No More Brothers (A Serafina Florio Mystery) Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE: On the Beach

  CHAPTER TWO: Colonna and Loffredo

  CHAPTER THREE: Mother and Son

  CHAPTER FOUR: The Crone

  CHAPTER FIVE: Condolences

  CHAPTER SIX: Silver and Gold

  CHAPTER SEVEN: The Plan

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Serafina’s Family

  CHAPTER NINE: Gentle Touch

  CHAPTER TEN: The Shoemaker’s Family

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: And Yet…

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Sleepless

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Midnight Encounter

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: In the Madonie

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Return

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Maria’s Lesson

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Teo

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Confession

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Boffo

  CHAPTER TWENTY: The Commissioner

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Prisoner

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: An Understanding

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Another Visit

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Apothecary Records

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: A Faded Soldier

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Chasing a Dream

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: The Sweet Shop

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: The Report

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: The Orphanage

  CHAPTER THIRTY: Eureka!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Before the Wake

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: The Wake

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: The Search

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: The Affair

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: The Funeral

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Missing

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: A Memory Dislodged

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Rosa’s Help

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: Totò

  CHAPTER FORTY: The Ride to the Cala

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: The Admiral

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: Messina’s Harbor

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: The Ride Home

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: A Cleansing Flame

  No More Brothers:

  A Serafina Florio Mystery

  by

  Susan Russo Anderson

  A Classic Mystery, A New Romance...

  No More Brothers, a novella, is the second book in the Serafina Florio Series of mysteries.

  When Serafina discovers a body on the beach, she plunges into the investigation. Suspected murderers include a Mafia capo, a soldier, a bar—keep, a shoemaker.

  Evidence leads Serafina to a forest on the edge of the Madonie Mountains. With the help of family and friends, she uncovers dark secrets and conceives a daring plan to catch the killer.

  Meanwhile, an old flame knocks on her door.

  Will love prevail?

  Does Serafina have enough time to catch the killer?

  In the midst of disease and diminishing funds, can she keep her family together?

  No More Brothers

  Susan Russo Anderson

  Conca d’Oro Publishing

  Copyright © 2012 Susan Russo Anderson

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  No More Brothers is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Derek Murphy

  ebook conversion: Ted Risk

  Copy Editing & Proofreading: Toni Anderson, Pauline Nolet

  Characters in order of appearance:

  Serafina Florio, midwife turned sleuth, widow with seven children

  Ugo Pandolfina, the corpse

  The commissioner, Oltramari’s police superintendent

  Carlo, Serafina’s oldest son, a medical student

  Giorgio, Serafina’s deceased husband

  Maddalena, Serafina’s deceased mother

  Beppe, Serafina’s factotum

  Colonna, an inspector

  Loffredo, Oltramari’s Medical Examiner

  Don Tigro, Oltramari’s Mafia capo

  Rodolfo Pandolfina, brother of the deceased

  Teo, Rodolfo’s son

  Carmela, Serafina’s oldest daughter, Carlo’s twin and a landscaper

  Renata, Serafina’s second daughter, a pastry chef

  Vicenzu, Serafina’s middle son, apothecary and accountant

  Giulia, Serafina’s third daughter, a seamstress

  Maria, Serafina’s youngest daughter, a prodigy

  Totò, Serafina’s youngest son

  Assunta, Serafina’s domestic

  Rosa, Serafina’s friend

  Graziella, the shoemaker’s wife

  Ezzo Abatti, a soldier

  Boffo, a barkeep

  Arcangelo, Rosa’s stableboy

  Mother Concetta, mother superior of Guardian Angel Orphanage

  Badali, a policeman

  Places

  Oltramari, fictional city on the northern coast of Sicily in the province of Palermo

  A forest near the Madonie Mountains, east of Palermo

  La cala, the ancient port of Palermo, now a fashionable harbor

  The harbor of Messina

  CHAPTER ONE

  On the Beach

  Monday, February 11, 1867

  Perched near the water’s edge, the gunnysack tilted toward the sea. Fingers curled out of a hole near the top. Serafina Florio picked her way over stones still wet from the tide to take a closer look. Bloated eyes gaped back at her. “Poor man,” she muttered.

  Something moved behind her? She shivered, turned this way and that. No one. She looked up at the sky. It was grey, decidedly so, like the color of stale body parts strewn over fields during Garibaldi’s campaign and mixed into the soil these past seven years. Were the crops better for the mulching?

  Life was full of death in Sicily. Last year, a wave of cholera created a sea of makeshift coffins. They lined the piazza like battered ships. But that wasn’t all. In the fall, peasants stormed the city’s gates, scything humans and animals alike. The streets were slicked with blood. Artisans joined in the uprising, railing against taxes, conscription, the price of bread. Serafina was grateful that Giorgio hadn’t lived to see it.

  This chaos must have been the reason that the commissioner summoned her to his office last week. He stood before her in sash and frock coat. “Dear lady, you caught the Ambrosi murderer before he could slash more women. You stunned us with the cleverness of your plan, the deftness of its execution.” His arms flailed like broken windmills. “We teeter on the edge of anarchy. Police and soldiers fill the streets, yet no one quells the riots. A pity, but we need your detecting skills. Say yes, you must. We’ll double your stipend.”

