Death of an Obnoxious Tourist

by Maria Hudgins

  Amy’s eyes were open. They stared out sightlessly behind her at an angle she could never have achieved in life. I swallowed hard and tried to think what to do.

  One of Amy’s high-heeled shoes lay ten yards or so uphill from her feet.

  Lettie shoved Crystal in the back. “Your mother is calling you,” Lettie said, then followed at Crystal’s heels like a shepherd corralling a wayward sheep.

  “How can we call an ambulance from here?” Wilma turned around as if she expected a phone booth to materialize on the slope. “Shall I run up and find a phone?”

  “Please do.” It occurred to me that Tessa would be the best one to make the call, but I doubted if she would be able to, given the state she was in. “If you see Achille, you might ask him to help you.”

  I was left alone with Amy’s body. Her pretty face, so lively and animated until a few minutes ago, was now scrubbed of all personality. I thought of our walk to the church together yesterday, how her shiny hair swung as she bounced along the street, oblivious to the leers and stares she got from the men she passed. How she worried that I would barge in on the Barrett-Brownings and interrupt Elizabeth’s Sunday morning tea.

  Amy’s shirt was bunched up in front, exposing her thin midriff and the lower part of her bra. I wanted to pull it down for her. I knew she’d want me to. But I also knew I mustn’t tamper with anything.

  The corner of a piece of paper peeked out of Amy’s pants pocket, and I remembered the note she’d made a frantic dive for when we had butted heads at the Milan airport. Could this be the same one? I wrestled with my conscience. Could I justify pulling the paper out and reading it? Assuming this was an accident—and there was no reason to think it was anything else—there’d be no harm in taking a quick peek. If Amy’s fall wasn’t an accident, I’d get my fingerprints on the paper, but then my prints could already be on it from the airport encounter.

  I looked up to the balustrade. Dick, Shirley, and Crystal were all staring down at Amy’s body. I considered moving to the left far enough to block their view of Amy’s pocket, and then thought I’d just boldly take the note out and read it, not even try to hide it. After all, what could the repercussions be? A tongue-lashing? Someone called down from the upper level and all three turned away. I seized the chance and slid the paper out of Amy’s pocket. It was a small sheet, probably torn from a pocket-sized planner. Written with a dull pencil, the loopy handwriting was hard to read, but there wasn’t much there—as if it had been cryptically jotted down by the note taker while someone else was talking. It said:

  Hosp dir Dr Spring

  Syntometrine inj uterine contractions

  Case

  Filed 9/6/81

  crushed the baby’s skull

  Seal

  Hearing 1/16/82

  I repeated the “syntometrine” several times to myself, associating it in my mind with synonym and metric. Dr. Spring, I supposed, was a hospital director. The date might refer to a complaint, to a criminal charge, or maybe a civil suit. That made sense, since the date for “filed” was about four months earlier than the date for “hearing.”

  But more important than the words on this small slip of paper was the fact that Amy had it in her pocket today. It was in her purse last week. She had risked a cracked head to get it away from me, and it was with her today. I refolded the paper and put it back. There was nothing else in her small, shallow pocket.

  The ambulance shrilled across the parking lot and stopped so close to the edge that I could see its rotating beam from my position below. As paramedics rushed down with a stretcher, I climbed the hill, staying well out of their way.

  Beth insisted she’d ride in the ambulance. She wouldn’t hear of letting Amy leave without her. But there was a language problem. The ambulance driver and Achille were gesticulating wildly, yelling in Italian. With a tight grip on Beth’s arm, Lettie said, “If you’re riding in that ambulance, I am too.”

  I understood that Lettie didn’t want to let Beth deal with this alone. I wanted to go as well,, if I could.

  The free-for-all of frantic English and Italian threatened to turn nasty, but Tessa intervened, both hands raised in a gesture of peace. She seemed to have regained her composure. She said something to the ambulance driver. Achille interrupted her and she glared at him. He shut up.

  “They can take two people, maximum, in the back,” Tessa said. “Beth, you can ride to the hospital with your sister, and I think I should—”

  “I want to go, too,” Lettie interrupted. “I really must. We’ll do okay with the language thing, don’t worry.”

