As we got out of the car I warned Vico not to talk in the stairwell. “We don’t want the dogs to hear me and wake Mr. Contreras.”

“He is a malevolent neighbor? You need me perhaps to guard you?”

“He’s the best-natured neighbor in the world. Unfortunately, he sees his role in my life as Cerberus, with a whiff of Othello thrown in. It’s late enough without spending an hour on why I’m bringing you home with me.”

We managed to tiptoe up the stairs without rousing anyone. Inside my apartment we collapsed with the giggles of teenagers who’ve walked past a cop after curfew. Somehow it seemed natural to fall from laughter into each other’s arms. I was the first to break away. Vico gave me a look I couldn’t interpret-mockery seemed to dominate.

My cheeks stinging, I went to the hall closet and pulled out Gabriella’s trunk once more. I lifted out her evening gown again, fingering the lace panels in the bodice. They were silver, carefully edged in black. Shortly before her final illness Gabriella managed to organize a series of concerts that she hoped would launch her career again, at least in a small way, and it was for these that she had the dress made. Tony and I sat in the front row of Mandel Hall, almost swooning with our passion for her. The gown cost her two years of free lessons for the couturier’s daughter, the last few given when she had gone bald from chemotherapy.

As I stared at the dress, wrapped in melancholy, I realized Vico was pulling books and scores from the trunk and going through them with quick careful fingers. I’d saved dozens of Gabriella’s books of operas and lieder, but nothing like her whole collection. I wasn’t going to tell Vico that, though: he’d probably demand that we break into old Mr. Fortieri’s shop to see if any of the scores were still lying about.

At one point Vico thought he had found something, a handwritten score tucked into the pages of Idomeneo. I came to look. Someone, not my mother, had meticulously copied out a concerto. As I bent to look more closely, Vico pulled a small magnifying glass from his wallet and began to scrutinize the paper.

I eyed him thoughtfully. “Does the music or the notation look anything like our great-grandmother’s?”

He didn’t answer me, but held the score up to the light to inspect the margins. I finally took the pages from him and scanned the clarinet line.

“I’m no musicologist, but this sounds baroque to me.” I flipped to the end, where the initials “CF” were inscribed with a flourish: Carlo Fortieri might have copied this for my mother-a true labor of love: copying music is a slow, painful business.

“Baroque?” Vico grabbed the score back from me and looked at it more intensely. “But this paper is not that old, I think.”

“I think not, also. I have a feeling it’s something one of my mother’s friends copied out for a chamber group they played in: she sometimes took the piano part.”

He put the score to one side and continued burrowing in the trunk. Near the bottom he came on a polished wooden box, big enough to fit snugly against the short side of the trunk. He grunted as he prised it free, then gave a little crow of delight as he saw it was filled with old papers.

“Take it easy, cowboy,” I said as he started tossing them to the floor. “This isn’t the city dump.”

He gave me a look of startling rage at my reproof, then covered it so quickly with a laugh that I couldn’t be sure I’d seen it. “This old wood is beautiful. You should keep this out where you can look at it.”

“It was Gabriella’s, from Pitigliano.” In it, carefully wrapped in her winter underwear, she’d laid the eight Venetian glasses that were her sole legacy of home. Fleeing in haste in the night, she had chosen to transport a fragile load, as if that gained her control of her own fragile destiny.

Vico ran his long fingers over the velvet lining the case. The green had turned yellow and black along the creases. I took the box away from him, and began replacing my school essays and report cards-my mother used to put my best school reports in the case.

At two Vico had to admit defeat. “You have no idea where it is? You didn’t sell it, perhaps to meet some emergency bill or pay for that beautiful sports car?”

“Vico! What on earth are you talking about? Putting aside the insult, what do you think a score by an unknown nineteenth-century woman is worth?”

“Ah, mi scusi, Vic-I forget that everyone doesn’t value these Verazi pieces as I do.”

“Yes, my dear cousin, and I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, either.” I switched to English in my annoyance. “Not even the most enthusiastic grandson would fly around the world with this much mystery. What’s the story-are the Verazis making you their heir if you produce her music? Or are you looking for something else altogether?”

“Turnip truck? What is this turnip truck?”

“Forget the linguistic excursion and come clean, Vico. Meaning, confession is good for the soul, so speak up. What are you really looking for?”

He studied his fingers, grimy from paging through the music, then looked up at me with a quick frank smile. “The truth is, Fortunato Magi may have seen some of her music. He was Puccini’s uncle, you know, and very influential among the Italian composers of the end of the century. My great-grandmother used to talk about Magi reading Claudia Fortezza’s music. She was only a daughter-in-law, and anyway, Claudia Fortezza was dead years before she married into the family, so I never paid any attention to it. But then when I found my grandmother’s diaries, it seemed possible that there was some truth to it. It’s even possible that Puccini used some of Claudia Fortezza’s music, so if we can find it, it might be valuable.”

I thought the whole idea was ludicrous-it wasn’t even as though the Puccini estate were collecting royalties that one might try to sue for. And even if they were-you could believe almost any highly melodic vocal music sounded like Puccini. I didn’t want to get into a fight with Vico about it, though: I had to be at work early in the morning.

“There wasn’t any time you can remember Gabriella talking about something very valuable in the house?” he persisted.

I was about to shut him off completely when I suddenly remembered my parents’ argument that I’d interrupted. Reluctantly, because he saw I’d thought of something, I told Vico about it.

“She was saying it wasn’t hers to dispose of. I suppose that might include her grandmother’s music. But there wasn’t anything like that in the house when my father died. And believe me, I went through all the papers.” Hoping for some kind of living memento of my mother, something more than her Venetian wineglasses.

Vico seized my arms in his excitement. “You see! She did have it, she must have sold it anyway. Or your father did, after she died. Who would they have gone to?”

I refused to give him Mr. Fortieri as a gift. If Gabriella had been worried about the ethics of disposing of someone else’s belongings she probably would have consulted him. Maybe even asked him to sell it, if she came to that in the end, but Vico didn’t need to know that.

“You know someone, I can tell,” he cried.

“No. I was a child. She didn’t confide in me. If my father sold it he would have been embarrassed to let me know. It’s going on three in the morning, Vico, and I have to work in a few hours. I’m going to call you a cab and get you back to the Garibaldi.”

“You work? Your long lost cousin Vico comes to Chicago for the first time and you cannot kiss off your boss?” He blew across his fingers expressively.

“I work for myself.” I could hear the brusqueness creep into my voice-his exigency was taking away some of his charm. “And I have one job that won’t wait past tomorrow morning.”

“What kind of work is it you do that cannot be deferred?”