of laughter and music. Enzo flagged the waiter and ordered two glasses of cognac. There was some back and forth between them—I imagined it to be about the cognac, but it could have been about politics or the weather for all I knew. I was more interested in Enzo’s congenial expression than what he was actually saying. He was so charming as to be unreadable.
The waiter delivered two snifters filled with golden liquid. I lifted my glass and smelled burned caramel swirled with alcohol.
Enzo looked me over. “An argument with your husband?”
“I needed to be alone,” I said. “I ended up walking all over the place.”
“I’ve had my share of spousal disagreements,” he said, smiling kindly, and I felt a sudden warmth toward him, as if I could confide in him. “Most revolving around family situations.”
“I doubt your situation has ever been as complicated as this,” I said.
“No doubt you are entirely correct.”
“Who are the Montebiancos anyway?” I asked, feeling the cognac warming me. “What do you know about them?”
“Probably less than you do.”
“The estate must have information about them. They work for the Montebianco family, after all.”
“To be honest,” Enzo said, “the estate hasn’t been entirely forthcoming with me about the details of your situation.”
“But how can that be?” I asked. “They sent you to bring me here. They gave you my medical records.”
“The messenger doesn’t need to understand the message to deliver it,” he said, sipping his cognac. “You can ask the lawyers anything you want tomorrow. They work for you.”
This caught me off guard. “They do?”
“Of course,” he said, smiling slightly. “You have just inherited them.”
“Oh,” I said, “I guess you’re right.” The reality of my position hit me. I wasn’t some powerless person being hauled into a legal meeting. The lawyers of the Montebianco Estate worked for me.
“The estate is composed of three lawyers. The head lawyer is a man named Francisco Zimmer. Swiss. Speaks very good English. He’s been the Montebianco family’s primary attorney for forty years. He knows the family very well, and can surely give you whatever information you want. The other lawyer, Murray Smith, has been part of the team for less time than Zimmer. He handles the daily problems and responsibilities. Bills and taxes and so on. I was hired last year, to oversee the more personal elements of the estate.”
“Personal elements,” I said. “Like me.”
“When I first began working for Zimmer, I was curious about Nevenero,” Enzo said, putting his snifter on the table and giving me a look of complicity. “I tried to look it up. There is very little information out there. You’ll find a Wikipedia page with the name Nevenero, and you’ll learn that it is a town in the Aosta Valley, but that’s about it. If you look hard, you’ll find a reference to the castle, which once belonged to the House of Savoy. You’ll find a line or two about how the village was abandoned around the time of the Second World War. Maybe two hundred people on the planet have ever been there, and I am not one of them. I can’t tell you more than that.”
As Enzo spoke, I couldn’t stop seeing the Beast of Nevenero, its pale skin and ferocious eyes. I couldn’t ignore the fact that everything Nonna Sophia had said was proving true. Maybe I should have taken her advice and stayed home. A tight ball of fear and suspicion formed in my stomach. I reached into my purse and pulled out the book of Alpine monsters, turned to the photo of la Bestia di Nevenero, and set the book between us. “I found this earlier this evening.”
He took the book in hand and read the photo’s corresponding passage. After a minute or so, he closed the book and gave it back to me. “Stories like this aren’t unusual in northern Italy. The Alps are one of the least-accessible geographical areas on the planet. All those frozen, unexplored mountains have an effect on the imagination. There are reports of abominable snowmen in practically every ski village between here and Chamonix.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said, tucking the book into my purse. Although his confidence reassured me, and I knew that the mostri delle Alpi were nothing more than old superstitions, I couldn’t help but feel the shadows of Nevenero creeping over me, the icy Alpine winds coming ever closer, leaving a foreboding in my heart as dark as black snow.
Eight
The next afternoon, I met with the lawyers of the Montebianco