by Unknown
There was a four-minute gap between the second and third photos. I thought of what that meant. Walter could have walked back up the stairs and down the ones on the other side, or he could have gone around the front, to get to the eastern overlook. There would have been plenty of time. In those four minutes, the population of both overlooks might have changed completely. People didn’t tend to stay in one place very long up here.
Walter had stood at or near the bottom of the right wing of the staircase for the last shot. How odd, I thought. Achille and Tessa stood, backs to the camera at almost the exact same spot where Amy and Tessa had stood in the first picture, but neither Beth nor Amy was there now. As soon as I located the spot, I saw that the balustrade and pavement wrapped around to the south, extending way around the side. This was not apparent until you walked right up to the edge. Amy might have been there when the third picture was taken.
I walked around that way as far as Icould and looked out across the farmlands dotted with tall cypress trees and stucco houses. At the bottom of the slope and beyond a thin clump of trees, a narrow road wound around the hill. In a flash, I realized that this was the road the blue Fiat had been on yesterday as we had picked our way down the slope to Amy’s body.
Charging up the steps and across the parking area on the upper level, I stepped down and across the slope and grabbed onto the strongest-looking plants on my upslope side for a little bit of anchorage. I found the spot where the body had lain; there was a bit of blood still on the grass. I hadn’t noticed any blood yesterday, but Amy’s head had been twisted in such a way that if she had bled from the mouth or the left side of her head, I wouldn’t have seen it. I paused a minute and thought about Amy. So young and healthy one minute. So dead the next. I hoped she was in a better place.
From here, I couldn’t pinpoint the exact spot from which Amy had fallen. I needed to go back up and put a marker or something at the place Tessa had been standing when I saw her, choking and gasping for breath. I doubted she had moved away, once Amy had fallen, but that didn’t mean that Tessa was right beside Amy when she fell, did it?
The spot from which I thought I had heard the blue Fiat rev up and peel off was just below here and a little to the right. I walked up and down the road for about a quarter mile in both directions. It was too narrow, along most of this stretch, for two cars to pass without one of them pulling onto the shoulder. There was one place where the outside shoulder was wide enough for a car to park. I stood there and looked up the hill. It gave a perfect view of the southern end of the balustrade. The spot where Amy had landed was almost directly between here and there.
If it was Gianni, and I would have bet good money that it was, what was he here for? Could he have been the reason Amy fell? He might have told Amy earlier, “I’ll meet you at the piazza.” It would have been shortly after work, if he worked at a regular nine-to-five job, but I had no idea what hours he worked—or if he worked. Amy had mentioned that he did some modeling occasionally, but that wasn’t a steady job.
Suppose he parked here until he saw Amy at the balustrade. If he had a motive for doing away with her, he could have simply walked up the slope—unseen by anyone but her—and pulled her over. Maybe not. I climbed back up the slope until I reached the part that was too steep to go any farther, and looked up. Unless Gianni was part mountain goat, I didn’t see how he could have done it. At best, he could have clambered up to the base of the wall, possibly grabbed the bottom of the balustrade, reached up and . . .
Forget it. Amy would have had to be a willing participant in her own killing!
There was another possibility. Suppose Amy thought he was scrambling up to kiss her, à la Romeo and Juliet. Then she would have leaned over the balustrade eagerly.
I thought about Amy and Gianni. Who was he, anyway? A friend of Cesare? A friend of Tessa? How did he and Amy meet? A blind date? Somehow, I had the impression neither Tessa nor Cesare knew him very well. If that was true, had Gianni finagled an introduction to Amy so he could ask her out? If someone wanted A dead, this could have all been planned before any of us even arrived.
Oh, God. Paul is right, I’m finding snakes under every rock.
I returned one more time to the east overlook and stood on tiptoes to get the feeling of wearing high heels as I imagined myself falling over, pulled over by someone on the other side, or pushed over by someone on this side. I couldn’t quite imagine tumbling over in any of those cases, but I chalked it up to being several inches shorter than Amy. I didn’t go so far as to test Michael’s center-of-gravity theory by leaning over the concrete balustrade myself. I’m not that dumb.
