Death of an Obnoxious Tourist (24 page)

The frescoed interior of Brunelleschi’s famous dome depicts the last judgment. On one side, souls condemned to hell tumbled, terrified, into the pit, prodded by horned demons with fiery pitchforks.

How effectively the medieval powers-that-were kept folks in line by scaring the bejeebers out of them,
I thought.

Lettie had a fit of vertigo from looking up too long, and I had to lead her to a seat. As she shook the kink out of her neck, she said, “Wow, it’s too much, isn’t it?”

But it was just starting.

———

Achille paced back and forth across the lobby, his cap twisted in his hands like a wet dishtowel. “Lettie, Lettie, please. You go see Beth, now. Tell her let me see. I need to see her.” He clasped his hands and his cap over his heart so pathetically it was almost comic.

“Achille, she needs to rest,” Lettie said. “I already told you that. I don’t think she’s in her room now, anyway. She left to eat with her brother Joe.”

“No good for her. No good. Joe, he . . .” Achille frowned and made frantic motions with his hands.

I got the idea. He didn’t like Joe. I was also willing to bet Joe didn’t like him, either.

“How was Pisa, Achille?” I asked, attempting to lighten things up a bit.

“Same like always,” he said, holding his forearm at an angle. “Still not straight.”

Lettie and I took the elevator up to Beth’s room. There was an embarrassing moment when the door opened onto the second floor. Elaine King was waiting beside the elevator and crying. I didn’t feel I knew her well enough to intrude on her personal space. On the other hand, I had visited her room this morning. When in doubt, err on the side of friendliness; that’s what I always say.

“Elaine? Can I help?” I held the door open while I waited for an answer.

“No.”

She shook her head and sniffled, so I let the door close and caught up with Lettie in the hall. Somewhere along our walk to the Uffizi, I had filled Lettie in on the curious quartet according to Paul Vogel. Lettie had trouble getting the new scenario straight, mainly because Dick Kramer would seem to be the least likely lothario. Walter and Michael were both urbane and handsome, whereas Dick was a bit of a lump. The sort of man whose hair looks worse after he combs it; the sort of man who looks better if he
doesn’t
shave; the sort of man whose clothes hang a bit awkwardly.

So when Lettie mumbled something about Walter, I reminded her that Dick would more likely be the reason for Elaine’s tears.

“Oh, dear. I can’t get that straight in my head. It still seems like it should be Walter and Elaine.” Lettie knocked on Beth’s door. “So, who actually does work for Dick? Or is it Walter who’s the boss?”

“It’s Dick. Walter works for him. I don’t know what Michael does.”

Beth opened the door. “Joe has gone off to find . . . well, I’m not really sure. He’s looking for a bilingual lawyer, and he wants to see if the American Embassy can do anything for us. He thinks the carabinieri—in particular that Captain Quattrocchi—are harassing me.”

I winced at that.

Beth flopped down crosswise on her bed and rested her back against the wall beside it. “I told Joe they’re just doing their job. Somebody killed Meg, and they have to find out who. Joe seems to think they could let it slide.”

“Did you have a nice lunch?” Lettie asked. “Are you going to lie down and rest for awhile? Is there anything Dotsy and I can get you?”

Beth made a time-out sign with her hands. “I’m fine, Lettie. Well, of course, not really fine, but . . .”

“Did Joe get a room here at the hotel?”

“Yes. A suite. Joe doesn’t do anything halfway. He asked me to share the suite with him, but I’d rather stay here.”

“Beth,” I said, “if you find it too hard to talk about this, say so, but I know Amy married right after she graduated high school. A young man named Perez, I believe. She told me about it last Sunday.”

Lettie glanced at me warily, as if I was stampeding into a delicate subject. I would not normally have broached it at this particular time, but time was what we didn’t have much of, and I was desperate to make connections between Meg and Amy and that note.

“Yes, Perez,” Beth replied. “Our parents weren’t too happy about it, but they accepted it.”

“Was Amy pregnant?”

Beth reddened and Lettie scowled at me. “Yes, she was,” Beth said.

“What happened to the baby?”

“Harvey was in the service and, after we got married, they sent us to Alaska. In those days phone calls to Alaska cost a lot, so I didn’t talk to the family very often. Mom gave me edited highlights of Amy’s situation.”

