Murphy's Law (12 page)

“I guess the weather in Virginia was better.”

“Everything in Virginia was better,” Ball answered sourly. “And to think, at the time I thought I was taking a step up. Roland Kane wasn’t present during the interview process. He never participates—sorry, he never
participated
—in any of the administrative tasks of the faculty. If he’d been there when I interviewed, you can be sure I’d never have accepted the job.”

“You had…problems with Professor Kane,” Dante said carefully.

“You could say that.” Ball’s mouth tightened. “I have two lawsuits against Kane pending—one for harassment and the other for assault. Roland Kane was undoubtedly the nastiest human being I’ve ever met, and I’ve met my share. Besides being a misogynist and an alcoholic, he was also a rabid homophobe. He made my life a living hell. I reported him several times to the dean and to the trustees of the university, to no avail.

“His harassment eventually became so serious I had to report him to the police. That was how I met your uncle, Lorenzo Rossi. He’s the president of the staff committee and he was as disgusted as I was, bless his soul. He went to have a talk with Kane. I don’t know what was said, but the worst of the harassment stopped.”

“And yet you worked together,” Dante said neutrally. “Every day. That must have been a strain.”

“Well, to tell the truth I didn’t see too much of Kane during the working day. He didn’t actually teach many classes. And lately I think his drinking was getting out of control. He was skipping more classes than he taught.

“Mainly I saw him at faculty meetings, but he had to restrain himself with other people around. Mostly, he would try to corner me in the restrooms. He’d leave lurid notes for me, that kind of thing. Luckily, the worst of it stopped once Lorenzo had his talk.”

“Yet you took it to court.”

Ball straightened. “Damned right I did. Kane’s behavior was inexcusable. I called for his resignation time and again, but whenever his situation got serious, he’d pull a rabbit out of a hat. He donated to the university the copyright to a traffic management software program that earned Southbury a lot of money. And the quantitative methods series of conferences gave the university a lot of luster. He had a genius for pushing a situation right up to the edge and then pulling back at the last possible second.”

Ball’s voice was even and his hands stayed calmly composed on his lap, but Dante could see a vein throbbing in his temple and his breathing had speeded up.

“Someone had to stand up to Kane, and that someone had to be me. I have tenure. I have a generous trust fund from my grandmother, and my partner is a very successful stockbroker. There wasn’t anything Kane could do to me. Unlike Faith.”

Dante raised his eyebrows. “Murphy?”

“Yes, Faith Murphy. She’s a lovely girl, and a very gifted mathematician, very gifted. Kane made her life miserable from day one. Faith comes from a very poor family and is on contract. Her entire existence is tenuous and Kane preyed on that. And there was a girl—” Ball stared into space. “Coral…” He snapped his fingers. “No, Candace. Candace Simmons. A student. There were rape charges but before the case could come to trial, she was institutionalized and the charges were dropped. Basically Kane got away with rape. Believe me,
Commissario
Rossi, whoever killed Roland Kane did humanity an immense service.”

Ball was slightly flushed, his jaw tensed. Suddenly he smiled. “But it wasn’t me.”

“That, Professor, remains to be seen,” Dante replied.

Ball inclined his head. “Of course.”

Dante drew in a deep breath. “We will keep your passport for the time being. You will get it back in a few days. I must ask you not to leave Siena until our investigation is complete.”

Like Madeleine Kobbel, Ball looked startled at the idea. “Of course I won’t leave Siena,
Commissario
. I’m here for the conference. It lasts until the 2nd, by which time I’m sure you’ll have made headway in your investigation.”

By which time,
Dante thought,
the Snail will have won.
“I’m sure we will have. I think that’s about it for now. You might be called in for further questioning, but in the meantime you are free to go.”

Ball nodded and rose gracefully, his pants falling softly, perfectly over his suede loafers.

The heat of the day had gathered in Dante’s office, bearing down oppressively. Dante was sweating and his clothes stuck wherever his body touched the chair.

Every year the town council swore it would put air conditioning in the Questura
,
and every year the town council fell before it could approve the supplementary budget.

In the summer, Dante’s office was like a furnace. Yet Griffin Ball looked cool and unruffled.
How the hell did the man do it?
Dante wondered.

