by Unknown
“Meg’s money? Did she have a lot? I mean . . . I do sop height="sey, don’t I? But somehow I just assumed, being a nurse and all . . .” I was shocked at my own brazenness, but this sounded like Meg had left a tidy sum—enough that a piece of lakefront property would be a minor consideration. Perhaps she had come into a bundle via a divorce settlement. “Was Meg ever married?”
“No! What man in his right mind . . .” Amy left the rest of that sentence unfinished. “Our parents weren’t wealthy, but we were comfortable. Dad was a building contractor. Mama was totally naïve about money matters. When Dad died, he left everything to her, and that was the house, of course, and some bonds, some CDs and a nice life insurance policy. So Mama was financially okay, and then Meg came back home to live with her. Beth, Joe, and I were glad of that, because what could be better, in her declining years, than to have a nurse living with her? But then Mama died only two or three years later, herself.”
“And left everything to Meg?”
“No, not really. That was a funny thing, you know.”
Amy and I turned left and took the wide street that led westward along the river. Amy collided with a middle-aged man, apologized, and patted his jacket. The man showed every sign of being delighted to have collided with Amy.
“In Mama’s will,” she continued, “Mama left all her money—her liquid assets—to Beth, Joe, and me. She left Meg no money, but all the real estate. All what real estate, you ask? Well, it seems that over the last few years, Meg gradually insisted Mama invest in more and more land and other property in our part of Baltimore. It was a smart investment because it was all in a part of town where prices were going up fast.
“But with the will made out like it was, that meant that Meg got everything. At the time she talked Mama into making her will like that, it would have meant that Beth, Joe, and I would have inherited a lot more than she would have. So Mama probably thought Meg was being a martyr by taking only—well, at that time, it was only our house and a quarter-acre lot. But by the time Mama died, there was no more money. It was all in real estate.”
“How awful. I really can’t imagine Meg didn’t plan it that way from the beginning. Can you?”
“Sure she planned it. She sold off most of that property and made a tidy profit. It wasn’t poor Mama’s fault. She didn’t know enough about finances to realize what Meg was doing. Plus, Meg was giving her good advice, and Mama did increase her net worth by following it.”
Ahead of us lay a piazza with several streets dead-ending into it. One of those streets, I recognized as the one I had walked along the day before with Marco Quattrocchi. In fact, the little trattoria we had eaten at was just a couple of short blocks to the right and the caserma was straight ahead along the street called Borgo Ognissanti. Several taxis sat idle around the edges of the piazza. A woman on crutches swung unsteadily toward one of them while her companion, a young girl with pink hair, rushed ahead to engage the driver.
“It’s the Hostetters,” Amy said. “Why is Shirley on crutches?”
“I told you about her feet, didn’t I? She must have seen a doctor and he gave r the crutches.”
“You said her feet were raw, but I didn’t take that literally! Ohmigod, the poor woman.”
Crystal spotted us as she held the taxi door open for her mother. She held up one finger to the driver, who reacted by slapping his forehead. Crystal dashed toward Amy and me.
“I can’t friggin’ believe it!” She raised her hands to the skies. “They’re not releasing the poor guy.”
I turned Crystal around and pointed her toward the taxi. Amy and I walked over with her, talking rapidly in deference to the steam that seemed to come from the driver’s ears. “Did you tell the Captain?” I asked. “Are you sure he understood you?”
“He isn’t in today. I told the others . . . several others. They called the Captain at home, but they wouldn’t let me talk to him. They said he told them to do nothing until he got there, and I have no idea when that’ll be.”
“Actually, I’m not surprised. He’ll want to talk to you, I’m sure, personally, before he releases the man.”
“But poor Ivo is just sitting in jail, not knowing what’s going on. And his poor wife, wherever she is . . . I guess she took the kids back to the camp. I need to get back out there.” Crystal grabbed my arm and bounced with her knees the way kids do when they’re begging for something or when they have to go to the bathroom.
