Death in Aramezzo E-Book

Damiani Michelle

• Herausgeber: Michelle Damiani
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Small villages keep big secrets.

Welcome to the picture-perfect Italian village of Aramezzo, where secrets are hidden among cobblestone alleys, and danger lurks in the tangled vineyards.

Chef Stella Buchanan, a rising star of the Manhattan restaurant scene, has come to Aramezzo to revive her family's abandoned bed-and-breakfast. But when her first guest dies under mysterious circumstances, Stella must use her culinary skills to uncover the truth of what happened before she herself comes under scrutiny.

Plus, to Stella’s chagrin, the property comes with a belligerent cat.

With a quirky cast of characters—from a quippy trash collector to an eccentric bookstore owner to a burly cop with a penchant for historical romance—Michelle Damiani's eagerly awaited debut cozy mystery, Death in Aramezzo, will keep you guessing until the very end.

Can Stella discover the bitter truth before the town's buried secrets claim another victim?

“Italy, food, wine, mystery, great characters—all of my favorite things!”
“Loved Aramezzo. Loved all the people. I swear I felt that I was there, could smell the coffee and almost taste the food.”
“This book was a brilliant adventure and I can’t wait to embark on the next one.”
“Like Michelle Damiani's other books, this is a story whose setting brings Umbria's sun-soaked piazzas to life.”
“I flew through it! I loved the town, the people and the mystery.”
“Travel to Itay—no passport needed!”

Leseprobe

Cast of Characters

Casale Mazzoli

Stella • arrives to Aramezzo to take over her family’s bed-and-breakfast

Mimmo • the caretaker of Stella’s bed-and-breakfast

Ilaria • the housekeeper of Stella’s bed and breakfast

Signor Severini • Stella’s first guest

Jobs in Aramezzo

Domenica • owns the local bookshop

Matteo • the streetsweeper

Cosimo • the antiquarian and expert on local lore

Romina • owns Bar Cappellina, married to Roberto

Roberto • owns Bar Cappellina, married to Romina

Marcello • the mayor

Victoria • the mayor’s wife

Marta • raises sheep, mother of Ascanio

Leonardo • an ex-racecar driver who now operates the family porchetta van

Antonio • the red-bearded baker

Orietta • the pharmacist

Bruno • the butcher

Flavia • the florist

The Church

Don Arrigo • the parish priest

Cinzia • Don Arrigo’s assistant

Enzo • Cinzia’s father

The Police

Luca • police officer

Salvo • Luca’s partner

Palmiro • the local police captain

Part One

Stella clutched the phone against her ear, huddling away from the white-coated chefs banging pans as they called for flour or kitchen twine. Pulling the landline’s cord as far as it reached, she whispered, “But you told me. You called it a lock, that the executive chef position was mine.”

Before she could even finish the sentence, Martin’s voice rushed across the phone line. “I know, I’m sorry—”

“And now it’s . . . gone?” Her grip tightened until she wondered why the handle didn’t snap in two like the grissini breadsticks she’d just been rolling.

Martin sighed. “Like I said, the silent partner—”

A sound exploded from her throat that vaguely resembled a laugh. The bustling kitchen paused. Hands stilled and eyes shot toward her. Vanessa, the apprentice at the fish station mouthed, “Okay, boss?”

Stella waved off the question and made a circling gesture to prompt the line of chefs to keep working. Not for the first time, she wished her cell reception reached this deep in the bowels of Lucky, the restaurant centered on food borne out of Italian immigration. But no signal could penetrate these walls. She rolled her body around the corner, away from prying eyes, the cord binding around her.

She adjusted her bandana lower over her cacophony of curls. People meeting for the first time Stella assumed she wore the bandana as an affectation, an attempt to create a signature look. As if she had the time. “The silent partner . . . it makes no sense. Tell me again. Slower.”

Martin’s words drifted over the line, slow and careful. “He said if you set foot into Farina’s kitchen, he’d pull his funding.”

“But . . . ” she sputtered, desperately untangling the cord to get a few more feet. If only she could reach her office, this would all make sense. “Why? They came to me. The concept for Farina, that was mine. The whole—”

“Stella.” Martin cut her off and then stalled, breathing uncomfortably on the other end of the line. “It’s Chad.”

At the name, Stella went cold. The answer formed in her head even as she asked the question. “What’s Chad? Martin . . . what’s Chad?”

She heard Martin’s intake of breath, as if summoning the courage to say the words. “Chad. He’s the silent partner. The one bankrolling Farina.”

Stella tried desperately to slow her brain even as her thoughts darted like seeds in hot oil. She repeated, “Chad is the silent partner.”

The phone cord unknotted along with the muscles behind her knees. With the extra few feet of line, she pivoted around the corner, onto the floor of her office. Not much of an office, more of a desk between vertical beams, cookbooks piled high, furry with scraps of paper marking pages. She hadn’t even found time to hang her corkboard, now leaning against the wall beside her.

She slid to the floor, creating a draught that loosened a photograph taped to the cork (where were tacks when you needed them?). She picked up the photograph absently, trying to focus on Martin’s words.

“I told you not to invest without a contract.”

“You also told me it was a sure thing! That Richard said a good-faith investment would make them take me seriously. I cleared my bank account!”

