Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  Back on the patio, all eyes turned toward us when we emerged from the office. “Problem?” Cynthia asked.

  “No, everything’s fine,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I had some questions about, uh”—I struggled for any reasonable excuse—“exporting wine by the case, back home, and I didn’t want to bore you all with it.”

  “Hey, that’s a great idea,” Connie said. “You’ll have to tell us about it.”

  “We can worry about that later,” Jane said brightly. “Right now you should decide what you want to do today. Did you want to visit any of the Cinque Terre?” She looked around at everyone at the table, clearly hoping to change the subject.

  “We were thinking about it, but only if it isn’t going to rain,” Cynthia volunteered. “Do you think it will? And we don’t want to see all the towns. Which do you recommend?”

  “Don’t worry about the weather, it’s supposed to clear later. If you want a short trip, Vernazza is closest, and you can take a train—it’s a short ride. How does that sound?”

  “Fine,” Cynthia said. “Is there any Internet connection somewhere around here?”

  “Not on the property here. There are some in the cafés and hotels in town.”

  “All right, then,” Cynthia said, slapping her hands on the table. “Ladies, I need maybe half an hour to check my messages down there, and then we can catch a train for this Ver-place and have lunch there.” She looked around the table, where nobody seemed to be in a hurry to do anything. “That suit you all?”

  Nods all around: apparently we were in sheep mode today, happy to follow anyone with a plan.

  Jane looked relieved. “Okay, how about I meet you at the train station and show you how to get tickets? Say, at eleven?” Jane said. “Oh, and it’s all the way on the other side of town, so allow yourself enough time to get there.”

  “I’m sure we can find it,” I said. “Eleven sounds fine. Nice to meet you, Loredana. Thank you for looking out for us.”

  “No problem, no problem.” She beamed at all of us. “We help the friends of our cousin Jane, no?”

  We finished the last of our coffee, and by the time we were done the sun had broken through the early-morning clouds. Cynthia was the first to stand up. “I’d better go get dressed if I’m going to find that café.”

  “Can’t leave your work at home?” Valerie joked.

  Cynthia ducked the question. “It’s an addiction. Hey, I rationed myself at the villa in Tuscany, but I’m just not ready to go cold turkey. See you at the station.” She walked off toward our rooms.

  “You know, it’s kind of nice not having the Internet,” Pam said. “Or television, or newspapers. Like we’ve stepped out of time. I could get used to this.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s kind of soothing,” I agreed. Actually I wasn’t as sure that I could get used to it, but it did make a nice break—and it forced us to talk to each other, without hiding behind electronic devices. But what I couldn’t say was that we needed the Internet, just a little, if we were going to take care of this murder problem. “I think I’ll walk down with Cynthia—you all go ahead. See you at the station?”

  The others nodded and turned to conversation, while I climbed back up to our rooms above. Cynthia was already dressed. “What was that little confab really all about?” she demanded.

  “The police are getting warmer, and they want to talk. I told Jane to keep a lid on it, and then we asked her cousin to see if she could stall the police just a bit. She was happy to help.”

  “Great,” Cynthia said, looking unhappy. “The clock is ticking.”

  “Well, it’s better than nothing. I’ll be ready in two minutes,” I said.

  “Fine. Think I’ll be able to get printouts at whatever café we find? Or maybe we don’t want to have any paper copies around—what if somebody else found the lists?”

  I was busy pulling a clean shirt over my head. “Cyn, I think you’re overreacting. And whatever your team back home has collected, all we need at this moment is a list of people we can prove knew the professor back in school, right? One of us can pull that up on our cell phone.”

  “I guess.” She slipped her tablet into her bag.

  We started down the hill ten minutes later. I had to admit I much preferred going down to coming up, but that was the price we paid for the view. We went past the hotel where our friends were staying, but Cynthia understandably did not want to use the Internet there in case anyone noticed what she was doing. So we went hunting for somewhere else and found a small café near the church, where for the price of a cappuccino we could have half an hour of access. After ordering, Cynthia dug in quickly, connecting with her office and downloading some files, or so I guessed, watching her. She glanced quickly at one of them, nodding.

