Chapter 46 - Wheels in Motion

Image by Dominik Martin from Unsplash

The policewoman scanned the room until her gaze locked with Ike's. She spoke over her shoulder, then shifted aside to let Commissario Guidetti enter and somehow suck the air out of the breakfast room. Still unshaven, his dark locks in disarray, his shirt rumpled, his feet sockless in their moccasins, a heavy gold watch weighing down his arm he oozed menace.

"He won't eat you," Brigitte whispered from somewhere on her left. Not quietly enough. All eyes in the room were upon her, and she felt the heat as it shot into her cheeks, vaporising the moisture in her throat.

Guidetti wove his way around the tables, an unpleasant smile playing around his sensuous mouth.

"Good morning, Signora," he said once he had arrived.

A few tables across, the mouse gloated into her teapot. Her right hand kept dipping a tea bag into the cup, in and out and back again as she continued watching the show with breathless excitement.

"Good morning to you too. You got my message, I presume?" Her voice was all fake, plummy and cheerful. And loud. It rang into the breakfast room like a gong. A few tables down, something fell over, followed by a squeak. Against her will, Ike's gaze skittered aside. The mouse had knocked over her cup.

Guidetti only had eyes for Ike. Fifteen years ago, she might have been delighted at attracting so much attention. Not now. Not here. Not by this man.

"Can we talk somewhere more private?" he asked.

"The lobby?" Her voice would have done the mouse proud. It was pitched way too high and came out all squeaky.

"After you," Guidetti said.

Brigitte pointed at her chest and mimicked talking.

"My colleague should come with us. She too has found out a few interesting things."

"My, my, you lot have been busy. Fine, she can come."

Ike's cheeks lost some of their fire.

"For the moment."

The flames rekindled.

Brigitte rose, and the policeman moved a chair out of her way. At Ike, he only nodded as if she were a lesser specimen of a human being. Caught in the nowhere land between good citizen and felon, between informer and murderess.

Which she wasn't. But only she knew, and Brigitte alone seemed to believe her. A latter-day Cassandra for sure.

###

A forest of potted palms in brass pots littered the lobby, each of them shading groups of striped wing chairs and leather settees clustered around fussy little wrought-iron tables. Ike chose the biggest palm in the farthest corner that otherwise housed only the fire extinguisher and one chandelier dotted across the otherwise prosaic fireproof ceiling.

The Commissario flicked a casual gesture first at Ike and her companion, then at the sofa as if he owned it. Ike levelled herself onto the slick, cold surface, glad for Brigitte's woolly warmth next to her.

"If I am to understand the somewhat garbled messages my colleagues left for me, you claim to have found the murder weapon?"

"Not found. It was planted on me."

The corner of his mouth curled ever so slightly. "How annoying."

Suddenly anger pounced, triggered her glands into squirting adrenaline into a body already coiled to the max because a lack of sleep and fear for her life had got the upper hand.

"Quite so. I came here to do a job, not to have the life of my guests threatened, a colleague murdered, murderous madmen on my heels while the cops are not only twiddling their thumbs but frame me for something I haven't done. And while talking of framing that's exactly what happened yesterday. I left my room for a short while, and that guy drops the scarf he used to kill poor Shalon. That is indeed annoying, I can tell you."

Guidetti regarded her with a detached calm and a good measure of superciliousness tainting his perfect lips.

"Please, Signora, let's be rational about this. I have a job to do."

"Yes, catch a killer. So far, you've not been very successful, have you?"

That was a mistake, she could see it in his eyes. "Difficult to do when people keep withholding information and evidence."

Brigitte shot forward and cocked a finger pistol at the cop. "We' ave not been withholding. We' ave been finding things. What we have found, we want to share with you, but you are not, how do they say 'available', non?" Ike noticed with interest how much of her excellent English Brigitte could lose in a hurry.

Guidetti massaged his temples. "Fine. Okay. Tell me what you have found. Apart from the murder weapon. Actually, I would like to see it that first. Where is it?"

"Give me a mo." Ike rummaged in her handbag, her fingers touching a crumpled hankie, something hard and small (a tampon?), something hard and slightly larger that was probably a lipstick. Only then did she touch crumpled plastic. Triumphantly she retrieved the Ziploc bag Brigitte had used for her herbal infusions which now protected the ruined scarf. "Voilà. And we didn't touch it. My colleague used a pen to place it in the bag. Like that we will have protected the DNA, correct?"

Guidetti was one of those people who could project a kaleidoscope of feelings by putting his facial muscles to good use. Which he did now. Ike's stomach muscles clenched at the irritation swimming her way as she handed over the bag.

