Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Cynthia gave a start. “Oh, crap, I think my brain is fried. Hang on a sec.” She found her own tablet and turned it on, scrolling through messages until she found what she was looking for. She clicked on a message, scanned it quickly, then clicked on an attachment. Her eyes widened. “Merda!”

  “What?” we all said in chorus. Even we could understand that particular Italian term.

  “We were right, Laura. About being wrong, I mean. Look.” She handed me her tablet.

  I peered at the screen, trying to decipher the report one of her people had sent … and the name jumped out: Gerry.

  I looked up at her. “Why?”

  “Keep reading—no, don’t bother, I’ll just tell you. Gerry had a younger sister who went to Wellesley, after we’d graduated. She took a class from Professor Gilbert. She killed herself the summer after her sophomore year. You can figure out the rest.”

  “The inference being, she couldn’t handle whatever Gilbert had done to her or with her?” Pam asked. Connie and Denise just stared, and Valerie looked triumphant, although she tried to conceal it.

  “Probably,” Cynthia agreed. “It may not matter, if that’s what Gerry thought. I can’t believe we were so stupid as to miss that. I mean, most people said he was the one who invited Professor Gilbert to speak.”

  Pam broke in. “Yeah, and we thought he naively believed he was doing something nice for us that we would enjoy. Instead, he was setting the scene for the professor’s murder and using us all for cover.”

  “Could it still have been an accident?” I asked. “I mean, say he confronted Gilbert about what had happened to his sister. Gilbert probably couldn’t remember her at all, and that would have set Gerry off.”

  “What about the two wineglasses?” Cynthia countered.

  “We know that it was the professor who asked for the wine to be taken up to his room,” I said. “We were so busy thinking it was a tryst with a woman that we didn’t think about alternatives. Maybe he intended it as a thank-you gesture for Gerry.”

  “Does Gerry’s wife know, do you think?” Pam asked.

  “I … don’t know,” I said. “They’ve been married forever, if I remember correctly.” Cynthia looked at her tablet again and nodded confirmation. “How could she not know about his sister’s death, under the circumstances?”

  “Lots of ways,” Cynthia said promptly. “She and Gerry’s sister never overlapped at college. The sister’s probably wasn’t the only suicide during that decade. And it didn’t happen on campus.” She looked at her screen again. “It was over the summer. She was at home.”

  “So Barbara wouldn’t have had much reason to know.”

  “Oh, come on. Gerry never mentioned it? In all the years they’ve been married?” Pam said incredulously.

  “Haven’t they lived abroad for a lot of that time?” Xianling asked. “Did Barbara ever attend reunions? Not everyone does, you know. And husbands have been known to keep secrets.”

  “So you’re saying she might not have known?” Connie countered. “Does that make it better or worse?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling deflated. “It’s probably not important anyway.” I’d been right about it being murder, but I’d been looking in the wrong direction for the killer. Good news, bad news.

  “What do we do now?” Valerie asked.

  “That is a very good question,” Cynthia said. “We have no proof. Even if someone had preserved the crime scene, if they do such a thing around here, Gerry’s prints would have been all over—he owns the place. The glasses are long gone, as is the bottle. The physical injuries were inconclusive. I mean, there wasn’t anything like the prints of a pair of hands wrapped around Gilbert’s neck, right? In fact, the only physical evidence we have is that he had a drug in his system, that you put there, Valerie.”

  “What?” Xianling said, startled.

  “Sorry, it just slipped out,” Cynthia apologized to Valerie.

  “Don’t worry about it. Guys, I brewed up a potion from the local poppies and slipped it to the professor. I’m amazed nobody caught a picture of it. But it was a mild solution—he’d have had to drink a gallon for it to kill him. I just wanted him to look foolish.”

  “Who else knows?” Pam demanded.

  “Just Laura and Cynthia. And now you. You going to turn me in?”

  Pam shook her head. “The man deserved it. You’re saying it didn’t contribute to his death. I don’t think the police need to know, if it comes to that.”