“No. You need to stay at the hotel where Captain Quattrocchi can find you.” I cringed at the thought of Shirley losing her child again. “If he doesn’t call in the next hour, you should find Tessa and explain. She’ll know what you should do.”
“Tessa’s out, I think,” Amy said.
“Well then, go to the front desk, Crystal, and ask them what to do. But stay at the hotel, okay?”
The taxi driver hit the steering wheel and let fly a sentence that even attracted Crystal’s attention. “Okay,” she said as she crawled in beside her mother.
Amy followed me down a little street to the trattoria where I’d had lunch with Marco Quattrocchi yesterday. It was closed, but just ahead in the next block we spotted a self-serve pizzeria that was open. I felt like I needed to eat something. Amy and I took our food to the only unoccupied table in the place.
“Does this—what Crystal found out—mean that Gypsy they arrested definitely didn’t kill Meg?” Amy asked.
“Oh, I never did think he did it.”
Amy gasped. “Why not?”
“Because if he had any thought of killing somebody, rather than stealing stuff, he would have brought a weapon with him. To have just lucked onto Beth’s knife was too much coincidence. No, I thought from the beginning they had the wrong person.”
“You think it might have been someone in our group?”
“That’s the most likely possibility, isn’t it?” Over the top of my water glass, I watched Amy’s face closely.
“Do you have any ideas?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“No, of course not.” Her gaze darted toward the wall; she was not a good liar. After a long pause she said, “The only person I’ve had any doubts at all about is Tessa’s fiancé, Cesare.”
“How so?”
“Oh, nothing definite. It’s just that he has a lot of money for a guy who only works on his father’s farm and serves on the local city council. I don’t know what the council position pays; it wouldn’t be much, if anything.” Amy pulled something out of her panini and scowled at it.
“I’ve noticed he wears expensive clothes.”
“Very expensive,” Amy said. “So I’ve wondered where he gets all that money. He drives a Ferrari and takes Tessa out to expensive restaurants all the time. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. But when it comes to who killed Meg, would Cesare have a reason? Did he ever meet Meg?”
Amy pulled another offending item out of her panini. “He met Meg in Venice that night when he and Gianni came to pick us up, our first date . . .” She paused, as if savoring the memory. “But that was no more than a ‘hi-nice-to-meet-you.’”
“Who else knew Meg? I mean, before we came over here.”
“She and Shirley Hostetter knew each other as nurses. I think they were at the same hospital at one time. I don’t know that she’d ever met Crystal.” Amy frowned thoughtfully. “She knew your friend Lettie, slightly, through Beth. That’s about it. Nobody else knew her that I’m aware of. Tessa, of course, heard me talk about her when we were in college together, but I don’t think they ever met. I went to Tessa’s home a couple of times during semester breaks, but I don’t think Tessa ever came to my house.”
“The whole thing makes no sense,” I said.
“I could probably find you a thousand people who didn’t like Meg, but there’s a big difference between don’t like and murder.”
“Exactly.” I had to go back to the counter to get another glass of water, as there was no table service. “Amy,” I
asked, when I returned, “do you know whether Meg had much money with her—I mean, cash—when she was killed?”
“I went to the bank with her as soon as we got here, the afternoon we flew in. She got a thousand dollars worth of Euros. She should have had most of that, I think, because she hadn’t bought anything much.”
Amy reached under her chair for her purse. “Oh! You were asking about what our family was like when we were growing up.” She pulled out her wallet and riffled through a half dozen photos. “I brought this along to show Meg and Beth. I found it in a bunch of old letters a week or so ago.” Her voice softened as she added, “I never showed it to ”
It was a snapshot of the Bauer family at Christmas. They all stood in front of the wreath-trimmed front door of a brick house. Amy, the shortest, stood in front of the others. She was pretty even in the middle of that awkward, pre-teen growth spurt. Joe looked about sixteen and embarrassed. Obviously, he didn’t want to stand on the front porch with his family. Beth was a young woman, bright-eyed and lively. A scowling Meg, bundled in a sleek white fur coat and matching hat, looked like a constipated polar bear. Their father, bald and mustached, looked as sturdy as his wife looked frail. Father and mother stood close together—a strong oak and a clinging vine.
