Dying For Siena (28 page)

Nick breathed out heavily. “You think so?”

She nodded. “And that’s not all.” Faith’s lips tightened. “I think I know who wrote it.”

“You do?” Nick stopped dead in the center of the narrow street. Two people bumped into him and broke out in Italian vituperation. The volume was impressive. He didn’t even budge. “Well, why the hell didn’t you say so?”

He gestured with a large hand back up the street.

“Christ, Faith, I just spent an hour while Dante and his men went over that sheet with a fine-toothed comb. I can’t begin to tell you how awful I felt when they said they couldn’t lift prints.

“And it didn’t make any goddamn difference because you knew who did it? What’s the matter with you? Why the hell didn’t you tell Dante?”

Faith’s spine straightened. “Whoa. I didn’t say I
knew
who did it. All I said was that I have my suspicions. And I’m certainly not going to talk to a police officer about a hunch.”

Nick ran a hand through his dark hair, leaving it sticking out all over his head, making him seem even more like a madman. With his limp, his red eyes, bloody scabs on his large jaw and wild hair, he looked like something an Italian Vittorio Frankenstein might have put together—a wildly attractive monster.

“Well?” he demanded.

Faith tugged on his arm. He’d been standing stock still in the middle of the busy pedestrian street so long people had started flowing around him as naturally as if he’d been a fountain or a bench. As immovable as a rock and twice as thick.

“Come on, Nick. Let’s see if you can walk and talk at the same time.” She pulled at his arm again and he moved forward slowly, like an ocean liner being tugged out of port. “That’s it. One step at a time, left, right, left… See, that’s not so hard.”

He shot her a fulminating look and she grinned as they moved slowly down the steepest part of the gradient, which would take them to the
Piazza del Campo
.

“You gonna tell me who?” he grumbled.

She sighed. “It’s pure speculation, you understand, and I certainly won’t repeat this in front of Dante, and don’t you dare tell him, but…I think Madeleine left me that note.”

“Madeleine…that lanky lady with the beaky nose and gray hair?”

Lanky lady with a beaky nose and gray hair was the best description of Madeleine she had ever heard. “That’s the one, yeah. She’s been acting very strangely these past few days. And she seems to be obsessed with the fact I—well, that things have been going well for me.”

Going well was an understatement. Moderating two panels, being asked to submit another paper to
Quantimath,
Leonardo Gori singling her out for special treatment, her friendship with Paul Allen. She was on a roll.

“She’s jealous?”

“Well,” Faith grappled with the unfamiliar yet thrilling thought that someone might be jealous of
her.
“Um, I think so. She has more seniority than I do, she’s on the staff committee and, for some reason, she was in Kane’s good graces.

“But she isn’t going anywhere with her career and she isn’t—” Faith stopped.
She isn’t as good as I am,
was what she was going to say. It sounded so unlike anything she’d ever say, how could she—

“She isn’t as good as I am,” a strange voice said, and she almost looked around to see who said that outrageously vain thing.

Nick stopped and nodded, as if she had stated something obvious. “So she sees someone she thought weak coming up from behind, fast, and sticks out the stick to trip them up. Oldest trick in the book.”

Faith blinked. “Well, yes. In a manner of speaking.” She tugged at his arm again. “Come on, Nick. We can’t just stand in the middle of the street all afternoon while you ponder the politics of the math department of St. Vincent’s.”

“If it’s old Beak Nose who wrote that note, I can live with it.” Nick started lumbering forward. “She seems harmless enough. It’s the thought of anyone else—”

“Oh, Faith! Do wait for us!” an English voice called out.

Faith turned and saw Paul and Tim scampering down the steepest part of the
Via di Città
.

What a pair,
she thought
, and how utterly un-Italian they look
.
One wildly tall and gangly with a red beard down to the middle of his chest, dressed in cheerfully absurd clothes, a brilliant clown. The other, short and flabby, in a beige shirt and beige shorts, wispy beige hair caught in a thin ponytail, thick beige legs pumping to keep up with Paul.

She couldn’t help it. She glanced to her right at Nick, so tall and broad and perfectly formed. So outrageously handsome, looking so completely at home on an Italian street. Then she looked back at Tim.

Nick looked as perfect as the buildings surrounding them—an otherworldly, unattainable perfection.

Tim was beigely clumsy. Inept.

That both men had been her lovers struck her as absurd.

Tim had caught her gaze, moving from Nick’s perfect form to himself, to his ugly, bowed legs and, as their eyes met, she saw a flash of hot anger in Tim’s.

He had caught her comparing him to Nick and had seen that he’d come out wanting. A flash of a moment that changed everything.

How many times had she herself suffered that? Some man talking to her whose eye had been suddenly caught by a beautiful woman walking by and who then politely turned back to her, already bored? And she could clearly read in his eyes that she had been compared and found wanting. That he wanted to be anywhere but here. That he wanted her to disappear off the face of the earth.

It was the way of the world and it was cruel.

Tim had paled and stopped near a storefront. Paul leaned down and Tim craned his neck as he said something to him. Paul nodded his head once and, with one last look at her, Tim veered off into a side street.

I’ve hurt him, Faith thought sadly.

Paul waved at her and came striding down the street, his red hair damp and wild around his shoulders. “I’m so glad I caught up with you. Leonardo wanted to talk to you. I said I’d seen you and we went out to look for you, but you’d just…left.”

He looked puzzled, as he often did, at the wayward behavior of humans. Faith had been there and then she hadn’t and he couldn’t seem to connect the two. Faith knew he had no sense whatsoever of time, and in his head, she had disappeared in an instant.

“But you’re here now—” he beamed, “—so let’s go. Leonardo’s saving us a place in his
contrada
. The Eagle. Jolly good name, what?” He laughed, a loud bray. He smacked large, liver-colored lips. “Fabulous food. Leonardo took us to his
contrada
last year.”

