by Unknown
I dashed down the stairs and out the side door. I glimpsed a few people milling around near her who were apparently afraid to approach her. Shirley appeared dazed, and caution told me not to rush up to her since I might startle her. I simply sat beside her on the edge of the fountain and said, “Shirley?”
She looked at me and smiled, tears beginning to roll.
“I’ll get you to your room, Shirley. Sit here a minute while I run in and get some help.”
“No. I don’t need help. Just let me l on you. I can walk.”
“Your feet, Shirley. Your poor feet. Will you at least wait a minute while I run in and get a pair of slippers for you?” I had the feeling she didn’t want to deal with anyone else and would have preferred for me not to have seen her, either, but it was too late for that.
“I’ve been looking for Crystal,” she whispered, “but I couldn’t find her.”
I was relieved to find the side door into the stairwell could be opened from the outside. I guessed they locked it in the evenings, so after dark it could be used only as an exit, because I had tried it last night after we got off the bus and had found it locked. I dashed down the hall to my room. My own slippers had backs and would not have fit Shirley, I figured, since she’s several inches taller than I am. Lettie had brought slip-ins, so I thanked her in her absence for her kind donation and took them out to the fountain.
Shirley refused to go down the hall to the elevator, insisting that we take the stairs—up two floors, four flights of stairs. She put most of her weight on me and the banister, but uttered not a whimper the whole way up. I imagined she wouldn’t allow herself that luxury, lest I remind her I had recommended the elevator.
“Do you have your room card?” I asked.
“No, I lost it.”
As I was planning how I would need to drop Shirley in the hall, prop her up against the wall and run down to the lobby for help with opening the door, she added, “We put Crystal’s card on the ledge above the door because we knew she’d lock herself out, otherwise.”
Above each door on the hall was a narrow transom window and a deep ledge. I couldn’t reach that high, but by backing up and jumping a few times, I saw the card. I used a sheet of newspaper, rolled lengthwise to coax it off the ledge, then attempted to return the front page of La Nazione to an acceptable state of neatness for the occupant of room 357.
I helped Shirley onto a bed and worked on her feet with a wet towel while I convinced her to let me call room service for some breakfast. She lay heavily, like one completely defeated, and tried half-heartedly to cry. Faint traces of mascara and tears still streaked her face, which had faded to the color of bread dough. As we waited for room service to come, Shirley began to talk.
“I went to a Gypsy camp. I found out where the largest one was. There are three big ones outside of town, and I exchanged clothes with this woman I found at the train station. I knew I’d stand out like a sore thumb with my own clothes, and my hair.
“The conditions they live in are horrible . . . you can’t imagine. This camp, there must have been five hundred people there, is just lean-tos. People living in plywood . . . corrugated tin . . . cardboard.”
Shirley seemed about to doze off, so I prodded her with, “How did you manage to communicate?”
“I didn’t. I walked all around the place several times until I had seen everything I could see without walking into someone’s . . . home. Then it got dark, and the music started. The men played guitars and . . . things. All the women danced around this huge bonfire, and I knew I’d be too conspicuous if I just stood there, but I couldn’t possibly let myself go enough to dance unless I got a little drunk first. There was plenty of wine around, in big goatskins . . . gallon jugs. So I drank until I loosened up. I thought I was doing pretty good, too.” Shirley raised one hand and soundlessly snapped her fingers. I saw the faintest hint of a grin on one side of her mouth.
“But I danced right out of my headscarf, and that was it. Game over. I ran out and kept running for about a mile or so, I think, until I looked back and there was no one behind me anymore.”
“They actually chased you?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sure they thought I was a spy, a police informant. I tried to get away by walking fast, but there were about ten of them gaining on me, so I broke into a full run.”
“It was your blonde hair that did it?” I asked.