I looked at Amy. “Nineteen eighty, I’d say, based on the cut of the jeans.”
“Wow, you’re good.” She tucked the photo back in her wallet.
“Amy, the first day we were here, when you and Tessa picked up Lettie and me at the airport, Tessa called you by another name . . . a Spanish name, I think it was.”
“A Spanish name?” She seemed momentarily at a loss. “Oh, Perez?”
I nodded.
“That’s because when I knew Tessa to begin with, when we were in college, I was Amy Perez. When I graduated from high school, I made a stupid mistake. I was even dumber then than I am now, and that’s not easy. I married this boy I was going with. I was afraid if I went off to college, he’d forget about me. So, instead of college, I spent my first year out of high school playing house with this kid who was no more ready for marriage than I was.
“He wasn’t a bad guy, really, but . . .” Amy shivered. “So when I met Tessa, I was still going by Amy Perez. I took my maiden name back after college.”
“There were no children?” I asked.
Amy realigned her cutlery before answering, “No.”
* * * * *
We passed a shoe store on our way back to the Hotel Fontana and Amy yanked me to a halt. “This is the shop where Tessa ordered our bridesmaids’ shoes. I wish I could show them to you, but they’re on order. They probably won’t be in for another few weeks, but they’re a gorgeous green with tiny straps.”
“You’re in Tessa’s wedding? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. In August. How about that, huh? Two trips to Italy in one year.”
“I didn’t realize you and Tessa were that close,” I said. “You haven’t seen each other since—”
“One of her other bridesmaids dropped out a couple of days ago. I kind of invited myself to be the replacement.”
And, incidentally, give yourself an excuse to see Gianni again.
Something needled me all the way back to the hotel. It hit me as I punched the elevator button. If the bridesmaids’ shoes are on order, what were those green shoes Tessa showed Lettie yesterday morning?
Chapter Fourteen
“Amy, you came to the parking lot Friday evening with Tessa. Did you run into her downtown, or what?”
Engrossed in watching the elevator lights progress upward, she took a few seconds to answer. “I ran into Tessa down near the Duomo, and we visited that little shoe store I just showed you. She was ordering the bridesmaids’ shoes, or checking on the order, or something.”
“But that must have been after five o’clock. Weren’t you planning to go up to the Piazza Michelangelo with us? We were supposed to have left the hotel at five.”
“But Tessa changed it to six. Didn’t you get the message?”
“Yes. After I got back to the hotel, Lettie told me. But how did you know? Tessa didn’t tell anyone about the time change until four thirty or so, and if you were downtown . . .”
“Oh, I see what you mean.” The elevator opened onto the third floor hallway and Amy stepped out. I followed her. She stopped to fumble through her bag for her room card. “I wasn’t planning to go up to that piazza with the group, anyway. I was supposed to meet Gianni for dinner. I was going to stay here and wash my hair.”
“I see. So you and Tessa visited the shoe store together and then came straight back here?”
“Sort of. She talked to the store manager for a few minutes, and then we stopped at an ATM machine because Tessa had to get some cash. Then we came back here.” Amy inserted her card in the door slot. “Want to come in?”
“If Tessa’s still here, I’d like to tell her about our plans for tomorrow,” I said, but Tessa wasn’t there. I took the opportunity to get another look out their window. The Fountain of the Bloody Knife looked so close from this angle, I almost felt I could jump out the window and land in it. Seeing the fountain reminded me of Shirley and her poor feet. “I think I’ll drop by and check on Shirley,” I said on my way out.
