Pasta Imperfect

by Maddy Hunter

  “Are we going to toast Mr. Fox?” Mom asked him.

  “Hell, no!” Blackmore’s face was so red by now that he looked like a Valentine balloon. “The little bastard. He had responsibilities on this trip and what’s he done? He’s run away.”

  Time to play a little devil’s advocate. “How do you know?” I leaped in. “I mean, aren’t you in the least bit alarmed that something terrible might have happened to him?”

  “If he’s not here, something terrible better have happened to him! He better be dead! But I won’t hold my breath. He’s done his disappearing act to get even with me, but the son of a bitch has forgotten it doesn’t pay to piss off the guy who signs your paycheck. So he’d better use this time away from the tour to begin looking for another job, because as of now, he’s fired!”

  Gillian and Marla sucked in their collective breaths. “Can you do that?” they cried in one voice.

  When push came to shove, I guess having a literary snob for an editor was better than having no editor at all.

  “I can do whatever I damned well please,” Philip corrected. “Ah, Duncan, good man.” He snatched the glass from Duncan’s hand and without bothering to offer another toast, guzzled the contents like an empty gas tank at the pump.

  “But you said Gabriel was our ticket to respectability!” Marla whined.

  “You said he was going to give romance a good name!” Gillian added.

  Philip remained stone-faced. “There are other editors in New York. People who, unlike Gabriel Fox, know how to be team players. Now that he’s out of the way, I’ll find you the best, ladies. You’ll see.”

  Was that a slip of the tongue? Mere speculation? Or did he know for sure that Gabriel Fox was “out of the way”?

  Philip regarded his empty glass, seeming to ponder how it had gotten that way. “I need another drink,” he said, but as he turned, Duncan stayed him with a hand.

  “Why don’t we grab something to eat first,” Duncan said with quiet authority. “You mentioned you’d like to dine by the river. I know the perfect place. Great food. A spectacular wine list. Much better than anything you’ll find at a wine bar.”

  It took a moment for Duncan’s words to bore into Philip’s skull, but when they did, Philip deposited his empty glass in Duncan’s hand and nodded agreement. “A fine idea. I could use something to eat. What do you think, ladies? Shall we dine by the Arno today on Hightower’s dime? I’ll write it off as a ‘memorial to Sylvia’ on my expense account.”

  “You’re not addressing my concerns, Philip,” Marla blasted.

  “You’re ignoring mine as well!” Gillian spat.

  “And I shall continue to do so for the remainder of the tour. If you have a problem with that, ladies, I suggest you buy your own damned lunch. Emily, Margaret, I hope you’ll agree to join us. Maybe you can show Marla and Gillian how a typical adult conducts a conversation without all the bickering.”

  “We’d love to!” Mom agreed. “Wouldn’t we, Emily?”

  “You bet.” Whether Gabriel Fox was dead or alive, I figured there had to be safety in numbers, even if Gillian and Marla did end up killing each other.

  Duncan led the way back through the streets of Florence toward the Arno, with the dome of the cathedral constantly to our left. Outside the baptistry, Philip stopped for a slug of water and immediately spat it out. Unh-oh. Must be the expensive hotel water that Jackie had said tasted like liquid sewage. But instead of discarding the bottle, he gritted his teeth and chugged half the contents. Ick. Some people were obviously too proud to admit they’d just blown twenty-thousand lire.

  We marched in the hot sun down streets lined with designer clothing stores and expensive salons, and when Marla made a detour into a gelato shop, Philip whipped out his bottle again and drained it.

  “Just like I always told your brother,” Mom said in a hushed voice as she watched him throw the bottle away. “Excessive drinking not only gives you a raging headache; it makes you thirsty. Then you end up going potty all night.”

  You could tell Mom was originally from Minnesota. Her proficient use of the word “potty” in both its noun and verb forms was a dead giveaway.

  While Marla slurped her gelato, we arrived at the insanely crowded Piazza della Signoria where we stopped to shoot pictures of an impressively naked Neptune rising from a really big fountain and an equally naked David without the fountain. As Duncan motioned us toward the arcaded walkway flanking the Uffizi, Philip lost his footing and went sprawling onto the pavement in a graceless heap. “I’m all right. I’m all right,” he assured us, as Duncan helped him to his feet. But he didn’t look all right. The sweat from his body was soaking through his shirt, and his eyes had that vacuous look that sometimes appeared in Mom’s when she was talking to Jackie.