He looked at it, turned it over in his hands to examine the other side, then tapped his index finger on the plastic. "It's been mangled yes, and the fabric is strained. Whether it was used to kill the young woman, we shall see. This is your scarf, you say?"

"Yes. At first, I thought that guy just wanted to implicate me by putting it in my bag—"

An index finger shot out. "This sack of yours?"

"It's an expensive Plucci shopper! Got it cheap at the sales." Now, why had she said that? She sounded like what poor Shalon would have called "ditzy."

Guidetti closed his eyes, then opened them again, his gaze drilling deep into her soul. "I felicitate you. Please don't pass on the address of the shop to my wife. So, somebody broke into your room and left the scarf, presumably to implicate you. Is that correct?"

"No."

He closed his eyes again when they opened Ike could have sworn she saw a faint red sheen.

Brigitte came to the rescue. "What my colleague is trying to say, she left the door to her room open. Somebody entered. The chambermaid had just cleaned, and she saw tracks."

Ike fought to keep the flow of words building up behind her teeth contained until Brigitte had finished. Then she let rip. "And there were scratch marks on the door jamb. I saw something similar in the toilet. I mean the place where Shalon was murdered. A black mark on the door with gouges in the tiles. I found it odd as the hotel was so hyper-meticulous and clean. We wanted to send you a photo, but the black marks were gone, only a few scratches which didn't photograph so well."

"I can assure you nobody broke into the toilet. Also, I doubt whoever left the scarf would damage the door frame to break into your room when you left the door open. Which is not very advisable, I have to say, Signora."

"Yes, well, some friends came around, and I got distracted. I'm not usually that stupid."

The expression on Guidetti's face shifted towards scepticism, but he was too polite to comment. "We'll check out that door, but I doubt it will tell us anything. What sort of marks did that chambermaid see?"

A Gallic shrug from Brigitte. "She wasn't precise."

"Anything about shoe size?"

"Ah. Not shoes at all."

The corner's of Guidetti's mouth twitched. "Paw marks then? Signora here has a dog, has she not?"

"He was at the film studios in the afternoon," Ike said

"Ah. A canine star. I congratulate you."

Gosh, the guy was dense. Well no, he wasn't. More like a viper ready to spring.

Brigitte gnawed her upper lip. "I'm sure she said tracks. Or was it trails? We spoke French at the time."

"Then you wouldn't have spoken of either tracks or trails, would you, Madame?"

If Brigitte could have shot daggers from her eyes, she would have, Ike could feel the volcano rumbling beside her. "In French, we do have a varied vocabulary. You had better listen to what I'm saying, not play silly word games, Monsieur. Should you not be taping what we are telling you? Or be taking notes?"

"Oh," he said airily. "I like to get an impression first. Okay, I'll do it your way. A track or a trail would indicate somebody wasn't walking. Cycling perhaps? It is very much en vogue here in Italy as well. Though we tend to treat it mostly as an outdoor sport."

Ike's mind might be called volatile and capable of some scary magical gymnastics, but the wiring was sound, and so far it had always delivered. The fact it took so long and required the image of a bicycle to finally kick-start the synapses into sparking had to be owed to all the stress she was under. But kick-start it did, blending the sensation of something hard and sharp pressing into her calf, the funny aerial poking out of the hedge, the marks on the toilet door and her room, and finally the tracks. Which were not made by a bicycle at all.

"A wheelchair."

###

It had taken both of Ike's and Brigitte's persuasive powers to muscle Guidetti off Ike's scent. He had pocketed the bag with the scarf, confirmed he had received all the evidence he needed from "my colleague in London", again conveying a world of displeasure with only a few words before he cautioned Ike not to leave either Rome nor venture forth from her hotel, which indicated he still kept his options open. Ike, not somebody to readily heed good advice, heeded that one. Well, not quite, she did a quick tour around the block accompanied by a middle-aged French coach driver as a bodyguard and a two-hundred-year-old Corgi puppy eager to sniff and water the exciting corners to be found in this neighbourhood. Brigitte had offered to take him back to her hotel and let him roam on the lawn, an offer Ike had gladly accepted. Another good reason to sort out this blasted mystery—her poor dog wasn't getting enough exercise. Safely escorted back to her hotel, Ike feigned a headache that might become all too real later if her hunch was right and Gary's briefcase contained what she hoped she might find there among the paperwork: A document belonging to the murderer. A destination for a dive.

Of course, asking Gary what his "competition benchmarking" included would have been easier. However, it was impossible to do since the man had gone incommunicado again.

Do let me know if you have questions or comments on my novel. Constructive suggestions and feedback are always welcome! And thank you for reading. In doing so, you give my writing a purpose.