by Unknown
“He has a thick accent, but his English is good.”
Beth rushed up behind us, pushing me in the back. “I hope they have a restroom on this boat, I’ve been looking for one for two hours.”
“What difference does it make if you find a bathroom or not? Isn’t that what you wear a diaper for?” Meg’s tone of voice was the same buzz-saw screech she had used on Lettie last night.
Achille turned away. Beth spun around and ran back down the ramp. Lettie ran after her. I started to follow, but then thought better of it. Lettie was the right one to offer the help Beth needed, and I’d have been in the way.
“I hate you, Meg. I really hate you!” Amy snapped as she raced past.
Meg sniffed and drew her sweater around her shoulders. “Incontinence is nothing to be ashamed of. I see it all the time. If you work in a hospital, you get used to it.” She looked around as if for validation, but found only scowls.
As she plunged onto the deck, Amy grabbed my arm like she needed me to keep her from jumping Meg with fists and flying feet. “Let’s find a seat as far away from her as possible,” she pleaded. We grabbed a couple of vacant plastic chairs in the passenger cabin next to Tessa, who was thumbing through a Bride magazine. I noticed it was in English. “Talk to me,” Amy said to Tessa. “Talk to me about your wedding and get my mind off that bitch.”
* * * * *
Early the next morning we left Venice-Mestre and Achille drove us to Florence. The ride took us south through the beautiful regions of Emilia-Romana and Tuscany—past medieval walled towns with watchtowers on hilltops, broad fields of sunflowers and wheat, olive groves and tall feathery cypress trees. The warm sun flowed through the big window beside me, and I dozed off with my ear in the crack between the seats. The size of our group, happily, allowed us to sit either with someone or alone. There were plenty of extra seats. Behind me, Elaine and Walter chatted softly, and somehow, their words became a part of my dream. Like banners towed by advertising planes along the beach, I watched their words drift back and forth. Elaine’s soft voice floated across from right to left, and Walter’s mellow replies bounced back like a shuttlecock in a lazy game of badminton—in my half-dream I saw Elaine’s words wave by, printed forward and Walter’s return, printed backward. The motor hummed, and the tires whined.
“It was from Beth that I heard about this trip. She and her boss were talking about it when I was at their office for a meeting,” Elaine said.
“What sort of business is it?” Walter’s voice bounced back.
“He’s an attorney. Beth is his secretary . . . girl Friday, sort of. I was there because of some litigation my office got mixed up in . . . a strip mall we wanted to demolish.”
“Did you win?”
“It hasn’t been completely settled yet. But anyway, Beth said Greg—that’s the lawyer—had offered to pay for her to take this vacation.”
“Nice boss. Do you suppose he’s paying for Amy’s and Meg’s trips, too?” Walter asked.
“I doubt it. That would be a bit much, don’t you think? Besides, Amy was the one who started the ball rolling when she ran into Tessa at some convention, so I imagine she just told Beth, and Beth probably mentioned it to her boss and . . .”
Walter raised his tone to a falsetto in a Beth imitation. “And I do so wish I could go to Italy with my sister, but I just can’t afford . . .”
“Maybe something like that.”
“I think there are several people in this group who’d be glad to send Meg home and give her a refund. Maybe we could take up a collection.”
“What a piece of work she is.”
The bus veered off the A1 motorway at the little Tuscan town of Scarperia. Tessa announced that we would have an hour and a half to “see the town, visit the fourteenth century Vicar’s Palace, or shop. Scarperia has been known for its excellent knives since the fifteen hundreds, and it’s been an important stopping place for travelers since Etruscan times.”
My ears pricked up at the word “Etruscan,” but I nearly missed it in the squeal of delight from Victoria following the word “knives.” Lettie and Beth headed out toward a small row of shops, and I traipsed around to the Vicar’s Palace. We reunited for a gelato break on a broad plaza near the Palace. Kicking off my shoes at a plaza-side table, I closed my eyes, tilted my face to the sun, and let the bright zippy gelato made with those huge lemons from the Amalfi coast trickle down my throat. “I’m having one of those moments, girls,” I said. “Don’t anybody say a word.”
