Meet Me in Venice (24 page)

Sam turned and walked quickly down the maze of little lanes until he came to an open
caffè-bzr.
He stood at the counter alongside men in suits and overcoats, newspapers tucked under their arms, grabbing coffee and
cornetti
on their way to the office. He ordered a double espresso, piled in the sugar, drank it down and ordered a second. He lit a cigarette, wincing at the acrid taste. Smoking was a habit he’d kicked years ago and resurrected only recently. The cigarette tasted like ashes and he ground it out, sipping the espresso instead. He had a third, waiting for the caffeine to kick in and clear his liquor-overloaded head. It was almost eight before a cold gray dawn broke over Venice and he headed back to the hotel.

He stopped at the concierge’s desk and asked him to get a seat on the Paris flight and then on to New York.

Back in his room he called Preshy. It was obvious from her befuddled voice that he’d woken her, but she snapped to icy attention when he said who it was.

“Isn’t it a bit early to be calling?” she said coldly.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “There have been some developments.”

“It’s only ten after eight. How could there have been developments?”

“Rafferty, get your clothes on, I’m coming up. I’ll give you five minutes.” He put down the phone, lit up another cigarette, grimaced, ground it out. He glanced at the empty bottle of vodka, then at the minibar. No, he wasn’t going in that direction again. He had things to take care of.

S
HE
answered the door in jeans and a T-shirt. Her short hair stuck up in coppery spikes, her pale eyes were ringed with shadows and she looked exhausted.

Without speaking, she led the way into her room, then sat looking at him as he dusted off his soaked leather jacket and smoothed back his wet hair. “Well?” she said distantly.

Sam thought
frigid
was the word that might best describe her attitude. He wondered what had happened. He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her. She looked away and he leaned forward, knees apart, hands clasped loosely. Their faces were just inches away. When finally she lifted her eyes reluctantly to his, he said, “The police found the body of an Asian woman in the canal this morning.”

Her chin shot up and her shocked eyes locked on to his.

“I’m guessing it’s Lily,” he said.

“Oh my God,”
she whispered. “I
knew
it. I
knew
something was wrong.” Her eyes narrowed with sudden suspicion. “How do you know about this?”

“I happened to be there when they fished the body from the canal, very early this morning.”

“Oh. Right. You
just happened
to be out walking, before dawn, when the police found a body? That just
might
be Lily’s? Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence, Sam? I mean, you still can’t find your wife but you find Lily right away. What exactly
happened
to Leilani, Sam? Was it something similar to what’s happened to Lily? Or can’t you admit to it?”

Sam shrugged. Now he knew the reason for her iciness. “You’ve obviously heard the story, so why bother to ask?”

“Because I need to hear it from you.”

“The truth and nothing but the truth,” he said bitterly. “It’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I believe it will.”

He got up and walked to the door. He hesitated and stood thinking, then he turned to face her, hands in his jeans pockets, staring silently down at the floor.

Finally, he said, “My wife, Leilani, was a depressive. She was a fragile soul, shy and insubstantial as a wood nymph; serene one minute, in the depths of despair the next. She left me that night, just as she had threatened to do so many times before. She didn’t want to ‘trouble’ me any longer, was what she would say. What ‘trouble,’ I’d ask, angry that she didn’t understand I loved her and
that was all that mattered. But Leilani hated the ocean. She was afraid of it. It was the reason she had left Hawaii, she couldn’t bear the noise of the surf. Santa Fe was a landlocked island of peace for her, and selfishly, I took her away from that.

“I don’t know what happened to Leilani, only that she was not there when I came home from my fishing trip the next morning, but I guessed she had done what she’d always threatened to do. Left me so she wouldn’t be any ‘trouble. ‘ She left no message, no note to explain.”

He lifted his eyes to look at Preshy. “She was such a very private woman, I couldn’t shame her by sharing her personal torment with the world. The media would have had a field day. So instead I said nothing, and I took the rap.” He shrugged. “It was only right. After all, I was the guilty party. I’d taken her from the place she felt secure, to live in the place that finally drove her mad.”

