Free No More Brothers (A Serafina Florio Mystery) by Susan Russo Anderson Page A

letting each damaged thought fly away like wounded birds out a window.
    She dozed, dreamed a little. Refreshed, she began with what she knew.
    From her interview with Rodolfo shortly after she found Ugo’s body on the beach, she learned that the shoemaker’s motives for killing his brother were strong. Like most of the other shopkeepers, including her own son, he was having difficulty making ends meet. Sales dwindled while expenses grew. By his own admission, Rodolfo had to share profits from the store with his brother. With his brother dead, all the profits were his to keep.
    While he and his family were well-clothed and seemed well fed, Rodolfo had a tab at Boffo’s. Perhaps he had other debts. If only she had some concrete evidence linking him to his brother’s murder, perhaps the courts would issue a mandate to examine Rodolfo’s financial records and she’d find deeper arrears, but for now, she could only assume his monetary situation had worsened.
    She considered Rodolfo’s means at hand—the soldier, the poison.
    Boffo claimed he’d seen Rodolfo in his bar with “a faded soldier” on at least one occasion shortly before Ugo’s death. There were many former soldiers in and around the piazza, thousands in Sicily. Was Boffo’s soldier Abatti? And if asked, would Boffo identify Abatti as the soldier he’d seen with Rodolfo?
    The barkeep also said he’d seen the Rodolfo and Ugo together. Recent and unusual behavior, according to him. Did the shoemaker affect a reconciliation with the brother, bring a bottle to his brother’s home, and slip a small quantity of arsenic into Ugo’s glass when he wasn’t looking?
    Her search for a record that Rodolfo had purchased arsenic was unsuccessful. If she found it, what would it prove? Another indirect piece of evidence. And if she were honest with herself, that’s all she had—bits and pieces, hearsay. Was it enough to bring Rodolfo in for questioning?
    Not quite yet. There was some fact she missed or had forgotten—something she should have seen. It toyed with her memory, a chimera enticing her. Searching for truth, she concluded, was a bottomless quest.
    And anyway, how could she be so foolish spending all this time chasing after ghosts when her children needed her and there were other murders to solve, other babies to deliver? If she were to take what she knew so far back to the commissioner, would he laugh at her? And why was she bothering with it? Because of her stubbornness? Because in her heart, she believed the shoemaker was guilty of fratricide and she must serve justice.
    How would she feel if she gave up now? She couldn’t live with herself. And she felt sure there was a piece she was missing when it came to Rodolfo’s acquaintance with Abatti, an acquaintance that Abatti, because of his pig-headed loyalty, denied.
    There was a knock on the door and Assunta’s voice called her to the noon meal. She stopped. How long, she wondered, had she been pacing back and forth?
    •  •  •
    After dinner, she went again to her mother’s room, swiping her eyes along the shelves in search of a good book. Returning to the chair with
A Tale of Two Cities
, she read as far as the first sentence when she smelled lavender and orange peel. The cloud transporting her mother evaporated and the specter appeared before her in full bloom.
    “You’re sitting in my spot!”
    Forcing Serafina to stand, her mother settled herself in her favorite reading chair. In front of her was the four poster where Maddalena had battled cholera two years ago and where, before succumbing to the disease, she had told her daughter the secret of Tigro’s birth, a millstone she’d carried by herself for over thirty years. But tonight her mother’s face had the freshness of youth. Her ginger curls sparkled and she wore her green velvet gown.
    “You startled me!”
    “Dawdling as usual, I see, and circling the same worn ground. Get a move on, girl: the answer’s before you.”
    “And