Pure Dead Brilliant Part 8

"Squee eek, 'Eek, eek squee?'" Don Lucifer jabbed his index finger at an item on the wine list.

"The house red is Rioja de Toromerde," the waitress explained. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper, confided, "I'd avoid that one like the plague-I wouldn't even use it to clean toilets. It's disgusting. How about a nice claret with your steak?"

The Don squeaked his agreement, hoping the waitress would now disappear. This was torture, trying to communicate in high-pitched noises that made him sound like he needed oil, not wine. But worse was to come.

"Now, sir. How would you like your steak?"

"Eek ike ick aww."

"Raw, sir? Not rare? You mean raw, as in cold, uncooked?"

"Eek."

"But-it's not a dish best eaten cold, sir. . . ."

Don Lucifer brought his hand thudding down on the table. "Eekeek ike eek ishh esst eek'n aww!"

The waitress retreated, clutching the menu to her chest like a s.h.i.+eld. Charm school reject, that one. And ugly as sin. Looked like he'd lost an argument with a mincing machine. . . .

Don Lucifer was all too aware of the effect his appearance had on most members of the general public. Cloistered away from humankind after his catastrophic surgery, he'd had plenty of time to bemoan his hideously altered reflection and plan his revenge. First the surgeon, he thought, and then, that item ticked off his "To Do" list, next-next comes my half brother, Luciano Strega-Borgia. Little lily-livered Luciano, who had the audacity to escape from the death trap I laid for him. Who managed, against impossible odds, to escape from a locked and burning room in my palazzo without leaving so much as a DNA smudge from his supposedly vaporized remains. . . . Luciano, whose eldest brat, t.i.tus, is due to inherit the millions that I, Lucifer, was promised by my dying father. Luciano, whose meddling messed up the Borgia Inheritance, an unbroken chain of money (or so my dying father had said) that had pa.s.sed down the male line for centuries since-since Italians ran this stupid little island.

Hissing through his teeth, Don Lucifer began to write a list in the margin of his newspaper: Item first: he scribbled, Buy gun oil. He'd retrieved his beloved Beretta from the ashes of the palazzo, and it badly needed to be taken apart, oiled, and rea.s.sembled to restore it to its former deadly perfection.

Item second: Reconnaissance. Had Luciano really escaped being incinerated? He needed to find out exactly who was currently living in StregaSchloss.

Item third: Animals. He had the suspicion that Luciano kept pets, since all Christmas cards from his half brother bore the weird names of several individuals as well as those of the immediate family . . . probably guard dogs, he decided, so- Item fourth: Buy dog food for item the third.

Item fifth: Buy flashlight-in case he did the job at night.

Item sixth: Buy waterproof trousers and jacket-to protect his clothes from blood spatter, and finally- Item seventh: a.s.semble state-of-the-art incendiary device and enter detonation code into cell phone- "Your lunch, sir." The waitress put a plate in front of him, adding, "Your raw steak, sir. Will that be all?"

Don Lucifer waved her away with a dismissive squeak. Pus.h.i.+ng the gruesome plate to one side, he continued planning his lethal a.s.sault on StregaSchloss, which at this stage appeared to involve nothing more sinister than a major shopping trip to Auchenlochtermuchty.

"Your wine, sir." The waitress reappeared with a bottle and a winegla.s.s, both of which she placed in front of Don Lucifer. "Ochhh, you're not enjoying your steak, sir. A bit too b.l.o.o.d.y, is it? Shall I take it back to the kitchen and ask the chef to do something with it?"

"Eek."

"Medium rare? Medium? Medium- to well-done? Well-done?"

To each inquiry, the surly guest shook his head. Seizing his pen, the waitress waved it in front of his face. "Write it down. Tell me what you want the chef to do with it."

s.n.a.t.c.hing his pen back and stuffing his incriminating newspaper under his seat, Don Lucifer scribbled something on his napkin and held it up. The waitress peered at the pen marks bleeding into the linen.

was the terse instruction written on the napkin. For some reason this one word filled her with foreboding, and she felt her flesh creep. Without another word, she picked up the plate and fled the dining room.

O Sole Mio Luciano Strega-Borgia sc.r.a.ped the untouched remains of lunch into the firebox of the range and slammed the door shut to prevent the smell escaping into the kitchen.

"If you're sure I can't be of any a.s.sistance, sir . . ." Mrs. McLachlan untied her ap.r.o.n and hung it on a hook by the door to the kitchen garden.

