Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death (29 page)

That last bit occasioned an extra question or two. Had I heard anything in the night? No, I was a sound sleeper, and we’d been so busy with our sightseeing and shopping and such that I fell asleep immediately. And Cynthia? She said she’d stayed behind to talk to some of her friends, and I’d been asleep when she returned to our room. What was I doing out so early in the morning? Why, it was such a beautiful day, in such a beautiful place, that I couldn’t sleep any longer and I had gone out to enjoy the morning. Yes, it had been awful to come upon the body. I debated about squeezing out a few tears, but I thought that was beyond my meager acting skills.

I did not mention my phone call, nor would they ever find out about it—I had used a very secure line.

The policemen, who indeed were young enough to be our sons, and who had no doubt jumped at the chance to take a jaunt to the Italian Riviera to talk with some harmless old ladies, all but patted us on the head. They apologized for inconveniencing us. They greatly regretted that we’d had to face such an unpleasantness as a dead body in such a wonderful place. Surely it had been a tragic accident that was nobody’s fault.

The
senatore
opened other bottle and distributed glasses all around. We toasted the late professor. We thanked the policemen profusely. If I’d been watching the performance from the outside, I would have been nauseated.

And then we sent the police on their way, apparently satisfied. We’d told our stories; we’d done our civic duty. And if anything popped up like an unwanted mushroom, I’d just make another phone call and make it all go away. I did not feel bad about that, because I wanted to spare my friends any more trouble.

When the police were well out of the way, the
senatore
topped up our glasses—and winked. Loredana hugged each of us in turn. Then she looked at her watch. “Oh, the dinner. We must get ready. We will see you up the hill, no? Jane, you stay here a minute?”

Yes, it was time to go up the hill—again—and primp for our final dinner. We said our thank-yous as best we could, then walked out the door.

Jane followed us a short way. “Thank you, all of you. Thank you for coming to me, and for not blowing this all up into a big stinking mess. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“I think we do, Jane. And we did this for all of us. See you at dinner!”

Jane went back inside, and we turned to the path and started up the hill. This might be the last time we made this hike, and in a perverse way I was going to miss it. After the past few days I could make it to the top without huffing and puffing, no small achievement.

“I think that went well,” Cynthia said. “Do you think we’re in the clear?”

“I think so,” I said.

“What if they come back with more questions?” Connie asked anxiously.

“If they do, I’ll take care of it,” I said, in a tone that didn’t encourage questions, and there were none. “Tonight we enjoy ourselves.”

Chapter 26

And we did. Cynthia and I went back to our room and changed shirts and put on fancy earrings, in honor of the party. I know I felt a sense of relief, of calm, about what we’d arranged down below. Whatever the murky legalities were, it felt right. Funny that I had come around to thinking that it was more important to assure that these women—these colleagues, these friends—went home with happy memories, even at the cost of … not exactly perverting, but maybe diverting justice. We believed we knew who the killer was, and it wasn’t one of us. No amount of official investigation would change that.

The patio had been transformed. The tablecloths were crisp and bright, the silverware gleamed, the glasses—there were three at each place—twinkled in the light of dozens of candles. The cooks and staff stood waiting for us all to appear, beaming proudly. People began trickling in, first in twos and threes, then in a clump, trudging up the last slope of the hill. We vineyard residents gave them a few moments to catch their breath, feeling smug. Wineglasses circulated, but people were reluctant to sit, many of them drawn to the view of the vineyard marching toward the sky above.

But eventually we all found seats. We sleuths scattered among the others. Cynthia sat across and down several seats from me, and she smiled at me when she wasn’t busy chatting with those seated next to her. More wine was poured, red and white. It was hard to grasp that it had come from the grapes that grew only a few hundred feet away, had been pressed here, had spent their fermentation in the barrels at the other end of the patio. The olive oil on our antipasti likewise had come from trees that we could see from where we sat. Maybe this was the way food and drink were meant to be, directly from the earth, to be shared with good and amiable friends.

