Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 11 - Good Blood Read online

  Synopsis:

  What was supposed to be an Italian vacation for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver and his wife turns into a busman’s holiday when their hosts’ only child goes missing — and nearby construction workers unearth human bones. The family awaits Oliver’s conclusions with both dread and cautious hope. But along the way, he’ll expose some extraordinary deceptions that lay bare the long-hidden secrets at the dark heart of a highborn family.

  GOOD BLOOD

  Aaron Alkins

  Book 11 in the Gideon Oliver series

  Copyright © 2004 by Aaron Elkins.

  PROLOGUE

  The Village of Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy,

  September 7, 1960

  DOMENICO de Grazia was a gentleman of the old school, a refined and courtly patrician, a man of breeding, poised and self-assured. Many of the simpler folk, out of respect for his lineage and his impeccable bearing, still spoke of him as il conte, the count, although the nobility had been abolished more than fifteen years before. And some took their hats off when he passed, but this was a practice he gently discouraged.

  Despite his reputation, Domenico knew himself to be a shy man, uncomfortable with intimacy and easily embarrassed. At this moment he was finding it impossibly hard to make the proposal that had brought him to the modest apartment of Franco and Emma Ungaretti. For half an hour he had sat in their living room making stilted small talk, while they plainly wondered, with many glances between them, what had brought him there. Emma was his niece, his brother Cosimo’s only child. Franco was her husband, whom Domenico employed, out of an admittedly grudging charity, as a part-time gamekeeper on the de Grazia estate.

  It was not often that Domenico visited them, although once upon a time, and not so long ago at that, he had doted on Emma. But Franco Ungaretti he could barely force himself to tolerate. Emma was such a pretty, good-natured girl too; to think of the husbands from whom she might have had her choice . . . but that was neither here nor there.

  With his second glass of Amaretto (which he detested) came the resolve he needed. He put down the glass and took a deep breath. “My children,” he said—and immediately regretted the choice of words, given the strange proposition he was about to make—“as you know, my wife has recently suffered a second miscarriage—”

  Emma began to murmur something, but Domenico, determined to carry on now that he had gotten started, talked over her. “—and Dr. Luzzatto has told us she can risk no further pregnancies.”

  More sympathetic murmurs, from both of them.

  “Thank you, please let me finish. As you also know, the de Grazia family has maintained its holdings and its place in the life of our beloved Italy for over six hundred years, from the days of the Dukes of Piedmont.”

  “Yes, Uncle,” Emma said.

  “Good.” He patted her hand, but quickly drew his own back as if he’d touched a flame. That had been another bad idea. “I am sure you will both agree that there must always be a de Grazia to continue the heritage of our family, and to—and so forth.” He was already losing them. Emma looked confused and Franco was alternating between smirking at what he no doubt considered empty platitudes, and watching a bicycle race on the muted television set in a far corner. The set had been Domenico’s second-anniversary present to them a year earlier.

  He decided to skip the middle paragraphs of his prepared speech. “I must have an heir,” he blurted. “In that regard I come to you—”

  “But you have an heir, Uncle,” Emma said. “Your daughter. Francesca.”

  Emma had many fine traits, but a piercing intelligence was not among them. “Francesca is the dearest of children, the darling of my heart,” Domenico explained kindly, “but I must have a male heir; someone to take my place someday, someone to carry on the name.”

  “Oh. But you could adopt someone, couldn’t you?”

  “I could, yes, and I’ve given the idea a great deal of thought.”

  At this, Franco’s head swiveled from the television. Bored and noncommittal till now, his face suddenly shone with . . . anticipation? Hope? Did this parasite think Domenico was going to make him his heir? What, adopt him? The mere thought was enough to make Domenico shudder.