I sat a table in the restaurant I had spotted earlier—a delightful respite from the blaring sun. I ordered a sort of bruschetta and a big glass of water, repeating the last part with hand gestures to make it plain that I needed a big glass of water. It seemed to me that Italians should adopt iced tea the same way we Americans have embraced their cappuccino and latte. I asked them to call a taxi for me and, when it came, I told the driver, “To the Borgo Ognissanti, please. To the caserma of the carabinieri.”
* * * * *
“I have a car for you to check out. It’s a blue Fiat, and the license number ends with either 10 M or I-O-M. It was parked very suspiciously at the bottom of the hill yesterday when Amy fell, and it sped off right after.”
Marco wrote that down and glanced at me. “How does one park suspiciously?”
“What I mean is, I saw the car drive up a few minutes before, and as soon as we started down to see about Amy, it tore off in a huge hurry.”
“Dotsy, you aren’t trying to make Amy’s accident into another murder, are you?”
“I think it should be considered.”
Marco sat stock still, his gaze glued to the corner of his desk calendar. At last he said, “No. It was an accident, and let me tell you why. I know you will think I want it to be an accident because it makes my job easier and because we have no evidence to the contrary. But that is not so. It would actually make my job easier if it was murder and I could prove it.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
“Beth Hines stands to inherit quite a lot of money. According to her brother Joe—” Marco forced the name through his teeth “—Meg had accumulated a small fortune, not entirely by means we would all approve of, but there it is. She has left it to Amy and Beth equally. Joe tells me that he told Meg to leave him a small piece of real estate, a cabin on a lake I believe he said, and that was all he wanted. Apparently he has enough money already.
“So, you see, Beth now inherits the whole thing. If she killed her older sister to get half a fortune, wouldn’t she also kill her younger sister to get a whole fortune?”
Every cell in my body wanted to scream at him. I knew Lettie would, if she was here, but if I expected him to treat me like a partnr, I had to maintain a façade of objectivity. “Go on,” I said.
“It can’t be murder because it was very bad luck it was even a death. The height from which she fell—the distance—she was very unlucky to have been killed. Most times, a fall like that would break some bones, perhaps collapse lungs, perhaps fracture the skull. But most times, a healthy young person like that would survive. Yes, she was very unlucky. To commit a murder you must do something that is fatal, Dotsy. If your victim survives, you are in deep . . . you know.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” I stared at my feet for a while. What he said made sense.
When I looked up, I caught him smiling at me, his cheek resting on his knuckles.
“When this mess is all cleaned up,” he said, “I want to take you some place where we can have a nice dinner, a nice evening together . . . just enjoy. Would you like that?”
“Well, yes.” This was the first time I’d been asked for a date in more than thirty-five years. I probably turned a very unattractive red. “I hope this mess is all cleaned up while I’m still in Italy. Have you heard anything from the lab about the purse?”
“The blood is of the same type as Meg’s, but we will know for certain if it is her blood when the DNA tests are completed.”
“It occurred to me that the killer might have used one of those thin disposable rain coats. It would have protected his clothes, and it could have been stuffed into the purse quickly.”
Marco winked at me. “I am ahead of you. I have men looking through all the trash containers, dumps—anywhere trash is found—within a one mile radius of the hotel.”
“Why one mile? Why not more?”
“Because we have to start somewhere. If this search turns up nothing, we will keep expanding.”
“Are you going to check out that car?”
“The blue Fiat? Yes. We will get a list of plates that match your description and see if any of them are registered to anyone we know. Do you recall Gianni’s surname?”
“No, but I imagine Tessa can tell us.”
“That’s all right. I have it in my notes somewhere.” Marco thumbed through a notepad. “Diletti—there it is. Gianni Diletti. What else do you know about him? He did not know Amy Bauer before this trip, did he?”
