Dying For Siena (18 page)

Yeah.

“So,” Tim said over breakfast, “I guess Elvis has left the building.” He sniggered over his
cornetto
. “Finally.”

Paul Allen froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. Not much of his breakfast would have gone into his mouth, anyway, as most of it tended to end up in his beard. Immensely tall and gangly, he had a red beard down to the middle of his chest and it clearly had a positive charge for food.

He was a true eccentric, kind and brilliant. Faith had adored him on sight. He’d helped make the symposium she’d chaired yesterday afternoon a wild success and she would have lain down on train tracks for him.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Paul. That was just a little math humor.” She eyed Tim severely. “Very little
math humor.”

Paul shoveled more Tuscan ham and bread into his mouth and Faith’s hands itched to wipe his mouth for him. “Odd chap, Kane, but there was no denying he was brilliant. I was quite taken with his model for traffic congestion. Very elegant, it was. I tried it on the traffic in Manchester, which is hideous, and it was like divination, only better.”

Faith looked down at her plate, acid eating into her stomach.

“Actually,” Grif patted his lips so elegantly with the paper napkin it could well have been the finest embroidered linen, “that wasn’t Kane’s model. That was Faith’s.”

Every head at the table swiveled toward her.

Faith felt the rush of blood to her head. She clutched the edge of the table. She’d worked for four months on the project only to have it whisked from under her nose by Kane and marketed to the City of Boston Traffic Administrator as his own.

She turned to Grif. “You knew?” she whispered.

“That Kane was using you? Using your work? Of course, my dear.” Grif looked around the table—at Madeleine, who blushed and looked away, and at Tim, whose jaw muscles worked beneath his wispy beard. “Everyone knew. But no one had the courage to stand up to him, myself, alas, included. Such is the way of the world.”

There was dead silence. Paul Allen drained his cappuccino in one gulp. He inclined his curiously elongated head to her. “Then, I guess we should be doubly congratulating Faith today. On the work that went into that marvelous time-traffic flow model and on her paper on tipping.”

He raised an earthenware cup stained with oily fingerprints. “I say we drink a toast to Faith. Hear, hear!”

“To Faith! To Faith!
Salute
!
Santé
!” This last from Jean-Paul Daumier, a flirtatious Frenchman who’d brought some interesting epidemiological data from the Pasteur Institute.

Something soft and damp like a slug touched Faith’s hand. Tim was holding her hand and looking at her out of adoring brown eyes. He leaned close and whispered, “Good for you, honey,” and puckered his lips.

She turned her head fast, and the kiss meant for her mouth ended up on her ear.

If it was meant to signal that they were lovers, he was way off base. Firstly, because there wasn’t one male around the table who could be made jealous, and secondly, because she had no intention of ever letting Tim in her bed again.

Once had been bad enough. It had been proof of the geek theorem that sex was merely a sublimation of the urge to do math.

Faith had always been quick to learn and she never made the same mistake twice. One pocket protector romance was enough.

She’d always been wary of men, but Tim had flown right under her radar. She hadn’t seen the affair coming until it was right on top of her, so to speak.

Though Tim had been at St. Vincent’s much longer than she had, he’d seemed as out of place as she was. They’d become friends, sharing jokes and whispered complaints about Kane.

They’d shared their unhappy childhoods. Faith, in Sophie, Indiana, with a drunken father and morosely depressed mother. Tim, all over the place, with a mother who practiced recreational marriage. His childhood had been so chaotic he’d had two last names and lived in four countries and ten cities before he’d turned eighteen.

There was nothing even remotely sexy about Tim with his wispy, blond hair pulled back in a dirty ponytail and “mouse potato” physique.

They had spent a lot of time together. One evening, they’d been sharing pizza and talking about coefficients for knowbots when all of a sudden, she’d found herself on her back and he’d been trying to stuff what felt like a marshmallow inside her.

It had been embarrassing, humiliating and—now that she’d experienced Nick—utterly futile.

She had a horrible feeling that nothing would ever compare to Nick. Maybe her peak sexual experience was already behind her.

Dante waited for Nick at the
Porta Camollia,
one of the gates to the city
.
He loved the ancient brick gate, fronted with a baroque frame of white marble. The gate sealed the city off from the hated Florentines.

Sienese hearts still burned with resentment at the loss of Siena’s freedom to Florence six hundred years before. After the bitter defeat, the hated Florentines insisted on entering through the gate. When the Medicis entered Siena, the Sienese had been forced to add the huge inscription above the coat of arms of the Medici
—“
Siena Opens Its Great Heart to Visitors”.

What a crock. The gate to the city had been opened under duress, at musket-point.

How many times Dante had seen tourists open their books, their faces softening as they read the translation of the Latin inscription, little realizing that the Sienese heart was anything but large, warm and welcoming. The Sienese heart was shriveled, cold and black. The inscription had been put up under threat of reprisal, and the Sienese still hated the Florentines for it six hundred years later.

Dante turned his back to the gate and slipped on his sunglasses, scanning the horizon.

It was, as it usually was at
Palio
time, a beautiful day. The morning sunshine glinted off the red-tiled roofs and made the brick buildings glow. Jasmine scented the air and he pulled in a deep, appreciative breath.

He leaned against the gate and made a mental bet with himself that Nick would come from
Via Piave
, the road that led to the
Certosa
and Faith. Dante was sure Nick would have made a long detour to see how she was doing this morning.

Sure enough, his Lancia hove into view, nipping smartly into an empty slot. Dante tried not to smile as Nick emerged with difficulty. His size and busted knee made the whole process laborious.

