Return to Umbria by David Wagner (13 ebook reader txt) 📗

at the policeman. Besides the sweater, she wore a long black skirt, and her gray hair had been carefully put up in a bun. A hint of rouge shone from her cheeks below frameless glasses. LoGuercio walked over and took her hand in his.

“I am Inspector LoGuercio, Signora, I understand you are expecting me.”

She smiled, but her eyes squinted at him. “Aren’t you supposed to show me your badge or something?”

“Of course, sorry.” He pulled his identification card from his wallet and she studied it, glancing from his face to the photo and back before returning it to him. He sat across from her.

“It took you long enough to find me. When I saw in the paper before breakfast that the murdered woman had attended the program here, I expected to see you this morning.”

Of course, the newspaper. The morning’s edition had run more details than he’d wanted to become public. Orvieto was small enough to walk everywhere, but the downside was that news often spread too fast.

“We were interviewing other people who knew the victim then.”

“The paper said she was Rhonda something, a name I didn’t recognize. But Rhonda wasn’t that common a name, so I assumed it was Rhonda Davis. Was I right?”

“You were right, Signora.” Normally this was the point when he’d say that he was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. This was not the doddering senior he had expected, the woman was sharper than his own grandmother.

“So you remember Rhonda Davis. What can you tell me about her?”

“She was one of a few of the girls that I remember quite well.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked past him into the distance. “The program was my whole life then, I’d just lost my husband and used what money he left me to buy the boardinghouse. It was my good fortune that right at that time the university started the exchange program and needed a place to put the girls. I don’t remember if Rhonda was here for that first year, but it was early on. She arrived already speaking decent Italian, unlike most of the girls. She’d been living somewhere else in Italy, I think.”

“Milan.”

She nodded. “Yes, Milan. So I was able to talk to her more than I could with the others.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Just about everything. Living in Orvieto, the history of the place. She was curious about what it was like during the war, when I was a little girl. And politics. She was fascinated by politics. As you might expect for an arts student, she was very much to the left politically. It was just at the time of the worst turmoil in Italy—the student uprisings, the shootings, the kidnappings.” She frowned and shook her head as if trying to shake the memory from her mind.

“Do you remember any of her friends?”

“Thought you might ask that. No, I can’t recall anyone specific. I don’t think she had a boyfriend in the program, but she had some Italian friends. Boys, I mean. Those girls didn’t think I knew what they were up to, but I did. Nothing in my house, though, I saw to that. I didn’t want the university to cancel the contract, so I was pretty strict about what went on there.”

A middle-aged man in a dark suit and a frail woman walked slowly into the room and took seats near them. Signora Vecchi nodded at them.

“That’s my friend Luisa,” she said to LoGuercio in a lower voice. “Her son visits her every day. I never had children.” Her sigh was short, a quick breath. “I suppose the American girls were like family to me. Who do you think did this, Inspector?”

The question brought him back to the matter at hand. “Unfortunately no obvious suspect has been identified. It could have been a random murder, but it would seem more likely there was some connection with the time she was here as a student.” It was more than he should have revealed, but he was too tired to care. “Which is why your help in remembering something—anything—could be critical.”

She rubbed her hands together. “I’ve been thinking about it since I read the article in the paper. Perhaps something will come to me. I’ve been looking at the photos to try to jar my memory, but it hasn’t helped much.”

“Photos?”

He had noticed a white album on the table next to her, but assumed it belonged to Casa San Bernardo. She picked it up and put it in her lap. “Back then everyone had a camera, and a real one, not a telephone.” She patted the cushion next to her. “Come sit and I’ll show you.”

He did as he was told, and she opened the album. The photos were mostly group shots, though some pictures had a much younger Signora Vecchi standing with one or two of the students. Most were taken in front of the same building, which he assumed was her boardinghouse. LoGuercio found it interesting that styles had not changed radically in forty years. The hair was different, longer on the girls’ heads and the boys’ faces, but the clothing was essentially unchanged, especially the jeans. A few of the tee-shirts had words written on them, but the shots were too wide to be able to read them easily.

“I think this is Rhonda’s year,” she said after turning one of the thick, plastic pages. The inspector leaned closer. The photos were yellowed, like the earlier ones, but still clear. In one of the group photos Rhonda stood smiling in the front row. The next showed Signora Vecchi holding a pot, Rhonda next to her.

“She gave me that pot.” She rubbed her finger over the plastic sheet of the album. “You know, I can’t remember what happened to it. I think when I moved in here it must have been left behind. What a shame, I could have found space for it in my