was with me. He got excited when he smelled those things.”
“What things?”
“Wait and see.”
Iole opened the flap on the little metal box. Her feet crunched on crumbs of dog biscuit. Her fingers danced over an unilluminated keypad. The numbers on the display consisted of large lines in a style that must have been the latest in modern technology two decades ago.
A hydraulic mechanism hissed, as if the iron door were uttering a reluctant groan. Several locks opened with clicking sounds. It seemed an unusual security system for a freezer that would normally have held provisions and game animals killed in the hunt.
“Give me a hand, will you?” Iole was tugging at the enormous door handle.
Rosa still wasn’t sure that she really wanted to see what her grandmother had left here. But the adrenaline junkie in her surfaced. That did her good.
She pulled at the handle with Iole, and retreated, step by step, as the heavy door swung out into the corridor.
Darkness reigned beyond it. The cool air of the cellar retreated before a surge of Arctic cold.
“You do know I’m a vegetarian?” She peered past Iole into the darkness. “If there are ancient pig carcasses or something dangling from the ceiling in there—”
Iole vigorously shook her head. “No, much better than that.”
The neon tubes outside shed light into the freezer for only a few feet. To the right and left, it fell on something that looked like rows of cocoons lined up. They hung from the ceiling without touching the ground. An aisle ran between them.
“Wait.” Iole pressed a button next to the display on the keypad. More neon tubes lit up on the ceiling, crackling. Their light flickered on in a wave from the entrance to the depths of the freezer. The white light showed a long room, more like a tunnel than anything else. It was wide enough for not just one but three aisles between the hanging shapes.
Rosa went up to the steel doorway. Iole hurried past her, brought a metal doorstop out of the room, and wedged it under the open iron door. “There,” she said, pleased with herself.
Vapor rose as Rosa breathed out. “What are those things?”
Iole went ahead. “Come with me.”
Together they approached the nearest dangling forms, which Rosa now saw were fabric bags. Made of linen or cotton, and stuffed very full. Four rails ran under the ceiling, parallel to the side walls. Animal carcasses had probably once been hung in here. The idea turned her stomach.
She looked more closely at one of the bags.
The shapes of arms showed right and left inside the fabric.
No legs. No head.
Iole put out one hand and tapped the front fabric bag. The hook fastening it to the rail made a slight grinding sound, and the shapeless thing began swinging back and forth.
“Fine. Right,” said Rosa, working hard on sounding matter-of-fact. “Not dead bodies, are they?”
Iole grinned. “Depends how you look at it.” She ran both hands over the fabric, found a zipper, and pulled it down with a firm jerk.
Brown fur spilled out of the opening. Iole put one hand inside and stroked the fluffy surface.
“Fur coats,” she said. “A hundred and sixteen. I counted them.”
Rosa bent her head and tried to look between the rows at the opposite side of the tunnel-like cellar room. But the hanging linen cocoons seemed to be moving closer and closer together at the back, as if to bar her view of the far end of the freezer.
“My grandmother stored her fur coats down here?” she whispered.
“They keep better in the cold,” said Iole, pride in her voice. “I read that somewhere.” She took the fur at the front off the rail, removed it entirely from its bag, and rubbed her cheek against the garment, enjoying its softness.
Once again Rosa realized how cold she was. “Who needs a fur coat in Sicily? And who, for god’s sake, needs a hundred and sixteen of them?”
However, she could answer that question for herself. Cosa Nostra loved status symbols, from magnificent properties to fast cars to designer fashion. Many a Mafioso collected villas on the Riviera; others surrounded themselves with crowds of beautiful women. Costanza had obviously had a weakness for furs. Florinda had hated her, Rosa knew that much.
She pointed to the rows. “No black leather jackets, I suppose?”
“If you sell all those coats you can buy yourself a thousand leather jackets.”
“Then I’ll have all the animal-rights activists in Italy after me, not to mention the police.”