A Deadly Paradise

A Deadly Paradise

by Grace Brophy
A Deadly Paradise

A Deadly Paradise

by Grace Brophy

eBook

$9.49  $9.99 Save 5% Current price is $9.49, Original price is $9.99. You Save 5%.

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

A German diplomat with many secrets is found dead in this “outstanding” police procedural series set in Italy’s Umbria region (The Denver Post).
 
In the peaceful Umbrian village of Paradiso, the murder and mutilation of an elderly German woman is bewildering. That is, until Insp. Alessandro Cenni of the state police discovers that this retired cultural attaché was not only a difficult tenant and a blackmailer, but a bisexual swinger who recently had an African female lover in residence.
 
To complicate things further, the dead woman grew up in occupied Venice, and one of her secrets from World War II might have surfaced. And the bucolic village is not that innocent after all: It was the site of a scandalous murder fifty years earlier.
 
Cenni’s boss wants a scapegoat, and the woman’s young lover is the obvious target. But Cenni cannot bring himself to close the case without ensuring that the true perpetrator is brought to justice.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781569476635
Publisher: Soho Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 07/01/2018
Series: A Commissario Cenni Investigation , #2
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 985,064
File size: 758 KB

About the Author

Born in New Jersey to Irish parents, Grace Brophy lived and worked as a teacher and systems engineer in New York City until 2001, when she and her late husband, figurative painter Miguel Peraza, traveled to Italy with their two cats. While still in Italy, she began The Last Enemy, her first work of fiction. Her second Commissario Cenni novel, A Deadly Paradise, is also published by Soho Press.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Paradise Lost

1

LORENZO WAS SURE he'd heard a soft mew coming from the garden next door. Normally he could see Tommaso quite clearly even when he was trying to hide. He was black as midnight and large even for an unaltered tomcat. The veterinarian said he was overfed and then, of course, he'd slip Tommaso treats whenever he passed him in the street. Lorenzo didn't usually worry when Tommaso was missing for a day, but since la tedesca had moved next door, he was keeping a close watch on him. The German had a flirtatious little female, and Tommaso had gone after her more than once.

He climbed the stone wall that separated the properties and caught his foot in one of the vines that sprawled exuberantly over his neighbor's garden. "Disgusting! It's a wonder every cat in town hasn't moved in," he muttered to himself as he untangled the vine to release his foot. "Tommaso, vieni qui," he called softly, spreading the foot-high weeds apart as he moved through the garden. He heard another mew, softer and more plaintive, and he knew that Tommaso was in trouble. What's the little devil up to now, he thought, as he searched frantically under a pile of dead leaves. That's when he saw the hole in the basement window, just big enough for a gutter rat to crawl through; but Tommaso, the magician, had gotten himself into even smaller spaces in the past.

If he knocked on the German's door and told her that Tommaso was in her basement, she'd make a huge fuss, maybe call the carabinieri again. Lorenzo had played in that basement many times as a child and knew that once Tommaso went through the window, he had no way of getting back out. He tried to peer in, but the window was encrusted with dirt. "Tommaso," he called again, and was rewarded with another plaintive mew. Nothing for it, Lorenzo decided, reaching through the hole in the window to unhook the latch. He hadn't seen the German or her car that afternoon; he would be safe.

The window frame, which was stiff from grime and disuse, cracked loudly as he pushed it inward. He hesitated a moment, holding his breath, but, hearing no thunderbolts in German, he climbed through, dropping four feet to the basement floor. "Bad cat," he whispered as soon as Tomasso began circling his feet and pushing up against his legs. "Andiamo a casa," he said, tenderly lifting the black cat onto his shoulder. Then he shuddered in disgust. Tom-maso was covered in blood.

2

QUESTORE CARLO TOGNI, commander of the Perugia Questura, knew himself to be an even-tempered man, but sometimes his favorite commissario would try the patience of a saint. Alessandro Cenni was staring off into space, not listening to a word Togni was saying.

"Did you hear me, Alex? It's your chance to redeem yourself. If all goes well, I can bring you back to Perugia with a promotion. What do you say to vice questore?"

