Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  Where were the restaurants like this back home? I had to admit I didn’t go out much. I didn’t really enjoy dining alone, no matter how good the food, and since my daughter had moved away there really wasn’t anyone in my life I could call on the spur of the moment and suggest going out to eat. All right, here the company made a real difference: I was enjoying being part of a roomful of women who were smart and interesting, and who loved to talk and eat, often at the same time. I had never thought of myself as a “joiner,” but maybe it was time to reconsider my position. Or maybe it was time to sit back and enjoy the moment—and eat yet another fantastic multicourse meal.

  I turned to the person next to me, someone whose name, Edith, I recognized vaguely from my short-lived foray into the sciences. She was Asian, and back in my college days the Asian women taking biology and chemistry classes were notorious for skewing the curves for the rest of us, who were struggling with those subjects most of the time. I wasn’t sure if that group had made many friends, in or out of class—they seemed always to be studying. I was curious to learn about how her life had turned out, and we chatted through a couple of courses. She had indeed become a doctor, married another doctor, was still practicing medicine, had traveled widely and lived abroad, and had led an altogether admirable life. I in return felt I had to apologize for abandoning my once-beloved major and taking on more prosaic work, which I couldn’t talk about in any detail anyway. But she wasn’t judgmental, and by and large we had a cheerful conversation.

  My ears pricked up when I heard the word “professor” from someone at the far end of the table, and I tuned in to that conversation.

  “Too bad he had to die while we were there,” someone said. I couldn’t see her face from where I sat.

  “I’m surprised someone hadn’t offed him years ago,” Dorothy said with surprising frankness. “You know, at the last Alumnae Council meeting, I ended up talking to someone who must have been twenty years behind us, and she said even then he was still up to his old tricks.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I heard another voice respond. “Why didn’t anyone ever say anything?”

  “Well, in our day we were taught not to make waves, right?” Dorothy replied. “We were the ‘nice’ girls. End of an era, maybe. I’m sure nobody would put up with that kind of nonsense today.”

  “Let’s hope not. Wonder if there’s anything in his file about all that?”

  “I wonder how the college will handle his obit,” Pat said. “Can’t you see them dancing around all this? ‘Professor Gilbert was truly involved with his students, blah blah blah.’”

  The speakers laughed and went on to talk of other things. Had everybody on campus except me known about his activities? What else had I missed? I remembered a solar eclipse one year, and the student strike. But lecherous faculty? Not on my radar.

  I sighed and went back to my excellent food.

  It was well past two when Jane stood up again. “I hope you’ve all enjoyed this wonderful meal”—enthusiastic clapping from all—“but we have one more stop to make before we return to Monterosso for our final banquet: the ruins of the Roman port town of Luna, where all that marble you saw today was shipped out to the rest of the world. The town was built in the second century BC and thrived for several centuries. Now it’s one of the most important archeological sites in the region. As you will see, it’s currently under excavation. And it’s spread out over several acres, so you can walk off your lunches!”

  Once again we hauled our derrieres out of our seats and set off to find our bus. This time the drive was relatively short, although it took us well out into the countryside, which was quite lovely, with or without historic ruins. Odd how quickly we went from a bustling modern city to the ancient past. To reach the small museum slash ticket desk, we strolled some distance from the parking lot, stopping to admire a handsome flock of black sheep, each equipped with a low-toned bell. When they rang in unison as the flock moved, it was both musical and moving, and I wondered for the first time if my point-and-shoot camera could handle a video with sound. I hoped someone would capture it.

  The museum came complete with a couple of cats sunning themselves on the steps—another thing I loved about Italy. This late in the day we were the only visitors. We acquired a tall, distinguished tour guide and set off across the meadows to stare at the foundations of a forum, shops, houses, fragments of the Aurelian Road and the city drain, while listening to the learned guide explain it all. I found if I paid attention I could pretty much understand what he said; my art-historical Italian was still useful. We made a circuit of what would have been the city walls, then headed farther out to the remains of the amphitheater, which, we were informed, could have held the entire population of the town with room to spare.

  Once there I peeled off from the crowd and wandered on my own around the outer aisle of the amphitheater, trying to imagine it packed with thousands of cheering people. I found a convenient portion of wall and sat down, just absorbing the ambience, but I wasn’t surprised when Cynthia joined me.

  “Anything new?” she asked.

  “Not really, except I have yet to find anyone who liked the professor or wants to defend his memory. Sad, isn’t it? On the surface he was eminently respected, but under it all …”

  “I know what you mean. So we haven’t proved a damn thing.”

  “Nope, apparently not. What if we did manage to talk to everyone, and then cross-checked every blinking fact with every other, and we came up with no one at all in that intersection of those circles of yours? If they all alibied out?”

  “But the professor is still dead!” Cynthia protested. “Somebody killed him.”

  “Yes, he is dead, but maybe it was really an accident. We’ve got the explanation for the poppy juice, and if Valerie was telling the truth, it wasn’t strong enough to do much harm, and besides, he drank it early in the evening, so it should have worn off by the time he died.”

