Murphy's Law

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Unless, of course, it was Grif who’d offed Kane in the first place.

  Could be.

  She watched him sipping his coffee—her coffee. He looked the way he always looked. Cool and elegant and together. From the top of his well-cut hair to the tips of his expensive loafers he looked like a successful academic, a man at the peak of his powers. But was that…glee she could see in his eyes?

  Kane’s death solved all of his problems. The academic council would appoint him head of the department, and Grif’s life would return to the smooth progression he had been born to. He’d be a good department head, too. Fair and just.

  Had he murdered Kane to become department head?

  “What are you thinking, Faith?” he asked, putting his cup down on the saucer without a whisper of sound. You had to be born rich to know how to do that. “Your thought processes scare me sometimes.”

  Me, too, she thought. “I was thinking about Kane.”

  “Listen, you don’t suppose…he’ll come back, do you?” Grif gave a little half laugh.

  Faith pursed her lips. “From the dead?” If anyone could do it, Roland Kane could. He’d make a great undead. “I don’t think so, Griffin. He looked like he was in a pretty permanent state of death.”

  Grif smiled. “Well…good.”

  Faith’s snicker was lost in a clatter of dishes from the kitchen and the sound of the door to the hallway opening and then slamming shut.

  Quick, tense footsteps and Madeleine Kobbel was frowning down at her. She was breathless, as if she’d been running. “Faith, I heard Roland is dead. Is that true? What’s going on?”

  Her voice was tense. Her stance was tense. Everything about Madeleine Kobbel was tense. She even managed to have tense clothes—a stiff, unattractive dress in an unflattering deep blood red. Madeleine took a seat near Faith just as the waiter started to put another cup of coffee down. She took it from the waiter’s hand and looked up with a tense smile. “Mille grazie,” she said, blew on the creamy surface, and then gulped it down.

  “Actually,” Faith began, “that was my—”

  “I needed that,” Madeleine said.

  Not this morning, you don’t, Faith thought.

  Madeleine was usually silent and retiring, but this morning she looked over-caffeinated and…wild.

  Her long, gray hair seemed to lift in electrostatic waves around her face instead of hanging down in lank clumps as it usually did. An undertone of ruddiness underlay her usually sallow complexion. Madeleine had always given Faith the creeps, so it wasn’t surprising death seemed to be Madeleine’s G-spot.

  “Someone said that you found him, Faith.” Madeleine fairly vibrated in her chair. “Is that true? Is he really dead?”

  Everyone seemed worried that Kane would come back from the dead, which Faith understood completely. “Yes, Madeleine. I found him and yes, he’s really dead. He won’t be coming back any time soon.”

  She primmed her lips. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant—I meant how. He was perfectly all right yesterday. We all traveled together. How did he die?”

  “Oddly enough, not by alcohol poisoning.” A miracle, considering the amount of alcohol Kane had soaked up crossing the Atlantic. “He died by a sharp object through the heart.”

  Madeleine was looking at her strangely, her long, narrow, gray head cocked as if Faith had been speaking some ancient, mysterious language. Sharp? Object? Heart?

  “Someone stabbed him,” Faith said, just to make it clear.

  Madeleine’s gasp sounded loud in the room. “He was—he was murdered?”

  “That’s right.” Why Madeleine should sound shocked was beyond Faith. If there was ever a man who asked for a knife through the heart every day of his life, it was Roland Kane. “He was murdered and the police want to talk to you.”

  “Who?” Grif straightened suddenly.

  “Me?” Madeleine said at the same time. “Whatever for?”

  Faith looked at both of them. She’d worked with them for a year, but she suddenly felt as if she’d never seen them before.

  “The police want to talk to both of you. And as to why, well, I imagine if Kane was murdered, it follows that someone did it. Q.E.D. And—I’m just guessing here, I might be wrong—but they might actually want to know who did it.”

