Murphy's Law (25 page)

“Where are we going?”

Dante hesitated, knowing Nick wasn’t going to like what was coming.

“To where it began,” he said. “To the Certosa.”

Faith’s in there,
Nick thought, as they pulled into the graveled driveway of the Certosa. He’d been in a bad mood all day, only partially lifted by the autopsy, which had been fun. Particularly the part where Dante turned gray. But now the thought of seeing Faith, even if she was going to ignore him, made him…what? Happy?

It put a spring in his limp, that was for sure. Just seeing her made him feel better and he thought that he stood a better than even chance at spending the night with her again. It was uncomfortable sharing a cot, but what the hell? Better that uncomfortable cot with Faith than a king-sized luxury bed with anyone else. He hadn’t gotten Faith out of his system, not by a long shot.

They walked through the big stone gate with the huge wooden doors, now open. Last night, Nick hadn’t been thinking of much beyond keeping Faith safe and, well, getting into bed with her. But now he looked around at the place which had been a ruin when he spent his teen years breaking and entering.

The Certosa had only been turned into a conference center in the past ten years. Dante had dated the chief restorer of the Certosa a few years ago, a pretty girl who had been much too sweet for him. Nick remembered her saying that the restoration team was proud nothing structural had been changed—not even the lock on the gate.

The restored Certosa was soberly elegant now, but it had had a wild and glorious ramshackle beauty all those summers ago, when he and Dante had climbed the walls to explore the abandoned monastery. The cousins had run wild in the cloisters, avoiding the rats’ nests and piles of bricks lying untouched since the Middle Ages.

Nick winced now at the thought of running his hands along powdery painted walls, enjoying the feeling of crumbling stucco. He realized now that he’d probably destroyed whole strips of priceless frescoes, just as they’d dumped the shards of what had been centuries-old terracotta vases in corners so they could play soccer undisturbed along the corridors.

It had been wild and wonderful then just as it was cool and beautiful now.

To tell the truth, all of Siena was dotted with warm and wonderful memories for him. He couldn’t ever remember being unhappy here.

Is this where I belong?
Nick wondered as he gimped along behind Dante through the arcades of the main courtyard. Was his family’s adventure in America about to run its course?

Nick’s father and mother were talking more and more about moving to Siena when his father retired next year. If they did, Lou would follow. Without making an issue of it, she would probably find a way to get a job in Siena or Florence for a year or two, which would stretch into forever. She was so good at her job they would fight over her services in the Gobi Desert. And Lou being Lou, she’d be knee deep in suitors before the year was out.

Nick would be left alone over in Southbury.

He had plenty of friends, but most of them were hockey players or sports writers or managers. He knew the score. Overnight, he had gone from being the big man in the game to being a has-been. Everyone would try hard to keep in touch, but the pull of the game would tug them away.

Nick shook his head. He hardly recognized his own brain. He never ever thought about the future until it was right on top of him. It wasn’t like him to have such somber thoughts. It was as if the Nick-shaped slot he’d inhabited all his life had suddenly disappeared.

He followed Dante through a narrow archway into a smaller cloister. A burst of laughter came from an open doorway in the eastern corner. He stopped in the doorway as another burst of laughter echoed in the hot, dusty air, and stared at the tableau.

It looked like Faith had found a slot all her own.

She was surrounded by men, and damned if they didn’t look a lot like admirers. He recognized Professor Gori—Dante had dated
his
daughter, too—and that slimy creep, Tim something. Her other colleague—what was his name? Something dumb like Griffin. There were two weedy-looking guys and a Japanese man, nodding and bowing and grinning.

Nerdy geeks, all of them, except for Gori and that Griffin guy. They looked like elegant geeks.

They were crowded around a laptop showing an overhead PowerPoint presentation. Faith held a laser pointer and was going down a graph. “And here we have tipping,” Faith said and, crazily, there was an audible murmur of approval. Like a flock of very odd birds, all the men bent their heads and tapped into their tablets.

Nick couldn’t take his eyes off Faith. Her big, light-brown eyes were alight with intelligence and humor, and Nick was suddenly floored with how wildly attractive she looked just then, hair a red-brown cloud around her face, cheekbones and forehead slightly sunburned, wide mouth curved in a smile.

