Death of an Obnoxious Tourist

by Maria Hudgins

  “I had a nice talk with Amy today,” I said. “She told me a good bit about her family and showed me a picture that was taken, I’m sure, before you knew her.”

  Tessa nodded.

  “She told me she visited your home, occasionally, when you were in college together, but did you ever visit her family?”

  “No.” Tessa sipped her drink. “I hardly ever visited anyone from school, because I needed—wanted—to go home every chance I got. My mom had to take care of my brother, twenty-four seven, poor woman. So when I came home, I relieved her a bit so she could go out shopping.”

  “What a lot of patience that must have taken.”

  “Dad wasn’t much help. He was in the military—gone from home a lot—plus, he considered child care woman’s work.” Tessa snorted. “That’s why my mother never learned English, you know. She never left the house long enough to learn. Funny thing is, I guess I owe my job to her. If she’d spoken English to me at home, I’d never have learned Italian. As it is, I learned both languages from babyhood.”

  “What sort of handicap did your brother have?” I immediately wished I’d phrased that better. I took a big gulp of my wine. “I mean, was it from birth? Or . . .”

  “Yes. From birth. There was an accident when he was born.”

  A cold chill ran all over me. Was it possible that Tessa’s mother had given birth in the hospital where Meg worked? That Tessa’s mother and her baby had been the victims of one of Meg’s careless screw-ups? Hadn’t the note Amy dropped in the Milan airport said: “crushed the baby’s skull”? But regardless of the events surrounding the birth of Tessa’s poor little brother, if Tessa had felt compelled to seek revenge, she would have done something before now.

  “My dad is marrying again. Did you know that?” Tessa pulled me out of my reverie. “He’s retired, he’s moving to Italy, and he’s marrying a woman I can’t stand. I just hope Mama can’t see through the clouds.”

  Marco Quattrocchi charged into the bar with a gruff, “May I see you now, Mrs. Lamb?”

  So we were back to last names again.

  To Tessa he said, “Mrs. Lamb ed andiamo per una passeggiata.”

  Tessa looked at me, her face devoid of any expression. “He says the two of you are going for a walk.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I ran to keep up as Marco Quattrocchi tramped down the sidewalk that ran eastward from our hotel to the Duomo. He took my elbow at crossings but said nothing for a full three blocks. I stayed as quiet as a kid being escorted to the principal’s office, but I’d done nothing wrong, so why did I feel I had to cower?

  “I had to let him go,” Marco finally said. “I guess you have heard that already.”

  “Yes. I heard you really gave him the third degree before you let him go.”

  “The third degree?”

  I explained what that meant.

  “Of course, I did! Of course I gave him the third degree. I would not have let him go at all if I had any way to hold him. You know why? Because I will never see Ivo Ramovic again, that is why. I told him not to leave the area, but he is already in Milan or Rome by now, I am sure. He was probably gone within the hour. Finding a Roma is not like finding a dentist. They do not have addresses. They are not officially even here.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I said.

  “I have to think about it like that. What I have now is the murder of a tourist from America, and a group of possible suspects and possible motives and . . .” He stopped and turned to me. He lowered his voice. “There is a strong possibility that I will have to arrest an American, or a Canadian, or a citizen of the U.K. for the murder of an American citizen. Do you know what that will involve with the embassies . . . possibly extraditions . . . it makes my head hurt to think about it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The American Embassy is not fun to work with. I avoid it whenever I can.”

  Ahead of us was a gelateria bustling with customers.

  “Have you had dinner already?” Marco asked. “Would you like a gelato?”

  I nodded.

  “I am sorry. I forgot your diabetes.”

  “It’s okay, one gelato won’t hurt.” I asked him to get me a cone with one scoop of strawberry. “What are you having?”

  “Nothing. I do not want any.”

  It occurred to me that a carabinieri officer might feel silly licking an ice cream cone in public, but surely he could eat a dish of gelato without sacrificing his dignity. Maybe he was too upset to eat anything. After raising four boys and trying to keep a husband happy for thirty years (albeit unscessfully, apparently) I have some feel for what a man’s ego requires. I changed my order to two scoops of strawberry in a dish and, while Marco paid for it, I picked up two spoons.