  Tessa helped Beth and Lettie into the back of the ambulance and explained things to the paramedics who, by this time, had secured Amy’s body to a gurney and were sliding it in. Beth and Lettie were directed to sit along the wall and out of the way.

  The ambulance sped out, leaving the rest of us to stare after it, still not quite believing.

  Later, Lettie told me she had found Tessa, shivering uncontrollably, swaddled in several sweaters and wraps that Elaine had rounded up for her. Lettie had also found Beth, wandering aimlessly around a flowerbed, a blank, uncomprehending look in her eyes. So, naturally, Lettie had sat with her and held her hand until the ambulance showed up.

  Right now, Michael Melon peered over the balustrade at the approximate spot Amy had gone over. By now, the lights around the piazza were on, and the city below was winking to life.

  “It was those shoes—those damned shoes!” Michael said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked as I joined him.

  “Center of gravity too high. Haven’t you ever walked in stiletto heels?”

  “Yes, of course I have.”

  “Then you know it raises your center of gravity. It also shrinks your baseline, the length of foot that touches the ground. Amy was tall, five ten or so.” Michael stepped close to the concrete balustrade and stood on his toes. It put the top of the balustrade below the bend of his hips. He leaned forward and the mother in me automatically grabbed the tail of his shirt. “If your center of gravity is about here,” he said, indicating his waistline, “it goes outside your baseline and you fall. It’s that simple. And in four-inch heels, it’s easy to lose your balance. If Amy’s torso went over as far as this . . .” He leaned over again, and I grabbed his shirt again. “She would have tumbled over, and unless she could have grabbed onto the rail, very unlikely, she wouldn’t have had any way to stop herself.”

  “But why would she have leaned over that far?” Glancing around, I recalled seeing Crystal Hostetter teetering on the upper balustrade a little while ago. Crystal, I could see doing it, but Amy?

  Michael said, “She either tripped, lost her balance, or—”

  “Somebody pushed her,” I said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was dark when we climbed onto the bus. I sat about halfway back, by myself. Tessa took her usual seat opposite the driver, with sound system controls and microphone handily placed beside her, but she didn’t say a word. I could see her face in profile when an oncoming car’s headlights swept across the windshield. She looked numb. She picked up her microphone, but didn’t do anything with it. Dangling from her slack hand by its cord, the microphone swung with the movement of the bus.

  The bus was eerily quiet. I tried to imagine what Beth and Lettie were going through at the hospital. Surely a doctor would pronounce Amy dead within a few minutes of her arrival—a mere formality in this case. Then Lettie would sit with Beth and try to comfort her while the hospital staff shoved papers at Beth to sign. They would ask her what she wanted them to do with the body. No, no. It wouldn’t be like that. They would probably hold the body or do an autopsy before they released it, given the traumatic nature of the accident. Then they’d need to call Beth’s brother, Joe. Would Beth be able to do that herself, or would Lettie do it for her?

  With a sudden thud in the pit of my stomach, I realized that the four Bauer siblings were reduced to half their former number. Only Beth and
Joe remained. If Beth had accepted Meg’s murder without apparent undue anguish, she certainly wouldn’t be able to do that with Amy’s death. Amy was the little sister Beth had baby-sat; the kid she let try on her clothes and taught to do makeup.

  How close were Amy and Tessa? Friends in college. Close enough so that Amy went home with Tessa over several weekends, and close enough so that Amy planned to fly back to Italy in August to be a bridesmaid in Tessa’s wedding. On the other hand, they hadn’t seen each other or even kept in contact since college. Tessa had called her Amy Perez, as if the name Bauer—which Amy had been using for several years—was new to her, and Amy had indicated that she had kind of gotten herself invited to be in the wedding party. Maybe they sent each other cards at Christmas, or maybe the travel convention meeting they mentioned wa their first contact in years.

  Perhaps Tessa was mainly concerned about what this might mean when it came to her job with Pellegrino Tours. What was it she’d said to me outside that little country inn Saturday night? I’m trying not to lose my job, she’d said. What would Pellegrino Tours say when they learned she was now minus two people?

