Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  When the police were well out of the way, the senatore topped up our glasses—and winked. Loredana hugged each of us in turn. Then she looked at her watch. “Oh, the dinner. We must get ready. We will see you up the hill, no? Jane, you stay here a minute?”

  Yes, it was time to go up the hill—again—and primp for our final dinner. We said our thank-yous as best we could, then walked out the door.

  Jane followed us a short way. “Thank you, all of you. Thank you for coming to me, and for not blowing this all up into a big stinking mess. You don’t know what this means to me.”

  “I think we do, Jane. And we did this for all of us. See you at dinner!”

  Jane went back inside, and we turned to the path and started up the hill. This might be the last time we made this hike, and in a perverse way I was going to miss it. After the past few days I could make it to the top without huffing and puffing, no small achievement.

  “I think that went well,” Cynthia said. “Do you think we’re in the clear?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “What if they come back with more questions?” Connie asked anxiously.

  “If they do, I’ll take care of it,” I said, in a tone that didn’t encourage questions, and there were none. “Tonight we enjoy ourselves.”

  Chapter 26

  And we did. Cynthia and I went back to our room and changed shirts and put on fancy earrings, in honor of the party. I know I felt a sense of relief, of calm, about what we’d arranged down below. Whatever the murky legalities were, it felt right. Funny that I had come around to thinking that it was more important to assure that these women—these colleagues, these friends—went home with happy memories, even at the cost of … not exactly perverting, but maybe diverting justice. We believed we knew who the killer was, and it wasn’t one of us. No amount of official investigation would change that.

  The patio had been transformed. The tablecloths were crisp and bright, the silverware gleamed, the glasses—there were three at each place—twinkled in the light of dozens of candles. The cooks and staff stood waiting for us all to appear, beaming proudly. People began trickling in, first in twos and threes, then in a clump, trudging up the last slope of the hill. We vineyard residents gave them a few moments to catch their breath, feeling smug. Wineglasses circulated, but people were reluctant to sit, many of them drawn to the view of the vineyard marching toward the sky above.

  But eventually we all found seats. We sleuths scattered among the others. Cynthia sat across and down several seats from me, and she smiled at me when she wasn’t busy chatting with those seated next to her. More wine was poured, red and white. It was hard to grasp that it had come from the grapes that grew only a few hundred feet away, had been pressed here, had spent their fermentation in the barrels at the other end of the patio. The olive oil on our antipasti likewise had come from trees that we could see from where we sat. Maybe this was the way food and drink were meant to be, directly from the earth, to be shared with good and amiable friends.

  Jane sat at the end of the table nearest me, next to Loredana, across from the senatore, flanked by a couple of cousins we hadn’t even met before, all somehow involved in the vineyard. Jane looked tired but happy; Loredana kept flashing brilliant smiles at us all, content in her role. She had done—no, exceeded her duty as hostess, averting a potential international incident, appeasing the officials and sending them on their way (I wondered briefly what the senatore thought about all of this, but he had definitely come through for us).

  The volume of our voices rose and fell. It was a bittersweet moment, rich with recent memories, tinged by regret that it had to end. Before the first platters of food appeared, someone led a round of “Dona Nobis Pacem,” and I felt the prick of tears—at the memories, at the soft harmonies of the women’s voices. Then somebody launched into our alma mater, and I stopped fighting the tears. I wasn’t alone.

  The last notes echoed over the valley filled with vines, and then the food appeared and we all dug in. Once again I lost count of the courses—food just kept coming, and it was all good. As the meal wound down, the wines were replaced with vin santo, a kind of sweet and heady wine called something unpronounceable and made from dried grapes. A woman across the table leaned toward me and asked, “Have you tried dipping a biscotto in this wine? It’s wonderful, particularly if you can find Cantuccini almond biscuits.” I nodded affably and promptly forgot the name of the special biscuits, but decided ordinary biscotti tasted just fine with vin santo.