  Franco Ungaretti had been an Olympic silver medalist, a famous skier of breathtaking speed and daring, and as handsome as a movie star to boot. Il Valangone, the Avalanche, they had called him. But this Avalanche had also been an uneducated lout, the son of a laborer who was the son of a laborer: an ignorant, self-centered womanizer blessed with a native ability to manufacture a smooth, superficial patter that the media had been in love with. Emma, like so many other innocent young girls, had fallen under the spell of his shallow charms, and it had been her everlasting misfortune to be with him the night that he got drunk enough to decide to make an honest woman of her and get married.

  Less than three months later he had been struck by an automobile. Several vertebrae in his neck had been crushed, and his sports career—and all the fame and endorsements that came with it—was over. Most athletes, so Domenico understood, put on weight when their athletic careers came to an end. But Franco had lost it. At thirty-three, with his neck now permanently askew, he was a wizened, bitter old man, all sinews and grinding tendons, and the smooth patter was a thing of the past. All that was left from before was the selfish, narrow lout that was, and had always been, the essential Franco Ungaretti. And still, Emma adored him. Love, the old proverb said, was like food or music; there was no accounting for taste.

  “But adoption is of no interest to me,” Domenico continued. “What good is an heir without the splendid genes of our family? It isn’t only the de Grazia name that must go on, but the good de Grazia blood that runs through our veins and has made us what we are.”

  “Good blood,” Franco echoed, looking interested. “That’s very important.” Beef-brained he might be, but there was a streak of cunning in him; even if he didn’t know what was going on, he could smell advantage to himself at five kilometers. Well, he was right enough about that.

  “Therefore,” Domenico said, “I have a proposition to make to you.” This was the part that he had rehearsed again and again, but now he rushed clumsily through it, addressing neither of them in particular, with his eyes fixed on the coffee table. “I would like Emma’s consent, with Franco’s approval, of course, to be the bearer of my child”—his face was burning—“by means of a process—very impersonal, very proper, performed by a qualified physician—of . . . of artificial insemination. This would, it goes without saying, involve no contact between us. I would, of course, expect to repay you—both of you—generously—for the inconvenience it would cause.”

  Emma, shocked, covered her mouth and stared at him. Franco’s eyes narrowed. The congealed gears of his mind were beginning to move, however slushily.

  “The child would be brought up as my own, my own and Stefania’s,” Domenico said hurriedly, speaking to Emma. “No one but Stefania and I and the two of you would know the truth.”

  “Uncle! I, I—” She was blushing furiously.

  “How would that work?” Franco asked. “That no one would ever know the truth?”

  How perfectly Domenico understood Franco’s mind, so true to its owner’s class. If there was profit in it, he was interested, but first he needed assurance that his own cherished manhood—his most prized possession—would suffer no slurs. Domenico was ready with his answers. “Emma would go to a small village up in the mountains.

  Gignese, a pleasant place with a good climate. I have contacts there, and Dr. Luzzatto would always be within easy reach. She would have a fine villa and be cared for in luxury, anything she wished. A maid, a cook. Franco, you could go with her. A nice vacation, why not? Only after the baby was born would she return to Stresa. People would be told that she had become ill with tuberculosis and had gone to a sanatorium in Switzerland. No one would know, I promise you.”

  “That’s all very fine,” Franco said. “But what about your wife, what about Stefania? Suddenly, without a pregnancy, she has a baby? How could that be explained?”

  “That will present no problem. No one knows about my wife’s latest . . .” He faltered. Answering this oaf’s rude questions about the most intimate details of his life took more willpower than he’d anticipated, but what choice did he have? “. . . about her latest miscarriage,” he continued. “However, everyone—the family, our friends, the servants—knows about the first one. So, like Emma, Stefania will go away for a while. It will be explained that, in order to insure against a recurrence of her difficulties, she has gone to a maternity rest home near Venice, where she can be professionally cared for at all times while she awaits the arrival of her baby. When she returns home, she will have the infant with her.”

  Franco shrugged his approval. “And what about my job? If I went with Emma to Gignese.”