"I don't think being a vice questore would suit my temperament," Cenni replied, smiling wickedly, "particularly now, just when I'm beginning to like Foligno. Fewer politics and more police work."

"Don't be ridiculous! And don't try my patience, Alex. I'll put you in for vice questore, and you'll take it and be happy!" Why he indulged Alex Cenni was beyond him, but his talent helped. Cenni was the best he'd ever worked with — none better, he'd often tell his wife, Romina, when no one else was around. Until Cenni's transfer from Perugia to Foligno two years ago, the Perugia Questura had had the best arrest record in Italy. It was also one of the best run, and for that Carlo had Alex to thank. He leaned over the desk and dropped his voice. "Listen, Alex, a success here would all but guarantee me a transfer to Rome and you a promotion."

Alex laughed out loud. "I surrender. Whatever you say, capo. Besides, I'm bored! Beyond the pickpockets and the family feuds, Foligno is amazingly dull these days. This recession seems to have everyone in the dumps; even the crooks are conserving their energy. Dimmi!"

"It's what I already told you while you were gazing out the window!" Carlo snapped. "A German diplomat was murdered in the village of Paradiso. They found her body yesterday in the wine cellar. It's worse than murder!" He dropped his voice. "Mutilated! And that's between us, Alex, at least until the press gets hold of it, which may have already happened. I saw that clown from La Repub-blica downstairs when I parked my car. You know the one I mean. You'd better not be the one responsible for him hanging around," he added ungraciously.

Cenni laughed again, still in good humor. "No problem, capo. If this murder is so hush-hush, why me? I'm persona non grata!"

The questore ignored the sarcasm. "You speak German; you're my best detective!" He tacked the last bit on with a generous smile and waited for the thank-you, but Cenni stared back without changing expression.

"How many times have I told you not to call me capo!" he snapped. "You know, Alex, things are very different in Rome these days, with the left back in power. The PM is anxious to get on the good side of the Germans. He'll show his appreciation if this murder is solved quickly — and quietly! It's your chance to have the Casati fiasco wiped off your record."

"Careful, Carlo. You're treading on one of my favorite memories. I'd do the same again." Cenni had arrested the fiancée of a senator (a very rich senator) against Carlo's specific orders. The charge of murder hadn't stuck; the senator had had far too many strings he could pull. And for his troubles, Cenni had been sent to Foligno, where he'd been rotting for the last two years. Of course he wanted to return to Perugia, Umbria's capital city and his hometown; but why give the power brokers the satisfaction of seeing him eat crow?

As much as he protested to the contrary, Togni was a paid-up member of that club. He'd cook his wife in Sunday's meat sauce if it would guarantee him a promotion, Alex thought with some regret. He liked Romina Togni.

The questore winced, almost as though he'd been reading Cenni's thoughts. "I know you'd do the same again, Alex. Don't remind me! You're too damned independent for your own good. Perhaps you should reflect that not all of us have Cenni Chocolates to back us up. Some of us need our jobs."

Alex hooted in genuine delight. "Good Lord, Carlo, Romina's family has far more money than mine. You two live like the Medici!"

Carlo smiled serenely. "True, but it's not my money," he said piously. "Besides, my bank balance has nothing to do with this discussion. Just do yourself a favor, Alex: cooperate on this one. The security officer from the German Embassy is outside. I'll send him in." Just before he reached the door, he turned and bestowed on Cenni one of his full-wattage smiles. "Be nice, Alex," he pleaded. "I want this promotion."

ALEX STOOD AT the questore's window looking down at his car below. He had parked it between the guard's shed and the fence, his permanently assigned space until two year's ago, soon to be his again. It would be good to return to Perugia, although in the two years since he'd left, his two most reliable inspectors had married and one of them had moved on. Piero was now in Assisi: Commissario Piero Tonni! Elena Ottaviani, Piero's wife, was still in Perugia but currently on medical leave, recovering from a gunshot wound.

