The Lure of the Italian Treasure Read online

  “I guess you know you’re pretty lucky, living in a place like this,” Frank said to Francesca.

  “Yes, of course,” she said with a sigh. “But I don’t know how much longer our luck will hold out.”

  “You mean, um . . . ” Frank couldn’t think of a nice way to refer to the money problems she had hinted about at breakfast.

  “Yes, Frank. I don’t know how much longer we can afford to keep the place going.”

  “Are you sure it’s that bad?” Joe asked.

  “That’s what Papa says,” she answered as they entered the restaurant.

  Joe couldn’t quite bring himself to feel sorry for her. After all, in the big scheme of things, she would still be a pretty lucky girl even if her family had to rent the place out. And if things were really so bad, why did she have her her own sports car?

  “Joseph is giving me one of those looks that my father gives me.”

  “Well, it does seem like you could rent your place for a lot of money.”

  “Okay, I see you are a thick-skinned American pragmatist,” she said to Joe. “After lunch I’m going to show you something.”

  “Okay—I think,” Joe said.

  “Can you all ride horses?” she asked.

  Joe and Frank nodded. Cosimo shook his head. “We Venetians ride boats, not horses.”

  • • •

  After dropping Cosimo off at the villa, Frank, Joe, and Francesca walked the half-mile to the count’s stables. Francesca whistled when they got close to the fenced-in ring and a beautiful palomino mare came prancing out of the stable, her white mane glistening in the midday sun.

  “Meet Lola,” Francesca said proudly as the horse came up and reached over the fence to get her muzzle scratched. “She was once a fine show horse, and she still has a lot of spirit.”

  Joe gently pulled open her mouth and examined her teeth. “She looks like she must be almost twenty years old.”

  “Very good,” Francesca said. “She’ll be nineteen next January. But she still loves to be ridden.” Francesca started walking toward the stable door. “Let’s go meet your horses and get them saddled.”

  Joe ended up with a black Arabian mare that a friend of the family boarded there, and Frank took the count’s young brown Hackney stallion. They started off walking so that Lola could slowly ease into her work. “She eventually does a pretty good canter,” Francesca said as they passed an old shirtless man pruning an olive tree. “Ciao, Giorgio,” she called out in a friendly greeting.

  He waved and flashed a toothless grin. Frank looked past him to admire the five or so acres of gently sloping land filled with evenly spaced olive trees. They were gnarled and twisted and grew low to the ground, as though they were straining to get away from the sun.

  Lola broke into a trot, and Francesca led her up the slope toward an old stone wall that climbed the hill. The slope was covered on their side of the wall with grape vines, but the wall was so high that even on horseback Frank couldn’t see what was on the other side.

  Frank’s stallion was growing impatient with Lola’s pace and wanted to move out. Frank pulled on the reins and shifted his weight to signal him to slow down, but he didn’t respond.

  “You two go ahead,” Francesca cried, seeing that both Frank and Joe were working hard to keep their young horses under control. “Lola and I will catch up in a minute.”

  As though understanding what Francesca had said, Frank’s stallion took off straight into a full gallop.

  Joe’s mare was right behind and the cadence of their hoofbeats echoed off the hard stone wall in the hot Tuscan air.

  Abruptly a gun blast erupted from behind the wall. Frank’s hot-blooded and skittish horse bolted to the left, running directly in front of Joe’s mare.

  “Steady, boy!” Frank yelled. He yanked hard on the right rein and dug his left knee into the stallion’s side, trying to pull the horse out of Joe’s path, but it was no use. Joe’s mare was barreling full speed right for him.

  7 A Smoking Gun

  * * *

  Joe’s mare was just taking off into the airborne phase of its gallop when the gunshot made Frank’s stallion bolt. Joe watched in horror as the stallion took a giant sideways leap into the path of his mare.

  There was no room to maneuver on the narrow path, and Joe knew he couldn’t prevent his horse from coming down on top of the stallion’s hindquarters. Joe could do nothing but brace himself for the fall. He squeezed tight with his knees against the horse’s shoulders and leaned down with his chest against her withers.

