Chapter 5: Ask Him Where It's From

Monday morning I came down to breakfast with the handkerchief still tied around my left hand.

Alessio was already at the long table in the kitchen, in his shirtsleeves, buttering bread.

He stood when I came in.

"Sit," he said. "The coffee's hot."

I sat on the far side.

He pushed the sugar toward me across the wood, and our fingers did not touch.

I noticed that they did not touch.

I noticed it so hard that I burned my tongue on the coffee.

"Domenico's trucks stayed home," he said. "Half my docks are idle. The council wants a meeting by Wednesday."

"And your plan?"

"I'm working on it."

"That isn't a plan."

"No," he said. "It's a start."

He almost smiled.

I looked at my plate so I would not smile back.

After breakfast I took my cup out to the walled garden behind the kitchen, where nobody could watch me do nothing.

The garden gave onto a lane through an iron gate, and the gate was ajar.

A woman in cream silk stood on the other side of it.

Ilaria Montanari had not been home to sleep.

Her makeup was perfect and her eyes were not.

"You're not allowed in the house," I said.

"I'm not in the house." She lifted her chin at the lane. "I'm on public ground. I thought we could talk, one woman to another."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Then listen." She opened her handbag and took out something small and brown.

My cup stopped halfway to my mouth.

It was the wallet.

The cracked clasp, the cracked leather, the little tear at the corner that I had known with my thumb for five years.

"Where did you get that?"

"My maid is very quick with her hands," said Ilaria. "I think you'll find it's the only thing missing from your case."

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