Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  “No signs of bruising, defensive wounds, broken nails?” Pam directed this question at Cynthia.

  “What, you have the autopsy report, Cynthia?” Valerie exclaimed.

  Cynthia looked at me, but I shook my head slightly; her cover might be blown, but I wasn’t ready to share what I did with the rest of the group. “Yes,” Cynthia answered. “There were no injuries not consistent with the fall.”

  “So, to sum up,” Pam began, “Professor Gilbert was found dead subsequent to a fall, with no injuries that can be attributed with any certainty to a human hand. He had ingested a poppy solution that may or may not have affected his behavior or coordination. We may infer that he had a late assignation, but we have no idea with whom, and nobody has come forward to admit being with him. And possibly a dozen of our number have a motive to seek revenge against him. He could have been killed, or helped to die, by any one of them—or a combination of more than one.”

  “Murder on the Orient Express,” I said suddenly. “Everybody did it, or at least that’s the way it looked. Do you really believe that multiple people were involved?”

  Pam shook her head. “Too elaborate, and too much planning required. Besides, no one knew he would be there until we arrived, which wouldn’t leave much time to plan and brew up the poppy stuff and arrange a late assignation with the man. I’m just playing devil’s advocate. But it is possible.”

  Cynthia yawned. “Hey, gang, can we go to bed soon? Unless you want to upset the apple cart and blow off tomorrow’s schedule.”

  “I’d rather not do that,” I said. “It would be a good day to try to talk to people because we can go around in small groups. And there are more of us now to do the asking. But what do we need to know?”

  Silence for several beats. Then Connie said softly, “Who had a kitchen when we were staying at the villa. Who knows herbs. And who hated Professor Gilbert.”

  Yeah, that about covered it.

  “I agree with Cynthia,” I said finally. “We need some sleep. We can meet at breakfast and see if daylight helps. Thanks, guys.”

  The others headed off to their own rooms. When our new allies were out of range, I asked Cynthia, “Do you trust them?”

  “Laura, I don’t know what I think anymore, but I think we have no choice with these people here. Let’s get some sleep and regroup in the morning.”

  “Agreed.” Damn, I still hadn’t had a chance to talk to Xianling. I’d have to catch her in the morning and hope she had enough time left to pull together what we needed.

  Chapter 19

  I was continually surprised at how well I slept in Italy, but I assumed it was all the unusual exercise I was getting. If I stayed much longer, my calves and thighs would be rock-hard.

  But as soon as I woke up, my brain started spinning. We had little time left to clear up this murder before we were all scheduled to leave. Of course, it was entirely possible that we could all go our separate ways without the police interfering—they hadn’t placed any restrictions on us yet, and then we might never know if there was a resolution. But leaving the professor’s death an open-ended question didn’t sit well with me: it would cloud our memories of this trip, leave a bad taste in our mouths. It had been too lovely (apart from that unfortunate corpse, the one little fly in the ointment), and Jean and Jane had put far too much work into making it happen to let it end like that. So we would have to fix it if we could. But how?

  No sound from Cynthia’s room. I tiptoed into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, then pulled on some light clothes and went out to sit on the patio and watch the sun burn the mist off the valley. It looked so pastoral, so innocent.

  Pam came up the cement steps, her feet silent in rubber-soled shoes. “Hey,” she said quietly and took the chair across from me. “She still asleep?” She gestured toward Cynthia’s room.

  “I think so. You have something to say to her?”

  “Nope, I’m happy to talk to you. You two aren’t, uh, together or anything, are you?”

  “As a couple? No, nothing like that. We’ve been friends forever, but I don’t see much of her these days. Why?”

  “Just asking. I like to know who I’m working with. You know I figured out what you two do.”

  “And what do we do?” I said noncommittally.

  “You’re an ‘analyst’”—she made air quotes—“at a government agency that shall be nameless. Cynthia is a data miner, and she’s good at it. That’s why I wondered if you’d worked together.”