I told Marco everything I could remember about what Amy had said about Gianni on Sunday. Then I gave Marco my impression of Gianni, based on our evening at the restaurant in the country. Marco listened, his forefingers pressed against his seductive lips, and I wondered what he looked like without the beard.
The three photos began to burn a hole in my purse. Marco was so certain Amy’s death was an accident, he saw no need to investigate. But I was here because I thought it wasn’t an accident, and if I really believed that, then I was withholding evidence in a felony crime, wasn’t I?
">The phone rang, and before Marco finished that conversation, a uniformed officer popped in with a note for him. He glanced at it and responded. That gave me time to consider what would happen if he discovered Amy had indeed been murdered. He would find out that I had been sleuthing, and he’d find out about the pictures. He’d have to question all of us again, and if I didn’t tell him about the pictures, Walter would.
“Could we go out for a walk? I need to get out of here for a little while,” he said.
I waited until we had wound through traffic and down to the street that ran along the Arno. Marco lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
“I have some pictures Walter Everard made yesterday, just before Amy . . . fell.” I pulled them out of my bag. “Do you want them?”
“What did you do? How did you get these?” He snatched the pictures from me.
“Walter used a digital camera, so I asked him to print them for me.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I began, deliberately not looking at his face, “I wanted to figure out what happened. I went up there this morning.” I pointed across the river to the southeast. The piazzale Michelangelo capped the big hill just beyond the Ponte Vecchio. If the bronze David were closer to the front of the overlook, I think I could have seen it from where we stood.
“You what?”
I explained. He ground out his cigarette on the sidewalk. “Did you go to the hospital yesterday?” I asked. “Did you see Amy or talk to the doctors?”
“Yes. Yes.” He walked a while in silence. “They have probably already done the autopsy because one has to be done in a case like this. I saw the body at the hospital, and I saw your friend Lettie. She was with Beth Hines.”
We had come to an intersection, and Marco paused to take my arm. I wondered if he knew I could cross a street by myself.
“Did they give you the contents of her pockets,” I asked, “or would they have given them to Beth?”
“To me, but there weren’t any.”
“Yes, there was. A slip of paper in Amy’s pocket.”
“Her pockets were empty.”
“Marco, I saw the paper sticking out of her pocket when she was lying on the slope, and I stayed with her body until the ambulance arrived.”
“Her personal effects consisted of a Swatch watch, very colorful, a Greek key bracelet, and a pair of small gold hoop earrings. That was all.”
“No money?”
“Lettie thought she had left her purse on the bus.”
Feeling like the worst kind of snoop, I told him what the note in Amy’s pocket said. Perhaps trangeness of the note would make him consider the possibility that Amy’s death was not an accident.
Back at his office, Marco slipped the three pictures in a manila folder marked BAUER, asked me to spell “syntometrine,” and peeked out into the hall. He closed the door again and took my hand. Pulling me gently to him, he lifted my chin and kissed me lightly.
“This is a terrible thing, Dotsy. I know it is difficult for you and for Lettie.” He stroked my cheek with one finger. “But it will all be over soon.”
Over soon? How could he say that?
Chapter Twenty-Two
I took a taxi to the hotel and sent Lettie the message “Room 220” with my pager. That was to inform her that I was back in our room, but almost as soon as I opened the door, the telephone rang.
“Have you had lunch yet?” Lettie asked. “I need to get out and do something.”
“What about Beth?”
“She and Joe are going out for a bite. She’s getting dressed now.”
After I freshened up, I walked to Beth’s room. As Lettie let me in, I glimpsed Beth, at the bathroom sink, sweeping blush onto her cheeks with a large brush. Having prepared myself for a pale and wan Beth with swollen eyes, I was shocked by how good she looked. Lettie grabbed her Florence guidebook and pushed me out the door. “Let’s go,” she said. “I need to get out of here.”
Moseying vaguely in the direction of the city center, we decided to eat, then head for the Uffizi gallery. We found a trattoria with a free table near the Piazza della Repubblica, roughly halfway to the Uffizi. “How is Beth doing?” I asked, as soon as we had ordered.
