Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death (25 page)

Now the drivers cheered. I couldn’t blame them.

“So go ahead and finish your desserts, we’ll be leaving for the vans in about ten minutes.”

I looked down at my plate. It was empty for the first time in three hours. “Isn’t it amazing how much food we’ve consumed in Italy?” I asked Rebecca, seated across from me—and realized that she could actually hear me, for the first time in hours.

She agreed quickly. “And it’s all been good. I think I’ll have to rethink my attitude toward Italian food. Sadly, most of the Italian restaurants I know don’t produce anything remotely like what we’ve had.”

“Isn’t it a shame? But any of us can work with fresh tomatoes and olive oil, right? Can’t we re-create at least some of this?”

“Sure, why not?”

We emerged eventually into the blue dusk, with swallows swirling around the tower of the castle. The rolling hills below were growing indistinct as the light died. My belly was full and I felt a slight buzz from the wine. Life was good—except for that pesky murder. Which we had only one day to resolve or risk the wrath of the
polizia
. I hoped we could pull it off.

Half the people in the van dozed on the way back. It was dark by the time we trudged back to our vineyard hideaway. Our small group looked at each other. “This is not the time to try to think. Breakfast?”

“Agreed. See you then.”

And we went to bed.

Chapter 22

There must be something different about Italian wine, because on this trip I had consumed far more than I would at home, yet I hadn’t had anything approaching a hangover yet. Maybe it was all the exercise we were getting. Or maybe all the food sopped it up. Either way I was content, particularly because this morning I needed a working brain.

Cynthia and I bumped into each other on the way to the bathroom. “After you,” I said. “I’ll go out and admire the view.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “I can’t believe it’s our last full day.”

“I know, I know.”

I went out, dried the dew off the chairs on the patio, and sat, listening to the clucking of the chickens below and watching the mist burn off in the valley. It was early yet, so there were few sounds from the town. A worker went by in a farm truck on a graveled lane below but didn’t look up to see me sitting there in my sleep shirt.

On this whole trip my only real regret was that there hadn’t been more time to explore Florence. Even though I’d seen it before, a long time ago, one day was not enough to reacquaint myself with it. Maybe I should come back. Maybe with my daughter? We hadn’t traveled together in a while.

My happy daydream was interrupted by Cynthia, now dressed. She dropped into a chair. “All yours.”

I took a quick shower, dressed, and joined Cynthia again. “I’m going to miss this,” I said.

“I know what you mean. Look, Laura …”

I turned to look at her. “What is it?”

“I don’t want to leave this death hanging over us all. I don’t want it to trash our memories of the trip. But there’s so little time left, I’m afraid we won’t be able to fix this.”

“I know what you mean. You still have that diagram?” When she nodded, I said, “Let’s go over it again, with what we know now.”

“But we haven’t been able to talk to everyone yet,” she protested.

“We can’t afford to wait. Let’s fill in what we can and see where we are.”

Cynthia disappeared inside and came back with a bigger, better version of her original napkin diagram. The larger size had allowed her to fill in names, which made the overview a lot clearer.

“I see you filled in the circle for who had a kitchen or somewhere to cook,” I said.

“Jean said there were three buildings that had cooking facilities, although she thought the one next to the dining room might be too large for one person. And she told me who was in which.”

“Would you go back to Capitignano alone? Or were you thinking of the twins?” I arched one eyebrow.

Cynthia laughed. “You’re bad. No, I probably wouldn’t come back on my own. I think if I returned to Italy my first choice would be to find a nice hotel in Florence and spend a few days there, although Capitignano was a great place to unwind.”

“My thoughts exactly. Anyway, what does Jean’s information add?”

“Not much,” Cynthia said glumly. “Turns out that most of the people on our shortlist were in one or another of them, or had a close friend who was. Can’t you see someone popping in, particularly when it was so cold, and asking if she could brew up a cup of tea? It would be that easy. And how can we find out? ‘Excuse me, but did you cook anything while you were at the villa? Did you let anyone else in to cook anything?’”

“That’s what the police will do.”

“We aren’t the police. We’re trying to
avoid
being the police.”