“Listen, Stella, I’m sorry but—”

“No.” Stella didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear Martin’s I-told-you-so’s about investing in Farina, and she couldn’t bear it if his words turned to I-told-you-so’s about Chad. She knew better than anyone that she shouldn’t have let that New York Times reporter take her to lunch, to ply her with wine and a sympathetic ear. She tried to tell herself that outing the New York culinary scene’s worst sexual harasser was worth it. At least women up and down the island would know, and maybe he’d be less likely to coerce fresh-faced apprentice chefs into the storeroom where his hands would—no. It didn’t bear remembering. She tried to focus on the fact that someday the article would seem less of a sacrifice, rather than remembering that since its publication two months ago, doors had been slamming in her face, one by one.

As if reading her thoughts, Martin said, “Stella. You did the right thing. Someone needed to out that guy.”

She mumbled, “Maybe it should have been someone with more clout. Who wouldn’t have gotten blackballed.”

His voice gentled further, a surprise given how much he and his girlfriend Heather had lamented her impulsivity over the years. “Like who? Stella, it had to be you. Only you had the guts—”

“Forget it. It’s done. It doesn’t matter anymore.” She ran her finger over the edges of the photograph. Though she could barely make it out in the half-light, she had gazed on it enough to recognize those stone walls rising behind a grove of olive trees. Drawing in a shaky breath, she said, “I can’t believe this. After that meeting. With you. With the investors. Drinking until three in the morning.”

“Well, to be fair, we didn’t start until two when you got off the line.”

Stella ran on as if he hadn’t said anything, “About how women restaurateurs work twice as hard, jump through rings of fire to be taken seriously. When mediocre men can step over a threshold and expect a crown of gold and a celebratory torch.”

“Always with the colorful language.”

Her voice felt far away, even to Stella. “Everyone seemed on board. And that was after the article. Even so, they talked about executive chefs who disparaged me in public while putting my ideas on their menus.” She whispered, “I have nothing. Nothing.”

“What are you talking about? You have Lucky! Your brigade loves you, they nominated you for that mentor award. Even as sous chef, everyone knows you made that restaurant what it is—”

“Martin,” she sighed. “I quit Lucky.”

“You quit! Why—”

“Because I had this new venture. Farina. And it felt too good to stick it to Angus when he called me ‘baby’ for the fifteenth time during service and accidentally-on-purpose touched my behind in the walk-in.”

“Oh, Stella.”

The clattering of the kitchen filled her ears. Usually, she found it soothing, like how other people described the murmur of the sea. She never understood that—by the sea, you were left alone with your thoughts, your memories. Why would anyone choose that? No, give her the bruising action of a well-trained kitchen. But now . . . now the clinking forks dumped out of the Hobart, the call-and-response of dinner service on the cusp of starting, it all grated. Gunshots of memories of every leer, every insult.

She didn’t want any of this drama. She just wanted to make food that people closed their eyes to savor. Belonging to the restaurant world had meant everything to her. Stella would never forget packing her knives before stepping out of her mother’s kitchen, which had fed a community of New Jersey Italian immigrants. For that one brief moment, her mother’s eyes shone with pride, rather than the grief that had blurred her expression since she lost her favorite daughter along with her husband. For that one moment, never before or since, Stella’s mother cherished her.

“What are you going to do?” Martin’s voice tore through the fragile veil of memory.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. When she opened them, her gaze landed on the photograph in her hands—the olive trees, which even in black and white gleamed like silver, the arbor of what looked like grapevines or maybe wisteria framing a terrazza, and the stone house rising naturally above the scene, windows open and merry against an expansive sky. “I guess it’s time to move on.”

His voice thrummed with false cheer. “That’s the spirit! You always land on your feet. Maybe Manhattan is played out. At least for now. I have contacts in Atlantic City. They might not have read the Times article. Or, no, of course they have. It took the restaurant world and swung it by the tail.”

“Martin.”

“I’m just saying. You may have to move down the line. Give up on an executive chef or even sous chef position. Or work somewhere that will care more about your Michelin star than your outing a culinary giant.”

She said nothing. Could she move back to Jersey? She’d sold the house when her mother died last year, and put the money into Farina. She shook her head to tamp down the useless anger. She winced as she heard a plate smash to the floor, followed by an apologetic voice bleating, “Sorry!”

She sighed. “Don’t bother. I’ll figure something out.”

“What though? You can’t work in New York.”

She murmured to herself, her gaze fixed on the photograph. “Then maybe I’ll leave.”

“Leave? Leave for where? Stella, please, for once in your life, curb your impulsivity. Let’s talk this through.”

But Stella had dropped the phone and stood, holding the photograph with both hands.

As Stella sailed past the foreigners’ line at Fiumicino airport in favor of the much shorter EU citizens’ line, she sent up a prayer of thanks that even though her mother had nothing positive to say about her birthplace, she nonetheless made sure to register her daughters’ births with the consulate and placed an Italian passport in their hands. The wheels on Stella’s carry-on slowed momentarily as it occurred to her that perhaps it was her father that fought for citizenship for both Stella and Grazie.

After all, he never tired of showing off his family as his very own Italian art. His wife and daughters, all variations on a theme, with their refined features, eyes like a Madonna in a fresco, glossy hair tumbling in variations of waves and curls, their tiny frames so unlike his own bearlike width. Only Stella got what had to be a throwback to his Scottish heritage, in the form of a fall of freckles across her nose. She remembered how he’d parade his family into church each Sunday, so proud of their slightly exotic beauty. That is, until . . .

