Liar Moon Read Online Free PDF

comfortable.”
    She sat on one end of the sofa with the dog in her lap, and Guidi sat at the other end. Having precariously balanced his army cap among the knick-knacks on the buffet table, Bora went to take a seat in a more distant armchair. When he looked up, he saw Guidi promptly offer a lit match to Claretta, as she took a cigarette out of a mauve mother-of-pearl case.
    She was thanking Guidi with a nod. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.” She sighed, leaning slightly toward him. “The past two weeks have been a nightmare.”
    “I understand, Signora .”
    “How can you?” Claretta turned anxiously from Guidi to Bora, and back. “I believe neither of you can possibly understand. Carabinieri and police have been badgering me so, and that hideous peasant woman—”
    “Your husband’s maid?” Bora coolly intervened.
    “Who else? Naturally you know why she has an interest in accusing me.”
    “No, why?” Guidi asked.
    “No,” Bora only said.
    After a long, disconcerted look at the German, Claretta faced Guidi again. She hesitated. “You must have heard how Vittorio behaved with women.” Her mouth quivered, but even under a lot of lipstick it was a fresh and charming mouth.
    Guidi nodded in sympathy. “We heard.”
    “This maid, this horrible Enrica – she was just the last of a series, Inspector. If it wasn’t one woman, it was
another. Life with him was impossible. I cannot imagine having wanted to marry him once.” Her eyes darted to the safety of her clasped hands, where the cigarette trembled between her fingers.
    “So, what was the source of your husband’s wealth, outside of his political office?” Bora asked. The question sank like a rock rudely thrown in water, splashing those around it. Guidi was provoked by his lack of sympathy, and – in spite of it – by the way his unfriendly good looks seemed to affect Claretta.
    “Why, Major,” she said. “I have no idea. Vittorio never discussed business with me.”
    “Yet you had been his secretary.”
    With some bitterness Claretta spoke up. “Facility with numbers is hardly what Vittorio sought in a secretary. It was only because I wouldn’t give him what he usually got so freely that he married me.”
    “Had he been married before?” Bora asked.
    “No.”
    “And you?”
    “I? I was a child !”
    “According to my information, you were of age.”
    Guidi gave a reproaching look at Bora, who paid no attention to him. Then, “ Signora ,” he coaxed her, “everything would be much easier, if we knew how your car was damaged.”
    “I told the police!” Claretta’s tone rose defensively. “How many times must I repeat it? Only a few days before Vittorio died, I ran into a bicycle parked between two cement posts. It happened as I was driving out of my parking space after shopping here in Verona. Vittorio and I had had a terrible row, and I was always so
ragged after arguing with him.” She unsteadily put out the cigarette in a pink onyx ashtray. “Vittorio was still paying the bills and always made a big fuss about little things. I know, I realize I should have tried to find out to whom the bicycle belonged, since I had demolished it. But Vittorio would have flown into a rage, the bicycle owner was nowhere to be seen, so I just drove on.” A quivering smile curled Claretta’s lips when she looked at Guidi. “Had I been more honest that day, I wouldn’t find myself in such trouble now.”
    From the other end of the parlour, there came the click of Bora’s lighter.
    “You forget the initial in the garden’s gravel,” he said in his unaccented Italian. “It may be coincidental, but we haven’t been able to find any other associate of your husband’s whose name begins with ‘C’.”
    The young woman, Bora could tell by the way her eyes focused on it, had just noticed that his gloved left hand was artificial. “It shows how little you know about Vittorio,” she replied. “There was much more to his life than