Arcadia Burns by Kai Meyer

Author:Kai Meyer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Young Adult
ISBN: 9780062006080
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Published: 2013-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

APOLLONIO

“DID YOU KNOW?” SHE spat into the receiver. “Shit, of course you knew!”

At the other end of the line, Trevini sighed. “This is not a subject we ought to discuss over the telephone.”

“I want to know the truth. Now!” She had a date to meet Alessandro this evening, but instead of looking forward to it she had to grapple with this filth first.

“You’re being unreasonable. You’re letting yourself get carried away over something that—”

“That’s enough!” She jumped up from her swivel chair, went around the huge desk, and began pacing up and down the study. Her heavy metal-studded shoes hammered on the parquet flooring as if a military commando unit were storming the palazzo.

Far away in Taormina, the attorney let out a breath. “Wait.” Something clicked on the line, to be followed by a rushing sound, and then another click. “There, that’s better.”

“What?”

“I’ve switched on a distorting signal to keep you from informing on us all. You will never again—never!—try talking to me about such matters over the phone without previous warning.”

“What are those furs in the cellar? Why did my grandmother keep them together down there? Where do they come from? And why so many?”

“Costanza didn’t kill those people, Rosa. If that’s what has upset you so much. And if they can be described as people, indeed as human at all.”

“Don’t you consider me human, Avvocato Trevini?”

He laughed softly. “The fact is, I wish you were less human. More like your grandmother.”

“She was a monster!”

“A collector with discriminating taste.”

“Taste? Have you lost your mind? Those furs down there were once men and women! And there are a few hundred of them.”

“As I said: She didn’t kill them with her own hands. She didn’t even contract for their deaths.”

“Very reassuring.”

“We ought to—”

“Discuss this at your place? Forget it.”

“The bugging specialists at the public prosecutor’s office never take more than three or four minutes to crack a distortion signal. If they’re listening in now, we don’t have much time left.”

“Then press the button again.”

“You’re upset because—”

“Because I’ve found a fucking mass grave in my basement!”

He seemed to be drinking something; she heard a faint clink. She was going to explode with rage any moment now. He was right about one thing. She had to calm down, control herself.

Reluctantly, she used the brief pause to go back to her chair at the desk. Florinda’s spacious study was strange to her. It had once been a living room in the palazzo, with walls paneled in dark wood and a view of the inner courtyard from a wrought-iron balcony. She felt small and out of place here.

There was a crackle and a rushing sound on the line again. Trevini had recoded the signal. Another three minutes.

“Well?” she asked.

“I don’t know much about it, believe me. Costanza had a weakness for furs of all kinds. The palazzo was full of them. As hearth rugs, runners, even curtains. She loved furs more than anything. Most of them disappeared after her death. Florinda got rid of them.”

“Florinda

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