When Carlo had first mentioned vice questore, Alex had perked up. I guess I'm not that different, he conceded to himself, secretly amused at his own vanity. We Italians love our titles. But now he wasn't certain that he should accept. If he agreed, the opportunity to do nuts-and-bolts policing would quickly disappear. Administration and politics would take over and his chances of ever finding Chiara's killers would be lost. The higher up he went, the fewer possibilities there were of dealing with those who might help him — pimps, prostitutes, petty thieves, most of whom knew each other by reputation, if not by name. Someone knew something. Chiara had been kidnapped in Perugia, in mid-afternoon, in front of her parents' home on Via Maestà delle Volte, twenty years earlier. Eventually someone would talk, and Alex wanted to be around when it happened, even if he had to wait for a deathbed confession.

He knew that the world at large viewed his long search for Chiara's kidnappers as an obsession, and perhaps it was. Genine had finally walked out on him three months earlier, to study police procedures in Munich. "I can't wait any longer, Alex. You say you love me, but when we're together you're thinking about Chiara. You're in love with a ghost! I just happen to look like her." When he'd protested, Genine had marched over to his nightstand and removed Chiara's picture from the top drawer. "Hiding it doesn't help, Alex. Look at us!" she said, holding the picture up close to her face. "Blondes, with blue eyes — we even have the same shape of mouth, although è vero I'm better looking," she said immodestly. "Not that it helps," she added tartly. "Every woman you fall for looks like Chiara. A year ago it was that Croatian iceberg. Now it's me."

He had protested again, and Genine listened quietly to his denials. Later that same evening they made love, but it was perfunctory and unsatisfying. At three in the morning he awoke to a noise and heard her moving around in the bathroom. He knew she was crying, but he stayed where he was, staring into the darkness. How could he help Genine when he couldn't help himself? Days later, she'd told him about the Munich assignment. He'd tried to talk her out of it, but half-heartedly. If she stayed, he'd have to relinquish his obsession. He wasn't ready.

The sight of a large tomcat jumping on the hood of his just-washed car rescued him from his thoughts. He knocked loudly on the windowpane until the cat looked up. It yawned, jumped again, this time onto the roof, curled its body into a tight ball, and settled in for a nap. Alex was amused, at the cat's disdain as well as at his own need to keep his car clean. The sun was shining directly onto the roof; on a sunny spring day it was the ideal spot for a snooze. Rachel, his own cat, would have done the same, and Alex would have been sorely put out if anyone had tried to stop her.

3

"DOTTOR CENNI, MI sensi di averla fatta aspettare." The words of apology for keeping him waiting were in Italian, but the accent was decidedly German. Alex turned from the window to greet Dieter Reimann, the German security officer, and wondered, irritably, how long he had been in the room observing him; he hadn't heard the door open or close. Dieter Reimann was a small, spare man with an unusually large head, made even more noticeable by the wisps of gray hair combed across his balding pate. Getting along in years, sixty at least, Cenni observed, and dressed like a tourist on his first trip to Italy. He looks damned silly wearing those galoshes and carrying that oversized umbrella, Cenni concluded, mainly to relieve his irritation.

"Exceptionally fine weather for this time of year," Reimann began after they'd exchanged credentials and settled on first names. Cenni winced again at Reimann's guttural Italian.

"Perhaps we should speak in German, Dieter," he responded, smiling to show his appreciation of Reimann's efforts. He was rather smug about his fluency in German, having read all of Goethe while at university, and was completely unaware that his own awkward efforts might evoke a similar degree of suffering in Reimann.

THE STORY THAT Reimann told in their thirty minutes together lacked credibility, Cenni decided, as he watched the German get into his car to return to Perugia. Something wrong there! When Cenni had expressed his desire to visit Rome to talk to the embassy staff, Reimann had insisted that such a visit was unnecessary:

"You have everything you need," Reimann said, pointing to the folder containing the police and postmortem reports. "All the evidence points to an enraged lover, if not directly to the woman she picked up when she was in Africa a year ago. She did that rather frequently, you know, picked up young women, especially so as she got older." His face clouded over. "My government needs to know what happened to the papers that Jarvinia Baudler stole from the embassy. Even if it's true that she was tortured before her death — although your medical examiner dismisses this as a possibility in the postmortem report — it couldn't have been for those papers. They're of no interest to anyone outside the German government."

"I still don't understand, Dieter. What's in these papers you keep harping on and, if they had nothing to do with her death, why are they so important? Who wants them? The Russians, perhaps?" he asked provocatively.