She shook her head and blinked back the easy tears that rose whenever she thought of her father, whose strong arms served as a refuge for those twelve years she had him. Now was not the time to dwell on the morose.

Anyway, whoever applied for that passport that allowed her to sail through immigration with no more than a “bentornata” from the bored officer, Stella had been the one to maintain it all these years. That passport had been her ticket to stage at restaurants in Milan and Florence and Bologna without fussing over work permits or visas. It occurred to her to wonder, with all those apprenticeships in Italy, she’d never taken a weekend to visit Aramezzo. Then again, she hadn’t even known about the house until her aunt died two years ago and her mother shoved the photograph into her hands, announcing that she’d had her fill of that backwater town and now it was up to Stella to manage the bed-and-breakfast or sell it, as she saw fit. Her inheritance, her responsibility. Her mother had washed her hands of the property and Aramezzo years ago, though she never said why.

Leaning on her carry-on as she waited at baggage claim, Stella fingered the old black-and-white photograph in her pocket, wondering at the fact that she hadn’t sold the property as soon as it landed in her proverbial lap. Obviously, she’d hopped online right away to investigate the property’s potential, but had trouble even finding a listing. Finally, she stumbled on an obscure Italian website that included Casale Mazzoli. The photos of the house were good enough, though with the low light, it was hard to tell. The few reviews were decent. Her aunt had obviously taken good care of her guests, and Stella particularly noticed how much the guests appreciated the meals. It seemed Aramezzo wasn’t exactly on the tourist trail. The only visitors trended toward bikers and people making pilgrimages to the town’s chapel, though no matter how Stella searched, she couldn’t figure out the chapel’s draw.

Her aunt left behind a caretaker, Mimmo, who helped with odds and ends and, with her aunt’s passing, had offered his services as property manager. Mimmo didn’t have an email address, and indeed there wasn’t one for the house listing. So she’d called him, hoping to get enough information to help her decide whether or not to sell. Mimmo seemed more full of assurances and platitudes than actual information. He promised to keep the bed-and-breakfast running and to deposit the proceeds into her Italian bank account. His oozy charm hardly proved comforting, so she’d poked around to look at property values, which seemed so shockingly low she soon gave up. She had too much to do to manage a sale. She decided to keep Mimmo on and be happy if she made a little extra each month off the enterprise.

Every once in a while, usually when she was a little tipsy and feeling sorry for herself, she hopped online to check the reviews, which grew worse over time. Though the listing boasted Wi-Fi, guests complained they were never able to connect. Even worse, meals of local cuisine and freshly baked breakfasts gave way to, and Stella could hardly believe it, packaged pastries. At the memory, Stella shivered, despite the hot airport. She had tried calling Mimmo, but he always seemed to be in the woods with poor reception, if he picked up at all. Finally, she decided to visit someday and sort it all out then. At some point, she had to have a vacation, right? Well, the vacation never materialized. Until now. If this could be called a vacation.

A rumble announced the start of incoming luggage and she did a double take as her tattered burgundy suitcase slipped down the track, unfamiliar in these new surroundings. Watching people unload piles of luggage, it occurred to her that this one suitcase held just about everything she owned in the world. Other than the pile of cooking books and wares she’d left with Martin and Heather.

Tugging the suitcase from the carousel, she waved off attempts of one man after another who tried to lift it off the belt and therefore allow their biceps to pop under their thin t-shirts.

“I got it,” she told them in Italian, ignoring their widened eyes. Like every Italian she’d ever met, they assumed she was American. She didn’t know why. Her skin was olive, if on the light side and with the faint fall of freckles, and it wasn’t like there weren’t Italians with grey eyes. Even her mother, almost in counterpoint to her father, had always sighed about the fact that Stella was all American. The comment rankled when, other than food and language, Stella’s mother proffered crumbs of her culture only reluctantly. Without an Italian upbringing, of course Stella grew up on a diet of Britney Spears and Pepsi.

She passed the remaining families waiting for their luggage, her eyes scanning for the taxi she’d ordered. It cost too much, of course. Everything cost too much when one’s bank account had cartoon moths twirling around it. But the thought of schlepping to Rome’s main train station, then a train ride to Assisi, then waiting for the bus to Aramezzo . . . No, she needed to not arrive in her ancestral village that disheveled and exhausted. She also needed to arrive with an extra hundred euros in her pocket, but, ah well.

Stella ducked around the clutches of Italians smoking in relief after the long flight until her eyes landed on the taxi driver, holding the sign with “Mazzoli” scrawled across it. Even after all these trips back to Italy, it never failed to delight her to see her mother’s maiden name spelled correctly. She’d learned from experience not to expect Italians to know what to do with “Buchanan.” Her family name written easily across a white sheet of paper felt like all the welcome she could ask for.

Two hours later, she waved goodbye to the taxi driver, grateful that he’d taken the hint of her closed eyes and the jacket rolled between her head and the window. He hadn’t irritated her with idle chatter, and in fact said nothing at all in the hours between the edge of the airport and a few minutes ago when he’d cleared his throat. “Signorina. We’ve arrived. Aramezzo?”

She knew, of course. She hadn’t really been asleep. How could she be, when this road unspooled to her new home? Or her home for the moment.

