My smile became a little fixed. “No. I’m a modern woman, and I drink neat whisky. Black Label, if you have it.”
He laughed as though I’d said something really delightful and pulled a bottle from a cabinet underneath the silk hanging. “Black Label it is. Now, you fix yourself what you’d like and I’ll go check on Mother.”
“Is she ill, Mr. Felitti?”
“Oh, she had a stroke a few years ago and can’t walk anymore. But her mind is still working, oh yes, still sharp as a tack. Still can tell Peter and me a thing or two, yes indeed. And the ladies from the church are good about coming by, so don’t imagine she’s lonely.”
He laughed again and went back down the hall. I amused myself by idly inspecting the statuary. Some of the pieces, miniature bronzes with perfectly sculpted muscles, looked as though they might date to the Renaissance. Others were contemporary, but very fine modern work. I wondered what I would invest in if I had millions of dollars to strew around.
After Jason had been gone five minutes it dawned on me that I might find Chamfers’s home number in the room. A large leather desk had a tempting array of drawers. I was just opening the middle one when Jason returned. I pretended to be studying a miniature globe, an intricate model with the stars carved out above and fanciful sea-monsters peeping from the oceans.
“Pietro D’Alessandro,” Jason said cheerfully, going to the bar. “The old man was mad for anything from the Italian Renaissance—proved he’d made it in the New World and was a worthy successor to the old. I think that sounds nice, don’t you?”
1 nodded dumbly.
“Then why not write it down?” He poured himself a martini, drank it rather fast, and poured a second.
“It’s a catchy line—I think I’ve memorized it.” I wondered if his exuberant good cheer to strangers was a sign of mental illness or alcoholism.
“I bet a good memory comes in real handy in your line of work. If I don’t write everything down in triplicate I forget it five minutes later. Now, take a pew and tell me what you want to know.”
Bemused, I sat in the green leather armchair he gestured to. “It’s about Diamond Head Motors, Mr. Felitti. Or specifically, Milton Chamfers. I’ve been trying to see him for two weeks and he won’t talk to me.”
“Chamfers?” His pale-blue eyes seemed to pop slightly. “You want to talk about Chamfers? I thought the story was supposed to focus on me. Or did you want me to talk about the acquisition of the company? Can’t really do that, because it’s family, and we don’t discuss our business with the public. Of course, we had a public bond issue, but you’d have to talk to the bankers about that. Not that I want to disappoint a pretty girl like yourself.”
So he wasn’t crazy—he was expecting a reporter. I was about to disabuse him when the last sentence came out. I’m as vain as the next person, but I prefer compliments on my appearance in the right context, and more aptly phrased.
“I like to get as many sides to a story as I can,” I murmured. “And Diamond Head is your first personal business venture, isn’t it? You can tell me that, can’t you, without violating the family omerta?”
He laughed again, a loud, merry peal. I was beginning to see why no one had ever married him.
“Good girl! Do you speak Italian, or did you dig that up for the occasion?”
“My mother was Italian; I’m reasonably fluent, at least through an adolescent vocabulary.”
“I never learned. My grandmother spoke Italian to us when we were kiddies, but after she passed on we lost it. Of course, Dad didn’t marry an Italian—Granny Felitti was beside herself, you know how people were in those days—but the long and the short of it was that Mother refused to learn the language. Did it to spite the old lady.”
He laughed again and I winced involuntarily.
“What made you want to buy Diamond Head, Mr. Felitti?”
“Oh, you know how these things go,” he said vaguely, looking into his glass. “I wanted to own my own business—do my own thing, your generation would say.”
I braced myself for the merry peal, but he held back this time. I didn’t really care why he’d bought the company; I was fishing around for ways to get to Chamfers and not having many ideas for bait.
“You were lucky to get Paragon Steel interested in your company,” I finally offered.
He studied my face over the brim of his glass. “Paragon Steel? I guess they’re one of our accounts. Not too many people know about them, though. You must have been doing your homework, young lady.”
I flashed a big grin. “I like to have enough background to make things interesting when I finally talk to a… uh… subject.”
His laugh came again, but this time it seemed a little forced. “I admire thoroughness. The old man was forever telling me I didn’t have it, though. So I have to confess that I leave the thorough details about the business to other people.”