“Hi, Jas.”
“Or do you prefer Beatrice?”
“Beatrice doesn’t exist. I borrowed that name from the woman Dante wrote his Divine Comedy for. She’s just a phantom, a nom du murder, if you like.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s nice.” I tried to keep it light, conversational. “What did you do to Bobby?”
“It’s only a tranquilizer. He’ll wake up just in time, don’t worry.”
“In time for what?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. All I was sure of was that the longer I kept her talking, the longer I stayed alive.
“You’ll find out.” She looked at me carefully. “You’re not just asking questions to buy yourself time in the hopes that your precious pals will come looking for you, are you? Because that would be completely pointless. They all think you’re in class for another hour.”
“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” I lied.
“I’m glad. I’ve been so looking forward to having a chat with you. Tell me, how long have you known?”
“That you were Maria? Or the killer?”
“Both. I want to know what I did wrong.” She leaned toward me like she was really interested.
“Nothing, your crimes were perfect. If I hadn’t refused to believe in Arabella’s suicide, you would have gotten away with everything. But even when I proved it was murder, you still had a suspect all lined up.”
“Max was easy prey. I would probably have had to kill him anyway, but him getting arrested is just as good. And it holds up so beautifully.”
“You mean because he was obsessed with the Neals?”
“Precisely. I just wish—well, I know it’s picky of me, but it would have been nice if you could have waited a little longer. I had it all planned for four fifteen when Max got home from work.”
“I’d been wondering about the time. That was quick thinking on your part yesterday. You went to his apartment to plant the brooch, the gun, and the trophy you’d knocked me out with, didn’t you? I bet that trophy used to sit on the dressing table here. Probably Arabella liked it because it reminded her of George.”
“God, I wish we’d talked before. This is so fun. You’re right, of course. I was at Max’s to leave all that stuff, but you walked in before I could get away, so I pretended to be tied up.”
“I bet you could have gotten away. I think you wanted to hear what we would say about your crimes.”
Maria gave a little minx-like smile. “Maybe.”
“Max’s brother didn’t commit suicide, did he? He died from drinking orange juice with ice you poisoned, hoping to kill Arabella, right?”
“You understood that? We’re such a good team! You know, I’ve never felt as close to anyone before as I do to you. I feel like you really get me. You feel it too, right?”
Hello not-so-fresh feeling. “Sure.”
“You’re right, George wasn’t supposed to die that night in London, it was supposed to be Arabella’s turn. It seemed like the perfect psychological moment for it. You have to get that, the right moment, it’s what makes the whole thing work, you know? She was depressed after her breakup, so no one would question it if she committed suicide. While they were fighting that night I poisoned her ice. But then she had to go and decide to make him breakfast.”
“People mess up even the best plans.”
“They do. That’s why you have to stay flexible.”
“Like the other night, after the ball, when we followed you. You hid in the water, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I’d left my scuba gear at the end of that dead-end calle. I didn’t expect anyone to come after me, but it’s always important to be prepared.”
“That’s how you got into The House that Kills the night you did in Ned Neal too, right? You swam up to the dock and hid behind the planters so the security cameras wouldn’t see you.”
“Exactly. Then I climbed up the side of the house into my own office window and went down the hall to his door. No one suspected a thing.”
“What was the psychological moment for Mr. Neal? Why kill him when you did?”
“That was a pity. I’d really hoped to keep him alive until his other children were dead, let him suffer a bit, and then do him in. But he started getting suspicious of me, asking questions. Nosing around at Prada about Maria Longhi. So he had to go.”
“Is that how Arabella got on your trail, too?”
“No, she found those old articles by my mother and started bothering people.”
“Your mother and Ned had an affair when he was here working on the Ca’Dario as an art student, right? And your mother got pregnant with you.”
“And Ned abandoned us. Bastard.”
“Lucien knew.”
“Yes. Funny thing, he’s disappeared.”
That sent a chill down my spine. “Did you have something to do with that?”
“No. I’ll have to hunt him down and kill him, of course. But that’s later. How did you figure out that I was Ned Neal’s illegitimate daughter?”
“I should have seen it earlier. One of the saleswomen from Prada called and asked me if Arabella was crazy. At first I thought it was just because she did seem kind of nuts, but I realized she meant something else. I’d shown them a photo of Arabella that also had you in it. And they were wondering why Arabella was asking about you if she already knew you. Especially because Arabella had said there was a lot of money if she could find Maria Longhi. The saleswoman thought that meant a reward, but Arabella really meant inheritance. Because she was looking for another Neal heir. So I knew that Maria Longhi was Ned’s daughter. The piece I missed originally was that she was you.” I paused. “You didn’t have to kill Arabella, you know. She would have shared the money with you.”
“Who says I killed her? All the evidence points to suicide. No other possible explanation. They’re waiting for Max to explain it, but of course we all know how that will end.”
“I know how you did it. It was really smart.”
“Tell me.” Her eyes were glowing.