"Quite sure, Flora." Signor Strega-Borgia smiled at the nanny. "Why not take Damp out for a walk before dinner? That way she'll work up an appet.i.te and we can get on with our work without distractions."

"Dad, where d'you want these?" Pandora edged through the garden door, her arms laden with herbs.

"On the table, and you can chop them with this." Signor Strega-Borgia pa.s.sed his daughter a seriously wicked knife and turned to see how his son was faring. t.i.tus stood over a large stainless steel pot, stirring onions and garlic as if his life depended on it.

"Not so violently, t.i.tus. They're only vegetables, not mortal enemies. . . ."

"Why are you cooking dinner tonight, Dad?" Pandora looked up from chopping oregano, brus.h.i.+ng a stray clump of hair out of her eyes.

"The rest of the household is indisposed." Signor Strega-Borgia poured a mountain of flour onto the kitchen table and, after making a small indentation in the center, dropped twelve egg yolks into it. "Your mama is feeling nauseous. Marie Bain is sulking in her bedroom because none of us touched her kippers in raisin and rat-pee sauce; your mother's colleagues are all covered in bee stings-"

"Hornets," muttered t.i.tus, "not bees. I saw them-"

"Me too," agreed Tock, crawling out from under the table and coming over to the range to peer into t.i.tus's pot, adding under his breath, "And that's not all I saw."

"Pardon?" t.i.tus looked down to where the crocodile put his front paw to his mouth and mimed, "Keep shtoom."

"Hornets? Where on earth did they come from?" Luciano Strega-Borgia wondered aloud as he rapidly worked the eggs into the flour with his hands, causing Pandora to regard him with horror.

"Yeurrrrchhh," she groaned. "Dad, that is just utterly gross. It looks like sick . . ."

Secretly agreeing with his sister's a.s.sessment of the clotted mess on the kitchen table, t.i.tus angled his body in Tock's direction and whispered, "What did you see?"

"That witch," Tock muttered. "Her with the ridiculous horse-drawn hea.r.s.e. I'd opened the bathroom window to let the steam out after my bath and I saw her. Standing talking gibberish on the edge of the meadow, messing up that spell, turning flowers into hornets."

"Are you sure?" t.i.tus stopped stirring and stared at Tock. "I mean, that's-that's evil. They're all covered in stings because of her."

"Yup," Tock said. "I think she's batting for the other side."

"What? What d'you mean? What other side?"

Tock's whisper was almost inaudible. "The side of Dark, not Light."

t.i.tus paled. "You mean she's practicing Black Ma-"

"Don't say it," Tock hissed. "Walls have ears. I think something very nasty is going on. Haven't you humans noticed anything?"

t.i.tus thought of the overall strangeness of the past few days and nodded. "I thought it was just me," he confessed. "I've been feeling . . . um, sort of . . . haunted . . . like there's something out to get me-"

Signor Strega-Borgia looked up from kneading a lump of dough that was beginning to resemble something you could put in your mouth as opposed to hurl in the trash and said, "How are your onions doing, t.i.tus?"

"Um . . . yes . . . great. Soft and squishy and brownish," t.i.tus guessed, adding in a whisper, "What do you think we should do? Tell Dad?"

"No. No way. When it comes to the odd behavior of student witches, your father's judgment is somewhat clouded. As far as he's concerned, Black Magic is just a darker shade of White, a tonal difference as opposed to a moral one. . . ." Tock sighed and raised his voice to a normal volume. "And speaking of clouded judgment, I'd say those onions were black, not brown."

"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, t.i.tUS!" Luciano roared. "Can't I even trust you to do a simple thing like brown an onion? How the heck are you ever going to be able to feed yourself when you leave home if you can't even carry out the most elementary of culinary tasks? At this rate, you're going to starve to death before you're thirty."

The knife slipped out of Pandora's hand and fell to the stone floor with a steely chinggg.

The faces of both his children were ashen.

"What on earth's the matter with you two?" Luciano pounded the lump of pasta dough with one fist, causing a cloud of flour to erupt around his hands. In the silence that followed, Tock sidled out the door to the kitchen garden, closing it quietly behind him.

"t.i.tus, caro mio." Luciano clutched his forehead, instantly full of remorse. "I am sorry for shouting. I'm an idiot. If you don't ever want to cook, well . . . that's your decision. Your poppa's money will make sure you never need worry about cooking ever again. You'll be able to hire the best chef in Europe, should you wish-your only problem will be avoiding turning into a complete b.u.t.terball in the process. . . ."

