Dying For Siena (32 page)

While Faith heartened to Tim’s unusual praise, he sneaked in a chance to lean over and peck her on the cheek, and took her hand.

He smiled, showing dull, gray teeth. “I love Siena,” he said. “And if you’re going to be spending a year here, that’ll be my chance to come over more often.”

Faith withdrew her hand and barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes.
Damn him!
Tim obviously wasn’t reading her face language, her body language or her language language. She couldn’t speak her thoughts out loud in a van full of colleagues, so she looked out the window instead.

It was the diplomatic choice, and had the added advantage that the countryside was much better looking than Tim Gresham.

“So, Professor Kobbel, you have a lot of explaining to do.” Dante felt like a character in a Hercule Poirot story at the denouement of the novel.

They should have been in the darkened library of an English country manor, rain lashing the windows, his elbow propped on the mantelpiece. Instead, they were in his sunny office, window open to the view of rooftops stretching away toward
Via di Città
.

Kobbel had finally stopped weeping hysterically, for which he was profoundly grateful. Dante was well aware of the many weaknesses of his character. One of the greatest was he couldn’t stand to see a woman crying. Even a lying, murdering woman’s tears could unman him.

Dante had sat rigidly in his chair, jaws and hands clenched, while she’d wept tears of rage and frustration. Finally, finally, the storm passed and she sat quietly, head bowed, fingers picking at the stiff fabric of her skirt.

Now he could talk to her rationally. He leaned forward. He wanted to start slowly, work his way up to attempted murder and then the real thing. “Professor Kobbel, this morning Faith Murphy was almost killed by a terra-cotta vase dropped from a great height. She missed death by inches. That is attempted murder and it is a serious crime in this country. It carries a mandatory sentence of seven years in jail.”

Her jaw worked upwards, giving her face a mulish cast. “Well, I’m sorry it happened, but it has nothing to do with me. I was upstairs in my room, minding my own business when all the commotion down in the courtyard attracted my attention—”

Dante sighed. “Before you go any further, professor, I think you should know that the vase broke in shards large enough to show fingerprints. And my fingerprint tech has found a match.”

He was lying through his teeth. The vase had shattered into tiny pieces and dust. Even if the pieces had been larger, terra-cotta was much too porous a medium to take prints.

And anyway, his fingerprint tech, Lionello Pucci, who had taken a six-week course in Rome a few months ago and was still enthusiastically, though profitlessly, reviewing the course material, would never have been able to make a match. The pieces would have had to go to Florence, where it would have taken them days to give an answer.

Nonetheless, Madeleine Kobbel had paled on cue and he had his answer.

Any further comments would be superfluous. He put on his knowing, can’t-get-anything-past-a-cop look and waited. And sure enough—

“It’s not fair. She’s only here in Siena on sufferance because Tim couldn’t come. Roland wanted her to help with the organizing and administration. Faith’s a nobody. A
nobody!

“A TA, for Christ’s sake, and not even a good one at that. She’s boring in class and her students can barely hear her. She doesn’t contribute anything to the running of the course. She never speaks up in admin meetings. People never even know she’s there.

“Okay,” she shrugged irritably, “so maybe she’s written a few interesting papers, but so what? She’s a nobody and all of a sudden she comes over here and she’s a—she’s a
star.
It’s not fair.”

And so you try to drop fifty kilos of vase and dirt and geraniums on her head,
Dante thought. But that was only the
antipasto.
Time to move on to the main course.

He tapped a pen on his blotter. “It seems, Professor Kobbel, that you neglected to tell us something. Something very important.”

She looked up, eyes red-rimmed, lids half-lowered. Heavy lines bracketed her mouth. She was looking singularly unattractive and Dante felt sorry for her. Being bony and plain was hard enough, without the prospect of spending at least twenty years for the attempted murder of Faith Murphy and the murder of Roland Kane in the
Volterra
prison, where she would come out bonier and plainer and sixty-seven years old.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were married to Roland Kane?”

She looked utterly surprised, as if he’d suddenly started discussing soccer scores. Her brow creased. “What?”

