Free Deadly to the Sight by Edward Sklepowich Page B

She could have approached Habib on some other occasion, and tried to get information from him. And information of a certain kind is power! It’s money!”
    Urbino resisted her implication that Habib might be lying to him, perhaps out of fear.
    â€œIt might be a good idea for us to see her together,” he said. “No, I don’t mean when we go to Frieda’s, but perhaps we can get a message to her then. We might arrange to meet her at the Palazzo Uccello. A public place wouldn’t be suitable, and she’d get the wrong idea if you saw her here. She needs to be asked some direct questions. Depending on what she says, we’ll decide whether we need to go to the police.” The Contessa gave a start. “I doubt it will ever come to that, and you should get it out of your mind that she knows anything compromising about Alvise. There’s something else at work here. It’s probably something easily explained.”
    He had spoken with more conviction than he felt, but it seemed to soothe her.
    All the way back to the Palazzo Uccello, he kept turning over in his mind the strange sequence of events surrounding the old lace maker. It was a puzzling affair and he could understand the Contessa’s distress. She very well might be in a vulnerable position, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with the Conte—except, that is, for the great Da Capo-Zendrini fortune that was now hers.
    Back home, he found Habib in the library, playing with the cat Serena. He had been considering asking Habib some questions about Crivelli, but the sight of him sitting on the floor and being so indulgent with Serena made him decide against it. He didn’t want to spoil Habib’s mood, at least not tonight, by bringing up a topic he knew was disturbing to him.

13
    â€œThere she is,” Habib said to the dark-skinned young man by his side.
    It was the next day. Habib and Urbino had gone to the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute with one of Habib’s friends. He was Jerome, a Senegalese in his twenties who had come to Italy to study at Perugia and was now at Habib’s language school.
    Habib was indicating the Byzantine painting of the Madonna and child on the high altar. Jerome’s surprisingly blue eyes opened wide as he took it in.
    â€œShe’s black,” he said in disbelief. “Darker than you, Habib. Just like me.”
    â€œYes! And it is stolen!”
    â€œStolen?”
    â€œIt was stolen hundreds of years ago. The Italians pray to it all the time.”
    Urbino listened in amusement. Habib was right. The painting of the Black Madonna was one of Venice’s many holy thefts. The thief had been none other than the last of Venice’s Doges, Francesco Morosini, who had brought it back from Crete in 1672 to adorn the newly built church. The Baroque Salute had been commissioned in thanksgiving to the Virgin for delivering the city from a plague. The ill and the infirm still prayed to her as the Madonna of Good Health. Every November she was honored by the Festa della Salute when a bridge of boats spanned the Grand Canal from the boat landing at Santa Maria del Giglio to the Salute.
    â€œWill the church have to give it back?” Jerome asked.
    â€œOh, no! Urbino says that there are too many stolen things in Venice to give back. The city would be empty!”
    â€œIt is very strange.”
    â€œYes. And there are also dead bodies that they stole away from churches and cemeteries. They put them in glass coffins and bury their bones in the walls of the churches. But there are none here.” He lowered his voice even more. “It is a strange religion, Jerome.”
    The Senegalese nodded in agreement.
    Before they left, Habib insisted that Jerome buy one of the small prayer cards at the sacristy, with a reproduction of the Black Madonna and a prayer for health in Italian on the back.
    â€œI have one. It will help you with your Italian,” Habib