Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death
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Authors: Sheila Connolly
Tags: #Mystery: Thriller - Class Reunion - Tuscany Italy
| Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death | |
| Sheila Connolly | |
| Beyond the Page Publishing (2013) | |
| Tags: | Mystery: Thriller - Class Reunion - Tuscany Italy |
Gilbert had had a long and illustrious career at the college. Now retired to Italy, and still disarmingly handsome, he appeared as a surprise guest speaker. As a young professor all those years ago, Gilbert used his position and looks to seduce and then cast aside many of his young and impressionable students, and at least some of the women on this trip had been hurt by his false promises of love—the kind of hurt that runs deep and may have given any number of them a motive for murder.
Before the polizia or carabiniere get involved, Laura and a few trusted classmates set out to solve the murder on their own. With the help of some influential locals and good old-fashioned detective work, they’re soon led to the conclusion that one of their classmates might be a killer—and what started as a trip to see how far they’d all come may turn into a stark lesson about just how far one of them would go.
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
Copyright © 2013 by Sheila Connolly
Material excerpted from
Golden Malicious
and
Relatively Dead
copyright © 2013 by Sheila Connolly
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
ISBN: 978-1-937349-95-0
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Contents
To the Fabulous Forty,
and particularly Sally and Sandy,
who made this book possible
Chapter 1
In 1968 Judy Collins sang, “Who knows where the time goes?”
When we were freshmen, you couldn’t walk down a hallway in any dorm on the Wellesley College campus without hearing it coming from stereos in every other room. The title didn’t mean a lot to us then, because at eighteen we had all the time in the world; the whole future lay before us, with all its possibilities. Now we have more to look back on than to look forward to—but Judy is still singing.
I had forgotten what a pain in the butt long overseas flights were. It had been a lot of years since I’d flown to Europe, although back in college and right after, I’d thought it would be a regular thing. Once, in another lifetime, I was an art historian, specializing in medieval churches, but I’d found out pretty fast that there were no jobs available for people who liked to study really old buildings, certainly not in the foreseeable future. I’d said a regretful good-bye to my dreams of regular excursions to Aquitaine and Lincolnshire, and come up with another plan for my life. Not for the last time.
Plan Number Two had included marriage and a child. Or maybe children, plural, were in the first draft, but by the time our one and only had turned two, it was pretty clear that the marriage wasn’t going to survive, and I didn’t think adding another child would make things any better. We’d stuck together for another decade, citing the hackneyed reason “for the sake of the child,” but in the end we’d decided we were doing her more harm than good and parted ways. By the time Lisa was in high school, Hugh was history and I’d become the main breadwinner, since his checks were somewhat unreliable. I’d never replaced him.
Lisa had survived the whole thing without years of therapy, had attended a good college, graduated with honors, and was now off in Chicago and not too close to Mom, doing something even she couldn’t quite define. But she seemed happy when we talked on the phone, and that was all I was worried about. I’d long since decided that career planning was overrated, and changing economic and social circumstances had only reinforced that viewpoint. We’d weathered the lean years, although I couldn’t say I exactly had a retirement account. But then, I didn’t plan to retire until I dropped in front of my computer keyboard.
But here I was, bound for Italy on the cheapest red-eye flight I could find. Made possible by a small bequest from my late mother, who attached only one condition: do something fun for yourself.
I’d had to think long and hard about what I considered “fun” these days, and how to please me and only me. Then at a college reunion a year ago—one of those landmark ones with a zero on the end—two classmates, Jean Rider and Jane Lombardi, stood up and announced that they were planning a ten-day event in the north of Italy for the following year. No spouses, no kids—just classmates, people we’d known to greater or lesser degrees four decades earlier and in some cases hadn’t seen since. They proposed a flat fee, and all we had to do was get ourselves to Italy and all would be taken care of—transport, food, museum tickets, and best yet, planning. I had known both of them slightly and had no idea what kind of organizers they had turned out to be, but the idea sounded like heaven, and my hand was in the air before I could even think—or say thank you, Mom, for allowing me even to consider going.
A year had seemed like a very long time back then. Plenty of time to change my mind, and in fact a number of people had dropped out, citing other obligations or plans or simply cold feet. But there had been a waiting list of people eager to join the group, and the number had held steady at forty. Forty people celebrating the last forty years, after spending four years together in another century, another millennium.
Lisa had all but cheered when I told her. “Live a little, Ma,” she said. “Show ’em you aren’t dead yet.” I didn’t know how to take that. I didn’t feel old, and I hoped I didn’t act old. I took care of myself, ate right (mostly), exercised (sometimes), didn’t smoke at all and didn’t drink too much (very often), and kept my brain agile by using it as much as I could. Surely I could handle ten days with an interesting group of people and hold my own.
But this was reality, spending six hours wedged in a seat with about two inches’ clearance in any direction, breathing recycled air and picking at plastic food. I’d bought plenty to read, but I’d also brought along the record book from our long-ago freshman year. Back then there had been no Internet, no electronic communication, so we’d sent in print snapshots of ourselves—most often those dreadful high school graduation photos—and a short text. Somebody had put them together into a small booklet and sent them to us before we arrived on campus so we could get to know our classmates—the people we would spend the next four years with. I know I was terrified at the time, but I hadn’t admitted it, nor had anyone else.
I leafed through the skinny booklet. So many people I’d known well—or thought I had—who had dropped off my radar altogether. So many others I didn’t recognize at all—and a scattering of some who had become household names in the forty years since graduation. I paused at my own picture, my hair in a tidy flip, with a headband holding it in place. My sweet, naive little text, which I didn’t even remember writing. Had I really thought I would be a biologist?
I had a list of the people who would be on this Italian excursion. No, excursion wasn’t quite the right word, but I wasn’t sure what was. Trip was too mundane; junket sounded too political. It was a coming together of people from all over the country, to spend ten days together to … what? Take stock? Revisit our youth? Indulge in one last blowout before we were too creaky to climb stairs or carry a suitcase? I wasn’t sure what the mission was, but I knew I wanted to be there. That kind of spontaneity was very unlike me: I was usually the planner, the organizer, the one who worked out all the details. This time I was going to try to let go and let somebody else worry about all that stuff.
At the end of the flight I emerged from the plane feeling rumpled and sticky and sluggish, in a place where people were speaking something that was definitely not English. I didn’t speak Italian, although I had mastered enough other languages to cobble together a few basic phrases, mostly things like “Where is the church?” and “How much?” In my current state I wasn’t sure I could string together a sentence in English, much less Italian, so it really didn’t matter. I collected my too-heavy bag (I had trouble deciding what to bring, so I sort of brought everything), tucked my shirt into my jeans, and headed through customs. I hoped that the proper documents and a polite smile would see me through. I couldn’t possibly look like a terrorist, could I? But what did a terrorist look like these days? If I were planning an attack, wouldn’t I want to look entirely forgettable and harmless—just like me?
I had to rein in my befuddled imagination when I reached the head of the line. There, documents were stamped, smiles were exchanged, and I was on the ground in Italy somewhere outside of Florence, free and clear. As airports went, this one was tiny, which was probably a plus at the moment. Now to find the promised ride—because if the driver and a few straggling classmates arriving this afternoon weren’t there, I had no Plan B.