  “Naturally, you would be given a leave with full pay.” That, Domenico thought, would be no hardship to himself. With Franco not acting as gamekeeper, he expected a considerable reduction in poaching, not that it mattered one way or the other. The animals on the de Grazia lands had never been a source of income. There had been no gamekeeper before Franco, and there would be none after, unless, God forbid, another girl in the family brought home a husband equally worthless.

  “In addition, I would hope you would indulge me by accepting a gift of, say, ten thousand dollars—American dollars—as a small token
of my gratitude, my sincere gratitude, to both of you.”

  Franco darted a quick look at Emma, who responded with an uncertain shake of her head. But Domenico could see that she was thinking about it.

  “Also,” he added silkily, “I couldn’t help but notice that your Lancia is showing its age, Franco. I was thinking it would be a pleasure to see you with a new one, perhaps a larger model?” The Lancia, too, had been his gift: a wedding present.

  He was ashamed of himself for dealing so baldly with Franco Ungaretti instead of with his own niece. It should have been Emma’s decision to make. Indulging Franco’s puerile cravings should have had nothing to do with it. But he had to have a “yes”; there were no other options. And he knew his chances were best with Franco.

  Franco shrugged. His animal instincts sensed a shift in the balance of power. “A Lancia? I don’t know.” He studied his extended left foot. “It’s a nice car, I suppose. But a Ferrari . . . now there’s an automobile for you.”

  Domenico held in his anger. This animal was haggling over the use of his wife’s body. Not as a question of principle, of “yes” or “no,” but of price.

  “A Ferrari,” he said through compressed lips. “Yes, all right, that would also be possible.”

  “What if she has a miscarriage? What if the child is a girl?”

  Domenico shivered. On their own, his fingers traced the sign of the cross. These things must not, would not, happen. “I would still consider that you had fulfilled your part of the bargain. What do you say?”

  “Uncle—” Emma said, and Domenico held his breath. “What does Aunt Stefania . . . how does Aunt Stefania . . .” She bit her lip and was silent.

  She had hit on a sore point, and Domenico was honest, if halting, about it. “Your aunt is not entirely . . . comfortable with the arrangement. Naturally enough, she would prefer that it not be necessary. But she understands the need. She will love the child as her own, you should have no fear on that score. And . . . ,” he hesitated, hoping he was still telling the truth, “. . . and she will love you none the less for it.”

  “I see.” Emma didn’t look much comforted.

  Franco patted her shoulder. “Give us time to think it over,” he said. “We’ll talk about it and let you know our decision tomorrow.” He gave Emma a remnant of the old, oily smile. “All right, sweetheart?”

  Emma nodded, looking at neither of them.

  Domenico reached for his cane and stood up. Franco had made up his mind. He would wheedle or browbeat her into it. It was as good as done.

  “I’ll see myself out,” he said, unable to meet Emma’s eyes.

  EVERY Thursday afternoon without exception, throughout the long winter, Domenico would have Clemente drive him up the mountain to Gignese for his two o’clock visit with the Ungarettis to assure himself that things were well. At first these visits were awkward. They would sit stiffly in the beautifully furnished parlor, the three of them, over china cups of tea or coffee, and comment on the unusually fine weather, or the health-giving mountain air, or the lovely view from the windows. As for the subject on everyone’s mind, the subject of Emma’s pregnancy, Domenico would scrupulously avoid it. (Stefania wasn’t the only one “not entirely comfortable” with the situation.) And so it would hang between them like an immovable, impenetrable curtain around which they were forced to talk.

  Domenico would ask if there was anything they wanted. The answer was always no, although Franco would sometimes have some additional requirement concerning the promised Ferrari. At precisely three o’clock Domenico would rise, Emma would offer her cheek to be kissed, he would nod to Franco—for some time he had preferred not to shake hands with him—and he would leave, feeling guilty and unfulfilled, as if there was something he had come to do, and he hadn’t done it. Emma was so quiet now, so pale and resigned. With time his old affection for her had blossomed again, and his heart ached to see her as she was.