Dante tapped the paper in front of him. “You were married to Roland Kane from 1985 to 1989. The two of you lived in San Francisco, where he was a Professor Emeritus at City College and you were a teaching assistant. I’ve been investigating Roland Kane’s murder and have spoken to you on several occasions. Didn’t you think your marriage to him was noteworthy? That you should’ve mentioned it?”

She shrugged and brushed long, gray bangs away from her brow. “It was a long time ago.”

Dante’s back teeth ground. “That might be, but it’s still very pertinent. What happened?”

She looked startled again. “What do you mean?”

“The marriage ended. Why?”

“You’ve spoken with people…Roland’s colleagues,
Commissario
Rossi. You must have a good idea why the marriage broke down. It was impossible being married to him. It only lasted as long as it did because of—” She stopped and bit her lip.

Dante didn’t have to look down at the report on his desk. “Because of the child. A girl.”

Her eyes lifted to his and he could see an ancient, wild grief there. It was such an intense, intimate look into her, into the very heart and soul of her that he wanted to avert his eyes. The part of his heart that could never be closed to a woman shifted and opened a little.

“Lauren,” she whispered. She swallowed and Dante watched her thin throat contract. “Lauren was born with multiple birth defects. I had to quit working to take care of her. She needed a lot of medical attention and the hospital bills mounted up.

“Roland behaved very badly. He moved out of the house the day I came home from the hospital with Lauren. He couldn’t stand to look at her. We stayed married because his job had medical benefits. He filed for divorce the day she died.”

Dante knew the sick pity he felt didn’t show on his face. He’d never even come close to marriage, had always been careful with protection, and was as sure as any man could be about that sort of thing that there were no kids of his running around. He also knew that the day he got married and had children…that was it—he’d be no more capable of deserting them than he could fly to the moon. No Rossi could.

“And yet you joined him in Massachusetts years later.”

Madeleine Kobbel gave a short laugh. “I was going nowhere academically, and my three-year hiatus hadn’t helped. When Roland called me out of the blue, I thought—” Her hands twisted in her lap. “I thought he’d, I don’t know…repented.”

Her hands flew up like pale, bony birds. “I thought somehow he was sorry for the way he’d behaved. That’s insane, of course,” she added bitterly. “Roland doesn’t—didn’t—feel anything.”

And as a direct consequence of that, he’d died,
Dante thought.

“I was without a job,” she continued. “So I was more than willing to come to Massachusetts. Only I didn’t get a job in Deerfield either. Not right away anyway. Roland wanted me to do his scut work on his book for him. The typing, the editing, doing the minor calculations.

“I’d been out of the academic world for many years by that point. My career was over. So when he arranged a job on the staff at St. Vincent’s, of course I said yes. It was perfect for him. I was utterly beholden to him and could be counted on to do what he wanted. He was a hateful man.”

This last was said in a low, vicious whisper. Her jaw muscles bunched as she sat staring at her hands. Dante let the silence seep into the room. Outside his window, the streets were quiet, that peculiar quiet of the day of the
Palio
, when the whole city held its breath, waiting, waiting.

“So hateful you killed him.”

“No.” Her hair swung back and forth as she shook her head. “No, I hated him, but I was dependent on him. I’d be without a job if it weren’t for him. And now that he’s dead, I’ll lose my job. God knows where I’ll find another one. Certainly not in the academic world.”

It was a good try. Dante recognized that. And maybe a line her defense lawyer would take. And no doubt she’d have all the time in the world to reflect on Roland Kane’s sins as she stared out the windows of the prison at the moonscape around
Volterra
.

“Professor Kobbel,” Dante said, rising.

Her eyes followed him up.

“I am going to read you your rights and call the American consulate in Florence to see that you get legal representation. An English-speaking counsel will be here in a few hours.

“In the meantime, I am calling the public prosecutor in to take your statement. You will, of course, be free to elect a legal counsel of your choice at a later stage when—”

“You really think I killed Roland, don’t you?”

Dante didn’t answer.

