one of those towers for weeks if a clan war broke out. Imagine you and Laura hiding out in a tower for weeks against an enemy family!" Colin winked at his wife, Michela, who seemed less than pleased by her husband's dramatics.

  I guessed Colin was about forty-five years old. His body seemed too tall and too thin for the cane chair in which he was sitting, and his long and thin features perfectly suited his body. His hair was light and turning gray.

  "What did you think of Siena and Rome?" Michela asked.

  I thought back on my jet-lagged days in both cities. "I enjoyed the Vatican the most, but I was disappointed I couldn't see the Vatican Libraries."

  Colin shouted, "Closed to the lay public! It's a scandal! At least librarians like ourselves should be allowed in!"

  Michela explained with a laugh, "My husband is the director of the British Council Library in Florence."

  I liked Michela's warm laugh. Michela was much shorter than her husband and enjoyed a full figure. Her coloring was darker than her husband's, and she spoke English with a slight Italian accent. She was dressed like a company director, rather than a sightseer, which we all were for the day.

  "I'll give you a personal tour of my library, Bert," Colin promised. "You can take books out via Laura, of course, or we can arrange a membership all your own."

  "For my short stay?"

  Michela cut in, "After the tour, you and I can go to lunch and to a concert, if you'd like?"

  "Thank you, I'd love the tour, the lunch, and the concert!" A waiter arrived and placed a tall glass of a red liquid before both Laura and I. I sipped the juice cautiously and was surprised by the intense orange juice flavor. "That's delicious!"

  "A woman with taste!" Donatella Bianchi cheered. "That's freshly squeezed Sicilian blood oranges."

  I noticed that Donatella was colorful not only in her language and enthusiasm for juice. Her tailored clothes were colorful, too, in contrast to her black hair. She was a very shapely woman of fifty, or so.

  Donatella called the waiter over and spoke to him in Italian. Then she explained to me, "I've asked for some special chocolates. I told him it was for our American friend's mother." She waved aside my protest and Laura's anxious look, and continued, "A white lie. The coffee will cure your jetlag. It's from Trieste. Smooth, but strong."

  I was not a coffee drinker but the way Donatella spoke of it, I could not resist. The waiter returned quickly with the chocolates and two coffees. Donatella instructed me on how to sweeten and drink the coffee, and then watched anxiously for my reaction. "Heavenly!" I exclaimed. "Like coffee candy!"

  Laura laughed. "Donatella, you've discovered Bert's weakness. She has a sweet tooth."

  Donatella smiled with pleasure, her grin covering nearly the whole width of her round face. "In Florence, Bert, I'll take you to my favorite pastry shop!" She pushed back her short black hair, picked up the dish of chocolates and proceeded to describe each one's filling from memory.

  I had no trouble finishing the chocolates. They were as delicious as the coffee.

  Aldo Bianchi said with pride, "My wife is a food historian, Be
rt. It's a specialist study at University. Donatella teaches there and writes books and articles on ancient recipes and cooking."

  Aldo's Italian accent when he spoke English was strong, but charming, I thought. He was no taller than I, and average in all physical characteristics, except his dark hair that he wore a bit long. The most striking thing about him was the intellectual energy that emanated from his face and eyes and his deep voice. I guessed he was close to fifty years old.

  "A food historian. That's wonderful! I didn't know they existed!"

  Laura said, "That's how we met. I was researching some things for an article on Florentine cooking."

  Donatella glanced around the table to see who was still eating or drinking. "Hurry up! I've arranged two tours."

  *****

  On our way through the winding streets of San Gimignano to the first tour at a potter, I found myself next to Michela Whitehorse. "I hope you don't mind my asking, but I believe you're Italian and your husband is English. Did you meet in Italy?"

  "Oh, I don't mind your asking!" Michela sounded pleased by my curiosity. "I was a teacher when I met Colin. I used to bring my students to his library. My family was shocked when we got engaged!"

  "Because he was English?" I was suddenly worried about Laura and her future Italian in-laws.

  "No, because they had written me off as an old maid! I was over forty when I married, just five years ago."

  "My family wrote me off as an old maid when I was younger than that! They said I was too independent-minded and liked to study too much, so I would never make a good wife or mother."

  "Hmm, that sounds familiar. Laura said you never married. I hope that wasn't because of what your parents said."

  "No, I became a civilian archivist for the military. In those days, you either worked or you married, but you did not do both. Later, times changed and we women were told we could do both, but by then I was working in high-school libraries and was many years older. It just never happened."

  "I'm sure that just like me," Michela hesitated then finally said, "when I was teaching, you mentored many young people like Laura."

  "I mentored many young people but none like Laura. Her home life was difficult, so she spent much of her free time in the library. I helped her apply to University and for financial assistance, and tried to encourage her in her studies and later in her work."

  "You were like a mother," said Michela.