“Arabella didn’t die on the bridge. You just wanted everyone to think she had. I realized it when I remembered that she’d told me she would be in disguise when she came to meet me. There was a wig in her armoire that I bet she was planning to wear. But since she wasn’t wearing it when her body was found, that meant she was killed before she could change. You drowned her here, in her own bathtub. That’s why she had water in her lungs. If the medical examiner had taken a sample, he would have seen that it didn’t match the canal water. You stripped off the outfit she was wearing and because it was soaking wet you had to get rid of it, which is why it wasn’t in the laundry hamper. Then you dressed her in a simple black outfit that would be easy to match.”
“Go on.”
“You dragged her from the bathtub and, using the tie from the curtains, lowered her body into a boat through the window. All the ruffles on the couch were pointing toward it—one of her feet must have dragged.”
“I didn’t even notice that!” she said, and clapped her hands like a little girl. “But if Arabella was killed here, how did everyone see her on the bridge right before the body was discovered?”
“You were wearing a nearly identical outfit, except you put on the brooch because you knew it would be identifiable. You parked the boat under the bridge, got out, and walked up and down a few times wearing the brooch to make sure you were seen, then went back to the boat, dumped the body, and took off.”
“It sounds complicated.”
“It was. And brilliant. You fooled everyone.”
“Except you. I realized it yesterday when you said that there was too much evidence. I knew you’d figure it out eventually. And I couldn’t take that chance.”
“Why did you do all this?”
“To get what is mine. The Neal money.”
“That’s not the only reason. I mean, you planned this for ages. You worked for Ned Neal for a year.”
Maria smiled then, a mischievous girly
smile. “You’re right. It was also fun.”
“That’s why you went from trying to scare me to trying to fool me?” I remembered something else then. “You were surprised when Bobby called you from outside of Prada and said I still wanted to come to dinner. You thought shooting at me would have frightened me off.”
“I admit, I underestimated you, Jasmine. But after that I worked with you. To lead you, not fool you. I fed you little drops of evidence. It was so gratifying to watch you digest them.”
“You’re the one who sent me the magazine, aren’t you? Because you wanted me to see the picture of George with Arabella in the article about her death. So I’d make the connection to Max after you’d so skillfully steered the conversation we had in Mr. Neal’s office. You didn’t even know I’d be interested in any other pictures.”
“Guilty as charged!” she said with a girlish shrug.
“But you got lucky, too. There’s no way you could have planned for me to test the inks on the different notes I’d gotten, but you’d had Max meet you at The House that Kills once—how did you do that, by the way?”
“I promised to put him in touch with Arabella. Easy.”
“Of course. Anyway, he must have taken one of the pens with the custom ink while he was there, so the ink of his note matched the ink on the one you sent with the invitation to the ball. Your luckiest moment, though, was with the phone. You left it the day you knocked me out because you wanted to make sure there was evidence of your call that morning to Arabella, establishing that you thought she was still alive. But you couldn’t have known that Max had tried calling her too, right before she died.”
“That was a good break. It added a little something extra.”
“And then the way you taunted me. That night in Ned’s office you purposely pointed out that blue thread in front of me. That must have given you such a thrill.”
“It did.”
“So, what happens to me now?”
“Oh, I have something special in mind for you.” She started walking around, like a director setting a scene. “You see, you and Bobby were having an affair. Naughty! You asked him to meet you here and he showed up, drunk, and told you he didn’t want to see you again. He’d been discussing it with me and realized I was the woman for him.”
“But you’re his sister.”
“Neither of us knew it at the time. That was what was going to precipitate his hopeless suicide in a few months, but I had to move the timetable up a bit.”
“The psychological moment.”
“Exactly. You were upset and hit him over the head, but he managed to stab you fatally first. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a mild sedative for the pain before I use the knife.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you. You’re a really great collaborator. Or should I say partner in crime?” She giggled. “Anyway, after realizing what he’d done, he stabbed himself as well. It will make exciting reading, murder—suicide, the last casualties of The House that Kills.”
“Why do it here rather than at the house?”
“I don’t want to get the rugs dirty. Besides, have you met the landlady here? She’s a bitch. It’ll be a pleasure to watch her try to rent this hovel again after something like this.”
It sounded like a lovely way to go, but I wasn’t quite ready yet, so I made my move. I had been trying to buy myself time, but not for the reason she thought. As we’d been talking I’d been working my left floatie down. Now I could just grasp it with the fingers of my right hand. I felt around for the two wires, said a small prayer to the smoke-bomb gods, and smushed them.
The smoke-plus-purple-spark light show that erupted from my arm, startled both of us with its size and majesty. Maria leaped away from me and I leaped to my feet.
My throat was burning and I was coughing and my eyes were watering but I tried to hop to where I thought the door would be. Only I missed and fell onto the couch.
Maria was back then, now holding a syringe pointed at my throat with her left hand. She used her right hand to tape my palms and fingers together.
