Death of an Obnoxious Tourist

by Maria Hudgins

  I wasted a half-hour trying to consciously will myself to sleep by relaxing every part of my body, starting with my head and working my way down to my toes. After a dozen attempts, I gave up. So I analyzed everything I knew about Gianni—a kid, a copycat—that was about it. Cesare—arrogant? No, that was unfair. I thought he looked arrogant, but I had no evidence that he was. Well, almost no evidence. He was the sort of man who’d rather send an electronic message to his fiancée a few yards away than get up and stick his head out the door. Cesare was probably connected with the mob-controlled underworld in some way. I had heard that from two independent sources, and he was awfully young to be holding political office. Did he owe that position to the criminal element? Might they have demanded repayment?

  Lucille Vogel: motive, money for drugs; opportunity, practically none. I couldn’t see how she could have killed Meg and met us in the lobby just a few minutes later. Paul Vogel: motive, noneportunity, who knows? But Paul was such a sneaky guy, he could easily have killed Meg, circled around the hotel, and followed the gruesome foursome into the parking lot. That way, it would appear that he, too, had come from downtown.

  Speaking of the gruesome foursome, in spite of their little deception as to who was bedding whom, I knew of no connection between any of them and Meg Bauer, except that Elaine King, Dick Kramer’s paramour, was acquainted with Beth and had heard about this tour from her. If there was another connection, perhaps Paul’s sources back home would uncover it.

  When my wake-up call came at 7:30 a.m., I clicked the receiver and tackled one more worrisome thought. Suppose Paul Vogel does have a motive, and his connections back home discover it. He certainly won’t report it to me, will he? And the same would go for his sister, Lucille.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We almost filled the little chapel on the left side of the nave. I counted twenty of us, including Gianni and Cesare, and we arrived in a Ferrari, a Fiat, and three taxis. The curious quartet moseyed in on eight feet, having opted to walk. Father Quick had forgotten all about our request, but it didn’t matter. There was no one else scheduled to use the chapel.

  Crystal Hostetter shocked me. She arrived with an acoustic guitar she had rented and asked me if she could play a song during the service. I glanced at her mother, hoping for some assurance that it would be okay, because I immediately flashed on a vision of Crystal and her guitar bouncing vintage Sex Pistols off the Norman arches, shattering the stained glass windows. Shirley gave me a nod.

  I started with my first reading and then called on Crystal to play. She seated herself atop a stool off to one side and began to play—simply, beautifully—a melody that brought tears to most of our eyes. Her pink head bent down over the neck of the guitar, her right hand expertly plucked intricate variations on each chord. I wondered if I was the only one who recognized “Girlfriend in a Coma,” a song recorded by The Smiths sometime in the eighties. I had heard it hundreds of times, pounding through one or the other of my kids’ bedroom doors. The funny thing was that Crystal wouldn’t have even been born at the time that record was released. Don’t tell me “Girlfriend in a Coma” is already a classic, I thought, as I glanced across the aisle toward Tessa, Amy, and their boyfriends. They were mostly of an age to have been teens at about that time. Only Amy showed signs of recognition, her grin discreetly concealed by a tissue.

  Tessa said a few appropriate words, and Amy followed suit. She didn’t go so far as to say she’d miss her sister, but she came up with some nice things to say about her—nice, without being too disingenuous. Beth sat, motionless and withdrawn, her hands lying softly in her lap. She was so small and vulnerable, I thought.

  Lucille, looking more than usual like a dwarf bowling pin, came to the altar, folded her fat little hands in front of her and sang the “Ave Maria” in a deep, rich, contralto voice like liquid silver. It seemed to me that the very walls of the church sang with her. There was not a dry eye in the chapel when she finished. After my last reading, Lucille finished the service with “Amazing Grace.” The whole service had turned out so much better than I had imagined. On our way out, everyone gave Crystal and Lucille hugs and thanked them.