Despite Preshy’s misgivings, he sounded so—defeated—her heart went out to him. “You think she . . .?” She couldn’t bring herself to say “killed herself.”

“I don’t think about it,” he said abruptly. “At least I try not to. In my waking moments, that is.”

She knew what he meant. At night, alone in the dark, memories had a way of coming back to haunt you, all the whys and why nots, and if onlys. “I understand,” she said, wanting to believe him, but still unsure.

His eyes behind the glasses were steely as they met hers. “Do you?” he asked indifferently, as though he no longer cared what people thought. He shrugged, then he came back and sat opposite her again. “We have to talk about Lily,” he said.

H
E
took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily. “You’ll have to go to the police,” he said. “Tell them you were supposed to meet your cousin here, and that you think the body might be hers.” His eyes met hers. “They’ll want you to identify it.”

Preshy gasped, horrified. “But I’ve never met her. I can’t identify her, I don’t even know what she looks like.”

“Her passport will be at the desk, or in her room.” He didn’t add that anyhow a drowned woman who’d been in the water for any length of time would be bloated beyond all recognition and would look nothing like her passport photo, and that fingerprints and dental records might be the clincher on her identity.

Preshy’s hand shook as she poured a glass of water from a
half-empty bottle of San Pellegrino. It was warm and flat and she wrinkled her nose in distaste.

“There’ll be an autopsy immediately, of course,” Sam said. “To establish the cause of death. Then the body will be released. To you,” he added.

Preshy put her head in her hands. She would have to identify the body, take care of everything, send Lily home to be buried. She wanted this nightmare to end. But it wasn’t going to go away just yet.

Sam glanced at his watch. “Better get going,” he said. “Get it over with.”

Getting a grip on her nerves, Preshy threw on Aunt G’s beautiful white Valentino coat and wound the blue muffler twice around her neck. Lily was her cousin. It was her duty to take care of her. Grandfather Hennessy would have expected it.

“You’ll be okay,” Sam said.

She glanced quickly at him. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” she said, suddenly worried.

“I can’t,” he said quietly.

She stared, stunned, at him. He was involved in this . . . he couldn’t just walk away, leave her to pick up the dreadful pieces.

“You’re looking at a man who’s been there before,” Sam said. “I can’t go through it again. Knowing what you know about me now, you have to understand. I’m flying back to New York tonight. I’m sorry, Rafferty, but you’re going to have to deal with this alone.”

They stood, silently, looking at each other for a long moment. Then he shook his head and walked out of her room. And also, Preshy thought with a sudden pang of sorrow, out of her life. Forever.

S
OMEHOW
Preshy pulled herself together. She called Aunt Grizelda on her cell phone and told her the terrible news.

“Do nothing” was Aunt G’s horrified response. “Mimi and I will be there with a lawyer in a few hours.”

Pacing her room, Preshy went over and over again what Sam had said. Of course she knew what he meant—that a man suspected of one murder could not afford to be involved in another—in which, because of his past, he might again become a suspect.

Uneasy, she wondered
why
Sam had gotten involved with her. And what about Bennett? Could he know something about him that she didn’t? And what was it Lily had possessed that someone wanted badly enough to kill for? And now she was dead, did that person have it?

She was going crazy. Nerves jangling, she threw on her coat and went in search of coffee. Her head ached and she wished she had never heard from Lily, or met the mystery man Sam Knight, whose past anyhow was as murky as Lily’s.
How could he leave me? He was there when they found the body. He was a part of this, the bastard. He had no right to skip town.

Huddled in Florian’s over her ten-dollar cup of coffee, she wished she were anywhere else but Venice, which, for her, was now beginning to sink under bad memories.

AUNT G ARRIVED A COUPLE
of hours later on a private plane “borrowed” from a friend, with a lawyer, Maître Hugo Des-champs, in tow. “You look terrible,
chérie,”
were her first encouraging words. Her second were “And where’s the Knight in shining armor?”

“I feel
terrible.” Preshy burrowed her face in Aunt G’s scented shoulder as the tears finally flowed. “And the Knight’s gone back to New York. He left me to face the music alone. I can’t blame him,” she added, lifting her wet face and look blearily at her aunt. “He’s been through all this before when his own wife disappeared into thin air and never came back.”