  “Hang on, old girl!” he yelled as he put his arms around her neck and held on tight. She gave a frightened whinny as her front legs came down on top of the stallion’s powerfully thrusting legs. Joe had a strange feeling that the tangled horses were falling in slow motion even though they were going top speed.

  As soon as his mare’s belly hit, Joe kicked his feet out of the stirrups and tried to direct his forward momentum into a roll to the side. He hit the ground hard, barely missing one of the wooden frames that held up the grape vines, and skidded on the hard, dry dirt. The horses came down the same way and Joe had to scramble fast to avoid being crushed by the twisting mass of his thousand-pound steed.

  Frank’s horse didn’t have Joe’s mare as a cushion and landed hard on its knees. It thwacked to a sudden stop, throwing Frank into the air before it rolled over. The ground seemed to fly into Frank before he could react. His face and chest were scraped across the rough surface for several feet before he came to an abrupt stop.

  Joe jumped to his feet and ran toward Frank, but the stallion was up, too, rearing and threatening to stomp Frank.

  “Get out of the way, Frank!” Joe shouted. But Frank lay there motionless.

  Just then Francesca rode up and skillfully drove Lola between Frank and his stallion. She used Lola’s muscular flank to shove the stallion, narrowly avoiding its hammering hoofs. Then both Joe’s and Frank’s frightened horses raced off down the hill.

  “Is he . . . all right?” Francesca asked after swinging off her horse and running to Frank and Joe.

  “He’s coming to now,” Joe said as he anxiously leaned over Frank. Not knowing whether Frank had broken any part of his spine, Joe didn’t dare move him, though he was lying facedown in the dirt.

  “I’d better ride down and call for an ambulance,” she said as Frank groaned and winced.

  “No . . . I’m okay,” Frank said, slowly rolling over.

  “Take it easy,” Joe said, relieved that Frank could move.

  “No, really,” Frank said as he sat up. “I’m just a little shook up. I didn’t break anything.”

  “You sure did a number on your face,” Joe said as he examined the scrape that extended from one side of his forehead to his chin. “You must at least have a broken nose.”

  “Yeah, maybe so,” Frank said as he ran a hand over the damage. “There goes my modeling career.” He looked up at Francesca and then over toward the wall from where the gunshot had come. “What’s with the idiot who fired the gun? Was somebody trying to kill us?”

  “I’m afraid it was just bad luck, Frank,” Francesca said, kneeling beside him. “A lot of people hunt around here—it could even have been our cook. You just rode by with the wrong horse at the wrong time.”

  “No kidding. That’s one frisky horse you’ve got there.”

  “Yes, he’s quite hot-blooded. But you were doing well with him, I thought.”

  Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to accept this innocent explanation. He decided to climb the wall to see what was on the other side.

  From the top of the ten-foot wall, whose large, uneven stones made it easy to scale, he could see nothing but a thin forest of deciduous trees with a path cut through it. He walked down the flat-topped wall several yards until he could see the clearing on the plateau below. As he was about to turn back to the others, he caught out of the corner of his eye a tiny distant figure running toward the stable.

  He had a vague feelin
g that he had better start to play his cards a little closer to his chest. It was hard to believe that Francesca would plan anything like this, but he couldn’t help thinking that if someone had tried to hurt them, he couldn’t have done it without Francesca telling him that they were going to ride that way. He decided not to tell Frank about seeing the fleeing figure until they were alone.

  I’m probably just being paranoid, he said to himself as he climbed down the wall. And even if she told somebody we were going riding and where we were headed, it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s involved.

  “I’ll give Frank a ride down,” Francesca said as she rode up beside Joe. Frank was sitting behind her, with his arms around her waist, looking quite pale.

  “Okay, I’ll meet you down there.”

  As they rode away, Joe climbed back up the wall and dropped over to the other side. He searched the ground until he found what he was looking for: the spent cartridge from the bullet that had scared their horses.

  Hmm, he said to himself as he sniffed the fresh powder. An 8-mm Fiocchi. That would be about right for hunting. He followed the path down, but found nothing else of interest.