  Lettie and I walked downtown immediately after the memorial service, with the vague idea of shopping, browsing, or eating lunch. I wanted to go back to the Museo Archeologico, but I didn’t think it would interest Lettie, so we found ourselves winding up and down rows of stalls that sold leather goods, clothing, and jewelry in a large open air market near the Church of Santa Croce. I know nothing about how to tell real Gucci purses and Rolex watches from fake ones, but from the prices I saw on most, I thought I could assume they were fake. Still, some of the leather jackets were gorgeous and bargain-priced. I had to try on one or two of them, in spite of the heat. I didn’t need a leather jacket, but at these prices . . .

  “Dotsy! Here’s Meg’s purse!” Lettie called from a nearby purse and wallet stall.

  I handed the jacket back to the vendor and dashed over. Lettie held up a brown Fendi handbag with a large, silver buckle on the side. I vaguely remembered Meg wrenching a very similar bag out of Lettie’s hand as we were getting on the bus in Scarperia. Lettie had tried to clean off the ice cream that she had accidentally spilled on the purse, but Meg wouldn’t let her. I cringed a little at the memory.

  “It does look quite similar,” I said. “Meg’s was a Fendi, too, wasn’t it? How much do they want for it?”

  “No, Dotsy.” Lettie shook the bag in my face. “This isn’t like Meg’s purse, this is Meg’s purse! Look. The dried ice cream is still right here at the bottom of the strap. See?” She pointed to a small, yellowish, jelly-like glob.

  “But how? I mean, it can’t be! Scuzi?” I held up the purse and showed it to the man behind a table piled with handbags. “Where . . . dove . . . where did you get this?”

  But he didn’t understand, or didn’t want to understand. I tried several more times, and Lettie tried, too, with an energetic sort of charades version of where-did-you-get-this?

  “It’s hopeless,” I said at last. “I’ll have to buy it. Fortunately, it’s a bargain.” It was marked 150 Euros, but I talked him down to a hundred and Lettie split the cost with me.

  “We have to take this to Captain Quattrocchi,” I said, and then I remembered fingerprints. “We have to get it there without getting any more fingerprints on it.”

  “We need a bag to put it in, Dotsy.”

  The vendor had no bags large enough for it. “One of us needs to stay here and hold the bag just like this.” I held it with two fingers under the strap. “While the other one finds a bag to put it in.”

  “But heaven knows how many people have handled it since Meg.”

  Lettie’s voice sounded shaky, and I wondered if she was picturing the purse lying on Meg’s bed, Meg’s dead body on the floor.

  “No reason for us to make it any worse by adding more fingerprints than we have to,” I said. “Why don’t you wait here? I’ll find a plastic bag.”

  I left Lettie holding the purse in front of her, by two fingers. I imagined she’d have to endure a lot of strange looks before I got back. My first thought was to simply ask the merchant in the next stall for a bag, and then it occurred to me that this purse was crucial evidence, and the bag we put it in should be free from stray hairs and dirt—anything that might contaminate it. I should buy a box of new bags, straight from the factory and never opened, but where? I couldn’t find any such place in the open-air market, but on a narrow street nearby I found a little store that had what I needed. By the time I returned to Lettie, she sat on the stone curb, her middle finger dangling the purse, her elbow digging into her knee.

  Checking my city map, I saw that we were within walking distance of the caserma on Borgo Ognissanti, but Lettie and I decided to indulge in a taxi ride. The driver stared after us as we left the cab with our trash bag and its mysterious contents. I wished I could tell him, “It’s a human head. We didn’t want to get our clothes bloody,” but I knew the
humor would get lost in the translation.

  Marco Quattrocchi waved us into his office almost immediately. It took a while to convince him that the purse was Meg’s purse, not one like it. Lettie suggested that the lab might analyze the dried ice cream to see if it was lemon. She was positive they’d find that it was.

  Marco slipped on latex gloves and removed the purse from the plastic bag. The purse had an overlapping magnetic button closure. Without touching the surface of the purse, he ran a pencil underneath the flap and peered inside. “Blood,” he said, and invited me to look. “Traces of blood, see? Here?” He used the tip of his pencil to point. “And here?”

  It wasn’t a lot, but I could see a rust-brown smear that partially obliterated the FF monogram on the interior pocket. Plus, a number of smaller spots on the lining. “How can you tell it’s blood?”

