Pasta Imperfect (32 page)
“Can’t breathe!” the other gasped.
I darted a look from one flushed face to the other. Gee. It would be nice if I could tell them apart.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!
I startled at the sound. Oh, my God! What was that? The fire alarm?
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!
I looked down at the twins. Oh, this was handy. Nothing like an unscheduled fire to speed up the strangulation process.
I made a megaphone of my hands and yelled down at them, “You need to stop this right now! THE HOTEL IS ON FIRE!”
“
Grrrrrrh,
” choked out one twin.
“
Arrrrrrh,
” choked out the other.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!
Oh, honestly! I dropped to my knees and seized their forearms, trying to pry them apart. “Let go! Come on now. Britha. Barbro. WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!”
Thwack!
An errant hand smacked me in the mouth. “Ow!” I cried, my hand flying to my lip. “That hurt!”
BAM! Another hand cracked me on the nose. “OW!” My eyes stung with tears. My lip seeped blood. I dodged another flailing arm and jumped to my feet. Okay, now I was
pissed.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!
There was only one solution. I had to take out the bad twin. The question was — Which one was Britha?
I shifted my gaze back and forth. They were identical except for one thing. One characteristic. One feature. Something so ordinary that no one ever noticed. Boy, they sure looked absolutely identical to me. WHAT WAS IT?
I grinned with sudden inspiration.
I spied their camera on the desk and raced toward it. I powered it up and pressed the button Nana had shown me in Pisa. Tiny images appeared on the display screen. Statues. Bridges. Fountains.
“
Gaaaaaa
…!” croaked one twin.
“
Euwwww
…!” croaked the other.
I punched faster. A bunch of holes poked into a piece of stone. What the —? Oh, yeah. Those were the holes in the cathedral in Pisa that the day-vil kept screwing with. Wow. That made a really boring picture.
Punch, punch, punch.
People. The Duomo. Aha! The photo I’d taken on the gallery of the Duomo. The twins with their name tags. And the closeup shot showing every hair, every pore, every detail.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG! BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!
I searched up, down, left, right. Their eyes. Their mouths. Their — A slight inconsistency caught my eye. It looked like a mere speck on the screen, but this could be it. A difference so small, so insignificant, that no one ever noticed. I squinted more closely. This
was
it! It had to be!
I looked desperately around the room. A weapon. I needed a weapon! My gaze fell on the liter of bottled water on the desk. Aha!
I raced toward where the twins were entwined on the floor. One on top, one below. Damn. It was hard to see anything with them in this configuration. “Excuse me, ladies, could I trouble you to roll over a little?”
“She…!”
“I…!”
With a grunt and a growl they rolled onto their sides like chickens on a spit.
“Thank you. That’s perfect.” I checked out one twin. I checked out the other. Nodding, I raised my liter of bottled water like a baseball bat. “I’m really sorry to have to do this, ladies, but if we don’t get out of here, we’re going to be toast.”
I swung downward, delivering a walloping blow to the back of Britha Severid’s head. THUNK!
She startled. She gasped. She wilted into unconsciousness.
Her hands fell away from her sister’s throat, freeing her.
I separated the two women, praying my hunch had been right.
“Did you kill her?” the conscious twin blurted out, rubbing her throat.
I gave her an odd look. “Of course, I didn’t kill her. I just —” Oh, God! I couldn’t have whacked the wrong one, could I?
“Roses are red, violets are blue,” I shouted over the racket of the fire alarm.
“I’m still alive, all thanks to you!”
I smiled at Barbro Severid. Oh, yeah. Right twin.
S
o I borrowed a lesson from you with the fire alarm and decided that was the best way to gather everyone into the lobby to tell them about the change of plans tomorrow.” Duncan caressed the stem of his wineglass as if it were an intimate part of the female body, but I tried hard not to make anything of it.
The hour was just shy of midnight, and we were at an open-air restaurant in the Piazza della Repubblica, surrounded by white linen-draped tables, singing waiters, and hundreds of twinkling minilights. The police had come and gone, taking Britha Severid with them. Mom and Nana were taking Barbro under their dual wings, lending comfort and support. Nana was pretty excited about her new role, saying it was almost as good as attending a wake. I figured if she was forced to spend more time with Barbro, maybe George would have a better chance of survival.
“I’m glad the fire was only a false alarm,” I said, taking a sip of my wine. “But I have to admit, it came at a good time. It kind of got my adrenaline pumping.”
Duncan traced a fingertip along the back of my hand. “That old adrenaline,” he said in a husky voice. “Hard to keep it from pumping sometimes. I’m curious. Are the tours you escort always this…eventful?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Yeah. I think they are.”