  “Are we supposed to tell them what we suspect?” Connie asked timidly.

  “We could wait until they come asking,” Cynthia said.

  “Will they?”

  “I … don’t know.”

  Xianling pounced on Cynthia’s weak answer. “If they do, will we tell the truth?”

  I stepped in quickly. “But we don’t have the truth—we have a lot of guesses. And we’re in Italy, and we don’t understand the local judicial system. I have no idea what the repercussions would be. Pam?”

  Pam held up her hands. “Don’t look at me! I haven’t a clue about how things work around here, and I don’t want to find out.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Cynthia asked. “All of you? Look, Laura and I don’t have to bring you into this at all, if you don’t want. Even you, Valerie—I’m willing to write off your little poppy juice experiment as irrelevant, and as far as I know nobody except us knows anything about it. We can suggest that it was an error in the blood tests or something. Or he did it himself.”

  “Do we tell our classmates what we suspect?” I asked.

  “About Professor Gilbert’s killer? No. We never told them it was a murder, and the police haven’t been sniffing around. Let sleeping dogs lie. Let them go home thinking it was a sad accident, period,” Cynthia said.

  I glanced around our little group. “Do you agree?”

  They all nodded wordlessly.

  I turned back to Cynthia. “Jean needs to know.”

  We lapsed into silence, stunned by fatigue and sunshine and unexpected revelations. Maybe it was fate that sent Jean walking past our table at that moment. She stopped.

  “Ciao, ladies!” she said brightly, no doubt relieved that the end of her responsibilities was in sight. “Ready for the banquet?”

  The seven of us at the table exchanged looks, and I thought we all nodded. I said to her, “Jean, there’s something we need to talk about. But not right here. Maybe we could go into the church where it’s cool and quiet?”

  Jean looked mystified. “All right, if it won’t take too long. I’d hate to be late for our party.”

  “We’ll be quick. Come on.” I led the way to the church, which was both open and empty. We gathered at a couple of pews, halfway down the nave, where we could be sure no one would hear us. And we laid out for poor Jean what we thought we knew. She looked increasingly shell-shocked. When we’d finished our summary, she looked away, down toward the altar.

  “I had no idea, I swear,” she said. “How awful.”

  “How did you meet Barbara and Gerry?”

  “I met Barbara through an Alumnae Council event, several years ago—she wasn’t our year, you know. We got to talking about Italy and she said she and her husband had this place in Tuscany that they rented out for groups. I’ve actually been there a few times, so of course I met Gerry. You might even say that Capitignano was the inspiration for this whole reunion—I could envision all of us in that beautiful place. And then Jane and I got to talking, and she said she had enough connections in this area to set up something along the same lines in Liguria. We had such a lovely time, planning all this …” she finished wistfully.

  I rushed to reassure her. “And it has been lovely, really. Look, so far most of our classmates still believe it was an accident, and we’d like to keep it that way. We can’t let what happened to the professor overshadow what has been a wonderful experience.”

  “What do we do, then?” J
ean asked.

  “We haven’t figured that part out,” Cynthia said. “We’d rather not talk to the police, and I think we agree we aren’t going to take this to them. We here are the only people who have discussed this, and we only just figured out what we think happened.”

  Jean brushed a few stray tears away and said firmly, “We need to tell Jane, just in case, because I don’t think my Italian is anywhere near good enough to handle this.”

  “I agree. Do you know where to find her?”

  “I do. Let’s do it now, before she gets sucked into the banquet.”

  Jean led the way to a house halfway up the hill on the way to the vineyard. When she knocked, it was Loredana who opened the door, with an expression more serious than any I had seen on her normally sunny face. When she stepped back to let us in without saying anything, I could see why: Jane was there in the living room, as was the senatore.

  And a pair of uniformed policemen.

  I wondered what the Italian phrase for “busted” might be.

