The Dead Don't Get Out Much (18 page)

The concert was in full swing, the pews jammed with intent listeners. I stood at the back, leaning against a pillar, sniffing the churchy air: holy water, decades of burnt incense and beeswax candles. I craned my neck to see if I could spot Mrs. P. anywhere among the audience. I saw several dozen grey heads. No one was smoking or drinking, so the usual indicators didn't apply.

After five minutes, I decided to move around to get a better view. I sidled as far as the front on the extreme right side of the church. I peered down each row. Most of the people were listening raptly, although several glanced sideways at me with reproach.

I returned to the back of the church and made my way over to the far left. I began to edge toward the front, attracting dirty looks from people as I went. So what? I would never see any of them again and, more importantly, I was on a mission.

I was pussyfooting to the end of the aisle when I spotted a familiar hawklike profile at the far end of the third pew. Mrs. Parnell, shoulders forward, head tilted to hear better, eyes front, transported by the music.

I gave a quiet whoop of joy that earned me many glares and shushes.

 

21 Frank Street
Chesterton, Ontario
July 1, 1946

Dear Vi,

Guess what? I'm getting married. Imagine that! I believe I have mentioned Judge Stiles. He is quite the gentleman, awfully handsome, and also very kind and good to me. It is time for him to have some companionship, now that his wife has been dead for five years. I am sure his children will get used to the idea in time. They are older than I am, so I can't see why they shouldn't mind their own business, get on with their lives, and allow their father a bit of happiness. Regardless of what they say, for our wedding I plan to wear a smart little cream silk suit with pearl buttons and, of course, a matching hat with perhaps just a puff of cream veil. This has been the happiest Dominion Day ever for me! I even have a diamond ring.

Speaking of happiness, it would make me very happy if you would respond to this letter. I know that someday you will find it in your heart to forgive me and that I will find a way to make it up to you. I hope you will be home in Chesterton soon! We could find lots to do here. I still love the movies. “The Best Years of Our Lives” is playing the Vogue. It makes you think about men coming home from war and what they face. I don't know if it is the same adjustment for gals. It made me sad because so many boys we cared about have never come back. I'd like to hear what you thought of it.

With love from Hazel (the person who misses you and who will always be your friend!)

P.S. Betty (Pardon me for living, I mean
Elizabeth
!) has moved to Toronto and has a job teaching at some snooty private school. There's nothing for her in Chesterton now with her mother and Perce gone. And I have snagged the last eligible man!

H.

P
eople sat crammed with shoulders touching in Mrs. Parnell's pew. I couldn't let that hold me back. I had found her. The entire purpose of this trip to Italy was fulfilled. Every inconvenience and bizarre occurrence was worth it. From her posture, she was fine. Probably better than I was.

I wore a silly grin on my face as I began to work my way past the listeners in the pew. It started well, but went downhill fast. These people were in a church, for Pete's sake, listening to music. So you'd think they could have been a bit more accommodating. The snarling reactions diminished my joy, but only slightly.

“Scusate,”
I said for the eighth time, as I stumbled over a pair of stubbornly unmoving feet and grazed the knees of a scowling woman.

“Permesso!”
I whispered to an elderly couple. I swear the husband stamped on my toes on purpose.

Never mind.

I continued to be polite. I am Canadian.

I was surprised by the increased muttering and hostile expressions my passage generated. I like concerts as much as the next person. However, this was an
emergenza
, as I kept saying to those whose feet got in the way. Where was Christian charity? And why the reluctance to stand and let me through? Was this the longest pew in the world? Halfway across, I realized it would have been faster to have gone to the back of the church and approached her from the centre aisle. Too late now. I would have had to retreat past the worst of the mutterers and foot stampers. I kept going and hoped for a more civil reception.

I was almost ready to reach out and touch her shoulder, when she turned her head and spied me.

Tears welled in my eyes.

She scowled.

I smiled broadly.

My smile was not returned.

“It's me, Camilla,” I mouthed, pointing to myself. “I want to help you.”

A chorus of shhs.

Mrs. Parnell got to her feet. The two people between us refused to budge. Something was very wrong. It was as though the person I was looking at was not Mrs. Parnell. Recognition, yes. No warmth, no welcome, no look of mischievous regret. No relief. Nothing. I recognized her face. I could have sworn that someone else looked back at me through those eyes.

I stopped pushing forward. I felt as if I'd been hit.

Years of defense work and helping victims should have prepared me for that look. I'd seen it in people who had nothing more to lose. I'd seen it in victims who had been pushed beyond their capacity to care. I'd never thought I'd see it in Mrs. Parnell. Had she had some kind of cardiac event that deprived her brain of oxygen? Had it changed her personality? You hear about these things. You can't imagine the impact when it happens to someone you love.

