While the two policemen were recovering from the brawl with Loris’s father, Colomba came back from Biella and managed to drag Dante off the sofa in order to go meet Demetra Melas. The woman had moved to Caglio, a small town not far from Portico, but a bit farther down in the lowlands. She was in a farmhouse that had been adapted for use as a group living facility, for the most part inhabited by old people who kept chickens and rabbits in their patches of the garden. Demetra used her patch of land to sit at a small plastic table, smoking, yelling at her neighbors if they made noise, and throwing rocks at the chickens. She kept a pair of Doberman pinschers she’d had sent to Italy directly from Athens. When the dogs saw Colomba and Dante arriving, they leaped to their feet snarling.
“The lady ex-cop has come to pay a visit.” Demetra laughed. “And she even brought her handicapped friend along for the ride.”
“How could I miss such a gracious social occasion?” Dante stepped away from his walker and extended his good hand toward the dogs’ snouts.
Colomba clutched the pistol in her jacket pocket with the torn lining. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Dante scratched the Dobermans behind the ears, and the two dogs immediately stopped barking and greeted him delightedly. “Don’t do anything stupid like what?”
“Don’t touch my dogs!” Demetra yelled.
“And don’t you keep them on chains,” said Dante, unhooking them.
Colomba put her hand on the grip of her sidearm again, but the two Dobermans ignored her and trotted around the courtyard, peeing repeatedly. Demetra went to get them by the scruff of their necks, and angrily locked them up in her mini-apartment.
“Do you mind telling me what else you want from me?” she asked.
Dante leaned on the walker. “To tell you that you’ll never see your brother’s money,” he said laconically.
Demetra’s eyes narrowed. “It’s Tommy’s money.”
“The money is going to be placed under judicial seal because it’s the proceeds of illegal activities. When the investigations are complete, you’ll be lucky if you aren’t under judicial restraint yourself.”
Demetra laughed wholeheartedly. “How idiotic. Your brain is as lame as your legs.”
Dante took off his glove. “My name is Dante Torre. Your brother changed my IV bags for a year and a half while I was being held prisoner by a terrorist named Leo Bonaccorso.”
Colomba hauled him away. “Are you planning to tell everyone every single detail? I mean, okay if it’s Lupo, but even this slut—”
“If you’d rather torture her, be my guest. Otherwise, this is the only thing we have to offer in exchange. In any case, if she’s had anything to do with this, she already knows all about it, and she knows that we know, too.”
Colomba huffed in annoyance. “So be it, but if you keep this up, they’re going to shut down this investigation before we can even get started.” She grabbed two chairs and turned to look at Demetra. “Now let’s have a chat.”
Demetra surprised them both by pulling out a cheap, outlet-brand bottle of brandy from under the table. “Then let’s drink to your health, Torre.” She poured the liquor into two plastic cups: Colomba didn’t even touch hers, Dante grimaced after sniffing at his. “You’re famous, even in Greece. Someone kidnapped you in Venice, right?”
“Right.”
“It’s obvious that my brother had nothing to do with it, but I’m not interested in running any risks. How much money do you want?”
“I’m not trying to blackmail you, Demetra. There’s nothing I can do to help you to inherit that money by proxy. Tommy’s money is going to remain frozen for years, unless it turns out that your brother was innocent. But … that’s impossible. Your brother really did act as my jailer on Bonaccorso’s behalf. When the story becomes public, you’ll know all the sordid details.” Colomba realized that Dante was playacting once again.
Though she didn’t like it, she could guess at his objective.
“It wasn’t him,” said Demetra.
“How can you be so sure?” Dante asked.
“Because he wasn’t a bad person. He was a coward, like all men, but he wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Plus, it would have disgusted him to care for you. He couldn’t even bring himself to get a tick off a dog.”
“I never said that it had been his idea.”
Demetra crushed her cigarette out on her heel. “If he did it under duress, then he was innocent.”
“That depends on how badly they threatened him and how much he got out of it. There was certainly a lot of money in his account …”
“If you say so in court, they’ll believe you,” said Demetra. “Or are you trying to avenge a death?”
“We need evidence,” said Colomba. “Revenge has nothing to do with it.”
“Then let’s get back to the reason we came here in the first place,” said Dante. “To see Tommy. To ask him some questions. His money is none of my concern, but if I do find something out, that’ll be to his benefit as well.”
Demetra looked at him, mulling it over. At last, she said: “As you can imagine, he’s not in my custody yet. Otherwise I’d have left for Greece, taking him with me. The judge says that he has to wait until the completion of the investigation into my brother.”
“But can you visit him freely?” Colomba asked.
“Yes.”
“The next time you go, tell the director that you want to have him examined by a psychiatric expert.”
“There’s already that clown Pala.”
Dante glared at her. “Do you want to get your money or not?”
“Okay.”
“Trust me, you need to speak in person to anyone you reach out to,” Colomba weighed in. “Don’t forget that you’re still a person of interest and that they’re probably monitoring your phone calls.” She wrote down her cell phone number on a used train ticket and handed it to her. “Call me from a pay phone. And don’t use names.”
Demetra took the rumpled ticket with the tips of her fingers, the nails spangled with tiny enamel stars, and slipped it under her bottom. “There’s one at the intersection. I’ll use it. In any case, if there’s anyone who was blackmailing him, it was Tommy’s mother.”
“You already told me that she didn’t like you.”
“That’s not the only reason … Aristides and I had been quarreling for years, mainly on account of his ‘girlfriends,’ if we can dignify the term. But he never held a grudge with me for more than a week. He’d send me a gift from some corner of the world, or he’d call me to send his best wishes. This time, he didn’t do it.” A drip of mascara ran down her cheek, under her left eye. “I ought to have reached out to him. It’s the only thing I blame myself for in this whole fucked-up story.”