The Case of the Missing Botticelli, page 6
“I didn’t tell you to turn on the girl. You had your tongue halfway down her throat. If I had come in a moment later, who knows what I would have walked in on?”
“For the record, she had her tongue down my throat. I was just playing along. Just following orders. A performance.” Luca’s dimples were showing.
“This ends now, Romeo,” Hadley fumed. “And don’t even think of getting into my bed tonight. You can sleep on the couch—after you take a cold shower. Or better yet, stay here with your precious Isabella. I don’t even want to look at you.”
“But, Cara—”
“Don’t Cara me. You are such an…Italian. It is never going to work out between us.”
“Mi piaci molto.”
“You really like me?” Hadley screeched. “Until the next girl comes along. Words, just words. I thought I could count on you.”
Were all Italian men like Signore Domingo? Was cheating on their wives second nature to men like that, or a national pastime? She and Luca weren’t exactly married, but they were in a committed relationship. Or so she had thought. That must count for something.
“Do you want me to tell you I love you?”
“Not if you have to ask me.”
“You’re jealous.”
“Don’t you dare try to define me. Just how far were you going to go?”
“As far as the situation demanded. For you.”
“You obviously got carried away. She’s inexperienced. You will break her heart.” And mine.
Outraged, Hadley reached her arm back and took a swing at Luca. He blocked her in mid-swing.
“Remember, I’m armed, Cara.”
“I hate you, you…Casanova,” Hadley screamed. Her heart beat out of her chest. Steam shot out of her head—or it might have been the settling fog.
Signore Domingo was right. She would heed his rules. Don’t overlook the obvious. She and Luca were from two different worlds. And, Always look beneath the surface—beneath the devoted exterior to find the rotten core.
Hadley rushed off toward the hotel to get as far away from Luca as possible.
****
Hadley stepped off the hotel elevator and used the card key to get into the room. When she was inside, she slammed the door and locked it. Let Luca try to get in. Ha.
She grabbed a polished apple from the fruit basket on the table and took a bite. Which just reminded her of Isabella and the garden and Luca, the serpent that had enticed the unsuspecting Eve, in the person of Isabella, to do evil. She threw the discarded apple into a waste basket. Then she got into bed, pulled up the covers, and started reading the diary of Karrissa Montanari.
Chapter Ten
Information From Karrissa Montanari’s Diary, Venice, Italy, 1934-1946
I met Hermann Göring at a dinner party one night after the opera. I knew he was dangerous the moment we were introduced. I detected the hunger in his eyes, and he detected the vulnerability in mine. But I was ready for some danger. He was a dashing aviator—a fighter pilot ace—a World War I hero, and so handsome in his uniform. A member of the Nazi party, years before Mussolini allied with Germany and the German occupation. He had a lot to recommend him.
Hermann was lonely after the death of his wife, and he pursued me. He knew what he wanted, and he wanted me. I was flattered by his attention and the gifts he lavished on me. I was inexperienced, but he taught me everything I needed to know to satisfy his amorous appetites.
It was rumored he was addicted to morphine, but that was because he had gotten a bullet in his leg and it was the only thing that eased his pain. By then I had fallen hopelessly in love and had become addicted to him. He called me at least five times a day when we weren’t together. After Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he appointed Hermann his cabinet minister, so he was busy working hard for the Nazi party and overseeing the creation of the Gestapo. Hermann was the second most powerful man in Germany. Promoted to commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe the year after we met. People thought of him as ruthless, one of the most sinister and dangerous men in the world, and he suffered mood swings, but in private, he was gentle and sweet. He seemed to genuinely care.
Hermann was often derided for being overweight. But that didn’t bother me. He knew he could relax and be himself with me. He confided in me. I was the keeper of his secrets. And when Amore surfaced, I was not to whisper a word about it lest Hitler get wind of the masterpiece and demand it for his own private collection.
In the beginning, when our love for each other was new, he made many trips back to Venice so we could be together. I wanted to go slow. It was Hermann who wanted to speed things up. I soon discovered his real mission in the city was to amass a fortune in stolen art. No matter how many paintings he seized, it was never enough.
To Hitler and Göring, artistic plunder was a matter of state policy. The two were in a race to steal artworks. It was as if they were Adoph and Hermann, young boys playing pirate, not grown men. They pilfered the entire contents of the Uffizi Museum, tens of thousands of masterpieces looted from the museums of Paris and occupied Europe, and struck gold by looting religious paintings and sculptures in dozens of churches in countries throughout German-occupied Europe.
Amore captured Hermann’s fancy. It was an obsession, really. Not to be outdone by the Führer, Göring scored the Botticelli, the most valuable art treasure the world had never known. He learned of the rare painting by Sandro Botticelli from a Swiss art dealer and acquired it (only later did I learn that “acquire” was another name for loot) from a wealthy and prominent Jewish banking family from Berlin that was interested in emigrating to the United States. They “sold” Hermann their Venetian villa, along with Amore and more than 500 pieces of art at the family’s Venetian vacation home and their main residence in Berlin, in exchange for passage out of Berlin.
