by Unknown
“Oh, no!” said Wilma and Lettie at the same time.
“Meg denied it and said the patient was just senile, delusional, which he was, actually. Shirley said there’d been many complaints filed about Meg being rude, arrogant, leaving work early without permission, but nothing ever stuck. The last straw for Shirley was an incident where Meg gave a patient a massive overdose of a cardiac medication. The woman died, and Meg got Shirley blamed for it.”
Appropriate expressions of horror rippled all around the table. Lettie said, “I thought you said it was a hand cleaner.”
“That was a different woman. Oh, there have been several.” Victoria straightened her back and glanced at us under one raised eyebrow. “But this one—the cardiac medicine—it seems that Shirley had taken the call from the woman’s doctor. He ordered the medicine because the woman was having heart . . . you know.” Victoria patted her chest. “Shirley wrote out the amount—fifty ccs, say, although I can’t remember the amount she told me—and she put down that it was supposed to be given as an injection. Anyway, Meg gave it to her in her IV drip and the IV form of the cardiac medication came in a highly concentrated solution. So the poor woman got something like ten or twenty times more than the doctor had ordered.”
“So how did Meg get Shirley blamed?” Lettie asked.
“She stole the order Shirley had written, probably while the whole staff was in a panic over this woman going into cardiac arrest. Meg changed it from ‘IM’ to ‘IV,’ or from whatever they use to mean injection to whatever means ‘put it into the drip.’”
“How awful!”
“Yes, well, Shirley said that’s when Meg threw a wobbly and went on the attack. Shirley pointed out to the hospital officials that the ink Meg had used didn’t even match the rest of the note, but it was no use. And since she was pregnant with Crystal at the time, she quit the job. By the time Crystal was old enough for day care, they had moved to another city, and Shirley found a nursing position there. In the neonatal unit, I believe.”
“I wonder if her meeting with Meg this spring, the one you mentioned, Dotsy, was the first time their paths had crossed since then,” said Wilma.
After dinner, we pushed our chairs, all eighteen of them, into a lopsided oval, in order to talk while we sipped our coffee and various cordials. Tessa slipped out the front door, drawing a cell phone from her purse as she left.
“I bet she’s calling about Shirley,” said Wilma. “Tessa’s worried sick, but who wouldn’t be? She’s got a teenage girl missing, and now the mother’s gone, too.”
“Oh, my Lord!” I couldn’t believe my own stupidity. I hadn’t thought to tell Tessa about the woman in Shirley’s clothes. Would Captain Quattrocchi have told her? Would they have been in contact with each other this afternoon? Of course, she would have called Shirley’s room sometime this afternoon, especially when she didn’t hear any further word about Crystal. I dashed out the door.
Tessa was silhouetted against the moonlight reflected off the shallow spring water on the other side of the road. She was talking on her phone, so I waited at a discreet distance until she finished—a good ten minutes. She paced and used her free hand for sweeping gestures that were wasted on the country air.
“Home office,” Tessa said when she saw me. “They’ve talked to Shirley’s husband. He wants to fly here tonight, but he doesn’t have a passport. The tour company is pulling strings to see if they can get one issued to him quickly. They said he’s out of his mind. In a total panic.”
“I would imagine so. His wife and daughter are in a foreign country and they’re both missing! Who wouldn’t be panicked?” I told Tessa my story and watched her pace back and forth across the parking area, head down and hands clamped together. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, Tessa, but I did tell Captain Quattrocchi. He said his men are already on the lookout for Crystal.”
“I know. I’ve talked to him several times today. Did you check all the bathrooms at the train station? Are you sure she wasn’t there?”
“I think we checked them all. The train station is such a big place, I couldn’t swear she wasn’t in there somewhere, but then again, I couldn’t swear she went into the station in the first place. The last I saw of her, she was walking across that plaza in front of the Church of Santa Maria Novella.”
“Neither Quattrocchi, nor I, nor the hotel has seen or heard from her since this morning. Obviously, something has happened to her. If not, she would have been calling the caserma and the front desk every ten minutes all day.” Tessa paced some more and kicked an old dry stone wall at the entrance to the parking lot. “Her husband thinks they’ve been kidnapped.”
