The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case Read online

  Molly fixed a huge lunch. When David said, “Wow. It’s going to take us all afternoon to eat all that stuff,” Molly said, “That’s the general idea.”

  Instead of going out to the road, as David had expected, Marzia led them across the courtyard, past the Morehouses’ villa—where both Marzia and Amanda found reasons to stop and talk loudly for a few minutes, but no one came out, so they finally gave up and went on—and then right up the steep hillside. Behind the villa there were two long terraces planted to grapevines and then the forest. Following a narrow path, Marzia led them to where half-ruined stone steps led from the lower terrace to the one above. On the top terrace they skirted the end of the rows of grapevine and returned to the path just where it entered the forest.

  The deep shade was very welcome after the heat of the midday sun. The path wound around the side of the hill, but it was easy to see that it had once been something more than just a hillside trail. Where the hill was steep, the path had been cut back into the slope and in some places the bank had been lined with stone to stop erosion. Before long they came to a kind of decoration, a large stone urn on a pedestal. The urn was chipped and weather-stained and obviously very old. Farther on they passed two more urns and then a stone bench, curved to fit an indentation in the hillside. Near the bench Marzia stopped and began to tell Janie something about the path, but David hardly understood a word. When he asked Janie, she didn’t seem too sure, either.

  “About this path,” Janie said a little uncertainly. Marzia says it’s called a passeggiata. She said something about how people used to take walks here a long time ago when the family who owned the villa was very rich.”

  “How do you know she said that?” Amanda demanded. “You don’t know all those words in Italian.”

  “I do too,” Janie said.

  “Okay, then how do you say rich? How do you say rich in Italian?”

  Janie’s frown turned into a triumphant grin. Obviously Amanda had happened to ask her a word she really knew. “Ricco,” she said in a very cocky tone of voice. “Molto ricco means very rich. So there!”

  Amanda shrugged and walked on down the path, but Marzia poked Janie and asked something about “molto ricco.”

  “Marzia wants to know if we’re molto ricco,” Janie said.

  David laughed. “Us? Our family? Fat chance. We’re not rich.”

  Amanda stopped and came back frowning. “Look, David,” she said, “don’t answer for me, will you? My father is very rich, so that means I am too. If your father is rich, you are too, even if you don’t happen to live together all the time.”

  “Okay, so you’re rich,” David said. “I keep forgetting.” Actually, he’d heard Molly say that her first husband liked to pretend he was a lot richer than he really was, but if Amanda wanted to believe her father was a millionaire, it was all right with him.

  Janie was pointing at Amanda and telling Marzia something about “molto ricco.”

  “Milionario?” Marzia asked.

  “Sì. Milionario,” Janie said with the doll-eyed look that could fool people who knew her a lot better than Marzia did. Marzia was looking very impressed, and there wasn’t anything in the world Janie liked better than impressing people. David couldn’t help grinning, wondering how Janie was going to explain how Amanda happened to be “molto ricco” when the rest of the family wasn’t. It wasn’t likely that she knew how to say words like divorce and marry in Italian. But then again, he wouldn’t want to bet that she didn’t. But whatever it was that Janie was telling Marzia about Amanda, the heiress, it must have been a good story because Marzia seemed to be very interested.

  Janie and Marzia were still talking about Amanda when the path turned sharply and widened into a circular clearing. In the center of the clearing was a huge stone table, and all around the edges were more of the massive curved benches. Behind the clearing the hill face had been lined with heavy stone slabs, forming a high semi-circular wall. From the center of the wall water dribbled from the mouth of a gargoyle and fell into a trough below. All of the old stone—the table, the benches, the trough and the wall behind it—had once been covered with sculpted figures, but now all of the shapes were blurred by time and erosion into vague, shadowy forms.

  Everyone told Marzia what a great picnic place it was, and she seemed pleased that they were all so impressed. They put the bags of food down on the table and started looking around trying to figure out where the spring was that had been piped to flow from the gargoyle’s mouth, and what all the carved figures represented. All except Esther, that is, who was more interested in taking the food out of the bags and arranging it very carefully on the table.

  It still wasn’t very late, but after Esther had arranged and rearranged everything several times, she began to fuss about being hungry. So the picnic got underway, and while they were eating Marzia tried to tell them something about a duel. It seemed a duel had been fought right there on the picnic terrace with pistols—“pistole,” Marzia called them.

  It was a long story, and even Janie didn’t understand all of it. After a while Marzia got tired of trying to explain and began to demonstrate, and, of course, Janie insisted on getting into the act. The results were pretty confusing. According to Janie’s interpretation, two men had gotten into a fight over a shopping bag and a whole lot of people had been killed, and the whole thing had happened just last Christmas. It made a good story—Esther got so excited she stopped eating for at least five minutes—but that night David found out from Olivia Thatcher that the duel had happened at Christmas about one hundred years ago. The argument had been over somebody’s wife, and the one guy who got shot didn’t actually die. It seemed that Janie had mixed up “sporta,” which means “shopping bag” with “sposa,” which means “wife,” and then just got carried away by her enthusiasm for doing death scenes.