Tears rolled down t.i.tus's nose, landing with a hiss in the pot of blackened onions.

"Dad-" Pandora tried to head her father onto safer conversational topics. "The herbs are all chopped . . . um . . . what d'you want me to do now?"

Holding up a hand for silence, Luciano stepped straight into the verbal equivalent of quicksand.

"How long now? About a week, t.i.tus? I've arranged for one of the estate lawyers to come for dinner tonight, so we can have a little chat about where best to invest your money. I mean, you can't keep it in a piggy bank, can you?"

t.i.tus stared at his pan of spoiled onions as if it alone held the answer to all that ailed him.

"t.i.tus. For heaven's sake, lighten up." Luciano threw his arms wide, narrowly missing Pandora's head. "Think about it: how many thirteen-year-olds do you know with so much money in the bank that they could buy a new car every year? Just off the interest alone? And not just any car; with that sort of money you could buy-"

"An Aston Martin," t.i.tus said woodenly.

"Please. Spare me. I'm Italian, remember?" Luciano made a derisory pffff sound. "Not an Aston Martin, no. A Ferrari, a Maserati, something with a bit of soul-"

"Eughhh, don't mention sole," Pandora interrupted, seizing the opportunity to halt her father's unwittingly tactless rantings. "If that was what Marie Bain made for lunch, then I want to be in a soul-free zone for the rest of my life. . . ."

"Cars don't have souls," muttered t.i.tus, sc.r.a.ping burnt onions into the compost bucket and dropping the ruined pan into the sink with a crash. Behind him, Pandora gritted her teeth. She'd tried to help, but both her brother and father seemed intent on conversational suicide.

"Heavens, child, do you have to be quite so literal?" Luciano abandoned his pasta dough in a mound on the table and headed for the pantry. "t.i.tus, give me a hand here, would you?" He retrieved a stepladder from behind a flour bin and dragged it across to a wall of shelves stacked with homemade jams and chutneys, some of such venerable antiquity that they had turned black. Climbing up the steps and using the shelves to keep his balance, Luciano turned to check that he had his son's attention.

"Look, t.i.tus." Luciano stretched up and seized a gla.s.s jam jar with its cloth cover held in place with yellow raffia. He peered at the handwritten label. "August 1989, Strawberry and Champagne Conserve-in your mother's illegible handwriting . . ."

"So?" t.i.tus glared up at his father.

"So, t.i.tus," Luciano sighed, "the contents of this jar are almost as old as you are. Your mother and I picked these strawberries in the garden with you as a baby on my shoulders. In fact, if memory serves, with you dribbling down the back of my s.h.i.+rt and attempting to pull my hair out in handfuls."

"Mmm . . . ," t.i.tus mumbled, then, rea.s.serting his adolescent need to prove that he found adult conversation deeply boring, added, "And your point is?"

"And my point is: this jar contains a memory of one of the happiest days of my life." Luciano patted the jar fondly. "The weather was hot and dry, there wasn't a gnat in sight, your mother was wearing a white linen dress, I still had all my hair, my firstborn child was burbling on my back, and we were about to go down to the loch and eat strawberries and drink champagne. . . ."

"So what's in the other jars?" t.i.tus scowled up at the laden shelves in the pantry.

"Heaps of things. There's half a shelf full of quince jelly made after Pandora was born and"-Luciano indicated a large blue-and-white china jar on a low shelf-"Rumtopf that we began after Damp arrived. We were turning into experts at preserving by then. Come to think of it, we were becoming pretty expert at babies, too."

t.i.tus winced. Some things just didn't bear thinking about. . . . "Can I go now?" he muttered, gazing down at his shoes.

"t.i.tus"-Luciano climbed down the stepladder and sat heavily on the bottom rung-"nearly thirteen years have pa.s.sed since I first held you in my arms. Nothing you do or say can change how I felt about you then, or now. You can act like you think I'm just the most terminally boring old fart it has ever been your misfortune to share a roof with, you can roll your eyes and pray that I'll just spontaneously cease to exist-but it doesn't matter. What does matter is that ever since you and your sisters came into our lives, we have been a family, and deny it if you must, this family is part of your soul."