“What?”
Mimi let out a shriek and Aunt G gasped, and now Preshy was forced to tell them Sam’s story.

“So you see,” she concluded, “he’s a suspect in his own wife’s disappearance or possibly murder. ‘A person of interest’ is what the police call it.”

“Imagine, a nice man like that,” Mimi marveled, thinking of the pleasant lunch at Chantecler. But Grizelda snorted and said as far as she was concerned men were all alike and none of them were to be trusted, especially by Preshy, who certainly “knew how to pick ‘em.”

“Of course Maître Deschamps is an exception,” she said with a sugary smile at the lawyer: a tall, imposing, silver-haired Frenchman with forty years of criminal law under his belt, including several famous murder trials.

“Thank you for that, Countess,” he said with a courtly bow. “But now I must accompany Precious to the
polizia.
And you, my dear,” he said looking sternly at Preshy, “will not say one word. You will leave it all to me.”

Preshy promised to keep her mouth shut, and Maître Deschamps informed the Aunts that they could not come along with them because he feared Grizelda would say too much, and he knew from past experience he had no control over
her.
They arranged to meet later at Harry’s Bar and he and Preshy headed off to the police station.

Thanks to Maître Deschamps, the interview was not as traumatic as Preshy had feared. As he’d promised, he did all the talking, merely saying that Precious was to have met her cousin from Shanghai, glancing every now and again at her for corroboration of the story.

The police captain in charge of the case said there didn’t seem to be much mystery about a tourist falling into the canal and drowning, and that she’d probably had too much to drink. Meanwhile the autopsy would take place tomorrow and the
cause of death established. He thanked them for their help, promising the results of the autopsy the following day.

SO WHAT D’YOU
THINK? Preshy asked Maître Deschamps, en route by
motoscafo
to Harry’s Bar.

“Of course it all depends on the autopsy. If there is evidence of foul play then we have to rethink your situation. But if the cause of death is established as an accident”—he lifted a dismissive shoulder—“then I doubt we’ll hear anything further from the police. And after that, my advice to you is to forget all about Lily Song.” The Maître helped her out of the
motoscafo
outside Harry’s. “Now, let’s try one of those famous Bellinis, shall we?”

THEY SIPPED THEIR BELLINI COCKTAILS
—a drink made famous by the then barman Harry, consisting of champagne and pressed fresh peaches, though in winter these had to be of the bottled kind. No matter, they were delicious and Preshy’s slid like silk down her tight throat.

Sam, you bastard, you left me all alone,
she thought, already on her third Bellini. I
know why you did it, but it was a cowardly thing to do
. . .
and anyhow I don’t trust you
. . .

“You’re too quiet,” Aunt G said suspiciously. “What are you thinking?” She was her usual flamboyant self in a black dress with
thirties diamond leaf-shaped clips at the sweetheart neckline, and her Rita Hayworth red hairdo sliding over one wickedly bright emerald eye. A taupe Fendi mink lay on the seat beside her and she wore high heels that were completely unsuitable for walking on Venice’s cobbled alleys.

“I was thinking how great you and Mimi look,” Preshy lied, “especially considering you had so little notice and got here in record time.”

“Chérie,
you know I can pack in ten minutes flat and be ready for any occasion.” Grizelda gave her a warm smile. “But that’s
not
what you were thinking.”

“My guess is she was thinking about that
snake,
Sam,” Mimi said, having gone full circle on him.

Sighing, Preshy admitted it was true. “I can’t help it,” she said sorrowfully, “I just seem to find the bad boys.”

Maître Deschamps looked at his watch then got to his feet. “My advice to you, mademoiselle,” he said, as he paid the check, “is to forget about him. And forget about the other one. Bennett, wasn’t it? Allow your aunts to introduce you to some nice gentlemen. They have a lot of friends, and I’m certain they will make perfect matchmakers.”

The Aunts beamed at him and Grizelda told him that piece of advice alone was worth any money she was going to have to pay him.