  As Achille swung the bus into the hotel parking area, I caught Tessa’s face in the blue-white light from a lamppost. Her eyes tightly shut, she covered her mouth with her hands and shook all over, as if she were forcing herself back into the here and now.

  My stomach reminded me that I needed something to eat. It was after 7 p.m.

  Jim and Wilma Kelly caught up with me before I reached the hotel door. “We’re going to the restaurant downstairs now. Want to join us?” Wilma asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’d like that.” It hadn’t occurred to me until just then that I would be alone for dinner. How nice of them to have thought of it first. “I’ll just dash upstairs and take my insulin. Won’t be a minute.”

  My blood sugar tested quite low. When it’s like that, I need to eat without delay or I’m likely to get hypoglycemic. I ran a brush through my hair and dashed down to the restaurant.

  “I feel so horrible for poor Beth,” Wilma said, after we’d placed our order. “And that sweet, pretty Amy. It’s too, too much.”

  I agreed, then asked, “Did you have a chance to get to know either Meg or Amy? I had a nice talk with Amy yesterday. It doesn’t seem real to me yet . . . that she’s gone.”

  “I’d only had a couple of brief chats with Amy,” Wilma said. “Now, Meg, well, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I would be less than honest if I said I liked her.”

  “Did you know her before this trip?”

  “No . . .” Wilma paused and glanced toward her husband. “Well, our paths had, in a way, crossed a few times, but I don’t believe I had ever actually met her until this trip.”

  “Wilma is very active in protecting the rights of those who can’t protect themselves,” Jim said.

  “Like animals,” I said. “Yes. I remember our talk about the baby harp seals.”

  “And babies in general.” Wilma took a sip of water and touched her napkin to her mouth. “I used to live in Baltimore, some years ago. I was active in a group that endeavored to protect the rights of the unborn . . .” Her voice sort of trailed off. “Nurse Margaret Bauer’s name came up frequently, usually at the end of a quote that would make your blood run cold.”

  “A hard woman,” I said. “That’s the impression I got.”

  Wilma smiled, as if she had found a compatriot. I wouldn’t have gone that far, but it didn’t hurt to have her think that way. I turned to Jim. “Did you see Amy fall, Jim? I wa on the other side of the piazza, so all I heard was a scream.”

  His face reddened down into his collar. He cleared his throat and glanced at Wilma. “No,” he said. “I was on the upper level, you know, where we took those pictures by the statue of the David. Well, not there exactly, but on that level . . . on the other side, though. Wilma was with me, weren’t you, love?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I was. We were on the other side of that upper level, you know, where we couldn’t see anything, but we heard. Just as you did.”

  Wow, that was way more than I had asked for. A simple “No” would have been sufficient.

  “Not to change the subject, but according to our itinerary, we are supposed to leave for Pisa tomorrow,” Jim said. “Do you have any idea what we’re doing?”

  “No, I think tomorrow is supposed to be Siena,” Wilma said.

  “I doubt if Tessa has even thought about it yet,” I said. “Let me know if you hear anything,”

  The pager inside my purse startled me. Jim and Wilma both jumped. I scratched around until I found it and read: room 367. Lettie, letting me know she was in Beth’s room now.

  ———

  I called Tessa’s room when I got back to my own, but there was no answer. I called Beth’s room, and Lettie answered. In a whisper she said she would spend the night there, try and get Beth to rest. Lettie said, “Joe will be flying over tonight. He’ll probably be here by tomorrow morning.”

  Faced with an evening alone, with nowhere to go and an urgent need to do something, I washed my hair, repacked my suitcase, and was running a basin of water to do some hand laundry when my phone rang. Marco Quattrocchi wanted me to meet him on the roof.

  “Nobody is able to talk to me tonight,” he said. “Tessa is not answering her phone, and Beth Hines is . . . well, your friend, Mrs. Osgood, says she cannot be disturbed.”

  “My hair is wet.”

  “Perfect. There is a nice warm breeze on the roof. You will not need the hair dryer.”

