The Lure of the Italian Treasure Read online

  “So what good will it do to kill us?”

  “I have not yet decided what to do with you, but if you don’t shut up, I will kill you for sure.”

  Now the group was in a small opening in the thick stand of trees, about fifty yards from the road. “You boys tie the men’s hands behind their backs with their belts,” he said.

  Frank and Joe did what he said, tying the thugs’ hands together.

  “Now you,” he said, pointing to Joe. “Tie Francesca to your brother.”

  Joe did so.

  “Now lie down on your stomach.”

  Joe did as he said.

  Frank watched in horror as Claudio slowly walked over to Joe, pointing the gun at him.

  Francesca screamed, “No!”

  15 The Truth at Last

  * * *

  Frank sat on the forest floor, his hands fastened to Francesca’s, and watched helplessly as Claudio—if that was his real name—approached Joe. He was starting to aim at Joe’s back when Francesca screamed once more. Claudio looked over at her and said something in Italian. It was the first time Frank or Joe had heard him use his native tongue. His words came out in a fast staccato, with a strange pronunciation that neither Frank nor Joe had heard before. But Francesca came back with a torrent of words that seemed to silence him.

  Claudio lowered his gun to his side. “If you come after me, I’ll kill you,” he said to Joe. Without saying goodbye to Francesca, he ran toward the road and was soon out of sight.

  Joe got up and untied Frank and Francesca. By the diffuse blue-gray morning light, Joe watched the thugs get to their feet and struggle to loosen their bound hands. “Not so fast,” he said, realizing that they probably didn’t understand English. Not that they would have listened.

  They began running away slowly and awkwardly since they were still joined at the hands. Frank and Joe together jumped on their backs and wrestled them to the ground. Then Joe tried to hold them down while Frank got the other belt to tie their legs with.

  The plan didn’t work. The thugs kept kicking and squirming, and it looked as if they were about to free their hands when Francesca came up and grabbed both of the thugs by the hair, pulling them back down to the ground. They screamed as she pulled hard, and then they finally submitted to being tied up with a belt.

  After they were secured, Francesca stood up, put her hands together, and lifted them toward Frank. “My turn,” she said.

  “There aren’t any belts left,” Frank said. “You walk ahead of us.”

  As the sun pushed back the night, they walked silently toward the autostrada, into a light breeze. Frank watched the wind ruffle Francesca’s dark curls, and he remembered following her on horseback and thinking that she belonged there on that mountain, her hair bouncing to the same rhythm as Lola’s mane. Now he wondered if she would ever be able to ride there again.

  When they reached the highway, a gas station was just opening for business.

  “I guess the fastest way to reach the police at this point is to call the villa,” Frank said as they approached the tasteful stone building.

  “I bet by now Cosimo has led them to the recording device,” said Joe.

  “Which means they’ll have a pretty good idea of what actually happened,” said Frank, looking at Francesca as she blankly watched the cars zipping by on the autostrada. “Count Ruffino probably thinks Francesca’s dead by now.”

  Upon hearing this, Francesca took off toward the highway and screamed, “I wish I were dead!” They ran after her and caught her. She didn’t try to fight their grip as they slowly led her back to the gas station.

  Joe let go of her and handed her over to Frank. “I’ll go make the call,” he said.

  After standing in silence for several minutes, Frank ventured a word. “If we hadn’t caught you, you would never have seen Claudio again. You would have been robbed blind. No payment, no boyfriend.”

  Francesca nodded and kept looking down. She didn’t seem to mind hearing Frank laying it all out for her, so he went on.

  “Now at least you know you were tricked by professionals. They’ve probably done stuff like this before. Of course, it doesn’t really excuse you. You agreed to steal the artifacts.”

  Apparently having heard enough, she turned away from Frank. “Those things had been on our family estate for centuries. They belong to us.”

  “Give it up, Francesca.” Frank couldn’t believe that anybody could be so piggishly selfish as to really think that. “Those things are way too important to belong to one family,” he said. “Julia said that nothing’s ever been found like those jewels. Besides, your family hasn’t owned the land for two and a half thousand years. In the big scheme of history, you’re a newcomer—and a spoiled one at that.”

  That was the end of the discussion. When Joe came out, they let her sit by herself on a bench until the police came.

  They got Francesca to direct the police to the spot where they had tied up the thugs. But the police seemed reluctant to believe her. Then they were all shoved roughly into the backseat of one of the two squad cars.

  “I guess they don’t know whom to trust,” Frank said.

  “Can’t blame them, exactly,” Joe said. “I’m just starting to get a grip on all this myself.”

  “Let’s hope the dynamic duo is still tied up. I think the police will believe us if they see we bagged those guys.”

  There were a few tense minutes while Frank and Joe waited in the car for the police to find the thugs. “Whew!” Joe said as the two were led out of the woods.

  When the men had been secured in the back of the other car, both cars set off for Florence. After a few exchanges on the police radio, the officer in the front passenger seat turned around and gave Frank and Joe a smile. “Avete fato bene,” he said.