Beth decided to forego the gelato and head back to the bus. She left clutching a smallish bag, apparently a purchase, tightly to her chest.
“Did you enjoy having a seat to yourself this morning?” Lettie asked.
“Oh, yes. And I learned a few things, too.”
“Like what?” Lettie used her tongue to trap a down-cone stream of melting gelato.
“Like Walter and Elaine aren’t married.”
“How did you discover that?”
“I heard them talking. They were saying things like, ‘I first heard about this trip from Beth.’ Now, if they were married, wouldn’t they both already know how they heard about the trip? And Elaine said something about some legal problem—a lawsuit she was involved in at work—something a husband would already know about.”
“Huh.” Lettie snorted. “That sounds like they don’t even know each other that well.”
We all converged on the bus at the same time and jammed ourselves up at the door like kindergarteners in a bathroom line. Lettie accidentally swiped Meg’s purse with her gelato cone while rummaging through her own purse. Since she already had a paper napkin in her other hand, Lettie tried to wipe her mistake off the purse strap, but Meg wasn’t having it. She twisted abruptly, tearing the purse from Lettie’s grip with a curt, “I’ll clean it myself,” then pushed me aside in her haste to board.
Beth’s purchase kept us from leaving immediately. All of us, including Achille, had to admire and pass around the knife—the “Coltello d’Amore.” It had a carbon steel blade about eight inches long that was engraved with hearts and scrolls. The polished black buffalo horn handle, with inlaid silver and ivory, curved gracefully to fit the hand. If a knife can ever be said to be beautiful, that one surely was. The workmanship was splendid.
“I hate to tell you how much I paid for this,” Beth said in a tone that hinted she really wanted us to ask. “But I’ve been stressing for a month about what to get my boss and his fiancée for a wedding present. Talk about a guy who has everything. And she has everything, too.”
“She paid five hundred Euros for it!” Lettie, subtle as always, broke the suspense.
“The knife of love is an old tradition.” Beth patted her hair and wiggled primly in her seat as the knife made its rounds. “A man may give it to his bride to symbolize how he will always protect her,” she informed us as she cast a wary eye on Victoria, who drew her thumb across the sharp edge of the blade and hefted it several times from one hand to the other. “And the woman gives one to her new husband, to symbolize . . . oh, I don’t know . . . something or other. Sometimes they would put the two knives, crossed, over their bed.”
“Don’t get any ideas, Wilma. It’s bad enough you leaving all those whips and chains behind our bed. Knives are out of the question.” Jim Kelly got a laugh all around for that remark, and Wilma swatted him.
“How do you think you’ll get that thing home? On the plane?” Paul Vogel asked.
“Don’t put it in your carry-on,” muttered Lettie. “Not unless you want to model your underwear for the whole Italian army.”
“Huh?” Meg’s ears perked up.
I scowled at Lettie lest she explain and give Meg more ammunition for her dignity-smashing artillery. I could just hear what Meg might do with the story of Lettie and the strip search.
“I’ll have it shipped home when I get to Florence. I just took it with me today so I could show it off a bit first.” Beth retrieved her knife and nestled it in its gi
ft box.
As we shuffled back to our seats, Michael Melon whispered over my shoulder, “If I had to share a room with that harridan, Meg, I wouldn’t trust myself with a knife.”
* * * * *
The next morning, a Friday, dawned bright and hot in Florence. Fortunately, our hotel was air-conditioned and centrally located because I could already predict I’d want to nip back to our room periodically for breaks. Lettie, Beth, and I started with a short trek to the Duomo, actually the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, topped by Brunelleschi’s famous dome. When we rounded a corner and got our first sight of its glorious façade of pink, green, and white marble, a gasp rose from all three of us.
“Unbelievable!”
“Oh, my God.”
“Almost too much, isn’t it?”
From there, we wandered down a side street called the Via della Studio and stopped at a Gypsy sidewalk vendor’s display of paper Disney character puppets. Minnies and Mickies with string legs and weighted feet danced on a board, their string arms bouncing, powered by the vibrations from the Gypsy’s boom box. Lettie had to have one, and Beth was mesmerized. I warned them that they’d probably never get a jiggle out of them once they got home, but they paid no attention to me.