"Yeah, Dad, but-"

"Hear me out. So . . . we keep all these ancient jars of jam because they are each and every one a reminder of the importance of family. When you and your sisters have grown up and gone, your mother and I are going to work our way through all these jars one by one, remembering all the joys you brought us-"

"Dad?" t.i.tus could hardly get the words out. "Dad, there's something wrong. . . . It's . . . oh, it's just so weird. . . . I've got this horrible feeling-something awful's going to-"

The pantry door opened and Signora Strega-Borgia tiptoed in. "Don't mind me," she whispered. "I've just suddenly been overcome with an unaccountable desire for some of that date-and-banana pickle we made last year. . . . D'you know where Mrs. McLachlan put it, Luciano?"

"You must be feeling better, Baci. You certainly look better." Luciano stood up and wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders. "But pickle? Are you sure? Why not wait until dinner? We're making pasta-that is, once t.i.tus has told me what's eating him."

Signora Strega-Borgia plucked a jar off one of the shelves and, after a cursory glance at the label, peeled off its cloth cover and sniffed the contents appreciatively. "Mmmm. Delicious . . ." She dipped a finger into the jar and withdrew a sticky lump of pickle which she promptly swallowed.

"Eughhhh. Mu-umm." t.i.tus squinched his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the revolting sight.

Signora Strega-Borgia opened the door to leave and then paused, as if remembering something faintly unpleasant. "I'll leave you guys to it," she mumbled in between mouthfuls. "Don't forget that lawyer chap is coming at eight and he doesn't eat meat, tomatoes, garlic, or onions."

"What does he eat, then?" Luciano complained. "Supper is meat, tomatoes, garlic, and onions."

"Who cares? Let him starve," Signora Strega-Borgia said with uncharacteristic venom, closing the door behind her.

"Doesn't she like lawyers?" t.i.tus said. "Or is it him in particular?"

"Just him. Your mother loathes anyone who has anything to do with your grandfather's estate."

"Why? What's wrong with it?"

"Let's just say that poppa, your grandfather, may he rest in peace, was a businessman with some rather unorthodox methods of dealing with his clients." Luciano turned back to the shelves and replaced the jar of jam.

"What d'you mean, 'unorthodox methods'? Come on, Dad, you have to tell me. After all, I am involved as well, with . . . with Grandfather's money and all that inheritance stuff."

Attempting to think of a reply, Luciano picked up a squat gla.s.s jar and tried to remember what was inside it.

"Dad? What exactly did my grandfather do to make all that money? What was his job?"

Peering into the murky depths of the jar, Luciano took a deep breath. "Only your mother and I know about this. And one other, but he may well be dead now. t.i.tus, you must never, ever breathe a word of this to another living soul. Some things are best kept hidden. Your grandfather, Don Chimera di Carne Borgia, was a mafioso. A very big and powerful one. In the criminal underworld of his time he was the big cheese, il grande parmigiano, with big businesses, politicians, royalty, and even heads of state forming corrupt links in his chain of influence. . . ."

"The Borgias must break the chain," t.i.tus whispered, recalling the final line of his terrifying e-mail.

"The Borgias are a chain. We are, t.i.tus. You and I. The money can only pa.s.s down the male line. Thank heaven your mother and sisters are exempt."

"But all that money . . . Where did he get it?" t.i.tus had the sneaking suspicion that his grandfather hadn't saved it up, lire by lira, in an old fruit jar.

"He killed for it-oh, not with his own hands. No. Not personally, but he gave the order to kill, and one of his henchmen would do the dirty work on his behalf. He also ran casinos and dog tracks, was involved in illicit trades on the stock market, owned diamond mines, smuggled opium, and probably had a finger in every dodgy pie imaginable. . . ."

"So, it's poisoned? Tainted?"

"The money? Oh yes, but most money is. Even if you make your money by honest means, the minute you bank it you're indirectly involved in all sorts of unsavory practices-or at least your money is."

"But, Dad. Why me? Why did you allow him to give that money to me? You knew all this-stuff and you still let him go ahead."

"t.i.tus, I loved him. He was my father. That doesn't mean I forgave what he did. I hated what he did. I ran away from home, left the country of my birth because of it. But when I heard he was dying . . . I-you were newborn-I took the first flight to Italy to show you to him . . . to show him that out of evil can come great goodness-"

"But you should never have allowed him to give me the MONEY!" t.i.tus's voice rose to an anguished howl. "You knew it was blood money! Yet you allowed him-"