"This snake group, then, wants a hydria—I emphasize a, rather than the—to arrive here today," Lucca said. "But why?"
"Good grief," Lake said. "Does everything have to be spelled out for you? Because, as Lara said, this is all about trafficking in antiquities. The snake's plan is to steal the real hydria, is that not correct?" I nodded. "No one is to know because the fake will be put in the Rosati Collection. Also correct?"
"Yes," I said.
"Poor Cesar," Dottie said. "Isn't that awful!"
"Could you hold your comments until the end, please, madame," Lake said irritably. "So the snake gets, probably buys, the real hydria back from Leclerc, and does what with it?"
"Sells it," Lucca said. "Probably someone with an order in for it already. It's in another country by now, I'm certain. Leclerc figures that out and tries to blackmail them. As we've already heard, he did have a tendency in that direction. The snake agrees to meet him at the Tanella di Pitagora. Leclerc is murdered on the spot. The fake has already been substituted and sent on its way. But unbeknownst to the snake, the lion enters the picture, and the fake hydria ends up in the police station."
"But why steal it from the station?" Eugenia said. "It's a fake."
"So no one will know the original has been stolen, of course," Lucca said. "It's a disaster that it's in the police station because someone, another expert, is going to take a good look at it during Signora Lola's trial, and they're going to figure out it's a fake. Correct, no?"
"Correct, yes," I said. "They have to get it out of the station before it is tested by someone else."
"Then you're saying one of us stole the fake from the carabinieri station," Hank said.
"I have this picture in my mind of Nicola," Lucca said. "Now that I think about it. In my carabinieri station, holding a large sports bag. Big enough to hold an Etruscan hydria, is what I'm thinking."
"That's ridiculous," Nicola said.
"Was this a one-off?" Lake said to me. "Or something more organized?"
"My guess is it's organized," I said.
"Then they got a little ahead of themselves this time," Lucca said. "Probably an impatient buyer, or merely an opportunity that presented itself, thanks to that fellow Leclerc. Normally, the fake would be substituted after it got to the Rosati Collection, would it not?"
"I think so. There's one way to find out."
"Have another look at our previous finds, the nenfro sphinx and that bronze warrior, you mean," Lucca said.
"What would be wrong with them?" Dottie said.
"Fakes, too," Lucca said.
"But the Bearded Sphinx kylix was stolen. Did someone steal a fake?"
"I'd say the snake stole it for the same reason the hydria was taken from the police station," I said. "The kylix was destined to go to another museum, where it would have been subjected to the same authentication procedures as the chimera hydria would in court."
"So the logical people to be involved in this are Rosati and Mondragon," Lake said. "They are the dealers in the group."
"That is balderdash," Mondragon said.
"I know nothing about this!" Cesar exclaimed. "I just have an art collection, that's all. I wanted to show the world beautiful things."
"How did you manage to make your money, Cesar, after Lake ran you out of business?" Hank said. "That's what I want to know. By selling the stuff we went to a lot of trouble and expense to bring back to Italy? Good deal, isn't it? You pay a one-thirteenth portion of the buying price and sell it for the full price, maybe even a higher one."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Cesar said. "I am as much a dupe in all of this as the rest of you. Nicola has betrayed my trust."
"Just a minute here," Nicola said.
"Did you say the hydria was in another country?" Gianni said. "We bring it back into the country, and then they send it out again? How is that done?"
"I believe Alfred Mondragon is the expert in that," I said. "Indeed, Pierre Leclerc already caught him at it once before. According to Alfred's partner Ryan, Leclerc tried to blackmail him for it."
"I made a mistake, that's all," Mondragon said.
"And what about the insurance?" Gino said. "I'll wager you did even better than Hank thinks you did. Did you sell the kylix and collect insurance on the fake?"
"Didn't you insure that kylix?" Eugenia said to Palladini. "You said you had to pay out a fortune on it."
Palladini swallowed. "Yes, I did. That's terrible. I had no idea."
"Did you not say you thought there were four members of this committee?" Eugenia said to me.
I nodded.
"And didn't you say you'd inherited money from your mother, Vittorio?" Eugenia said. "Didn't you tell me the apartment in Rome was hers?"
"It wasn't," I said. "He bought it a couple of years ago, just about the time the kylix went missing."
"Oh, dear," Dottie said. "Poor Eugenia. Us girls are learning more than we ever wanted to know. Where'd they get the fakes?"
"That would require an accomplished artist. Almost as good as the Micali painter, wouldn't you say, Nicola?"
Nicola started to say something but stopped.
"I brought your painting to show everyone," I said. "It's in my bag. I'm sure if an expert took a look at both the hydria and the painting, we'd know one way or the other."
"Hey, I'm thinking here," Gino said. "Didn't Nicola authenticate the hydria in the police station?"
"He did," Lucca said. "Quite definitely."
"Naturally, I wouldn't take the kinds of risks that Lara here did, breaking the hydria," Nicola said.
"Oh, right," Gino said.
"But you were talking about murder," Anna said. "Not forgery, and not insurance fraud."
"Antonio and I were friends," I said. "We looked out for each other. He saved me from robbers. I saved him from being misconstrued. I think he was much smarter than people gave him credit for. He followed me everywhere. He saw everything. I think he saw me put the hydria back in Leclerc's trunk, saw Leclerc meet with the person who would later be his killer, maybe even tripped over Leclerc's body the way I did, and put two and two together. Almost certainly he saw the fake hydria delivered to my hotel room."
"He phoned me, you know," Mario said. "I was supposed to go to the Melone to pick up the hydria from Lara. He called and told me not to come. He said something very strange was going on. He liked you very much, Lara. He didn't want anything bad to happen to you. He said he would go to make sure you were all right."
"So which one of these four miscreants killed Antonio?" Lake asked.
"Whichever one drives the red Lamborghini with a bright yellow umbrella in the back," I said. "Whoever drives that car was in both Nice and Volterra, dealing, I suspect, with Leclerc. There's a distinct possibility it was the car I almost ran into in the fog near Cortona the day I found Leclerc."
Perhaps we hadn't noticed, in the chaos, who was moving where, but as I said this, the miscreants, as Lake called them, made a run for it, dashing toward, and then up, the steps, roughly shoving several people aside as they went. In the turmoil, the bottle of grappa on the table was knocked over, and the liquid oozed across the red cloth.
"Stop them!" Lucca cried, and everyone went after them. Lake, remarkably agile, was already on his way up the steps.
"You creeps," Dottie yelled, taking off her shoes and hurtling up the steps. I stepped aside to let the thundering hordes go by.
I was starting to follow them, when I thought, How many of them did I see leave? I turned back and looked about the tomb. It was empty. I walked toward the table at the back of it but saw nothing.
I heard something, though, when it was too late. Cesar Rosati stepped out of the darkness of the side room and grabbed me from behind, a blade, the cheese knife, at my throat.