The next morning, Olivia went to the island of Murano to meet Rocco Zucaro, the glass artist she’d be translating for in New York. It was going to be hard to keep her thoughts from wandering back to Venice. Indeed, the day ahead in Rocco’s studio now felt like only a way to fill time before going to see Alessandro at the Fenice.
Silvio came to her office before she left. “I don’t know how much reading you’ve been doing on the family. Rocco had a sister who was also a glassmaker. She married the son of one of the wealthiest men in Venice, if not Italy, and was murdered not long after. It was probably a botched kidnapping, but it was all kept quite hush-hush. I thought you should know so you’re not caught off guard if it comes up.”
She thanked him, thinking this was the second woman she’d heard of being murdered in Venice. First Alessandro’s wife and now Rocco’s sister.
Silvio offered to call Dino for her, but she declined, saying she’d take the vaporetto. She’d never told Silvio that despite her attempts to get over it, Dino still made her uneasy. He was friendly, but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that whenever she was in his presence, he was watching her. Today, it didn’t help that she’d had a nightmare the night before about a giant seagull in the Piazza San Marco. It pulled a baby out of its mother’s arms and, carrying it by one leg, flew out over the Grand Canal. Hovering there, it held the baby under the water as the baby’s mother screamed from the canal’s edge. She had awakened with a start to the sound of her alarm, seagulls, and an ambulance siren, which explained some of it, but the rest had to have come from Dino.
Fortunately, the image evaporated an hour later when Rocco welcomed her into his studio and offered her a glass of grappa. He was in his mid-thirties, with cropped blond hair, a relaxed smile, and blue eyes that sparkled with humor. He was meticulously polite and, after handing her the bottle of grappa and a couple of glasses, he carried two wooden chairs closer to the warmth of the glass furnace, dusting one off with a towel before offering it to her. Everything about his manner indicated that he’d be an easy charge in New York, unlike some of the more temperamental artists Silvio represented.
He poured their grappa and set the bottle on the floor between them. “It’s so nice to meet you at last. Marco is always talking about you. I thought I saw Marco near San Marco the other day, but Silvio tells me he’s in Iceland. Such an interesting place to visit. I’m sure you’ll be glad to have him back in Venice with you, though. I know you recently lost your father, and I know how important family is at such times.”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “And Marco has been wonderful.”
“You probably know of my sister’s murder. She was better than I’ll ever be. You’re getting poor seconds in representing me. Her work was so intricate. She could make a goblet so delicate and so detailed, if you looked at it and nothing else for an entire year, you would still see details you had missed before.
“This business meant everything to her. We suffered some bad times after my father died. I was sure we were facing bankruptcy, but Katarina took control and found us an American dealer. Our less gracious competitors like to say it was her wealthy husband and not her skill that saved our business, but I know for a fact that she had turned it around before she married. And she worked every bit as hard after. Unfortunately, the dealer seemed to lose all interest after her death. By then, though, she had set us fully back on track, and while I still miss my sister every day, I’m satisfied with how things are going.” He picked up the bottle of grappa, but Olivia declined—she didn’t want to show up at Alessandro’s concert with a hangover.
Rocco topped off his own glass before continuing. “Of course, unless one of my children decides to follow in my footsteps, there will be no one to carry on the family tradition. It was assumed I would follow my father’s path, but it is not like that now. Children have to choose their own paths. Right now, my daughter talks of becoming a veterinarian, and my son wants to be a professional soccer player. They are young, and so they may change their minds many times, but I will support them in whatever they choose.
“And this studio will continue—only the artists will not have the surname of Zucaro. And I’m at peace with that too . . . although I know if Katarina were alive, she would not take it so lightly. She used to say it was good I had a son to carry on the family name. She made the beads you’re wearing,” he concluded with a smile. “I didn’t know they could still be had—so much of her work ended up in the States.”
“I love them,” she said. Now she knew who’d designed them. She only wished they weren’t connected to such a tragic story.
Rocco had put together a series for his show. They were calling it Water Like Glass, and he’d taken for his inspiration the colors of the canals, the lagoon, and the Adriatic. He wanted to give the impression that at any moment the piece would turn to water and flow away and join the sea. He handed Olivia a string of beads, and she held them in her hand, expecting them at any moment to drip through her fingers.
He offered to give her a little demonstration before she left, and when she agreed, he went over to one of the worktables and turned on a blowtorch. Picking up a rod of blue glass, he heated it in the flame until it became a glowing white orb. With a pair of pliers, he pulled out a strand of molten glass. Shaping it with a few swift twists, he transformed the blob of glass into a tiny seahorse. “A little present for you,” he said, laying it on a stone block where it cooled to a sweet blue.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “I’ll always treasure it.”
“No, it is but a trinket, like what we make for the tourists.”
“It’s very lucky for the tourists.”
Her work itself was easy, since he’d already chosen the pieces he wanted to show. Just as she was leaving, Luigi arrived with a red carry-on suitcase and an armload of forms to be signed for Customs. She resisted the urge to tell him to pack carefully. He was, after all, working for Silvio Milan, and it was his job to make sure nothing would break.
Still, as she left, Luigi looked at her a little oddly, and she wondered if he was expecting her to admonish him.