I took the stairs down one floor. Shirley and Crystal’s room on the second floor was next door to Jim and Wilma Kelly. A half dozen or so doors down from them and on the same side of the hall was Dick and Michael’s room and next to that was Walter and Elaine’s. Beth’s new room, the one they’d moved her into when the first one became a crime scene, was on the opposite side of the hall.
With the handle of the stairwell door still in my hand, I stopped. A man in a blue T-shirt and plaid shorts slipped out from a room near the other end of the hall. It was hard to see him because the light slanting in from the stairwell window on the far end of the hall made him appear dark, outlined fuzzily by the glare, but I was pretty sure it was Paul Vogel. He pulled a handkerchief from his shorts pocket and closed the door, giving the knob an extra swipe with the cloth. As he turned, thankfully toward the stairs on the far end of the hall, I allowed myself to exhale. If he had decided to take the elevator, he would have found me peeking around the door in a manner that couldn’t possibly be construed as anything but furtive. Paul Vogel walked in a way that reminded me of the little pointy-nosed “Spy vs. Spy” characters from Mad magazine. I now had no doubt it was he.
As soon as he was safely gone, I slipped down the hall while keeping my gaze on the door he had emerged from. It was the third one from the end, number 366. I knocked; no answer. Assuming this was either Dick and Michael’s room or Walter and Elaine’s, I gingerly knocked on the door of number 368, aware that there was a fifty-fifty chance it belonged to someone I’d never seen before. I was relieved to get no answer again. Pushing my luck, I backed up two doors and tried number 364. Nothing.
So Paul Vogel was snooping around in the room of one half of the Curious Quartet; definitely snooping, because he had been in there alone. Was there any connection at all between the Vogels and these folks? None, that I knew of. I’d have to ask Lettie to clarify the room numbers for me—Lettie with her practically photographic memory.
No one was in Shirley and Crystal’s room, so I walked to my own room. Lettie was back from services at the Duomo and bubbling over with details. I grabbed a box of orange juice, kicked off my shoes, and tossed Lettie a pager. “My security blanket,” I announced. “We’ll both carry one of these so we can find each other if we need to.”
“I don’t know how to use this thing.”
We practiced for a while, sending each other phone numbers and short messages. We agreed that a phone number would mean, “Call this number,” and a room number would mean “This is where I am” and be preceded by the word “room.”
“Okay, I’m sending you a number.” I punched in my own home phone number, for no particular reason, and sent it.
“Oh no, Dotsy! That’s your home number. D
o you know how much that’s going to cost?”
“Lettie, I’m not calling that number. I just sent it to you. Across the room. I promise you my phone at home isn’t ringing. There’s no one there to answer anyway.”
Lettie blushed and lowered her head. “Are you going to tell everyone I said that?”
“Only if there’s a lull in the dinner conversation.”
“Please don’t,” she begged.
“It’s time to reevaluate our list, Lettie. This morning I’ve learned about some more possible motives people might have had for killing Meg.” I quickly filled Lettie in on the return of Shirley and of Crystal to the safety of the Fontana Hotel, my visit with Amy to the English church, and our chance encounter with the Hostetters. “Amy, Beth, and Joe were all more or less screwed out of their inheritance by Meg’s conniving. That’s one thing. Now that Meg’s dead, Amy and Beth will finally get what should have been theirs to begin with—that is, if Amy told me the truth. Also, Amy has noticed, as I already had, that Tessa’s boyfriend tosses around more money than you’d expect from a small-time farmer.”
“So maybe he’s involved in some shady business. What would that have to do with Meg?”
“Good question. Maybe drugs? She’s a nurse. Aren’t there sometimes connections between hospital staff and black market drugs?”
“I don’t know.” Lettie stretched out on her bed and laced her hands across her chest.
“And Meg apparently had the better part of a thousand dollars in cash at the time of the murder.”
“Really. Who has it now?”
“Ivo? Didn’t they say he had a lot of money on him at the time of his arrest? They probably took it away from him when they arrested him.”
“If not, then whoever killed her probably took the money,” Lettie said.