  “You want to rest?” Duncan asked him.

  “Tripped is all,” he growled, pressing a hand to his stomach. “My shoelace. Get me to the restaurant. I’ll be fine.”

  The liquor was obviously starting to impair his thinking. His shoes didn’t have lacings. He was wearing loafers.

  We dodged around people queued up in long lines for the museum and fought off young East Indian men hawking artwork and questionable articles of clothing. “You buy this, Madame,” one man urged Mom, shoving a fishnet shirt in her face. “It look very nice on you. I have large size.”

  Mom offered the man a courteous smile and stopped to hold the thing up to her. “What do you think, Emily?”

  I eyed it critically. “I think it would look great…at the end of a pole.” I craned my neck to keep track of the rest of the group. “Come on, Mom, we’re losing everyone.”

  We pushed, and shoved and beat off more men selling postcards and gaudy scarves. By the time we reached the end of the arcade and stepped into the sunlight, we’d lost sight of the entire group, except for Philip, who was staggering across the street, unmindful of the scooters that vroomed past like angry gnats.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Mom.

  I cringed as a Vespa squealed to a stop just shy of plowing into him. The helmeted driver flipped him an obscene gesture and gunned around him, leaving him to fend off a half dozen more.

  “Watch out, Philip!” I yelled, but he seemed not to hear me as he stumbled toward the opposite sidewalk and collapsed onto the low stone balustrade that overlooked the river. “Don’t move!” I screamed at him. “I’m coming!” Then to Mom, “Stay right here and wait for the others, okay? I don’t want to lose you, too.”

  I stepped into the street, leaping backward as a scooter nearly clipped me. I darted an anxious look at Philip. He was crumpled on the balustrade, his arms and legs dangling lifelessly. Oh, God.

  I charged into the street again, stiffening as a pack of Vespas wishboned around me, their helmeted drivers shaking their fists at me amid the deafening buzz of their motors. I glanced back at Philip.

  I did a double take.

  He was gone.

  What?

  I looked right. I looked left. WHERE WAS HE?

  I heard a sudden scream. I saw a teenage girl in a bandana and hiking boots point a finger downward at something on the opposite side of the ledge where Philip had been lying. Her female companion leaned over the barrier, her hand flying to her mouth. I battled through traffic toward the sidewalk and raced toward the ledge.

  I looked down.

  I squinted into the sunlight, blinded by the reflected glare of the river, but not so blinded that I couldn’t make out the body of Philip Blackmore spread-eagled on the paved walkway twenty feet below me.

  Mom had obviously forgotten to mention a further consequence of excessive drinking.

  It could kill you.

  Chapter 12

  And when I looked again,” I explained an hour later, “he’d disappeared. That’s when I ran to the ledge and…and saw what had happened.”

  Officer Agripino Piccione used the blunt end of his pen to scratch the place where the wild hairs of his eyebrows intersected over the
root of his nose. “And what you tink happened?”

  “He fell!” Duncan’s hand was a comforting pressure on my shoulder as he stood beside me in the cool shade of the Uffizi’s arcade. “He drank too much too quickly at a wine bar, and when it caught up to him, I think he passed out, and…and fell off the ledge.”

  Piccione flipped backward through the pages of his notepad. “How many people dis make who fall dead on you tour?” he asked tiredly.

  “Four dead. One missing. But this was an accident. I saw it myself.”

  “You tink Signora Root, someone push her,” he said, consulting his notes. “You no tink Blackmore pushed?”

  “I didn’t see anyone standing near him who could have pushed him in the few seconds when I wasn’t looking at him.” I eyed him, aghast. “Uff da. Do you think someone pushed him?”

  “Ooff da? What you mean, ooff da?”

  “It’s a Norwegian idiom,” Duncan informed him. “Loosely translated it means holy cow, holy smoke, holy cats, holy moly, holy mackerel, holy shit, or holy crap.”

  I stared at Duncan. Holy moly? No self-respecting Norwegian would ever say holy moly.

  Piccione frowned. “How you use in sentence?”

  Okay. Had I missed something? I replayed the scene in my head. No. I was sure no one had been around Philip. His fall had been an accident. But why did his death suddenly seem to smack of Jeannette Bowles’s? “By any chance, have you seen the videotapes from the Duomo yet?” I asked Piccione. “I know you’re busy investigating all these other incidents, but I should think if you’d get on those tapes, they might provide a huge break in the case.”

