Case 3: Strange Tale
of Lasagna
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
A funeral for a man named Marco Belnini is being held in a
cemetery in Florence , Italy
Keaton is here to meet the owner of the house, Mrs. Belnini,
whom refuses to let the other woman from the funeral take custody of her granddaughter. Keaton argues that the girl’s mother has
parental rights in the custody battle but Mrs. Belnini absolutely refuses to
adhere to the laws. She claims that the
woman started “seducing” another man shortly after Marco was buried. Keaton doesn’t deny this claim but he does
start to try and explain things before Mrs. Belnini cuts him off, stating this
factor is incredibly important and that she has set up “the best environment”
for her granddaughter to grow up in.
Keaton wants to talk to the granddaughter, Flora, but Mrs. Belnini states
that Flora does not want to go back to the home of her mother “that heartless
woman.” Keaton insists he should speak
with Flora but Mrs. Belnini has her assistant/bodyguard Franco throw Keaton out
the door, quite literally might I add.
Keaton uses some quick thinking and weasels out information
from Franco that Flora’s room is upstairs at the corner of the building. He attempts to get the girl’s attention by
throwing stones at her window but fails.
Keaton remember meeting with Flora’s mother, where we learn a little bit
more about Mrs. Belnini. Mrs. Belnini
was born into the most powerful and influential family in all of Italy
We go back to Keaton tossing stones at Flora’s bedroom
window only for him to give up. When he
goes to his car he finds Flora in the passenger seat and we discover that
Flora’s mother has hired Keaton as a detective.
Flora says she “really hates” her grandmother and asks Keaton if they
shouldn’t be leaving (Keaton’s car has been boxed in by a pair of cars on
either side, the joys of parallel parking.) and we hear Mrs. Belnini yelling
for Franco to find Keaton. Flora reveals
that Franco was once a boxer, and asks Keaton if he knows how to box. Keaton attempts to start up his car as Franco
approaches and Keaton slams into the bumpers of the cars ahead and behind him,
damaging them before he tears off down the street.
We transition to sometime later that night as Keaton
attempts to cook lasagna whilst chatting with someone from the college from
Case 1. He says he doesn’t care where or
why Keaton is somewhere and that the man “just can’t skip classes for two weeks
in a row.” Now it’s never specifically
stated if this episode takes place two weeks AFTER Case 1 or not, but I’ve
always liked to assume it does considering the events of Case 4 and then Case 5. Keaton drops the phone and Flora comes into
the room to ask if he’s all right.
Keaton assures her he is fine but says he forgot to get mozzarella and
that they can’t have lasagna without it.
Flora freezes at the name of the food and she grows quite bitter,
telling Keaton she hates lasagna and that they can eat out. Keaton begrudgingly agrees and the two eat at
a nice restaurant in town.
Flora says that her father Marco made a promise to her that
when she was older he would take her out to a nice restaurant and dance with
her. She also admits that he made the
best lasagna. When Keaton asks her why
she doesn’t like the food Flora grows quiet.
She looks over as Keaton eats and comments that he’s actually a rather
cute guy. Keaton is a little embarrassed
and flustered by this and Flora asks his age but then says she wants to guess
it herself. She guesses that Keaton is
younger looking than he actually is and says he must be around 50. Keaton chuckles and says “Well close compared
to you…” Flora looks out towards the
couples dancing in the restaurant and tells Keaton about when she went to her
first party. Flora was 8 and danced with
her father as she imagines the scene we see her dancing with a man wearing a
suit that looks exactly the same as Keaton’s.
We don’t see the man’s face (we only see him from the shoulders down)
but his build is also similar to Keaton’s.
Whether Marco actually dressed and looked like this or not isn’t shown
in the episode but I get the feeling that Flora has substituted in Keaton in
her father’s place.
Flora asks Keaton for a dance and Keaton, again flustered,
says he’s not a good dancer. Flora gets
a little annoyed at this and as the two leave the restaurant asks if he was
lying, saying Keaton just wouldn’t want to dance with a little girl. Keaton says he’s telling the truth and as
Flora berates him Keaton spies Franco waiting for them back at their car. Keaton grabs Flora and runs with Franco
giving chase. Keaton and Flora quickly
duck into a train station and Keaton gets a pair of tickets to the end of the
line. As the two run to the train car
Flora says she thought detectives were supposed to be cooler and Keaton jokes
back that he’d rather dance than risk their necks by running from Franco.
The two manage to catch the train and leave Franco behind
and Keaton questions why Flora went to her grandmother’s in the first
place. Flora says that she wanted to
punish her mother, but that she’s also angry at her grandmother. Mrs. Belnini is convinced that her son Marco
died because of Flora’s mother. Mrs.
Belnini is apparently using Flora for revenge against her mother, at least,
according to Flora. Flora asks Keaton if
he’s married and we discover another bit of Keaton’s past.
At one point in time Keaton was married (we later discover
that he divorced his wife when their daughter was 5 just like what happened to
his parents. Flora asks if Keaton is
ever lonely and Keaton skirts around the issue by redirecting the question back
at Flora, saying she has both her mother and her grandmother. Flora asks Keaton if he still ever thinks
about his ex-wife and Keaton just smiles sadly and says that he does. Flora says that once you love someone it’s
difficult to forget about them even if they aren’t around anymore; pretty
intelligent thoughts coming from a girl who is only about 10 or so. Keaton says it isn’t quite the same thing
Flora is talking about however and Flora asks Keaton if he’ll run away with
her. Flora says all of her father’s
insurance money is going to her and says that they can tell people she is
Keaton’s daughter. It is here that
Keaton reveals another part of his past:
he already has a
daughter. Keaton knows Flora means no
harm from her statement and assures her that his daughter might be a little
upset with having a new little sister.
