Murphy's Law

by Lisa Marie Rice

  “The Certosa was locked up last night. Of course, any building can be breached, but the walls are fifteen feet high and have glass embedded along the top. There are flowerbeds all around the perimeter of the walls and so far there are no signs of a break-in.” Dante looked at her, all affability gone, a cop. “We’re checking.”

  “Well.” Madeleine Kobbel blinked slowly once. Twice. She opened her mouth then closed it again. She didn’t look like a woman who was often at a loss for words. “Well, I, ah—” She sighed. “Put that way—”

  “Put that way, Professor Kobbel, the list of suspects narrows considerably.”

  “Put that way I guess it does,” she agreed.

  Dante put on his most charming smile. “But we don’t necessarily suspect you, Professor Kobbel. And forensics will be telling us a little bit more about the method of the murder which will undoubtedly bring us closer to who killed him. In the meantime, Professor Kobbel, I have asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office for a warrant to sequester your passports.”

  This was true and technically Dante had the approval of Marcello Sestini, the public prosecutor. The only thing was Marcello’s lazy secretary, Sonia, wasn’t going to draw up the warrants until tomorrow, something Madeleine Kobbel didn’t necessarily have to know.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to keep your passport and the passports of Faith Murphy and Griffin Ball for the duration of our inquiry. I would also ask you not to leave the confines of Siena for the next few days.”

  “I’m hardly likely to, Commissario Rossi,” she said. “We’ve got a conference to organize and during the conference itself we rarely leave the Certosa.”

  “The conference isn’t going to be called off?” Dante asked.

  For the first time, a true expression crossed Madeleine Kobbel’s face—surprise. “Of course not,” she said blankly. “We’ve been working for a year for this. Something as—” She clamped her lips shut.

  Dante could figure out the rest of the sentence himself. Something as trivial as murder certainly isn’t going to stop us.

  “Well, Professor, I’m sure you will receive your passports back in a few days,” he said smoothly, rising. He stretched out his hand. Hers was dry and bony. “Thank you for your cooperation, Professor Kobbel. I might want to question you further in the next few days.”

  “That’s fine, Commissario.” There was a minute relaxing of the lines around her eyes. “I understand you’re just doing your job. Am I allowed to go now?”

  “Most certainly, Professor Kobbel. And I’d be grateful if you would send in Professor Ball.” Dante accompanied her to the door, keeping behind a few steps. When her hand was on the door handle, he said, tone casual, “By the way, how did you know Roland Kane’s heart was punctured? We didn’t give out that information.”

  Her hand tightened on the handle, then she released it and turned around. “Faith Murphy told me.” She gave a tight, thin smile. “Good-bye, Commissario Rossi.” She walked out.

  Dante went back to his desk, picked up the Kane file. His cell rang. “Rossi,” he said.

  “Gianni the pharmacist saw Nerbo buying a new, expensive sweater. Armani,” his brother Mike said without preamble.

  Dante shut the file and sat up straight, electrified. “Damn.”

  Nerbo had absolutely no virtues save the fact he was a magnificent horseman. He was quick to anger, had problems holding down jobs and was in trouble more often than not. He was also totally incapable of handling money. Any money that crossed his small, tough, leathery palm was usually illicit and was immediately blown. If Nerbo was buying Armani, someone had bought Nerbo.

  “Fucking Turtles,” Mike said grimly. “How much do you think they sprung to bribe him?”

  “I’m not too sure it was the Turtles,” Dante said thoughtfully. “It might have been the Tower. If Nerbo had been bought by the Turtles now that we have Lina, he’d be pricing a Mercedes.” The Turtles would pay any sum to keep the Snails from winning.

  Dante took a perverse pleasure in knowing that the Turtles and the Snails had been arch enemies for almost as long as there had been a Palio. He had no doubt whatsoever that his great-great-grandfather had complained regularly to his brother about those treacherous Turtles. It gave him a warm, solid feeling in the pit of his liver.

  “Have someone keep an eye on Nerbo,” he told his brother.

