"Eugenia Ponte I know, of course. Palladini owned the apartment, as you have already pointed out. He's in insurance in Rome? And Cesar Rosati? That name is familiar."
"I met him in Volterra. Other than that, I have nothing that links him to this. He owns something called the Rosati Gallery. I need to check that out."
"Perhaps I can help with that," he said. "But you don't have enough names here. You must try harder. Who would have told whoever is behind this that you were even in Italy? Who knew?"
"My shipper, Luigi D'Amato, but I've been dealing with him for years."
"Never mind. You told me you've known Dottie Beach for years also, and I think now you are not so certain about her. Signore D'Amato goes to the top of the list, given he is the first person in all this you dealt with. But he can't be the only person who knows you're in Italy. Your business partner?"
"Clive? I used to be married to him," I said.
"Bad marriages have been the cause of many a crime, I'm afraid," he said.
"I know, but Clive, for all his faults, wouldn't be involved in something like this. I suppose he might inadvertently have told someone where I was. In fact, he did, now that I think of it. He mentioned that someone by the name of Antonio phoned the shop asking what hotel I was staying in. Clive thought Antonio worked for D'Amato."
"And your partner in life, Rob his name is, I think you said."
"Rob knows where I am, but he's unavailable at the moment. His daughter Jennifer is well-trained and wouldn't tell anyone where I was unless she knew them really well. She'd E-mail me with their name and phone number, but she wouldn't give mine to them directly."
"But many people know you are in Italy now."
"Yes," I said. "I can see Lola's court case will be in good hands."
He smiled. "Am I interrogating you? Perhaps a little. But we must go on. Do you know who owned the house where Balducci was found?"
"Yes, it was in the newspapers. Mauro, Gino Mauro. And he knows Mario Romano. His daughter told me."
"His daughter? Put her on the list, too. Anyone else?" he said, setting a steaming bowl of pasta in front of me and pouring a grappa for himself and another one for me, "People who would know that you are looking for Lake. His sister."
"Brandy, yes. And Brandy's nurse and housekeeper, Maire. I don't know her last name, either. She told me that she couldn't get in touch with Lake, but someone did. He knew I'd been there and even that I'd taken white roses."
"We're speaking of the real Crawford Lake now, are we? Then we have twenty names. That's it? Twenty?"
"I forgot Angelo. Dottie's new boyfriend. Also young and cute, and she found him at Eugenia Ponte's agency."
"Angelo," he said. "Twenty-one."
"Angelo Cippolini," I added. "And Alfred Mondragon."
Salvatore looked at me. "I told you there were many people you were overlooking. Who is Mondragon?"
"I talked to him on the telephone. A British art dealer. He buys art for the real Crawford Lake, but he said he didn't know how to reach him, either. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't."
"So, twenty-two. Actually twenty-four."
"Twenty-four? Who are the other two?" I said.
"Lola and me," he said. "Life, as I've already mentioned, is about learning who to trust. Right now you should trust no one. You should make it twenty-four, despite what you think of your partner in life and his daughter and your business partner."
"Salvatore," I said. "I think we can narrow the list down just a little. I may have more enemies than I can ever know, but I do know who my friends are. Please delete you and Lola, Rob, Jennifer, Clive, and D'Amato. I'm godmother to one of D'Amato's kids, for heaven's sake. I had dinner at his home only a couple of weeks ago. Also delete Silvia. She's a lovely and innocent young woman, no matter what her father is up to. And I think we should eliminate Godard, because he's dead, Antonio and Pierre Leclerc for the same reason, and also Yves Boucher. That makes it thirteen, and that's more than enough."
"Why do you eliminate Boucher?"
"Because I talked to him at length, and he was just too out of it, too ineffectual to have anything to do with this. He was completely out of his depth. I'd like to take Brandy off the list, too, given she can't really leave her house, but I suppose she has the wherewithal to get the job done if she chose to do so. I'd also eliminate Kyle, and maybe even Angelo, although he worked for Eugenia Ponte."
"All right then. Tomorrow, we will begin. I will take this list of names, and I will learn what I can about every single one of them. There must be something here. We already know there is a connection between your friend—I use the term loosely—Dottie, and Eugenia Ponte's agency, and between Ponte and Romano and Balducci, and again between Romano and Mauro. Perhaps there are other connections as well. If there are, I am determined to discover them. But first I will tell Lola about the disappointment about Lake."
"No," I said. "I'll tell her. That's what I came up here to do."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," I said.
"And after that?"
"I don't know. What do you suggest?"
"You have been the prey all along, have you not? Now I think you will have to become the hunter. These people who are always popping up in your life? Perhaps it is time you popped up in theirs. Tomorrow you are going back to Rome to pay them each a visit."
LOLA WIPED A SINGLE TEAR FROM HER EYE when I told her about Lake and the whole sorry mess. She looked thin, pale, and ill. "That's okay," she said.
"No, it's not, Lola. It's not okay at all. I was the one who was so proud of myself and what I do, that dishonest people were able to get the better of me. I'm the one who should be in here, not you."
"But that's not true!" she exclaimed. "This is about me. It's not about you."
"How do you figure that, Lola?" I said. "Where can you see any justice in this situation?"
She looked away from me for what seemed to be a long time, staring at a stain on the wall beside her. "You at least were trying to do the right thing," she said. "I wasn't. I don't think I can ever begin to describe my feelings when I saw that Etruscan hydria sitting on that awful pink blanket on your bed, but I want to try to explain it to you. It's important to me that you understand just what I did.
"I was sure, despite what you said, that it was the real thing. It almost seemed a sacrilege that it was in that kind of grotty hotel, with that lurid red bedspread and curtains, and that hideous wallpaper. It was so perfect: the workmanship, the shape, and most of all the decoration. It could only have been the Micali painter. It is, isn't it?"
"Yes," I said.
"It was absolutely gorgeous. I've never seen anything like it up that close. I wanted to touch it, try it out, run my hands over the surface." She laughed a little. "It sounds as if I'm describing a lover, doesn't it? And you know, it was love at first sight. Like a besotted lover, I had to possess the object of my love.
Or was it lust? I don't know. I've spent most of my life studying the Etruscans. People laugh when I tell them I'm looking for Lars Porsena's tomb, but it's out there somewhere, isn't it? And it would be a worthwhile thing to do, wouldn't it, to track it down?"
"Yes, it would. But—"
"I don't know why I picked the Etruscans, rather than the Romans, or the Maya, or North American Indians for that matter. Maybe it was opportunity, more than anything else. My class was going to Italy, so I went, too. I can remember going to Tarquinia that summer and making my way down into The Tomb of the Leopards, and just gaping at the sight of it. I've spent more hours than you can imagine studying them since then, standing in front of glass cases in museums, peering at Etruscan ceramics from every angle, tramping the countryside looking for Lars.