Murphy's Law

by Lisa Marie Rice

  “Let’s see.” Faith tried to concentrate. It was all catching up with her—the lack of sleep, the shock of finding a dead man—even if that dead man was Roland Kane, who fully deserved killing--the excitement of attending a conference with some of the greatest mathematical minds on the planet.

  Faith hesitated for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts, but the truth was her thoughts were harder and harder to gather, like fireflies in summer.

  “Besides Professor Kane, there was the head of the Siena University Math Department, Professor Gori. Leonardo. Nice man. He speaks excellent English. Then Madeleine and Griffin and myself. And the waiters, of course. We ate a pasta dish and then veal cutlets and a salad. Then this really incredible ice cream. Professor Kane excused himself after the second course and, a few minutes later, so did Madeleine.” She thought about it. “Well, Kane didn’t exactly excuse himself. He simply stood up abruptly and walked—or rather staggered—away. He’d drunk a whole bottle of Chianti himself. Quite frankly, I’m surprised he could stand.”

  “So Professor Kane left early, followed immediately by Professor Kobbel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything…personal between Professor Kobbel and Professor Kane?”

  “Personal? You mean like…sex?” Faith wrinkled her nose. The idea of anyone having sex with Roland Kane was repugnant in the extreme. “No, there was nothing personal between them. Not that I know of, anyway. Professor Kane wasn’t fit for human intercourse. Of any kind. And believe me, I should think sex was the last thing on his mind. Particularly since, for some reason, he’d ordered himself another bottle of whiskey. As if four weren’t going to be enough.”

  “He had? How do you know that?”

  “On my way back to my room I saw a maid walking down one of the corridors. She stopped at Professor Kane’s door and knocked. She was holding a tray with a bottle of whiskey on it.”

  “Are you sure she stopped at Professor Kane’s door?”

  “Yes. Number seventeen. I’d asked beforehand what his room number was because I knew I might have to ask him a favor. In the end, I waited until morning to ask him.”

  What if I hadn’t? Faith thought suddenly. What if she’d decided to go to his cell that night instead of in the morning?

  Would she have surprised someone kneeling over him, stiletto point poised over his heart? Faith shivered at the thought then jumped as she felt Nick’s large, warm hand on her shoulder.

  “Are you cold, Faith?” he asked softly. “I could get you a sweater.”

  “No.” Faith struggled for calm. Looked over her shoulder at him. “Thank you.” It was easy to stay angry at Nick when he was his usual cocky, ebullient self. But when he showed his sweet side…she turned back and concentrated on the cop Rossi and tried to ignore the jock Rossi.

  “Did you see Professor Kane when he opened the door?” Dante asked.

  “Sort of. No, actually I didn’t.” Faith frowned, trying to remember. “I heard the maid knocking and the door opening, but I was just walking across a sort of intersection, where the two corridors crossed. But it must’ve been Professor Kane who answered. Who else could it have been?”

  “Do you remember what she looked like?”

  “The maid?” Faith thought, then shook her head. “Nope. Sorry.”

  Dante leaned forward. “Think, Faith. What was she wearing?”

  Faith snorted.

  “What?”

  “Close your eyes,” she said.

  He didn’t question her. He simply closed his eyes and waited.

  Faith smiled. “Now, what are you wearing?”

  He sighed. “A tan cotton shirt, dark brown cotton pants, brown socks and loafers. The shirt isn’t ironed very well, my mom refuses to do my ironing and I’m no damned good at it.” His eyes opened. “Did I pass the test?”

  “Perfect,” Faith said. “Now close your eyes again. What is Nick wearing?”

  Dante smiled, eyes closed. “Probably the first thing he found in his closet. A very rumpled, not very clean T-shirt, faded jeans with a rip at the knee and sneakers. No socks. Nick, if Lou saw you like this, she’d have your hide.”

  “Well, if I’d known I was going to be attending a fashion parade—” Nick began heatedly.