  Chapter 25

  We made an odd crew, and I wasn’t looking forward to trying to explain anything. Jane was the only classmate in the room who spoke Italian well, but Jane didn’t know what we’d just explained to Jean. Cynthia and I had the most pieces of the story, but we wanted to keep Valerie out of it if we could, which meant we had to choose our words carefully. Loredana hovered like a mother hen, but we couldn’t communicate with her. The senatore was an unknown quantity, but the young police officers seemed very respectful of him. And we still had no idea whether we were facing Tuscan or Ligurian police or representatives of another agency altogether. Was it too much to hope that at least one of them spoke reasonable English?

  Everybody looked confused. I wondered briefly if we should ask for a lawyer, but if we couldn’t find an English-speaking one, that could only make things worse and would no doubt take time. I’d rather this was resolved now, with a minimum of outside intervention. But at the very least we needed to confer with Jane, our lone interpreter.

  I stepped forward. “Jane, can we speak with you privately?”

  She looked at the rest of us, then nodded. “Loredana, we’ll be outside.”

  “Si, si.” Loredana made a whisking gesture toward the back of the house—then followed us out to a stone patio, leaving her husband to deal with the men. We had to speak softly—and quickly. While Loredana meant well, she didn’t understand half of what we were saying, so poor Jane had to keep translating for her cousin while listening to us. It was a wonder that Jane’s head didn’t explode.

  Cynthia and I outlined what we’d deduced, in the briefest possible terms. By silent agreement she and I left out any mention of Valerie and the poppies; I said only that the detailed autopsy had turned up something suspicious, and Jane didn’t press for details, nor did she ask why I happened to know that. I hoped that nobody had read all the fine print on the autopsy. When we finished, there was a moment of silence as Jean digested it. She was looking imploringly at Jane, maybe hoping she could make all this go away. Cynthia and I held our tongues: we had done what we could, and now it was out of our hands. We had carefully omitted explaining where we had come by some of our information; let them think that we had put all the pieces together through delicate conversations with everyone else. I didn’t think anyone would question that.

  Jane touched Loredana’s arm and drew her aside for a private conversation, not that we could understand anything they said anyway. They spoke quickly and urgently, with much gesturing on the part of Loredana. She seemed incensed, and Jane appeared to be trying to calm her down. While we waited I could hear the rumble of male voices from the living room and wondered what they were talking about. The murder? Sports? Politics? Was the senatore handing out glasses of wine? How the heck did one deal with the police in this country?

  After another five minutes of heated discussion, Jane and Loredana rejoined our huddled group. Jane looked at all of us in turn.

  “Let me get this straight. Nobody has any physical evidence of any of this?”

  “That’s right,” I answered. “But we think it’s the only explanation that makes sense. Who are those police?”

  “They’re local. The Tuscan police got in touch with them and asked them to pay us a call, out of professional courtesy.”

  That sounded encouraging. “What do they think they’re looking for?”

  “I don’t have all the details, but I gather the general idea is that Professor Gilbert died under suspicious circumstances while we were in Capitignano, and they had a few questions they wanted to ask.”

  “So nobody is screaming ‘murder’ and looking to arrest anyone?” Cynthia asked.

  “No, so far this is a polite inquiry, nothing more.”

  “Jane, you know these people better than any of us. What do you think we should do now?” I hated laying this on her shoulders when she didn’t deserve it, but she was the only one who could handle both sides.

  Jane glanced at Loredana, who nodded her encouragement, then turned to smile at us, still nodding. “Loredana thinks we can make this go away, with her husband’s help.”

  “Is that legal?” I asked cautiously.

  Jane nodded. “It’s not like we’re concealing or destroying evidence. All we have is a lot of guesses. And those guesses are confined to the people here, right?”

  “As far as we know,” Cynthia replied. “We haven’t exactly polled the rest of the group to see what they’re thinking. And we only came up with this theory this afternoon.”

  Jane looked at Jean. “Not exactly what we planned, is it?”