  “What about the wine and the two glasses?” Cynthia asked.

  “Maybe it was all quite innocent—his date showed up, they talked about old times and polished off the bottle, and then she left and he took a walk to look at the stars. Hell, maybe he got stood up by his whoever it was and drank the whole bottle of wine himself, and then decided to walk it off, slipped and fell, end of story.”

  I leaned back against ancient stones warmed by the setting sun and shut my eyes, listening and just being. There was so much history here, and yet all those long-ago inhabitants were gone, the site forgotten for centuries. But here we were.

  I opened my eyes suddenly. “Cynthia, what if it wasn’t one of us?”

  “Who else is there?”

  “We haven’t thought much about that. I guess we were so worried that it could be a classmate that we didn’t look much further, plus we’d already left Tuscany. But what if we were wrong?”

  “Well, that’s a whole new can of worms. You still think there’s a Wellesley connection?”

  “The timing would suggest that, plus the fact that there was such a handy collection of potential suspects, a lot of whom have motives. Maybe that was the red herring.” I was beginning to get excited about my nebulous idea. “What if somebody took advantage of this trip of ours to lure the professor in and kill him?”

  “Or what if someone actually planned the trip with that in mind?”

  We stared at each other. “But Jane and Jean have been planning this for at least a year! We signed up last summer.”

  “That works for either scenario. If someone had already waited forty years, what difference did one more make? And that would let whoever it was polish the plan. How long ago did the professor retire to Italy?”

  “I have no idea, but I’m sure it was announced in the alumnae magazine. Everyone would know where he was.”

  “Including Jean and Jane? As you said, they set this up.”

  “Jean was an art history major. Is either one of them on that list of ours?”

  “Both are. Na
turally they took one or another of Gilbert’s classes.”

  “We need to talk to them. Who else?”

  “Barbara went to Wellesley, but not our year.” Cynthia looked contrite. “But I never asked for a profile on her—I guess we were too focused on our classmates.”

  “Hey, it’s early back in the States. Ask now.”

  Cynthia pulled out her cell phone and walked away to talk. She was back in two minutes. “We should have a report on Barbara by the time we get back to Monterosso.”

  “And we’ll have to find a way to talk to Jane and Jean before the banquet. I hate to pry now, when all we want to do is enjoy our last night.”

  “We’ll all enjoy it a lot more if we can wrap up this murder.”

  Chapter 24

  We all strolled slowly back toward our waiting bus, delaying our departure as long as possible. The flock of black sheep was still there, now in a line, diligently munching their way through a field of lush grass. The shepherd, a man about our age, politely tipped his hat to us as we passed. His dog ignored us, keeping his eye on his charges.

  On the bus I watched the scenery unfold as we made our way back to Monterosso, and I thought hard. I wanted resolution for the death of the professor, for all our sakes. Sure, maybe he was pond scum and deserved to die, but murder was murder, and I didn’t want to believe any of the people on the bus could have killed him. Nor could I imagine how to sort out the legalities of charging and prosecuting someone in a foreign country, particularly Italy, still smarting from the ongoing Amanda Knox mess. The fact that we were all polite older women might work in our favor, since I’d always heard that Italian men respected their mothers, and we were certainly the right age. But at least some of us had been and were assertive smart women, which might not play so well with the polizia.

  No, Laura, that’s a biased assumption. You haven’t had any direct interaction with a local police officer, so you’d better keep an open mind. You’ll need it. There were at least a few women on the force these days, weren’t there?

  But I couldn’t talk to them because I didn’t speak Italian, and I didn’t feel confident of their English capabilities. Worse, I needed to speak to some other Italians, specifically Loredana and her husband, who I hadn’t even met. What had he said that had kept the police at bay so long? Would it last? And could he help at all if Cynthia and I did actually come up with a solution?

  Strange vacation this was turning out to be!

  When I found Professor Gilbert’s body back in Tuscany, I had been presented with choices. I could have done nothing; I could have not reported seeing the body and waited for someone else to deal with it. Or I could have alerted someone—but not made that phone call. Why had I done that? Because my intuition told me something was not right with the death? I didn’t believe in intuition, or gut feelings. The fact that I had been right about his death was little comfort. It had not been a simple accident, not entirely. Valerie’s potion could have played a part in it. Was I obligated to turn her in? To whom? Based on what I knew of the Italian judicial system, I wouldn’t want to throw her into that. If only the autopsy had found nothing unexpected, this whole thing would have gone away.

  I was sorry that I had fallen asleep so quickly that night. If I had stayed awake reading, as I so often did, I might have heard the footsteps of a second person over my head, might have heard an argument, or at least a heated discussion; might have heard a voice I recognized. Might have heard bouncing bedsprings (no, don’t go there—I hadn’t looked to see whether the autopsy had made any reference to recent, um, intimate activity). Instead I had zonked out entirely and missed it all. Maybe it was fitting that I had been the one to find the body—I’d fallen asleep on the job. But who goes on a vacation with a bunch of old friends anticipating a crime? I certainly hadn’t.

