Death of an Obnoxious Tourist (26 page)

In the parking lot below and to the right of the fountain, a girl ran across to meet a man in dark clothing, with his collar turned up and his cap pulled down low on his face. Obviously, he was waiting for her. Seated on a low wall at the edge of the lot, he stood up as she approached. The girl was Tessa. The flowered dress and clunky shoes were the same clothes I’d seen her wearing at the caserma earlier. In the dim half-light of the lamp posts, colors were mostly shades of blue, and spots danced before my eyes, but Tessa’s mop of curls, the flowered dress, the clunky shoes, the way she ran—it was definitely Tessa.

She couldn’t have exchanged more than two sentences with the man. She handed him an envelope, turned, and ran back the way she had come. The man opened the envelope and appeared to check its contents. He watched her retreating figure for a minute, then ambled—almost a swagger, it seemed—to his car. I was about to throw up, but through waves of nausea, I strained to get a good look at the car. It looked like a Fiat, but I couldn’t determine the color. Everything in the parking lot looked blue.

I strained to see the license plate, but the front end of the car, the end facing me, was in shadow. It could be Gianni. There was nothing about him that couldn’t be Gianni, but with the cap, I couldn’t see his face at all. On the way to the Uffizi gallery today, Lettie and I had remarked on how many Fiats there were; far more than in America. And blue was a common color.

What would Tessa have given to Gianni? What could have been in that envelope? A payoff? A memento? Something to remember Amy by? I couldn’t think. In a dim sort of way, I realized I needed to get downstairs—to get some sugar. The elevator doors seemed a mile away, but I reached it, somehow, and punched the button. There was only the one button, unnecessarily marked with an arrow pointing down. I waited. Nothing.

I pushed the button again and waited. Sweat beaded up on my forehead. It was hard to estimate how long I had been standing there, or to decide how long I should wait. There was always the staircase. I didn’t think I could make it down the stairs, but at least I could start. Once inside the building, I could yell for help. Would anyone hear me? The stairwell was separated from each floor by a set of double doors, but perhaps someone would be on the stairway—if only I could yell loud enough. My voice, I felt, would be too weak. I weaved my way to the stairwell door, my purse slapping annoyingly against my side as I lurched forward. I grabbed the door and pulled. Nothing. Locked.

My palms were sweating, and I was about to lose my grip on my purse. I knew I couldn’t make it to the elevator again. My brain was fading in and out. It seemed important to get to the edge of the roof. I was about to throw up and I didn’t want to get the roof messy. My lips had gone numb.

The pager! That’s why I’d rented the pagers. Logically, it seemed wise to lie flat. I needed to be prone, as flat as possible, because I couldn’t fall down if I was already down.

I sank to the rough tile and dumped the contents of my purse. My hand found the pager and I flicked it on. There was a low-wattage floodlight mounted on the brick exterior of the elevator shaft. Blessed light, enough to see by, despite the spots dancing across my field of vision. I crawled nearer to the light. It was angled so that its beam shone in an oval across the tiles and part of the railing. When at last I twisted the pager into a position where I could see the screen, I entered “roof” and sent the message, hopefully to Lettie, wherever she was.

The pager slipped from my hand and skidded under the railing. I wiggled forward on my stomach and ran my hand under the iron railing, only to push the pager over the edge with my fingers. Next stop, the flowerbed.

With my last wisp of consciousness, I realized that I had pushed “roo” but not the letter “f.”

“Well, yes, it took some time,” a voice stated. “Nobody really knows exactly how long.”

A second voice said, “At least an hour, don’t you think?”

“How long have you been here?” the first voice asked. Do you want to get something to eat?”

“I would like a break. Just a short one. Do you mind?”

“That’s what I’m here for, dear,” the first voice said.

“Wait. I thought I saw her move.”

“I don’t think so.”

Actually, I think I had moved, but I didn’t feel like joining this particular universe quite yet, so I lay still. To wake up was to enter the world with all its problems and questions, questions, questions. I wasn’t ready.

The first voice said, “You should have been in the lobby last night when Captain Quattrocchi came in.”

“I guess we were in the ambulance by that time,” the second voice said.
Lettie!
“Why? What happened?”