  Finally she said, “I think this is what we need right now, although there’s lots more information. Anyway, it looks like maybe a third of us here took one of Professor Gilbert’s classes. There could be more if anyone started the class and then dropped out before the cutoff date, but at least we’ve narrowed things down a bit. And we know we’re two of the people who didn’t cross paths with him.”

  “So we need to ask a dozen or more people if they knew the professor?” I said.

  “Let’s think about it. What we need next is to collect the photographs. Did you bring a computer?” Cynthia asked.

  “I’m afraid I did. I’ve tried not to use it so far.” I hated to be completely out of touch, although I was proud of abstaining as long as I had.

  “Well, it’s a good thing you did. That means you can collect the photos.”

  “Why me?” I protested. “I’m lousy at asking people to do things like that.”

  She looked at me with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Because you have no connection with Professor Gilbert, so you can go all gooshy and say you think since we were the last Wellesley women to see him, we ought to set up some sort of memorial tribute or something in his honor. And then you sit back and see what people say, or if they don’t say anything. You won’t have to fake anything. Then you just upload them to your computer and we can look them over later. Ask for any picture that includes the professor. We need to see if we can figure out who was close enough to him to slip him something.”

  “There must be hundreds of pictures!” I protested.

  “Stop whining. I told you, focus on that one afternoon and evening. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll have the information we need.”

  I had a sudden brainstorm. “You know, there’s a way to cut the process short,” I said.

  “What? Ask for someone to confess?”

  “No, not that. I was talking to Xianling last night, after you went in. You know, she’s been carrying around her tablet and taking pictures constantly. Is she on that list of people who took a class?”

  Cynthia looked down at her list and scanned it. “Nope.”

  I felt a welling of relief. “Then let’s ask her to help.” When Cynthia started to argue, I raised a hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll offer her that pathetic excuse you came up with, but I don’t think she’ll resist. And she seems to be pretty observant, in addition to taking good pictures.”

  “Sounds good, then,” Cynthia admitted. “Is she coming along to Vernazza?”

  “I think so. We’ll know soon enough. Are you ready to find the train station yet?”

  Cynthia snapped her tablet shut and drained her coffee. “Ready. It’s thataway, isn’t it?” She waved vaguely toward the sea.

  “Just follow the waterfront. There should be signs.”

  As we walked, I reviewed Cynthia’s plan. In some ways it made sense. By talking to people, we would get the pictures we wanted and I could observe how people reacted to the mention of the professor’s name and the whole idea of a memorial piece. But I thought that Xianling’s stash of pictures would in fact be more useful to us, assuming she had covered the right time period. At least her photos would be large and easy to decipher. “Do you think having
Loredana and her senator husband intervene is going to help or hurt?”

  Cynthia shook her head. “I have no idea how local politics and power work—you’d know more than I would. But it may have bought us a little time while we sort things out. Nobody’s said we can’t do what we planned today. So we’d better work fast.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Where is this flipping train station?”

  I pointed. “Right there. The door where Jane is standing, looking worried.”

  Chapter 16

  Jane was standing outside the main entrance to the station as we straggled in. She shepherded us inside and up the stairs (once again, everything seemed to be on a steep hillside, and the station was no exception), where we found the rest of our breakfast companions, and then she bought us tickets and handed them out like we were schoolchildren. “Now, I’ve given you round-trip tickets, rather than an excursion ticket. You did all want to go to only the one place?” she asked anxiously.

  Everybody nodded dutifully, and Jane looked relieved. “Be sure to validate your ticket—you stick it in that machine on the wall over there and it stamps it. Maybe nobody will check it on the train, particularly since you’re going only one stop, but better to be safe than sorry because they’ll fine you if you don’t. Vernazza is the next stop down the line, so it won’t take long to get there. You can take all the time you want once you’re there. Is everything clear?”