  And after that, a strong grappa. We toasted a lot. We toasted Jean and Jane, with heartfelt thanks. We toasted Loredana and the senatore for their magnificent hospitality (and during the toast Loredana winked at me). We toasted Jane’s extended Ligurian family for welcoming us everywhere. We toasted each other for having the wisdom to come on this trip. We toasted our absent classmates, who had missed all the fun.

  Darkness fell, and people reluctantly started drifting away, claiming early trains or planes. Some were headed to other places in Europe, to meet up with spouses or friends; others were making the long ride home. In a last spurt of energy, Jean and Jane were coordinating rides to the airport or the train station and promising to pick up luggage. I was content to sit and do nothing.

  Cynthia dropped into the seat next to me. “I don’t want this to end.”

  I stared into the depth of what was left in my glass. “Neither do I.” I sipped at the last of my grappa—strong stuff.

  “We ended on a happy note here,” Cynthia said softly. “If anyone comes asking, we just tell them the Italian police decided it was an accident and that was the end of it.”

  “Suits me.” I drained my glass. May you rest in whatever peace you can find in hell, Anthony Gilbert. “But I think there’s something we still need to do, you and I. Do you have to go home tomorrow?”

  “No, not really. What are you suggesting?”

  “That we go back to Capitignano and talk to Gerry.”

  Cynthia nodded, slowly. “I think you’re right. Rent a car?”

  “I’ll check it out. As long as I can drive slowly getting out of here, and it’s a small car, I can deal with it. And we know the way at the other end.”

  As it happened, we negotiated the loan of a car from one of Jane’s relatives—I wasn’t even sure which one—with the promise that their son would drive us part of the way (past the mountains, thank heaven!) and we would drop him at a train station to get home. We’d figure out the back end later.

  Our rather loose plans let us sleep in the next morning. We’d said our formal good-byes to Loredana and the senatore at the end of the banquet, thanking them (through Jane) for all their help. I wondered how much each of us understood about what the others had done, but we’d achieved a happy outcome, and that was what mattered. We cadged a sketchy breakfast of leftovers and sat on the patio in the sun, waiting for our ride.

  Pam, Xianling, Denise, Connie, and Valerie stopped by to say their good-byes. They were all going their separate ways. Valerie’s was a shade more heartfelt than those of the others; I still thought we had done the right thing by her.

  Xianling was the last to stop. “It’s been a long journey from Art 100, hasn’t it, Laura?”

  “It has. It has been a very unexpected couple of weeks, indeed.”

  “Keep in touch, will you?” Xianling said. She sounded like she meant it.

  “I’ll try,” I replied—and I meant it.

  Finally Cynthia and I were the only ones left. “We don’t have to do this, you know,” Cynthia said.

  “You getting cold feet?” I asked. “I can go alone.”

  “No, I’ll go with you, but I’m not sure what you hope to gain. I mean, do you want to make a case against Gerry? Turn him in?”

  I thought for a minute or so before answering. “To be honest, I’m not sure what I want. Closure, I guess. I want to look him in the eye and hear his story. I can understand his anger and his grief and his desire for revenge, but I still resent th
at he used us, used our trip, to cover up what he planned to do.”

  “Only because of us—well, you in particular—he hasn’t gotten away with it, has he?” She munched on some buttered bread for a few moments. “Nobody ever asked you why you got so involved in this, did they?”

  “No. But I think they were trying hard not to think about it at all.”

  “Can you make trouble for Gerry, if you want to?”

  “Officially or off the record? Probably. I haven’t decided if it’s worth it.”

  “Laura, how long have we been doing … what we do?”

  “A long time now. A lot has changed since we started, hasn’t it?”

  Our driver appeared from up the hill. He was a charming, shy young man by the name of Davido who spoke reasonable English, which he was happy to practice on Cynthia and me. Someone else appeared with a motorized cart to haul our luggage up the hill. We followed more slowly, and I turned to say good-bye to the vineyard view. It would be hard to forget the last few days, for a lot of reasons.