We were back at the hotel before Beth discovered that her cash, a credit card, and the card that opened the door to her room were no longer in her fanny pack. It wasn’t too hard to figure out where they were, since she had last opened it to pay for a Minnie Mouse puppet. We dashed back to the Via della Studio, but the Gypsy had apparently folded up shop and gone out of business.
It’s Friday the thirteenth, I thought. It was Friday, but I had lost track of what day of the month it was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Then it popped into my head: Bad things come in threes.
Chapter Four
I knew it was Lettie as soon as I swung through the big lobby door. Perched in a wing chair facing the elevator and with her back to me, her wispy red hair stuck out above the bargello upholstery like reeds in a needlepoint swamp. One foot dangled, not quite touching the floor, the other probably crossed over and swinging to the rhythm of whatever tune was making her fingers tap on the chair’s arm.
“I’m doing elevator duty.” Lettie turned and saw me at the same moment the elevator opened and Wilma Kelley popped out. Lettie caught her eye. “We’re not leaving ‘til six. Tessa told me to tell everybody.”
“I know. I stopped by Beth and Meg’s room. Meg told me.” Wilma looked past me toward the lobby door. “Why the change?”
“She had some sort of emergency . . . had to run downtown for a few minutes, she said.”
“I just came from the parking lot. Achille told me,” I said. I had cut my time pretty close. After lunch, I had walked to the Museo Archeologico by myself and lost track of time. At five o’clock, Achille was supposein drive us to the Piazzale Michelangelo, the hilltop that offers the view of Florence seen on thousands of postcards, and I had dashed straight to the hotel parking lot only to learn that we weren’t leaving for another hour. Actually, I was glad for the chance to run back to my room for a new supply of Wet Ones. It was a hot afternoon, and I’d been using them like napkins at a toddler’s birthday party.
Lettie had found a pleasant little nook across from the elevator. It had two armchairs and a table with a house phone on it, centered on a pleasantly worn oriental-type carpet. I took the empty chair.
“Tessa asked me to wait here for a few minutes so I could tell whoever gets off the elevator that we’re not leaving ‘til six—save them a trip out to the parking lot.” Lettie tapped her fingers lightly on the arm of her chair.
Now that I had settled down, I could hear “Funiculi, Funicula” wafting through from the restaurant behind us.
“It’s fun to watch people get on and off the elevator,” Lettie continued. “So colorful. It’s almost like a parade.”
“What do you mean, colorful?” I asked. As if to answer my question, the elevator doors opened, and two men in bright swirling dashikis got off. A family, all wearing green Tyrolean hats, got on. “I see. How did Wilma know already about the change in time?”
“Didn’t she say she’d just dropped by Beth and Meg’s room? I talked to Meg on the house phone a few minutes ago. Tessa asked me to call them as she was running out . . . said she wanted them to bring her sunglasses when they came down later. She left her glasses in their room last night.”
The elevator opened again, and a tear-stained Crystal Hostetter raced out. Her black eye liner ran down from the inner corner of both eyes; she resembled an ocelot. She stumbled out the lobby door, colliding blindly with the Reese-Burtons who were coming in. I popped up and held the elevator door open for them. Geoffrey mopped his brow and muttered, “Muddoes in glitchmun.” Victoria smiled and thanked me as the door closed on them.
“‘Mad dogs and Englishmen,’ maybe?” I guessed. “Good Lord, I think I’m starting to understand him.”
The next opening of the doors revealed a harried-looking Shirley Hostetter. “Have you seen my daughter?” she asked.
“She went that-a-way,” Lettie said, jerking her thumb toward the lobby door. “Did you know we’re not leaving until six?”
“I’ll be with you if I can. That is, if I can find Crystal before then.” Shirley dashed out in hot pursuit of her daughter.
I was so glad of the nice cool spot Lettie had found, I was reluctant to leave. Lettie was right. It was fun to just sit here and watch the human parade. A couple in matching plaid shorts and clashing T-shirts breezed by in a swirl of English Lavender.