Jane sat at the end of the table nearest me, next to Loredana, across from the
senatore
, flanked by a couple of cousins we hadn’t even met before, all somehow involved in the vineyard. Jane looked tired but happy; Loredana kept flashing brilliant smiles at us all, content in her role. She had done—no, exceeded her duty as hostess, averting a potential international incident, appeasing the officials and sending them on their way (I wondered briefly what the
senatore
thought about all of this, but he had definitely come through for us).

The volume of our voices rose and fell. It was a bittersweet moment, rich with recent memories, tinged by regret that it had to end. Before the first platters of food appeared, someone led a round of “Dona Nobis Pacem,” and I felt the prick of tears—at the memories, at the soft harmonies of the women’s voices. Then somebody launched into our alma mater, and I stopped fighting the tears. I wasn’t alone.

The last notes echoed over the valley filled with vines, and then the food appeared and we all dug in. Once again I lost count of the courses—food just kept coming, and it was all good. As the meal wound down, the wines were replaced with
vin santo
, a kind of sweet and heady wine called something unpronounceable and made from dried grapes. A woman across the table leaned toward me and asked, “Have you tried dipping a biscotto in this wine? It’s wonderful, particularly if you can find Cantuccini almond biscuits.” I nodded affably and promptly forgot the name of the special biscuits, but decided ordinary biscotti tasted just fine with
vin santo
.

And after that, a strong
grappa.
We toasted a lot. We toasted Jean and Jane, with heartfelt thanks. We toasted Loredana and the
senatore
for their magnificent hospitality (and during the toast Loredana winked at me). We toasted Jane’s extended Ligurian family for welcoming us everywhere. We toasted each other for having the wisdom to come on this trip. We toasted our absent classmates, who had missed all the fun.

Darkness fell, and people reluctantly started drifting away, claiming early trains or planes. Some were headed to other places in Europe, to meet up with spouses or friends; others were making the long ride home. In a last spurt of energy, Jean and Jane were coordinating rides to the airport or the train station and promising to pick up luggage. I was content to sit and do nothing.

Cynthia dropped into the seat next to me. “I don’t want this to end.”

I stared into the depth of what was left in my glass. “Neither do I.” I sipped at the last of my grappa—strong stuff.

“We ended on a happy note here,” Cynthia said softly. “If anyone comes asking, we just tell them the Italian police decided it was an accident and that was the end of it.”

“Suits me.” I drained my glass.
May you rest in whatever peace you can find in hell, Anthony Gilbert.
“But I think there’s something we still need to do, you and I. Do you have to go home tomorrow?”

“No, not really. What are you suggesting?”

“That we go back to Capitignano and talk to Gerry.”

Cynthia nodded, slowly. “I think you’re right. Rent a car?”

“I’ll check it out. As long as I can drive slowly getting out of here, and it’s a small car, I can deal with it. And we know the way at the other end.”

As it happened, we negotiated the loan of a car from one of Jane’s relatives—I wasn’t even sure which one—with the promise that their son would drive us part of the way (past the mountains, thank heaven!) and we would drop him at a train station to get home. We’d figure out the back end later.

Our rather loose plans let us sleep in the next morning. We’d said our formal good-byes to Loredana and the
senatore
at the end of the banquet, thanking them (through Jane) for all their help. I wondered how much each of us understood about what the others had done, but we’d achieved a happy outcome, and that was what mattered. We cadged a sketchy breakfast of leftovers and sat on the patio in the sun, waiting for our ride.

Pam, Xianling, Denise, Connie, and Valerie stopped by to say their good-byes. They were all going their separate ways. Valerie’s was a shade more heartfelt than those of the others; I still thought we had done the right thing by her.

Xianling was the last to stop. “It’s been a long journey from Art 100, hasn’t it, Laura?”

“It has. It has been a very unexpected couple of weeks, indeed.”

“Keep in touch, will you?” Xianling said. She sounded like she meant it.

“I’ll try,” I replied—and I meant it.

Finally Cynthia and I were the only ones left. “We don’t have to do this, you know,” Cynthia said.

