numbered account for him, to keep his mouth shut. And then I called Davide.”
She pricked up her ears. “My father?”
“Of course.”
“But by then it had been ages since he’d had anything to do with the clan’s business affairs. I always hoped that one of these days he’d come back to take his rightful place as head of the family.”
Interesting. Sounded as if Trevini had disliked Florinda so much that he’d rather have discussed the subject with the disinherited Alcantara son than with her. “What did my father say?”
“He was quite upset.”
“I can imagine. I’m quite upset.”
“Davide wanted to know everything about this man Apollonio, and he said for me not to do anything for the time being.”
“Did you tell Florinda?”
“He expressly forbade me to do that, too.”
“And you were only too happy to do as he said, right?”
“Your aunt wasn’t as effective a head of the family as she thought. In addition, she was under the sway of Salvatore Pantaleone. Just as well that he is dead.”
Did Trevini know that Rosa was responsible for Pantaleone’s death? Impossible, really—but by now she was ready to believe him capable of anything.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “The signal…” That clicking and rushing on the line again. “Right,” he finally continued.
She tried to put her thoughts in order. There were two things that she had to find out more about. “Did my father give you any other instructions?”
“No. He asked me to let the matter rest, saying he would see to everything else personally.”
“When exactly was this?”
“Shortly before his death.”
The mysterious phone call that her mother had mentioned. Her father’s strange reaction to it. And then his hasty decision to leave his wife and his two daughters and go to Europe.
“It was you,” she whispered.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You were the reason he left. You called him, and after that he…” She stopped, and turned the swivel chair slowly in a circle.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Trevini. “But it seems that Apollonio was reason enough for him to become active again himself.”
“Tell me all about this man Apollonio. Every last thing.”
“As I said before, I don’t know much about him. In the first place, an attorney’s office in Rome got in touch on his behalf. I finally managed to speak to him myself, but never face-to-face, only by phone. I was aware of Costanza’s collection in the cellar—”
Why did he know?
“—and I had always assumed that I was the only person she had taken into her confidence. However, this Apollonio left me in no doubt that he knew all about it.”
“Did he try blackmailing you?”
“I had to believe him, like it or not, when he said that he had supplied the furs. And I thought it possible that the last payment hadn’t yet been made at the time of Costanza’s sudden death. He was threatening to make the whole thing public. That could have meant the end of the Alcantaras.”
“A breach of the concordat,” she murmured.
“Worse,” he told her. “Treachery.”
The word seemed to echo down the line for a moment. “TABULA?” she whispered tonelessly.
“Apollonio never mentioned that name. But yes, I do think there is some connection. TABULA carries out experiments on members of the dynasties. How else could he have come by the pelts of so many Arcadians?”
She remembered the video that Cesare Carnevare had shown her. Endless rows of cages, with Arcadians in their animal forms shut up inside them. Obviously the captives had lost the ability to turn back into human beings.
“As far as I know,” Trevini went on, “hardly anyone who was abducted and held by TABULA ever appeared again.”
“And you think these people are sick enough to skin their victims and sell the pelts? Sell them back to another Arcadian, of all people?” She instinctively thought of Alessandro. Of his silky black panther fur.
“Maybe there are other collectors. Or maybe not. I can’t answer that question.”
“Right,” she said, after a brief pause. “So this Apollonio got the furs from TABULA. He’s probably even a member of it himself. And my grandmother did business with him—with TABULA, the archenemy of all the Arcadian dynasties.”
“That was the danger I saw looming at the time. And I had to react.”
“Did my father know about it?”
“He drew exactly the same conclusions as you did just now.”
“You have no idea what he was planning to do?”
“None whatsoever. He expressly told me not to investigate the matter any farther. He was going to see to it all himself.”