“Oh, dear.”
“And Pellegrino Tours has got the jimmyjams, because we’re supposed to keep up with our guests. I can’t blame Mr. Hostetter. I mean, I’d be panicked too. Hell, I am panicked. Nothing like this has ever happened before!”
“What’s your best guess, Tessa? When I saw that woman in Shirley’s clothes, it occurred to me that Shirley might have made some kind of trade. After all, they were really nice clothes. Perhaps she’s wearing the woman’s clothes and figures she’ll be able to find out more if she can blend in.”
“I don’t think either of them has been kidnapped. I know Italian kidnappings have got a lot of bad international press, but trust me, it just doesn’t happen to ordinary tourists. Only the very rich. The Hostetters aren’t rich, are they?”
“I never met them before this trip,” I said, “but Shirley did say she saved up for it. She was anxious to have this time with Crystal in a new place, just mother and daughter, and Shirley works as a nurse. No, I’d say they aren’t rich. The rich don’t have to save up for a trip.”
“Exactly.” Tessa’s phone beeped. She looked at the message screen. “Damn. That lazy Cesare is paging me . . . too lazy to walk out here.” She took my arm, and we strolled toward the door. “Oh, something else, Dotsy. I have a favor to ask.”
“Yes?”
“Wilma Kelly mentioned to me that she thought it would be nice to have a little memorial service for Meg. Something small and simple, you know. I agree. It seems to me that before we go on with our tour, we should have something, I don’t know, it just seems appropriate. What do you think?”
“Well, yes.” I could feel an assignment coming on.
“The problem is, several in our group didn’t really feel all that kindly toward Meg. I’m afraid she left behind a lot of raw nerves and injured feelings. I’m the most logical person to organize it, of course, but Dotsy, you have no idea. I’ve got more than I can handle right now. I’ll be on the phone all night, I’m sure, with the home office, with Shirley’s husband, with Meg’s brother back home. I’m rooming with Amy, trying to help her get through this, I’m worried about Beth, I’m in the middle of wedding plans, and I’m trying very hard not to get fired. I can’t organize a memorial service. Could you do it, please?”
Tessa had me firmly by the elbow. I wasn’t getting back inside until I made a decision, but this was supposed to be my vacation, damn it. Organizing a memorial service was the sort of thing I did at home. “Well, I didn’t really know her,” I said. “I met her at the start of this trip.”
“So you didn’t dislike her. That’s why I’m asking you. That, plus the fact that Beth told me you are a super organizer.” She gave me an almost comically pathetic look. “I know a church in Florence, an English church, the vicar is from England, and they would probably let us have it there. I’ll give him a call tomorrow if you’ll go talk to him and take care of it.”
“Okay,” I said. I have trouble with the word “no.”
My coffee was cold whean returned to my chair, and the waiter caught my grimace as I took a sip. Without a word, he brought me a fresh, hot cup. Cesare, his chair pushed back and his legs stretched out, affected a posture of extreme nonchalance and, it seemed to me, an awareness that Amy’s date, Gianni, was copying him, right down to the casually crossed ankles. Paul Vogel, elbo
ws on knees, scanned the circle, his eyes pausing for a microsecond on each face. Wilma Kelly kept her feet tucked under her chair, and I wondered if it was because she had compared her own worn canvas shoes with Tessa’s and Amy’s designer jobs.
“One way or another, Achille will drive us to Pisa on Tuesday morning,” Tessa said. “I still don’t know if we’ll stay there overnight, or drive back here, but we’ll definitely see the Leaning Tower either way.”
Cesare spoke up, in heavily accented English. “And another thing. I have an invitation to . . . to offer to you. On Wednesday evening, my town is having a festival . . . a march . . .”
“Parade.” Tessa corrected him.
“Yes. And I am have . . . I will have a party before. I would like to invite all of you.” He swept his upturned hand, an inclusive gesture, around the circle.