  Faith held her hand up. “That’s enough, I’ve made my point. You can open your eyes, Dante. I want you to know I could never, ever do that. Unless I have a reason to focus on it, I don’t remember what people look like, or what they’re wearing or what they do.”

  She didn’t mention that most times, unless it was about math, she didn’t remember what people said, either. She gave a short laugh. “I rarely remember what I’m wearing on any given day.”

  “Okay, cops are trained to be observant,” Dante said. “But surely you remember something about her. How tall was she?”

  Faith shrugged.

  “The windows of the corridors start about a meter and a half off the floor and are about two meters tall. How tall was she in comparison to the windows? Did her shoulders reach the bottom sill?”

  Faith was amazed at a cop’s thought processes. She would never have thought of that. She did the mental calculations. “Put that way, maybe a five feet seven inches.”

  “Okay, that’s helpful. Now think back to that moment,” Dante urged. “What were you thinking? Do you remember?”

  Nick. She’d been thinking of Nick. Of how angry she was at him, of how exciting it had been to have sex with him, of how much she missed him, of how she hoped never to see him again. She’d barely noticed the maid.

  “Come on, Faith,” Dante said softly. “Cast your mind back. You were tired, you’d just arrived in Italy, you’d had dinner, you were walking along, you see a woman and she’s carrying a tray. What was on your mind?”

  “Ah, I wasn’t thinking of much. I was tired and jet-lagged. Oh, I do remember thinking that—” She stopped suddenly.

  “You remember thinking?”

  “Well…I remember thinking she wouldn’t have to worry about Professor Kane harassing her. He’d have been too drunk to make a pass.”

  “Did most women around Professor Kane have those kinds of problems?”

  “Anyone young and attractive,” Faith said. “Pretty much. Two sexual harassment suits have been hushed up. There was talk of another young woman…Candace Simmons, I think her name was.” Faith frowned as she tried to recall the gossip that had swirled around the school last fall. “But I think the charges were dropped. She’s apparently in psychiatric care. A lot of women had problems with him.”

  “Did you?” Dante asked, his eyes sharp.

  “He harassed me.” Faith swallowed heavily. “But not sexually. He always said I was too plain to make love to. He didn’t employ the term ‘make love to’ either.”

  “Why did he harass you?”

  “I wasn’t his first choice as assistant lecturer. His first choice was Loren Ing at Arizona State, who was working on meteorological models. Professor Kane thought he could sell Ing’s package to commodities investors. But Dr. Ing accepted another position at the last minute. They didn’t have any other candidates. Professor Kane was—” Faith tried to keep an even voice as she remembered the first horrible months at Southbury. “—difficult. He made it known he didn’t want me. That he thought I was an inferior mathematician from a fourth-rate school. That I wasn’t fit to wash the floors at Southbury. He wrote letters to the administration complaining about my teaching abilities. It was—” She swallowed and shrugged. “—hard. Then, after a while, I guess he lost interest. And I learned to stay out of his way.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you would’ve had a motive for murdering him.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Nick said heatedly. “How can you—”

  “Stop it, Nick,” Faith said wearily, without turning around. “Your cousin is just doing his job.” She met Dante’s eyes. “I would say, Dante,” she said clearly, “that just about anyone who has ever met Professor Roland Kane
would have had a reason to kill him.”

  “I see.” And he looked as if he did. “All right then, let’s get back to the maid. You didn’t see her face, and you didn’t see Professor Kane when the door to his room opened.”

  “No.”

  “All you saw was the back of a woman carrying a bottle of whiskey and stopping at Professor Kane’s door.”

  “That’s right.” Faith clenched her hands on the chair arms and straightened. The temptation to slump was great, but she couldn’t give into it, no matter how tired she was.

  “What time did you go to Professor Kane’s cell the next morning?” Dante asked, his voice casual.

  “Early. I was up all night, working on my paper. It was only going to be a footnote. But I wanted it to be a good footnote.”

  “All night?” Dante was writing constantly now. He didn’t look up. “Could you clarify that, please? You didn’t go to bed at all?”

