Death of an Obnoxious Tourist (18 page)

“You know what I mean then,” Marco said. “Things like that just keep coming up. But Tessa has a very good alibi.”

“I know. She was with the victim’s sister at the time of the murder.”

“Also, she has a receipt from a cash machine that says she was downtown at five thirty-two p.m.”

“That let’s out Amy, too.”

“Yes. They both agree they were at the cash machine together. And Amy has also told me that Meg was a very active supporter of . . . what do you call the kind of aborht Tessat pulls the baby . . .” Marco twisted one hand into a forceps-like curl.

“Partial-birth abortion,” I said.

“Right. And Mrs. Wilma Kelly is quite active in the movement
against
partial-birth abortions. She has had her picture in the paper protesting against it.”

My brain was in danger of crashing from information overload. “How did you find this out?” I asked.

“Mrs. Shirley Hostetter mentioned it.”

———

If I slept a whole hour that Sunday night, it certainly wasn’t more than that. I had too much to think about. I pretended to be asleep so Lettie wouldn’t talk to me and so I could think things out by myself. Sometimes, it’s good to bounce your ideas off someone else, sometimes it’s good to listen, and sometimes you have to work it out in your own head. I started by imagining Beth Hines as her sister’s killer. I tried, as they say, “wearing that for a while.”

I imagined being at the mercy of a shrewish sister at a time in my life when I had always imagined I’d be free and financially secure. I’d drive home—no, I’d drive to
her
home—from work every day in the old clunker my husband left me, only to spend the evening with a never-ending discourse on all my flaws and shortcomings. I would think, now and again, that if I had gotten my fair share of my mother’s money, I wouldn’t be a charity case. Perhaps I’d dwell on that. Perhaps I’d obsess about it.

I imagined how Beth must have felt when Meg embarrassed her in Venice, in front of Achille, perhaps the first man to show an interest in her as a woman since her divorce. On that fateful Friday, having just dealt with the loss of her money and credit cards, she would have had to listen to a lengthy harangue from Meg about her stupidity in allowing herself to be robbed. How would she feel, after a trek through sweltering afternoon streets, dripping with sweat, to discover that what she had hoped was a gift—maybe even from an admirer—was one more cruel insult from Meg?

If I had bought that knife for a completely innocent purpose, for a gift, I would certainly remember it. I would think about its potential. I would realize that, with one well-placed slice, my “Coltello d’Amore”
—
knife of love—would silence that hateful voice forever. Would I be able to resist the temptation? If there was ever a straw that broke the camel’s back, wouldn’t the card on that pot of flowers, the card that said, “Vanity, vanity” be that straw?

If I were Beth, I could have slipped into the bathroom when Meg was preoccupied with her own ugly face in the mirror, grabbed her hair in my left hand, jerked it backward—

The memorial service. My mind suddenly jumped to the memorial service and the fact that I had totally forgotten to call the organist. I punched the little light on my wristwatch; it was 11:05. Was it too late to call? Italians do tend to have long dinners and to stay up later in the evenings. I didn’t want to awaken Lettie, so I slipped on my slacks and shirt in the dark, ran my feet under the bed until I found my shoes, and felt around on the floor under a chair for my purse.

I’d also need a Bible. I had meant to check our room for a Gideon Bible before going to bed, but, like the call to the organist, I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts of Beth, I had forgotten. I needed a Bible—in English—to pick out a couple of things to read tomorrow. I didn’t plan to make a speech. I hoped one or two people might volunteer to say a few words, and I could come up with a kind sentence or two myself, but a couple of scriptural passages would definitely be needed if the service was to last more than five minutes.

The woman at the concierge desk led me through a warren of computers, fax machines, and a central phone bank which appeared to have buttons for dozens of extensions. She unlocked a small office door, entered, and ran her fingers along the top row of books on a shelf while I waited at the doorway.

“
Grazie
,” I said as she handed me an English-language Bible. “
Ritorno domani
?” I added, feeling incredibly bilingual.

From a phone in the lobby, I dialed the number of the organist and braced myself for an avalanche of verbal abuse. A woman answered, “
Pronto.
”

“
Il mio nome è
Mrs. Lamb.” I switched to English, figuring that if the woman didn’t understand me, I had the wrong number. She was, indeed, the organist I was looking for, I had not awakened her, and she would have played for us tomorrow if I’d called earlier. She had another engagement.