  • • •

  When Joe reached the stable, he found Frank helping Francesca put up the tack of all three horses, the two renegades having peacefully returned home. He joined in, and together they began cleaning the horses’ feet with hoof-picks and inspecting them for any injuries. They worked quietly, Francesca singing an old Italian folk tune that she said Lola liked.

  While he listened to her singing, Joe wondered if she would steal to keep this life? And kill to keep her secret? Cosimo had said that according to the newspaper, the Etruscan jewels might fetch up to five million dollars on the black market. That could pay for a few household repairs, all right.

  Having found no injuries that couldn’t be patched with the first-aid supplies on hand, they were about to leave when a man walked in through the arched doorway. He acted surprised and, Joe thought, a little annoyed to see them.

  “Oh, hi, Vito darling,” Francesca said, running up to him and giving him a kiss. “You haven’t met my American friends, have you? I was just showing them the estate when we had a bit of an adventure.”

  “I see. Inexperienced riders, yes?” Vito asked with a deep, thickly accented voice. He started laughing when he noticed Frank’s face, with its scrapes and bruises.

  “Oh, come on, Vito, don’t be cruel,” she replied, stepping back from him. He was dark and tall—taller than either Frank or Joe—and had a set of perfect white teeth, which made him look as though he belonged on the set of a movie. Joe figured he was in his early twenties. “Actually, they are excellent riders,” Francesca said. “The problem was with Papa’s new stallion.”

  “Perhaps he does not like Americans?” Vito said, flashing his teeth.

  Joe studied Vito carefully to see if there was any sign that he had been shooting a gun or running down a hill. He did look hot, but then who didn’t? It must have been about ninety-five degrees. Joe wished he could think of a way to get Vito’s hand analyzed for gunshot primer residue, to see if he had fired a gun recently. But he didn’t think he could get Inspector Barducci to do a nitric acid swab just because the guy was acting like a jerk.

  “I’d like to see you ride that stallion past a gunshot,” Francesca said, backing farther away from him and closer to Frank.

  “Why shouldn’t I be able to?” Vito asked. “How else does one hunt?”

  “You’ve never hunted on horseback,” Francesca said, laughing.

  “But do you doubt that I could?” He stood there with his arms crossed, his jaw jutting out. He was obviously trying to look serious and important, but Joe couldn’t suppress a snicker.

  “Excuse my boyfriend’s bragging,” Francesca said, turning to Frank and Joe with a shrug. “I think he must be jealous of you.”

  Vito turned around and stomped off in anger. As Francesca ran after him, Joe shook his head. “There’s one mixed-up chick.”

  “I won’t disagree with you this time, Joe.”

  • • •

  About two hours later, Joe was brushing the dirt from another pottery fragment when Bruno poked his head over the mud-brick wall and peered down into the pit.

  “Scusate,” he said, excusing himself.

  Cosimo looked up. “Ciao, Bruno, come sta?” He asked how the other man was.

  Frank, Joe, and Cosimo left Julia in the pit to check out what Bruno wanted them to see. Cosimo explained it all to Frank and Joe after listening to Bruno.

  Professor Mosca had asked Bruno to drain the large reflecting pond near the east end of the dig because water had been seeping into the trenches. Bruno had been unable to turn off the valve of the old pipe that fed the fountain with water from the reservoir on Monte Morello, so he had had to explore the extensive passageways under the villa in order to find the master valve.

  He was holding the huge villa keyring, with its dozens of keys dangling from it, as he trotted toward the kitchen entrance. He seemed ten years younger as he excitedly explained what he had found to Cosimo. Whether or not he was making up a story to clear himself, he seemed genuinely enthusiastic to Joe.

  “He says he’s found a secret passageway that no one on the staff knows about,” Cosimo said. “It’s behind a set of shelves in the wine cellar.”

  “Did he find anything in it?” asked Frank, who still had a slight trace of a headache.

  “Apparently nothing unusual. He just thought we’d like to see it.”

  “He seems to be in a good mood,” Joe said.