Later at a hotel Keaton hears Flora crying in the next room
and finds out that Flora had a nightmare.
Flora dreamt that her father was inside his car and fell off of a cliff
and that she was sitting in the car as well in the passenger seat. Flora dreamt that her mother was pushing the
car down the cliff and laughing the whole time she did it. Keaton comforts her and tells her that Marco
was drunk and fell asleep at the wheel which caused the accident that killed
him. Rather than be shocked or horrified
Flora reveals that she knows this fact and that it really doesn’t matter as
only a year has passed since her father’s death and her mother is already
trying to marry another man: Allen. Flora asks Keaton if it’s wrong for her
mother to marry so soon after her father died and wishes she were with her
father. Keaton really doesn’t have an
answer for her but tries to cheer her up by saying if she wasn’t there that
there would be no one around to listen to his Ultimate Joke. Flora is intrigued by this and Keaton says
one of his old college friends fled to the Soviet Union after hearing it.
Keaton tells Flora that her mother isn’t going to marry
Allen and Keaton passes on a little bit of advice of his own before asking
Flora if she’ll have any more bad dreams.
Flora asks to hear Keaton’s Ultimate Joke but Keaton says he’ll only
tell it to her once they reach Marseille in France
Keaton and Flora hitchhike (back in the days where you could
do that with some sense of safety) with a nice man in a truck; he even gives
them some cheese to make pasta with for lunch, and the two continue on their
journey towards Marseille. That night as
they travel Keaton questions Flora about her favorite pastas and asks again why
she doesn’t like lasagna. Before he can
get an answer or apologize for the question they are blinded by the lights of a
car; Mrs. Belnini and Franco have finally caught up with the pair. Franco comes towards Keaton and Mrs. Belnini
says she feels sorry for Keaton as Franco was heavyweight boxer. Keaton however seems entirely unfazed by the
large man’s approach, something which completely counters his attitude earlier
when told about the man. Keaton dodges a
swift jab from Franco and, using his quick wits, asks if Franco had lasagna for
dinner as he appears to have cheese on his chin. As Franco is distracted Keaton trips the much
larger man and quickly uses an impressive Judo technique to toss him to the
ground. Mrs. Belnini congratulates
Keaton and offers to pay him whatever he desires to have her granddaughter
given back to her. Keaton asks what
she’s on about and Mrs. Belnini says she could charge him on the grounds of
kidnapping (Really lady now you bring
law into this?).
Mrs. Belnini tells Flora that she had discovered Flora’s
mother was seeing other men while Marco was still alive. Again, Flora isn’t fazed by this news and
admits that she’s known this for a long time.
We see a flashback from Flora’s point of view as she overhears her
mother and Allen talking while she is supposed to be sleeping. Allen is entirely devoted to Flora’s mother
and insists he will do everything in his power to take care of Flora. Again, we never meet the man face-to-face but
he sounds incredibly genuine and it makes me like the guy for some odd reason. Flora’s mother says it wouldn’t be fair as
Flora loves her father and Marco loves her.
Allen laments that Marco is probably drunk, again, and with another
woman as they speak. As Allen and
Flora’s mother kiss, Flora’s mother giggles and says Allen tastes just like the
lasagna they had for dinner that night.
So here it is, we finally get the answer to why Flora has such distaste
for lasagna.
As Mrs. Belnini comments on how awful a woman Flora’s mother
is Flora tells her not to talk badly about her mother. Mrs. Belnini is shocked by this outburst and
Flora says it’s her father’s fault for making her mother go to Allen. As Mrs. Belnini tries to refute this Flora
says that her father was always nice when he was around her but any other time
he was always drunk and physically abusing her mother as well as flirting with
other women. Flora says her grandmother
knows this and Mrs. Belnini remains silent.
Flora simply states she will go to live with her mother. As Mrs. Belnini tries to argue Flora says she
loves her father and her but that she also loves her mother. Mrs. Belnini says Flora is no granddaughter
of hers if she speaks that way and she and Franco (whom has just recovered) get
ready to leave. Flora stops them and
asks if she can come visit her grandmother again next Christmas. Mrs. Belnini simply says Flora can do as she
pleases and the bitter old woman and her bodyguard leave, allowing Keaton and
Flora to cross the border into France
Flora remarks that they will be in Marseille soon after they
cross the border and Keaton starts to tell her his Ultimate Joke.
“Once there were two little skunks named In and Out. Sometimes In and Out played outside but other
times they played inside. One day In was
out, and Out was in. Mother skunk told
Out to go out and bring In in. So Out
went out and in a few minutes he came in with In. Mother skunk was quite astonished with her
young skunk. ‘My my Out’ she said, ‘How
in the world did you find In so quickly?’
Out just smiled at Mother skunk and said ‘In stinked.’”
Flora and Keaton stop on a bridge and Flora asks Keaton to
be honest with her. She asks him if he’d
dance with her when she gets a little older.
Keaton simply smiles, sets down their bags, and buttons up his suit
before asking Flora to dance. As the two
dance under the moonlight Flora says that Keaton was lying after all about
being a horrible dancer and that his Ultimate Joke actually wasn’t very funny.
Mrs. Belnini is a slimy woman that I just love to hate. She’s not above ignoring the law to get what
she wants and even if she did get in trouble it’s likely her large fortune
could be used to quickly get her out of it.
We don’t get anything with Franco other than a gruff lackey but we don’t
really need that much out of him. He’s
meant to intimidate and be the servant to Mrs. Belnini and nothing more.
What comes next for Keaton? Does he keep his job at the college from Case 1? Does he get fired in spectacular fashion for missing so much work? Tune in next time!
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