“Lasiarme loro dice,” Tessa murmured to him and took over. “Cesare’s home town, he’s on the town council, has a festival every year on this date. It’s a medieval sort of thing with costumes, a parade, and banners—very colorful and fun. Anyway, we can’t be positive where we’ll all be on Wednesday evening at this point, but if we’re in Florence, Achille can take us there. It’s about a thirty minute drive, and Cesare would like us all to come to the party he’s hosting at the town hall. We’re supposed to be in Siena on Wednesday, but whether we spend the night there or in Florence, it’s not a long drive from either place.”
“Do we have to wear costumes?” Wilma asked.
“No, only the parade people, the marchers, will be in costume. You can wear whatever you want.”
Chapter Twelve
Back at the hotel, Lettie stopped by Beth’s room, and I knocked on Shirley and Crystal’s door but got no response. Lettie managed to get a call through to Ollie from a public phone in the lobby by using a phone card.
“I was a fool for even mentioning Meg and Crystal and Shirley to Ollie. Now he’ll do nothing but worry ‘til I get home,” Lettie fretted, kicking her shoes into a corner.
“Did Ollie know Meg?”
“No. He’s met Beth once or twice, but not Meg.”
“If I were you, I’d call him every night for the next few, just to relieve his mind.”
“Good idea,” Lettie said. “So what do you think about Victoria’s story—about Meg and Shirley and those poor patients? Is it possible that Shirley came on this trip just to get Meg?”
“And then Crystal disappears because . . .?”
“Huh?”
I slathered a big dollop of cream across my face. “Do you have a theory that explains why a mother would bring a kid on a trip on which she plans to commit a murder? And why the kid then promptly disappears?”
“Well, no.”
“I’d say we can scratch Shirley off our list of suspects . . . if we ever did suspect her.”
“Scratch her off?”
“Sure. If she had had any idea of killing Meg, why would she have handed Victoria her motive, on a silver platter?”
* * * * *
It’s odd how we go on vacation to get out of the rut we’re in and immediately start forming new ruts. Lettie and I walked straight to the patio for breakfast, took the same table we’d had yesterday, and ordered the same things with one exception: I added a large fruit cup to my order, because I had noticed one on my way in and thought it looked delicious. We each sat in the same chair as yesterday.
“I’ll go to Tessa’s room after I eat and see if she’s called that vicar yet. I guess today would be a good time to catch him at the church, right after morning services.”
“Do you need me to go with you?” Lettie asked.
I shook my head.
“I sort of told Beth I’d do something with her this morning,” Lettie continued. “I think she wanted to go to services at the Duomo, but I’m so worried you’ll have another one of your spells like you had yesterday. Don’t you want me to go with you?”
“No. In fact, I think I’ll see if Amy can go with me. I want to get to know her a little better.” I buttered a croissant. “I’ve been thinking about motives. Paul Vogel is obviously interested in Jim Kelly and Geoffrey Reese-Burton—at least he was yesterday. Why do you suppose that is? Does either of them have a motive?”
“Not that I know of, and you say we can forget about Shirley because she blabbed her motive to Victoria.”
“Well, don’t you agree that she would hardly have mentioned it, if she had any thought of committing murder?”
“I suppose so. Beth had a motive. The way Meg belittled and embarrassed her all the time could be construed as a motive, don’t you think? Especially over time. Living with her. The resentment would build up and build up . . .” Lettie bit her lip. “But Beth couldn’t kill a fly. I’m serious. I’ve seen her pick up crickets in a napkin and carry them outside.”
“Sorry, Lettie, but there’s no connection. Crickets are innocent creatures. You can’t hate a cricket. Meg was a human who knew what she was doing, knew when she was hurting her sister, and did it deliberately. That’s evil. Crickets don’t know about good and evil.”
“Okay, what about Amy?”
“Motive? None that I know of. Of course, we all did hear her say, ‘I hate you, Meg,’ when we were boarding the vaporetto in Venice. But that was more in sympathy for poor Beth than for herself. How about Lucille Vogel?”
“Lucille? I don’t think they even know . . . knew each other,” Lettie said. “I don’t recall ever seeing them together, so what possible motive could she have?”
“Money. If she really is a drug addict, she needs money to support her habit, doesn’t she?”
“And she looked like she had money yesterday, didn’t she? Lucille might have plenty of her own, though. We have no reason to think she needs to steal.”