I sighed. “Maybe that’s just not possible.”

“What, you’re giving up? That’s not like you.”

“I didn’t say I was giving up. What I
am
saying is that we set ourselves an impossible task, to try to discreetly interview a dozen or more people about a murder while everybody is wandering off in all directions or we’re all jammed together in a noisy space and can’t possibly talk.”

“Well, if you put it that way …”

“I do. But I haven’t given up.”

I checked the time: still too early for breakfast down below. Then I noticed Valerie trudging in our direction. She didn’t look happy.

When she reached our patio, Valerie said, “I have to tell you something.”

I waved at the remaining chair. “Sit. What is it?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m the one who gave Professor Gilbert the poppy drink,” Valerie said. “But I didn’t kill him.” She dropped heavily into a chair across the table and glared defiantly at Cynthia and me.

“What?” Questions tumbled around in my head: when, how, and mostly, why. My confusion must have been obvious on my face.

Valerie smiled without humor. “I apologize. When you asked me about the poppy drink, I didn’t tell you then that I made it and used it on the professor. I knew I hadn’t killed him—the stuff I gave him wasn’t strong enough. But after talking with you two, and with the others up here, I realized that I wasn’t being fair to the rest of our classmates. If I said nothing, just to protect myself, that would get in the way of finding out who really did kill him. And that would leave us all under a cloud, and I didn’t want that. So I figured I should eliminate one variable from the mix and let you focus on what really happened. I take it you haven’t shared any of this information with the whole group?”

“No, we’ve kept it quiet,” I said, “although some other people may have put two and two together and guessed. But the police know somebody had given him something, and I’m afraid that was my doing.”

“What, you’re some kind of international cop?” Valerie asked.

“Not exactly.” I wasn’t about to give her a detailed explanation. “But I did go so far as to make sure that the autopsy was thorough, or the police would have been content to call it an accident and close the file. When the autopsy results came back, they found out about the poppy stuff, since it set off a drug test. I opened that box, but I think there’s a good chance I can close it again, since it’s pretty clear that another person was involved. Look, when did you feed the stuff to him?”

Valerie sighed and leaned back in her chair, the tension beginning to drain from her. “Early on, when we were having cocktails before dinner. You know those drinks they were pushing at us? They were plenty strong enough to cover any odd taste—heck, they tasted odd anyway. And the color was helpful too. So I brought Professor Gilbert a drink and made sure he drank it—he was used to women waiting on him, so he didn’t think twice about it. And it wasn’t his only drink.”

“You’re saying that the amount he drank and the timing mean that the effects would have worn off by the time dinner was over?”

“Yes, most likely. I wanted him to look stupid during the dinner, maybe stumble a bit in front of everyone. That’s all I knew about the properties of Tuscan poppies, and when I got here and learned that Anthony Gilbert would be our speaker, it seemed too convenient to pass up, and sort of appropriately ironic.”

“Did it work?” Cynthia asked. “I mean, did it have the effect you wanted?”

Valerie shrugged. “I don’t think so, but I don’t really know. It gave me the creeps to be near him again, so I sat at the other end of the room. Everybody was drinking, so probably no one would have noticed. And nobody had seen him for a long time—they might just have written the effects off to drink or simple old age. He was pushing eighty, after all. I know, the whole thing was stupid, but when I heard he was coming, I wanted to do
something
.”

“Were you … I mean, did he?”

“I slept with him, all right? I was the girl of the moment for about fifteen seconds in 1969 and then he lost interest. It hurt, but I survived. It took me a while to realize I was far from the only one, and he was a jerk in other ways too. He was a mean-spirited bully. I wish I’d had the guts to complain to someone, but I couldn’t figure out who—the college didn’t have a support system in place, like they do now. So I figured the best thing I could do would be to hunker down and get a good education while I had the opportunity. When I saw him at the villa, though, it all came back. There he was, smug and sleek, and that seemed wrong. I knew there were other women there who had had run-ins with him. I wanted to do something, and I figured embarrassing him, attacking his ego, was the best way. So I tried to dope him, just a little, so he looked like a stupid drunk, and bring him down a notch. Am I in trouble?”