  “Already did,” Mike answered. “Gianni’s second son, Beppe. He failed two classes this year in high school and he’s in the doghouse. Gianni promised him that he’d forgive him and let him go to the beach after the Palio if he keeps tabs on Nerbo. Nerbo won’t be able to take a shit without Beppe knowing about it.”

  Dante grunted. Gianni didn’t need to sic his son on Nerbo. The whole Snail contrada would be watching the jockey’s every move.

  As soon as all the details of a Palio had been decided upon by the drawing of the lottery, the partiti began—that ever more slippery series of formal and informal deals with the enemy of one’s enemy contrada, forming temporary coalitions with other contradas to ensure that one’s enemy not win, approaching a rival contrada’s jockey…

  There was a discreet knock on his door.

  “Stay on top of the situation,” he said to his brother and hung up.

  “Avanti,” he called out.

  The door opened and an elegant man slipped in, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Dante rose, all affability. “Professor Ball?”

  “Griffin Ball,” the man confirmed with a nod. “I understand you’re Commissario Dante Rossi. I also understand you’re Lorenzo Rossi’s nephew. Your uncle is a very dear friend of mine. He’s a wonderful man.”

  “That he is,” Dante said as he indicated the chair for Ball to sit in, and sat down himself. “If you know Uncle Lorenzo, I imagine you also know my cousins, Niccolò and Lucrezia.”

  Ball frowned a moment, then smiled. “Nick and Lou. Sure. They’re great. My partner, Carl and I had them over for dinner recently. We had to be really inventive with the menu because Nick had just broken a finger.”

  “Niccolò has always just broken a bone,” Dante replied. “I’m surprised he can stand upright.”

  While they were having their little chitchat, Dante studied Griffin carefully. He’d seen Griffin’s passport. If he hadn’t read the birth date, he wouldn’t have put the man’s age at much more than forty, but he was approaching sixty.

  Ball was immaculately dressed in light tan chinos and a cream-colored, short-sleeved linen shirt. Despite the heat and the fact it was afternoon, his clothes were crisp and spotless. Ball straightened his trousers carefully so they wouldn’t crease and Dante noticed the skin on his hands was smooth and unspotted.

  Clearly, the man had made a pact with the devil. Or with an extremely clever plastic surgeon and very talented hairdresser. His dark brown hair was well-cut and showed no signs of white hairs. His skin was clear with only a few smile lines around his eyes.

  Actually, Dante thought uneasily as he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window, Griffin Ball looks younger than I do.

  Dante had been meaning to make it to the barber for weeks now and his hair touched the back of his collar. It wasn’t fashionably long, just slovenly. It was against the natural order of things for an American to be more elegant than an Italian. Unthinkable.

  Dante brought his mind back to the business at hand. “So, Professor Ball, I wonder if you could go over the last twenty-four hours with me.”

  Ball folded his hands calmly. “Certainly, Commissario.”

  Griffin Ball’s recollections of the trip and the dinner dovetailed with Madeleine Kobbel’s. And he, too, had heard nothing, seen nothing and knew nothing.

  Ball wound down and Dante sat back in his chair, carefully aligning his pen with the side of the notepad.

  The two men looked at each other. Griffin Ball, like Faith Murphy and Madeleine Kobbel, was cool and apparently unflappable. Dante decided to see if he could conjure up a response.
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br />   “What was your relationship with the dead man, Professor Ball?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  It wasn’t a difficult question. “I said, what was your relationship with Roland Kane like? You worked together in the same department for—” Dante made a show of looking at the sheet of paper in front of him, though he knew the answer. “—for eight years. That’s long enough to get to know someone very well. Were the two of you friends?”

  Ball smiled. “Clearly, you never met Roland Kane, Captain Rossi. I doubt whether Roland Kane ever had a friend. I doubt he even fully realized what friendship was. The man was so emotionally stunted I wouldn’t hesitate to define him as a sociopath.”

  “Harsh words, Professor,” Dante said mildly.

  “And one never speaks ill of the dead, right? Well, in Roland Kane’s case, it would be very hard to speak well of him. I’ll spare you having to go check back with the authorities in Southbury, Commissario, and tell you straightaway that I had good reason to hate Kane. Probably to kill him, too, if I were a violent man.” He shifted elegantly in his chair. “Which I’m not.”

