“I know.” He grinned. “She just left. Too bad you weren’t here earlier.”
“But I’ve come to see you.”
“Here’s her latest design.” He showed her a velvet pillbox that sat on the counter, its feathers tall and silky and shiny in the late morning sun, but she wasn’t tempted to linger.
“The photos, please? I suppose the police questioned you about them.”
He smiled. “In police custody.”
“I don’t believe you.” She smiled and crossed her arms.
He shut his eyes and wagged his head, his lips making a moue.
He reminded her of Carlo when he still had his charm, and her stomach lurched.
Ricci sighed, said she’d won, and asked her to follow him to the back room. She took a seat in front of his desk, watched as he walked to the other side of the room, opened a drawer, and retrieved a packet bound in felt.
After he untied the string, he lifted the contents and the cloth fell away, revealing a series of prints and plates. He pushed them across the desk so they faced her, and she picked up a photograph, squinting at it before holding it closer to the light. She winced and tried to catch her breath.
The first was a frontal view of a woman’s face distorted, recently robbed of life, the skin and muscle blown away from the woman’s left side so that the some of the skull was exposed. Could she have misconstrued it as a likeness of Elena’s face? Never. She leafed through the others, each filled with horror, each one of the same woman, definitely not Elena. Beneath them were the plates.
“The police haven’t been here?”
He shook his head. “As far as I know, they questioned my mother, but on another matter.”
“And?”
He lifted his hands and smiled.
“Have you been to Longchamp?”
He shook his head.
“You offered to show me around, remember?”
“I thought you meant recently.”
“Elena paid your debts?”
He nodded.
“You’re lying.” Despite his charm, he was difficult. He looked at her, all innocent, revealing nothing, hiding everything. Maddening.
While she reached into her reticule, she watched him tip his kippah forward and scratch the back of his head.
“Do those things itch?”
He laughed. “Sometimes. This is a difficult situation for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you. I like Carmela, but I have a duty to protect my own.”
“You have a duty to the truth, just like I do.”
“But why pursue it? Elena’s dead. Our relative, at times fun, at times a horror, a blight upon the family name. But now she is no more. She’s buried.”
“In Oltramari, this might be true. But this is Paris.”
“We hide from the truth, too.”
Serafina got up to leave. As she opened the door, she heard the brass bell, but told herself she’d been too hasty and walked unannounced into the back.
“One more question,” she said and brought out the wad of papers that Rosa found in Elena’s apartment. She spread them out so they were facing him, each one a statement of debt owed to Elena.
“Do you recognize these?”
He smiled at her but didn’t look at the papers. “Not mine.”
“Then whose are they?”
He didn’t answer.
“So do you deny signing these?”
He nodded.
“Whoever signed them must be a close relative. Not your mother, she wouldn’t… she works hard and doesn’t have time for Longchamp. Then whose? You know but you’re not telling me.”
He tipped his kippah and scratched his head.
She rolled her eyes, trying not to smile. “Who took the photographs, one of your brothers?”
“I didn’t take the photographs.”
She stopped and thought.
“Who photographed the woman?”
He didn’t reply.
“You have a brother.”
“Two. I have two. One you won’t find. The other one manages the store on Rue de Verneuil, or did the last time I talked to him.”
“May I see your signature?”
He reached in the drawer and pulled out paper and ink and signed his name. Nothing like the signature on the IOUs.
“May I keep it?”
He smiled. “Of course.”
“Why won’t I find Beniamino?”
“He disappears.”
“How long ago did you see him?”
“Some weeks ago, but my mother sent him a note last week. She wanted to speak with him. He hasn’t replied, and we’re not sure where he is.”
“If he signed this paper, would it look more like the signature on the IOUs?”
Ricci smiled at Serafina, but made no reply.
She admired him. “Some day I’ll take you up on your offer to show me Longchamp.”
“You’ll love it.”
Chapter 41: Valois and Serafina
Valois rose when she entered, kissed her on both cheeks. It was a warm, genuine expression of friendship.
“As soon as we’re settled, we’ll ask you for a dinner,” she said. “We’re staying in the Busacca apartment on Place de Passy. You know it well.”
“New carpet, I hope.”
They laughed.
When they were through catching up, she told him that she’d been to visit Ricci. “I saw the photographs and the plates. I would have known the woman was not Elena.”
Poor Valois. He tried to hide his surprise. He buttoned and unbuttoned his frock coat. “Ricci seemed cooperative, but only to a point. Perhaps we didn’t ask the right questions.”
“I’m sure you did, but he had a cagey way of answering, and since I’ve got secrets of my own, I understood him and called his bluff. Don’t forget, we’re both Sicilians.”
“Where are the photographs?”
She told him and after he’d made a note, she summarized her meeting with Sophie’s youngest son.
“Have you spoken with your photographer, the one who took the photos?”
Valois shrugged. “He quit last month.”
“There’s the connection-the photographer. He must have been well paid by one of the de Masson’s, and I have a feeling it was Sophie’s oldest son.”
She produced the IOUs and showed him the difference between the forgeries and Ricci’s signature. “When is Ricci not Ricci?” she said, half to herself. She paused to let him examine the documents. “Will Sophie be tried?”
He shrugged. “A matter for the insurance lawyers. If Elena were alive, they’d prosecute-fraud, pure and simple. But since she’s dead, I don’t know. I heard Busacca’s lawyer is working with the insurance company, an Italian company based in Trieste. He wants to protect his sister.”
“He wants to protect the name of Busacca, you mean.”
“So you might want to ask him,” Valois said. “More to the point is the question of whether or not Sophie would collect. I’d have to read the terms of the policy-payout might be nullified since Elena’s death was self-inflicted.”
She looked at her watch, realized she was taking more time that she thought she’d need, and apologized.
“Not at all, I’m always glad to see you, and when we’re through discussing your concerns, I have another case I think you may be interested in, also involving a forgery and the death of a pregnant woman brutally savaged. We’re strapped for men these days. Now that peace has arrived, crime rises again.”
Serafina told him about the fire destroying their means of livelihood, an apothecary shop that had been in Giorgio’s family for centuries, no doubt in retaliation for what she’d done to Don Tigro’s men. She told him about her confrontation with the local mafia capo, his demand for a percentage of her pay and her refusal to give it. “So we are here to stay, at least for a while. We thought of America, but I’m more familiar with Paris. We’re comfortable here, it brightens our spirits, and we have ties now to Busacca-our oldest daughter works for him.”
“Greater protection for you here, especially from thugs like the mafia. You’d have them on your back the minute you arrived in New York. The Italian immigrant community is brutalized by them. Become French citizens, my advice. I’ll put in a word and so will the prefect, I know. He’s been impressed with our handling of the Elena Loffredo case.”