  “Jane, Jean—this has all been wonderful,” I hurried to reassure them. “You’ve shown us places we never would have found or even known existed. You’ve provided us with great places to stay and incredible meals. We all know how much effort you’ve put into this and we’re beyond grateful. You couldn’t have foreseen the murder—if it even was a murder, which nobody has proved.” I took a deep breath. “We don’t want to spoil this for everyone else by dragging the police into this. We’ve all got arrangements to go home over the next couple of days, and it would be a nightmare to change all that now. We want the banquet to be a happy event, a glorious end to an incredible ten days. So—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—if there’s a way to make this go away quietly, I think we should take it.”

  The relief in the room was palpable, although Jane had to explain it to Loredana, who nodded vigorously in agreement. “We will fix this, you will see,” she said. I believed her.

  Jane smiled at last. “I think we can make it work. Let’s go back to the men—wait until you see the senatore in action!”

  When we returned to the living room, the men were acting like they were old pals. As I had guessed, they each had a glass in their hand, no doubt sampling the vineyard’s renowned wines. The police were laughing at some story the senatore was telling. He broke it off when we returned.

  “Va bene?” he asked his wife.

  “Si, si, molto bene.” She turned to the police, who were struggling to regain their official demeanor, and shot a few questions at them. There was a lot of nodding. Then Loredana looked at Jane and said something, and Jane looked at us and said, “They have just a few simple questions. I’ll translate for you. Nobody else here speaks Italian, right?”

  We all shook our heads. Maybe for once that was a good thing, since we could easily pretend to misunderstand the questions, and Jane could shade our responses to put them in the best possible light.

  “Are they going to, uh, talk to us one at a time?” I asked cautiously.

  “No, no, nothing like that. This is not a formal interview, and no one will take notes or record anything. Just information.”

  We could handle this. We did handle it. The nice policemen lobbed softball questions: Did you know the deceased? We all made noises about knowing him, or at least knowing of him, when we had all been at school together, a long long time before, and everyone had thoug
ht he was wonderful (we managed not to gag at that) and wasn’t it a shame that he had fallen? Most of what we said was the truth. We hadn’t seen him in decades. We hadn’t known he was in Italy. It had been a surprise to us to learn that he would be presenting a lecture in Capitignano. Yes, he had been in fine form during his talk and at the dinner afterward, although he might have taken a teensy bit too much to drink. Yes, as far as we knew he’d gone to his room as soon as the dinner was over (which I could corroborate). No, no one else had heard or seen anything of him after that. Yes, I was the one who had found him.

  That last bit occasioned an extra question or two. Had I heard anything in the night? No, I was a sound sleeper, and we’d been so busy with our sightseeing and shopping and such that I fell asleep immediately. And Cynthia? She said she’d stayed behind to talk to some of her friends, and I’d been asleep when she returned to our room. What was I doing out so early in the morning? Why, it was such a beautiful day, in such a beautiful place, that I couldn’t sleep any longer and I had gone out to enjoy the morning. Yes, it had been awful to come upon the body. I debated about squeezing out a few tears, but I thought that was beyond my meager acting skills.

  I did not mention my phone call, nor would they ever find out about it—I had used a very secure line.

  The policemen, who indeed were young enough to be our sons, and who had no doubt jumped at the chance to take a jaunt to the Italian Riviera to talk with some harmless old ladies, all but patted us on the head. They apologized for inconveniencing us. They greatly regretted that we’d had to face such an unpleasantness as a dead body in such a wonderful place. Surely it had been a tragic accident that was nobody’s fault.

  The senatore opened other bottle and distributed glasses all around. We toasted the late professor. We thanked the policemen profusely. If I’d been watching the performance from the outside, I would have been nauseated.

  And then we sent the police on their way, apparently satisfied. We’d told our stories; we’d done our civic duty. And if anything popped up like an unwanted mushroom, I’d just make another phone call and make it all go away. I did not feel bad about that, because I wanted to spare my friends any more trouble.