  “I think so,” Cosimo said. “He even joked that now he has a place to hide if Inspector Barducci comes to get him.”

  “Ask him what our silence is worth to him,” Joe said as they descended the narrow stone steps that led to the dank cellar.

  Bruno gave Joe a dark smile in reply. “He asks how much your lives are worth to you,” Cosimo said.

  Joe realized this was a joke and took it as a joke, laughing and slapping the strong gardener on the back. But he could see from Frank’s expression that they were both thinking the same thing. When a man who has spent five years in prison jokes about murdering someone, the humor has an edge.

  Frank ducked to get under the beam at the bottom of the steps and was amazed at what he saw when Bruno flipped on the light—a large dust-filled cavern, teeming with racks of wine bottles from floor to ceiling. Most of them looked as if they’d been gathering dust for a long time. “There must be thousands of bottles here.”

  “It is no doubt worth a fortune,” Cosimo said. “Suddenly I am not feeling so worried about Francesca—if I ever was.”

  “Well, the count is in the wine-making business,” Joe said. “Maybe this is just unsold bad wine, going sour.”

  “I doubt it very much,” Cosimo said.

  Bruno led them over to the shadowy end of the room and trained a flashlight on the ceiling. “Guardate il tubo,” he said, tracing the path of a large steel pipe to a hole in the wall above a wine rack. The light traveled down the wall to a vertical piece of the framing that supported the wine rack. Bruno motioned them over and shone the light on the side of the frame. Joe put his head right up against the bottles, and could just make out the outline of a metal hinge glimmering in the beam of light.

  Bruno reached behind a bottle several feet to the right of the hinge and pulled a lever. Then he grabbed a shelf and opened the secret door.

  “Amazing!” Joe said as he peered into the dark tunnel. “Let’s check it out.”

  After a low, narrow passage, a room opened up that looked like a little underground chapel, about twelve feet by fifteen. Eight simple worm-eaten wooden benches were laid out on either side of an aisle that led to a wooden structure, which looked to Frank like an altar.

  “Weird,” Frank said, turning to Cosimo. “Do you think some kind of religious group met down here?”

  “It certainly looks that way. Perhaps the Ruffini were heretics at some poin
t in their history.”

  “Hey, maybe this is somehow connected to the secret entrance to the garden,” Joe suggested.

  Cosimo shrugged. He looked as though he was deep in thought. Frank was about to ask Cosimo if he could guess when the chapel had been built, when Joe broke the silence.

  “Hey, look at this chest,” he said, shining his flashlight on the floor between two benches. “It’s got Capitano Alfonso Ruffino marked on the top.”

  “Bruno says he’s the father of Count Ruffino,” Cosimo relayed.

  Joe tried the lid and found that it opened easily. “What kind of uniform is this?” he asked Cosimo, examining a brown officer’s jacket decorated with ribbons and medals.

  “Evidently this count was not quite as independent minded as some of his ancestors,” Cosimo said, bending over to take a look. “This is a Fascist uniform from World War Two. Captain Alfonso Ruffino was an enemy of your country and a disgrace to mine.”

  “No wonder the count hidden it,” Frank said.

  “Look at this!” Joe said as he turned back the uniform to see what else was in the foot-deep wooden chest. “A rifle.”

  “It must have been Captain Ruffino’s weapon in the war,” Frank said.

  “Yeah, and it’s someone else’s weapon now,” Joe said, after he bent over to examine the action. “It smells like fresh powder.”

  “Strange,” Cosimo said, taking a closer look.

  As Cosimo and Bruno heatedly discussed the gun, Joe kneeled down to get a closer look at it. He was careful not to leave or disturb any fingerprints as he read off the identifying marks on the barrel. “It’s an eight-millimeter. Mannlicher.”

  “Did you say eight-millimeter?” Frank asked, remembering that as the size of caliber cartridge Joe had said he found near the bridle path.

  Joe had told Cosimo about it as well, and Cosimo suddenly seemed to stiffen as he realized what it might mean. “So the person who tried to kill you hid the gun in here?” Cosimo asked. “Let’s get out of here!”