  About time, too. The government paid her a pittance for all her backbreaking midwifery. And with Carlo in medical school and customers using wheat instead of coins to pay for their medicinals, Serafina needed the extra money her sleuthing would fetch. Besides, someone had to stop this butchery. Who better than she?

  Someone hiding behind the prickly pear? She bit her lip, forcing herself to remain calm. Something familiar about the corpse—his flat face—but she couldn’t quite recall where she’d seen the man. Staring out to sea, she let its vastness mesmerize her, and in the letting go, remembered his name. She felt a surge of pity as she recalled his friendly presence in the piazza. A coincidence, she was just talking about him the other day with Loffredo. What had he said? Something about shady dealings. Serafina wrestled with herself until she was int
errupted by the sound of retching.

  She spun around. “Carlo, steel yourself!”

  “The smell is fierce, worse than the cadaver room in May. Who is it?”

  “You know our shoemaker?—it’s his brother, Ugo. Quick, before he comes, let’s take a closer look.” She unbuttoned the dead man’s shirt.

  “Before who comes?”

  “Inspector Colonna. Now, no more questions. Tell me what you see. Start at the head and go down to the toes.”

  “You’ve sent for Dr. Loffredo?”

  “Yes. But no harm in beginning.”

  Carlo knelt and examined the face. “A dried, bile-like substance around his lips. I think he’s been poisoned, but why the multiple stab wounds on his chest and abdomen? Look at their size and shape. Made by a double-edged, thin blade.”

  The sea was still. She cupped her elbows, waiting for Carlo to loosen the dead man’s cape and shirt, hoping for a breeze to soothe her temples. For a moment her mother appeared, not as she was in death, but full of vigorous regard and wrinkling her nose. “Such a fuss! It’s only death. And with Giorgio gone, you have a household to feed. Get on with life!”

  Serafina rubbed her forehead.

  “Angle of wounds and contusions on the left side of the neck suggest the killer approached his victim from the front, grabbed him with his right hand, used his left hand to stab.”

  He lifted the torso. More bruises on the nape and shoulders.

  “Couldn’t the killer have surprised Ugo from behind, squeezed him with his left arm, used his right hand to stab?” Serafina asked.

  He pointed to Ugo’s neck. “Look at that abrasion on his Adam’s apple, probably made by the killer’s right thumb where he pressed it into the throat. What’s more, he used an upward thrust when he stabbed. Hard to do from behind a tall man like Ugo unless the killer’s a giant, and giants are rare in Sicily.”

  Carlo droned on and she realized she missed half of what her son was saying. “Anything else?”

  “Some leaves and pieces of prickly pear in the folds of his cape. Are you listening?”

  “Of course, dear. Brilliant.” Her mind whirled, pieces of it flaking off in different directions as it often did in the morning hours, some of it ranging over this year, that plan. She must remember to take Maria to her lesson before school; she’d remind Giulia to finish sewing beads on the baroness’s collar by tomorrow; Totò’s sore finger needed addressing. Her stomach knotted as her son talked about the corpse’s lividity. She wondered where she’d get the coins to buy new shoes for the children this spring. Was she heartless in the face of this poor soul’s recent agony?

  She shook herself and examined one of the leaves Carlo had just given her, turning it over a few times and pricking her finger on its edges. Her mind played its tricks again. She and Giorgio were frolicking in the Madonie when she threw a handful of leaves his way. They looked like the leaf she held in her hand. The fantasy evaporated. “Go on.”

  “Loose bowels, another indication of poisoning. Soiled all over the front and back of his pants. Little wonder, the stench.”

  “Why go to all this trouble? Why not just poison to kill?” Serafina asked.

  “More than one person wanted him dead?”

  A left-handed killer with a stiletto and help. But why so many wounds? The killer was inexperienced? Enraged? Probably both.

  She watched the thin, wet line of shore as morning clouds massed in the distance. Awake, now, the wind. It slid across her vision, churned up bits of seaweed, molding the water into small waves as it had done, she imagined, on the first day of creation. For a moment, she listened to the ebb and flow of the sea.

  Carlo pulled at the sack. The rest of the body slipped out. “Only one boot.”

  “Take it off. I’ll put it in my bag.” Serafina brushed sand from her skirt.

  He shrugged but removed the boot. After fishing in Ugo’s pockets, he found a scribbled note and handed it to Serafina.

  She read aloud. “’Midnight, m’dni, ea.’ An assignation?”

  “Who knows?” Carlo made a face.

  “Better cover him up again.”

  While Carlo retied the gunnysack, Serafina stuffed Ugo’s boot into her bag, along with the note and a few of the leaves.

  In the distance, Serafina saw Beppe approaching with Inspector Colonna. Black-hooded stretcher bearers followed in a cart and, behind them, uniformed men.