  “There’s no call to be sarcastic, Faith.” Madeleine’s blade-like features took on a disapproving cast. “It’s just that—it’s just that there’s a lot to do still, and the participants will be arriving soon and—”

  “And this will interfere with the organization of the conference. I understand. God forbid that murder interfere with our seminar.” Faith ignored the narrow-eyed glare Madeleine threw her way and perked up at the sound of the waiter coming back in. “Still, I’m afraid the policeman insisted. His name is Dante Rossi and he’s Lorenzo Rossi’s nephew.”

  “Lorenzo Rossi from the economics department?” Grif asked.

  “Yes. Dante Rossi. He’s the police officer in charge and he speaks perfect English. And he wants to talk to you.”

  They stared.

  The waiter placed another cup on the table. Faith pulled the saucer toward her and placed a protective arm around it. She looked up. “You might want to start getting your alibis ready. I think they have extradition laws in this country.”

  Dante Rossi yearned.

  The drawing that would assign horses to the contradas for the Palio was about to begin.

  Most of Siena was now in the central square, the Piazza del Campo, watching the horses race around the track, ten at a time, in a trial heat. The Snail’s jockey, Nerbo, would be watching the legs of the horses for form and the eyes of the other jockeys for bribeability.

  The trial runs would be just about over and everyone in the piazza would have an opinion about the best horse, the toughest jockey and would be arguing at top volume with anyone within earshot.

  Dante wanted to be there with every fiber of his being. Instead, he was watching his Crime Scene Unit troop in. Corrado was already blocking off the door with the red-and-white crime scene tape Dante secretly thought was so much more elegant than the American yellow-and-black.

  It was very early in Southbury, but there was no avoiding it. He pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed Lou’s number. He’d wake her up, but she’d skin him alive if he didn’t let her know that her friend Faith had gotten herself mixed up in a murder.

  Lou’s cell was off. He called her apartment and let the phone ring for two minutes, but she wasn’t home. She was probably away on a business trip. He hesitated for a moment before calling Nick. It was just after dawn there after all, and knowing Nick, he’d had a hard night. Either playing on the ice or playing in bed. Or maybe he hadn’t even been to bed yet. It was off-season, when Nick trained hard and played hard.

  To hell with it. But Nick’s cell was off too. Was this some kind of new trend? He pressed Nick’s home number and got the answering machine on the third ring.

  “Nick, tell Lou I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is her friend Faith is, indeed, very cute. The bad news is that she’s got herself mixed up in a murder.”

  He left a long message explaining everything, ending the call just as a loud voice boomed, “Commissario, permission to enter the room, sir!”

  Dante rolled his eyes then turned around. “Permission granted, Loiacono.” His latest recruit, Inspector Carmine Loiacono, stiffened, snapping off a sharp salute. Dante suppressed a sigh.

  Carmine Loiacono had been shipped here by disgruntled city officials from Catania, Sicily, where he’d been a little too zealous in uncovering corruption in the local health district. The man was painfully eager to prove his mettle and to show that, notwithstanding local prejudices, southerners knew how to work.

  Loiacono was a thorn in Dante’s side because he was humorless and because he mangled the beautiful language of Tuscany. On the other hand, he did the work of four men.

  “Let’s start working the scene, Loiacono,�
�� Dante said and waited patiently for the bellowed Sir!

  “Sir!” Loiacono shouted and Dante managed not to wince. Loiacono straightened to his one meter sixty-five-and-a-half centimeters—he had insisted the half centimeter be included in his file—and saluted.

  “Okay, let’s—” Dante’s cell phone rang. He looked at the number on the display. It was his brother Mike. The results of the tratta–the drawing--were starting to come in and his heart beat a little faster.

  Loiacono, however, would never understand this. He had no conception of what Siena was about and would consider it dereliction of duty to worry about the Palio when there was a murder—a murder!—to investigate. He was already marching up and down the room, cheeks ruddy with excitement, tossing instructions as Carducci and Falugi trooped in.

  “Inspector.” Dante beckoned Loiacono over.

  “Sir!”

  Dante put a finger to his lips and Loiacono moved his head closer and whispered, “Sir.”