“And where is it you’ll be escorting your next tour?”
“Hawaii. Over Halloween. It’s a cruise of the islands.”
“Sounds wonderful. I’ll be sure to stay at the opposite end of the world.”
“These situations are not my fault!”
He elevated one skeptical eyebrow at me. “What I want to know is, how did Britha do it? When did she lace his water with the alcohol?”
“From what Barbro was able to figure out, Britha must have pocketed Philip’s duplicate key when she got back from dinner last night, then entered his room this morning just after breakfast while he was waiting in line to take the elevator. The elevator was so slow, it gave her plenty of time. Barbro was taking her turn in the bathroom, so the coast was clear.”
“I guess a man needs to watch himself around women from Iowa. There’s more to them than meets the eye.”
I leaned back in my chair, searching his face with my eyes. “What’s going to happen to Britha? Will they test her mental competency? Try her here? Send her back home?”
Duncan shook his head. “I hate to admit it, but I don’t know much about the criminal justice system here. Nothing like this has ever happened on one of my tours before. But we can pay a visit to the police station tomorrow before we go. They should be able to answer some of our questions. Will that work for you?”
I nodded my thanks. Okay, Duncan Lazarus wasn’t a killer. He was a very nice, very intelligent, very sexy man. And I was going to be spending ten more days with him. Oh, God.
He grinned widely. “Now, would you like to tell me how you knew which twin to clobber with your bottled water? How could you tell them apart? They look exactly alike.”
“Mmm, not exactly. One
teensy
feature is different.”
“And that is…?”
I tugged on my ear. He looked confused. “Carol Burnett used to do that at the end of her variety show,” he commented. “I caught all the reruns when I visited my grandparents in the States.”
I rolled my eyes and tugged again.
“Their ears are different?” he asked tentatively.
“Their lobes. Britha’s lobes are attached. Barbro’s are
de
tached.”
“Detached from what?”
I smiled coyly. “Britha’s lobes don’t drop away from her ear. They form a continuous curve. They’re attached. Barbro’s, on the other hand, form a little teardrop of skin that hangs slightly below the ear. The lobes are
de
tached. Britha’s earring fell off at the top of the Duomo, and that’s why. She didn’t have as much lobe to attach a clip-on to.”
“And people never noticed the difference between them because —?”
“Because it was only a minor irregularity and most probably because…they always wore earrings!”
“And you observed this how?”
My smile widened. “From a photo I took of them. Digital cameras are amazing.”
As a chorus of violins struck up a tune from the front of the restaurant, Duncan shook his head, laughing. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. But I have some bad news for you.” He circled his hand around mine, his thumb resting on the pulse point at my wrist. “The hotel is going to charge you for that bottle of water you used on Britha. You apparently cracked the plastic. The water all leaked out.”
“No problem. I saved lots of money on the leather jacket I didn’t buy.” I bowed my head, hesitant to ask this next question, but needing some kind of closure. “I don’t mean to pry, Duncan, and I know it’s painful for you to talk about, so I apologize, but would you mind telling me” — I lifted my eyes to his — “what was your sister’s married name?”
He regarded me askance. “O’Grady. Molly O’Grady. She met a black-haired Irishman at Trinity College in Dublin and knew instantly that she’d found her soulmate. Funny how some people just know.”
I shivered at the look he gave me. “How did she die?” I asked gently.
“A boating accident in Venice. I still have trouble conducting tours there, but I’m coping.”
Chirrup chirrup. Chirrup chirrup. Chirrup chirrup.
Duncan pointed to my shoulder bag. “That’s yours. I decided to go incommunicado for once.”
“Hello?” I said into my phone.
I heard a spate of soft, sensuous Italian being spoken into my ear. I felt an awkward smile play across my lips. “Etienne? Where are you?”
I listened intently, trying to hear him over the melodic voices that had joined forces with the violins. “Right. I thought that’s what probably happened. A tunnel.” I listened some more. “Unh-huh. This…this is a good time.” I flashed Duncan an uneasy smile. My heart thumped. My stomach churned. My blood pounded in my ears. This was it. This was really it!
I listened to the words pouring from Etienne’s mouth in his beautiful French/German/Italian accent. Apologies. Sweet nothings.
That’s it. So far, so good. Keep going.
A little more buildup and finally the question I’d been waiting to hear for so long.
I bit my tongue until he was finished. I inhaled a deep breath. I forced a half smile at Duncan, then responded to Etienne’s question in a slightly different way than I’d imagined.
“YOU WANT ME TO WHAT?”
Pasta Imperfect
Maddy Hunter
2004
novel
text/html
ISBN 1-4165-0517-2
en
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Copyright © 2004 by Mary Mayer Holmes