  Dante had always envied gays their style, as if they were all—every single one—Italian. Being an Italian heterosexual took a lot of work to keep up the image and Dante wasn’t always up to it. But any gay, from more or less any part of the world, managed to look more elegant than he did without breaking a sweat.

  “I’ve had problems with Roland Kane since my arrival at Southbury,” Ball began. “And I bitterly regret the day I left Virginia.”

  Dante didn’t have to check his notes. Griffin Ball had resigned his post as assistant professor at Virginia Tech and had been hired on the tenure track at Southbury.

  “I guess the weather in Virginia was better.”

  “Everything in Virginia was better,” Ball answered sourly. “And to think, at the time I thought I was taking a step up. Roland Kane wasn’t present during the interview process. He never participates—sorry, he never participated—in any of the administrative tasks of the faculty. If he’d been there when I interviewed, you can be sure I’d never have accepted the job.”

  “You had…problems with Professor Kane,” Dante said carefully.

  “You could say that.” Ball’s mouth tightened. “I have two lawsuits against Kane pending—one for harassment and the other for assault. Roland Kane was undoubtedly the nastiest human being I’ve ever met, and I’ve met my share. Besides being a misogynist and an alcoholic, he was also a rabid homophobe. He made my life a living hell. I reported him several times to the dean and to the trustees of the university, to no avail.

  “His harassment eventually became so serious I had to report him to the police. That was how I met your uncle, Lorenzo Rossi. He’s the president of the staff committee and he was as disgusted as I was, bless his soul. He went to have a talk with Kane. I don’t know what was said, but the worst of the harassment stopped.”

  “And yet you worked together,” Dante said neutrally. “Every day. That must have been a strain.”

  “Well, to tell the truth I didn’t see too much of Kane during the working day. He didn’t actually teach many classes. And lately I think his drinking was getting out of control. He was skipping more classes than he taught.

  “Mainly I saw him at faculty meetings, but he had to restrain himself with other people around. Mostly, he would try to corner me in the restrooms. He’d leave lurid notes for me, that kind of thing. Luckily, the worst of it stopped once Lorenzo had his talk.”

  “Yet you took it to court.”

  Ball straightened. “Damned right I did. Kane’s behavior was inexcusable. I called for his resignation time and again, but whenever his situation got serious, he’d pull a rabbit out of a hat. He donated to the university the copyright to a traffic management software program that earned Southbury a lot of money. And the quantitative methods series of conferences gave the university a lot of luster. He had a genius for pushing a situation right up to the edge and then pulling back at the last possible second.”

  Ball’s voice was even and his hands stayed calmly composed on his lap, but Dante could see a vein throbbing in his temple and his breathing had speeded up.

  “Someone had to stand up to Kane, and that someone had to be me. I have tenure. I have a generous trust fund from my grandmother, and my partner is a very successful stockbroker. There wasn’t anything Kane could do to me. Unlike Faith.”

  Dante raised his eyebrows. “Murphy?”

  “Yes, Faith Murphy. She’s a lovely girl, and a very gifted mathematician, very gifted. Kane made her life miserable from day one. Faith comes from a very poor family and is on contract. Her entire existence is tenuous and Kane preyed on that. And there was a girl—” Ball stared into space. “Coral…” He snapped his fingers. “No, Candace. Candace Simmons. A student. There were rape charges but before the case could come to trial, she was institutionalized and the charges were dropped. Basically Kane got away with rape. Believe me, Commissario Rossi, whoever killed Roland Kane did humanity an immense service.”

  Ball was slightly flushed, his jaw tensed. Suddenly he smiled. “But it wasn’t me.”

  “That, Professor, remains to be seen,” Dante replied.

  Ball inclined his head. “Of course.”

  Dante drew in a deep breath. “We will keep your passport for the time being. You will get it back in a few days. I must ask you not to leave Siena until our investigation is complete.”

  Like Madeleine Kobbel, Ball looked startled at the idea. “Of course I won’t leave Siena, Commissario. I’m here for the conference. It lasts until the 2nd, by which time I’m sure you’ll have made headway in your investigation.”