  But after a month Franco’s interest in these weekly calls waned and he began finding other things to do: coffee and newspapers with his friends at the café; bocce on the court beside the village square. He would spend days at a time back in Stresa, doing God knew what—cavorting with his mistresses, Domenico assumed. But it was all to the good. Emma began to blossom. She became talkative again, and laughed often, with that merry little hiccup at the end, a sweet sound Domenico hadn’t heard for years. With the swelling of her abdomen she seemed to become contented and happy, and Domenico along with her. His weekly visits, far from being a chore, became something he looked impatiently forward to.

  Most important, Dr. Luzzatto pronounced her health, and that of the developing child, excellent. And it was his opinion, from the way she was carrying the baby, that it was indeed a boy.

  There were only two things to mar his happiness. First—and this was something that Dr. Luzzatto had warned him about more than once—he worried that there would be a problem later, when it was time for her to turn the child over to Stefania and him. The hormones that flowed through a new mother’s body, Luzzatto had said, often exerted a power that no man could understand. Emma was likely to experience depression, even despair, when the baby was taken from her. Domenico should prepare himself for it. It was natural and expectable, and there was nothing to be done about it. Given time, it would pass. Still, it hurt him to think of her unhappiness to come.

  The other worm in the apple was a thing he learned from Caterina, the live-in servant he’d hired to look after Emma. Emma had become friends with the young laundress who came once a week to bring the washed and pressed linens and to take away the dirty ones. This Gia, according to Caterina, was a sluttish, independent creature with loose morals and brutish manners. At first the friendship between two women of such different classes had been inexplicable, but then one day Caterina had heard them whispering and giggling about pregnancy and childbirth. Gia was also pregnant, and there lay the source of their closeness. But—and here the housekeeper lowered her voice to a whisper—Gia could not even say for sure who the father was. The dreadful girl spoke laughingly—laughingly!—of giving the child up for adoption if there was money to be made from it. Even in jest, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t natural. Caterina wrung her hands beneath her apron. This Gia was not a fit companion for a woman of Emma’s class.

  In his thoughts Domenico agreed with her and might easily have seen to it that there was no further contact between them. But he hesitated to interfere. Whom else did Emma have to giggle with and confide her girlish secrets in? Franco? Besides, once she returned to Stresa and was with her own kind, time and distance would necessarily put an end to their closeness. The problem would take care of itself.

  BUT the other problem, the problem of Emma’s maternal hormones, did not take care of itself.

  Emma gave birth at the villa in Gignese. Her labor, attended only by a midwife and her assistant (Dr. Luzzatto had been with a patient in Belgirate and had not made it back in time) was difficult and extremely hard on her. The baby, a strapping, squalling boy, was healthy—everything Domenico could have wished for—but Emma’s condition troubled him. When he arrived a few days later (she had asked that he permit her time to recover, which was what gave him the first real inkling that all was not as well as it might have been), she remained secluded in her bedroom, and it was the nurse who brought him the beautiful infant. Dr. Luzzatto prevented Domenico from seeing her until the following day. It was not her physical condition that was cause for concern, Luzzatto warned gravely, but her mental state. It was more precarious than he’d expected. Four days now, and still her spirits were dangerously low.

  The following day, when Domenico was permitted to call on her—Stefania was not with him, having preferred to remain at home—Emma was on a regimen of tranquilizers that Luzzatto had prescribed. It was like talking to some cleverly made mannequin, an automaton controlled by gears and pulleys, but ultimately lifeless. Her hair had been combed and her face had been made up to hide her pallor. She smiled, she nodded, she replied to questions, but there was no emotion, no human connection. Her eyes were enough to make one weep. For Domenico, all the joy had been squeezed from the occasion. It was the tranquilizers that were making her so spiritless, Luzzatto said, but both men knew there was more to it than that.