Читать книгу The Secret Price of History - Gayle Ridinger - Страница 7

"How are you feeling, Ms. Cebrelli?"

At the hospital, a boyish-faced blond policeman smiled at her from over the head of the petite Asian nurse, who was repositioning the metal fang in her un-bandaged arm, the one that was attached to the bedside drip bottle.

"Woozy," Angie rasped.

The nurse looked up from her work questioningly.

Angie cleared her throat; she had just woken up and hadn't spoken since yesterday. "But I don't feel pain," she added, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

The jolting sensation of returning to herself that she felt was the same she'd had as a child at the end of the shocking cold shower her parents had given her to drive the high fever from her body.

"Did you take my cell phone and call my mom?"

"Sure we did," said the blond policeman before the nurse could reply. "She's waiting for you outside."

He opened the door and Delia walked slowly into the room with one hand tightly clutching the shoulder strap of her handbag; four steps, and then her other hand groped for the foot of Angie's bed as if she were unable to find her balance. "I've been in a state, Angie. You know how I get. And naturally Stan is worried too. How are you, sweetheart?"

"I'm OK, Mom."

"The doctor says it's not serious," Delia said hesitantly. "The bullet was fired from far away. It didn't hit bone or muscle."

"That's right. You've got just a bloody groove," the small nurse said in the bright voice she'd been trained to display, as she left the room.

Delia gazed at her daughter, tanking up on full certainty about this. A ringlet of her curly reddish gold hair—the same as Angie's, except for the grey streaks—escaped from its bobby-pin behind her ear, as she reached out to stroke her daughter's hand with strenuous affection.

"Ms. Cebrelli, the bullet hit you was .22 Caliber," said the second policeman present, dark in complexion and sounding Indian or Pakistani. "But the hand gun used wasn't modern, and this could make a problem for determining the model from a ballistics test. Any idea of who shot you?"

She shook her head.

"Our first thought was of course that it was an accident. There's no denying that accidents have happened in the past. But the only re-enactors authorized nowadays to carry side arms during the battle re-enactments are the officers, who all get checked out." He stopped. Angie Cebrelli's mother was crying now, those tears of relief he'd seen in many other cases, as she muttered 'my girl, my girl.'

Of course Delia could feel the policemen's desire for her to finish her display of relief and affection but they had riled her and she would make them wait on purpose. The questions they'd put to her out in the hall—especially the blond officer—had been nosy bordering on disrespectful. Why had the family moved to Virginia from Memphis a few years ago? And Memphis? That wasn't the kind of place with lots of Italians, it seemed to him. She had found herself giving this oaf, who looked like his ancestors had been yodellers from the hills in Austria, their family history on the defensive, fielding his ignorant and unsolicited remarks. In the 1800s both her and her husband's families had immigrated with many others to Memphis from Bassignana, a village in Northern Italy. "The whole town just up and came to Memphis, Tennessee?" the policeman had marvelled, with his strange toddler-like eyes. Her husband had helped her mother run their small cheese factory and Italian deli up to her death, carrying on alone until his own death in a hit-and-run accident. From then onwards, she had needed something more than her part-time job as public librarian in Memphis. She'd happened to find a full-time position in Virginia, and now she and her daughter lived in Manassas.

"So how come you didn't just take over the deli and cheese business in Memphis?" he'd asked.

What did this have to do with her daughter's shooting? And what gave him the right to poke around in her past like that? Anyway, the answer was that they had just been breaking even, and so after Bill's death she'd sold out.

But the oaf wasn't satisfied.

"You must have been sad to see the business go. It had been in your family so long. It'd been your father's and grandfather's."

"It was my great-great-grandmother's down to my grandmother's, and mother's, actually," she'd bristled.

"Mom?" breathed Angie plaintively now, "you're making my hand sore."

Delia let her daughter go with a final pat and the blond cop approached the bed again.

"Well, Angie, where's that medallion you were wearing?"

She clutched at her neck.

He smiled. "It's in your drawer."

She drew it out and lay back on the pillow with it.

"Was it a present?"

"No."

"Looks antique."

"Yes," Delia interceded.