No, she’d peeked from lowered lashes at the rolling Umbrian hills laced with fog, the lines of cypresses, the hilltop towns that resembled nothing so much as piles of stones glowing in the morning light.

She’d tensed as they’d left the highway, tucking into the wooded valley behind Assisi. It had been all she could do to not sit bolt upright and ask the driver questions as she peeked out at houses and arches so charmingly medieval they seemed straight out of a Disneyland version of the King Arthur story. But the sleeping charade had gone on so long, she didn’t know how to break it and so waited until the wheels slowed to a stop.

And now, she shifted her weight, drinking in the town in front of her. The woods lay mostly behind her, reaching up the mountain that must be Monte Subasio. In front of her rose Aramezzo. She knew from her research that, unlike most Umbrian towns, which ran along the spine of a hilltop, Aramezzo was laid out in concentric circles. Like a wedding cake, she’d thought to herself a week ago when she’d fought the internet for any kernels of information about this town that didn’t seem to exist to the rest of the world.

It didn’t look like a wedding cake now, though. From here, a rise of buildings blocked her view of the concentric streets, and Aramezzo seemed like nothing so much as a squat, upside-down ice cream cone. Made of stones in hues of honeycomb-gold and blush-pink. Pink? She blinked at the realization. That seemed odd.

At the top of the town, the chapel’s steeple punctuated a sky so heavy with blue it seemed almost purple. A few thin clouds drifted, like tentative swipes of a brush barely dipped in white paint. Their presence only made the blue bluer. That must be Chiesa di Santa Chiara di Aramezzo, Aramezzo’s lone church. The bells lay silent and still.

The entire town lay silent and still.

From the corner of her eye, Stella noticed a line of laundry, blue and green and coral swatches of color, vibrant against the stones, spangled from one window to another. Life. At last. Just as she had the thought, she watched an orange cat scramble to the top of a wall. All these outward-facing homes had gardens that rolled down like an apron around Aramezzo to the ring road she stood on. The orange tabby seemed to be standing guard on one of the few garden walls. His eyes glowed green as he stared at her from above the wall, the tip of his tail flicking.

Stella lifted her chin. I will not be cowed by a cat. She hated cats anyway.

The tabby turned away as if already bored by her, and Stella followed its gaze to the squat two-story building across the ring road from Aramezzo. It seemed to be a school, if the sign was current. If so, it would be a small one. Then again, how many children could live in a town the size of a large shopping mall? No more than fifty, surely.

The orange cat leaped nimbly down onto a structure Stella hadn’t noticed, some sort of stone bath. No, two baths. Water bubbled into one side and then spilled over a dividing wall into the other side, before being piped away. A fountain?

Stella peered into the shadows of the structure and noticed old photographs, blown up and faded by time and the elements. Her thoughts whirred and clicked into place. Ah, this once served as the village laundry. Women washed clothes in the basin furthest from the incoming water and rinsed in the cleaner water at the spout of the first basin.

She smiled at the discovery. She always loved making sense of strange towns when she traveled. Her face stilled as she considered—for the first time in her travels, this wasn’t a strange town. This was her home until she could sell the property for enough money to finance her own restaurant back in New York.

But Aramezzo was her mother’s birthplace. Her grandparents’ birthplace. Their parents’ birthplace. If the documents she’d flipped through after her mother’s death were any indication, there had never been a time when she didn’t have family walking these circular roads, climbing the steps to that perilously perched chapel. Or doing their laundry, right here in these stone basins. Her eyes flitted over the women in the photographs, looking for any sign of familiarity.

In her mother’s documents, she’d only found one photograph, of a severe-looking couple dressed in black with two daughters dressed in white lace—one in arms and one standing between her parents. The baby had been her aunt, the older one her mother, Stella the elder. Stella wished she’d carried that photo in her pocket as a talisman, rather than the faded photo of the house. She debated getting the family photograph out of her suitcase, to compare the cheekbones of her grandmother, the ferocious eyebrows of her grandfather, the rounded cheeks of the girls, to these women in the blown-up photographs stretched across the walls of the former laundry.

There would be time later. For now, she let her eyes scan the faces. None looked familiar. Just a random assortment of typically Italian faces . . . except. Stella paused and dragged her suitcases to look more closely. One of the women, perhaps two, it was hard to tell in the light, appeared to have eyes of two different colors. Strange.

Stella shrugged. Probably cataracts or something. In a remote village, medical care could never have been easy, especially before cars. Assisi must have been a few hours’ ride away by horseback. And Stella knew from her research that the only other town in the vicinity was mostly abandoned, tucked even higher on the mountain. In Italian fashion, the town, Subbiano, was actually part of Aramezzo.

Stella looked at the cat, begrudgingly thanking it for this little window into the history of life in Aramezzo, but only caught its orange tail whisking behind a shed as it dashed away. Her eyes followed the cat and then gasped, wondering why it had taken her so long to notice—spreading out below Aramezzo, lay what to her sleep-deprived eyes seemed to be a frothing sea, sparkling and tossing waves of silver and green.

She blinked, and the view refocused into olive trees, following the lines of earth, down and away from Aramezzo like a glittering quilt. Stella swayed a little, mesmerized by the rustling light, interspersed with patches flecked with rows of vegetables or vines.