  “I cannot tell for sure. It will have to be tested. But I would bet it is blood, wouldn’t you?”

  “The question now is, why was it for sale on the street and how did it get there?”

  “Probably, it was found by someone who simply sold or traded it to the vendor of the stall where you found it. Some of the designer goods in these markets are the real thing, and some are reproductions or . . . how do you say . . .?”

  “Knockoffs,” I suggested. “Counterfeit.”

  “Right.” He motioned Lettie and me to visitors’ chairs and took the leather swivel chair for himself. “Sometimes they are authentic, but they have not been obtained in the . . . normal way.”

  “Stolen.”

  “Yes. But in this case, I am suspecting that it was discarded and then discovered by someone unconnected to the murder of Meg Bauer.”

  “That makes sense. I wonder if the murderer would have been so bold as to sell a purse he or she had taken from his or her victim.”

  “I doubt it. No, I think someone may have found it, tossed away by the murderer or possibly by the Roma man, Ivo, although he says he never saw the purse.”

  “Might the blood inside have been from some sort of protective clothing the murderer wore while killing Meg? It could have been folded up with the soiled side inward and stuffed into the purse.”

  Marco tapped his forehead. “I told you before. You would make a good detective.”

  I tried to accept the compliment graciously, but I feared my face looked smug. “If it was one of those very thin plastic rain coats, you know, like they sell for emergencies, it would fit easily into that purse . . . even if it was bloody.”

  “And what would that tell us?”

  Marco sat back and tented his fingers in front of his beard. I could see a slight twinkle in his eyes.

  “That the murder was premeditated,” Lettie put in.

  “Correct.”

  “The killer came to the room with protective clothing, all ready to go!” Lettie sat forward, fairly bouncing with excitement.

  “Do you think they’ll find any useful fingerprints on it?” I asked.

  Marco pointed to the leather parts of the purse, the handles and the wide closure strap, with his pencil. “These parts will, but these—“ he indicated the monogrammed fabric on the sides “—no prints are likely here. But fingerprints may or may not help us. Whose will we find? Your own, probably,”

  “We were as careful as we could be,” Lettie said. “We tried to hold it by the middle of one strap, but I’m afraid we both handled it before we even thought about fingerprints.”

  “There will probably be prints from the vendor, the person who gave it to the vendor, maybe a print or two remaining from Meg Bauer.” Marco exhaled loudly. “Even if we find the prints of another member of your group, what would that prove? Nothing. Any of you may have handled that purse for any number of reasons.”

  “The man at the leather stall is Paulo Palermo. He’s a little guy, gray hair, about fifty,” Lettie said.

  Good old Lettie. It hadn’t occurred to me to get the vendor’s name.

  “But the bloodstains,” Marco said. “With luck we may be able to identify the blood as Meg Bauer’s blood. Perhaps the killer cut himself, too, and some of his blood might be mixed in.” Marco winked at us. “But that is a bit too much to hope for.”

  “If you found prints from an unknown person, could you identify them?” I asked.

  “Only if they belong to someone with a criminal record. Otherwise, they would not be in our data bank. We will, of course, compare any prints that we do find with s of Ivo, of the vendor you bought this from, and of all the people in your tour group.”

  I stared at Marco. “And if you find prints that belong to someone who does have a record?”

  “Then we will locate that person and ask him where he found this purse.”

  “Duh.” Lettie gave me a cross-eyed doofus look.

  “I will take this to the laboratory now. Thank you,” Marco said, and melted me with his smile.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Achille drove us up a big hill south of the Arno to the Piazzale Michelangelo at 5 p.m. It was the same time of day but three days later than we had originally planned to go. The bus wound up a narrow road past the 11th century Church of San Miniato to a broad flat terrace centered by a much-larger-than-life bronze replica of Michelangelo’s David. Although hot, there was a nice breeze out of the west.

  On stiletto heels, Amy Bauer clicked off across the pavement until she reached a railing of the overlook, where she was joined by Tessa.

  Geoffrey and Victoria Reese-Burton headed for a building at the back of the piazza, possibly a restaurant or lounge.

  Paul Vogel put his camera to work.