"Ah. And is it valuable?"

"In what sense? It's a family memento."

"I see. Well now that Angie is awake, there are a few things we want to tell you both. The man sitting next to Angie in the grandstand has testified that some guy crowded in on him as he was applying the tourniquet—his T-shirt—to your arm. We've seen cell phone footage that shows a second figure by your head, yanking and pulling—maybe with a cutter—to break your necklace chain. He's a real fast operator, but your neighbour suddenly realizes what he's doing and repels him with his hand, while at that moment the ambulance attendants move in. Presumably your thief drops below the bleachers and gets away. In a crowd of fifteen thousand that's pretty easy. Did you notice anything suspicious or bothersome, from the time you arrived, I mean?"

The only thing she could recall was that scene between the cashier and the re-enactor at the Gettysburg Inn.

"Describe him."

"He was dressed like a soldier." She recalled the strips on his uniform. "An officer," she added. "He had a dark goatee."

The two officers exchanged glances, and the blond one seemed suddenly to lose a bit of his verve.

"Your hostess, Mrs. Reilly, has just been able to put her family business back on solid financial ground. Something—something you might understand."

"Was that man with the goatee the one in the photos you saw?" she blurted.

"No, ma'am."

"Well, did he shoot me?" Hadn't the policeman said that re-enactors who were officers could carry pistols?

The cop's jaw tightened. "We have no suspects at present."

"Give our investigation time, please," the Indian partner interjected with dignity. "As regards your medallion, we have taken a photo of it. If I were you, I would do some serious thinking about where it comes from."

"It's from Rome. That's where our ancestor found it," said Delia.

"If you would allow me, I would like to say that I have seen something similar in India, actually."

His blond colleague nodded at him in satisfaction. "OK, Ron, we're finished. Goodbye ladies. Get a good night's sleep, Ms. Cebrelli. You're going home the day after tomorrow."

She was?

A bandaged arm. Frick it. And yet by switching cars with her mother, Angie managed, thanks to the automatic transmission, to drive home to Virginia, steering rather well. She kept the radio on in order not to entertain thoughts that she'd rather not have had, especially the frightful image of some creep trying to cut the medallion off her neck while she risked bleeding to death.

It was nice to be following her mother into the safer, pretty state of Maryland. It was nice even to stop in the service area for coffee and a donut. Too bad that as soon as they sat down with their order, the blond policeman had to call her again.

He had some news. Mrs. Reilly had denied talking to any man with a goatee at her restaurant.

"Denied?" she sputtered.

"She says she—."

"I didn't make up what I said, Officer."

"She says—."

"You do remember what I said? She was there at the cash register." Angie squinted angrily at the corner of the table. "She was plump. Plump and....middle-aged with stooped shoulders."

"What color was her hair?"

"Color? Something neutral, not black or bright white or anything. Neutral."

"That's—that's not very clear to me, Angie."

So this was their little game.

"What's important is that this Mrs. Reilly of yours is lying."

She pushed the button that ended the call and went out to the parking lot. Her mother followed, anxious and looking stricken as was her way, and only managed to solicit a few obscene words of explanation—fucking police, fucking lady liar—which Angie finally offered when she was in position behind the wheel and about to close the car door on her.

It took the sight of their small split-level house in Manassas to change her mood—and radically. How could she continue to fume when bouquets and bouquets of flowers under cellophane were stacked up against her front door? Jesus, they even over-spilled the stoop. Her TV viewers, her lovely audience. She pulled a slew of get-well notes off the cellophane and flipped through them as she entered the house, followed by her exclaiming mother, carrying most of the flowers in a large rustling pile. The note Angie liked most said, "You can weather this, Weather Girl!" It might be corny but she was touched that someone had thought to write that to her.

They hadn't been home very long when Stan rang the doorbell.

He gave Angie a long, careful, affectionate hug. "You're a heroine, lovely. Now if only you'd gone to Georgetown instead of to George Mason for college you'd be goddamn perfect."