A city bus roared by on the other side of the hedge that separated us from the street, interrupting conversation and leaving a trail of foul air in its wake. “I told you the main reason I thought that Ivo, the Gypsy man, couldn’t have killed Meg—other than the fact that an experienced thief would have better ways of dealing with the situation—was because he wouldn’t have known about the knife. Unless it was lying out in plain view, he wouldn’t have known about it. Yesterday, Marco said Beth told him she’d put the knife in a dresser drawer.”
“Ivo might have been going through the drawer when Meg walked in on him.”
“That’s possible.” I thought about it. Yes, that was possible. “But Lucille did know about the knife. Think about it, Lettie. A drug addict, desperate for a fix, notices Meg has a lot of cash in her wallet, knows Meg’s sister has just bought a knife that could be hocked or fenced for a decent chunk of change, and knows what room they’re staying in.”
Lettie nodded, finished her coffee, and headed upstairs to find Beth.
I was on my way to Tessa and Amy’s room when, passing through the lobby, I came to a screeching halt. The sign on a little booth advertised the rental of cell phones, pagers, fax machines, printers, and various electronic gizmos. I hadn’t brought a cell phone with me because I had assumed it wouldn’t work in Italy, and I had never used a pager in my life, but here was a possible solution to Lettie’s anxiety about me and my diabetes.
It wasn’t that easy. The boy who waited on me spoke no English, and his attempts to show me how the pagers worked made no sense at all. I could see, however, that they had little screens and could display either numbers or letters, so I rented two of them for a week and trusted that Tessa could help me. If it turned out that they weren’t what I needed, I could bring them back.
Tessa sat with me on the bed and showed me how the two-way pagers worked. Amy was barely awake, her eyes still puffy from sleep, and her voice gravelly. Tessa, her head turbaned in a shampoo-scented towel, punched a message into one device and sent it to me, two feet away.
“Boboli Gardens,” I read. “So that would tell me where you are, but not what you want me to do about it.”
“Right. If I want to ta
lk to you, I get a phone number from somewhere, maybe a phone booth or the bartender’s phone, and just send you the number . . . like so.” Tessa looked at the phone on the nightstand between the two beds. She punched in that number and sent it to me.
“Let me try one.” I punched in ROOM 238 and sent it. It was easy. “Have you called that vicar yet? The one you told me about last night?”
Tessa checked her watch and dragged a phone book from under the nightstand. “It’s not too early to call on a Sunday, I’m sure, but I bet he’s already doing a service. I probably should have called earlier.”
While Tessa waited for an answer, I explained everything to Amy. She seemed too fog-brained to process more than the basics, but I had the idea Tessa had mentioned the possibility of a memorial service to her already. She didn’t look surprised.
“If the vicar can see me, would you go with me?” I asked.
“I don’t know anything about stuff like that,” Amy said.
“But you know what Meg liked and didn’t like, I don’t even know if she belonged to a church, or had any particular beliefs we should be sensitive to, or—”
“Meg belonged to the church of Meg!” Amy diverted her gaze to the window. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Our parents took us to the Episcopal Church when we were little. I don’t believe Meg attended any church regularly since she grew up . . . not that I know of. So if this is an Anglican Church or Church of England, that will be fine.”
Amy pulled a bra and panties from a red suitcase. I debated whether I should repeat my request for her to go with me as she padded, barefoot, to a closet and dragged out a yellow shirt.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “I’ll go with you. But I have a date tonight, so I don’t want to be gone too long.”
* * * * *
Amy needed a few minutes to dress, so I headed down to my own room. Something made me look out the northwest-facing window in the stairwell. A bedraggled woman pulled herself, hobbling, to the Fountain of the Bloody Knife. Her dirty, flowered skirt was half covered by an equally grimy blue-flowered shirt, and her blonde hair hung in wet strings. She was barefoot. She fell onto the low ledge that surrounded the pool and leaned over, dipping her hands into the water. As she lowered her head to splash it, I saw the bottoms of her feet. They were bleeding and as raw as fresh hamburger. After splashing several handfuls of water into her face, she turned toward the hotel, but I already knew it was Shirley Hostetter.