  When all the food was finally gone, Marzia showed them a short path that led directly down from the picnic terrace to another dirt road. They all slid and scrambled down the hill and then started walking down the road, which was narrower and not in as good condition as the one that went past the villa. It led past a large quarry, where they stopped to watch some workmen loading huge slabs of stone onto a truck. The walls of the quarry formed a semi-circle of gigantic stairsteps where the slabs of stone had been cut out of the hillside. It looked as if it would be an interesting place to fool around, but all along the road there were signs that said ATTENZIONE! PERICOLO! VIETATO L’ACCESSO! in big red letters. It didn’t take much Italian to figure out what that meant. A little way past the quarry, they came to where the small road merged with the larger one that went past the villa.

  After that first picnic, the terrace at the end of the passeggia became a favorite place, not only for picnics but for all kinds of games. Janie took the twins there quite often to play medieval lords and ladies, and duels and crusades, and a game about werewolves that scared Esther so much she cried all the way home. But all the games and picnics were during the daytime. As far as David knew, nobody ever went there at night.

  six

  Not long after that first picnic, Marzia offered to take all the Stanley kids to the Saturday morning market at Valle. They started very early in the morning and walked down the road past the olive orchards and vineyards and the solid tile-roofed farmhouses. Marzia pointed out things and told about them, and Janie translated. Either Janie’s Italian was improving rapidly, or else it was her imagination, because they all learned some amazing things about wine making and wild boar hunting that day, plus a whole lot of local gossip. When they finally got to the village and turned the corner into the piazza, they were all surprised at how different it was from weekdays.

  The piazza in Valle was a large square paved with cobblestones with a statue of an Italian soldier in the center and places for parking cars all around the edges. During the week the central part of the square was empty, except for little groups of men standing around talking things over, which was something Italian men seemed to
spend a great deal of time doing. But on Saturday morning the whole area was suddenly covered with dozens of little booths and stalls under bright-covered umbrellas and awnings. Some of the booths were mobile affairs on the backs of trucks, and some were just a table under an umbrella. The merchandise included everything—from fresh fish to French perfume. Everyone in town seemed to be there having a great time shopping and visiting and arguing, and the whole thing was exciting and a little like a carnival.

  Marzia seemed to know everyone. People kept stopping her. They were all very friendly and curious about the Stanleys, particularly the little kids. Blair especially got fussed over and called things like “bellino” and “un angelo.” But people were always saying things like beautiful and angelic about Blair, and even when it was in English he never paid any attention, so you didn’t have to worry about it’s being bad for his ego, the way you did with Janie.

  They stayed in the village most of the morning, and Marzia took them all around the piazza and introduced them to dozens of people, several of whom gave them little samples of what they were selling; slices of cheese and salami and pieces of candy. It was a lot of fun and David was having a great time until, just as they were getting ready to go home, they ran into Hilary. After that, as far as David was concerned, the whole expedition turned into a real bore. Hilary had been shopping at the market, and he was about to leave, too, so he decided to walk home with them. From then on, David was stuck with just the little kids to talk to while Marzia and Amanda concentrated on trying to impress Old Knobby Knees.

  Actually Hilary seemed to be more interested in some books about Tuscany that he’d bought at the market than he was in the girls, but Marzia and Amanda both kept trying to get his attention. Once in a while they succeeded by getting him to talk about the books, which were in Italian and were all about castles and monasteries and other famous places in the area. Hilary said he could read Italian, but he didn’t seem to speak it very well, which meant that most of the time he was talking in English—to Amanda.

  David couldn’t believe Amanda. He could just imagine what would happen at home if any member of the family tried to tell her all about some fifteenth century monastery, complete with all the facts and figures and names and dates, clear down to what the monks ate for breakfast. But here she was, hanging on every English-accented word as if she’d never heard anything more fascinating in her whole life. The twins weren’t paying any attention, but Janie, who had recently added “romance” to her list of special interests, along with gore and violence, kept poking David from time to time and making significant faces about the way Amanda was acting. And, of course, Marzia noticed. Did she ever! While Hilary was talking to Amanda, Marzia looked as if she were about to explode. David couldn’t help feeling a little nervous because he’d heard how Italian people take things like romance very seriously. He wouldn’t have been at all suprised if something serious had happened right then between Marzia and Amanda. But nothing did, and the next time Marzia came to the villa she seemed as friendly as ever. In fact, she asked the Stanleys to go on another exploration.

  “Marzia wants to take us to see something scary,” Janie said; but when David asked what it was, she didn’t seem to know for sure. “I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But it’s up the hill a long way, and it’s something about dead people.”

  The next morning Marzia arrived at the villa dressed for serious hiking, in blue jeans and a pair of heavy boots that looked too big for her. She was carrying a plastic bag with some salami sandwiches in it. She pointed to the bag and said some things in Italian.

  “Marzia says we’ll be gone a long time and we’d better take some lunch,” Janie translated. David was starting the lunch when Amanda came downstairs, and when Marzia saw that she was wearing sandals, she shook her head and made a lot of gestures and acted out stumbling and hurting her toe.

  “She says you’d better change your shoes,” Janie said.