Lettie jiggled her hands and bounced in her chair as if she didn’t know where to begin. “She’s devastated, of course. We talked, she cried, and I cried until the wee hours. But Dotsy, Achille called her about every fifteen minutes all night and this morning! I don’t know how she stands it. I finally talked to him myself about an hour ago, and I told him, ‘Quit calling. Beth needs to rest.’”
“Didn’t he take the group to Pisa today?”
“Yes, but he has a cell phone with him. Every time they make a stop, he calls. He’s in love with her.”
“And Beth? Is she in love with him?”
“She doesn’t know. She can’t think about anything right now, except Amy and Meg. And then there’s Joe. He isn’t helping much. The phone rings and Joe stands there tapping his foot and going, ‘Who is this joker, anyway?’ Joe almost had a fist fight with Captain Quattrocchi this morning, and he’s threatening to sue the tour company and the carabinieri and . . . oh, I don’t know. He’s trying to help, but he’s like a big old bulldozer. He’s making things worse.”
“Did Beth see Amy fall?”
“No. She said she and Achille were on the same overlook with Amy and Tessa, you know, the one on the other side from where we were, and she left to find a place to get a drink. She was looking for a bar or a water fountain or whatever. She heard the scream like we did, but she didn’t see anything.”
“I went back up there this morning,” I said. I told her all about Walter’s pictures and the computers and about walking up and down the road where the blue Fiat had been. “So I visited the caserma and asked Marco to find out who owns a blue Fiat with a license that ends in 10 M or I-O-M.”
“You talked to Captain Quattrocchi today?” Lettie, wide eyed, leaned forward too far and got a swipe of marinara sauce on her blouse, at the point of her left breast. She dipped her napkin in her water glass and worked on the smudge.
I knew it was time to tell her about Marco and me, before it got to the point where I was deliberately leaving it out. “Marco kissed me last night . . . and again today.”
“Oh
, how wonderful!” Lettie clapped her hands noiselessly because there was a wet napkin in one hand. “A summer romance. A Latin lover. What is it they say? La dolce vita.”
“Contain yourself, Lettie. I’m not sure how I feel about it. There’s so much tension, so much happening.” I searched Lettie’s face for a hint of anything other than simple schoolgirl delight and found nothing. “With Marco and Joe going at it tooth and toenail, and a murder investigation and all, I think it’s crazy to complicate things further.”
“How did it feel when he kissed you?”
I laughed. “You’ve seen those pictures of a guy crawling across desert sands, haven’t you? All skin and bones and dying of thirst, and suddenly there’s this great big glass of ice water? It felt like that.” I looked at my plate of spaghetti—twisted and tangled, but not more than the current state of my mind. I had lost my appetite. “Did Beth sleep at all last night?”
“We talked until about two a.m. I was totally worn out, but every time I thought Beth was about to wind down, she’d start crying again.” Lettie put the back of her hand beside her mouth in that curious little stage-whisper way she does. “So I slipped her a mickey.”
“You what?”
“I put some sleeping pills in her ginger ale.”
“That was dangerous. What if she was allergic to the pills or something?”
“No chance. I got ‘em out of her own toiletries kit. She told me, back home, that she was bringing some pills so she could sleep on the plane.”
“Did that do the trick?”
“You bet. As soon as she dozed off, I went to the lobby and called Ollie and cried on his shoulder. It wasn’t even bedtime at home, yet.”
* * * * *
In Florence, there’s a real danger of art overload. This is a state of depravity in which the poor visitor has sunk so lowthat he schleps by Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, giving it only a quick glance while adjusting his sunglasses. The Uffizi Gallery is so huge and so crammed with masterpieces, the only way one can avoid going completely numb is to take in a small part at one time. I steered Lettie to a bench in an open-air courtyard as soon as I noticed her eyes had glazed over. Kicking off my shoes, I stretched my legs out in front of me.