Page 5 of The Rainbow Recipe
ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG
Italy
“Duck, Leo,”Dante Ives Rossi told his truculent neighbor for the fiftieth time. “That tuff will crumble back to ash before your hard head does. The Etruscans didn’t dig these tunnels because the ground is hard.”
Younger and more compact than Dante, Leo flattened and slowed to a crawl over the uneven sandstone, shining his headlamp deep into the cavern. “They’re caves, Rossi. Caves won’t stop them from running a highway through my vineyards.”
Leo’scousin’svineyards, but after swearing she’d never leave the farm, Lucia had left for an easier city life. Not that Dante was resentful or anything. Leo had benefited from her defection, at least, depending on whether or not one considered a life of farming ancient grape vines a benefit.
“I’ve had some of the artifacts we’ve found analyzed. They’re not Roman. You may be sitting onEtruscantunnels. Archeologists and universities are slavering over any evidence we can produce on their life and times. That gold cuff you found at the entrance is a work of art.” Dante knew the cuff had been stolen, but he couldn’t explain to a disbeliever the mysterious means by which he knew. Only his weird ancestors could relate.
What he couldn’t tell andneededto know was if the stolen goods had come from here or elsewhere.
When Leo had first told him of the find, Dante had hoped and prayed that his neighbor had found a site that would allow him to stay home and work and help a neighbor while he was at it. But this cuff...Would pay an awful lot of Leo’s bills if sold on the black market.
And quite possibly destroy Dante’s career if his name were associated with it.
“A trove of gold would be fine if I could sell it.” Leo let his bitterness show. “Why do we have to tell the authorities?”
“Because if you try to sell that cuff, you’d be in jail faster than you could spend the money. The laws change regularly, but reporting the find first is always best. Artifacts like this advance our knowledge of history and reporting the find provides you some protection.” He squeezed his broad shoulders though a passage meant for a much smaller man. “You need to turn it in.”
Leo beamed his headlamp ahead and wriggled faster. “History won’t plant more olive trees or buy new vines. I need cash.”
Dante understood that dilemma as well as anyone. His love of knowledge fed his family and little more. But the law was the law for a reason. He waved a metaphorical carrot. “The Etruscans possessed a wealth of expertise even beyond that of the Romans at the time. You might have a historical landmark as big as Vulci, only easier to access. It could be visited by thousands of tourists a year.”
“They’ll want to build a highway through the vineyards to reach it. I need to get back to the harvest. This is a waste of time.”
“Head down, Leo!” Dante shouted as Leo’s hard hat struck an outcropping.
Leo ducked—too late for Dante. The ceiling cracked and caved.
Five: Pris
DANTE’S VILLA
Italy
Prisdamned well hadn’t poisoned anyone. Yet. Neither had Larraine. The idea was blatantly ridiculous to anyone with half a brain, but apparently half the population was brainless. Or Evil Lawson’s Faux News followers were. Or both.
The petition for a mayoral recount was ridiculous enough, but now the council wantedlicensinglaws to prevent Pris from operating her catering service so she couldn’t poison anyone. Not that anyone had officially been declared poisoned. That was just Lawson’s rumor-mongering and the council’s bigotry at work.
Only—Pris was as convinced as Lawson that Lady Kat’s death had not been a heart attack.
So, if the cops weren’t looking for the reason for Lady Kat’s death, she’d damned well search for it herself—before a killer got away with murder. La Bella Gente had an Italian owner who sold olive oil products originating in this area. Would that owner want to kill their CEO? Or know who would? Any good research had to start by covering the basics.
Having had the eternal plane trip to learn the Euro coins the bank had ordered for her, she stood on the villa’s stairs and counted out the fare for her loquacious taxi driver. She added the tip recommended by the guidebooks. He smiled hugely, so she’d probably calculated wrong. Oh well. Money had never been her forte, probably because she’d never had any.
She had never been in an airplaneorout of the country in her life either. Exhausted from lack of sleep in cramped economy seats, drained from struggling with unfamiliar languages and customs, she wearily studied the crumbling stone where the driver had left her luggage. Stairs like that were dangerous and probably condemned in forty-eight states but apparently not in Italy.
She longed to turn around and go back, but after this past hectic week of her entire family learning how to obtain an emergency passport and scraping up the money to send her, she couldn’t quit now.
She finally lifted her head to study the imposing stone edifice presumably belonging to Dante Ives Rossi, Conte Armeno—Jax’s distant Italian relation. Everyone thought she was crazy to come here.
Only she knew she was plain certifiable.
She should have given up catering, found a sous chef job in the city where rumors wouldn’t touch her. She didn’thaveto live in Afterthought. She didn’tneedher own business.
She just hated being trampled by a yellow-dog journalist and her small-minded readers. Well, she hated being trampled, period. She had spiteful dreams of blowing up Jane Lawson’s theory and Jane with it.