So it would be a plain and simple service. But at least we’d have one song from Lucille Vogel, who had said she didn’t mind singing a cappella.

I parked myself in the same chair in front of the elevator that I had sat in on Friday afternoon. In a cold rush, the horror swept over me again. The confusion at the desk, the scurry, and the curt orders spat out by the hotel manager as he rushed past us. I shook myself back to the present and flipped through the Bible, sticking scraps of paper at Psalm cxxi and I Corinthians xv. I thought those passages would sound good.

Gathering my stuff together in preparation for returning to my room, I saw Amy and Gianni approach the elevator, their arms wrapped around each other. Amy carried her high-heeled sandals hooked over her fingers. Her head was tucked into the hollow of Gianni’s neck, and he lightly kissed her hair. I wondered if she had taken the shoes off so she’d be shorter than Gianni for the goodnight kiss. He held her against the wall beside the brass panel of buttons and kissed her over and over. I think I could have yelled “Fire” and neither would have moved.

Back in my bed, I resumed my tossing and turning. So Ivo had actually been in Meg’s room and had seen her lying there in a pool of blood. I could understand why he had not reported it, but to take the time to swipe the wallet before he ran out? I couldn’t imagine thinking about money at a time like that.

Paul Vogel had been asking about the men in our group only because he assumed a woman wouldn’t have had the strength to do it. Could I have done it? If yes, any woman in our group could have mued Meg. I decided if I was mad enough, or determined enough, I could. The hardest part would be steeling the nerves to actually press and drag that blade across the neck. It might be easier, I thought, for someone who’d had experience with blades and flesh. A chicken or pig farmer, perhaps, or a hunter, or a butcher, or a doctor—or a nurse.

I thought about Shirley Hostetter. She had a motive. She had been forced to quit her job because Meg surreptitiously altered her note detailing the doctor’s orders. But why would Shirley have told the story to Victoria Reese-Burton? Wouldn’t she have tried to hide the fact that she had reason to hate Meg? Marco said Shirley had told him about Wilma versus Meg in the battle over partial-birth abortion. Might Shirley have mentioned that in order to throw suspicion on someone else? Might she have told her story to Victoria because she knew it was bound to come out anyway, once Meg’s murder was investigated? Put the story out there so it wouldn’t seem as if you were hiding it?

I worried that I was becoming way too suspicious.

What about Jim and Wilma? Jim had no motive and no alibi. He was supposedly in his room throughout the relevant time, and I had already learned not to put too much stock in an apparent lack of motive. Motives had a way of popping up.

Wilma Kelly was certainly an intense, issue-oriented sort of person. The sort that would love to throw fake blood on a woman wearing a fur coat. But murder? I couldn’t see it. Murder would be a refutation of everything she stood for.

Geoffrey and Victoria Reese-Burton had no possible motives. Okay, Victoria had a fairly weird hobby—medieval torture—but that was strictly armchair torture, I was sure. I rose to my feet, went to the bathroom, drank a box of orange juice, and brushed my teeth again to get the sweet juice off.

Amy and Tessa. Tessa and Amy. Friends since college. Amy had a motive—money. Tessa might have had a motive. Paul’s contacts back home might dig up something, but the problem with Amy and Tessa was that at the time of the murder, they were definitely together, so either they were in it together, or they weren’t in it at all. And, of course, there was the time problem. Unless Marco was wrong about the time of the murder, Amy and Tessa couldn’t have done it unless they could get from the hotel to downtown Florence in two minutes. Make that eight to ten minutes. Marco had said, “Give or take a few minutes.” But still. No way.

I wasted a half-hour trying to consciously will myself to sleep by relaxing every part of my body, starting with my head and working my way down to my toes. After a dozen attempts, I gave up. So I analyzed everything I knew about Gianni—a kid, a copycat—that was about it. Cesare—arrogant? No, that was unfair. I thought he looked arrogant, but I had no evidence that he was. Well, almost no evidence. He was the sort of man who’d rather send an electronic message to his fiancée a few yards away than get up and stick his head out the door. Cesare was probably connected with the mob-controlled underworld in some way. I had heard that from two independent sources, and he was awfully young to be holding political office. Did he owe that position to the criminal element? Might they have demanded repayment?

