Murphy's Law (34 page)

“Nuts,” Tim agreed. “But still, it’s worth it. The Palio’s really glorious. Here we are.”

Where?
Faith frowned as she glanced up at the marble plaque.
Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
. Well,
duomo
meant cathedral, she was assuming opera didn’t mean singing and
museo
was easy. Except closing herself up in a museum held no appeal. No appeal at all.

“This is where they keep the original art works and statues from the façade, and some artifacts from inside the cathedral. They’re eight hundred years old and deteriorating, so they put them in a museum.”

“A museum? Maybe some other time, Tim, but right now—”

“It’s a great place, better than the inside of the cathedral. And the best thing is that it will be empty now. Everyone’s going to start congregating in the cathedral square soon and we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

Tim plowed right over her. He grabbed her hand and plunged through the tall Gothic opening into the cool lobby within. He was digging in his pants for the ticket money before she could catch her breath.

“Come on.” He grabbed her hand again and followed a bright red arrow up the stairs.

With a sigh, Faith followed. It was pleasantly cool inside and was indeed empty. They walked through room after room, their footsteps echoing on the flag-stones. It was almost eerie seeing the marble statues that had once adorned the
façade
of the cathedral, safe forever from the lashes of wind and rain, lined up against the walls as they walked through. John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Moses, even Plato. The necks of the statues were craned forward awkwardly.

“They look odd,” she said.

“That’s because the statues were placed in niches way up high,” Tim answered her question. “So the sculptor had to make sure the face would be visible from down below. Hey, isn’t she beautiful? That’s a sibyl.”

Indeed, the statue was beautiful, a serene marble woman with eyes fixed far in the distance. Seeing the future.

Tim was rushing through the rooms, sprinting up the stairs to the floor above. Faith followed more slowly, watching Tim’s short legs disappear around a bend and feeling vaguely uneasy. For the moment she was completely alone. Even the guards seemed to have disappeared.

She had a sudden sense of remoteness, as if she were watching the scene from outside her body. Here was Faith Murphy, of Sophie, Indiana, climbing the exquisite stairs of an exquisite building in an exquisite city far, far away from home.

No wonder she was feeling a bit alienated. So much had happened in the past few days, so much had changed that of course she felt changed with it. Sex with Nick, crossing the Atlantic, finding a dead body , sex with Nick again, a new job…

This floor was a series of large rooms with vaulted ceilings arching into the distance. She could see Tim two rooms down.

As she followed him, she was suddenly overwhelmed with sensory memories of her first night in Italy—the bone tiredness, the heat, the disorientation of jet lag. She was walking down a corridor now as she had then, but what a difference. She felt like a different person and—she thought as she caught a glancing look at her reflection in the glass covering a medieval triptych—she
looked
like a different person.

Tim was in front of a huge wooden panel with a gilt background and a black-robed Madonna holding an amazingly adult-looking Christ child on her lap. The olive-skinned Madonna had her head bent to the side, her eyes fixed on a far-off horizon, an expression of inexpressible sorrow on her face, as if she knew what was going to happen to the sober-looking child she was holding.

She was surrounded by saints, to judge by the gold halos enclosing their heads like a muff, instead of a circlet overhead, as she was used to. The faces resembled the faces she’d been seeing in the streets of Siena. The painting was majestic, overwhelmingly beautiful and unbearably sad.

“This is the
Maestà
,” Tim enthused. “One of the greatest paintings of its time. It’s made with gold leaf and lapis lazuli dust and cost three thousand florins at the time. That would be almost a million dollars now. When it was finished, the entire city escorted it from the artist’s studio to the cathedral where it was kept until recently.”

Faith kept cutting between the amazing painting and amazing Tim. He was spouting art historical information as if there were a tape inside his pudgy chest. Whoever thought he was interested in art history? In the year she’d known him, he had only ever shown an interest in math, food and briefly—very briefly—her private parts.

The painting was gorgeous and what Tim was saying was interesting, but today wasn’t a day to be stuck inside a museum sucking up historical information. It was delightful to know she could come back here any time she wanted during the course of the entire year. In the meantime, she wanted to be back out in the dust and heat, watching the people, waiting for the
Palio
. Waiting to be with Nick.