It wasn’t like she’d never seen olive trees before. In Italy, they were as much a part of the landscape as those iconic cypresses and vineyards. Stella adjusted the bandana around her head to get the curls out of her eyes and realized that she’d driven through groves on her way to restaurant apprenticeships, but she’d never stayed silent and been surrounded, on all sides. Nothing but quiet and the drifting of boughs caught by a breeze she couldn’t see or feel.

She clenched the handle of her suitcase as if to ground herself, but her hand merely slid, catching on the edge of the plastic. The suitcase fell to the ground with a bang that reverberated into the still air.

Stella groaned in frustration and hefted the suitcase upright, snatching the carry-on as well as she walked up the road, looking for the town entrance. She knew no cars were allowed in Aramezzo, but she wondered if the little three-wheel trucks, Apes, she reminded herself, maneuvered those circular streets, still hidden to her.

Where was the entrance?

She lifted her hand to shade her eyes from the rising sun that seemed bigger than the one in New York, closer maybe. She startled at a sudden whirring behind her. A biker, wrapped in yellow and black spandex, muttered “salve” as he passed, and then gave her a second look before slowing, resting a foot on the dirt road. He said nothing for a moment, no doubt taking in this stranger in a strange land, burdened with a suitcase that must weigh twice as much as she did.

“Do you need help?” the man asked in English.

She sighed. In Italian, she responded, “I’m looking for Casale Mazzoli. It’s a bed-and-breakfast.”

His eyes widened as she spoke. He nodded and responded in Italian. At least, she thought it was Italian. She couldn’t catch some of the words, though they tugged her brain. Maybe her Italian wasn’t as flawless as she thought. “Come?” she asked.

He smiled and spoke again, and this time she caught all the words. Thank God. She remembered that Italian towns all had their dialects. This man, his words were like her mother’s. She’d just never heard anyone other than her mother blur her t’s and g’s that way. She almost lost focus, so distracted was she by the memory of her mother’s voice. “You passed the town gate, it’s behind you there.” He pointed and she followed his finger and wondered how in the world she’d noticed a cat and a laundry but missed the rising arch that announced the town entrance.

He went on, “Casale Mazzoli is on the outermost street. So go up the steps, turn right, and follow the road around past the butcher shop.” He appraised her suitcase. “But you may want to reconsider. I stayed there a year ago with my buddies for a biking weekend, and I wouldn’t recommend it. There aren’t any other bed-and-breakfasts in Aramezzo, but there’s one not that far from here, on the road to Assisi. That’s where I’m staying.”

As her face stilled, he went on, as if trying to make sure she knew it wasn’t a pick-up attempt. “Or stay elsewhere, there are loads of places, obviously, in Assisi. Casale Mazzoli is a dump. Cobwebs everywhere, the shower looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Mussolini. Not bad views, of course, but views I get for free.” He patted the handlebars of his sleek bicycle before gesturing to the panorama in front of him. He looked back at her. “And don’t get me started on the mess. What kind of B and B has boxes strewn around like moving day? My friends and I decided the whole thing felt like an off-brand horror movie.” He shook his head. “Take my advice, Signorina. Go elsewhere.”

She could barely get the words out. “I can’t.”

“Can’t? But—”

Her eyes lit with more annoyance than resolve. “I own the dump.”

The biker mumbled half apologies before pushing off to veer onto the white road with a sign indicating Monte Subasio.

Stella sighed.

Unless she’d just met an unusually fussy cyclist, she had her work cut out for her. How long would it take to turn Casale Mazzoli around so she could sell? Six months? A year?

Dragging her suitcases to the entrance arch, she bumped them over the steps that rose through the tunnel, up to Aramezzo. She winced as the wheels slammed against each step, and then echoed back through the surrounding stones, either blackened with age or shadows. Stella shivered.

What had she gotten herself into?

Basta, she berated herself. Stop it. She couldn’t let the biker’s words get to her. Messes could be cleaned up, bathtubs could be scrubbed, and of course the packaged cornetti would be the first things she’d change. One step at a time and she’d banish the ghosts.

She straightened her shoulders as she came out of the end of the tunnel, into the hesitant morning light. Quiet. So quiet. People lived in Aramezzo, didn’t they? The internet had assured her the town had over two hundred residents. Then again, how often were these things revised? A tucked-away town like Aramezzo, maybe nobody had thought to update the websites after some sort of cataclysmic event, like a radon leak, or—

The sound of church bells broke through Stella’s downward spiral, and she stopped to look up. She could barely see the top of the church from here, the view blocked by walls and rooftops. A horde of birds—crows—burst from the top of the bell tower at the sudden rending of the silent morning.

Murder, she reminded herself.

A group of crows is called a murder.

She shivered and wrapped her cardigan around her before snatching up her suitcases and turning right. As the bells continued, she saw shutters thrown open by disembodied hands up and down the street. The hands withdrew as quickly as they appeared, with no heads partnering to lean out the window and take in the morning.

A woman’s voice sounded deep within the recesses of the house on the left, and Stella smiled a bit at the sound of the whining response of a child, no doubt reluctant to leave the comfort of bed to face the day.

Stella sympathized.

Stella knocked on the door of Casale Mazzoli, but though she could hear the raps echoing within, no footsteps hurried to the door. She sank onto the stone steps with a gusty sigh. Though she kept herself fit by jogs through Central Park, today had already winded her completely.

She fished for her phone in her overloaded handbag before remembering that she had no international plan and no SIM card and therefore no service.

Damn.