“Americans,” I said. “What did Meg say about Beth getting her money stolen?”
Lettie threw up both hands. “It was not a pretty sight. Let’s see . . . Beth is worse than a six-year-old . . . she deserves to go for the rest of the trip with no money . . . only a fool would put her money in a fanny pack . . .” She ticked these items off on her fingers. “I don’t know how she stands it. Meg treats her like a kid.”
“And they live together?”
“I told her the other night. I said, ‘Beth, honey, you need to get out of Meg’s house.’ I know it’s been hard on her, though, with Harvey leaving her with nothing but an empty back account. It’s taken her all this time to get her finances in order . . . but you asked about the theft. She’s already called the credit card people and the traveler’s check people . . .”
I stopped her with a touch on the arm as the subject of our conversation tramped up behind us. Beth’s face, red and set in a tight-lipped scowl, was wet with sweat, her hairline dripping. She swung a pot of paper-white narcissus recklessly, holding it by the rim with one hand; the entire contents threatened to plop out on the floor. “I don’t want to talk about it!” she growled over her shoulder to us, as she headed for the elevator.
Lettie and I had enough sense to stay quiet. We watched the door close and the red lights blink in succession until it paused on the third floor.
“What was that about?” Lettie asked.
“Apparently somebody ‘said it with flowers,’ and Beth doesn’t like what they said.”
“Who would send her flowers here?” Lettie turned to me, eyebrows lowered.
“Achille? But why would that make her mad?”
An eruption of shuffling and confusion from the general area of the reception desk made Lettie jump. I hopped out of my chair to peek around the corner. A manager in a black tie dashed through the half-door beside the desk, a walkie-talkie against his mouth, and the man I had seen asleep near the front door a few minutes ago blossomed instantly into a security guard and ran to the elevator door. By the time the elevator reached the ground floor, four employees, including the woman from the concierge desk, had gathered to scowl at the row of red lights, as if scowling would speed it up. They hissed softly at each other in Italian.
When the wall had gobbled them up, Lettie and I stared at each other and then at the row of red lights. The elevator inched up to the third floor and stoppe
d.
Lucille Vogel came out of nowhere, smiled serenely, and punched the up button. “Hi, ladies. I guess you’re not going on the bus trip either.”
Strange. Not only did the comment seem inappropriately casual—we knew something was dreadfully wrong, although there was no reason Lucille should have known it—but it was the first time I had seen Lucille smile. Or say anything remotely pleasant. She had, up to that point, been a little black cloud over our group, but now she seemed, well, sweet.
I found my voice before Lettie did. “We’re not leaving until six. Tessa had something come up.”
“It’s almost six, now,” Lucille said.
I checked my watch. It was a quarter to six. Lucille pushed the up button again and waited. The elevator light didn’t budge.
“It’s stuck,” Lettie said, after a suitable length of time. “Let’s take the stairs. Are you ready to go up, Dotsy?”
I was ready to find out what was going on, but I didn’t want to do it with Lucille Vogel. Our room was on the first floor, which in Europe is the one above the ground floor, so Lettie and I slipped through the first set of swinging doors off the stairwell, leaving Lucille to climb another flight by herself. I nipped into a cubbyhole out of the line of sight from the small windows in the stairwell doors and waved Lettie over. “Let’s wait until she’s out of the stairwell and go on up to the third floor. I want to find out what’s up.”
“Is your antenna beeping?” Lettie has the nicest ways of calling me a snoop.
“My antenna is about to short out.”
The stairwell doors on the third floor landing were locked. I peeked through the little window on the right hand door, while Lettie took the one on the left. I’m sure that, from the other side, we looked like a pair of those big-nosed “Kilroy was here” cartoons. The fifth door down on the left was open, and the hallway was empty except for the man with the walkie-talkie and the black tie. He stood at the open door, gulping air. He stumbled as if he was about to pass out. The woman from the concierge desk, a brisk, efficient-looking woman, crossed the threshold, pushed the man aside, and vomited against the right-hand wall.