“You getting cold feet?” I asked. “I can go alone.”

“No, I’ll go with you, but I’m not sure what you hope to gain. I mean, do you want to make a case against Gerry? Turn him in?”

I thought for a minute or so before answering. “To be honest, I’m not sure what I want. Closure, I guess. I want to look him in the eye and hear his story. I can understand his anger and his grief and his desire for revenge, but I still resent that he used us, used our trip, to cover up what he planned to do.”

“Only because of us—well, you in particular—he hasn’t gotten away with it, has he?” She munched on some buttered bread for a few moments. “Nobody ever asked you why you got so involved in this, did they?”

“No. But I think they were trying hard not to think about it at all.”

“Can you make trouble for Gerry, if you want to?”

“Officially or off the record? Probably. I haven’t decided if it’s worth it.”

“Laura, how long have we been doing … what we do?”

“A long time now. A lot has changed since we started, hasn’t it?”

Our driver appeared from up the hill. He was a charming, shy young man by the name of Davido who spoke reasonable English, which he was happy to practice on Cynthia and me. Someone else appeared with a motorized cart to haul our luggage up the hill. We followed more slowly, and I turned to say good-bye to the vineyard view. It would be hard to forget the last few days, for a lot of reasons.

Cynthia came up beside me. “Will you come back?”

“To Italy? Probably not,” I said, my eyes not leaving the view. “This was special—it wouldn’t be the same the next time. But all this has reminded me how much I like to travel, and that I should do more of it, while I can. There are plenty of places I haven’t been yet.”

“What, you think you’re getting too old for jaunts like this?”

“Not at all, but you never know what’s going to happen, right? Seize the day!”

We turned away and made our way up to the top of the path. The car proved to be a shiny new Audi and I almost felt guilty borrowing it, especially since no one had mentioned anything like insurance coverage or even asked if I had a valid driver’s license (I did). We traveled perhaps an hour, and then young Davido instructed us to leave him at a train station in a town I’d never heard of, and we were on our own.

The car came with GPS, so we had no trouble finding where we were going. For most of the drive we followed one or another
Autostrada
, all of which looked like every major highway I’d ever seen, except the signs pointed to exotic places like Florence and Pisa and Genoa. I enjoyed driving like this, on a nice day, with little traffic.

“You planning to retire any time soon?” I asked Cynthia out of the blue.

“Are you a mind reader or what? I’ve been thinking about it lately.”

“Why?”

“I remember when I started in the business, it was all so new, so exciting. There were so many possibilities. Now I’m the old lady of the group, and I feel like I’ve seen it all. That doesn’t mean there aren’t innovations, or new and better ways of doing things. But it’s not fun anymore. Even the government has kind of tainted it, now that we know they’re looking over all our shoulders all the time.”

“What would you do with yourself?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine an idle Cynthia.

“That’s the biggest hang-up—I don’t have a clue. No significant other, no kids. Not too many friends—I mean, you’re probably my closest friend, and I’m lucky if I see you once a year. All the people I work with seem like children. I don’t have any hobbies. I don’t garden or fix houses.”

“Maybe you could write a book about your company—fictionalized, of course, and lawsuit-proof.”

“You mean sit down and do one thing for a long time? I don’t know if I could handle that. Like you, I’ve been thinking of doing more traveling, although not in a pack like this one. I think in the back of my mind I was treating this as a test run. If I could survive a trip with forty other women, I could do just about anything. But I do draw the line at cruises. What about you?”

“Do I want to go on a cruise? No way.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. You going to quit any time soon? Just hang out for a while? See more of your daughter? I bet you’re in line for a nice government pension by now—what’s stopping you?”

I drove for another couple of miles before answering. “I guess the same things as you. Apart from my daughter, I don’t have a lot of outside interests. And she’s got her own life, I can’t just piggyback on hers.”

“No grandkids in the future?”

“I don’t know—I don’t pry. But I can’t see me morphing into a doting granny. Can you?”

“Not really. What a pair we are! The downside of our outstanding education—we’re too dang independent for our own good.”