  “Not until now,” I said. She’d gotten us right, and it wasn’t worth asking how or why. “Did you tell the others?”

  “They don’t know. But we all agree that you two are our best hope of getting out of here on time—with my help, of course.”

  “You said you’re a lawyer, right?”

  “I am. If you want to know what kind of lawyer, ask your sleeping buddy.”

  “In the interests of saving time, let’s say you’re as good as you say you are and leave it at that. Do you have any suggestions?”

  “I think you’re doing it right—and you’re using your heads, not running around stirring things up. You’ve defined the parameters well: motive and means. Odds are good that someone is lying to you and everyone else, but the question is, does that matter? Can you figure this out anyway?”

  This woman was certainly intense. “I’d like to hope so. We still have to work out which people really did have a motive, no matter what they tell us. We know there were twelve people who took a class from Professor Gilbert. Some took more than one. But he can’t have hit on everybody—you’re a case in point. There may be more people who connected with him outside of class, but there’s no way to track that, so we’re sticking to what we can verify. So how do we weed out the—for want of a better word—rejects and figure out who had a real motive?”

  “The ‘unselected’ or the ‘unchosen’ would be a kinder term,” Pam said. “And it wasn’t always a sex thing. Sure, he had his share there, but he could be cruel in other ways.”

  “After he’d scored and then dumped them?” I asked.

  “Some, maybe, but not all. He enjoyed showing off, and he enjoyed exposing other people’s ignorance. He didn’t have to sleep with a woman to screw her, you know.”

  “Embarrassment as a motive for murder? Give me some examples.” I wasn’t sure I bought into her theory.

  “Remember the times. We were so young, so vulnerable then. To be ridiculed in a class by a professor you admired could be devastating. And hard to forget.”

  “Maybe.” I tried to remember any major faux pas I’d been called out on in a class and failed. I’d always been solidly in the middle—no highs or lows. And I’d had a good eye for artistic styles, which carried me a long way in art history classes. But I’d known shier, quieter girls in the dorm; I’d come across more than one crying in the shower, but I’d never asked why. Maybe I should have.

  “All right, say we want to follow up on that. Cynthia should have the grades for anyone who stuck it out in his classes. Should we be looking at anyone who received a C?”

  “It’s an idea.”

  “So now we’ve got sex, plagiarism, and ridicule to think about.”

  “Great way to start the day,” Cynthia said, coming through the door. “Talking about me?” She sat down at the table.

  “How much did you hear?” I asked.

  “A lot. You make lousy conspirators. Or maybe it’s just so quiet up here that all sounds carry. Do you realize we haven’t heard a plane in days? And you know a car is coming long before it shows up.”

  “There are, however, some very loud chickens,” I said. “So, Cyn, you have anything to add?”

  “I think you’ve got it right. Do you want to split up the list by possible offense? Like, which ones he slept with versus which ones he embarrassed? Or just go with alphabetically?”

  “What’s on the schedule for today?” Pam asked.

  “What, you haven’t memorized it?” Cynthia twitted h
er. “All I remember is the food. Lunch at some town called Sarzana, tea at some relatives of Jane’s somewhere else, and a big dinner at a castle somewhere. And more driving around between the aforesaid. We should eat breakfast before someone drags us off to the vans.”

  “I assume there’ll be some open time at the first event, if not the second one,” I said. “The problem is leading up to discussing the dead professor, if people don’t want to talk about him.”

  “We could just be direct about it,” Pam said. “You know, ‘I think there was something funny about Professor Gilbert’s death, and so do the police. What do you think? Who would want him dead?’”

  “Oh, now we’re a ‘we’? Pam, are you signing up for the investigation? And we’ve already got a Sherlock and a Watson.”

  “If you’ll have me, I’m in. I’ll be Mycroft,” Pam said.

  “Welcome, then, Mycroft. So, what if we put the question to people and they don’t say anything?” Cynthia asked.