  By which time, Dante thought, the Snail will have won. “I’m sure we will have. I think that’s about it for now. You might be called in for further questioning, but in the meantime you are free to go.”

  Ball nodded and rose gracefully, his pants falling softly, perfectly over his suede loafers.

  The heat of the day had gathered in Dante’s office, bearing down oppressively. Dante was sweating and his clothes stuck wherever his body touched the chair.

  Every year the town council swore it would put air conditioning in the Questura, and every year the town council fell before it could approve the supplementary budget.

  In the summer, Dante’s office was like a furnace. Yet Griffin Ball looked cool and unruffled. How the hell did the man do it? Dante wondered.

  Ball walked quietly to the door and stopped. After a moment, he turned around. Dante lifted his head. “Was there something else, Professor?”

  Ball hesitated. “I know I shouldn’t say this, Commissario. But…don’t look too hard for Kane’s murderer. Whoever did it should have a monument erected in his honor.”

  Chapter Eight

  Smile…tomorrow will be worse.

  The next morning, Faith slid into her seat and smiled at the black-coated waiter pouring more of the delicious coffee so strong it should be classified as a nutraceutical.

  Even breakfast, normally a humdrum affair in her life consisting of lukewarm instant coffee and a supermarket donut, was delicious here.

  There were sweet croissants, called cornetti, still warm from the oven, star-shaped cookies with plum marmalade in the middle, sugary donuts the waiters called bomboloni and—on the other side of the diet pyramid—slices of thick salty country ham and round, sweet melon balls.

  Everyone looked up as if surprised to see her. They were frozen in a little breakfast tableau. Tim with bread crumbs from the salt-less Tuscan bread spilling down his shirt. Grif, elegant as always with a little round pastry held up between thumb and forefinger. Madeleine hunched over her plate, long grey hair swinging forward to hide her face.

  “Faith.” Grif, always the gentleman, stood while Faith took her seat.

  For the thousandth time, Faith wished Grif were straight and that she had had a brief, passionate affair with him rather than the brief, bloodless affair she�
��d had with Tim.

  Grif would have taken her out to some elegant restaurant and he would have made her laugh and sigh while seducing her. She and Tim had shared a stringy takeout pizza in her apartment followed by very bad sex. Hardly worthy of the name.

  She and Nick had had very good sex, though of course her experience was limited, so maybe it hadn’t been as spectacular as her memory insisted. And yet…

  On the plane over, every time she moved in her seat she thought she could feel him inside her. The memory of the night and the plane’s slight vibration had kept her on a knife-edge of arousal. It had been humiliating and uncontrollable.

  “Sit down, Grif.” Faith smiled. She picked up her cup, drained it and looked around. Before she could signal a waiter a freshly brewed cup was slipped in front of her. “Can’t fault the service here.” She caught Grif’s eye. “Beats the cafeteria back home, eh?”

  “By a mile.” Grif delicately patted his lips dry. “What did Leonardo want with you yesterday, Faith? Is something wrong?”

  Much as Grif liked her, he had somehow picked up on the general aura Kane had created around her that she was an accident just waiting to happen.

  With real pleasure, Faith reached out for a cornetto and said, “Not at all. As a matter of fact, he asked me to chair the Tipping Behavior panel.” She felt slightly defiant as she looked up. Grif was looking thoughtful, and Tim slightly shocked.

  Madeleine put her cup down sharply in its saucer, two red spots on her sallow cheeks. “There must be some mistake,” she said, frowning. “I was supposed to head that panel.”

  Faith tensed. “I’m afraid he didn’t say anything about that at all, Madeleine. Are you sure? Professor Gori—Leonardo—doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who would make mistakes like that.”

  Madeleine’s lips tightened at Faith’s use of Gori’s first name. “Last year, I chaired the workshop on viral quantitation. So this year, of course I assumed I’d be taking Roland’s place as chair of the panel on tipping behavior. This isn’t fair, Faith. I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to Professor Gori and say you weren’t aware of the situation and that you can’t chair the panel. I came prepared for this.”