  I ripped a fresh shirt and slacks out of my neatly packed bag and dabbed on a little foundation and mascara. As I stepped off the elevator onto the roof, my heart skipped a beat. Marco was at the railing with the floodlit Duomo behind him. What a perfect picture. This was what I had come to Italy for. No, this was way better than anything I had imagined I’d find in Italy. If only I could simply enjoy it. But the reality of two tragic deaths was there, and it wouldn’t go away.

  Marco said, “Your hair looks very nice, wet.”

  “Thank you. What have you heard about Amy Bauer? I mean, I know she’s dead, of course, but are they going to do an autopsy? Are you convinced it was an accident?”

  “Yes and yes. They have to do an autopsy in a case like this. Of course it was an accident. There is no evidence of anything else.”

  “But you haven’t talked to the people who were there yet. Don’t you need to do that first?” I glanced at Marco. The Duomo was reflected in his tired-looking eyes.

  “I have talked to Dick Kramer and Michael Melon and to the couple . . .”

  “Elaine and Walter?”

  “Yes. They seem to always be together, don’t they?”

  “I call them the curious quartet,” I said, and Marco laughed.

  Oh, please, don’t let him ask me what else I know about them! The sleeping arrangements of that little group had no bearing on Marco’s investigation, and I’d promised Paul I’d keep my mouth shut. I decide to change the subject. “Have you talked to Paul Vogel? Shirley Hostetter was nearby, too, I think.”

  “I have talked to both of them. What did you see, Dotsy? From your viewpoint, what happened?”

  “I heard a scream, but I didn’t see anything. I was on the overlook on the lower level, but on the opposite side from the staircase. Do you know how it is up there?”

  “Of course. I have been there a hundred times.”

  He walked toward the southern end of the roof, and I followed. From here, we looked toward the Arno, and the Fountain of the Bloody Knife was to our right. The breeze on this side blew my wet hair across my face. Lifting it gently away from my lips, Marco smiled at me, jerked his hand away quickly as if he had committed a minor sin.

  “You see my problem, don’t you?” he said. “My prime suspect is in a genuine state of grief. I can’t question her now. If she’s guilty of killing her sister Meg, she is still grieving for her sister Amy. And if she is guilty, you can bet she will prolon
g this state of grief as long as she can, to delay the questioning.”

  I was shocked at his bluntness, but strangely flattered that he was confiding in me.

  He grabbed the railing with both hands, so tightly his knuckles stood up in bold relief. “I cannot keep your group here much longer. I’ve questioned all of you, and unless I can arrest someone, I have to let you go on your way. You have all paid for a tour of Italy, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I have to know who killed Meg Bauer. It was a brutal killing.” Marco spat the words out.

  I felt exactly the same way. Never mind what Meg was or wasn’t; it was a brutal killing. From Marco’s point of view, it was his job to find out who did it. From my own, it was the only way my innocent friends could get out from under the cloud of suspicion that lay over all of us.

  Marco took a deep breath. “I know Mrs. Hines is a close friend of your friend, Lettie, but look at what I have here. Beth Hines, who had good reasons to hate her sister Meg, stands to benefit financially by her death. Beth is seen entering an elevator. She is angry because her sister finanpulled another one of her cruel tricks, and a few minutes later, that same sister is found dead, killed with the knife Beth bought the day before and left in a drawer by the door. Now, I can make up stories that will put someone else, like Lettie, or you, or Paul Vogel, or even Achille, at the handle end of that knife, but compared to the simple, obvious case against Beth Hines, all the other stories I can make up are . . .” And here his English failed him.

  “Like straining at gnats?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I do see what you mean.” I held back my hair with my hands. “Have you considered Jim Kelly, Marco? I can’t think of a sufficient motive, but out of all our group, Jim is the only one with no alibi. He was in his room, he says. His wife was out.”

  “Jim Kelly has a better alibi than anyone. In fact, he has a perfect alibi. From four forty-one p.m. until five thirty-five, he was on the phone with the United States Secretary of Agriculture. They were discussing the safety of Canadian beef, and there are tapes and backup tapes of the entire conversation in Washington, D.C.”