  I threw up my hands, then stood up. “Solving murders is not part of my job description, and I’m making this up as I go. I’m going to grab a quick shower and get dressed so we can go eat. You two, continue brainstorming.”

  I went inside. While I showered, I turned over the idea of welcoming Pam into our tight little group. Would the other four come with the package? I suppose some small part of me had hoped that Cynthia and I could figure it out on our own and save the day—which I recognized as both vain and selfish on my part—but I had to admit that Pam brought some new and useful skills to the mix.

  When I emerged from my room, ready for the day, Cynthia was alone on the patio. “Where did Pam go?” I asked.

  “To rouse the others so we don’t miss breakfast.”

  “What do you think of her? And her plan?”

  Cyn shrugged. “I don’t have a better one. If you’re asking a different question, I think we need her. With so little time, we have to trust someone. Of course, I’d rather declare everybody honest and aboveboard, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to go.”

  “She knows about our, uh, professions.”

  “I’m not surprised. She’s smart. Maybe sneaky too. But we can use the help.”

  “She said Professor Gilbert didn’t even notice her.”

  “Well, he’d have to have been SuperStud to score with every student. He was picky, and he had plenty of pretty girls to choose from.”

  “Maybe that’s a motive—being dismissed as not attractive enough, not good enough to sleep with. Maybe Pam has been trying to compensate and prove him wrong for decades.”

  “I doubt it.” She shook her head. “How could this one man be so toxic? And nobody said or did anything? How many others like him do you think there were?”

  “You mean randy faculty members? I can’t say. It never happened to me. And I’d really rather think that he was the exception to the rule, and that most academics are nice enough people just doing their jobs, and if they’re lucky, they love their subject and try to pass that on to students. Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I hope so,” Cynthia said firmly. “I don’t want to see our college, or any college, for that matter, then or now, as a seething pit of depravity.”

  “Heaven forbid!” I said. “I always hoped it was about learning something, although that could include learning about yourself, not just academic subjects.” I stood up. “So let’s go get breakfast.”

  The others were already assembled, helping themselves to coffee, yogurt, fruit, granola and so on. I went for the bread. What can I say? I like carbohydrates. And caffeine. From the meaningful looks darting between them all, I surmised that Pam had filled them in, but no one said anything to Cynthia or me. Fine: now we were six—seven if Xianling came on board—and if each of us talked with three other people … that would just about do it. We should find a time to compare notes later in the day.

  But I still had one more task. “Pam, was Xianling showing any signs of life when you left the room?” I asked.

  Pam shrugged. “She likes her beauty sleep. And she doesn’t like breakfast. She’s fine. Why?”

  “I need to talk with her—I’ve got an idea.” I got up and approached the room Pam and Xianling were sharing, then knocked quietly at the door. After several moments, Xianling opened it, looking absurdly well put together for someone who had just gotten out of bed. “Can we talk?” I asked.

  “Of course.” She stepped back to let me enter.

  I came straight to the point. “I need to ask a favor. I think it will help us figure out how Professor Gilbert died.”

  Xianling nodded once. “Go on.”

  I outlined my rather vague plan to have her collect as many photographs as possible. It sounded lame to me, but we were fast running out of options. When I was finished, Xianling looked over my head, thinking. Then she returned her gaze to me.

  “I think I can do that. I’ll have to work out a method for assembling whatever photos I collect into one file, but that shouldn’t be too difficult, and there probably won’t be a large number. Not many people were concerned with capturing pictures from that evening.”

  I hadn’t even considered that, but I was relieved. “Thank you. I wish we had more time, but we don’t. At least we’ll all be together today.”

  “That we will. The others of our group up here know what you’re asking of me?”