Or cavolo, she silently amended to herself. She might as well start swearing in Italian. Her cheeks flushed faintly, as they always did when anyone swore. Even herself, to herself.

Where was Mimmo? Was she expected to sit and wait? Would she have to go door to door begging for a phone to call him?

She peered up and down the quiet street, but only saw a trim older woman stepping out of her house with a brown plastic bag held away from her body. She dropped it unceremoniously where the steps met the street, no doubt for the trash men. Or trash women? Maybe in Italy, the gender gap had been taken down in ways it hadn’t in the United States. Somehow, she doubted it.

The woman did a double take at the sight of Stella, perched on the steps leading to the door of her inheritance. The woman stepped forward, into the patch of sunlight filtering through an arbor draped with what looked to be grapevines on the wall above. Stella noted the pert slash of a red belt across the navy dress before the woman drew back as if burned. She wheeled around, darting back into the safety of her home, probably already reaching for her phone to call everyone she knew to report a stranger in town.

Stella sighed. Her mother never told many stories about Aramezzo, but those she did share all featured gossip and innuendo as their main characters. Stella had never noticed a culture of gossip at her Italian apprenticeships, but then again, those were in major cities, with plenty of entertainment. Unlike Aramezzo, where nothing happened, and the citizenry had no option but to sit around and watch their neighbor’s every move. No wonder her mother left. Even though, Stella had to admit, the town appeared quite charming. Her mother had never mentioned the pink stone walls or the arbors laden with grapes or those olive trees stretching into the distance.

Anyway, within ten minutes everyone in reach of that lady’s phone line would know a young woman with impudently curly hair sat on the steps of the old Mazzoli place. Stella stretched out her legs and leaned forward to unkink the cramp in her lower back, a holdover from the flight. She wondered how long it would take for someone to put her presence together with Mimmo’s news of her arrival. Then again, if Mimmo was as absent from gossip circles as he seemed to be from his appointment schedule, it could buy her some time. For what, she didn’t know.

As if summoned by her increasingly annoyed thoughts, she heard footsteps approaching. She looked up to see a man in jeans far too long and a shirt not lined up properly over his substantial girth. Even from this distance, she noted his pitted face and a nose that resembled an exploded cork. She thought for a moment that the man leered at her, but she blinked to clear her eyes and decided it was a trick of that filtering light. As he drew closer, Stella noted a coffee stain at his belly button. Certainly not the dapper Italian she’d expected.

She mentally checked herself. This wasn’t Milan.

She rose to meet Mimmo, sticking out her hand to introduce herself, inadvertently slamming him in the gut as he reached to kiss her cheek.

He grunted before catching his breath. Mimmo pulled back to examine her face more closely. “You are Stella?” He asked in ponderous English.

Stupid, really, since she’d conducted their previous conversations in Italian. “I am,” Stella answered, in Italian. “And you must be Mimmo.” She drew out her phone again and pointedly looked at the time. He couldn’t know that it was in airplane mode and therefore set to New York time.

He switched easily to his native language, ignoring her hint. He turned to the door with an enormous bundle of keys. “Yes, Mimmo. Your first time in Aramezzo, yes?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, flipping through the keys before landing at what must be the correct one. “Your accent. It’s different.” He said “different” like she might say “poop-covered.”

“I expect so.” She didn’t feel the need to fill Mimmo in on her backstory—the Italian learned first from her mother, and then from the customers who lined up in the back alley to buy her mother’s bags of frozen homemade tortellini, her aluminum foil pans of baked pasta. Later, Stella’s Italian improved from working for chefs all up and down the boot.

In a bored voice, he said, “Everyone will be looking at you. Not my idea of a good time, but you Americans like a show.”

She decided not to respond to this strange assumption.

He flung open the door with a grand gesture. Stella stopped at the threshold, her breath caught in her throat. This was it. Her home, her birthright, the place where she’d lick her wounds, gather her strength for her next move.

Stella peered into the darkness, stumbling over the threshold. She turned back to Mimmo. “The light? Where is the . . . ” She stumbled over the word for switch.

He understood, though his huff suggested annoyance that she would need something so first-world as light. Brushing past her, his body nudged hers to the side. She tensed, her bile rising. But Mimmo seemed unaware as he strode to the lamp in the far corner of the room, flicking it on. A weak light nudged the darkness. Stella looked around, her eyes growing accustomed to the dimness. “That’s the only light for this room? Why isn’t there an overhead light?”

Mimmo shrugged, his pockmarked face growing hard. “I’m not a decorator. I’m a manager. And not a well-paid one.” His raised eyebrow suggested what she should have anticipated. The man saw her as a money tree, ripe for the plucking.

“Hrmph.” She made her way to the enormous window that would normally let sunlight spill across the stone floor, if only the sky hadn’t turned suddenly overcast. Were Umbrian days always this tumultuous? Still, the view stalled her and she paused, gazing out over the rolling hills and the peaked mountains beyond. What had her mother thought when she stood here for the last time, wondering about her future in America? What had her grandmother wondered about as she contemplated the same view? Did she look at the olive trees below the window with fondness, or was she only ever counting them, calculating yield and profit?