  Francesca explained what she had gleaned from the radio conversation. “The men have been identified. They both have long records,” she said flatly. “It looks like you two will be big heroes at the police station in Florence.”

  “We’re not going to Sesto Fiorentino?” Joe asked.

  “No, it sounds like they’re bringing in all kinds of agents from different departments to question you. They’ve also notified all the border crossings so they can catch Speck.”

  Soon after they arrived at the station, they heard that Speck had been picked up on the autostrada long before he arrived at the Swiss border. He had both the statue of the centaur and the jewelry box with him, along with several other stolen artifacts.

  Inspector Barducci arrived after they’d already been interrogated by agents from customs and from the organized crime unit centered in Rome, all of whom spoke perfect English. Francesca had stayed with them and confessed everything willingly.

  “I suppose I owe you gentlemen an apology,” the inspector said after consulting with the agents.

  “That’s okay,” Joe said. “It turns out we didn’t have a very good idea of what was going on, anyway.”

  “You were way ahead of me.” She turned to Francesca. “Now, young lady, what are we going to do with you?”

  They began speaking in Italian, while Frank and Joe were told they were free to go. An officer came in holding a large cardboard box and offered them a ride back to the villa.

  “I think the archaeologists will be glad to see you bringing this back.”

  “You’ve got the artifacts?” Frank asked excitedly.

  “Yes, well, I saw one piece of jewelry my wife would like, but in general it is a little too, uh . . . ”

  “Old-fashioned?” Joe supplied, while the officer searched for the right word in English.

  “Yes, that’s it,” he said, laughing.

  By the time the police dropped Frank and Joe back at the villa, it was midafternoon. At that point, there was still no word on who Vito, a.k.a. Claudio, might be. He was still on the loose, and Frank and Joe figured he might be hard to catch.

  Cosimo and Julia were sitting on the bench under the statue of Hercules and
Cerberus when the Hardys entered the garden with the box. Frank and Joe sneaked up on them from behind.

  “A package for Julia Russell!” Joe announced as he put the box down on the bench next to her.

  “No!” she screamed in delight. “It can’t be!”

  “With our compliments,” Frank said.

  “We couldn’t get the police to tell us anything,” Cosimo said as Julia opened the box. “What happened?”

  “Never mind!” Julia cried. “Look at this, will you. The jewelry is more beautiful than I rememembered.”

  Once the excitement died down a little, they exchanged stories, and Cosimo explained that he and the count had gone to the piazza with the police at about four in the morning. They had stayed in Inspector Barducci’s car while five other police cars converged on the scene where Francesca and “Vito” had put on their show. By the time they arrived, the place was deserted. When they found the eavesdropping equipment that Joe had thrown on the ground, everyone assumed that Frank and Joe had been discovered, even though the tape didn’t reveal anything about how it had happened.

  The whole business had been very hard on the count, but when he heard the tape of his daughter being thrown in the trunk and threatened with death, he was beside himself.

  “It was terrible to watch the poor man,” said Cosimo. “He kept blaming himself for doing a bad job raising Francesca after his wife died.”

  “From what you say,” Julia said, “it’s actually pretty hard to know what to make of Francesca. She certainly did wrong, but she was also the victim of some very treacherous people. I guess she’s young enough to have learned a lesson.”

  “Speaking of which, has anybody seen Bruno?” Frank asked. “It sure is good to know that he wasn’t the thief.”

  “He came back earlier today,” Cosimo pointed out. “And you will be glad to know that my theory was exactly right.”

  “You mean, he went back to the gun and fooled around with it?” Joe asked.

  “Yes. He said he was just curious.”

  “Boy, we’re going to have to give him a hard time about that,” Frank said.

  “No kidding,” Joe said. “If we’d found Vito’s fingerprints on that gun, this whole thing would have been over much earlier.”

  “Except that Julia convinced us not to do anything about the gun,” Frank pointed out, smiling at Julia.

  “I thought you were just a couple of silly boys with delusions of grandeur. I still can’t believe that you pulled this off.”

  “And what about now?” Joe asked.

  “Hmm. No, you’re right. Silly must not be the right word.” Julia smiled as she looked them over thoroughly. “Let’s see now—there’s Frank, with a big scab across his face, his belt missing, and ridiculously dirty clothes.”

  “Never mind,” Joe said. “You can skip my description.”

  “No, really, Joe, I do concede that silly was the wrong word, but I can’t think of the right one.”

  “How about humbled,” Joe suggested.

  “Okay, good, that’ll do,” Julia said. “After all, I wouldn’t want any of this to go to your head. We’ve still got work to do.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  A MINSTREL PAPERBACK Original

  A Minstrel Book published by

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1999 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Front cover illustration by Broeck Steadman

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-03445-6

  ISBN 978-1-4391-1427-8 (eBook)

  First Minstrel Books printing July 1999

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