“Listen, Tim,” she said, “maybe we should go back out now. Didn’t you say people were going to start gathering for the parade in historical costume? I’d like to see that and maybe grab a bite to eat.”

She wasn’t meeting Nick until four and she was suddenly ravenous. A little
trattoria
in a secluded square, eating
panzanella
in the shade…

“Okay, okay.” He smiled, but a nerve twitched in his cheek.

If she didn’t know him better, she’d say he was high on something. He was certainly wired.

“Just one more thing to show you. You’ll like it.”

Faith had a sudden overwhelming desire to get out. The museum was dark, and she wanted the light. Empty, and she wanted people. “Another time, Tim. Come on, let’s go now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He wasn’t listening. He grabbed her hand again and pulled her down another corridor.

Faith tried to drag her feet, but he was surprisingly strong. Also, he seemed to be obsessed with showing off his knowledge of Siena. Maybe out of jealousy of Nick. Shrugging, she gave up her resistance and followed him.

He sure had reason to be jealous of Nick. It was uncharitable of her to think it, but the two weren’t even on the same planet in terms of attraction. And it wasn’t just the physical attraction. Apart from being gorgeous, Nick had an ease with himself and others Tim couldn’t even hope to match.

It was unfair and she knew it. Nature had favored Nick in every way there was. He was beautifully made and athletically gifted. He had a sunny personality. He had a wonderful family and they loved him. Nothing had ever gone wrong in his life. All right, he had to stop playing hockey, but that would have happened sooner or later anyway. That it had happened now would allow him to do something else with his life, instead of happening ten years from now when it might be too late.

Even in misfortune, Nick was fortunate.

Tim had pulled her through a door, dropped her hand and forged ahead. With a sigh, she followed him.

Unexpectedly, the door led outside. Her eyes took a moment to adjust from the gloom of the museum to the glare of outdoors. As everything came into focus, she realized she was something like six stories up off the ground on a narrow walkway, inside a great marble arch suspended in the bright blue sky.

Tim was in the middle of the tall, narrow arch, silhouetted against the brilliant, cloudless sky, elbows resting on the marble balustrade. He beckoned her over and she rested her elbow companionably next to his.

“Beautiful, huh?”

It was beautiful. Faith looked down at the people far below, tiny in comparison to the immense bulk of the cathedral filling the sky in front of them.

Tim looked sideways and upwards, his eye following the marble facing of the inside of the arch. “Actually we’re in a window, believe it or not. This was supposed to be the
façade
of the new cathedral, the largest in the world. Look.” He pointed to the side of the cathedral across a vast space. “That was supposed to be the back of the cathedral and we’re in the
façade
and all that space was going to be the central nave. You’ve got a great bird’s eye view from up here.”

A throaty warble and whirring of wings and she was staring at a pigeon perched on one of a series of small stone tablets jutting out along the wall to the right and left of the arch. The pigeon stared at her unblinkingly, then took a delicate step to the right to come to rest on the next tablet.

“Pigeon’s eye view is more like it.” Faith turned her head to discover Tim had moved closer and was staring at her with the same unblinking intensity as the pigeon had done. Unobtrusively, with a smile on her face, Faith moved toward the arch’s side.

What was she doing here with Tim when she wanted to be with Nick? Again, she felt that sense of unease, but more intense this time. Behind her was the Questura, where Nick was.

What’s Nick doing? Is he helping Dante take Madeleine’s confession?

Tim brushed her arm and she shifted. Tim moved again. Unease prickled in her veins.

Would Nick have finished? It was about one. Surely he was going to grab a bite to eat before meeting her at four in the
Piazza del Campo
. She had a violent wish to see him limping up the street, crossing Cathedral Square.

When would he be free? How long would it take them to take Madeleine’s statement?

“About what?” Tim asked, and she realized she’d spoken the thought aloud.

Faith turned her head. “About the murder. I wonder how long it’ll take her to confess to Roland’s murder.”