In the throes of lust when first dating Dee Dee, Nick had once commented on how gorgeous she was. Lou had shocked him by saying Faith was prettier. Nick had laughed at the time, but it was true.

He’d rarely seen Dee Dee without makeup, not even in bed. The few times he’d managed to catch a glimpse of her unadorned face, she seemed like a different person. Eyes small and too close together. And her nose—well, it was definitely a bit…piggish. Dee Dee made up for it with good makeup, tight clothes and pretty hair out of a bottle.

Dee Dee, in ten years’ time, would be puffy and over the hill. Faith would look even better. She’d probably fill out some. Like
Nonna
, she had the kind of facial structure that aged well.

Right now, she was sexy and vibrantly alive as she held the undivided attention of all the men in the room, whose collective IQ was probably as high as the amount of money he had in the bank.

Faith made a comment, something crazy about… He leaned forward to hear better. Was she talking about
hysterias
? Whatever it was, it was sparking another round of laughter. Nick shook his head. No wonder the geeks had stayed away from the jocks in college. They didn’t even speak the same language.

But Faith was definitely queen of these people, the high IQ tribe.

Oh God, he was lost. Nick stood still, watching her, not moving, barely breathing. Fuck. This was it.

Lou made fun of his lack of brains but he knew he wasn’t stupid. It was true though that he didn’t analyze things, he went with his instinct, which was better. You don’t have time out on the ice to reason things through, you go with your gut. He trusted his, and right now his gut was telling him that Faith was the one.

He’d fucked his way through a sea of women and now this woman was the one. She didn’t look at him through a glaze of lust or greed. She saw
him
, Nick Rossi, warts and all, and she liked him. Maybe even loved him. She was mad at him still but he could work around that. Give him another day or two and he’d charm his way back to her heart.

Oh yeah.

Faith was smarter than he was but he could compensate for that. He smiled. His best attribute wasn’t his brains. Whoa, it all felt better now. The loss of hockey had left this huge empty hole in his life but Faith could fill it. A family of his own could fill it. Because if you’d held a blowtorch to his feet he’d have denied it, but his sex life was getting old. He wanted a partner. He wanted Faith.

A bell rang and Faith turned, murmuring something in that dry tone of hers. The room erupted into laughter again and Faith looked up. She froze when she saw Nick at the back of the room.

Her body language had been smooth, even elegant, but now her movements became jerky. Her mouth tightened and she declared the session adjourned.

He just had to make sure she wanted him right back.

He waited patiently as ten or twelve of the geeks scrambled out of their seats to huddle around Faith like groupies around a rock star. He was surprised they didn’t ask for autographs, though one of them
did
ask her to write something on the blackboard. She scribbled some impenetrable symbols, and the man nodded, humming a little.

Nick couldn’t read anything of what she’d written—it was in math and God knew he had enough trouble with English.

He’d been slightly dyslexic as a child. Luckily, his parents were loving, attentive and smart. He got help early, but he distinctly remembered that feeling of helplessness in school—everyone understanding but him. Even now, when he got too tired or anxious, the words danced about on the page.

Faith certainly didn’t have that problem.

Actually, Faith didn’t have any problems at all that he could see. Kane’s death had liberated her. She was going to be successful and she was on the verge of understanding what a desirable woman she was. Kane’s death had done that. For a moment, Nick almost wished Faith really had offed him. It would have been poetic justice.

He hung back as Dante walked forward into the little flock of mathematicians.

“Faith,” Dante said, his voice somber, “I need to talk to you again.”

One of the geeks stepped forward, the one Nick particularly hated. The one who thought he had a claim on Faith. Tim—Tim Something. Tim Something glared at Dante. “What’s this about?”

Dante barely glanced at him. “I need to talk to Miss Murphy,” he repeated.

“Well, we’re in the middle of work here and we need to talk to Faith, too.”

“Yeah.”

“
Oui
.”

“
Si
.”

“
Hai.
”

The men’s voices formed a chorus.

“What is this, Dante?” Leonardo Gori asked with a frown. “We’re busy here. Whatever it is, won’t it keep?”