  Dante laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. Southerners were used to the heavy hand of authority, it was in their DNA. “I have to move into the corridor for a moment for an important phone call, inspector.” Dante pointed his thumb heavenward toward the Center of All Things for a bureaucrat. “Rome,” he whispered. “The Ministry.”

  Loiacono stood to attention so stiffly he quivered.

  “Can you cover for me on such an important case, inspector? Can I count on you?”

  The cords in Loiacono’s neck stood out. “Absolutely, commissario. We’ll work the scene. Dr. Guzzanti should be here soon, too. Have no fear, commissario, everything will be done according to protocol!”

  Dante had no doubt.

  “Very good, inspector,” he said, making his voice deep. He turned and marched out of the room in almost military cadence in case Loiacono was watching and allowed himself to slump against the wall only when he’d turned the corner.

  He called Mike.

  “Pronto.” Dante could hardly hear his brother with thousands of people shouting in the background.

  He closed his eyes briefly and imagined it—the campo filled to the brim with excited Sienese who had just watched thirty or forty of the finest horses on the face of the Earth race in packs of ten.

  The drawing was a solemn ceremony, a blindfolded young boy in medieval dress extracting the names of the contradas one by one, each contrada assigned a horse.

  As each horse was assigned, the inhabitants of that contrada would surround it and lead it off to the special stables that had been prepared.

  There would be cries of exultation from the contrada assigned a brilliant horse, moans and even tears from the contrada that had drawn a poor horse. The contrada’s rivals would then yell out baa-ing sounds, rubbing it in that the contrada had drawn a sheep instead of a horse.

  It was pure chance, fate at its most ineluctable, which was why it was so important to even up what the fates doled out by putting together the craftiest arrangement of bribes and alliances possible.

  A microcosm of Italian life.

  Dante heard a garbled noise from his brother. “What?” He curved in toward the wall. Mike was trying to shout above the noise of the crowd. Dante pressed the phone closer to his ear. The roar of the crowd was like the ocean in a tempest.

  “I said we drew Lina. Lina! Do you hear me?” Mike’s voice was exultant, and Dante wanted to shout with joy.

  “Lina!” His voice carried loudly in the empty corridor, echoing faintly, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Lina! That’s great! My God, Mike, we’re going to do it this year.”

  “Bet your ass, brother! Bet your ass!” Dante’s normally staid, correct-to-a-fault brother became a wild man during the days of the Palio. Another wave of sound crashed over the phone. “I’ve got to go now. We’re taking Lina back to the stables.”

  “Keep a close eye on her.”

  “You’d better believe it.” The horse was being escorted by wildly exulting Snails to the special stables in the contrada. From now until the moment of the race itself, Lina would be anxiously watched day and night. Rivals had been known to slip laxatives in the feed of horses that weren’t well watched.

  “Who’d the Turtles draw?”

  “Big bay named Cioccolato.”

  “He any good?”

  “Yeah. Fast,” Mike said, and Dante could hear the anxiety in his voice.

  The only thing worse than not winning the Palio was watching your mortal enemy win it. The Snails and the Turtles had been enemies forever. But the Turtles weren’t going to win this year.

  Eat your hearts out, Turtles, Dante thought. The Palio will be ours.

  “Keep an eye on Nerbo, too,” Dante admonished. With a strong horse like Lina, the chances of the Snail winning the Palio had just increased dramatically. Nerbo would be inundated with offers of bribes and he was an avaricious son of a bitch. Hell of a rider, but he didn’t have an honest bone in his body.

  “Don’t worry. We won’t let anything slip past us.” Another wave of sound. “Listen, Dante, I have to go.” Mike rang off.

  Dante closed his cell phone slowly. It was going to happen this year. He could feel it in his bones. This year, his contrada would take the Palio, a silken banner, home to the little contrada museum where it would be kept with the other Palio banners for a thousand years, and admired by generations of school kids. He couldn’t wait to get back down into town. He wanted to see Lina for himself, in the stable where she’d be pampered until…

  “There you are, Dante!” a voice boomed. “I think you should be there when I examine the body. What are you doing hiding out here?”

  “Speaking with Rome,” Dante lied coolly as he turned around.