  “I guess I started working on my paper around eleven. I was really tired. I thought I would just go over it quickly, but there were a number of problems and I got sucked in. By the time I realized that I wasn’t going to get anywhere without the array to crunch my numbers, it was a quarter to six and it was already light. I set my alarm for 7:30 and just fell into bed.”

  “This array.” Dante looked up from his notes. “What is it?”

  “A series of powerful computers working together on a single problem. A special network. We have one back at Southbury, but only department heads can authorize its use. That would be Professor Kane.”

  “I see. So you decided to knock on his door at 8 a.m. in the morning.”

  “8:05,” Faith said. “I checked my watch. Uh, Dante?”

  “Yes?”

  “My laptop has a built-in clock in the hard disk. I mean all laptops do, of course, not just mine. I didn’t mean to say that I have a special—” She was babbling. Tiredness and stress. She drew in a deep breath and tried to ignore the dizziness she felt. “What I meant to say is that the time I was working—it’s all recorded on the hard disk of my laptop. If you take the hard disk out and have it analyzed, you’ll see that I was constantly at the keyboard until a quarter to six in the morning.”

  “Mm. Useful. How did you get into Professor Kane’s cell, Faith?”

  “Well, I knocked, of course, but the door was unlocked and off the latch. It swung open and I could see Professor Kane on the floor. We’ve been through this.”

  “Yes, I know.“ He didn’t look up from his notes. “And what did you think when you saw Professor Kane lying on the floor?”

  “That he was dead drunk.” Faith’s lips tightened. “I told you that before.”

  “Yes, you did.” He flipped back through his notes. “You considered that a reasonable assumption.”

  “Considering what I saw him drink over the course of the previous day, it was. I knew he was a heavy drinker, but I didn’t realize he was that bad. Maybe he was worried. They say—”

  Dante’s deep blue eyes were suddenly sharply focused on her. “They say what, Faith?”

  Faith sighed. Looked like she was the designated gossip-repeater. “They say Professor Kane lost a lot of money on a model he designed with a colleague to predict consumer trends. It was a flawed model and he sank a little of his money and a lot of other people’s money into it. There was sort of a stink and then it blew over.”

  “I see.” Dante looked at her steadily. “Where do you suppose I could find a list of investors?”

  Faith shook her head wearily. There had been rumors someone in the English department had lost all his savings in the scheme and had blown his brains out. Roland Kane had left such a blighted legacy of suffering and unhappiness behind him. Who cared who killed him?

  Then, unbidden, the image of his dead body swam before her eyes. Someone—probably someone she knew, and knew well—had stood close to him, slipped a stiletto into his heart and watched as the light in his eyes had died. What kind of person could do that? Even to a man like Kane?

  “Faith?”

  She started. “I’m sorry,” she murmured wanly. “I missed your question. I guess I’m…a little tired.”

  “I can see that,” Dante said kindly. He put down his pad and stood up. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you get a good night’s sleep tonight and we can go over the last few points tomorrow. They’re just details anyway.” He straightened and lost his smile. “However, I am obliged to remind you that you may not leave the confines of the city of Siena and we will continue to hold your passport until further notice.”

  “Sure.”

  “Your purse and personal belongings are downstairs, in room Ten C. Why don’t you go down and sign for them? I’ll send Nick on down to you in a moment.”

  Faith shot to her feet and squared her shoulders. She looked him straight in the eye. “Don’t bother. I don’t need or want Nick around me.”

  “Faith…” Nick growled from behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You’re dead on your feet. I’m not about to—”

  “Take your hand off me, Nick,” Faith said icily without turning around. “Dante, tell Nick to take his hand off me.”

  Amusement lit Dante’s dark blue eyes. “Nick,” he began, “take your hand off—”

  Nick pulled his hand away as if she had become red hot. Faith turned to glare at him.