  Cynthia came up beside me. “Will you come back?”

  “To Italy? Probably not,” I said, my eyes not leaving the view. “This was special—it wouldn’t be the same the next time. But all this has reminded me how much I like to travel, and that I should do more of it, while I can. There are plenty of places I haven’t been yet.”

  “What, you think you’re getting too old for jaunts like this?”

  “Not at all, but you never know what’s going to happen, right? Seize the day!”

  We turned away and made our way up to the top of the path. The car proved to be a shiny new Audi and I almost felt guilty borrowing it, especially since no one had mentioned anything like insurance coverage or even asked if I had a valid driver’s license (I did). We traveled perhaps an hour, and then young Davido instructed us to leave him at a train station in a town I’d never heard of, and we were on our own.

  The car came with GPS, so we had no trouble finding where we were going. For most of the drive we followed one or another Autostrada, all of which looked like every major highway I’d ever seen, except the signs pointed to exotic places like Florence and Pisa and Genoa. I enjoyed driving like this, on a nice day, with little traffic.

  “You planning to retire any time soon?” I asked Cynthia out of the blue.

  “Are you a mind reader or what? I’ve been thinking about it lately.”

  “Why?”

  “I remember when I started in the business, it was all so new, so exciting. There were so many possibilities. Now I’m the old lady of the group, and I feel like I’ve seen it all. That doesn’t mean there aren’t innovations, or new and better ways of doing things. But it’s not fun anymore. Even the government has kind of tainted it, now that we know they’re looking over all our shoulders all the time.”

  “What would you do with yourself?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine an idle Cynthia.

  “That’s the biggest hang-up—I don’t have a clue. No significant other, no kids. Not too many friends—I mean, you’re probably my closest friend, and I’m lucky if I see you once a year. All the people I work with seem like children. I don’t have any hobbies. I don’t garden or fix houses.”

  “Maybe you could write a book about your company—fictionalized, of course, and lawsuit-proof.”

  “You mean sit down and do one thing for a long time? I don’t know if I could handle that. Like you, I’ve been thinking of doing more traveling, although not in a pack like this one. I think in the back of my mind I was treating this as a test run. If I could survive a trip with forty other women, I could do just about anything. But I do draw the line at cruises. What about you?”

  “Do I want to go on a cruise? No way.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. You going to quit any time soon? Just hang out for a while? See more of your daughter? I bet you’re in line for a nice government pension by now—what’s stopping you?”

  I drove for another couple of miles before answering. “I guess the same things as you. Apart from my daughter, I don’t have a lot of outside interests. And she’s got her own life, I can’t just piggyback on hers.”

  “No grandkids in the future?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t pry. But I can’t see me morphing into a doting granny. Can you?”

  “Not really. What a pair we are! The downside of our outstanding education—we’re too dang independent for our own good.”

  We passed through Borgo San Lorenzo by five, and I was pretty sure I’d recognize the route from there, helped by the convenient road signs. We passed a few rotaries, and then the villa with the whalebone, and a bit farther on the fallen tree where we were supposed to turn. I started up the hill, slowly, both for safety and because I hadn’t decided on a strategy.

  I think Cynthia felt the same way. “You have any idea what you’re going to say?” she asked.

  “No. None. I don’t know that I’ve ever confronted a killer before.”

  “Do you think he’ll threaten us? Maybe toss us off a convenient hill?”

  “I doubt it. I think he may guess that the game is up, even if the police haven’t dropped in lately.”

  At the foot of the hill below the estate we pulled into the driveway and paused. It was still so beautiful—masses of masonry and stucco crowning the hill, with the row of tall thin cypresses leading the way up the driveway. It was so timeless. But then, this was Italy—and even murder was timeless here. So much history, so much misery.