Their old joke made her smile within his embrace. If Stan, a well-built man with sandy hair and regular features, had been older than thirtyish when he'd met Delia, fiftyish, at a town hall meeting, taken a liking to her, and spent the following three years working side by side with her on the citizens' steering commission for the new park center, he might have become Angie's stepfather instead of just a family friend, and she always remembered this when he got close physically.

"Come on in, Stan."

Entering, he hugged Delia in greeting as well. "This is all just so incredible."

"Oh yes," said Delia, grimacing.

They sat at the kitchen table and they told him about the strange things the police in Gettysburg had said.

"Information is what we need," he responded. He owned a TV station, did he not? He paid a salary to a news director. He would find out more about Gettysburg and Mrs. Reilly. "Why don't you two ladies just sit down over there on the couch for a bit?" He lifted the cordless kitchen phone from its stand.

And as Stan made his round of calls, the two studied the medallion.

"It's the flip side that's strange," said Angie. "Do you think it's a sort of warped, bent-over tree or something?"

Delia, undecided, pursed her lips.

"Mom, how do you think Nonno Goffredo came by it really?"

"I don't know. I have no secret to tell you. It could even have been Nonna Eleonora's, instead of Goffredo's. She kept the suitcase. Many of those letters in Italian are addressed to her."

"Do you think we need to get them all translated?"

"Who knows how much that'd cost."

"But Mom, if we need to."

Delia shook her head. "I don't remember any stories about this medallion."

The people Stan was talking to made promises to get back to him. As lunch time approached, Delia quietly proceeded to make hamburgers and baked beans for three.

"Oh, that looks good, Delia, thank you." Stan put aside his cell phone as his steaming plate arrived. Every time an answer came from his TV station staff, however, he put down his bun and took notes there at the table.

At the meal's end he said, "I think you're right, Angie. That woman in Gettysburg is lying. My people tell me that recently there's been a suspicious amount of over-development around there. Too many shopping centers, theme parks, bed and breakfasts, and converted inns like the one you ate at. A southern investment company has been having a field day of late, coming to the rescue of just about one and all. I checked up on its founder and chairman for you. He's one Marc-Alexandre Brandeau, of French origin, a billionaire; nobody's really sure how he made so much money so fast. The family had some colonial ties and so Brandeau's father was able to get in on all sorts of money-making ventures, like building airports and military bases in African countries, especially in the Congo. Marc-Alexandre grew up there, when on vacation from boarding school, and may have even been a mercenary. At a certain point, however, he gets himself a college degree in business in America and American citizenship. His real estate investment group is called the Golden Palmetto, and he's been quietly operating across the East Coast for some years, investing in and financing commercial assets and properties, including development projects, but also buying up scores—and I mean scores—of private homes and apartment blocks on the other. It seems people don't have to move out of their defaulted property with him—they just become renters. You can imagine the media coverage he's gotten for that."

"And this is the man who helped out Mrs. Reilly in Gettysburg?"

"Ninety percent sure. And the guy with the goatee, who was making Mrs. Reilly so unhappy, probably works for him, don't you think?"

"Why would he shoot Angie?" Delia intervened. "Why did this Brandeau want him to shoot Angie?"

"Did he shoot Angie? Did Brandeau want him to?"

"This is incredible," said Angie. "What I am to him?"

Stan cramped the last bite of hamburger into his mouth, and when he'd swallowed it he said, "OK, let me see the famous medallion again."

"I don't know, my friends," he said after a moment of fresh scrutiny. "I don't remember ever studying lion-men. Say, Delia, could I ask you for a beer? That burger's left me thirsty." He drank from the can with gusto, his chin raised so the two women could watch his Adam's apple pulse. "Man, that's good." Then he turned satisfied eyes towards Angie. She really liked Stan. As a boss and a person. He was the kind of man so inwardly programmed to be thoughtful with his friends that he sent text messages to buddies when he read that their favorite football teams had won big. "We're trying too hard to understand something beyond us. I want you to go talk to Father Giovanni Martini at Georgetown in the history of world religion department. He was a terrific professor, one of my favorites. Italian like your medallion. He'll be able to tell you something for sure. Forget George Mason—," he began.

"Georgetown," Angie mouthed.

He laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at. "Ready for his phone number?"