I later learned that the banker never made it out of Germany. He was lost in the Holocaust, as were his priceless artifacts. The banker’s wife and young son managed to flee the Nazis, but the family’s assets—paintings, along with their properties—were appropriated, assets that rightly belonged to the branch of the family that managed to make it to the United States.
After the war, a train car filled with Hermann Göring’s stolen art was pillaged by the locals in the Bavarian Alps. But Hermann’s most prized paintings stayed safe in our villa in Venice.
By then, Hermann had already started seeing that actress from Hamburg. But that didn’t stop him from his regular visits. He set me up in a villa and paid all my expenses. He married Emmy, and they had a daughter together. When I told Hermann I was pregnant, he said he would continue to support me and my daughter. He brought crates of looted art to store at the villa and built the circular gallery room—temperature controlled to protect the paintings.
He said he or someone would be back to collect it, and I was not to sell it off under any circumstances. After the war, after Hermann died, I was constantly expecting a knock on the door, someone saying, “Get out of my house. Return my stolen paintings.” But that knock never came. And in time I began to think of the house as mine. But the paintings were sacrosanct. I would never sell them.
The deportations of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps didn’t begin until September 1943 when German troops invaded Italy from the north and the Italians surrendered. By that time Hermann and I were not together except for the times he dropped in to add a painting or two to the collection here. In October 1943, Nazis raided the Jewish ghetto in Rome. In November 1943, the Jews of Florence were deported to Auschwitz. About 1,200 Jews were living in Venice when German troops occupied the city in 1943. When the head of the Jewish community in Venice was asked for a list of all the Jews living in Venice, rather than turn it in, he burned every list and took his own life.
Because of his sacrifice, the Nazis were never able to locate the Venetian Jews, and only 243 were deported to concentration camps, including the chief rabbi. Of those 243 who were taken to Auschwitz, only eight returned home. Meanwhile, the rest of the community managed to escape. An estimated 10,000 Italian Jews were deported to concentration camps—7,700 of them perished in the Holocaust.
I remember once at a dinner party, in 1935 I think it was, Hermann saying, “I should not like to be a Jew in Germany.” At the time, I didn’t know how big a role he played in finding a solution to the “Jewish question.” I was blinded by my feelings for him, so blinded I ignored the signs that I was in love with a monster.
Works of art were taken from museums, churches, individual homes, particularly Jewish collections. Many artworks were never claimed after the war mainly because the individual owner had gone up in smoke in the Holocaust. I was complicit in the scheme without even realizing it.
My daughter Serena married an abusive man, a man who cheated on her. When she left him, she brought the twins to live with me in the villa. We lived a solitary life. We didn’t allow people into our home for fear they would discover the paintings in the locked room. We all knew we were to protect the paintings with our lives and were not to share the secret of the hidden museum. Isabella, the angel, was my favorite. Matteo was the image of Hermann in more than looks. He was my flesh and blood, but there was an air of evil about him that was frightening.
Matteo mistakenly believed the paintings were his legacy, much as I tried to correct his notion. They did not belong to our family. We were merely caretakers. One day, I told them, someone would come for them.
****
The diary documented the systematic Nazi thefts and seizures from German citizens of Jewish descent, even before the war, to fund the German war effort. In many cases, Göring’s art advisor made the connections and the sale through galleries in Switzerland—also listed in the pages of the diary, so the Reichsmarschall’s hands remained clean. Hitler followed suit, ordering the theft of such treasures as the Mona Lisa for his super museum in his hometown of Linz. It turned out the Mona Lisa Hitler stole was a copy. Perhaps, then, so was the Botticelli in the Uffizi.
Before war erupted in 1939, artworks in the Louvre were crated and shuttled to villas and castles all over France. Today, Paris’s Louvre has more than 1,000 unclaimed works.
The Mona Lisa was sent to a castle in the Loire Valley and moved twice in 1940 and a final time in 1942. The real masterpiece was returned to the museum on June 16, 1945.
The Monuments Men found a sixteenth-century copy of daVinci’s painting still in the Louvre’s possession. The painting that made its way around France was that copy, captured in 1942 by Germans. Meanwhile the real daVinci remained in Paris, hidden in an undisclosed location by the Monuments Men.
Artwork was hidden in underground storage facilities like salt and copper mines, Italian homes, and in the villas of high-ranking SS officers, such as the villa in which Göring had installed his mistress.
I knew that during the war, to avoid being stolen or damaged, paintings such as the masterpieces Primavera and The Birth of Venus were hidden in Castello di Montegufoni and scattered in many other places throughout the Tuscan countryside. In late July 1944, the allies arrived on the southern bank of the Arno River. The next month, the Nazis grabbed a cache of paintings taken from the Uffizi and hidden in Northern Italy. Another cache of paintings—some 1,261 works of art stolen from the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti, another Florence art museum, was discovered.
Chapter Eleven
There was a pounding on the door of the hotel suite. Hadley slipped the diary back into her handbag.
“Open up, Hadley.” It was Luca.
She didn’t answer, hoping he’d go away.
“Come on,” he pleaded. “Don’t leave me standing out here.” Luca was normally an even-tempered man, but when he thought he was in the right, he was like a caged tiger. It was better not to press him.
