“Holy crap!” Janice sat back, overwhelmed. “If it’s this easy, then why didn’t Mom go tomb raiding herself?”
Just then, one of our candle stumps extinguished itself with a small puff, and although we still had other candles left, the shadows of the room suddenly seemed to close in on us from all sides.
“She knew she was in danger,” I replied, my voice oddly hollow in the darkness, “and that’s why she did what she did, and put the code in the book, the book in the box, and the box in the bank.”
“So,” said Janice, trying to hit a bushy-tailed note, “now that we’ve solved the riddle, what’s preventing us from-”
“Breaking into a protected building and wrecking Saint Catherine’s cell with a crowbar?” I made a face. “Gee, I don’t know!”
“Seriously. It’s what Mom would want us to do. Isn’t it?”
“It’s not that simple.” I poked at the book, trying to remember the exact words in the message. “Mom tells us to ‘go with Romeo’s ghostly confessor… sacrificed before his time.’ Who is that? That’s Friar Lorenzo. Obviously not the real one, but maybe his new… incarnation. And I bet that means we were right: The old guy knows something about the location of the crypt and the grave-something crucial, which even Mom couldn’t figure out.”
“So, what are you suggesting?” Janice wanted to know. “That we kidnap Friar Lorenzo and interrogate him under a hundred-watt bulb? Look, maybe you got it wrong. Let’s do this one more time, separately, and see if we get the same result-” She began opening the drawers in the desk one by one. “Come on! There’s gotta be some pens kicking around here somewhere!… Wait! Hang on!” She stuck her whole head into the bottom drawer, struggling to liberate something that was trapped in the woodwork. When she finally got it loose, she sat up triumphantly, her hair tumbling over her face. “Will you look at that! A letter!”
But it was not a letter. It was a blank envelope full of photographs.
BY THE TIME we had finished looking at Mom’s photographs, Janice declared that we needed at least one more bottle of vino to get through the night without going totally insane. While she went downstairs to get it, I turned to the photos again, putting them out on the desk side by side, my hands still shaking from the shock, hoping I could somehow make them tell a different story.
But there could only be one interpretation of Mom’s exploits in Italy; no matter how we sliced it, the main characters and the conclusion remained the same: Diane Lloyd had gone to Italy, had started working for Professor Tolomei, had met a young playboy in a yellow Ferrari, had become pregnant, had married Professor Tolomei, had given birth to twin girls, had survived a house fire that had killed her elderly husband, and had proceeded to hook up once again with the young playboy, who, in every single photo, looked so happy with the twins-that is, with us-that we both agreed he must be our real father.
That playboy was Umberto.
“This is so unreal!” wheezed Janice, returning with bottle and corkscrew. “All these years. Pretending to be a butler and never saying a word. It’s too friggin’ weird.”
“Although,” I said, picking up one of the photos of him with us, “he always was our dad. Even if we didn’t call him that. He was always-” But I couldn’t go on.
Only now did I look up and see that Janice was crying, too, although she was wiping away her tears angrily, not wanting Umberto to have that satisfaction. “What a scumbag!” she said. “Forcing us to live his lie all these years. And now suddenly-” She broke off with a grunt, as the wine cork broke in half.
“Well,” I said, “at least it explains why he knew about the golden statue. He obviously got all that from Mom. And if they really were… you know, together, he must have known about the box of papers in the bank as well. Which explains why he would write a fake letter to me from Aunt Rose, telling me to go to Siena and speak to Presidente Maconi in Palazzo Tolomei in the first place. He obviously got that name from Mom.”
“But all this time!” Janice spilled some wine on the table as she hurriedly filled up our glasses, and a few drops fell on the photos. “Why didn’t he do it years ago? Why didn’t he explain all this to Aunt Rose while she was still alive-?”
“Yeah right!” I quickly wiped the wine from the photos. “Of course he couldn’t tell her the truth. She would have called the police right away.” Pretending to be Umberto, I said in a deep voice, “By the way, Rosie-doll, my real name is Luciano Salimbeni-yes, the man who killed Diane and who is wanted by the Italian authorities. If you had ever bothered to visit Diane in Italy-bless her heart-you’d have met me a hundred times.”
“But what a life!” Janice interjected. “Look at this-” She pointed at the photos of Umberto and the Ferrari, parked on some scenic spot overlooking a Tuscan valley and smiling into the camera with the eyes of a lover. “He had it all. And then… he becomes a servant in Aunt Rose’s house.”
“Mind you,” I said, “he was a fugitive. Aless-someone told me he was one of the most wanted criminals in Italy. Lucky for him he wasn’t in jail. Or dead. At least, working for Aunt Rose, he could watch us growing up in some kind of freedom.”
“I still don’t believe it!” Janice shook her head dismissively. “Yes, Mom is pregnant in her wedding photo, but that happens to a lot of women. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that the groom is not the father.”
“Jan!” I pushed a few of the wedding photos towards her. “Professor Tolomei was old enough to be her grandfather. Put yourself in Mom’s shoes for a second.” Seeing that she was determined to disagree with me, I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her closer. “Come on, it’s the only explanation. Look at him-” I picked up one of many photos of Umberto lying on a blanket in the grass with Janice and me crawling all over him. “He loves us.” As soon as I said the words, I felt a lump in my throat and had to swallow to keep down the tears. “Crap!” I whimpered, “I don’t think I can take much more of this.”
We sat for a moment in unhappy silence. Then Janice put down her wineglass and picked up a group photo taken in front of Castello Salimbeni. “So,” she said, at last, “does this mean your mobster queen is our… grandmother?” The photo showed Eva Maria juggling a large hat and two small dogs on a leash, Mom looking efficient with white slacks and a clipboard, Professor Tolomei frowning and saying something to the photographer, and a young Umberto off to a side, leaning against his Ferrari, arms crossed. “Whatever the hell it means,” she went on, before I could answer, “I hope I’ll never meet him again.”
We probably should have seen it coming, but didn’t. Too busy unraveling the knot that our lives had become, we had forgotten to pay attention to things that go bump in the night, or even to sit back and use our common sense for a moment.
Not until a voice spoke to us from the door to the office did we realize how moronic we had been, seeking refuge in Mom’s house.
“What a nice little family reunion,” said Umberto, stepping into the room ahead of two other men I’d never seen before. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Umberto!” I exclaimed, jumping from the chair. “What on earth-”
“Julie! No!” Janice grabbed my arm and pulled me back down, her face contorted with fear.
Only now did I see it. Umberto’s hands were tied in the back, and one of the men was holding a gun to his head.
“My friend Cocco here,” said Umberto, able to maintain his cool despite the muzzle burrowing into his neck, “would like to know if you ladies are going to be of use to him, or not.”