Dying on the Vine by Aaron Elkins Page B

butter, and perhaps a little rosemary or lemon. But with Marti there, even though she would make no comment, it would dent his pleasure with a tinge of guilt. “I’ll have what they’re having,” he said, making his request clear by gesturing at Julie and Gideon.
    As Bruno, pleased with his tableful of
americana
after all, hurried to the kitchen to place the orders, Gideon’s cell phone emitted its soft
bip-bip
, the least intrusive sound he could find on its ringtone menu. When he opened it, Rocco was at the other end. “Hey, Gid, I was thinking more about all this. You said you’re going to be spending some time with the Cubbiddus the next couple of days?”
    “Right. We’ll be staying with them till Sunday.”
    “Well, look, let’s keep all this stuff to ourselves for now, okay? I think it’d be better if they didn’t know about these questions that have come up. In fact, I think it’d be better if nobody knew.”
    “If you mean our wives, I’m afraid you’re a little late.”
    “Well, tell them to shut up about it too if they know what’s good for them.”
    “Oh, right. We’ll do just that.”
    “Slap ’em around a little if they don’t like it.”
    “Yeah, right, excellent idea, I’ll make a note of that.” He closed the phone and slipped it into a pocket. “Rocco’s asked us not to mention any of this to the Cubbiddus.”
    “He’s planning on reopening the case, then?” John asked.
    “Thinking about it, I guess. He didn’t say.”
    Bruno returned with the wine and poured a little for everyone. They clinked glasses and settled back.
    “You know, I think I’m going to give Linda a quick call while we wait,” Julie said, clicking buttons on her own phone.
    “But—” Gideon began.
    “No, not to talk about Pietro and Nola, just to touch base and make sure we’re all still expected. What with the bodies having just been found, and this police determination of murder-suicide . . . Linda?” she chirped. “Hi, this is Julie. . . .”
    Linda Rutledge was their connection to Villa Antica and to the Cubbiddu clan. Julie and Linda had met more than a decade earlier when they were both nineteen-year-old students enrolled in culinary arts programs. (Linda had been interested in wine and food even then; Julie had been going through a hotel-management phase before switching to a multidisciplinary degree program in wildlife studies, psychology, and national-park management.) To cut costs they’d shared a hotel room at a hospitality-industry exposition in Chicago and had become fast friends, a relationship that continued even after Julie married and Linda remained single. A couple of times a year, Linda had flown from her home in Tennessee to spend a few days with the Olivers, and every once in a while, Julie had returned the favor to go on some kind of brief jaunt with her old friend, who was by then the food and beverage director at a big Memphis hotel.
    Then, a few years ago, Linda had met two of the Cubbiddu sons—Luca and Nico—at a winery conference in Basel. Luca and Linda had fallen head over heels in love, and six months later she was married and living happily with her husband in Tuscany, in one of the spacious “noble apartments” of Villa Antica. Since then, Julie had heard less from her, but a year ago, when she and Gideon were on an Italian vacation, they’d accepted her invitation to visit her there; it had been only a month or so before Pietro and Nola’s disappearance. Expecting to stay only overnight, they’d wound up canceling their other reservations and remaining for a week. They’d gotten to know and like Luca, and they’d met the others at the mandatory (by order of Pietro) daily family luncheons; noisy, spirited repasts of five or six courses, mostly simple, hearty Sardinian or Italian fare built around a main dish of spit-roasted rabbit, goat, or lamb that had been turning over a charcoal fire all morning. And always there were bottles of the same hearty,