  “Like crystal,” I said. “Don’t worry, Jane, we’ll be fine.” Somehow we had managed to muddle along for forty years on our own, and I was pretty sure we could handle a ten-minute train ride, even if it was in Italy. “Where did everyone else in the group decide to go?”

  Jane shook her head, as if worried by the scattering of her flock. “They’re all over the place—some took the ferry, others set off earlier by train to try to see as many towns as they could. A couple even decided to try the cliff walk, although I warned them that some parts have crumbled and fallen recently. You may run into them in Vernazza, if they find they can’t go any farther. Oh, here’s your train! Have a nice day!” Jane watched us as we all clambered aboard the train and she waved at us as it pulled away from the station, into a tunnel.

  I looked at the others and we all broke out laughing at once. “You’d think we were in the third grade,” Valerie said.

  “She’s just looking after us,” I said. “You know, none of us speaks Italian. I have no clue what to do if anything goes wrong.”

  “In case you need to know, aiutarmi covers most circumstances—it means ‘help me!’ But nothing will go wrong,” Cynthia said firmly. “We are going to a charming town, where we will stroll about and admire the scenery, so beloved of travelers before us, like What’s-His-Name, the famous English poet. Then we will find some authentic Italian food and enjoy a leisurely meal. And then we will shop. It will be the perfect day.”

  The way she described it, it would be, if it weren’t for that annoying problem of hunting for a killer. But Cynthia was doing a great job sketching the scene—no pressures, no worries, just some old friends having lunch in a lovely town in Italy.

  And it was beautiful, as quickly became clear when the train emerged from the tunnel and slowed at the train platform in Vernazza, despite some wind and drizzling rain. We climbed down from the high train steps and stopped a moment to get our bearings. I did a quick head count: all the vineyard people except Pam were here. Then Connie announced, “I think I’ll check out that hill path. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Now we were five, and luckily Xianling was one of them. From what we could see, there was only one road, which led down to the sea. We wrapped our raingear more closely around us and followed that, and, yes, found the sea. We stood on the jetty, watching waves crash over the rocks along the shore and the clouds scud across the sky.

  Denise pointed. “Look, there’s a boat coming in.”

  It had to be the regular ferry, but as Jane had warned us, it was a pretty small boat. As I watched its approach, I was glad I wasn’t on it. There were a couple of familiar faces from our group: they waved but didn’t disembark. They were all bundled to the eyes with waterproof gear. The boat bobbed vigorously, and people climbed on and off by way of a couple of wooden planks that looked none too safe. We were still watching as it pulled away again and grew smaller in the distance, riding up and down over the swells.

  “I want to climb up a bit and get some pictures.” Denise waved at the path carved from sheer rock, with a rope serving as a railing, that wound up a spire of rock.

  There appeared to be a castle at the top, but I didn’t feel like exploring it. “You go ahead—we’ll wait here.”

  Cynthia and I watched as Denise, Xianling, and Valerie made their way up, clinging to the handrail. Halfway up they all stopped and started taking pictures in all directions. I took a picture of them taking pictures. They took pictures of us waiting at the bottom, taking pictures of them. This was going to be one extremely well-documented trip, from all angles. I hoped that our Tuscan stay had been as well covered.

  “Tell me again—are Valerie and Denise on the list?” I asked Cynthia.

  “They both are.” She pulled out her cell phone and showed me the screen with the list of names. “Seen enough?”

  “Yup. When they come back down, we can go look for lunch. We can pick a relatively quiet place and lead into our questions gently. I just hope we’ll have enough time to talk to everyone we need to before the police swoop in,” I said. I suppose it could have been worse: at least we were conducting this off-the-record murder investigation while consuming Italian food, most of which had been excellent so far. It all seemed so incongruous—although maybe it shouldn’t have, after all the Medici entanglement we had been wallowing in the prior week. Plotting and scheming seemed to come with the territory.

