Jim had his wallet out. “This is Sandra. I call her Sandra because she’s blonde and she has big brown eyes, like Sandra Dee. You remember her? Gidget?” He started Sandra’s picture around the table, followed by another of Sandra when she was a calf. “And this is Polly. Polly is Sandra’s mother.” Jim’s picture of Polly showed another dozen or so Jersey cows, all more or less identical, in the background.
“But Jim,” Lettie said, “
all
your cows are blonde and have brown eyes.”
“But Sandra’s the one who looks like Sandra Dee—or did, when she was little.”
After the waiter had taken our orders, I turned to Wilma. “Do you have any special . . .7 I didn’t know what to call it: projects, passions, pet peeves—none of those sounded right. “Any special interests in your animal rights work?”
“When I was in school, I protested against the horrible massacres of newborn harp seals. The pups, you know, the hunters would club them to death, bash in their little heads, right in front of their mothers. They did that to keep from putting a bullet hole in their precious white pelt.” Wilma shuddered, her face clouding over. Jim folded his hand over hers.
“You were successful, weren’t you?” said Victoria Reese-Burton. “They passed laws against it, didn’t they?”
“For a while, yes, but they’re easing the restrictions again, and I do worry that we’ll go back to square one. The seals’ numbers have risen and fishermen are starting to complain.”
Jim squeezed her hand and leaned a little toward her. It appeared to be a signal between them, I thought; a signal for Wilma to pipe down before she placed both feet on her soap box.
Paul and Lucille Vogel got stuck at a table by themselves, and neither of them looked too happy about it. As we ate, I glanced their way several times, each time catching Paul with his gaze on our table. I recalled his pointed questions at breakfast about the whereabouts of Jim and Geoffrey at the time of Meg’s murder. Did he know something about them, something that would connect either or both of them to Meg? I wondered how many other people he had talked to, and if he had found out everything he wanted.
“I must say I was relieved when they arrested that local bloke for Meg’s murder.” Victoria realigned her silverware while Geoffrey struggled to divide a large thick steak equitably.
“Relieved?”
“Yes, relieved. Just think of the cross-examination and the surveillance we’d be under right now if these police . . . whatever they call them . . . had to figure out which one of
us
did it.”
“Do you think they have the right person?” I asked and looked around the table quickly. My question seemed to freeze the entire table; for a second or two, no one moved or spoke.
Jim said, “Do you have anyone else in mind?”
“No,” I replied. “It just seems—”
“Well, after all, the most likely suspect has enough troubles of her own, right now, doesn’t she?” Victoria used a fork and knife to transfer a portion of steak to her own plate.
“Havta ’splain that, luv,” said Geoffrey.
“Well, I mean Shirley. She’s the only one in the group that I know of who absolutely hated the woman. Of course, if you ask me,” Victoria whispered, leaning forward, “her sister, Beth, had more than ample reason for wanting to do for her as well!”
“I wasn’t aware that Shirley and Meg even knew each other,” Wilma said.
“They’re both nurses,” I said. “Didn’t Shirley say she had heard abhis trip from Meg?”
I recalled Shirley telling me she had visited Meg’s hospital recently.
“If Meg told her about the trip,” I continued, “and Shirley came and brought her daughter, that doesn’t sound like hatred to me.”
“I don’t know about that,” Victoria said, “but I talked to her—to Shirley—on the trip down here from Venice. She filled my ear full of fascinating stuff about Nurse Bauer.”
“Like what? Did she say Meg was incompetent?” Wilma asked.
“Incompetent, irresponsible, arrogant, unprofessional, you name it. Shirley told me Meg had made mistakes that killed people. She told me about one case where she had added a . . . well, basically a disinfectant . . . a hand cleaner, I believe . . . to a patient’s intravenous tube during surgery. The patient died.”
“Oh, my.” Wilma’s mouth formed an “O”.
“Meg didn’t get fired. You see, she was quite good at making things appear to be someone else’s fault. Usually, the rest of the staff could be persuaded to help sweep a complaint under the rug because they’d be worried about being blamed themselves. Shirley said Meg had violent confrontations with practically all the staff except the ones that could fire her—no coincidence there, I’m sure. Shirley said she saw Meg throw a bag of blood at a patient one time.”
“Oh, no!” said Wilma and Lettie at the same time.
“Meg denied it and said the patient was just senile, delusional, which he was, actually. Shirley said there’d been many complaints filed about Meg being rude, arrogant, leaving work early without permission, but nothing ever stuck. The last straw for Shirley was an incident where Meg gave a patient a massive overdose of a cardiac medication. The woman died, and Meg got Shirley blamed for it.”
Appropriate expressions of horror rippled all around the table. Lettie said, “I thought you said it was a hand cleaner.”
“That was a different woman. Oh, there have been several.” Victoria straightened her back and glanced at us under one raised eyebrow. “But this one—the cardiac medicine—it seems that Shirley had taken the call from the woman’s doctor. He ordered the medicine because the woman was having heart . . . you know.” Victoria patted her chest. “Shirley wrote out the amount—fifty ccs, say, although I can’t remember the amount she told me—and she put down that it was supposed to be given as an injection. Anyway, Meg gave it to her in her IV drip and the IV form of the cardiac medication came in a highly concentrated solution. So the poor woman got something like ten or twenty times more than the doctor had ordered.”
“So how did Meg get Shirley blamed?” Lettie asked.
“She stole the order Shirley had written, probably while the whole staff was in a panic over this woman going into cardiac arrest. Meg changed it from ‘IM’ to ‘IV,’ or from whatever they use to mean injection to whatever means ‘put it into the drip.’”
“How awful!”
“Yes, well, Shirley said that’s when Meg threw a wobbly and went on the attack. Shirley pointed out to the hospital officials that the ink Meg had used didn’t even match the rest of the note, but it was no use. And since she was pregnant with Crystal at the time, she quit the job. By the time Crystal was old enough for day care, they had moved to another city, and Shirley found a nursing position there. In the neonatal unit, I believe.”
“I wonder if her meeting with Meg this spring, the one you mentioned, Dotsy, was the first time their paths had crossed since then,” said Wilma.
After dinner, we pushed our chairs, all eighteen of them, into a lopsided oval, in order to talk while we sipped our coffee and various cordials. Tessa slipped out the front door, drawing a cell phone from her purse as she left.
“I bet she’s calling about Shirley,” said Wilma. “Tessa’s worried sick, but who wouldn’t be? She’s got a teenage girl missing, and now the mother’s gone, too.”
“Oh, my Lord!” I couldn’t believe my own stupidity. I hadn’t thought to tell Tessa about the woman in Shirley’s clothes. Would Captain Quattrocchi have told her? Would they have been in contact with each other this afternoon? Of course, she would have called Shirley’s room sometime this afternoon, especially when she didn’t hear any further word about Crystal. I dashed out the door.
Tessa was silhouetted against the moonlight reflected off the shallow spring water on the other side of the road. She was talking on her phone, so I waited at a discreet distance until she finished—a good ten minutes. She paced and used her free hand for sweeping gestures that were wasted on the country air.
“Home office,” Tessa said when she saw me. “They’ve talked to Shirley’s husband. He wants to fly here tonight, but he doesn’t have a passport. The tour company is pulling strings to see if they can get one issued to him quickly. They said he’s out of his mind. In a total panic.”
“I would imagine so. His wife and daughter are in a foreign country and they’re both missing! Who wouldn’t be panicked?” I told Tessa my story and watched her pace back and forth across the parking area, head down and hands clamped together. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, Tessa, but I did tell Captain Quattrocchi. He said his men are already on the lookout for Crystal.”
“I know. I’ve talked to him several times today. Did you check all the bathrooms at the train station? Are you sure she wasn’t there?”
“I think we checked them all. The train station is such a big place, I couldn’t swear she wasn’t in there somewhere, but then again, I couldn’t swear she went into the station in the first place. The last I saw of her, she was walking across that plaza in front of the Church of Santa Maria Novella.”
“Neither Quattrocchi, nor I, nor the hotel has seen or heard from her since this morning. Obviously, something has happened to her. If not, she would have been calling the caserma and the front desk every ten minutes all day.” Tessa paced some more and kicked an old dry stone wall at the entrance to the parking lot. “Her husband thinks they’ve been kidnapped.”
“Oh, dear.”
“And Pellegrino Tours has got the jimmyjams, because we’re supposed to keep up with our guests. I can’t blame Mr. Hostetter. I mean, I’d be panicked too. Hell, I
am
panicked. Nothing like this has ever happened before!”
“What’s your best guess, Tessa? When I saw that woman in Shirley’s clothes, it occurred to me that Shirley might have made some kind of trade. After all, they were really nice clothes. Perhaps she’s wearing the woman’s clothes and figures she’ll be able to find out more if she can blend in.”
“I don’t think either of them has been kidnapped. I know Italian kidnappings have got a lot of bad international press, but trust me, it just doesn’t happen to ordinary tourists. Only the very rich. The Hostetters aren’t rich, are they?”
“I never met them before this trip,” I said, “but Shirley did say she saved up for it. She was anxious to have this time with Crystal in a new place, just mother and daughter, and Shirley works as a nurse. No, I’d say they aren’t rich. The rich don’t have to save up for a trip.”
“Exactly.” Tessa’s phone beeped. She looked at the message screen. “Damn. That lazy Cesare is paging me . . . too lazy to walk out here.” She took my arm, and we strolled toward the door. “Oh, something else, Dotsy. I have a favor to ask.”
“Yes?”
“Wilma Kelly mentioned to me that she thought it would be nice to have a little memorial service for Meg. Something small and simple, you know. I agree. It seems to me that before we go on with our tour, we should have something, I don’t know, it just seems appropriate. What do you think?”
“Well, yes.” I could feel an assignment coming on.
“The problem is, several in our group didn’t really feel all that kindly toward Meg. I’m afraid she left behind a lot of raw nerves and injured feelings. I’m the most logical person to organize it, of course, but Dotsy, you have no idea. I’ve got more than I can handle right now. I’ll be on the phone all night, I’m sure, with the home office, with Shirley’s husband, with Meg’s brother back home. I’m rooming with Amy, trying to help her get through this, I’m worried about Beth, I’m in the middle of wedding plans, and I’m trying very hard not to get fired. I can’t organize a memorial service. Could you do it, please?”
Tessa had me firmly by the elbow. I wasn’t getting back inside until I made a decision, but this was supposed to be my vacation, damn it. Organizing a memorial service was the sort of thing I did at home. “Well, I didn’t really know her,” I said. “I met her at the start of this trip.”
“So you didn’t dislike her. That’s why I’m asking you. That, plus the fact that Beth told me you are a super organizer.” She gave me an almost comically pathetic look. “I know a church in Florence, an English church, the vicar is from England, and they would probably let us have it there. I’ll give him a call tomorrow if you’ll go talk to him and take care of it.”
“Okay,” I said. I have trouble with the word “no.”
My coffee was cold whean returned to my chair, and the waiter caught my grimace as I took a sip. Without a word, he brought me a fresh, hot cup. Cesare, his chair pushed back and his legs stretched out, affected a posture of extreme nonchalance and, it seemed to me, an awareness that Amy’s date, Gianni, was copying him, right down to the casually crossed ankles. Paul Vogel, elbows on knees, scanned the circle, his eyes pausing for a microsecond on each face. Wilma Kelly kept her feet tucked under her chair, and I wondered if it was because she had compared her own worn canvas shoes with Tessa’s and Amy’s designer jobs.
“One way or another, Achille will drive us to Pisa on Tuesday morning,” Tessa said. “I still don’t know if we’ll stay there overnight, or drive back here, but we’ll definitely see the Leaning Tower either way.”
Cesare spoke up, in heavily accented English. “And another thing. I have an invitation to . . . to offer to you. On Wednesday evening, my town is having a festival . . . a march . . .”
“Parade.” Tessa corrected him.
“Yes. And I am have . . . I will have a party before. I would like to invite all of you.” He swept his upturned hand, an inclusive gesture, around the circle.
“
Lasiarme loro dice
,” Tessa murmured to him and took over. “Cesare’s home town, he’s on the town council, has a festival every year on this date. It’s a medieval sort of thing with costumes, a parade, and banners—very colorful and fun. Anyway, we can’t be positive where we’ll all be on Wednesday evening at this point, but if we’re in Florence, Achille can take us there. It’s about a thirty minute drive, and Cesare would like us all to come to the party he’s hosting at the town hall. We’re supposed to be in Siena on Wednesday, but whether we spend the night there or in Florence, it’s not a long drive from either place.”
“Do we have to wear costumes?” Wilma asked.