  “Signorina Andrew, I conduct investigation. Si?” Ignoring my question, he turned to Duncan. “Why you no see anyting?”

  Duncan nodded toward the lines of people still jammed together beneath the arcade. “I’d gotten held up trying to extricate my companions from the unrelenting clutches of the clothes and art hawkers. You want a friendly suggestion? Get rid of them. They’re a nuisance.”

  “I make note of dat and give to prime minister. I’m sure, how you say, he get right on it.” Piccione slapped his notepad shut. “How much longer you people be in Florence?”

  “We leave for Montecatini tomorrow morning,” Duncan replied.

  “Better for me you leave today. You people big trouble.”

  Testiness sharpened Duncan’s voice. “You indicated you might want to question some of the guests about Ms. Root’s death later this evening. Have you changed your mind?”

  “We wait for autopsy report, den decide. I tell dem be quick so you leave soon.” He nodded toward a nearby police car, where Marla and Gillian were crying hysterically and Mom was huddled over them, trying to lend comfort. “What you want do wit signoras?”

  “Ms. Michaels has a minor heart condition, and Ms. Jones has severe hypertension, so it wouldn’t hurt to have them checked out by a professional,” said Duncan. “Can one of your officers give them a ride to the hospital?”

  “Si.” A digital tone sang out from the cell phone holster on Piccione’s belt. “Pronto,” he answered, striding away from us. I gazed up at Duncan.

  “Do you want me to ride with Marla and Gillian to the hospital?”

  “I’ll go. That’s my job. And maybe you wouldn’t mind if your mom came, too.” He bobbed his head toward the police car. “She’s calmed the ladies down considerably in the past hour. Look at the three of them. I think they’ve become fast friends.” His eyes grew distant, his voice wistful. “Your mother reminds me of my aunt Carolyn. I don’t know what we would have done without her support after my sister died. She was a regular Rock of Gibraltar.”

  “I’m so sorry about your sister, Duncan,” I offered in a small voice.

  He shrugged. “You think you’ve dealt with the worst of it, but the emotions seem to keep cropping up, and then you have to deal with it all over again.” On a whim he unzipped a security pocket on his shirt and removed a micro address book. Flipping to a page toward the middle of the book, he studied it intently. “I still have her name penciled in under L. Address. Phone number.”

  He held the book up for my perusal. I squinted at the name printed in tiny block letters. MOLLY LAZARUS.

  “I’ve tried to erase it a few times, but I can’t bring myself to do it.” He touched a hesitant fingertip to the page. “It’d be too much like saying…she never existed. As long as she’s still in my book, I figure —”

  He cleared his throat self-consciously and threw a distracted yet composed look back toward the police car and nodded. “Your mother obviously has the touch, Emily. I’d hate to ruin her efforts by separating her from Gillian and Marla.”

  I watched the divas sobbing into Mom’s ample breast and realized how satisfied this must be making her feel. She was being helpful. Doing something positive. Making a difference. This might go down as the highlight of her trip. “I expect she’ll want to go with you, but you have to promise me you won’t let her out of your sight. You’ll be there with her at the hospital, then escort her back to the hotel?”

  He raised his fingers in the air in a familiar salute. “Scout’s honor.”

  “I don’t want her left by herself until they find Gabriel Fox.”

  Duncan eyed me curiously. “Why ever not?”

  I hesitated. Did I dare trust him with my theory? What the heck? I was offering theories to everyone. Why not him? “Okay, it might sound a little off-the-wall, but —”

  “Four dead,” Officer Piccione announced as he rejoined us. He shoved his cell phone back into the holster on his belt and trained his black eyes on my face. “None missing.”

  “You found Gabriel Fox?” I croaked.

  “At Fiumicino Airport in Rome. You right, signorina Andrew,” he said with grudging respect. “Signor Fox, we find him trying to leave country.”

  Curiosity seekers crowded the balustrade to watch a black bag containing the body of Philip Blackmore being lifted onto a gurney and deposited in the rear of a modified station wagon. The divas, along with Duncan and Mom, had been carted off to the hospital, and Officer Piccione and his minions had already departed. But the crime scene people had taken a long time with the body, so I’d stayed behind to watch the proceedings from the street above. I realized my presence did Philip Blackmore no good now, but being here while they fussed over his body made me feel as though I was paying my respects to him in some small way. This wasn’t part of my escort duties. I figured it was simply part of being a decent human being.

