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Brunetti and toasted him with her prosecco. ‘I’m not at all sure what the protocol might be here,’ she said, echoing Brunetti’s concern.
    Ribetti raised his glass and said, ‘I think the protocol is we raise our glasses and give thanks I’m not in the slammer.’ He finished what was left of his prosecco, holding the glass in the air for a moment.
    â€˜I’d like to thank you for helping Marco,’ his wife said. ‘I didn’t know what to do, so I called Lorenzo, but I never imagined he’d involve anyone else.’ Her glass remained forgotten in her hand as she spoke to Brunetti. ‘In fact, I don’t know what I thought he’d do. Just that he’d do something.’ Her brown eyes were set under unfashionably thick eyebrows, and her nose was broad at the tip and slightly turned up, butsoftness had found its way into her face with her mouth, which seemed made for smiles.
    â€˜I really didn’t do anything, Signora; I assure you. By the time we got there, the magistrate had already decided to release everyone. There was no way charges could have been brought against them.’
    â€˜Why is that?’ she asked. ‘I don’t see how they could have been taken there if they weren’t going to be arrested.’
    Brunetti had no desire to explain the vagaries of police procedure, certainly not now, with a glass of prosecco growing warm in his hand and his wife making her way through the crowd towards him, so he said, ‘No one ever made it clear what happened, so no charges were brought.’ Before either of them could say anything, he sensed Paola’s presence at his side and he said, ‘This is my wife.’ And to Paola, ‘Assunta De Cal and Marco Ribetti.’
    Paola smiled and said the right things about the pieces on display, then asked how it was they were at the opening. She was delighted to learn that Assunta was the daughter of the owner of the
fornace
where one of the artists’ work had been made.
    â€˜The flat panels,’ Assunta explained. ‘He’s a young man from here. The nephew of a woman I went to school with, as a matter of fact. That’s why he used my father’s
fornace
. She called me and asked, and I talked to the
maestro
and then brought Lino to talk to him, and they liked oneanother’s work, so he commissioned the
maestro
to fire the pieces.’
    How Venetian a solution, Brunetti thought: someone knew someone who had gone to school with someone, and so the deal was done.
    â€˜Couldn’t he do the work himself?’ Paola asked. When Assunta and Ribetti seemed not to understand, she pointed to the pieces in the display cabinet and said, ‘The artist. Couldn’t he make them himself?’
    Assunta held up a hand as if to ward away evil. ‘No, never. It takes years, decades, before you can fire something. You have to know about the composition of the glass, how to prepare the
miscela
to get the colours you want, what sort of furnace you’re working with, who your
servente
is, how fast and how reliable he is with the things you have to do for that particular piece.’ She stopped as if suddenly exhausted by this long list. ‘And that’s just the beginning,’ she added, and her listeners laughed.
    â€˜You sound like you could do it yourself,’ Paola said with every sign of respect.
    â€˜Oh, no,’ Assunta said, ‘I’m too small. You really do have to be a man, well, be as strong as a man.’ Here she held up her hand, which was little larger than a child’s. ‘And I’m not that, as you can see.’ She let her hand fall to her side. ‘But I’ve been in and out of the
fornace
since I was a little girl, so I guess I’ve got glass or sand in my blood.’
    â€˜You work for your father?’ Paola asked.
    The question seemed to puzzle her, as if ithad never occurred to her that there might have been