  “All right!” he said, lifting his hands. “All right.” He drew in a deep breath and blew it out again, struggling for patience. “Look, Faith, all I want to do is to help—”

  But he was talking to thin air. Faith had left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  Dante looked at Nick for a long moment, deciding that it was Rossi pumping time. He picked up the phone and punched an extension. “Keep Miss Murphy busy with formalities in Ten C for a quarter of an hour.”

  “Thanks, Dante.” Nick rubbed a big hand over the back of his neck. “I owe you.”

  “Yes, you do. I let Faith go. Technically, I could’ve kept her in jail for thirty-six hours.” Dante sat back in his chair and eyed his cousin.

  “She didn’t do it,” Nick growled, his muscles tensing.

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” Dante said agreeably, and Nick relaxed. Nick had always been an open book. “I’m just telling you what I have the power to do. But I’ll have to question her again, and I’ll have to keep her passport. Lucrezia didn’t tell me you’d be coming. She said Faith was a friend of the family, but I didn’t realize…” Dante frowned, looking for words which wouldn’t offend Nick. Then thought—fuck that. Nick was a big boy. “She’s not your style, Nick. She seems like the kind of woman who can be hurt.”

  “I have no intention of hurting Faith,” Nick said heatedly. “And you’re making me out to be some no-brainer Romeo.”

  Dante raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

  “I’m not,” Nick said truculently. “And anyway, I’ve…matured.”

  “It must’ve been a recent development. In the last week, say. Lou had me in stitches about your latest, Dee Dee. And the one before that…” Dante held up a hand to ward off Nick’s sputtering protest. “Never mind. Here.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys and tossed them. Nick caught the set one-handed. “Use my car while you’re here. I’ll use Mike’s old Fiat. Do you need anything else?”

  “Clothes. I only have what’s on my back.”

  “You can stay at our grandparents’ house. They’re in the country. The tobacco shop next door has the keys. You’ll find some old clothes of mine there. Feel free to use whatever you want.”

  “Thanks. How’s Gramps doing?”

  Dante sighed. “Some days he’s better than others. Mostly he sits in the sunshine and dozes. You’ll see for yourself.” He stood. “I like your Faith.”

  “Hands off, Dante,” Nick bristled. “I’m looking after her now.”

  “She seems to be very resistant to the idea of being looked after by you.” Dante’s lips lifted in a half smile as he wat
ched his cousin limp around the room. “I think she might need someone else to look after her. Though, come to think of it—” he scratched his chin “—she seemed pretty good at taking care of herself.”

  “Well, if she’s that good at taking care of herself, what’s she doing all tangled up with a murder? All of this wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t left my b—” Nick suddenly clammed up, pressing his lips tightly together.

  Dante laughed and stood up. “Go on down and get her and feed her. She looks like a strong wind would blow her over. I’ll talk to her when she’s rested.”

  “Right.” Nick hobbled to the door and opened it.

  “Oh, and Nick…”

  Nick turned and met Dante’s sober gaze.

  “Make sure she sleeps somewhere safe tonight. There’s a murderer on the loose.”

  Chapter Nine

  Mother Nature is a bitch.

  “Faith.”

  “Go away Nick,” she said stonily as they both stepped outside the Questura.

  “Goddammit!”

  Faith looked up in surprise as Nick raked a big, scarred hand through his blue-black hair. He looked angry, which surprised her even more. She had supposed he usually worked out his aggressions on the ice because he always seemed so even-tempered.

  Not now. Now he looked tired and exasperated, regretting his precipitous rush over the ocean. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here. With her. Well, no one had asked him to come over. Her spine stiffened. “I told you before, Nick, go away. It was absolutely crazy of you to fly across the Atlantic for me. All that money wasted and you’re probably in the middle of training or something—”

  “We train in the fall,” Nick said.

  “Whatever.” A limp loop of hair fell over Faith’s eye and she shoved it out of her face. She felt limp all over. “It was ridiculous to come out here just because—”

  “I often come over at the end of June, beginning of July. Or else halfway through August. The race is run twice in the summer.”