  “Did Ivo have a lot of money on him when you arrested him?” I asked.

  “Almost nine hundred Euros.”

  “Did you take it away from him?”

  “Of course. Do you think we would let him keep it?”

  “But after you let him go . . . I mean, how do you know it wasn’t his money, legitimately?”

  “Because he admitted he took it from Meg Bauer’s room.”

  “So he admits he was there?”

  “He did, after we had questioned him for several hours. He said he got into the room using the card he had earlier stolen from Mrs. Hines’s . . .”

  “Waist pack?”

  “Yes. He said he found Miss Bauer lying near the bathroom door in a pool of blood. He said the contents of someone’s purse lay scattered on the bed, and there was a wallet with a lot of money in it. He grabbed the wallet and ran out. He does not remember if he closed the door or not, but he still had the room card in his pocket when we found him.”

  “And the wallet?”

  “He had thrown it in a trash box behind a restaurant. We have it now.”

  “How about the purse?”

  “We have not found it.”

  I handed Marco a spoonful of gelato. He ate it and smiled. The gelato seemed to cool him down a bit. I saw his eyes relax. “People expect a lot of you, don’t they?”

  “A lot more than stupid idiots like us can live up to.” He let me refill his spoon. “Dotsy, do you know what people think about us? About the carabinieri?”

  “No,” I said, happy I was Dotsy again.

  “They think that we are all in the Sicilian Mafia, they think that we are all gangsters, they think that we are all below average in intelligence. I, for one, am not from Sicily. I have lived my whole life in Tuscany.” Marco drew his hands to his chest. “I am not in the mob. I am honest, and I deal very severely with anyone who I discover is not honest.”

  I smiled, but I could have cried for him.

  “I may, however, be below average in intelligence,” he added.

  We both laughed. Marco had the eyes we used to call bedroom eyes. My knees felt weak.

  His face turned serious. “I will tell you who is in the mob. Cesare, Tessa D’Angelo’s fiancé. Did you know that?”

  “I’ve heard it suggested.”

  “I have to ask you some questions, now.” He found a small table on the sidewalk outside the gelateria and pulled out a chair for me. He leaned forward in his own chair, his hands tucked between his knees. “How long did you sit in the lobby in front of the elevator?”

  “I already told you. I was there from a little after five until a quarter to six or so. Lettie, Lucille Vogel, and I tried to catch the elevator about that time, but apparently it was being held on the third floor. Oh! I have something you might not know.”

  I told him about Lucille Vogel and the mysterious transaction Lettie and I had seen in the train station. While I was at it, I filled him in on Amy’s version of the Bauer family inheritance.

  “Do you want to come to work for me? You would be a good detective,” he said. “Another thing. When did Mrs. Hines go up in the elevator? You did see her go up, did you not?”

  “Oh yes, with a pot
of flowers. It was a few minutes before . . . it was about five thirty, I guess.”

  In other words, I thought, Beth could have reached her room in time to kill her sister, toss the knife out the window, and call the front desk in an ersatz panic. I felt like a traitor—as if I had just convicted Beth. Lettie would hate me.

  “Marco, who do you think it was? I know you don’t know yet, but you must have some idea.”

  “I do not know. I really do not. The obvious first choice is, of course, Beth Hines. She had the motive, actually two motives considering what you just told me about Meg getting all of their mother’s money, and she had the opportunity. She would have known exactly where to find the knife; it was her knife. But there is a lot we still have to learn.”

  “Don’t you think it would have been hard for Beth to have committed a very bloody murder at five thirty and clean up fast enough to invite the folks from the front desk up at five forty-five?”

  Marco tapped his forehead and winked at me. “I know that Meg Bauer had a lot of enemies. She was apparently a very careless and . . . uh . . . unfeeling nurse. I keep discovering all these little connections . . . possible motives.”

