Then, turning to Sonia and Emilio, her gaze softened.
“You see, the picture was of my dead husband, Costanzo. And I know that Costanzo was the angel, and that he’d come to tell me what I should do.”
Sonia seemed unaware of the embarrassment gathering like sticky threads between Leonora’s children. She looked calmly at the old woman. “And what do you think you should do?”
“I must help your investigation,” said Leonora. “I’ve asked God to preserve my memories—to tell you everything that happened, so you can find the man who did this.”
Valerio exhaled.
“Good,” said Emilio. “That’s very good. Last night, when we spoke, you said that you often attend mass at Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo?”
“Sì.”
“Did you recognize any of the congregation?”
“Sì.”
She patted her pockets, then pulled out a folded sheet of paper and extended it to Emilio. He opened it carefully.
“Those are all the people I remember in the congregation,” she said.
Valerio leaned over to read his mother’s painstaking looping writing. It looked like one of her meticulous shopping lists.
“The sister-in-law of Graziano the mechanic,” Sonia read aloud. “Do you have a last name for Graziano?”
Leonora shook her head. “I don’t know. But his repair shop is near Garibaldi.”
“You wrote here:The woman whose son was in the hospital for mumps last year.Do you have a name for this woman?”
“She’s a very nice lady,” said Leonora. “She’s fat because of a thyroid sickness. She says her husband left her because she became too fat.”
“Okay,” said Sonia. “This is very helpful. We may need to ask more questions about each of these people—especially the ones without names. Was there anybody in the congregation you didn’t recognize?”
“Before the service started, there were tourists. There are always many tourists. That was where I saw the girl.”
“You saw the victim?” Emilio asked, leaning forward.
“Sì.”
“Where was she?”
“Near the Chapel of the Holy Martyrs.”
“Did you see what she was doing?”
“She was kneeling on the floor…looking for something in her bag.”
Sonia raised an eyebrow. “She had a bag?”
“Sì.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It was a backpack. Black.”
“We didn’t see the backpack. Did you notice it with her afterwards…close to the body?”
“No. It was not with her when she died.”