  Amanda gave Janie an icy stare and said, “She didn’t say anything, and I can figure out what all that pointing and stumbling meant as well as you can.” Then she glared at David and said, “Your sister, the interpreter.”

  David laughed. “Look, Amanda,” he said, “don’t blame Janie on me. I didn’t think her up.”

  Amanda only shrugged and went off to change her shoes; and while she was gone, another problem came up. It seemed that Marzia didn’t want the twins to go along this time. “She says it’s too far for them,” Janie said. “She says they’re too little.”

  “But we have to take them,” David said. Dad was doing research at a library in Florence, the Thatchers were away, too, and Molly was trying to paint. “When I asked Molly if we could go, she said we could do anything we wanted as long as it was legal and kept the twins out of her hair today. She’s working on something very important. If they can’t go, we’ll probably have to stay home and take care of them.”

  When Marzia finally understood what David was saying, she shrugged and shook her head and threw her hands in the air. He was beginning to think she was giving up on the whole expedition, when all of a sudden she nodded and said, “Va bene,” which can mean “okay” or “great” and things like that, but this time seemed to mean, “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Okay, Marzia says you can go,” Janie told the twins; and Esther, who had been looking very mournful, grinned and jumped up and down and said, “We’re going, too, Blair. We’re going too.” As usual, Blair didn’t say anything, but he looked at Marzia and did what Molly always called his Christmas-card-angel smile. After a minute she stopped frowning and smiled back.

  When lunch was ready, Amanda went to tell Molly they were leaving, and Molly came out to say good-bye, looking the way she always did when she was painting—barefoot and paint-smeared and happy. She hugged the little kids and told everyone to be careful and to stay in the shade as much as possible because it was going to be a very hot day.

  She was right about that. When they all started off up the road that led past the villa, the sun was already blazing down from almost straight overhead and there was a hot, spicy August-in-Italy smell in the air. As the road wound up the hill through the olive orchards, there were places from which you could look down to where the villa was visible—its tile roofs and thick stone walls basking in the sun, while inside the cavelike cool would last far into the day.

  Farther on, not long after the olive orchards had given way to forest, they came to a place where the hill leveled out into a kind of plateau. In the midst of the level area there was a large building that looked as if it were half-barn and half-house. Chickens and turkeys scratched at the bare earth in front of the building, and off to the side there was what looked like a medium-sized used car lot. Besides several beat-up looking cars, there were two very small pickup trucks, some tractors and other farm machines, and several shiny motorcycles. Not far from the car lot a dog was chained to a doghouse made out of an old wine vat. When the dog began to bark, Marzia motioned for them all to follow her and began to run.

  They went on running until they had rounded the curve in the road and were out of sight of the house. When Marzia finally let them slow down, Amanda said, “Hey, Janie. See if you can find out who lives in that house. And ask her why we were running.”

  Janie talked to Marzia, and then said that it was Marzia’s uncle’s house. “Marzia lives there too, now,” Janie said. “Before her father died, she used to live in a nice house in Florence, but now she and her brothers and sisters all live there with her aunt and uncle and all their kids. She says there’s too many people and she doesn’t like it. And I think she said we were running because if her aunt or uncle saw her, she might have to go in and do some work instead of going on the hike.” It was hard to believe that Janie had understood all that, but it seemed to make sense so nobody questioned it.

  After they passed Marzia’s uncle’s house, they went on up the dirt road for a long, long way. They stopped once in the shade of some
pine trees and ate their lunch and then went on. The sun seemed to get hotter and hotter, and the air got drier and dustier. The twins tried hard to keep up, but after a while they began to lag behind and Esther started to whine. She went on whining until Amanda yelled at her, and then she began to whimper and sniffle. So David yelled at Amanda that it wasn’t Esther’s fault that her legs were short and fat, and Esther yelled at David that her legs were not fat, and Marzia yelled something that David didn’t understand but that sounded like “I told you so,” and Janie yelled at everyone to shut up so she could hear what Marzia was saying. Somehow, when all the yelling was over, David was carrying Esther piggyback and thinking that he should have known enough to keep his mouth shut.

  At least things were quieter after that. No one was whining or yelling, and David wasn’t saying anything at all. He needed all the air he could get just to keep moving. Esther was small, but she was very solid. David’s knees were beginning to wobble, and he was wondering how much longer he could keep going when Marzia stopped and pointed and said something.

  “There it is,” Janie translated. “That’s it. That’s where the dead people are.”

  seven

  It was a church, or at least it had been one once. The crumbling walls and shattered bell tower stood at the very top of the range of hills so that, looking up, it made a dark and jagged silhouette against the sky. From where they were all standing, a steep rocky path led upwards towards the church; a path that might once have been cobblestoned, but now was only a jumble of tilted stones and deep potholes. Single file, with Marzia leading the way, they made their way over the ruts and among tentacles of thorn-covered vines to where the path ended at a gap in a tumble of stones that had once been a fence. Motioning for them to follow, Marzia climbed through the opening and into an old graveyard. Among tall weeds and more of the vicious vines, a few chipped and eroded tombstones leaned at crazy angles or lay half-buried in the weeds.