Mimmo’s impatient gesture at the doorway recalled her attention. At her blank expression, he grinned and waved his arm at the room. “A big room, set up for guests to have their breakfast.” He strode past the bookcases without comment, though Stella couldn’t help but let her vision linger here, her fingers running over the spines, looking for her twin passions of old cookbooks and old mysteries, or gialli, as they were called in Italy, after their trademark yellow spines. She did spy a patch of goldenrod, indicating that over the years the house had accumulated a selection of the mysteries. In Italian, no doubt, but she’d picked up Italian murder mysteries many times over the years, as a way to unwind after the heat and stress of the kitchen. She could see herself, curled on that sagging sofa with a book on her lap, the fireplace crackling. She looked up. “The fireplace, does it work?”

“Birds live in it.” Mimmo shrugged, as if that were an answer. He cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms. “You said you’re a chef.” His words rang with accusation, like she’d lied to him.

“I am.” She lifted her chin and tried to broaden her five-foot-two frame.

Mimmo snickered and shook his head. “You couldn’t swing a pig.”

She adjusted her bandana. Was this a regional insult? Or a crack about her size?

It must have been the latter the way he let his eyes run up and down over her body, muttering, “Not a lick of meat on those bones. What kind of chef can she be?”

Stella bristled. “I’m quite capable, I assure you.”

With an indulgent smile, he said, “I’m sure you think so. But American food doesn’t count around here.”

She set her teeth but before she could formulate a retort, he walked through a doorway to the right of the living room, calling over his shoulder, “You can make your hamburgers in here.”

The kitchen. Her heart skipped a beat.

She followed him, more awake than she’d been all day. Maybe all year. She amended her vision of reading by the fire to include the wafting scent of stew bubbling, rich with slowly cooked onions and fragrant with rosemary and red wine. Or maybe even just a simple mac and cheese.

The kitchen.

The kitchen would soothe her feathers, ruffled by the foreboding that began with the biker’s warning, the dour silence as she walked through town, the woman hightailing it away from her, and the tumult of black birds like a tornado rising into the sky.

Stella stopped, her vision cracking as she took in the dining room table, rings in the varnish peeking out between piles of boxes. She took a breath and turned to the cooking area: the stove leaning against a yellowing refrigerator, across from a row of cabinet doors hanging at odd angles, and the grime of a thousand fish fries ground into the tile backsplash. The enameled sink was deep, so deep it must be original to when the house was a farmhouse, but other than that, everything looked too old to be modern and too new to be vintage. She wondered what could lie under the cracked linoleum. Stella ran her bottom lip between her teeth, taking it in. “It all works, I hope.”

Mimmo stuck his index finger in his ear and turned it like a Q-Tip.

Something flashed past her ankles, with a sound like tearing paper. Losing her balance, she reached for the wall, and then pulled back as her fingers brushed against something prickly and moist. With a ferocious twist, she righted herself, following the flash of black and silver. A dog? A fox?

Mimmo snickered at her near collapse. “You’ll want to do something about the cat.”

“Cat? That was a cat?”

“Sì.”

“And it lives here, in this house?”

Mimmo frowned. “Who can say? It’s always been here.”

“Always? What do you mean, always?”

“Since I can remember. This cat, another cat that looks like it. Same kind of spotted fur. Always here.” He shrugged in punctuation.

“Who feeds it?”

“Boh.” The classic Italian non-answer. He pushed the door open and didn’t wait for her as he barreled back through the living room to the open door on the other side. “This is your aunt’s room. Guests sleep upstairs.”

She stood her ground. “I don’t favor cats.”

“It doesn’t much matter. This cat doesn’t favor anyone.”

Stella looked around pointedly. “It got in somehow.”

Mimmo stood silently, waiting for her to ready herself for a new topic. She sighed and joined him on the rest of the house tour. As he gestured to the bathroom added in the 1950s and then climbed the steps to the two guest rooms, Stella cataloged each hole in the floorboards and gap in the plaster. She’d have to plug up each one to keep out the cat. Or vermin, she realized with a start.

But as she took in the bare wires sprouting from the ceiling and the watermarks on the plaster, she realized the cat might well be the least of her problems.

A few days later, Stella felt like she’d spent more time in her cabinets, scrubbing, than in the streets of Aramezzo.

Stella yelped, her fingers pulled back as if she’d rested her hand on a hot griddle. She glared into the darkness of the kitchen cabinet, prodding the offending attacker with the edge of her sponge. No, not a bug this time. A trap. Ancient, by the looks of it. And thanks be for that, the rusted hinge snapped slowly enough to barely scrape her quickly withdrawn fingers. Stella tossed the sponge into the bucket in irritation. The water, already filthy after just a few passes over the shelf, sloshed onto the floor.

What did it matter? Far from being fussy, the biker had been generous in his assessment. This place was a sty. A legitimate comparison since she’d investigated the actual pig’s house next to the terrace. Empty for years, it gleamed in comparison to her home. And why, Stella wondered, adjusting her bandana, did she find more chicken excrement in the house than in the chicken coop? Did Mimmo keep chickens in this kitchen? It couldn’t have been her aunt. Her aunt’s bedroom was the best-maintained room in the house. How it had avoided Mimmo’s dereliction of duty, she’d never know.

Her aunt’s bed was actually fairly comfortable. She’d slept better these last few days in Aramezzo than she had in months, even though it took her about forty-five minutes to fall asleep. How could quiet seem so loud?

