The Case of the Missing Botticelli by Marilyn Baron

Author:Marilyn Baron [Baron, Marilyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cozy Mystery; Florence; Venice; Stolen Nazi Art; Botticelli; Birth of Venus; Marilyn Baron
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2021-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Hadley and Ingrid snagged a prime outdoor table at St. Mark’s Square. It was a touristy establishment and the pigeons were out in force, but it was a beautiful day, and they were enjoying the ambience only Venice can offer. And you could hardly get a bad meal in Italy. Hadley ordered an amaretto sour, and Ingrid was sipping a Bellini. It was a little early in the afternoon to be drinking, but Hadley felt she’d already lived a lifetime in a day, and she was still steaming over Luca’s behavior.

“I’m sorry I lied to you and pretended I was a museum curator,” Ingrid said. “But it was the only way I could get the help I needed. I had exhausted the court system. I didn’t have enough evidence.”

Hadley knew a thing or two about lying, so how could she not accept Ingrid’s apology?

“I was certain you were going to be my pathway to a job at the Uffizi.”

“Is that what you want out of life?” Ingrid asked. She seemed really interested.

“Sure, why not?” What she really wanted was Luca, but that vaporetto had already left the lagoon. “If you’re not a museum curator, then what are you?”

“A math teacher.”

Hadley laughed. “About as far away from art history as possible.”

“But I love art. Paintings were prized in my family.”

“Can you tell me the story?” Hadley prompted, “If you’re ready?”

The server placed a large order of fritto misto and two Caprese salads at the table and then refilled their water glasses. Apparently, the two women had more in common than art. They had the same taste in food. If they had met under different circumstances, quite by chance, Hadley thought they could be good friends.

“If you tell me what’s going on between you and that hot cop of yours.” The tension in the air was as thick as molasses.

“He’s not mine, not anymore. We were dating, and then along came Isabella, and it was love at first sight.”

“He wasn’t looking at her the way he was looking at you,” Ingrid observed.

“Well, then I think you need to have your eyes checked.”

“I can see what’s right in front of me. I’m quite sure he’s yours, if you want him.”

Hadley was eager to change the subject. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

As they ate their lunch, which was delicious, Ingrid told her story despite the fact that thousands of tourists swarmed the square around them.

“My grandfather came from a long line of wealthy bankers. They lived in a big house in Berlin, and he was an avid art collector. Unfortunately, he used the same Swiss art dealer as Hermann Göring, and that’s where the trouble started.

“It was way before they enacted the racist and antisemitic Nuremberg laws, and before Kristallnacht. They had just opened Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, in 1933 in southern Germany. At the beginning, it was a camp for political prisoners, Communists and Marxists, before it became a death camp. Ostensibly, the inmates would be implementing land cultivation projects.

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