I looked at her, searching her face. “The autopsy showed the presence of an opioid in his system, but according to the official record it would not have been enough to kill him. Given what you’ve told me, it had in fact probably worn off by the time dinner was over. I think we can set that aside.”

“Thank you. And I didn’t try to get in the way of what you were doing, at any time. I talked to a lot of the other women, and I reported everything I learned to you. I really didn’t want to think that I had killed him, and from everything you’ve said, I didn’t. But someone did.”

“If we eliminate you, we’re back where we started,” Cynthia protested, “with a body and a handful of suspects who knew him and/or had a motive to do him harm, and no way to eliminate them. If we go to all of them and ask for alibis, it’ll be one unholy mess.”

“If the police get involved, it’ll be an unholy mess anyway. Should we look for the most damaged person?” I suggested. “Is it easy to hide the kind of anger and hate that lasts forty years?”

Valerie and Cynthia turned to look at me, and I held up my hands in mock surrender. “No, I’m not suggesting we go directly to each person and ask, ‘Where were you at midnight on the day and who can vouch for you?’ But I think we’ve agreed that the professor’s kind of behavior can cause long-term harm to vulnerable young women. Nobody who came on this trip was expecting to be confronted by him so many years later. There are women who have put that part of their history behind them and it wouldn’t matter to them. But there are others for whom it was traumatic, and maybe they wanted to rewrite history, or to make peace within themselves by confronting him after all this time. Professor Gilbert might have misconstrued their intentions, given that he requested that bottle of wine. Maybe in his misguided mind he thought the woman was looking for a repeat performance.”

“Jerk,” muttered Valerie. “I can’t believe I ever fell for his crap, even when I was nineteen.”

“You weren’t the only one, Valerie,” I pointed out. “In any case, if he thought he was going to have an amorous evening, this time he got something else altogether.”

“Laura,” Cynthia interrupted, “we’ve got less than twenty-four hours. How do you suggest we figure this out in that amount of time?”

I stood up. “I need coffee. Let’s go get breakfast.”

“Hang on a moment, Laura,” Cynthia said. “Valerie, we’ll meet you down there.”

Valerie gave us an odd look, but left. I turned to Cynthia. “What?”

“As long as we’re looking for confessions, I … I’ve got something to say.”

“Don’t tell me
you
killed him.”

“No, of course I didn’t. But the night he died …” She looked uncomfortable.

“What? Spit it out, will you? I’m hungry.”

“I was with the two chefs, but I kind of, uh, misrepresented our activities.”

I cocked my head at her. “You mean no wild orgy?”

“Not exactly. I did spend the time with them, so my alibi holds. But mostly they wanted to practice their English on me—they’re hoping to find jobs in a restaurant in Florence and they thought it might help.”

“So why did you lie about it?”

Cynthia looked away, out over the steep vineyard. “It made me sad, I guess. I keep trying to pretend I’m not as old as I really am, and maybe I hoped … Forget about it.”

“Let’s go get breakfast, shall we? And please, no more revelations before I’ve had my coffee.”

Did I really think that coffee would help?

We trooped down our steps in single file. Valerie was waiting for us, so I pulled her aside before we reached the patio. “Thanks for telling us, Valerie. You probably would have been in the clear if you hadn’t said anything.”

“I know. But that didn’t seem right. And I want to know who actually had the guts to kill him.”

“I understand. I’m glad you came clean with us.”

Our breakfast was a quiet affair. I was thinking, or trying to. We’d crossed one more person off our list—Valerie—but as for the rest we were indeed back to square one, except that we’d gotten to know a lot of the women better. Was I ready to point a finger at anyone in particular as a killer? Nope.

I liked these women. We weren’t the same people we had been forty years earlier, but if anything we’d improved with age. When I stopped to think about it, this whole event had been extraordinary. We’d all gotten along well. We’d all followed the jam-packed program and apparently enjoyed it. No one had whined or complained or dragged their feet. No one had thrown her weight around or tried to impress anyone else. I tried to imagine a comparable group of men setting off on an expedition like this one and almost spewed coffee. Not in a million years.