“If you think I did, you’re barking up the wrong tree. And letting the real murderer get off. I didn’t want to have to say this,
Commissario
Rossi, but I have a cast-iron alibi for the night Roland Kane was murdered.” Pink tinged the sallow skin stretched tightly over her cheeks. “I was in bed with my lover of seven years, the porter up at the
Certosa
, Egidio Pecci. I was with him all night. He’d be willing to swear to that.”

Dante sat back down again, abruptly.

Where is everyone?
Faith thought. There was an expectant hush in the streets of Siena. She could hear footsteps a street away. It was high noon on a day that the city apparently waited for all year, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. The sun beat down on the gray paving stones of the city streets as if it had a weight and heft all its own. Faith tried to keep in the shade, scurrying from shadow to shadow.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Where is everyone? The whole place is deserted, it’s weird.”

She and Tim had separated from the rest of their colleagues, or rather, Tim had herded her away. She still felt mildly guilty about her treatment of him and had allowed herself to be spirited away.

Tim was being charming company, morphing back into the old ironic Tim she’d known, not the sappy and clumsy suitor he’d been over the past few days, hovering at her side and throwing her longing glances.

And he was proving surprisingly knowledgeable about Siena and its history.

“Where is everyone? They’re down in the
piazza
watching the last trial heat. Hey, careful. Watch your step.” Tim smiled and took her elbow to steer her around a mound of horse droppings, then dropped her arm immediately, to her relief. “On the day of the
Palio
, horse poop brings good luck, but stepping in it is overkill.

“And I’m sure the good luck doesn’t apply to foreigners. Nothing applies to foreigners in this city, it’s all inward-looking.” He stopped and fastidiously scraped off a bit of manure clinging to the edge of his right sandal. “Did you know that on the day of the race the horses are brought into the
contrada
church and blessed?”

Faith laughed. “You’re joking.”

“Nope. They’re brought in by the jockeys. The horse is given some hay and munches it while the priest says some Catholic mumbo jumbo over it, then sprinkles it with holy water, kisses it on the nose and says, ‘Go forth, little horse, and come back victorious.’ Swear to God.”

He grinned. “I’ve seen it three times in the
contrada
church of the Eagle,
San Giovanni Battista
. We’re in the Eagle
contrada
right now. It’s great watching the ceremony—the priest and the jockey standing around soberly in this elegant, little baroque church listening to Mass and this horse, munching on hay and farting.”

A horse in church, being blessed by a priest. It sounded…fun. Worlds away from the Catholicism of Faith’s parents, narrow-minded and mean.

“And the best bit is when the horse poops.” Tim grinned. “Everyone goes ‘Ahhhh’. Because it’s a sign of good luck.”

“Like pigeon droppings,” Faith laughed.

“Yeah, only bigger and better. Hey! Look at that.” They’d been meandering around the back streets, seeking shade, when suddenly the street opened up in front of them and the birthday cake facade of the cathedral rose tall and imposing, ornate and unreal.

Faith narrowed her eyes against the blinding glare, wishing she’d thought to bring along her sunglasses. She blinked sweat out of her eyes.

Fanciful spires topped the towers and fierce, white marble gargoyles stared down at them, disapproving of the passersby for eight hundred years. The bell tower to the right had narrow black and white stripes rising dizzily to the top. The stripes floated and vibrated like an optical illusion in the glare of the sun.

She had her bearings now. Across the immense square to the right, past a huge, mysterious arch, was the police station. And Nick.

Faith tried not to sigh. She needed to take her mind off Nick. Her emotions were still raw and unsure, flustered, rising suddenly at odd moments like the pigeons fluttering high up in the air at a stranger’s footsteps, only to settle back down somewhere else.

Nick seemed to think something had been settled between them in her days here, but she had no idea what her feelings were, beyond an intense desire for him. But if there had been no future for them before, a year in Siena was a tombstone on any foolish hopes she might have harbored in the deepest reaches of her heart.

Sober thoughts for a glorious day.
She had to shake the somber mood.

The door of the cathedral was open, bits of gold and marble glinting in the cool darkness within. It was enticingly mysterious.

She elbowed Tim. “Do you know I haven’t been inside the cathedral yet? I can’t believe it. That’s usually the first place I go to in a city…not that I’ve traveled that much.”