“Some of them are blonde, too. I think it was the haircut. Sixty-dollar cuts and moisture-conditioned hair are not the norm in a place like that. Anyway, I walked along the road. I was thinking, all night long, that a bus would come along or a car would stop and pick me up. I knew, at least I thought I knew . . . at first . . . then I wasn’t so sure, that I was heading in the right direction, back to Florence. But I didn’t know how far it was, because I had taken a bus out there yesterday and hadn’t paid attention to the distance. I walked all night. Not one bus. A few cars, but they just looked at me as they sped past. I guess I looked like a derelict. I suppose they were afraid to pick me up. Miles and miles and miles. I had flip-flops to begin with, but one of them broke, and I tried shifting the good one from one foot to the other. That made the bare foot hurt worse, so I finally chucked that flip-flop, too.”
“You poor baby.” I checked her feet again. A doctor needed to take a look at them, but for now I thought it best to leave them open to the air.
“I did find one thing, though.” Shirley pulled up her long, grubby over-blouse and fished a brochure-sized piece of plastic from her skirt pocket. In red and green letters, it said “Pellegrino Tours.”
I had one just like it in my room, a little folder given to each of us by Tessa to keep tickets and such handy.
“Crystal must have been there,” Shirley said.
There was a knock on the door. “That’ll be your breakfast,” I said.
“Mom? Open up.”
Chapter Thirteen
The voice came from the other side of the door. Shirley scrambled across the bed and fell against the wall in her haste to get the door open. Shaking with excitement, she pulled her daughter inside. Crystal looked prettier than I would have thought possible. She was really a cute young girl. The harsh makeup was gone, and it seemed to me that a few pieces of facial hardware were gone as well. Her hair had faded from magenta to pink and was pulled back into a ponytail. As Shrley smothered her in kisses, Crystal, a bit self-consciously, hugged her mother back.
She was starved. Shirley gave her the breakfast when it arrived and immediately called in an order for two more of everything. Crystal dribbled juice down her chin in a vain attempt to add a half glass of liquid to a mouth already full of bread. She had freckles. Now that the death-warmed-over makeup was gone, I could see her Irish red-head’s complexion—green eyes, chubby cheeks, and freckled nose. Shirley pulled up another chair to the table and simply stared at her daughter. I felt I intruded on what ought to be a private moment.
“I’d better be getting on,” I said. “Amy Bauer and I are going to this church on the other side of the river to talk to the vicar about a memorial service for Meg.”
“Oh! Don’t go, Ms . . . I forgot your name.” Crystal spun around and held out one hand.
“Call me Dotsy.”
“Okay. That’s a cute name. Anyway, don’t go yet. I’ve got some important news.”
I saw Shirley’s stomach tighten as she caught her breath, and I knew what she was thinking. Important news? It can’t be good.
“Could you first tell us where you’ve been since night before last?” Shirley asked, her hands clamped rigidly together in her lap.
“In a Gypsy camp . . . a couple of Gypsy camps, actually. Now, don’t have a hissy fit, Mom, but I was talking to this guy, Chiriklo’s his name, outside the hotel the other night and he asked me if I wanted to hang with him and his friends for awhile and I said okay . . .” Crystal paused.
Shirley opened her mouth and then shut it.
“Anyway,” Crystal continued, “h
e’s real hard to talk to because he doesn’t really speak Italian. He speaks what they call Romanes—and a little Italian.”
Shirley turned to me. “Crystal speaks quite good Italian. She learned it from an exchange student we had and from taking it in school.”
“I learned diddly in school. Dafne taught me all the Italian I know.” Crystal fired back, and Shirley didn’t argue with her. “Anyway, this guy Chiriklo took me to this huge Gypsy camp outside of town, and we just hung out with these other kids. It got real late and I told him I had to get back to town. He asked all around, but nobody had a car or anything, and so we had to stay there all night.
“Chiriklo has a sister who lives in that camp, he and his Mom and a bunch of brothers and sisters live in this other camp, and she let me stay with her. Chiriklo stayed with some of his friends.”
Shirley breathed an audible sigh of relief.