  The medical examiner, Dr. Aldo Guzzanti, was watching him steadily, white bushy eyebrows drawn together. He was a tall, lanky man, with a deeply ironic view of life, and Dante liked him eleven months of the year. He knew Aldo Guzzanti very well. Not just in his official capacity as coroner, but in his official capacity as enemy. Dr. Guzzanti was a Turtle.

  “What does Rome have to do with this?” Alas, Guzzanti was not only an enemy but also highly intelligent.

  “Ahm…” Dante thought quickly. “The dead man is an American. I had to talk to the embassy in Rome. Protocol, you know.”

  Guzzanti looked at him for a long moment. “Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s get going. Your inspector is practically panting with excitement. I’ve had to keep him from trying to pick latents up from the ceiling.”

  Oh yeah. That sounded just like Loiacono.

  “Commissario, sir! Dottore!” Loiacono bellowed as Dante and Guzzanti entered. “Photographer Pecci—” The lanky youth kneeling next to the body threw him a sardonic look. “—has almost completed his photographic survey, sir. He has taken photographs of the complete perimeter of the body and lambent photographs of the murder area.”

  “Last one,” the photographer said, unfolding his length as he rose. He nodded to Dante. “I’ll put the shots on a flash drive for you, Commissario. And email them.”

  “All right, Carlo,” Dante said.

  Carlo moonlighted as a photographer for weddings and christenings. The last time he’d been called in to photograph the scene of a crime had been eight months ago, at the site of a vandalized discotheque.

  Dante looked around at the gray dust. He turned to Loiacono. “How about the prints? They finished?”

  “Sir! Yes! Specialist Carducci and Specialist Falugi have dusted this room and the door. They’ve gone downstairs to fingerprint the suspects. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey and they’ve taken it to the toxicology laboratory, where Toxicologist Biagi will analyze it.” Like all southerners, Loiacono loved titles. Whatever a person’s job, Loiacono managed to upgrade it to a title. Gas Station Attendant Manzini. Garage Mechanic Trotti. Dante fully expected him one day to refer to his wife as Wife Anna.

  “There was an unopened bottle of whiskey as well, Inspector Loiacono,” Dante said. “I want you to ta
ke that bottle and the half-empty bottle and any other bottles you might find and send them to Florence for analysis.”

  Loiacono’s face fell. The person Loiacono so grandly called Toxicologist Biagi was actually a police cadet who had been sporadically studying for a degree in chemistry these past three years.

  Loiacono was always crushed when he realized that the Siena Police Department wasn’t the FBI. There was no toxicology lab, unless you counted the Bunsen burner used to brew coffee in a moka when the espresso machine broke down, and a perfectly useless microscope with scratched lenses pressed into service as a paperweight.

  Everything went to Florence for analysis. Where, Dante thought irritably, they took their own sweet time about responding.

  Guzzanti was kneeling by the body and had opened his black medical bag.

  Dante hated everything pertaining to doctors and illness and had to school himself not to look away from the array of hideous instruments Guzzanti was placing on the floor.

  Guzzanti snapped on latex gloves and examined the body carefully, head to toe.

  “What do you think, Guzzanti?”

  Guzzanti looked up. “Dead, Dante. He’s definitely dead.”

  Guzzanti had always been ornery. Dante was suddenly very glad that he hadn’t married Simona Guzzanti, good in bed as she had been. Having Guzzanti and his sharp tongue as a father-in-law would have been hell. “I mean, when did he die? Can you tell?”

  Guzzanti touched the body for the first time, picking up the right hand and holding it, turning the body slightly. He unbuttoned the first button of the shirt to loosen it and lifted the body slightly to check the dead man’s back.

  “Okay, here’s what I can tell upon visual examination. The body’s cold, so algor mortis has already set in. But that happens immediately. Rigor has begun. The skin of his face, neck and hands is ashen, so blood has started to drain from the topmost part of the body. He has lividity on his back. He has a normal expression and there is no sign of a struggle. He must’ve been taken by surprise. The stiletto was slipped right between the fourth and fifth rib for an instant death. Not an easy thing to do.”