  "I don't know about that, especially these last years! It seems I've lost touch with what's happened in Laura's life. I didn't know she'd been ill!"

  "It was nerves more than anything else. Laura pushes herself so hard. She's much better now."

  "Do you think this young man will be good for her?"

  Michela hesitated before saying, "Tomaso is a Bartolini. They're a well-known family in Florence." She shrugged and said, "To be honest, Bert, I don't know him well enough to answer your question. I wish I did, for Laura's sake."

  "Laura said Tomaso has some difficulty socializing with people older than himself."

  "Laura said that?" Michela sounded surprised. "That she's admitted it!" She looked at me appraisingly. "I think you've a good influence on Laura, a motherly influence." Michela explained cautiously, "Italians like to mix with people just like themselves. It makes it difficult for people like Colin and I to make friends. Tomaso is normal, I suppose." She smiled. "Laura is exceptional, that's why we're so fond of her. She's curious, open and self-confident, and honest and not envious, which are qualities I have a hard time finding in Italian women. Donatella, of course, is an exception, too!" Michela laughed her pleasant laugh.

  "So Tomaso's friends may not accept Laura, you mean?"

  "I don't think Laura socializes at all with Tomaso's friends." Michela stopped there because we had arrived at a potter for our first tour.

  I gained very little from the tour. My mind was on the less than favorable impression Michela Whitehorse had given me of Laura's future husband.

  *****

  "You look tired, Bert. I hope it's not the company." Aldo fell into step next to me and smiled a rusty looking smile.

  "I'm just thinking about too many things at once."

  "It can help to talk about them. I'm at your service! We have another five minutes, at least, until we get to the restaurant. That should be enough to get to the bottom of any serious problem," Aldo said facetiously, in his soothing voice.

  I did not hesitate. "What do you think of Laura's fiancé? I don't want her to rush into anything, especially with her health only just improving."

  Aldo studied me a moment. Finally, he said, "Not only do you look the part, but you sound like Laura's mother." He mused on this in silence, seemingly too occupied with his own thoughts to answer my question about Tomaso.

  Laura's mother? I wondered why everyone was so preoccupied with my motherly relationship with Laura.

  *****

  I looked at Laura seated next to me at the restaurant table and said with surprise, "It's so strange to be sitting with you, here, in Italy!"

  "It's been too long. I know. I tried to write regularly but I just didn't feel up to traveling or calling," Laura said with some embarrassment.

  "We're together now, Laura." I felt I was sitting next to an older and wiser Laura.

  "I saw you speaking to Aldo earlier. That can be a difficult experience." Laura whispered her comments, so as not to be overhead by the others at the table. "Aldo's a psychoanalyst. They never answer questions. They only ask them!" She smiled and looked fondly at her friends. "Aldo and Donatella make an interesting couple, don't you think? Aldo intellectualizes everything and Donatella lives in the moment. Aldo distances his emotions and Donatella lives by them. I've always thought that Donatella is Aldo's link to life. That without her, he would be isolated and completely absorbed in his work."

  I suggested, "They complement each other. Without Aldo, perhaps Donatella would live too much in the moment and not make any plans for the future, or not reflect on where she's been."

  "I think you're right. By the way, I forgot to warn you that it's best not to mention children with them. They have some problems with their son. I'll explain later."

  Michela leaned over and said, "Bert, it looks like your jet-lag is coming on."

  "It couldn't be this light wine, could it?" I drank the last of the nearly clear liquid in my wine glass.

  Colin laughed. "Italian wine is deceptively light!"

  The waiter served our coffees right in time to keep me from nodding off. I savored the sugary mixture, imagining I could taste a difference from the coffee I had drunk earlier that afternoon.

  Donatella watched me closely, and then exclaimed, "You can taste the difference! You have exceptional taste buds! This is a more bitter coffee."

  I was taken aback by the compliment to my taste buds. It was the first I had ever received.

  Michela reassured me, "That is the highest compliment Donatella can give. You should be honored, Bert."

  During these exchanges, I had noticed Laura arguing quietly with Aldo. She seemed to disagree strongly with something he had suggested.

  Aldo turned to speak to the group. "I'd like to propose a brindisi, a toast, to Bert. She's been the mother Laura deserved but nature did not give her." He raised his glass and was quickly joined by the others, Laura included.

  Colin said, "It's a shame the Bartolinis won't be able to appreciate all that Laura has overcome in her life."

  "Why won't they?" I looked to Laura for an explanation, but Laura remained silent and avoided meeting my eye.

  "This is a traditional society," Colin explained. "Trust is family based. Laura is not Italian and that's a handicap. It's a double disadvantage that her family in America isn't admirable. I know all this from experience." He glanced at his wife who nodded in sympathy.

  Michela explained. "What Colin is saying is that if Laura tells the Bartolinis about her real family, they'll think less of her."

  "Think less of her? They should think more of her!" I exclaimed.