  “Yes. And tonight Tessa told me her younger brother’s handicap was due to a problem with his birth, and it struck me . . . what if Meg was the nurse? Of course, what are the odds of that?”

  “You know what I mean then,” Marco said. “Things like that just keep coming up. But Tessa has a very good alibi.”

  “I know. She was with the victim’s sister at the time of the murder.”

  “Also, she has a receipt from a cash machine that says she was downtown at five thirty-two p.m.”

  “That let’s out Amy, too.”

  “Yes. They both agree they were at the cash machine together. And Amy has also told me that Meg was a very active supporter of . . . what do you call the kind of aborht Tessat pulls the baby . . .” Marco twisted one hand into a forceps-like curl.

  “Partial-birth abortion,” I said.

  “Right. And Mrs. Wilma Kelly is quite active in the movement against partial-birth abortions. She has had her picture in the paper protesting against it.”

  My brain was in danger of crashing from information overload. “How did you find this out?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Shirley Hostetter mentioned it.”

  ———

  If I slept a whole hour that Sunday night, it certainly wasn’t more than that. I had too much to think about. I pretended to be asleep so Lettie wouldn’t talk to me and so I could think things out by myself. Sometimes, it’s good to bounce your ideas off someone else, sometimes it’s good to listen, and sometimes you have to work it out in your own head. I started by imagining Beth Hines as her sister’s killer. I tried, as they say, “wearing that for a while.”

  I imagined being at the mercy of a shrewish sister at a time in my life when I had always imagined I’d be free and financially secure. I’d drive home—no, I’d drive to her home—from work every day in the old clunker my husband left me, only to spend the evening with a never-ending discourse on all my flaws and shortcomings. I would think, now and again, that if I had gotten my fair share of my mother’s money, I wouldn’t be a charity case. Perhaps I’d dwell on that. Perhaps I’d obsess about it.

  I imagined how Beth must have felt when Meg embarrassed her in Venice, in front of Achille, perhaps the first man to show an interest in her as a woman since her divorce. On that fateful Friday, having just dealt with the loss of her money and credit cards, she would have had to listen to a lengthy harangue from Meg about her stupidity in allowing herself to be robbed. How would she feel, after a trek through sweltering afternoon streets, dripping with sweat, to discover that what she had hoped was a gift—maybe even from an admirer—was one more cruel insult from Meg?

  If I had bought that knife for a completely innocent purpose, for a gift, I would certainly remember it. I would think about its potential. I would realize that, with one well-placed slice, my “Coltello d’Amore”—knife of love—would silence that hateful voice forever. Would I be able to resist the temptation? If there was ever a straw that broke the camel’s back, wouldn’t the card on that pot of flowers, the card that said, “Vanity, vanity” be that straw?

  If I were Beth, I could have slipped into the bathroom when Meg was preoccupied with her own ugly face in the mirror, grabbed her hair in my left hand, jerked it backward—

  The memorial service. My mind suddenly jumped to the memorial service and the fact that I had totally forgotten to call the organist. I punched the little light on my wristwatch; it was 11:05. Was it too late to call? Italians do tend to have long dinners and to stay up later in the evenings. I didn’t want to awaken Lettie, so I slipped on my slacks and shirt in the dark, ran my feet under the bed until I found my shoes, and felt around on the floor under a chair for my purse.

  I’d also need a Bible. I had meant to check our room for a Gideon Bible before going to bed, but, like the call to the organist, I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts of Beth, I had forgotten. I needed a Bible—in English—to pick out a couple of things to read tomorrow. I didn’t plan to make a speech. I hoped one or two people might volunteer to say a few words, and I could come up with a kind sentence or two myself, but a couple of scriptural passages would definitely be needed if the service was to last more than five minutes.

  The woman at the concierge desk led me through a warren of computers, fax machines, and a central phone bank which appeared to have buttons for dozens of extensions. She unlocked a small office door, entered, and ran her fingers along the top row of books on a shelf while I waited at the doorway.

  “Grazie,” I said as she handed me an English-language Bible. “Ritorno domani?” I added, feeling incredibly bilingual.