Reimann laughed nervously. "Sorry Alex, but there's only so much that I'm at liberty to share. This is strictly a German matter, nothing to do with anyone here in Italy, or anywhere else. It was an act of petty revenge, a protest against her forced retirement, no spies coming in from the cold, as you seem to be thinking. Only a very small number of people are aware of their contents. I'm not fully in the know myself," he added with reluctance. "My charge is simply to keep them out of the hands of the wrong people, and that's all I need to know —"

Cenni interrupted. "But not all that I need to know! Italy's not at loggerheads with Germany. We're not in the business of embarrassing the German government. If we find the papers, we'll turn them over to you after we've examined them, but first we must examine them." He found himself tapping his fingers on his desk in annoyance. He stopped tapping and continued: "My job is to find and arrest the murderer of Jarvinia Baudler. If my officers locate these papers and if we conclude that they have nothing to do with her murder, we'll hand them over to the magistrate assigned to the case. I'll certainly do all I can to keep the contents private, but the German government must apply directly to the judiciary if they want the papers sealed."

After fifteen years working in homicide, Cenni was an astute reader of emotions. Reimann exhibited none of the expected signs of anger, not even a prick of irritation, when Cenni refused to go along with the program he had outlined.

"Of course, of course," the German responded good-naturedly. "You have your job, dottore, and I have mine. Just keep me informed. I may need help in filling out the correct forms in applying to the judiciary. Italian bureaucracy, you know, has a certain reputation."

It may have been Alex's imagination, but a slight chill descended on the room after Reimann addressed him as dottore.

4

"WE HAVE A problem!" Reimann said, holding the telephone receiver a short distance from his mouth. His hotel in Perugia had a five-star rating, but he had an innate distrust of Italian germs. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to the window, shielding his tired eyes from the sunlight streaming through the window, as he kept watch on the door.

"What now?" the voice on the Berlin end asked. Reimann heard a fat sigh of annoyance.

"Cenni. Uncooperative." Reimann responded crisply. "We should have insisted on working with the carabinieri. They're easier to deal with. Cenni's threatening to turn any papers he finds over to the presiding judge."

"Why is that a problem? Have someone from the PM's office call the presiding judge."

"Not very likely. The last government had no control over the judiciary, and I doubt this one does either. It's independent here — like Cenni!"

"I want those papers, Reimann. If the information in them gets out, we'll have serious problems. What about that African she imported? Isn't she the logical starting point?"

A bank of clouds moved across the horizon, blocking the sun and casting a long shadow into the room.

"Disappeared!" he responded.

Another fat sigh from Berlin. "I have to go. You know what to do. No excuses; just do it. And we don't need to know the details; but of course you know that."

Reimann sat holding the receiver until he heard the dial tone. He was sweating profusely in the unheated room, and he used the edge of the brocade bedspread to wipe his face and hands. He was thinking about the woman he'd been speaking with. Brass balls! A friend of the chancellor's, she was the first woman appointed to head the BND, Germany's secret service, but there was nothing womanly about her ambition or her directness in serving that ambition.

I'll lose my pension if I don't find those papers, he realized. She blames me for letting it reach this point, Reimann thought as he poured another scotch, a larger one than the two that he'd swallowed earlier. He walked over to the hotel window, carrying his glass and the bottle, to look out at Mount Subasio in the distance. Just beyond his window was a large olive grove. He watched as the sun came from behind a cloud, dappling the pruned treetops and coloring the leaves a burnished silvery gold, the color of Jarvinia's hair when he'd first met her. He thought about Jarvinia and the trouble she was causing him, that she'd always caused him. He was a decent man and he believed that no one should die as she had. But he was also a man who valued justice, and he knew that Jarvinia had brought it on herself.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "A Deadly Paradise"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Grace Brophy.
Excerpted by permission of Soho Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE Venice 1945,
BOOK ONE Paradise Lost,
BOOK TWO The Sparrow and the Peacock,
BOOK THREE Venice 2007,
BOOK FOUR Speak me fair in death,
BOOK FIVE Paradise Regained,
EPILOGUE Flotilla for a Queen,

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews