“Did you hear? Crystal’s missing.”
Wilma Kelly went out of her way to walk past our breakfast table and bring us the news. The Hotel Fontana had a delightful little terraced area under a vine-draped arbor just outside the main dining room. Dappled sunlight on white linen and fresh flowers on every table. The only problem was that it was separated from the busy street by a thin hedge so the street noises, banging trash cans, and motorcycles revving up at the corner stoplight, made conversation a little difficult.
“Missing? What do you mean?” Lettie buttered her second croissant and licked her fingers.
“Shirley said Crystal went out last night, supposedly for a few minutes, and didn’t come back. She’s absolutely beside herself. She was at the police station most of the night.”
“Why did Crystal go out by herself? She did that a couple of times yesterday, too,” I said.
“Well.” Wilma leaned over our table. “Crystal has been popping out every so often for a cigarette. Shirley is horrified that her daughter is smoking, so they’ve had several bouts over that the last few days. At home, Crystal can probably go out with her friends and smoke without her mother knowing about it. If she smells smoke on her, Crystal can always just say, ‘I was in a smoky room,’ but here, she goes out by herself and comes back fifteen minutes later smelling like smoke . . . well. Shirley may be dumb, but she’s not that dumb.”
“Maybe it’s more like, at home she can pretend not to know, but here it’s too obvious to keep up the pretense,” I said.
“I suspect that’s it.” Wilma started to leave, but turned back. “Did you hear about the meeting? Tessa wants us all to meet in the conference room beside the front desk at nine. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about Crystal.”
I thanked her and checked my watch. We had twenty minutes. No sense going back to the room now, so I’d just have another cappuccino . . . and another croissant.
“I’m so glad I’m finished raising my teenagers, aren’t you?” Lettie’s two, a boy and a girl, were grown now and out on their own.
“Very, very glad,” I answered with feeling. “Especially the teenaged girl. Give me boys, any day.” My mind flitted quickly past my own daughter, Anne, who at that moment was sailing in the Caribbean under circumstances I refused to ruin my vacation thinking about. My four boys—I was so proud of them. My daughter—well, I still had my fingers crossed.
Lettie asked, “Speaking of Anne, how is she?”
Paul Vogel interrupted before I could answer.
“Morning, ladies, morning! Mind if I join you?” He yanked a chair from a nearby table and seated himself. His ubiquitous camera with the macho lens swung from his neck as he flashed us a yellow-toothed smile.
“Croissant?” I held out the basket to him.
“No, thanks. I guess you ladies have a big day planned?”
Paul Vogel’s sudden joviality seemed as contrived as a hair compliment from a used car salesman. “Just sightseeing,” I said.
“Yeah, me, too . . . me, too.” He fiddled with his camera. “Lettie—you don’t mind if I call you Lettie, do you? I understand you were in the cat-bird seat yesterday.”
Lettie looked confused. It surprised me that Paul knew her name; this was the first time he had spoken to either of us directly.
Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean, cat-bird seat?”
“Weren’t you sitting at the elevator when all the . . . you know . . . stuff hit the fan?”
“Oh, right. Yes. Lucille must have told you. She popped in just when . . . well, as a matter of fact, we all, Dotsy and your wife and I . . . we all had to walk up the stairs because they stopped the elevator.”
“My wife? I’m not married.”
He said it so simply, I wondered if I had got the last names wrong.
Please don’t tell me you and Lucille are having an affair.
They might be brother and sister, of course. I found it mind-boggling enough to imagine either of them in the bonds of matrimony. But a passionate affair? Fly off to Europe to melt in each other’s arms? My imagination simply would not leap that far.
“Oh, no,” Paul continued. “Lucille is my sister.”
Now that, I could imagine. I remembered Shiry telling me Lucille had pitched a fit in Venice because they wanted twin beds and had been given a double. It all made sense now.
“How nice that you travel together,” I said.
“We don’t usually, but she was keen to go on this trip and didn’t want to go alone.”
“What do you do back home?” I asked.
“Security.” Paul coughed and tapped his lens cover a couple of times. “Security service. Electronic sweeps. Photography. Location and recovery.”
“That explains the state-of-the-art camera,” I said.
I hate it when people tell you what they do in such nebulous terms you still have no idea what they do even after they’ve told you. That happens to me all the time whenever I talk to someone who has a government job or something to do with computers. Paul’s answer sounded to me just like, “You wouldn’t understand if I told you, and if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“This camera is not state-of-the-art anymore, I’m afraid. Nope. I need to go digital, but I’ve been putting it off because it means taking courses to learn what the hell it’s all about and I just haven’t had the time.”
“I see,” said Lettie. “Is your sister enjoying Italy as much as she thought she would?”
“Oh, I think so. Of course, we’ve not exactly had just a happy little tour so far, have we? I mean, this whole thing is extraordinary. At the elevator yesterday, did you see Jim Kelly at any time?”
“No, but I saw Wilma,” Lettie replied.
What a strange question
. It had nothing to do with what we had been talking about. It made me feel uncomfortable, so I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “You and Lucille didn’t do your sightseeing together yesterday, did you? Lucille came into the lobby by herself.”
“No. I spent my day at the Ponte Vecchio and the Boboli Gardens . . . taking pictures, you know. Lucille went to the Uffizi Gallery.” Paul sipped my water, apparently not noticing that he had done so without asking me first.
“So Lucille is the art aficionado in the family?”
“She’s an artist, all right, but not the visual kind,” he said, tapping his right ear. “The auditory kind.” He leaned forward, one hand on his knee and looked into my eyes in a confidential, almost uncomfortably intimate, way. “Lucille has had a tough time. She was a singer—a classical singer. Voice like an angel. But you know how it is, show business. Tough life.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“She always thought that by the time she reached this point in her life—mid-forties—she’d be an established artist, maybe even famous. But she kind of slipped downhill instead of rising up. She went from concert halls to smaller venues to night clubs to . . . well.” Paul glanced over his shoulder and checked his watch.
“You said you ddn’t see Jim Kelly yesterday.” He looked straight at Lettie. “Did you see that Brit? What’s-his-name, Reese-Burton?”
Lettie’s eyelids fluttered. Since she is not quick to pick up on subtleties like a cough or a throat clearing, I resorted to the old kick under the table. With Lettie, though, you run the risk she’ll yell “Ow! Whadja do that for?” Paul was fishing for information. Why, I couldn’t guess, but I felt strongly that it was time for us to clam up. Captain Quattrocchi we would talk to, but Paul Vogel? This was beginning to feel like high-stakes poker, and I knew enough to keep my cards close to my chest. Who was Paul, anyway, and why was he pumping us for details on what Lettie may have seen or not seen yesterday?
The kick to the shin worked. Lettie grabbed my arm from across the table, looked at my watch, and said, “Oh dear, we’re late for the meeting.”
We were the last to take our seats in the small conference room. A quick glance around told me that everyone was there except Crystal. And Meg, of course. Beth and Amy sat beside Tessa, Amy holding Beth’s hand. Tessa explained that we were going to play it by ear for the next few days. We were scheduled to stay four nights in Florence, then go to Pisa on the West Coast, but things being like they were, we might stay on here a bit longer. “This hotel has room for us if we need to stay. In fact, you’ll probably be able to stay in your current rooms, if you want to. We can go to Pisa as scheduled, but we might just make it a day trip and return here for the night.
“We didn’t get to do our excursion to the Piazzale Michelangelo yesterday, of course, but we can still do that. We just don’t know exactly when, yet.” Tessa paused and looked around. “Is this okay with everybody?”
Lucille Vogel boomed, “Will we get a refund on whatever we don’t get to do, because of circumstances beyond our control?” and silence dropped like an anvil.
It was an outrageously inappropriate question, but Tessa had to say something. “Pellegrino Tours always goes out of its way to be fair to its guests. I’m sure they will be this time, too, but you must understand that we haven’t been able to discuss any specifics yet. Today was scheduled to be a free day, anyway. So that won’t change, but Captain Quattrocchi has asked that you keep the front desk here informed about where you are. Not in any great detail, of course, but if you’re, say, taking a bus trip to San Gimignano, you should let the hotel know. In the event that Captain Quattrocchi needs to speak with you again, he will probably want you to come to the caserma—that’s what we call carabinieri headquarters. It’s located down near the river on the Borgo Ognissanti, easy walking distance from here. Now. Amy wants to tell you a couple of things.”
Amy Bauer released her sister’s hand and stood up. “Beth and I want to thank you for all the help you’re giving us. This is a hard time for us, but everyone has been so kind.” She cleared her throat and lowered her head. “It was Meg’s desire to be cremated. We’ve decided to have that done here, and then we will take her ashes back to the States. Our brother Joe is planning a service for her at home, but the date will have to be left open until we know how long everything here will take. We understand a cremation may take some time. At any rate, until then, Beth and I will continue on with the group, and like I said, we appreciate your help.”
Tessa smiled at Amy and stepped forward again. “One more thing. Since it’s Saturday, restaurants all over town will be jammed tonight. I thought some of you might like to have an authentic Tuscan country dinner, so I’ve contacted a charming little place I’ve been to many times. It’s about ten miles out of town. Achille can drive us. If you want to go, tell me soon so I can call in a reservation. We’ll leave here about seven.”
Paul Vogel stood up. “I heard they’ve arrested some local guy for the murder. Is that true?”
“Captain Quattrocchi has asked me not to discuss specifics of the case with anyone, and to tell you the truth, I don’t know much about it, since I only sat in as translator when he was talking to each of you.” She hesitated a moment. “But, yes. I think it’s okay to tell you that they did arrest a man yesterday. That’s all I really know.”
I had a strong feeling that Tessa knew a great deal more, but, of course, she really couldn’t talk about it. People began to stir, and it looked as if the meeting was over.
Shirley Hostetter barred the doorway with her body before anyone could get out. “May I have your attention for a minute?”
“Oh dear, Shirley, I forgot to call on you,” Tessa said, her voice apologetic.
“As you may have heard, Crystal is missing.” Shirley’s whole face betrayed the fact that she hadn’t been to bed at all last night. Her hair was a mess and her makeup was gone. “She was last seen by some of the hotel staff outside on the street at about nine o’clock. They saw a young man—black hair, about five feet eight, wearing a blue denim shirt and jeans—talking to her, but nobody actually saw them leave. We don’t know if she left willingly or not. We don’t know if she left with that young man or not. Those who saw him say he looked like a Roma—that’s what they call Gypsies. They said he dressed like a lot of the Roma teenage boys do. They guessed his age at about fourteen to sixteen.
“Anyway, if you were out last night at about that time, would you please, please, search your mind for anything you might remember seeing? Anything at all. Tell me, or tell the police, or the carabinieri. And while you’re out and about today, please keep your eyes open. Okay?”
Her voice broke on those last few words. My heart bled for her.
In the lobby, two young men—cool, debonair, like fugitives from a Milan designer’s summer collection—waited. Their eyes lit up when Tessa and Amy emerged from the conference room.
“The fiancé and the new boyfriend, I presume,” I whispered to Lettie.
As we watched them, I filled Lettie in on my plan. “I worked something out in my head as I tossed and turned last night,” I told her. “I want to know if it was possible that Beth’s knife was thrown into that fountain where Crystal found it, or if it had to have been carried there.”
Lettie said nothing, but her eyes danced like she smelled an adventure.
“So, if we’re lucky, either Tessa or Amy, but not both of them, will go up to their room now,” I said. “We need to station ourselves at the end of the hall on thhroird floor so we can see who’s going in. Let’s get the elevator.”
“Isn’t Amy staying with Beth now, in a room on the second floor?”
“But she and Tessa still have their things in Amy’s original room. We need to drop by when only one is there. Which one doesn’t really matter.”
“Why?”
“Because it will be easier for you to keep one person distracted while I do what I’ve got to do,” I said.
“Which is?”
We dashed to catch the elevator and rode to the third floor. I shoved Lettie down toward the end of the hall just in time. Through the little windows in the stairwell doors, we watched Tessa insert her room card and open the door. Yellow crime scene tape still crisscrossed the door on her immediate right.
“Perfect,” I said. “You let me handle everything, and I’ll explain it all later. I hope this works. Your job is to distract Tessa for about one minute while I poke my head out the window.”
“You mean balcony door.”