Beth cleared her throat. “Amy got pregnant in her senior year of high school, and she told people she’d been married since Christmas, you know, like kids usually do. She went into early labor about two months before her due date, or it may not have been early at all because she was never real clear about the date of conception.” Beth leaned forward, tucking her rigid hands between her outstretched legs. “Anyway, the baby didn’t make it, and Amy and—oh, I’ve forgotten what his first name was, young Perez—didn’t have much of a marriage going anyway, so they split up.”

“I know this is going to sound impertinent,” I said, “but when Amy lost the baby, was Meg the nurse in attendance?”

I really should have eased into that question a little better. My question sounded, even to me, like a well-lobbed hand grenade. I was afraid to look at Lettie.

“No,” Beth said. “I mean, I can’t be sure, because I wasn’t there at the time, As I said, Mom and Dad were just giving me edited highlights of Amy’s trials and tribulations. When they called me, they tried to keep the conversation cheerful. I think Amy wasn’t in the same hospital where Meg worked, but I could be wrong.”

“Lettie says elieve something had been bothering Amy since we got to Italy.”

“Oh, yes. I’m sure of that. If only I had made her tell me what it was.”

“But that wouldn’t have made any difference, would it?”

I stifled a gasp. Was Beth suggesting Amy might have committed suicide? That whatever was bothering her might have induced her to jump?

Lettie stood up and shook out her pants legs. I could tell she was anxious to leave.

Beth slid to the edge of the bed. “I might have been able to make her feel better; it might have helped if she’d just been able to talk to someone. No, it wouldn’t have made any difference in . . . in what happened, but her last few days might have been happier.”

“I think they were happy days, Beth,” I said. “Something may have been bothering Amy, but I had the definite feeling that Gianni outshone everything else in her mind.”

“Speaking of Italian men,” Lettie said, heading for the door, “Achille is downstairs in the lobby, pining his heart out.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Beth jumped up and dashed to the bathroom mirror. “Do I look all right? I hope he’s still there.”

“What about Joe? Won’t he be back soon?” Lettie asked.

“Screw Joe,” she said.

Tessa paid Lettie and me a visit as I was opening my French windows to the early evening air. Lettie polished her nails, and I preferred the smells of the city to acetone. Our balcony was big enough to stand on, but not large enough for chairs, so I stood at the railing and Tessa joined me. She looked very, very tired. “I dropped by to tell you about tomorrow,” she said, “although anything or everything could change between now and then.” Draping her arms over the balcony rail, she sighed. “Achille will take whomever wants to go, to Siena about ten o’clock tomorrow morning. It’s a beautiful medieval town, hardly changed at all since the fourteenth century. They have the Palio, a horse race, around the center of town every year. If you want to go, meet Achille in the parking lot. No need to tell him in advance.”

“Are you going?”

“No. I have to stay here. My bosses are not too happy . . .”

Her voice trailed off. It seemed to me that she was too tired to keep her mind on a subject long enough to finish a sentence.

“Captain Quattrocchi wants me to stay here to do any translating necessary,” she continued. “He seems to think my services will be needed. But I don’t know why, really. He speaks English pretty well, himself.”

“I guess when it comes to formal questioning, they have to be sure.”

“That’s what he says.”

“I don’t understand these translating duties. What would he have done if you had been out of town when all this happened?”

“They—and the police, as well—don’t need a translator that often. When they do, they call my roommate, Francesca, or me. Francesca also works for Pellegrino Tours, and we’re both in and out of town a lot. It’s funny, but even though we share an apartment, sometimes we don’t see each other for weeks. Francesca is in the south this week, taking a group around Naples and Pompeii, so I was elected. Of course, I was already here anyway. On the spot, you might say.”

Tessa’s phone rang. I couldn’t tell who she was talking to because the conversation was in Italian, but from her tone of voice, I surmised that it might be her boss.

When she rang off, I asked, “What would happen if they needed a translator and you and Francesca were both out of town?”

“I don’t know. I suspect they have more people on their list than just us. I never thought about it. They don’t even need us that often. They don’t call us for every little traffic or disturbing-the-peace problem involving an English-speaking visitor. Their own English is good enough for that.”

“I see,” I said. “All they need to know how to say is, ‘Shut up before you get yourself in really big trouble.’”

