Chapter 4: Nonna's Kitchen

By evening Rocco's men had carried a steel bench, a centrifuge and a microscope into the basement.

I spent the afternoon with the amber vial and did not like what I found.

I came up the back stairs at seven for coffee, and a woman in a black cardigan caught me by the elbow.

"You're the doctor," she said. "Sit."

Concetta Carbone was seventy-four years old and came up to my shoulder.

She put a plate of pasta in front of me before I had the chair pulled out.

"I'm not hungry, Mrs. Carbone."

"You're skinny and you're pale. You're hungry."

"She's right," Rocco said from the doorway. He had a roll in his hand. "Nobody wins an argument in this kitchen."

"Rocco, out. You eat standing up like a horse."

"I'm going."

I ate. The sauce was so good that I stopped talking for four bites.

Concetta watched me with her chin in her hand.

"Alessio told me what you said," she said. "That somebody is feeding him poison."

"I think so. I need to look at what comes into this kitchen."

"My kitchen?"

"Yes. Everything. Oil, salt, coffee, the water."

She folded her arms.

"I've cooked in this house for fifty-one years," she said. "If anyone put anything in my food, I'd know."

"Would you know if they put it in the oil bottle before it reached you?"

Her arms came down slowly.

"No," she said. "I wouldn't."

I took a clean jar from my bag and began to fill it, one sample at a time.

Concetta handed me the salt without being asked.

Behind me, a chair scraped.

Alessio stood in the doorway in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

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