We have a suspect

…

Alberto Dicostini.

I sent the name over to Albert and within an hour he sent back what might have been a yard of archive shelf space in files.  He was the head of a rival winery and hadn’t lived up to the hype riding on the coattails of his former business partner.  Wrong land, wrong grape varieties, and poor harvests had battered his reputation, and getting a hold of the Burkehardt’s winery would solve all his problems.

And surprise, surprise, he was the brother of Anna Dicostini.  Before he fell out with the count and went his own way, he had been happy to see his sister marry his business partner, a way of cementing relations between the two, and gaining recognition for the small winery his family owned and ran.  He started out dirt poor and made the most of every opportunity, created others in ways that could be almost construed as criminal, and almost ended up where he started.

All this was about, pure and simple, though not necessarily the people I first thought were the protagonists, was a feud, and feuds between hot-blooded families were often deadly.

We didn’t have a lot of time to put the Dicostini family under surveillance, but I was betting he had the Countess and Mrs Rodby somewhere on one of his properties.  That was the latest request to the research team, and I hoped they would get back to me before the morning arrived.

Then we’d only have the whole day to find the missing sisters.  If they were in the area.  If they were not, then I was not sure what I was going to do.  Dicostini could hardly let them live, because the countess would have to know who it was that kidnapped her.

If they were not already dead.

That led to another message, sent to Rody, asking him to pull whatever diplomatic strings he had in the Foreign Office to get the Italian police or equivalent to MI5 to intervene in the will signing and have it postponed for a week.  We needed more time to run surveillance on Dicostini.

I had no doubt, with his wife’s life in the balance, he could pull a few stings, or call in a favour or two, and make it happen.

And, of course, there was always one more phone call.  This time to Alfie who was hardly polite given the run around we had given him back in London.

After he vested his spleen, I asked him if it was possible to use my cell phone to clone three others if I was close enough, in order to hear their calls and read their text messages.

It was a simple question.

Ten minutes of tech speak, and time to download a special app on my phone, he said yes.  I told him to be available in the morning.

He said, quite stiffly, he was always available.

It was a bridge I would have to men, sooner rather than later.

I had managed to obtain several bottles of Burkehardt’s famous red wine and had opened one with Cecelia.  Francesca was not feeling too hospitable and had stayed in one of the other rooms.

She seemed interested when I related some of the details of my conversation with the older countess, and no doubt she was relating that to her employer and getting further instructions.

I didn’t realise Cecelia was a wine connoisseur.  Violetta had been, she had a nose for such things, and she was Italian too.  It helped.

“Nice drop.  Now, tell me the real story.”

She had noticed the obvious omissions, like who our target tomorrow was going to be.

“We have another surveillance job, and I’m hoping we’re not going to be spread thin.  It won’t help to tell Francesca because her employer will put two and two together and join the party.”

“If they go and ask to old lady themselves, she’ll tell them.”

“A calculated risk, but it is what it is. My guess, the two sisters are being held at one of their properties.  It would be too easy to think they would be at the main residence.”

“Some crooks are stupid.”

“Sometimes.  We’re not going to be that lucky.”  My cell phone blipped. 

So did hers.

“A list of properties, a dozen.  Two are not in use, just a building on a plot where they vines are being replanted.  I’m not an expert but if they failed once, won’t they again?”

I shrugged.  From the many visits I made of the wineries all over Tuscany with Violetta, I was amazed anything grew in the rocky soils.  “Keep that in mind when we go check them out.”

There was more on the Dicostini, and coroner reports on the death of the Count senior, and the Count junior that would be my nightly read before bed.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.  I took the bed near the window.  Try not to trip over when you come in.  I don’t like being woken.”

I shook my head.  Last time I tripped over her shoes, tossed on the floor in the way and it woke her.  Just the thought of it sent shivers down my spine.

By the time I fell asleep, and no I made it into bed without tripping over anything, I had come to the conclusion that the old lady might be right, her husband and her son might have been killed.

It was something I would investigate after I sorted out Rodby’s problem.

As much as I tried not to, the last person I thought of before going to sleep was Juliet.  There was something about her that contradicted everything that I knew about her.

I was not sure why, but I got the feeling running into her again in Venice might not have been simply because of Larry.

© Charles Heath 2023