“So, here’s the big news. You know that guy they arrested for killing Miss Bauer? He’s a Gypsy, too. His name is Ivo, and he lives in the same camp as Chiriklo. Anyhow, we finally caught a ride yesterday, but it was to this other camp. I thought he was taking us back here, but no such luck. We saw Ivo’s wife, and sh didn’t know anything about him being arrested for murder. Isn’t that wild? Nobody bothered to call and tell her . . . well, actually, I guess they couldn’t. They don’t have a lot of phones in these camps.
“So Mrs. Ivo grabs up a couple of kids and runs off to find someone to give her a ride into town. That left Chiriklo and me at Ivo’s trailer with a couple of other kids Mrs. Ivo forgot to take with her, and we couldn’t just leave them alone, so we hung out there for a while.”
The second round of breakfasts arrived, and Shirley set out the plates, this time taking some for herself. I wished I could prod Crystal to get on with her story. I looked at my watch, but Crystal was absorbed in the buttering of a fresh roll.
Shirley said, “It was nice of you to help with the little ones. I guess Mrs. Ivo just wasn’t thinking clearly . . . understandably.”
“Yeah. Well, while we were waiting, I picked up Ivo’s guitar and tried to play it, and it went like, bluungghh!” Crystal plunked an air guitar and made a sour face. “So I tried it again, and it went bluungghh. It was strung backwards. So I said to Chiriklo, ‘Is Ivo left-handed?’ and he said, ‘No, Ivo’s hand is . . .’ and this part took a while because like I said, Chiriklo doesn’t speak good Italian.” Crystal paused for a breath. Her green eyes sparkled. “Ivo’s right hand doesn’t work! These two fingers, Mom . . .” She held up the index and middle fingers of her right hand. “These two fingers, are stiff. He can’t use them. Some kind of accident, I guess. But Chiriklo explained that somehow he can still use his right hand for the fretwork on the guitar, but the strumming and picking he has to do with his left hand. You see what this means, don’t you?”
As Crystal said it, I recalled what Marco Quattrocchi had told me the day before. “The murderer was right-handed,” I said. The Captain told his assistant that when I gave him the knife. Remember?”
Shirley shook her head.
“No, I guess not,” I said. “They were speaking in Italian so you wouldn’t have caught it, but I did.”
“I can see how it would make it less likely that he would have used his right hand, but not impossible,” Shirley said.
“Bit it is impossible. We tried it. Here, you try it.” Crystal passed her butter knife to me and nodded toward the one on her mother’s plate.
With the knife in my right hand, I held my index and middle fingers out straight. I tried it several times, and discovered that Crystal was right. Without those two fingers, all control of the knife was lost and there was no strength in the grip.
“You’ve got to go to Captain Quattrocchi’s office immediately,” I said. “I can go with you.”
Shirley glanced at Crystal, then turned her gaze on me. “No, that’s all right, Dotsy. You have another mission to accomplish. Crystal and I can find our way over.”
Looking at her bare, swelling feet, she added, “We’ll take a cab.”
* * * * *
Amy and I hurried to get to the church before the second morning service ended. Following Tessa’s directions, we dashed across the Ponte Vecchio, an ancient bridge lined with jewelry shops, all closed on Sunday. We passed the imposing Pitti Palace, residence of the Pitti family and, later, the Medici family. “The Boboli Gardens behind the palace are supposed to be wonderful for strolling,” I said, pausing for breath.
“Maybe Gianni and I could go there tomorrow,” Amy mused out loud.
I had already gathered that Amy was totally smitten with Gianni. Since we’d left the hotel, she had yet to utter a single sentence that didn’t have his name in it. Gianni was picking her up tonight at seven, but she was already obsessing over what to wear.
“Gianni does some modeling for a shirt designer, occasionally,” she said. That’s not his full-time job, of course, but it means he knows fashion. He knows quality, too. I think Italians in general have a good eye for quality, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” As I picked up speed again, I attempted to change the subject. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s home is supposed to be near here. I wonder if we could find it.”