Ball walked quietly to the door and stopped. After a moment, he turned around. Dante lifted his head. “Was there something else, Professor?”

Ball hesitated. “I know I shouldn’t say this,
Commissario
. But…don’t look too hard for Kane’s murderer. Whoever did it should have a monument erected in his honor.”

Chapter Eight

Smile…tomorrow will be worse.

The next morning, Faith slid into her seat and smiled at the black-coated waiter pouring more of the delicious coffee so strong it should be classified as a nutraceutical.

Even breakfast, normally a humdrum affair in her life consisting of lukewarm instant coffee and a supermarket donut, was delicious here.

There were sweet croissants, called
cornetti
, still warm from the oven, star-shaped cookies with plum marmalade in the middle, sugary donuts the waiters called
bomboloni
and—on the other side of the diet pyramid—slices of thick salty country ham and round, sweet melon balls.

Everyone looked up as if surprised to see her. They were frozen in a little breakfast tableau. Tim with bread crumbs from the salt-less Tuscan bread spilling down his shirt. Grif, elegant as always with a little round pastry held up between thumb and forefinger. Madeleine hunched over her plate, long grey hair swinging forward to hide her face.

“Faith.” Grif, always the gentleman, stood while Faith took her seat.

For the thousandth time, Faith wished Grif were straight and that she had had a brief, passionate affair with him rather than the brief, bloodless affair she’d had with Tim.

Grif would have taken her out to some elegant restaurant and he would have made her laugh and sigh while seducing her. She and Tim had shared a stringy takeout pizza in her apartment followed by very bad sex. Hardly worthy of the name.

She and Nick had had very good sex, though of course her experience was limited, so maybe it hadn’t been as spectacular as her memory insisted. And yet…

On the plane over, every time she moved in her seat she thought she could feel him inside her. The memory of the night and the plane’s slight vibration had kept her on a knife-edge of arousal. It had been humiliating and uncontrollable.

“Sit down, Grif.” Faith smiled. She picked up her cup, drained it and looked around. Before she could signal a waiter a freshly brewed cup was slipped in front of her. “Can’t fault the service here.” She caught Grif’s eye. “Beats the cafeteria back home, eh?”

“By a mile.” Grif delicately patted his lips dry. “What did Leonardo want with you yesterday, Faith? Is something wrong?”

Much as Grif liked her, he had somehow picked up on the general aura Kane had created around her that she was an accident just waiting to happen.

With real pleasure, Faith reached out for a
cornetto
and said, “Not at all. As a matter of fact, he asked me to chair the Tipping Behavior panel.” She felt slightly defiant as she looked up. Grif was looking thoughtful, and Tim slightly shocked.

Madeleine put her cup down sharply in its saucer, two red spots on her sallow cheeks. “There must be some mistake,” she said, frowning. “I was supposed to head that panel.”

Faith tensed. “I’m afraid he didn’t say anything about that at all, Madeleine. Are you sure? Professor Gori—Leonardo—doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who would make mistakes like that.”

Madeleine’s lips tightened at Faith’s use of Gori’s first name. “Last year, I chaired the workshop on viral quantitation. So this year, of course I assumed I’d be taking Roland’s place as chair of the panel on tipping behavior. This isn’t fair, Faith. I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to Professor Gori and say you weren’t aware of the situation and that you can’t chair the panel. I came prepared for this.”

Say no
? Over her dead body. Faith drew in an outraged breath, but Grif raised his hand before she could speak.

“Madeleine, the decision is not ours to make. Traditionally, Leonardo draws up the speakers’ list and the workshop panels, and unless something is very wrong, we go along with it.”

“Well, there’s something wrong here.” Madeleine’s flat chest rose and fell quickly. “Having chaired last year’s meeting, I just naturally assumed—”

“You
co
-chaired a panel on a different, though related, subject. That’s not the same thing at all. Faith is the only one here to have written a paper on tipping behavior. And a very good one, too.” He nodded to Faith and her outrage muscles—the ones running from her nape along her shoulders that had got such a workout under Kane—relaxed slightly.