Lucille Vogel: motive, money for drugs; opportunity, practically none. I couldn’t see how she could have killed Meg and met us in the lobby just a few minutes later. Paul Vogel: motive, noneportunity, who knows? But Paul was such a sneaky guy, he could easily have killed Meg, circled around the hotel, and followed the gruesome foursome into the parking lot. That way, it would appear that he, too, had come from downtown.

Speaking of the gruesome foursome, in spite of their little deception as to who was bedding whom, I knew of no connection between any of them and Meg Bauer, except that Elaine King, Dick Kramer’s paramour, was acquainted with Beth and had heard about this tour from her. If there was another connection, perhaps Paul’s sources back home would uncover it.

When my wake-up call came at 7:30 a.m., I clicked the receiver and tackled one more worrisome thought.
Suppose Paul Vogel does have a motive, and his connections back home discover it. He certainly won’t report it to me, will he? And the same would go for his sister, Lucille.

We almost filled the little chapel on the left side of the nave. I counted twenty of us, including Gianni and Cesare, and we arrived in a Ferrari, a Fiat, and three taxis. The curious quartet moseyed in on eight feet, having opted to walk. Father Quick had forgotten all about our request, but it didn’t matter. There was no one else scheduled to use the chapel.

Crystal Hostetter shocked me. She arrived with an acoustic guitar she had rented and asked me if she could play a song during the service. I glanced at her mother, hoping for some assurance that it would be okay, because I immediately flashed on a vision of Crystal and her guitar bouncing vintage Sex Pistols off the Norman arches, shattering the stained glass windows. Shirley gave me a nod.

I started with my first reading and then called on Crystal to play. She seated herself atop a stool off to one side and began to play—simply, beautifully—a melody that brought tears to most of our eyes. Her pink head bent down over the neck of the guitar, her right hand expertly plucked intricate variations on each chord. I wondered if I was the only one who recognized “Girlfriend in a Coma,” a song recorded by The Smiths sometime in the eighties. I had heard it hundreds of times, pounding through one or the other of my kids’ bedroom doors. The funny thing was that Crystal wouldn’t have even been born at the time that record was released.
Don’t tell me “Girlfriend in a Coma” is already a classic,
I thought, as I glanced across the aisle toward Tessa, Amy, and their boyfriends. They were mostly of an age to have been teens at about that time. Only Amy showed signs of recognition, her grin discreetly concealed by a tissue.

Tessa said a few appropriate words, and Amy followed suit. She didn’t go so far as to say she’d miss her sister, but she came up with some nice things to say about her—nice, without being too disingenuous. Beth sat, motionless and withdrawn, her hands lying softly in her lap. She was so small and vulnerable, I thought.

Lucille, looking more than usual like a dwarf bowling pin, came to the altar, folded her fat little hands in front of her and sang the “Ave Maria” in a deep, rich, contralto voice like liquid silver. It seemed to me that the very walls of the church sang with her. There was not a dry eye in the chapel when she finished. After my last reading, Lucille finished the service with “Amazing Grace.” The whole service had turned out so much better than I had imagined. On our way out, everyone gave Crystal and Lucille hugs and thanked them.

Lettie and I walked downtown immediately after the memorial service, with the vague idea of shopping, browsing, or eating lunch. I wanted to go back to the Museo Archeologico, but I didn’t think it would interest Lettie, so we found ourselves winding up and down rows of stalls that sold leather goods, clothing, and jewelry in a large open air market near the Church of Santa Croce. I know nothing about how to tell real Gucci purses and Rolex watches from fake ones, but from the prices I saw on most, I thought I could assume they were fake. Still, some of the leather jackets were gorgeous and bargain-priced. I had to try on one or two of them, in spite of the heat. I didn’t need a leather jacket, but at these prices . . .

“Dotsy! Here’s Meg’s purse!” Lettie called from a nearby purse and wallet stall.

I handed the jacket back to the vendor and dashed over. Lettie held up a brown Fendi handbag with a large, silver buckle on the side. I vaguely remembered Meg wrenching a very similar bag out of Lettie’s hand as we were getting on the bus in Scarperia. Lettie had tried to clean off the ice cream that she had accidentally spilled on the purse, but Meg wouldn’t let her. I cringed a little at the memory.