Tim’s smile broadened and she recoiled from the expression in his muddy brown eyes. “Well, that’s the thing, Faith,” he said, leaning close. “Madeleine didn’t kill Roland. I did.”

Chapter Eighteen

All great discoveries are made by mistake.

“What does ‘date rape drug’ mean?” Carmine Loiacono’s strong Sicilian accent mangled the English words.

Nick leaned over his shoulder. While waiting for Dante to do his cop thing he’d been roped in by Loiacono to translate the full text of the files sent by the Southbury police department on Roland Kane, Griffin Ball, Faith Murphy, Madeleine Kobbel and Tim Gresham.

Loiacono’s English was grammatically correct, but the Chief of Southbury PD’s version of English strained his vocabulary. Nick had eagerly accepted Loiacono’s request for help to keep his mind off the woman in Dante’s office.

He’d never hit a woman in his life, but he had been tempted. Fuck, had he been tempted.

Madeleine Kobbel had almost killed Faith. Nick didn’t give a damn about the fact she’d probably killed the Professor, too. The important thing was right now he could be arranging for Faith’s body to be transported back to the States and back to the family that didn’t love her. But he wasn’t, thank God.

The files Southbury PD had sent were interesting, with an official and unofficial version. There was dirt on everyone except, he was glad to see, Faith. Griffin Ball had once been arrested for lewd behavior while intoxicated on a gay beach in Florida. His family was rich and powerful and, in the end, the charges had been dropped. He had twice sued Roland Kane for harassment.

Madeleine Kobbel had been married to Roland Kane in the late nineties. There had been a child, a girl with multiple birth defects. Nick noted that Roland Kane had filed for divorce the day his daughter died. He shook his head. He never understood men who didn’t stand by their families. He never would.

The mother of Tim Gresham, the man Nick loved to hate, had been married five times. Tim had been adopted once by an Englishman, John Dunham, and had lived a few years in England until his mother married again. They moved back to the States where his mother had married a Barry Simmons. At the age of eighteen, Tim had changed his name back to his biological father’s, Gresham.

For an instant, Nick had a pang of sympathy for the creep. Having four stepfathers, two names and two nationalities couldn’t have been easy. Then he remembered Tim’s proprietary attitude toward Faith and his sympathy evaporated.

“
Allora
?” Carmine Loiacono’s sharply intelligent face was turned up to his.

Nick snapped out of his reverie. “Date rape drug? It’s a drug put in the drink of an unsuspecting woman and it renders her either unconscious or incapable of resistance. They have no memory of what happened when they wake up.” He’d heard the stories of spiking a girl’s drink and then using her when she was unconscious. The thought made him sick. “Why? Why are you asking?”

“That’s why.” Loiacono pointed to the printout in front of him. Roland Kane’s file. Nick read slowly. Now here was an interesting set of data. Roland Kane had cut a wide swath in life, leaving behind burnt earth. Multiple law suits, charges of fraud, harassment…

Loiacono tapped the file impatiently. Nick was a slow reader, so he scrolled down, focusing on where Loiacono’s finger was.

Nick read out loud slowly.

“October 27, 2012. Roland Kane accused of raping Candace Simmons, a freshman student at Southbury. Massive amounts of Gamma hydroxybutyrate—” He stumbled over the word. “—were found in the bloodstream of the victim—”

“Wait!”

Nick looked up frowning at Loiacono’s shout.

Contrary to American prejudice, southern Italians were anything but voluble, dramatic and over-emotional. Until recently, they had lived in a poor and dangerous world where one wrong word to the wrong person, an attitude of disrespect, could get you a bullet in the back from the local version of a sawed-off shotgun, the
lupara.
They kept their emotions reined in.

But now Loiacono, normally so stiff and formal, was shouting and waving his hands.

“Gamma hydroxybutyrate, GHB…” He was pawing wildly through a sheaf of documents. “
Ecco
!” He thrust a sheet into Nick’s hands. “Look at that!”

“That” was a computer printout of some kind of medical analysis from the Florence toxicology lab in Careggi. Nick tried to run his eyes down the page quickly, but the words and numbers had no meaning and the font was tiny. The words shimmered on the page.