“The man at the front desk admitted that you can’t get into the stairs from the roof because that door only opens from the inside. The Captain went all red in the face, yelling, ‘I’ll have your guts for garters!’”

“I’ll have your guts for garters?”

“Well, he was yelling in Italian, of course, but that was the gist of it.”

I tried to move my head slightly, so as not to attract attention. It felt as if my brain was full of marbles, and they all shifted. I waited a few minutes. There was no more conversation, so I thought I might be alone. Opening one eye enough to glance down my body, I could see a plastic tube, a white sheet, the tip of a red toenail. Obviously, I was in a hospital bed. I tightened my neck muscles and moved my head a little more. It wasn’t as bad this time. I didn’t pass out from the pain.

I opened both eyes. Might as well get this over with, although I rather hoped I’d be able to lie there a few more minutes before I had to make any important decisions.

Victoria Reese-Burton sat in an upholstered chair against a white wall. She flipped through an Italian language magazine. She looked up and smiled.

“Welcome back, dear,” she said in a suitably soft voice.

The marbles in my brain thanked her for not yelling. “I went hypoglycemic, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yes. In a big way. We’ve had quite a night with you. Oh, I’m just so glad you’re awake. Lettie’s downstairs, getting a bite of breakfast. Do you want me to find her? She’ll be so happy.”

“No, thanks. Let her eat. What’s in the IV?”

“A saline solution, dear. They gave you something last night, an injection they called . . . glucose? No, but gluco-something.”

“Glucagon, I bet. What time is it?”

Victoria checked her watch. “About half-seven . . . a.m. You’ve been here all night.”

“What happened?” I tried, feverishly, to remember the events leading up to this pretty predicament. I flashed on Michelangelo’s
Holy Family
, dashing down the street with Lettie, two carabinieri on white horses, the caserma, the floodlit Duomo. “I was on the roof, wasn’t I?”

“You were indeed on the roof, but it took the brains of a dozen people about an hour to figure that out. Lettie got a message on her pager that said ‘roo,’ and at first she thought you were telling her you were in Shirley and Crystal’s room. That you had meant to send ‘room’ and whatever their room number is.” Victoria waved her hand dismissively. “Lettie said that was your signal to let her know where you were, but that if you had wanted her to call the room, you would have sent the message ‘call room whatever.’”

“Right. But since I hadn’t given any room number, how did she interpret that?”

“That you had changed your mind about sending the message, but had accidentally sent it anyway. That’s why she waited quite a while before she did anything.”

“I see.”

“So after a while, she called Shirley, who said that you weren’t there, and Crystal told her you’d come to the door some time ago, but you hadn’t come in.”

I dimly recalled doing that. If I had a few minutes to think about it, I felt like I could bring it all back. I could see Crystal standing there, holding her guitar by its neck. I walked down the hall, my purse felt too light—yes, it was coming back.

“Lettie and Shirley called room after room. Then the rest of us got in on it. We all—well, several of us at least—ended up in your room. Yak, yak, yakking. Some were of the opinion that you had started to tell Lettie what room you were in, and then you decided to go out somewhere, but sent a part of the message by mistake. Then Tessa had the brainstorm. She said, ‘Roof! That’s it. Not room, roof!’ And Lettie said, ‘Of course. That’s where we were earlier. She may have gone back for some reason.’ So we all dashed up straight away, and there you were.”

“I owe all of you a big one.”

“Are you hungry, Dotsy? I can call for some breakfast for you.”

“Not just yet. What’s on the agenda for today?”

“Some are going to Siena, but Crystal and Shirley and I are going to San Gimignano. Achille says he can drop us off on the way and pick us up later.”

“How was Pisa yesterday?”

“Oh, lovely. Crystal and I went together, and Shirley stayed in the hotel. Geoffrey wanted to browse the Boboli Gardens. He’s a keen gardener at home, you know.”

“After spending the day with Crystal, what do you think? Is she doing a normal teen rebellion thing, or are there bigger problems?”

“To tell you the truth, compared to some of the youngsters you see on the street in London, Crystal is an advert for Laura Ashley.” Eyes twinkling, Victoria laughed. “Crystal is an exceptional girl, I think. She has a gift for looking at the world differently; from various angles. I think she gets irritated with her mother because Shirley sees things from a conventional angle.” Victoria sliced the air in front of her face with a knife-rigid hand.

