“And that someone is me?”
I glared at him. “Maybe not. I just assumed someone like you wouldn’t want someone like him running loose in your precious Siena. But”-I made a move to get up-“I see that I got you all wrong.”
Now, finally, Alessandro leaned forward with mock concern and put his elbows on the table. “All right, Miss Tolomei, tell me why you think someone is trying to kill you.”
Never mind that I had nowhere else to go; I would have walked right out of there, had it not been for the fact that he had finally called me Miss Tolomei. “Well-” I moved uncomfortably on the edge of the seat. “How about this: He followed me through the streets, broke into my hotel room, and then, this morning, he came after me with a gun-”
“That,” said Alessandro, deploying a great deal of patience, “doesn’t mean he intends to kill you.” He paused to study my face, then frowned. “How do you expect me to help you, if you are not telling me the truth?”
“But I am! I swear!” I tried to think of some other way of convincing him, but my eyes were drawn to the tattoos on his right forearm, and my brain was busy processing the impulse. This was not the Alessandro I had expected to find coming into Palazzo Salimbeni. The Alessandro I knew was polished and subtle, if not downright square-toed, and he certainly did not have a dragonfly-or whatever the heck it was-etched into his wrist.
If he could read my thoughts, he didn’t show it. “Not the whole truth. There are a lot of pieces missing in the puzzle.”
I snapped upright. “What makes you think there is a big picture?”
“There is always a big picture. So, tell me what he is after.”
I took a deep breath, only too aware that I had chosen to put myself in this situation, and that a more substantial explanation was due. “Okay,” I finally said, “I think he is after something that my mother left for me. Some family heirloom that my parents found years ago, and which she wanted me to have. So, she hid it in a place where only I could find it. Why? Because-whether you like it or not-I am Giulietta Tolomei.”
I looked at him defiantly and found him studying my face with something akin to a smile. “And have you found it?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet. All I’ve found is a rusty box full of paper, an old… banner, and some kind of dagger, and quite frankly, I don’t see-”
“Aspetta!” Alessandro held up a hand to make me slow down. “What kind of paper, what kind of banner?”
“Stories, letters. Silly stuff. Don’t get me started. And the banner, apparently, is a cencio from 1340. I found it wrapped around a dagger, like this, in a drawer-”
“Wait! Are you saying you found the cencio from 1340?”
I was surprised to see him reacting even more strongly to this news than my cousin Peppo had. “Yes, I think so. Apparently it is very special. And the dagger-”
“Where is it?”
“In a secure place. I left it at the Owl Museum.” Seeing that he did not follow, I added, “My cousin, Peppo Tolomei, is the curator. He told me he would take care of it for me.”
Alessandro groaned and ran both hands through his hair.
“What?” I said. “Was that not a good idea?”
“Merda!” He got up, reached into a drawer to pull out a handgun, and slipped it into the holster in his belt. “Come on, let’s go!”
“Wait! What’s going on?” I got up reluctantly. “You’re not suggesting we go see my cousin with that… gun?”
“No, it’s not a suggestion. Come on!”
As we hurried down the corridor, he glanced at my feet. “Can you run in those things?”
“Look,” I said, struggling to keep up, “I just wanna make one thing absolutely clear. I don’t believe in guns. I just want peace. Okay?”
Alessandro stopped in the middle of the corridor, took out the gun, and wrapped my hand around it before I realized what he was doing. “Can you feel that? That’s a gun. It exists. And there are a lot of people out there who do believe in it. So, excuse me for taking care of them so you can have your peace.”
WE LEFT THE BANK through a back entrance and ran all the way down a street that was open to motorized traffic. This was not the way I knew, but sure enough, it brought us right to Piazzetta del Castellare. Alessandro took out the gun as we approached the door of the Owl Museum, but I pretended not to notice.
“Stay behind me,” he said, “and if things go bad, lie down on the floor and cover your head.” Not waiting for me to respond, he put a finger on his lips and slowly opened the door.
I dutifully entered the museum a few steps behind him. There was no question in my mind that he was overreacting, but I was going to let him reach that conclusion on his own. As it was, the whole building was completely silent, and there was no evidence of criminal activity. We walked through several rooms, gun first, but in the end I stopped. “Okay, listen-” But Alessandro immediately put a hand to my mouth to silence me, and as we stood there, both tense, I heard it, too: the sound of someone moaning.
Moving faster through the remaining rooms, we soon circled in on the sound, and once Alessandro had made sure it was not an ambush, we rushed inside to find Peppo lying on the floor of his own office, bruised but alive.
“Oh, Peppo!” I cried, trying to help him. “Are you okay?”
“No!” he shot back. “Of course I am not okay! I think I fell. I can’t use my leg.”
“Hold on-” I looked around to see where he had put his crutch, and my eyes fell on a safe in the corner, open and empty. “Did you see the man who did this?”
“What man?” Peppo tried to sit up, but winced in pain. “Oh, my head! I need my pills. Salvatore! Oh no, wait. It is Salvatore’s day off-what day is it?”
“Non ti muovere!” Alessandro knelt down and spent a moment examining Peppo’s legs. “I think his tibia is broken. I will call an ambulance.”
“Wait! No!” Peppo evidently did not want an ambulance. “I was just going to close the safe. Do you hear me? I must close the safe.”
“Let’s worry about the safe later,” I said.
“The dagger… it is in the boardroom. I was looking it up in a book. It must go in the safe, too. It is evil!”
Alessandro and I exchanged glances. Now was not the time to tell Peppo that it was far too late to close the safe. Clearly, the cencio was gone, as was every other treasure that my cousin had been safeguarding. But maybe the thief had not noticed the dagger. And so I got up and walked into the boardroom, and sure enough, Romeo’s dagger was lying right there on the table, next to a collector’s guide to medieval weaponry.
The dagger clutched in my hand, I returned to Peppo’s office just as Alessandro was calling an ambulance.
“Ah yes,” said my cousin, seeing the dagger, “there it is. Put it in the safe, quickly. It brings bad luck. See what happened to me. The book says it has the spirit of the devil in it.”
PEPPO HAD SUFFERED a minor concussion and a broken bone, but the doctor insisted on keeping him at the hospital overnight, hooked up to various machines, just in case. Unfortunately, she also insisted on telling him precisely what had happened to him.
“She says someone hit him over the head and stole everything in the safe,” Alessandro whispered to me, translating the spirited conversation between the doctor and her cranky patient, “and he says that he wants to speak to the real doctor, and that no one would hit him over the head in his own museum.”
“Giulietta!” exclaimed Peppo, when he had finally succeeded in driving out the doctor, “What do you make of this? The nurse says someone broke into the museum!”
“I’m afraid it’s true,” I said, taking his hand. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t-”