“What happened to Manuela’s things?”
“The Carabinieri came and searched the room and then, a few weeks later, Manuela’s mother took all her things away.”
I decided that the Carabinieri hadn’t, technically, performed a search. Among other things, there was no mention of a search in the file. They had gone to the apartment and, as so often happens in these cases, they had taken a look around, found nothing useful, and left.
“Why were her parents in such a hurry to get her stuff out of the room?”
“The landlady asked them if they wanted to keep paying the rent on the room, and of course they didn’t. So Manuela’s mother, with one of Manuela’s aunts, or maybe just a friend, came and took all her things away.”
When Nicoletta was done talking, I walked over to the window and looked out. I saw that it overlooked a dirty gray courtyard. I half-closed my eyes and tried to sense Manuela’s presence, her voice. Perhaps, in that slightly dreary seventies-style bedroom, I might receive a message from the missing girl.
Fortunately, I acted the fool for a few seconds only, and neither Caterina nor Nicoletta noticed anything. Is your brain turning to mush, Guerrieri? Who do you think you are, Dylan Dog, paranormal investigator? I berated myself loudly, albeit internally, as I left the room, upset with myself.
Ten minutes later, Caterina and I were back out on the street, as darkness fell.
30.
“Did you know all of that already?”
“More or less, though not the details,” Caterina replied.
“So why didn’t you tell me any of it?”
We were already in a taxi on our way back to the hotel. Rome’s traffic was at its spectacular worst. Caterina took a deep breath before answering.
“Try to see it from my point of view. These were things that concerned Nicoletta, and she is a friend of mine, even if we don’t hang out anymore. I did what I could so the two of you could meet and she could be the one to tell you about it. It seemed to me like the best solution.”
“What if Nicoletta hadn’t told me anything?”
“I don’t believe that would have happened, but if it had, I would have stepped in.”
There wasn’t a thing wrong with what Caterina was saying. She’d behaved impeccably. She’d helped me without betraying the trust of a friend.
So why was I feeling so annoyed, as if we were playing a game and I wasn’t privy to the rules?
I should have asked her if she had ever tried cocaine herself and if there was anything that she had forgotten to tell me. I was trying to find the words when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket but didn’t answer.
“Go ahead and answer if you like,” I said.
“It’s a friend of mine. I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to tell her I’m in Rome. I’ll text her later,” she said, shrugging as she pushed a button that silenced the phone. I decided I was uncomfortable asking that question, and that it probably wasn’t important. I could ask her some other time.
“In your opinion, did Nicoletta tell me everything she knows?”
“Probably not, but she told you what you wanted to know, and I doubt very much that she knows anything specific about Manuela’s disappearance.”
She was right, I thought, as I looked at her.
She also had beautiful skin, I thought, as I continued to look at her, until I realized that I had become, shall we say, somewhat distracted.
“What do you think? Do you think Manuela’s disappearance might have something to do with cocaine?”
Even though the cabbie seemed to be completely absorbed in a soccer game on the radio and completely uninterested in us, I instinctively lowered my voice.
“I don’t know. If Michele hadn’t been out of the country the day she disappeared, I’d probably think there was some connection. But since he was, it’s a mystery.”
She began squeezing the bridge of her nose between her thumb and two fingers. She seemed to be staring at something off in the distance. Then, it looked as if she’d located what she’d been looking for, and she spoke.
“Can I say something?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“Why are we sure that Manuela disappeared in Puglia? Who says that she didn’t come to Rome, that afternoon, that evening, or that night? Why are we ruling that out?”
Right.
We had all taken it for granted that Manuela never left for Rome. And we had excellent grounds for doing so, of course. It was the most credible hypothesis. The ticket clerk remembered selling her a ticket to Bari; Manuela had told Anita that she was going to Bari and would leave for Rome from there. So it was reasonable to theorize that the point and moment of her disappearance was somewhere and sometime along the journey from Ostuni to Bari, or else subsequent to her arrival in Bari. Still, there was no evidence that would allow us to exclude categorically that Manuela might have left for and even arrived in Rome. Whatever had caused her disappearance might have happened in Rome.
Of course, I thought to myself, if Manuela left Bari and then arrived-and later disappeared-in Rome, my entire so-called investigation meant less than zero. Most important: I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of where or how to begin again.
Caterina must have sensed what I was thinking.
“Well, we’re not going to solve the mystery tonight. We’ve done what we could. You got all the information from Nicoletta that she could give you. Now it’s a matter of thinking about what we know and seeing if we come up with anything. But we should do that after we’ve had a chance to let it settle, don’t you think?”
I nodded, but with a dubious air.
“Have you ever tried Ethiopian food?”
“Excuse me?”
“I asked if you’ve ever tried Ethiopian food.”
“A few years ago in Milan. Why?”
“Did you like it?”
“Sure, it was fun. You eat with your hands and wrap the food up in a sort of soft flatbread, like a crepe, right?”
“ Injera -that’s what it’s called. So tonight we’ll go to an Ethiopian restaurant and then we’ll think about all of this tomorrow.”
We’ll think it over? You and me? What are we now, partners?
The Ethiopian restaurant was near the main station. The place was crowded with African customers, which gave me the impression the food would be authentic. The waiters knew Caterina. They greeted her warmly and brought us menus immediately.
“Is there anything you don’t eat?”
“No, I eat everything. I was in the army,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll order for both of us. You can choose the wine.”
Picking a wine wasn’t an especially challenging job, considering the selection. There were four possibilities and none of them was particularly alluring. I ordered a Sicilian Syrah that struck me as the only acceptable choice.
“You’re a regular here, I see.”
“When I lived in Rome I came here a lot.”
“Did Manuela come here, too?”
“Sure.”
It occurred to me that I could ask her to take me to the places that Manuela liked to go when she was in Rome. I could ask around and maybe I’d uncover something. Then it occurred to me that I’d gotten the idea from TV detectives. I changed the subject.
“So, you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“Has it been a long time?”
“A few months.”
“And why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?”
“Okay, that’s not what I meant to ask. You had a relationship that ended a couple of months ago. Was it a long relationship?”
“Fairly long. It lasted a couple of years.”
“And when Manuela disappeared, were you still together or was it already over?”