  Before he’d left, Officer Piccione had informed us that the Rome police would be detaining Gabriel Fox for questioning about his disappearance from Pisa. Questioning, he emphasized. There was no law against leaving a tour group early. But I suspected there probably was a law about skipping out on a tour after you’d murdered three of the guests. Odds were, if Fox wasn’t dead, he was guilty. I still didn’t know what would possess him to commit triple murder, but —

  Chirrup chirrup. Chirrup chirrup. Chirrup chirrup.

  Everyone around me went for their phones, but it was mine ringing. “Hello?”

  “I got that information you was asking about,” Nana said. “You want it now or later?”

  “Now is fine. But hold on a minute.” I squirmed through the glut of onlookers to a quieter spot near the columns of the arcade. “Where are you calling from?”

  “A phone outside the cybercafe. I bought me one a them phone cards, but it’s taken me five tries to get the call through. It’s easier hackin’ into the National Security Agency.”

  A chill stiffened my spine. I was going to pretend she hadn’t said that. “Okay, Nana, what do you have for me?” I thought I caught a glimpse of Fred’s hat in the crowd by the balustrade, but when I blinked, it disappeared.

  “I done what you said, dear. I found some news articles and interviews in the archives a some trade magazines, and you’ll never guess what Sylvia Root done before she began her literary agency. She was a romance author! Pretty su
ccessful, too. Wrote what they called erotic series romance under the name Elizabeth Hampton.”

  “No kidding?” Is that what she’d been trying to hide when we’d had lunch together two days ago?

  “No kiddin’. Some articles said she had the talent to become more popular than some famous romance author by the name a Barbara Cartland, because Sylvia was a lot more racy. One article claimed she was perched on the edge a romantic stardom. And then, it all went bust.”

  “What happened?”

  “Some fella reviewed her books and said such bad things about ’em, she couldn’t write no more. He said her characters were dim-witted. Her plots were half-witted. Her dialogue was dull-witted. Her prose was heavy-handed, half-baked, and — Wait a minute. I got it written down here. Oh, yeah. And ‘hebetudinous.’ Isn’t that a fancy word? And it’s not even hyphenated. So the upshot was, Sylvia lost all her confidence, went into seclusion, came down with a case a what they call writer’s block, and never wrote another word.”

  “All because of one reviewer?”

  “All because a Gabriel Fox. He was the fella what done the reviewin’.”

  “Gabriel Fox? Oh, my God! He’d mentioned at lunch the other day that he’d begun his career reviewing pulp fiction. But I never dreamed that one of the authors he’d reviewed was Sylvia.” No wonder she’d been carrying a grudge against him. No wonder she’d been uncivil to him from the moment they’d met. He’d ruined her writing career! She knew how vicious he could be because she’d already been victimized by him.

  “The thing is, dear, Sylvia probably made more money as an agent than she ever would have as a writer, so maybe she shoulda thanked him for the review instead a holdin’ a grudge.”

  Nana had a point, but I doubt Sylvia would have agreed. “You’re a genius, Nana. Thank you.”

  “I’m not done yet. I didn’t have no luck hackin’ into Hightower’s internal memos, so I done the next best thing. I stuck my nose into one a them publishin’-related chat rooms and learned plenty. Someone whose screen name was SLUSHGAL said it wasn’t no secret about the bad blood between Philip Blackmore and Gabriel Fox. She said Blackmore warned Fox at the weekly staff meetin’s that if he didn’t start actin’ like a team player, Fox could edit all the literary novels he wanted, but it wouldn’t be at Hightower Books. Blackmore called him a pseudointellectual boor and said if Hightower didn’t change its publishin’ direction, they was gonna sink, and sink fast, but Fox couldn’t see past his own elitist nose to realize the good it would do the company. So SLUSHGAL says Fox tried to form employee opposition to the move to romance, but he didn’t get no support. It made Blackmore so angry, though, he gave Fox both romance divas to edit as a kind a punishment. Fox wasn’t real high in Blackmore’s good graces, but I guess for the tour, at least, they tried to put on a good front.”