  “Look! Colonna’s holding a bandana over his mouth and nose already,” Serafina said. “Waddles like a goose, no?” The air, now blowing, snapped at her skirts.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Colonna and Loffredo

  Drawing closer, Colonna said, “Here before me, I see.”

  “I didn’t ask for this. Early this morning my factotum informed me he’d seen a strange-looking sack on the beach. He led me here. I told him to run for you and Dr. Loffredo, but since I planned to stay here out of respect for the dead, I asked him to fetch my son first so that I would not wait alone.”

  Serafina introduced Carlo to Colonna. “My oldest, home for two weeks.”

  Carlo inclined his head to the inspector.

  “You’ve been here for how long?” Colonna asked.

  “A while. You took your time getting here. Carlo came shortly after I arrived. We’ve seen no one else.”

  Colonna opened the sack. “Do you know this man? His family?”

  “I delivered his brother’s child last night.” She pictured Graziella in her final groaning; candles guttering, helper women crowded around a chipped statue of the Virgin. Last night, birth. This morning, death.

  “And last night, did you see anything unusual?”

  “I was directing a birth. I had no time to see or hear anything else.”

  “Ah, but here’s the examiner now. Been waiting for you, Loffredo. Make room for him, dear lady.”

  “Stay where you are.” Dr. Loffredo tipped his hat to Serafina. His eyes did not leave hers while he shook hands with Carlo and Inspector Colonna. He was tall with not a hint of paunch, his clothes from the best tailors in Palermo.

  The doctor shook hands with Carlo. “I could use your assistance. Make room for us, please, Colonna.”

  While the doctor and Carlo bent to examine the dead man, Colonna shuffled over to speak with the black cloaks waiting to prepare the body for its trip to the morgue.

  When they finished, Loffredo addressed Serafina. “The wound to the heart killed him. Bruising suggests he’s been moved, but any fool can see that. Lividity’s well established, so he’s been dead for some time—at least twelve hours, I’d say, but I’ll be able to give you a better estimate of the time of death after the autopsy.” He peered out to sea. “A mess they’ve made of it. Looks like he was poisoned beforehand, stabbed more often than I care to count, then stuffed into a sack and dragged here—an ignominious end.”

  She shuddered. “Why the poison?”

  Loffredo shrugged. “I see it often in a murder like this one.”

  “What do you mean, ‘like this one?’”

  “A revenge killing, I’d say. Killer had assistance, someone who fed the victim just enough substance to weaken the man.”

  “I agree,” Carlo said. “Softened him up for the kill.”

  She was silent a moment.

  Carlo asked, “When’s the autopsy?”

  “Probably next week. Busy these days with bodies.” He faced Serafina. “You investigate?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Be careful, my dear.” He kissed her hand and left.

  Colonna held onto his fedora, pushing toward them on splayed feet. “Three small uprisings in the province yesterday. We’re spread thin. No doubt the commissioner will assign this case to you, but I can spare an hour this morning to give you a few pointers while you search the home of the deceased. Of course, I’ll wait outside for you to finish up with the spouse.”

  “’Finish up?’ His wife died. No children.” Serafina gave Colonna directions to Ugo’s home
. “I’ll meet you there after I’ve talked to his brother.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mother and Son

  “You? Investigate?” Carlo asked, helping Serafina navigate the rocky ascent to the center of town.

  She nodded.

  “Why you?”

  She told him of her meeting with the commissioner last month, the increase in her stipend if she agreed to help the department investigate. “Only temporary, you understand.”

  He smirked. “Don’t waste too much time on this case. Looks like the work of Don Tigro’s thugs to me. Messy enough. The don’s style, too—body dumped on shore for all to see. ‘Look what happens when you tangle with Don Tigro,’ that’s what he’s saying with this roaring stink.”

  Serafina winced. Each time she heard the don’s name, she thought of her mother’s deathbed confession—Tigro was Serafina’s half-brother, born out of wedlock, given up for adoption. A horror, Maddalena’s admission, revealed only in her final agony and shared only with her daughter. If it were true, Don Tigro was the uncle of Serafina’s children. She shuddered when she imagined the burden that knowledge would give them, then quickly chided herself for believing a dying woman’s hallucinations. No matter, no one must ever discover the secret. Beneath a veneer of culture, Don Tigro ran a deadly organization, demanding the last drop of blood from those who sought his friendship. How could he be her mother’s child?

  “You’re far away, again, not listening.”

  “Brilliant, dear. Please continue.”

  “What’s more, you underestimate Colonna. He’s overworked, but he knows how to investigate.”

  “And your mother doesn’t?” She stopped to catch her breath and gazed at the glistening sea far below.

  “You grabbed the town’s attention when you captured the Ambrosi killer—only took you a week in contrast with the police who searched a little, scratched a lot, and discovered nothing. After that, you primped on stage for a while and enjoyed it. Now you want the limelight again. You know what? I think you’re jealous.”

  “A bit too smug this morning, aren’t we, Mr. Smarts? I wonder what Gloria gave you last night to uncork such wit.”

  Carlo grinned.