  Crystal, whose hair had suddenly turned grass-green, sat on a concrete balustrade at the edge of the pavement, which seemed to have nothing but thin air on the other side. Shirley warned her to get off. Behind Crystal was the famous vista that everyone recognizes as Florence—the Duomo, the Church of Santa Croce, the tile roofs, the Arno. The piazza wrapped around on both sides to forested walkways and roads on the west and to farmland and houses on the hillsides to the east.

  I took a few photos from the balustrade and, looking down, saw that two broad staircases led from the top level, where we were now, then fanned out left and right to yet more overlooks, flower gardens, and a winding path that disappeared into the trees below.

  Jim and Wilma Kelly called to us from the bronze statue. I took a picture of them standing on the steps below the statue. They snapped Lettie and me doing the same. Jim got one of Wilma, Lettie and me.

  Beth and Achille disappeared down the stairway. It appeared to me that he slipped his arm around her shoulder as soon as they descended a few steps. Amy and Tessa soon followed, but I couldn’t see whether they took the left or the right wing of steps. Since our driver and our guide had both wandered away, I figured we would be here a while.

  “Tessa said thirty minutes, didn’t you hear her?” Lettie told me.

  The curious quartet replaced us at the statue, and Michael Melon, who I now knew was Walter’s lover and not Dick Kramer’s employee, stretched his cat-like self out languidly along its base for a photo op. If Paul Vogel could get this shot, I thought, he could sell it to a men’s fashion magazine, but Paul seemed to have disappeared.

  “Who’s missing, Lettie? There’s someone missing.”

  “Lucille Vogel. She stayed in town.”

  Lettie and I strolled down the left branch of the stairs and found another overlook, even better, I thought, than the one above. The sun, sinking in the western sky, cast a tangerine glow across the river. We walked to the rail. From there I could glimpse a road winding up the hill through the pines. A small blue car crept up and disappeared behind the hill.

  “Looks like Gianni’s car,” Lettie said. “Do you suppose it is?”

  Turning, I looked up the slope. From the winding road below, the car could climb to the parking area on top, or it might continue on around the road our bus had taken and descend the hill to the south. I turned back to enjoy the view and the
breeze. A minute or two later, Dick Kramer and Michael Melon appeared on the stairs above us. They seemed to be debating whether to go left or right when a chilling scream, a woman’s scream, pierced the golden afternoon air.

  I paused long enough to point myself in the probable right direction. Lettie was right with me as I raced around, not up, the wide double staircase. Another balustrade at the boundary of a flower-lined terrace led off the east side. Tessa stood at the balustrade, leaning over. She appeared to be choking. I dashed over and touched her shoulder gently, so as not to frighten her. Tessa pointed downward.

  It was a sheer drop from the balustrade to a grassy slope. At the base of the slope, Amy lay in a contorted position, her head downhill from her feet. It was obvious to me that her neck was broken. She lay on her right side, her left arm behind her back. Her legs were in a sort of climbing position, but her head faced the other way. Tessa kept making choking sounds.

  “Oh, my God!” I darted a few steps left, then right, searching for a route down the hill. The only way, it seemed, was to go back up the stairs and across the piazza. Elaine, joined quickly by Dick, dashed across and looked down in horror. “Watch Tessa,” I shouted to them as Lettie and I rushed up the stairs.

  The race across the piazza and the parking area beside it seemed to take hours. By the time we got to the slope I hoped would take us down to Amy, we were joined by Crystal and both Kellys. A car motor coughed to life somewhere below us. I skidded to a stop, sliding a little on the grass, and saw the blue car as it rounded the backside of the hill.

  “Damn. I wonder if that could have been a Fiat,” I mused out loud.

  “It was a Fiat. Blue. The last three parts of the license were ‘10 M’ or ‘IO M.’” Lettie tossed this over her shoulder as she edged down, planting each step firmly into the slope.

  Kneeling beside Amy, Jim Kelly said, “She’s dead.”

  “Where can we make a call?” Wilma looked up the slope to the balustrade above.

  My gaze followed hers. Shirley leaned over, calling to Crystal to come back up.