Death in the Dolomites by David Wagner (feel good books .TXT) 📕

The man glanced down at the book. “Not at all. I often read the classics, but I must confess that I have a taste for novels of the American West.” He held up the book, a paperback. The cover showed a sheriff’s star, a smoking bullet hole cut through one of its points. “I thought you might be familiar with it, Signor Montoya.” He inclined his head and looked at Rick’s cowboy boots.

Rick laughed. “It’s not an author I know, Signor Peruzzi. Though as you have noticed, I did spend many years in the American Southwest.”

“You did? What part?” It was the most energy the man had shown since they’d entered his room.

“New Mexico.”

“Where Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid?”

“That was to the east of where I lived, but yes, sir, the same state.”

Peruzzi settled back in the chair and slowly closed his eyes. “I can just picture the tumbleweed and sagebrush.”

***

They separated outside the Campiglio police station. Luca went in to see if anything had come from the lab, and to make contact with his office. Rick started the walk to the hotel to check his email. They would meet at lunch after separately mulling over the case, but from the mostly silent drive back over the mountain Rick sensed that Luca was as stumped as he was. There were some suspects, a few motives, and a lot of alibis, but no obvious trail that could lead them to the murderer. He knew from conversations with Uncle Piero that this was the critical point in an investigation. They needed to catch a break now, or the trail could go cold, perhaps permanently. He took a deep breath and started up the hill. The trail may be going cold, but the temperature today was not. He looked at the sky, watched a few wispy clouds floating between one mountain and the next, and knew it would be a good afternoon to be skiing after all. There were worse ways to spend a few hours than out in the snow with a beautiful woman. If only he had some progress to report to Cat.

The main street he was on continued to the gondola station, but Rick stepped onto the smaller one, without sidewalks, which took him up to the hotel. His boots sloshed through snow that was beginning to melt despite the shade from tall fir trees on either side of the pavement. The road bent to the right, but opening on the left was a narrow pathway, barely wide enough for a car. A few fresh footprints ran up its center, as well as others that had been filled with the snow of the past few days. At the end of the road, about thirty meters distant, he could see a metal gate in a stone wall. While he could not read the writing that was written on the arch over the gate, there was no question in his mind what was beyond it. This was the town cemetery.

Rick had been fascinated by cemeteries since childhood when he’d been taken to visit family graves, a tradition shared by both the Montoya and the Fontana sides of his family. Many of his favorite family stories he’d heard for the first time while standing quietly in front of a grave marker. They were often stories that had made him laugh, like learning about an uncle in New Mexico who had been treed by a bear for three days, or his Italian great-grandmother who never, even on her deathbed, revealed her recipe for mushroom soup. Each story was like shining a flashlight into a corner of the family attic. Now he found it hard to pass a cemetery without going in to see if it might reveal something, even if he had to imagine it for himself.

The metal gate creaked as it opened as Rick stepped carefully inside the walls. Gravestones of different sizes poked out of the snow, closer together than they would be in the States, but then space was at a premium here. Standing guard behind the graveyard loomed the town church. The regular lines of its rectangular side wall were broken by a pointed bell tower at one end and the curved stones of the apse at the other. Rick walked the narrow paths that separated the graves, their snow tamped down by recent visitors. Flowers, some more withered than others, adorned a few of the graves, placed in metal vases set into the stones, often next to an oval black-and-white photograph of the departed. Rick walked slowly, reading the names and studying the photographs, wondering if the people buried under the frozen ground had been consulted on choosing which image would be used. The faces in the photos were stiff and frowning, as if saying they would rather be somewhere else. All but one—a smiling young woman whose color photo matched the bright plastic flowers set in the vase next to it. A few flakes from the recent snows had stuck to the photo and to the petals of the flowers. Rick brushed the gravestone with his hand to better read the name and date. After a few moments of thought he stepped back and noticed the gravestones on either side. The parents had died only a few years after their daughter. A slow death caused by grief? Perhaps this was one story he did not want to know more about.

He was turning to leave when he looked back at the side of the church. Its flat surface was broken by a door and two windows, but his eye went to a series of colorful frescoes. He walked closer to get a better view. Most of the wall’s paintings were of saints and biblical stories, what would be expected, but at the top, just under the eaves, a striking procession marched the entire length. Thanks to the protection of the roof over the centuries, its figures had more vibrancy than