  Mentally I reviewed everyone else’s behavior following the announcement of the death. To the best of my recollection no one had shown an inappropriate reaction, like whooping with glee or bursting into tears. Of course, we’d all had long practice with putting on a game face. But even after that first moment, no one had gone off skulking in corners and weeping, or had taken to drinking too much—or at least, not any more than the rest of us. If someone felt guilty, she was hiding it well. She must have heaved a sigh of relief when we had departed the scene of the crime.

  But I had to admit I didn’t know these women well. Why on earth did I think I could figure out what had happened? Even with Cynthia’s and the others’ help? I was not good at this, and I never had been. My usual reaction to crises was to say something like “how interesting” and then take notes or pictures. This did not make me popular with some people, who would have been a lot more sympathetic if I’d dissolved in tears or had hysterics. Sorry—I’m too old to change. My brain just keeps ticking along, making observations, drawing conclusions. Useful for my job; not so useful in personal relationships.

  The ride back to Monterosso took well over an hour, and I’d bet a number of people dozed at least part of the way. We arrived back around six, and those of us staying at the vineyard had the easy walk down. But there was no quiet corner to be found there: the staff was busy setting up for the big dinner. The tables on the patio had all been pushed together to form a single long one, now draped with white linen, punctuated with lush bouquets of flowers. The staff members were adding cutlery, plates and glasses even now. No place to linger.

  The six of us looked at each other. “Dinner’s not until eight. I don’t want to waste time taking a nap,” Connie said.

  “Back down to town? That means we’ll have to walk back up for dinner.”

  “I don’t care. Let’s do it,” Connie said firmly.

  So we did, picking up Xianling along the way. We hadn’t seen much of her today, nor had we talked with her, although she’d been in the background, taking pictures as always. The downhill leg was easy; we would deal with the uphill one later. “We need to talk to Jane,” I said to Cynthia, watching where I put my feet on the slanting path. This was not the time to twist an ankle. “Do you know where she’s staying?”

  “With relatives, I think,” Cynthia said. “I don’t know where.”

  “So I guess it will have to wait.”

  We reached the town, where everyone was still out and about on the streets. We wandered down to the shore and found a table at a café and ordered sparkling water—saving our appetites for the dinner?

  “Well,” Valerie said.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. I had no idea what to do next.

  Xianling, who had accompanied us in silence, finally spoke. “I have something. I don’t think you’re going to like it, but I believe you need to know.”

  I sighed and turned to the others. “I asked Xianling to do something for us that she is best suited for. All right, Xianling, let’s have it.”

  Xianling pulled her ubiquitous tablet from her large bag and I wondered irreverently what else she might have in there, like Mary Poppins. “You asked me to collect pictures of the dinner, and the cocktails before,” she said.

  “I did. Did you find something?”

  Xianling was not to be rushed. “I asked all the others whom I knew had taken more than the occasional picture. As you suggested, I told them I wanted to assemble a memory book for our trip, in digital form so that we could all share it easily. Most were happy to contribute. Last night after we returned from dinner I assembled the pictures you requested and identified all the people and where they were at the relevant times.”

  An impressive effort on her part—and a lot of work. “Thank you, Xianling. It never occurred to me how much of your time it would take.”

  “I collected quite a few pictures, but most were not relevant to this,” she stated in a matter-of-fact tone. “I eliminated the ones that showed much the same scenes. Then I looked to see who had been in proximity with who else and when—during the cocktail hour, and at the dinner.”

  And then it hit me: she didn’t know about Valerie�
�s confession. Valerie had shared the information about her role to Cynthia and to me, but not to the others. Awkward. I wasn’t about to reveal what Valerie had said, so I had to let Xianling go forward. Maybe something else useful would emerge.

  “Have you come to any conclusions?” I asked Xianling.

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing conclusive. Of course, it would be nice if someone had captured the moment where someone slipped something into the professor’s drink, but no one did.”

  So nothing pointed to Valerie, I thought, relieved.

  Xianling wasn’t finished yet. “However, what is perhaps more interesting is the number of people whose expressions were captured while they were looking at Professor Gilbert, when they thought no one was watching.”

  “Interesting,” Cynthia said. “Did anyone stand out?”

  “Several, but I found this the most striking shot.” She tapped on the screen and enlarged a picture, then handed it across the table. The rest of us leaned in to look.

  It was a shot of the head table, taken from an angle off to the side. Professor Gilbert sat in the center, regaling someone out of the frame with a story, his hands gesturing broadly. And on his other side sat Gerry—with a look of pure hatred on his face.

  Cynthia and I looked at each other. “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  “What?” the others asked, bewildered.

  I shut my eyes for a moment to collect myself. “Cyn and I were talking earlier … We had begun to wonder if maybe we’ve been looking at this backward.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Pam said.

  “We got so worried that one of our classmates might have done it that we forgot it wasn’t all about us. That someone else might have been involved.”

  Valerie’s eyes lit up with something like hope. “You think so?” Clearly she would be glad to be let off the hook.