“It’s a little matter of murder, Leonardo, and no, I’m sorry, but it won’t keep.” He beckoned with his hand. “Now, Faith, come with me, please.”

Nick was used to seeing Dante as his cousin, his best friend, a guy he’d practically grown up with. Good-natured and kind beneath his casual exterior. But this was a new Dante—Dante the Cop.

Leonardo Gori shut up.

Without a word, Faith put down the pen and moved forward. She walked past him silently and followed Dante out of the room. If Nick had told her to follow
him
, she would have turned in the opposite direction.

If this is the effect you get,
Nick thought
, then maybe I should become a cop.

Chapter Fourteen

Anything that begins well, ends badly.

Anything that begins badly, ends worse.

Faith watched the two Rossi cousins’ broad backs as she followed them into the central cloister. She stifled a sigh. She’d been having such a good time with her colleagues, then the room had narrowed and all she could see was Nick.

He was like a curse. He simply sucked all the oxygen out of the room and she couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Ack! This was her time! She should be beyond yearning after Nick, but apparently she wasn’t.

They passed through two big wooden doors, the cop Rossi shouldering them open, the jock waiting for her to pass then following hard at her heels, then another set of glass doors which opened onto a corridor. They must be somewhere near the kitchen because she could smell cooking.

Roast beef for dinner,
she thought.

They went through the third and last door on the left. Coming in from the dim hallway, Faith had to shield her eyes.

They were in a corner room of the monastery and light flooded in through four large windows. Like the other rooms, it had high ceilings, but there the resemblance ended. It was sparsely furnished with cheap utilitarian furniture. A Formica-topped table and six matching Formica chairs, pure vintage ’70s, and a gray-green metal bookcase holding document classifiers, each folder with the date written in pen on a label. The dates ran from 1973 through 1991 when, presumably, some form of computerization had taken place.

Perched on the edge of one of those lethally uncomfortable-looking chairs was an attractive, dark-haired woman.

Her glance moved briefly and without interest over Faith, then immediately to the two Rossi men. She beamed at both, and Faith bristled before she remembered that Nick wasn’t hers. Had never been, never would be hers.

Faith stopped a few paces into the room and looked at Dante. This was his show.

“Please sit down, Faith.” As he had the first time he’d questioned her, he didn’t take a chair to sit behind the table, to show authority, but sat down in the nearest chair.

Nick leaned his shoulders against the wall, hands deep in the pockets of his loose tan cotton trousers.

Dante gestured to the woman. “This is Sara Pellegrini, Faith. She’s one of the wait staff working at the Certosa
while the conference is on.”

Faith nodded to the woman and received a chilly smile in return.

“Now, I want you to tell us once again about the night you saw Ms. Pellegrini, the night Professor Kane was murdered. I want you to tell us every detail. Don’t leave anything out.”

Faith frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. When did I see Ms. Pellegrini?”

“The night you arrived. The night Professor Kane was murdered. We need to know—”

The woman broke out in angry and voluble Italian. It was quick and liquid. Faith recognized the words
mai
—never—and whiskey. Dante heard the woman out until she wound down, more out of a lack of breath than of things left unsaid. He nodded once, briskly, and turned back to Faith.

“Now, about the night Professor Kane was murdered. I trust you haven’t forgotten it already.”

Faith looked around. Her glance crossed Nick’s who was watching her steadily. Her heart—treacherous organ—thumped hard and her gaze shot back to Dante.

“No.” She shook her head. “I remember.”

“Well, then, do you want to run through it for me again?”

“All right. We all ate together—”

“No, later,” Dante interrupted her. “When you were going to bed. You saw a maid bring a bottle of whiskey to Professor Kane’s room.”

“That’s right.” Faith was mystified. This must have been the fifth time she’d told this story. It wasn’t even a story, it was an incident. “I left soon after Professor Kane…retired.”
Stumbled to his bed would be more like it.
“My bedroom is on the other side of the cloister, but I got lost and crossed Professor Kane’s corridor by mistake. The corridor was empty except for a maid carrying a bottle of whiskey on a tray.”