Tessa managed a grin as we walked back into the room. Lettie had finished her nails and was cutting her hair with nail clippers. I didn’t say anything. Lettie’s red hair was cut in what might be described as a random-length or chaos style, so I didn’t see how it could possibly matter if she used nail clippers on it or not.

“I’ve been thinking about Amy and Gianni,” I said. “It was nice that she had so much fun with him in her last few days.” I pulled my blood sugar monitor out of my bag and did a forearm test; sugar level, okay. “What I mean, of course, is that she didn’t know they were her last few days, but I think she really had fun with him, don’t you?”

“She was completely gaga over him, couldn’t even see straight,” Tessa said.

“Who was it that introduced them? You or Cesare?”

Tessa seemed to need a minute to figure that one out.

“Neither of us, actually,” she finally said. “Gianni introduced himself to Cesare in the bar at our hotel in Venice. He had seen Amy walking through the lobby and decided he had to meet her. He told Cesare he worked in men’s clothing. I mean, his job had something to do with men’s clothing. Naturally, he worked while wearing men’s clothing.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Cesare and I both thought it would be all right to ask Amy if she wanted to go out with him as long as we four were together. That way it would be safe, even if we didn’t know him.”

“I assumed that he was an old friend,” I said. “What does Cesare think of him?”

“That he is very young. That he is not very sophisticated.”

Tessa’s phone rang again. Lettie and I stared at each other, waiting quietly for the conversation in Italian to end. This time, something told me it was Cesare calling.

“
Ciao
,” Tessa said, and slipped the phone back in her pocket.

“Do you remember the other night when Cesare asked everyone to his town festival and the parade?” Tessa asked Lettie and me. We nodded. “It’s tomorrow night. I told him some people might think it was inappropriate to attend a festival, under the circumstances, but he says most of the group had no connection with the Bauers, and they are probably itching do something other than hang around here. After all, the trip you paid for calls for us to be on the road again by now. What do you think?”

My first thought was that it would be a little strange to attend a celebration, but then I thought of the Kellys and the Reese-Burtons and the curious quartet who didn’t even know the Bauers.

“Why can’t we do it the same way we’re doing Siena tomorrow?” I said.

Since it was almost seven o’clock, Lettie asked Tessa to go to dinner with us, but Tessa said she had too much to do and she would be lucky if she ate before midnight.

I slipped into the bathroom and took my insulin. Then I grabbed my purse and gave Lettie the high sign. The restaurant downstairs always filled up before eight.

Tessa’s phone rang again. “
Pronto
,” she said. “
Si
. . .
si
. . .” The caller talked for a full minute. Every bit of color drained from Tessa’s face. She turned shakily to the door and opened it, mumbling an almost inaudible “
Scuzi
” to Lettie and me as she stumbled out.

———

“They’ve arrested Beth,” said Wilma Kelly.

She stood at the door. Lettie and I were trying for the fourth time to leave for dinner, and if Wilma had been thirty seconds later, she wouldn’t have caught us.

Lettie and I had gone back to the room for Lettie’s room card. Then we returned for my pager. Then, standing at the elevator, I mentioned to Lettie that she was wearing bedroom slippers, and before we could leave the room for the third time, the phone rang. Shirley Hostetter had lost Crystal again.

“I was in the lobby when Beth and Achille came in,” Wilma said. “Apparently, they’d been out somewhere together. Anyway, you remember that Captain what’s-his-name? The one who’s handling the investigation of Meg’s murder? Well, he stepped out from wherever he’d been, I hadn’t noticed him until then, and he had a couple of uniformed men with him, and he said, ‘Elizabeth Bauer Hines, I am arresting you.’ I forget whether he said ‘for the murder of,’ or ‘on suspicion of murder.’”

“I said, “For the murder of whom?”>

“Margaret Bauer, of course.”

Lettie blanched and fell into a chair.

Wilma closed the door behind herself. “Well, my mouth fell open, and Jim’s did too, and Beth, she looked like she was going to pass out. She stared at Achille and her lips were trembling, and he, Achille, looked so helpless. Looked like he wanted to attack the Captain. Protect Beth. Slay the dragon.” Wilma took up an
en garde
position and brandished an air sword. “But he’d just get himself arrested, too, if he did anything.”