  Cynthia looked troubled. “Let’s see how this goes.”

  “One more thing. Are we allowed to have fun while we interview murder suspects?”

  Cynthia sneaked a quick look at me to determine whether I was joking. I was. Wasn’t I? But we needed to eat, and I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to enjoy seafood this close to the sea.

  “How was it?” I called out as our friends descended and approached us.

  “Cold, wet and windy,” Denise said. “But great views. There’s this big yacht anchored out there a ways—wonder who owns it?”

  “We can only guess. You ready for lunch?”

  “Sure. It’s been at least an hour since our last meal. Let’s see what we can find.”

  We strolled up the main street, peering into eateries. A lot had tables and umbrellas set out in front, on the plazas, but it was too cool and breezy to tempt many people. In the middle of the village I glanced up a flight of stone stairs: there seemed to be a restaurant partway up, away from the noisy street. “Let’s check this out,” I said, leading the way.

  When we reached a landing we found a bustling restaurant on the right and a smaller room served by the same kitchen on the opposite side, with three or four tables, all empty. It seemed warm enough, and out of the wind, and the privacy was perfect for our needs. I moved toward the nearest table that would accommodate all of us; the others followed, and we all sat down. A young waitress came out and distributed menus and asked something about drinks. I think. Somehow we ended up with acqua frizzante—sparkling water back home.

  When I looked at the menu, my eye lighted on a seafood risotto, but it required at least two people to share it. “Who else wants to try this?” I asked, pointing.

  “Oooh,” Cynthia breathed, taking in the list of ingredients, which was impressive (even I could speak “food” in Italian). Denise and Xianling followed suit, and Valerie ordered some kind of pasta with pesto, with a promise to share. The handsome waiter who came to take our order nodded enthusiastically and told us the risotto would take some time. Or more precisely, he said, “Venti minuti—you wait?” Nobody minded.

  When he’d gone back to th
e kitchen, we all relaxed into our chairs. I couldn’t see another tourist anywhere. There were plusses to eating in out-of-the-way places like this; even though it was no more than twenty feet from the main thoroughfare, it felt far removed.

  “So, what do you think?” I threw out the challenge.

  Denise asked, “About what? This restaurant? Vernazza? The Cinque Terre? Liguria? Italy?”

  “Yes,” I said, laughing. “At least you’ve identified where we are. I had trouble finding any of these places on a map. You can answer whichever you like.”

  Valerie volunteered, “This has been an amazing trip.”

  “I agree,” Xianling said. “I never would have found any of these places on my own, and I’ve traveled quite a bit. I would not have thought to look for some of them. Like that leather place—that was extraordinary.”

  Everyone agreed. “There are definitely advantages to having organizers who know the area well,” Cynthia said. “And the vineyard! I keep pinching myself to make sure it’s real. It’s such a treat to be able to stay in the middle of it.”

  “I know what you mean,” I told her. “I feel like I’ve walked into a Travel Channel show, only it’s real.”

  Reluctant though I was to change the mood, it was time to get started on our so-called investigation. I began with a soft question for the group. “Tell me, how well did you know all these other women at school? Or have you gotten to know them since?” I asked.

  That carried our conversation along nicely until the waiter reappeared, cradling a large earthenware casserole dish with both hands, well covered with hot pads. “Caldo! Bollente!” He set it down carefully on the table, where we could see rice in a rich red sauce bubbling furiously, the whole blanketed with a layer of mussels, with other bits of seafood peeking out. Needless to say, all talk stopped as we did justice to the dish, which vanished quickly. We were reduced to sopping up the last remnants with some crusty bread when the waiter reappeared. “Caffè? Dolci?”

  “Caffè, per favore,” I said, and the others nodded. “Nessun dolci.” I looked around the table. “Maybe gelato later?”