  “Only Cynthia. The rest know the general outlines of what Cyn and I have been doing.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  I was being dismissed, but I didn’t mind. As I rejoined my vineyard companions, I spotted Jane coming up the hill, accompanied by Loredana.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Jane said, cheerful as always. “Today we’re going to visit Lerici, a lovely seaside town much favored by the English literary community in the nineteenth century. Virginia Woolf, for example. And Percy Shelley drowned in the harbor there. We will be driving, so please stick with your usual vans—we’d hate to misplace anyone now! Then we will regroup and go to Sarzana, where we’ll have an al fresco lunch featuring one of my favorite regional foods, farinata, which is kind of a chickpea pancake, except it tastes better than it sounds. Then later in the afternoon we will visit another town, Montemarcello, where generations of my family lived and where a cousin of mine has a house. She’s an artist, and we’ll be having tea at her home. You’ll have a little time to explore the beautiful coastline there, and the views are magnificent. And finally, we’ll be treated to a wonderful dinner at a castle. So, enjoy! We’ll meet at the vans at eight—and this time it will be a short climb up the hill for you, because we’re leaving from where we arrived! Just take that path there—it’s not far. See you in a bit!”

  Loredana smiled and nodded but didn’t add anything. She was a very cheerful presence, whether or not she understood what we were doing and saying most of the time. She and Jane turned and marched down the hill to inform the others at the hotel; they were talking a mile a minute in Italian again. I was tickled that for once the hotel dwellers were the ones who would have to do the trekking uphill, not us.

  We passed a pleasant half hour over breakfast. The sun shone; the flowers were blooming mightily; and the coffee flowed. And then it was time to head back for the vans, for the next leg of our journey. I wasn’t looking forward to the steep road out of our valley, but a couple of millennia of Italians seem to have survived it, so I’d just have to deal with it.

  The drive to Lerici was lovely—once we got out of the mountains. Lerici was lovely too, what we could see of it. Clearly a whole lot of people thought it was lovely and had arrived well before us and scarfed up all the parking spaces. Parking four oversized vans in Italy is a challenge under the best of circumstances; parking them in a crowded seaside town on a sunny summer day is a nightmare.

  After a slow loop around the town, our little caravan accepted the inevitable and started looking for a parking garage or lot somewhere away from the beach and the hear
t of town. We went around and around, and at the same time up and up. Finally, on a hill (with, as usual, a lovely view) we arrived at a garage entrance without the dreaded Pieno sign, and turned in. The first van collected its ticket from a machine and headed down into the bowels of the garage. Our van was second. Brenda pulled her ticket from the machine; the crossbar went up and we began to go down, until we were interrupted by a loud crash, followed by Brenda’s “Oh, shit! Oops, sorry, ladies.”

  We stopped. She put the van in park. We looked around and realized that some part of the bar mechanism had just blown out the back left window and it was now scattered in a million tiny pieces (thank heavens for safety glass!), both inside and outside the car. It was toast. “Shit, shit, shit,” our driver said again. I agreed with her choice of epithet. “Anybody hurt?”

  We exchanged glances. “No, we’re fine,” said someone from the backseat.

  The car that Jane had borrowed from Loredana pulled up behind us and stopped (having no choice). We climbed out of our van; Jane climbed out of the car. We all stared at the damage. Then Jane pulled her cell phone out and called somebody, while the rest of us wandered aimlessly around near the entrance to the garage, admiring the view so beloved of Shelley and friends. It was very pretty. We took more pictures. I’m pretty sure Shelley had never tried to park a humongous van in his favorite town—and he hadn’t had much better luck with a boat. Although to be fair to the poor man, various sources suggested that he was suicidal, incompetent, or had been hijacked by pirates who didn’t recognize a poet when they saw one. Or maybe he was murdered. It was anybody’s guess. So said Jane’s meticulously detailed handouts.

  A car emblazoned Polizia Mobilia pulled up. Jane went over to speak to one of the men in the car—a chat that lasted less than five minutes, when the polizia car pulled away. Apparently our shattered window was not important enough for them to worry about; their suggestion was to contact the rental agency. Right.

  Jane stood there, taking a few deep breaths, and looked at the rest of us, who were waiting for guidance. Finally she said, “Screw Lerici. Let’s go eat lunch.”