  From a phone in the lobby, I dialed the number of the organist and braced myself for an avalanche of verbal abuse. A woman answered, “Pronto.”

  “Il mio nome è Mrs. Lamb.” I switched to English, figuring that if the woman didn’t understand me, I had the wrong number. She was, indeed, the organist I was looking for, I had not awakened her, and she would have played for us tomorrow if I’d called earlier. She had another engagement.

  So it would be a plain and simple service. But at least we’d have one song from Lucille Vogel, who had said she didn’t mind singing a cappella.

  I parked myself in the same chair in front of the elevator that I had sat in on Friday afternoon. In a cold rush, the horror swept over me again. The confusion at the desk, the scurry, and the curt orders spat out by the hotel manager as he rushed past us. I shook myself back to the present and flipped through the Bible, sticking scraps of paper at Psalm cxxi and I Corinthians xv. I thought those passages would sound good.

  Gathering my stuff together in preparation for returning to my room, I saw Amy and Gianni approach the elevator, their arms wrapped around each other. Amy carried her high-heeled sandals hooked over her fingers. Her head was tucked into the hollow of Gianni’s neck, and he lightly kissed her hair. I wondered if she had taken the shoes off so she’d be shorter than Gianni for the goodnight kiss. He held her against the wall beside the brass panel of buttons and kissed her over and over. I think I could have yelled “Fire” and neither would have moved.

  Back in my bed, I resumed my tossing and turning. So Ivo had actually been in Meg’s room and had seen her lying there in a pool of blood. I could understand why he had not reported it, but to take the time to swipe the wallet before he ran out? I couldn’t imagine thinking about money at a time like that.

  Paul Vogel had been asking about the men in our group only because he assumed a woman wouldn’t have had the strength to do it. Could I have done it? If yes, any woman in our group could have mued Meg. I decided if I was mad enough, or determined enough, I could. The hardest part would be steeling the nerves to actually press and drag that blade across the neck. It might be easier, I thought, for someone who’d had experience with blades and flesh. A chicken or pig fa
rmer, perhaps, or a hunter, or a butcher, or a doctor—or a nurse.

  I thought about Shirley Hostetter. She had a motive. She had been forced to quit her job because Meg surreptitiously altered her note detailing the doctor’s orders. But why would Shirley have told the story to Victoria Reese-Burton? Wouldn’t she have tried to hide the fact that she had reason to hate Meg? Marco said Shirley had told him about Wilma versus Meg in the battle over partial-birth abortion. Might Shirley have mentioned that in order to throw suspicion on someone else? Might she have told her story to Victoria because she knew it was bound to come out anyway, once Meg’s murder was investigated? Put the story out there so it wouldn’t seem as if you were hiding it?

  I worried that I was becoming way too suspicious.

  What about Jim and Wilma? Jim had no motive and no alibi. He was supposedly in his room throughout the relevant time, and I had already learned not to put too much stock in an apparent lack of motive. Motives had a way of popping up.

  Wilma Kelly was certainly an intense, issue-oriented sort of person. The sort that would love to throw fake blood on a woman wearing a fur coat. But murder? I couldn’t see it. Murder would be a refutation of everything she stood for.

  Geoffrey and Victoria Reese-Burton had no possible motives. Okay, Victoria had a fairly weird hobby—medieval torture—but that was strictly armchair torture, I was sure. I rose to my feet, went to the bathroom, drank a box of orange juice, and brushed my teeth again to get the sweet juice off.

  Amy and Tessa. Tessa and Amy. Friends since college. Amy had a motive—money. Tessa might have had a motive. Paul’s contacts back home might dig up something, but the problem with Amy and Tessa was that at the time of the murder, they were definitely together, so either they were in it together, or they weren’t in it at all. And, of course, there was the time problem. Unless Marco was wrong about the time of the murder, Amy and Tessa couldn’t have done it unless they could get from the hotel to downtown Florence in two minutes. Make that eight to ten minutes. Marco had said, “Give or take a few minutes.” But still. No way.