I thought of “Girlfriend in a Coma,” the song Crystal had played at Meg’s memorial service. A bit of a tongue-in-cheek joke on the older crowd? On her mother? If so, it was both clever and harmless.

“Yesterday, we took pictures of the leaning tower,” Victoria continued. “Well, everybody does, of course. What else would one do at Pisa? I’ve seen people standing in front of if with their hands up—like they’re holding it up, you know. They do that all the time. I’ve seen people turn the camera, so the tower looks like it’s up straight, but then the grass is on an angle. But do you know what Crystal did? She walked around ninety degrees and took a photo from there. How clever.”

“Dotsy! Oh, oh, you’re awake.” Lettie clapped her hands. Two tears ran down her cheeks, and she grabbed a tissue from my bedside stand.

Taking leave of us to go back to the hotel, Victoria pshawed my profuse thanks for her help.

Lettie jammed her fists on her hips. “Well, Dotsy, the next time you send ‘roo’ you’d better be talking about Kanga’s baby. We were at our wit’s end.”

“I’m sorry. I guess you didn’t find my pager, did you?”

“It wasn’t there.”

“I know. I think I knocked it over the edge. We’ll have to check around the building when we get back. When are they going to release me? Do I have a doctor?”

“I’ll find out what I can. But are you strong enough to leave?”

“All I need is some ibuprofen and I’ll be fine.”

Lettie disappeared for several minutes. When she returned, she told me the nurse thought I’d be able to leave as soon as the doctor knew I was awake. The nurse was on her way to locate him.

I asked, “What do you want to do today? Some of the group are going to Siena.”

“Do you think you’re well enough to make a trip like that?”

“Of course I’m well enough, but I don’t want to go. This may be our last day in Florence and I have yet to spend more than a few minutes at the archaeology museum, which is the main thing I came here to see. I want to go there and spend at least a couple of hours.”

“Do you need me to go with you? I told two friends back home I’d price some gold chains. They supposedly have some nice bargains at the shops along the sides of that bridge.”

“The Ponte Vecchio? Okay. Let’s each do our own thing. Shopping bores me and the museum would bore you.” I tried to sit up. My head felt like a tennis ball at Wimbledon, but at least the match was nearly over. “Oh! Guess what? Before I passed out last night, I saw Tessa in the parking lot down below. She gave an envelope to a man who left in a Fiat.”

“Gianni?”

“Could have been.”

“Mrs. Lamb, I’m happy to see you are awake now.” The man in a white lab coat extended his hand.

I didn’t catch his name, but it had to be my doctor. He explained what they had done to me last night and cautioned me in the strongest terms not to run such a risk again. He spoke very halting English. I assured him that I would be careful and he would not see me gain. A nurse stood behind him. She made notes on a clipboard.

“May I leave now?” I asked the doctor.

“The nurse will take your vital signs, and then you may go.”

The nurse jotted that down.

“One more thing,” I said. I begged a pen and paper from Lettie and wrote SYNE, crossed that out and wrote SYNTOMETRINE. I hoped I remembered correctly the word on Amy’s little slip of paper. The doctor looked at it and frowned. “What kind of medicine is that?” I asked.

“After the birth of a child,” he said, “It is used to make the uterus contract.”

“What if it was given to a woman who was in early labor?”

He shook his head energetically. “Never!”

“What if a woman wanted an abortion?”

“That would do it.”

I didn’t pursue it any further. He was obviously uncomfortable with the whole conversation. I didn’t have any belongings to gather up, but Lettie looked around the room anyway, while I signed a couple of papers the nurse gave me and changed into my own clothes.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Lettie said. “Marco Quattrocchi is downstairs. I guess we’d better sneak out another door, right?”

I didn’t need an ugly confrontation. I thought about last night and about the pity party I had held in my own honor on the roof.
Time to grow up, Dotsy. So it all fell apart. So what? He’s the man in charge of finding out who killed Meg and quite likely, who killed Amy too.
It occurred to me that it was much better to be on speaking terms with him than to be “out of the loop.”

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Go downstairs, find him, and think of some reason to mention that I’m here and I’m on my way down. If he wants to leave before I get there, he can.”