Mrs. Parnell whispered something to the people next to her. Whatever it was caused quite a commotion. People leapt to their feet. A distinguished gentleman in an expensive-looking overcoat shoved me hard.

As Mrs. P. slipped from the pew, two sturdy middle-aged women grabbed my arms. I was trapped. I heard talk of
carabinieri
. I could see Mrs. Parnell hustling as fast as she could with her cane, down the centre aisle toward the church door.

I was stunned and shocked. Not to mention getting roughed up. And Mrs. Parnell was escaping.

Two can play that game, I thought.

“Aiutatemi!”
I called. Help me!

The quartet stopped playing mid-melody.

The man holding on to me let go of my arm, shocked. It gave me the chance to jump over the pew to the row behind. I scrambled over people, ignoring the yelps, and reached the centre aisle.

“Interpol!”
I bellowed.
“Polizia Interpol.”

It wasn't really a false declaration. I hadn't actually claimed that I was an Interpol officer, so it wasn't my fault if someone misinterpreted. It was worth the risk to stop Mrs. Parnell from disappearing.

I shook off a young man in a striped scarf who seemed determined to restrain me. I raced down the aisle. I never looked back to see if anyone was following. I shot out the door.

The music swelled behind me.

I stopped on the church steps and checked both ways. There was no sign of Mrs. Parnell.

I spoke to the woman at the ticket desk.
“Mia nonna è malata! Dov'è partita?”

She shook her head. Perhaps she'd heard the sick grandmother story once too often in her time.

No time to argue.

Voices rose behind me. I sped down the stairs and into the street. No grey head in any direction. I picked the route leading toward the piazza and stormed on, peering from right to left. I left no corner unchecked, seeking her tucked in a boutique entrance, standing inside a restaurant door or flattened against the wall of an alley.

No luck at all.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that no one had followed me from the church. Good. I leaned against a wall and caught my breath. Time to think. If I was out of breath, Mrs. P. must be too. She might be fit. Still, she was eighty-three. Since she had not come this way, she must have gone the other. She would have to be resting. I turned back and retraced my steps, scooting speedily past the church just in case.

At the next cross street, someone whipped around the corner at the end of a long curving block. When I reached the spot, I found no one. Just a dark, misty, damp Florence streetscape in November.

I kept prowling just in case, around blocks, doubling back, continuing to peer into alleys and gated courtyards, although she could hardly have vaulted the gates. She could easily have been staying at one of the small hotels cunningly tucked into this part of the city. All she needed was a key.

Where the hell had she disappeared to?

And why didn't she want me to find her?

* * *

An hour later, I let myself into my hotel room and flopped on the wonderful bed. I was relieved that the police still hadn't come looking for me to discuss the theft at signor Falcone's place. If they got a complaint about the church incident and put those two together, life might not be too good.

For a scary moment, I pondered the fact that the hotels have to register foreign visitors with the Italian authorities. Would the police be able to connect the fracas in the church with me and roust me from my ochre-coloured, high-ceilinged room at the Hotel Paris and slap me into a cell? Would anyone have called them? Anything to do with the police was bad. I didn't want to have my movements restricted. On the other hand, it might work in my favour if I went to them and asked where Mrs. Parnell was staying. She would have to be using her maiden name, Violet Wilkinson, as she had at the car rental office, so maybe they'd fall for the sick grandmother story.

In the end, I decided against it. I figured there was plenty of bureaucracy to slow me down and way too much to do me any good. I'd likely end up being questioned and wandering through the rigmarole you'd expect in dealing with police in another country and grovelling for help from the Canadian consulate. My main concern hadn't changed. If Mrs. Parnell found herself in any confrontation with the police, even an interview at the station, it might provide enough stress to trigger a heart attack.

Anyway, I needed time to make a plan. I had one stunning piece of new information: Mrs. Parnell was in full control of whatever was happening. Judging by her quick-witted escape, her mind was working just fine, thank you very much. I worried about what that speedy departure might have done to her body.

I couldn't shake my reaction over the look in her eyes. What did it mean? Mrs. Parnell was no criminal. She was a person of great spirit and integrity. She never gave up. She was always ready to devise another tactic to solve a problem. She wasn't a victim either. Of course, there were things that we didn't know about her, but she always seemed so in control. It couldn't be that she didn't care about me. She had risked her life to save me more than once. She was the most loyal person I'd ever met. She must have had some compelling reason for not wanting to see me. And I was pretty sure it was something I wouldn't like.

I made a list, scratching out things, adding things, scratching out the added things, adding some of them back until I was left with:

She thought she'd encountered a dead man
.

She came to Italy with a plan
.

Her plan seems connected to the plane crash in Berli
.

She has something she wants to accomplish
.