She knew he could get into the room. She’d forgotten to bolt the door. Luca was a police officer, after all. But she was still angry and hurt.
She recalled Rule Number Four of the Pocket Guide: Don’t Waste Time With Distractions. Focus On The Matter At Hand.
Luca was a classic example of a distraction. He was handsome, idealistic, principled, caring, demonstrative (case in point: tongue down the throat of a girl he’d just met), generous, and above all, loyal, committed, and responsible. While she was intense, temperamental, and suspicious. And don’t forget secretive. King Charles knew nothing about Luca, and Luca wasn’t aware she had a serious boyfriend waiting for her back home. And her boss, Massimo Domingo, didn’t know she was in Venice, working for a client behind his back and that she had borrowed his contact book without permission.
“Go away. Why don’t you go back and comfort Isabella?”
“Do you really want me to do that? Matteo will be back at the villa by now. We can’t just barge in. We have to come up with a plan.”
Luca was probably right. Rule Number Five of the Guide was Formulate A Plan.
“Then get another room.”
“Hadley, you know I can’t afford a room at this hotel, at these prices.”
“Then sleep outside the door.”
“Hadley, you asked me for my help.”
Hadley pouted. Did pouts count if the person you were trying to impress wasn’t in the room with you?
Resigned, Hadley got up from the bed and opened the door.
“Okay, you can sleep on the couch, but don’t dare come anywhere near me. I’m not in the mood for your games tonight.”
Luca walked in, removed his gun, and laid it on the end table. He stretched out on the couch, but his body was too big for the sofa. He tossed and turned all night.
The next morning, when she awoke, he was gone. And, now that her emotions had somewhat cooled, she hoped Luca would be waiting for her at the villa. She had missed him in her bed last night, but she had no one to blame but herself. Luca was just being Luca. He was proud, just like any other man.
She’d placed a frantic call to Gerda after she’d decided she really did need Massimo’s help. He could be on a train and in Venice in a couple of hours or a little more than two hours by car. But the temp told her Gerda was at the doctor. Again? Was something wrong with Gerda?
She’d ordered room service for them the previous day, knowing they would want an early start, but since Luca had disappeared, she felt obliged to eat his crispy bacon slices and part of his cheese omelet to complement her Belgian waffles. And pick at his fruit cup. After which she dipped the end of his croissant into a mini jar of honey. Then she wrapped the remainder of the croissant in a monogrammed napkin and placed it in her handbag. Before she showered, dressed, and walked toward Isabella’s villa, she put in another call to Gerda.
Chapter Twelve
“Massimo Domingo Art Detective Agency.”
“Gerda, it’s Hadley.” She exhaled, relieved to hear her friend’s voice. Gerda was a very private person. She would have to approach any questions about health issues with caution.
“I thought you were on vacation.”
“Well, not exactly. I’ll explain later, but I need to speak to Massimo.”
“He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“He said he’s coming in late. He’s having breakfast.”
“With his mistress?”
“No, with his wife, for a change. He came this close to blowing up his marriage. If I hadn’t called to warn him his wife was on her way home last Friday, he would be thrown out on the streets and we’d be thrown out of a job.”
“Gerda, this is an emergency. I need him to get to Venice as fast as he can, to this address.” Hadley made Gerda repeat the address.
“What’s this about?”
“There’s no time to explain, but I need him to get here right away.”
“I’ll track him down and make the arrangements,” Gerda said.
“Gerda, are you okay?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“Well you were just at the doctor last week and the temp said you went back today. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about.”
“But I do worry. If you’re sick—”
“We’ll talk about it when you get back to Florence. And, I almost forgot, there’s someone named Charles King looking for you.”
“King Charles?”
“Maybe I got the name mixed up, but he was here this morning. He just flew in, and I didn’t want to give him your address without checking with you first.”
“Damn.”
“He says he’s your boyfriend.”
“You didn’t tell him about Luca, did you?”
“Of course not. I didn’t give him any personal information, just that you are on vacation.”
Hadley breathed a sigh of relief. But what unfortunate timing. Charles hadn’t visited her the entire six months she’d attended classes in Florence or during the time she’d been working at her new job. And now, of all times, when she was in the middle of a crisis, he shows up?
“And your mother has been calling,” Gerda added. “She says you aren’t answering your phone.”
The gears in Hadley’s head were spinning out of control, and her radar was on high alert. Somehow, her mother had something to do with this new development.
Hadley dialed her mother’s cell phone.
“Mom. I heard you wanted to talk to me.”
“I was just thinking it’s been a while since we’ve heard from you.”
Something was definitely up. Her mother was being too casual.
“I’ve been busy at work, and I, um, went to Venice this week. I’m actually still here.”
“Venice, but—you need to get back to Florence. You’re not with that Italian boy, are you?”
“His name is Luca, Mother. And we’re here on business.”
“Monkey business?”
“No, he’s helping me on a case.” Hadley fought to get her breathing under control. “Mom, have you heard from Charles lately?”
“Charles?”
“Yes, Charles King. Mother, what aren’t you telling me?”