So much for tactical planning.
She was coughing too. “Don’t do that again. I admire the effort, but…” She dragged me with her to the window so she could open it and air the room out, pressing me against the wall so I was immobile.
I took stock of the situation:
I had no hands.
I had no defense.
I had Miss Crazy holding a syringe to my neck.
Every time she coughed I was in danger of being jabbed by the syringe. Things did not look good. But they looked worse when she shoved my head out the window and said, “Take a last glance at Venice. It’s a lovely city to die in.”
That might have been true, but it was so not how I wanted to die. Please, I prayed silently, if I make it through this, I promise to be the best, most Model Daughter in the world. I’ll never make anyone upset, never give Dadzilla a moment of worry, never even call him Dadzilla, never have my name in the papers, never—
It hit me. I was never going to get to kiss Jack again.
Three things happened at once:
I started to cry.
She plunged the syringe into my neck.
The shiny black cat with the green eyes came out of nowhere and leaped through the open window onto Maria’s chest.
Little Life Lesson 64: Sometimes being attractive to cats isn’t such a sucky superpower after all.
She was flung back, away from me, tripped over Bobby’s body, and went down. Whatever she’d injected me with was starting to work and I felt more like a Weeble than a girl. The knife skidded across the floor away from Maria and as she got on her hands and knees to reach for it, I Weeble-wobbled over to her and sat down on her back.
Okay, more like fell on her back. But either way, she was pinned under six feet of Jas.
Little Life Lesson 65: Sometimes being tall isn’t so sucky for detective work either.
That’s when the fourth thing happened, in the form of Arabella’s door bursting open and Officer Allegrini pushing into the room. Behind him were the landlady, Polly, Roxy, Tom, Alyson, and Veronique.
Polly said something that sounded like, “Your alarm went off!”
Roxy said something that sounded like, “We followed your Skittles trail!”
I said something that was supposed to sound like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
And passed out.
Chapter Thirty-three
When I opened my eyes I was still a bit groggy from whatever Maria had injected me with. I had vague, delirious images of white-coated men and hospital boats and a conversation I must have hallucinated about the NASCAR Dads coming to Venice to play a concert in Menudo’s place. In fact, I was still hallucinating because I was in my bed in the Grissini Palace. But I could have sworn that the person sitting next to it was Jack.
“Hi, hot stuff,” I told the hallucination.
He seemed to have been asleep, which was weird because why would a figment of my imagination sleep, but after my experiences with BadJas I wouldn’t put anything past my brain.
He said, “Hi, super girl.”
Since he was just a hallucination, I decided I could say pretty much anything I wanted to him. “You’re really handsome.”
“Thank you.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Twenty-six hours.”
“What happened to everyone?”
“Maria was arrested, Bobby is out of the hospital, and your friend Max was released.”
“I owe him an apology for getting him arrested.”
“I don’t think you have to worry. He has a big crush on you.”
“BadJas wanted to believe that, but I doubt it. He’s nice. Not as nice as you, though.” I feasted my eyes on Hallucination Jack. “The first time I saw you, all I could think about was how I wished you’d take your shirt off.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, and I thought you migh
t be The One. I still think that.”
“Really.”
“That’s one reason I’m glad I didn’t die. So I could find out. How did Roxy and Polly find me?”
“Roxy said something about putting a stroke monitor in your floatie. That it kept track of when you changed altitude, like when you fell down, and set off an alarm. I guess after you got knocked out twice, they thought it would be safest. And they installed some kind of pressure-sensitive Skittles dispenser in your boot in case you got dragged somewhere.”
“My friends are crazy.”
“Yes, they are.”
“That’s probably good, though.”
“Yes, it is.”
Hallucinations are really agreeable listeners. “Sometimes I dream that you and I are eating Nutella together in our Underoos. Yours are Incredible Hulk.”
“Nutella, huh? I’ll have to make a note of that.”
“Please do.”
“What else happens in these dreams?”
“Kissing mostly. Sometimes we eat ice cream. And you laugh at my jokes. And sometimes I ask you why you’re with me instead of girls who can save whole orphanages.”
“Do I tell you it’s because you are the most courageous, most loyal, most exciting person I’ve ever met? And that just hearing your voice makes me smile?”
“No. Mostly you say you’re not sure.”
“I think I need someone to write better lines for me.”
“Okay, I’ll work on that.”
I dozed off again. When I woke up, Hallucination Jack was still there. Now he was reading a magazine. “What’s she like?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The girl you’re making out with in that photo?”
“Rachel Tiegs? She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Would you let me finish, please? She’s also incredibly dull. She once talked about her nail beds for five straight hours on the bus. And just to be clear, I’m not making out with her. You can see they Photoshopped my head onto some other guy’s body. I’d never wear those jeans.”
“That’s what Polly said.”
“I’ll have to remember to thank her.”
“I thought it was you.”
Kitty Kitty Page 20