She had never been close to Madeleine, but by the same token, Madeleine had never gone out of her way to be nasty to her either. By department standards, they were practically BFFs. Why was Madeleine being so difficult now? Madeleine was already co-chairing another panel on pseudo-quantitation and, over the course of the past few years, had chaired and moderated her share of workshops and seminars. It wasn’t even as if she were an expert on tipping behavior. Faith was.

Faith had been surprised Leonardo had taken the trouble to read her paper, but she was proud of it. Maybe she was lacking in just about everything a normal human being and a normal woman should have but by God she was a fine mathematician and had written a fine paper.

At some level, she’d been aware of the fact that part of Kane’s hostility had stemmed from jealousy. Tim, Grif and Madeleine—they were all competent enough. Tim was a decent theoretician and Grif was an excellent teacher. Madeleine—no one really understood what Madeleine was doing in the department, but Kane wanted her there and so she’d been there.

But none of them were as good as Kane had been. And none were as good as she was.

The thought shocked her and thrilled her.

Faith looked around. A sunlit room in Tuscany in a restored monastery was as good a place as any for an epiphany. Something deep within her shifted, something old and rotten like a piece of ancient furniture moving away to make room for something new.

All her life she’d been put down. By her parents, for being alive. For having that chance at a happy life that had so spectacularly eluded them. At college, for being poor and overly bright. By Roland Kane, for being as good a mathematician as he was.

Even Nick had dealt her a huge blow. He couldn’t even remember her name after a night of lovemaking.

But for the first time in her life, she had a glimpse of a life that was more than merely grimly hanging on by her fingertips. She might not be good at much but she was good at mathematics.

And another talented mathematician, Leonardo Gori, had recognized it. If he had read her paper and been impressed, then maybe others had as well.

“
Ancora caffè?
”

Faith was jerked out of her thoughts by a handsome waiter hovering over her with a steaming silver coffee pot.

“Si, grazie.”

He bent over to pour, then stood and winked. “
Brava
.”

Faith winked back and was rewarded with a brilliant smile, a thousand watts of teeth.

“…not fair,” a voice was whining.

With a sigh, Faith turned from the pleasant, mild flirtation to gaze at Madeleine across the table, still complaining to Grif. Madeleine shook her head, the long, gray strands around her ears making her look like a greyhound. “I’m going to speak to Leonardo about this.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” Grif’s voice was sharp, eyes sharper. “Kane’s dead, and until the administration appoints his successor, I am
pro tem
department head. I absolutely forbid you to make a fuss about this, Madeleine.”

Madeleine blinked. Grif rarely raised his voice and was rarely anything but lazily courteous. But now Faith could almost see the glint of steel beneath his indolent southern charm.

“Well.” Madeleine stood up abruptly, jarring the table, and Faith steadied her cup before it could slosh over. “That was clear. And it’s also very clear whose side you’re on.” Shooting a look at Faith that was surprising in its venom, she turned and left.

“Wow.” Tim’s eyes blinked behind his thick glasses. Tim rarely noticed anything going on around him, but Madeleine’s temper tantrum had broken through his usual distraction. He turned to Grif. “What was that all about?”

Grif sighed. “Jealousy.”

“Of
Faith?”

Faith could have slapped Tim for the tone of utter disbelief.

“Yes. Of Faith.” Composed, Grif patted his lips with the snowy, blanket-sized napkin and smiled warmly at her. Eerily, his words echoed her thoughts. “Looks like this is
your
time now, Faith, my dear. I’m happy for you.”

Tim’s head swiveled. Grif. Faith. Then Grif again. His brow furrowed. “Huh?”

A tall, good-looking man in a uniform materialized beside her, accompanied by Leonardo Gori.

The man mouthed wonderful sounds in liquid tones at her. She frowned at Leonardo. It seemed so unfair to have a handsome man asking something and she didn’t know what.

Leonardo bent forward. “I’m sorry, Faith,” he said unhappily. “But the
Commissario
wants to talk to you again. He’s willing to wait until the day’s work is over.
Agente
Nicoletti here will wait for you and then accompany you downtown to the Questura.”

The good news was she had a handsome young man waiting for her.