  I hit the gas and we climbed the hill. I parked where the vans had been the last time we’d seen the place. There were no cars in sight, and I wondered if there were any guests in residence, or if Barbara and Gerry had claimed a few days alone after our departure.

  When Cynthia and I climbed out of the car, Barbara appeared at the doorway. She didn’t look surprised.

  “Laura, Cynthia. I wondered if anyone would come back. I assume you want to speak with Gerry?”

  She must know something, and again I wondered if she had always known, or if Gerry had been moved to confess in recent days. “Or both of you, if you prefer.”

  “Come in,” Barbara said. “Can I get you something cool to drink? It must have been a long drive for you from Liguria.”

  “Not too bad. And yes, a drink would be nice.”

  “Let me find you some iced tea, and then I’ll go get Gerry. He’s down the hill.” She went to the small adjoining kitchen and I could hear a refrigerator door opening and closing, the clink of ice cubes. She returned quickly with two filled glasses. “There you go. I’ll only be a moment.”

  When she’d gone out the door, Cynthia leaned toward me. “You think it’s safe to drink this?” she whispered.

  “You mean, would she poison us? I doubt it. She would know that Jean knows where to find us—or our corpses.”

  After a few minutes we could hear the sound of low conversation approaching, and then Gerry came in, followed by Barbara. He gave us a humorless smile. “No police?”

  I regarded him steadily. He looked as though he had aged in the few days since we’d seen him last. “No, no police. They still don’t know what really happened. But I think we do.”

  “You know that I killed Anthony Gilbert? I can’t say I’m surprised. If your group had come from some nice little junior college, most likely no one would have worked it out.”

  “Barbara knows?” I nodded toward her.

  “She does. She wondered why I invited the man to speak—he’d only just started teaching when she was at your college, but there were already rumors about him and students. Please, sit down, so we can all discuss this like rational adults.”

  We sat. “Why, Gerry? Your sister?”

  “You know about her? Yes, that was it. She was a good deal younger than I was, the baby of the family, and I guess you’d say we all coddled her. We were so happy for her when she went off to a good college—we felt like the whole family had succeeded. And she did really well her first semester.
But something changed during the second semester.”

  “She took Professor Gilbert’s class,” I said.

  “Yes. At first she would write home glowing letters about how much she was enjoying it, and then she stopped talking about him. I was already in graduate school by then, and teaching, so I didn’t see much of her after her first year. And then my parents called to say that she was dead.”

  “How did you work out why she did it?”

  “She left a note. Oh, nothing pointing a finger specifically at him, but I’d been reading the letters that came before and it was clear what she was talking about. He had used her, briefly, and then he’d moved on, which I gather was his usual course. She thought she loved him, and that she was special to him. You can guess what happened. But she wasn’t strong and she couldn’t deal with his rejection. We never saw it coming. My parents were devastated.”

  “You never told anyone at the college?”

  “What could I tell them? That I thought that one of their handpicked professors had seduced and abandoned my baby sister? I had no proof, just an ugly suspicion. And to make that public, I would have ended up dragging Amy’s name through the mud, and my parents would have hated that.”

  I felt a spurt of anger. “So a lot of other women had to pay the price?”

  Gerry looked away. “I suppose that was selfish of me. But your lot—you can’t cast stones. I gather Amy was far from the only one he treated that way, and yet nobody else ever came forward.”

  He had a point: we all shared the blame. So many had fallen victim to Gilbert’s charms; so many others had heard the rumors and done nothing. But those were the times back then, indefensible though they might seem now.

  “You waited a long time to do anything about it,” Cynthia said. I wondered if she was feeling what I was.

  “I did. Sometimes I thought I’d laid my anger to rest. And then your group came to stay, and it seemed like a sign. Perhaps it was shallow of me, but it seemed like an ideal way to distribute the blame, so to speak. So many of you could have done it, and had a motive for it, if anyone cared to look.”