He frowned. “Or was it the year before last? Never mind. Anyway, he said to be sure to bring you with, if we saw you. So, off we go.”

He had taken her gently by the arm, his huge hand curving easily around her biceps, and had started walking.

Leonardo wanted her at the dinner.

There was an etiquette to conferences.

During the conference itself, all participants were equal. But after the conference, only a select few were invited by the host, it being understood that was where contacts were established. Where careers were made.

And she was being asked to sit with The Chosen.

“What did you think of Kabusaki’s paper? Interesting notion, what?” Paul pulled her forward and she followed, smiling.

“I think it smacked of some smart undergraduate’s thinking,” Faith said. “Kabusaki has never shown any signs of original thought before.”

Paul threw back his head and brayed to the soft Sienese sky. “Too right, love. And I know who the undergraduate is and where he lives. Brilliant guy.” He winked at her. “He’ll be invited next year, too, just like you.”

Too. Which meant…Paul Allen thinks I am brilliant.

Or did it? Maybe she was reading too much into what was essentially a casual comment. That was easy to do. Maybe he’d meant—

Faith realized they were walking around the curve of buildings that hid the
Piazza del Campo
, and that she’d left Nick behind. She stopped. Paul stopped, too, and looked back, then looked down at her.

“Do you want that chap to eat with us?” he asked doubtfully. He was speaking to her, but his braying voice carried.

Nick was standing behind them on the slope leading down.

“Nick?” Faith called out. “Do you want to come with us?”

She knew what the situation looked like. Two people politely asking a third—an intruder—to join them.

On the one hand, she’d like to eat with Nick. On the other, this was the last night of the conference and she wanted to network, and it would be hard with him distracting her.

Nick swallowed, his throat working up and down visible from a distance. “No,” he called out. “Thanks anyway. Do you need a ride back—”

“Not to worry,” Paul boomed. “There’s a minibus going back up at midnight.”

“Okay.” Nick smiled weakly. “All right. See you tomorrow. Enjoy the evening.”

“You, too,” Faith called out. Paul took her arm again and moved her along. She had to scamper to keep up with his long legs.

“There’s a thing Leonardo wants to talk to you about. I think you might find it interesting. We’ve been planning this for the past couple of years and now it’s coming to fruition. I’ll be interested to know what you think.”

“Mm.” Faith was barely listening. She craned her neck and saw Nick, still standing in the center of the road, watching them walk away.

He looked lost, and lonely.

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Where’s Nick?” Mike leaned over to shout in his brother’s ear over the noise of the Snails’ happy cheers.

“Over there. Avoiding Serenella Gattini’s breasts.” Dante’s fork, on which was speared a slice of boar sausage, pointed to the table set up on the far right of the street. “And brooding.”

Serenella was the
contrada
vamp. She was doing her best to attract Nick’s attention, all but thrusting her breasts in his face, but Nick wasn’t having any. He was sitting and frowning down at the wine in his glass. Luckily, it was a very good one, a
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
, which, at any other time, would have kept him happy. Certainly capable of appreciating breasts.

Mike grinned. “Brooding? Over that girl Lou keeps calling about? Faith?”

“Yeah. She got a threatening letter this afternoon and it threw Nick for a loop.”

Mike swung his head around. “A threatening letter?”

Briefly, Dante filled his brother in. Mike did his best to concentrate, but after a minute or two, he was listening with only half an ear, his eyes wandering over the happy crowd. Now was no time to worry about murder and threats.

Dante couldn’t agree more. He leaned back in his chair at the podium and surveyed his kingdom. And a rich and satisfying one it was, too.

Trestle tables had been set up along the
Via San Marco
and the
Via della Diana
. There were between five and six hundred people sitting at the tables under the red-and-yellow banners of the Snail, the red-and-yellow bandanas of the Snail around their necks, yelling the Snail cheer.

“
Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

Mike started singing with the crowd, wildly off-key. He was drinking and eating too much, but he could, since his wife, Loredana, wasn’t around to breathe down his neck and recite his cholesterol count like a chant.

Loredana had been born in the Forest
contrada
. Though most of the year Dante thought she was a great sister-in-law, wife and mother, she morphed right into The Enemy come
Palio
time.

She always stayed at her parents’ house with the daughter, Carlotta, during the last week before the
Palio
and on the big day itself. The son, Alessandro, stayed with Mike.
Contrada
tensions ran too high during the
Palio
for two people of differing
contradas
to share a roof. Or a bed.

Which was fine. Loredana’s father, Alberto Conti, was the
capitano
of the Forest
contrada
this year and would have had no compunctions about using his daughter for espionage.

Loredana would have reported right back to her father about whom Mike was seeing and how much was being offered for bribes to which
contradas’
jockeys.

The Forest and the Snail had never been mortal enemies—indeed they’d been tepid allies since 1790—but come
Palio
time, all bets were off.

Right now Loredana was sitting down in
Via Franciosa
wearing a bandana with the green-and-orange colors of the Forest, screaming her head off.
Se-Se-Selva!

In the years of the Snails’ drought, Loredana had come home five times after a Forest win, looking insufferably smug. That had to end.

Tomorrow.

“
Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

The chant went up again from a long table full of teenaged girls. The boys of the
contrada
, pressed into waiter duty, hustled about filling glasses with Chianti and passing out slices of fried polenta from long, steel serving platters.

Dante picked up one of the slices, still hot from the pan, and slipped it into his mouth. It was oily and salty, and crunchy and delicious.

The Snail women had been arguing and planning the menu for seven months now. If the Fates continued to look kindly upon the Snail, the
contrada
would be celebrating tomorrow’s victory for the better part of next year.