“I wouldn’t want to just drop in on her, though, would you? Not on a Sunday morning.”
Amy seemed relieved when I assured her I wouldn’t dream of interrupting the Brownings’ day of rest.
We found the church and read the message board—it was in English—then wandered around the churchyard to kill time until the late service ended. A stray acolyte advised us that the man we needed to talk to was the Chaplain, Father Quick, and that he should be out shortly. Father Quick, however, was anything but. When we were sure the congregation was all gone, we looked into the nave.
“Could he have got away?” I asked Amy. Then a tall, stooped man in a clerical collar emerged from a side room. “Excuse me,” I said. “Might you be Father Quick?”
Father Quick moved, spoke, and reacted to my questions like a turtle in cold molasses. He studied my face, his head tilted a little, as I described our situation, and responded with such a long silence, I was afraid I had asked him for the impossible.
Finally, he said, “Yes, of course. When we have a small group such as you have described . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he had lost his train of thought.
“We’ll have about fifteen people, I guess.”
“We like to recommend one of the small chapels . . . just over . . . follow me, please. Yes.”
He shuffled across to a charming little chapel off to one side of the nave. There was an altar, a lovely oil painting of the Madonna and Child, and several rows of seats. It seemed to me that the church had perhaps four of these little chapels, maybe two on each side.
“If you’ll come with me to the parish house,” Father Quick said, “I can check the book, but we almost never have all the chapels in use at the same time.”
“If this one is available tomorrow, it would be lovely,” I said and turned to Amy who nodded her assent.
“What about music?” Father Quick asked.
“I supposed, on such short notice, that we wouldn’t be able to arrange for music.”
“One of our organists—I’ll get you her number—is sometimes available to play. For a small fee.”
It seemed to take forever, but we booked the little chapel for ten o’clock the following morning and left with the phone number of the sometimes-available organist.
Amy and I paused in the center of the Ponte Vecchio on our way back to the hotel. In the middle, there was a wide gap in the row of little shops that lined both sides of the bridge, affording a wonderful view downstream of the Arno as it flowed lazily westward. We sidled over to the railing where a nice breeze funneled through, cooling my neck and scalp. Amy trapped a passerby and asked him to take our picture with the river in the background.
“How is Beth doing?” I asked when the accommodating stranger ran out of
ways to prolong his meeting with Amy and walked on.
“All right, I guess. She’s been kind of clammed up about Meg. At least around me, she has. It’s great that she has Lettie here with her, though. I think she’ll talk to Lettie. She should talk to someone.”
“Are you and Beth close? Sorry, that sounds nosy; but I’ve just been wondering about you three sisters . . . and you also have a brother, don’t you?”
Amy squinted as she gazed down at the water flowing under us. “We were so spread out in ages, you know. When I was born, Meg was already grown, Beth was starting high school, and Joe was nine. Beth babysat me, and I looked up to her like a . . . well, she used to show me how to put on makeup . . . let me try on her clothes. But Meg was out of the house and in nurse’s training when I was born. I’ve always thought of her more like an aunt than a sister.”
“And Joe? How did he handle being surrounded by sisters?”
“He paid very little attention to any of us. He had his own friends on the soccer team, baseball team, Boy Scouts . . . stuff like that.”
“I’ve been wondering how Beth will fare financially, now. Lettie told me she was left destitute by that rat of a husband who walked out on her.”
“Oh, right.” Amy turned and by some tacit agreement, we resumed our stroll northward into the center of Florence. “What a rat he was. I think she’ll be okay, now. I talked to Joe last night, and he says Meg left a will. He’ll be contacting her lawyer in the next few days, but he thinks she left everything to the three of us, equally. Joe’s been worried about Beth, and he doesn’t need any more money than he’s already got, so he said he’d pass on Meg’s money. Beth and I could split it. All Joe wants is a small piece of property Meg had on a lake. It’s not too far from where he lives, and there’s a small cabin on it. He wants to fix it up as a weekend getaway place.”