She'd visited a former partisan who turned up dead
.

She knows exactly what she is doing
.

She does not want me involved
.

Even though her heart might do her in without medical attention, she won't stop until she gets what she wants
.

All this told me whatever she was up to either wasn't legal or wasn't safe. Maybe both.

I also still had one nameless partisan in Stagno Toscano who was possibly in grave danger, one fibbing little boy, four towns left to visit, some kind of false son, who was almost certainly the hit and run driver and who might or might not have been the furtive visitor who got to Mrs. Parnell's apartment before us, a whole lot of Italians whose names sounded quite a lot alike, and a bunch of letters that offered poignant glimpses into Mrs. P. as a young woman, yet shed no light on our problem.

I had one other kick at the can: I would intercept Mrs. P. at the car rental garage the next day at one p.m.

While I was making lists, in my personal life I had: one useless assistant, one unreachable love interest, too many disturbing memories of Florence and a case of jetlag that just wouldn't quit.

* * *

I awoke with a start, fully clothed. I yanked open the heavy velvet curtains to face a grey day. It was just before seven in the morning, and I was ravenous. I wasn't sure when I'd last had a meal. I needed something so that I could at least think straight. The breakfast room would be opening in a half-hour. I showered, changed and tossed my notebook into my backpack.

I pulled my wet hair into a ponytail, slipped my jean jacket over the sweater and headed to the pay phone down the street.

* * *

“Who is this again?” The Cape Breton accent was clear on the line. It would have been one in the morning there. I knew that was prime time for the Deveau girls.

“Camilla MacPhee, your father's friend. We have met, Brittany, although you may not remember. And I spoke to your sister, Ashley, yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah. She said that. Something about a hospital. Dad's not in the hospital today either.”

“Can I speak to him?”

“I don't know where he is.”

“He seems to be on vacation from work.”

“Yeah, that's right. He is on vacation from work.”

“He's not home now?”

“No, he's not.”

“Do you know how I can reach him.”

“I don't.”

“All right. Any idea when he'll be back?”

“No idea. My aunt might know.”

“That's great. Can I speak to her?”

“She's in bed.”

“Should I call later?”

“It's your money, Carla.”

I thought hard. I needed to get something out of one of these pricy phone calls, besides another headache. I tried a variation on the theme.

“Is your father in town?”

“No, he isn't.”

“Okay. You don't know where he went?”

“He's on vacation somewhere. He was talking about like Costa Rica or Mexico and places like that. I didn't pay too much attention.”

“But…”

“Look, that's my boyfriend on the other line, I gotta go.”

“Wait! Is there a number where I can reach him?”

“I don't
know
. He went with a friend. Some lady.”

I hung up with a sick feeling in my stomach. Ray had lost patience with me and gone off to a bird sanctuary in Costa Rica or a beach in Mexico with another woman. Who could blame him? It wasn't like I was much of a companion. On the other hand, what else could I have done? I'd had no choice but to try and find Mrs. Parnell. What kind of guy couldn't deal with that?

* * *

Okay, I asked myself, what would Mrs. P. do? She always says that an army marches on its stomach. Good advice.

I headed back to the hotel and hit the breakfast buffet the minute the door opened. I managed to catch up on a day's worth of food and stockpiled a bit for the future rough spots. The breakfast room had even higher ceilings than the bedroom, fourteen foot ceilings or more with lovely faded frescos, ancient stained glass windows, and a smattering of other guests who minded their own business. I helped myself to rolls and butter, preserves, cheese and ham and salami. I even had a yogurt and juice. I considered cereal but settled for fruit.

I avoided the coffee pot, where a dark mucky brew was boiling away in what was obviously considered to be American style, and headed for the smiling girl behind the bar counter. She was making cappuccinos.

I was happily sipping one when the desk clerk fluttered in with a message for me. A signor Vittorio Ralli was asking to see me. It was urgent. signor Ralli was waiting in the lobby. Was I available? To hell with cappuccino.

* * *

Vittorio delivered big time. He'd coaxed the missing name out of Giuseppe's memory and secured an address in Stagno Toscano. He assured me that this man, Stefano Braccia, was a noted partisan, with all his marbles, and unlike poor Giuseppe, he was rumoured to speak some English as well.

“Signora Camilla,” he said, running his fingers through his thick silvery waves, “I wish I could come with you. I have promised to help with the funeral arrangements for poor Luciano Falcone. He deserves proper respect, and signora Martello is too hysterical to do a good job. That boy Fabrizio is quite a brat, and who knows, they may even lose their home.
Povera donna
. Not everyone can be
brava
like you. Don't worry too much, because Giuseppe tells me his friend can speak pretty good English. Of course, Giuseppe's a bit off his nut. Let's hope it is the truth.”