The houses were beautiful, impressive. On Sundays, Detective Lange sometimes took his wife out here, just to look at the outside of the houses and the grounds.
He found the address he was looking for and turned into the long driveway leading to the Gassner estate. The estate represented something more than money: it represented power. The Roffe dynasty was big enough to make governments fall. Major Wageman had been right: he would be very careful.
Detective Lange drove to the front door of the three-story stone house, got out of the car, took off his hat and pressed the doorbell. He waited. There was the heavy hanging silence of a house that has been deserted. He knew that was impossible. He rang again. Nothing but that still, oppressive silence. He was debating whether to go around to the back when the door unexpectedly opened. A woman stood in the doorway. She was middle-aged, plain-looking, wearing a wrinkled dressing gown. Detective Lange took her for the housekeeper. He pulled out his identification. "I'd like to see Mrs. Walther Gassner. Please tell her Detective Lange."
"I am Mrs. Gassner," the woman said.
Detective Lange tried to conceal his surprise. She was totally unlike his image of the lady of this house.
"I - we received a telephone call at police headquarters a short time ago," he began.
She watched him, her face blank, disinterested. Detective Lange felt that he was handling this badly, but he did not know why. He had a feeling that he was missing something important.
"Did you make that call, Mrs. Gassner?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered. "It was a mistake."
There was a dead, remote quality to her voice that was disturbing. He remembered the shrill, hysteircal voice on the tape recorder half an hour earlier.
"Just for our records, may I ask what kind of mistake?"
Her hesitation was barely perceptible. "There was - I thought that a piece of my jewelry was missing. I found it."
The emergency number was for murder, rape, mayhem. Walk on fucking eggs.
"I see." Detective Lange hesitated, wanting to get inside the house, wanting to find out what she was covering up. But there was nothing more he could say or do. "Thank you, Mrs. Gassner. I'm sorry to have troubled you."
He stood there, frustrated, and watched the door close in his face. He slowly got into his car and drove off.
Behind the door Anna turned.
Walther nodded and said softly, "You did very well, Anna. Now we're going back upstairs."
He turned toward the stairway, and Anna pulled out a pair of shears that had been concealed in the folds of her dressing gown and plunged them into his back.
Chapter 28
Rome.
Sunday, November 4.
Noon.
It was a perfect day, Ivo Palazzi thought, for visiting the Villa d'Este with Simonetta and their three beautiful daughters. As Ivo strolled through the fabled Tivoli Gardens arm in arm with his wife, watching the girls race ahead from fountain to splashing fountain, he idly wondered whether Pirro Ligorio, who had built the park for his patrons, the D'Este family, had ever dreamed how much joy he would one day give to millions of sightseers. The Villa d'Este was a short distance northeast of Rome, nestled high in the Sabine Hills. Ivo had been there often, but it always gave him a feeling of special pleasure to stand at the very top level and look down on the dozens of sparkling fountains below, each one cunningly designed, each one different from the others.
In the past Ivo had taken Donatella and his three sons here. How they had adored it! The thought of them made Ivo sad. He had not seen or talked to Donatella since that horrifying afternoon at the apartment. He still remembered vividly the terrible scratches she had inflicted on him. He knew what remorse she must be going through, and how she must be longing for him. Well, it would do her good to suffer for a while, as he had suflered. In his mind he could hear Donatella's voice, and she was saying, "Come along. This way, boys."
It was so clear it seemed almost real. He could hear her say, "Faster, Francesco!" and Ivo turned and Donatella was in back of him, with their three boys, moving determinedly toward him and Simonetta and the three girls. Ivo's first thought was that Donatella had happened to be here at the Tivoli Gardens by coincidence, but the instant he saw the expression on her face, he knew better. The putana was trying to bring his two families together, trying to destroy him! Ivo rose to the occasion like a madman.
He shouted to Simonetta, "There's something I must show you. Quickly, everybody."
And he swept his family down the long winding stone steps toward a lower level, pushing tourists aside, casting frantic glances over his shoulder. Above, Donatella and the boys were moving toward the steps. Ivo knew that if the boys saw him, everything was lost. All it needed was for one of them to shout "Papa!" and he might as well drown himself in the fountains. He hurried Simonetta and the girls along, not giving them a chance to pause, not daring to let them stop for an instant.
"Where are we rushing to?" Simonetta gasped. "What's the hurry?"
"It's a surprise," Ivo said gaily. "You'll see."
He risked another quick glance back. Donatella and the three boys were out of sight for the moment. Ahead was a labyrinth, with one set of stairs leading up and another leading down. Ivo chose the stairs going up.
"Come along," he called to the girls. "Whoever gets to the top first gets a prize!"
"Ivo! I'm exhausted!" Simonetta complained. "Can't we rest a minute?"
He looked at her in shock. "Rest? That would spoil the surprise. Hurry!"
He took Simonetta's arm and dragged her up the steep steps, his three daughters racing ahead of them. Ivo found himself gasping for breath. It would serve them all right, he thought bitterly, if I have a heart attack and die right here. Goddamn women! You can't trust any of them. How could she do this to me? She adores me. I'll kill the bitch for this.