After her bedroom, the guest rooms were the next least awful. The bedrooms weren’t terrible, though each bed sagged in the middle like a weary plow horse. That view made almost anything forgivable, which could be why none of the reviews she’d read mentioned the stains on the walls or the splintering beams. Unfortunately, nothing would distract from the smell creeping from the upstairs hall bathroom. She hoped that she’d be able to find the source of the smell before her first guest arrived tomorrow. Not likely given how many excuses she found for not entering the bathroom. She shivered in dread and told herself that she needed the confidence boost of clean kitchen shelves and then she could tackle the offensive odor.

At a movement in the doorway, Stella startled, bumping the edge of the bucket with her heel, and sloshing water all over the floor.

“Miss! I’m sorry! So sorry!”

Stella barely took in the sight of a middle-aged woman in a black housedress and black apron before the stranger flung herself onto the floor to sop up the water, which Stella suddenly noticed smelled of fish. What kind of bacteria smelled of fish? Maybe fish bacteria. She had fish bacteria growing in her cabinets.

She put out her hand to forestall the stranger. “You probably did me a favor. I think I might be better off filling the house with water like a pool than this piecemeal process, which is getting me exactly nowhere.”

The woman grinned.

Stella frowned. “What?”

“Your accent, Miss. It’s . . . ”

“Yes, yes, I know, it’s a patchwork.” The guy at the hardware store had pretended to not understand her before chuckling as he walked her to the industrial solvents and lightbulbs. Though that didn’t stop him from leaning across the counter to ask how old she was and why her mother left Aramezzo.

She had barely said a word to the young woman at the register at the little alimentari where Stella had picked up coffee and pasta and a bottle of wine her first day in town, but even so, the woman had furrowed her brow in a parody of confusion. Before she too decided that Stella’s life was fair game, and Stella spent the next few minutes batting away questions about whether or not she was married.

Stella waited for the woman in the black dress to explain who she was, or at the very least, what she was doing in Stella’s wreck of a kitchen.

With a start, the woman laughed awkwardly. “Ilaria, Miss. I’m Ilaria.”

“Ilaria. Piacere. I’m Stella.”

“Yes.”

Stella waited. When no other information was forthcoming—Ilaria seemed a person perfectly comfortable with the long silences Stella abhorred—Stella prompted. “So, Ilaria. You are here because?”

“I’m the cleaner.”

Stella looked down at the bucket now only half-filled with grayish, fishy smelling water.

Ilaria laughed again. “For the guest rooms, Miss. That’s all Mimmo hires me for.”

Stella nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Which explains why those are decent.”

“Thank you, Miss. “

Stella hadn’t realized it was a compliment.

Ilaria went on, “I’ve asked Mimmo, many times, if I can bring in my cousins to replace the plaster, patch the floors, but he always says no. The smell in the bathroom would be more difficult, but my husband—” Her voice trailed off and Stella noticed the sudden lines that had taken up shop on Ilaria’s gentle face.

Stella didn’t know what to say.

Ilaria sighed. “Mimmo, he always says no. So I change the sheets, scrub the bathroom, mop.”

Stella gestured to the bucket, sluggishly dribbling more water onto the floor. “So the kitchen is never cleaned? Or the living room where the guests have breakfast?”

Ilaria’s olive-toned skin flushed coral. “No, Miss. I did ask. But he said . . . ” She looked down at the floor, blushing brighter. “He says he pays me enough as it is.”

Numbers from the pile of papers Mimmo had handed Stella (not a spreadsheet in the bunch, just a bundle of scraps and receipts) clicked together in her mind, releasing understanding like garlic hitting warm butter. “How much is he paying you?”

Ilaria shifted uncomfortably. “It depends, Miss. On how often there are guests. I’m not meaning anything by this, but not many people stay here.”

“Call me, Stella, please. So I can call you Ilaria.” Ilaria nodded uncertainly and Stella went on, “As an estimate, would you say you get paid about a hundred euros a week?”

Ilaria’s laugh seemed to take her by surprise. At Stella’s frank expression, she stopped and rearranged her face into one of great seriousness. “No, Miss. I mean, Stella. More like ten euros a month.”

“I see.”

A look of concern flickered across Ilaria’s face. “I work hard in that hour or two I’m here. If Mimmo told you different . . . ”

“He didn’t. He didn’t even tell me you existed, other than the line in the bill for cleaning.” Stella went on, “Look, I’m sure you have realized this place needs more cleaning than a couple of hours a month. I could do with the help, I guess is what I’m saying. I can’t give you a raise, but I can give you more hours. If you have the time—”

“Oh, yes, Miss! I mean—”

Stella waved off Ilaria’s apology. “Great. Can you start now? As you see, I’m out of my depth.” She glared at the offending bucket. “And while it’s been fine for Mimmo to give guests packaged cornetti, I’d like to make a proper breakfast and I can’t while the kitchen is this filthy.”

Ilaria started to nod, but then stopped. She held up a white paper bag. “I have to bring this to my husband. Blood thinners. He had surgery last week. For a blood clot after falling off a ladder. I only meant to come by and get the sheets to wash. But I can hurry and come back.”

“Absolutely.” Stella adjusted her bandana while glancing at Ilaria. “I hope he’s okay? Your husband?”

Ilaria stared at the ground, her face suddenly taking on a patina of stone. “I hope so, too.”

When Mimmo dropped by with the keys she’d asked for, she cornered him. “I met Ilaria.”

His finger rose to turn in his ear again, his eyes fixed on Stella, waiting.