Nick waved and crossed the street, limping heavily.

He looked tired, Dante noted. Tired and defeated. He hated seeing Nick like that, but he understood completely.

Nick was a talented athlete who would never compete again. The whole family had ribbed him for his choice of career, but Dante had yelled himself hoarse many a time at a Hunters game, and his heart had swelled with pride and affection at Nick’s powerful plays across the ice.

How would he feel if he couldn’t be a policeman any more? Shuddering, he walked toward Nick. Didn’t bear thinking about.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Nick smiled wanly as Dante hugged him.

“Come on. The car’s this way.” Dante matched his stride to Nick’s. “You can start becoming Sherlock Holmes right away.”

Dante’s theory was that Nick had to start right away finding something else to do. Why not tag along and see if he could be a cop?

“I won’t be any good at it,” Nick said glumly. “Hockey’s the only thing I know how to do.”

“You never know until you try,” Dante said affably. “By the way, how’s Faith holding up?”

Nick froze and shot him a narrow-eyed look. “You having me followed?”

“Nah.” Dante laughed and tapped his head. He nudged Nick forward again. “Just old-fashioned deduction powers. It’s why I’m super-cop and you’re not.”

Nick speeded up and Dante kept pace easily.

“So?” he repeated. “What’s Faith doing?”

Nick gave up and drew in a deep breath. “Don’t know. I stopped by this morning to check on her. She was rushing around with this sheaf of documents under her arm, babbling something about chairing a tipping panel.”

“Tipping? You mean like a tip? For service?”

Nick shrugged. “Beats me. But whatever it is, it had her excited. She all but shooed me out of the
Certosa
. She said something about coming into town later this afternoon.”

“That Rossi charm is slipping, cuz. You usually have them at your feet. She’ll come around, though.”

“Yeah? How do you figure that?”

Dante tapped his head as he got behind the wheel. “Superior deductive powers. Super-cop at work.”

“Super-cop.” Nick snorted and Dante was glad to see a faint smile. They’d always ribbed each other about their jobs. “In Siena. Big bad Siena. When was the last time you had a murder here? 1950?”

“Ah…” Dante headed out of town into the countryside toward
Le Scotte
, the hospital. “Don’t remember.”

“See?”

“Well, at the moment, we do have a murder to investigate. The intrepid Detective super-cop is now officially on his way to the county hospital to talk to the coroner, to dig up clues. God, that makes me sound like something out of Michael Connello or Ed McBain.”

Dante loved American noir mysteries. For a moment, he imagined himself in one of them—the Lone Knight cruising down dark mean streets, alienated and alone against the world…

Nah.

He was a highly integrated Sienese, member of a large and loving family, driving down a gorgeous country lane bordered by pencil-straight cypresses in the warm buttery sunlight, to investigate the first murder in Siena in…he couldn’t remember how long. Certainly the last murder had been years before he’d come back from his stint in Naples.

“Hey, super-cop, why don’t you stop for a moment?”

Dante shot a startled glance. “Where?”

They rounded a corner. “There.” Nick pointed at a small brick building housing a coffee shop. “I haven’t had breakfast yet and I remember they make good sandwiches.”

Nick was hungry? Half an hour after leaving their grandmother’s house? “
Nonna
actually let you out of the house without feeding you?”

Nick looked away guiltily. “Yeah, well, a third degree would’ve accompanied the food. And you know what she’s like. The Gestapo were pikers in getting information next to her. Before I finished my coffee, she’d have grilled me about my injury, my love life and my plans. All of which suck.”

Nick’s right about
Nonna, Dante thought. She was a gentle, loving woman, still beautiful at seventy, a fabulous cook with eyes that would drill like a laser right into your head when she wanted to find something out.

And she wasn’t at all backward about giving advice. Nick was too shaky to deal with the smothering blanket of Rossi love right now. He needed some distance and space.

And a sandwich. Dante swerved to park in front of the little red brick building. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Make it snappy. Guzzanti’s waiting for us.”

Five minutes later, Nick was gingerly settling back in the passenger seat, a huge white bag in his hands. Knowing Nick, there were at least seven sandwiches in there. Nick extracted a sandwich of thick slices of country prosciutto, overly savory to offset the saltless bread.

By the time they pulled into the
Le Scotte
parking lot, Nick had polished one sandwich off and was rooting around for another.

Dante got out and stood for a moment in the balmy summer sun. The heat of the day had just started. It was a good heat, the kind that penetrated into the bones. He wanted to soak up that warmth before entering the dead zone of the hospital.

As hospitals went, it was pretty enough, he supposed. Brick and glass, not too big, not too tall, and built on an exquisite little hill with one of the best views of Siena.

Which didn’t stop it from being a place of pain and misery. Blessedly, he’d only ever been in for the births of his nieces and nephews, and once when Michelangelo had broken his leg. Dante had the Tuscan’s superstitious horror of sickness and death, and walked toward the side entrance with dread in his heart.

“Nice hospital,” Nick said approvingly. “Good size. Can’t be more than three hundred beds. Our hospital in Deerfield is ten stories tall and covers three acres. Like being in suburban hell.”

“Since when do you know anything about medicine?” Dante asked. Like all the Rossis, Nick was as healthy as a horse.

“Get real.” Nick rolled his eyes. “I’m a—” He stopped and swallowed. “I
was
a hockey player. We’re in and out of hospitals the way you’re in and out of restaurants. I’ve picked up a lot of medical knowledge over the years. Particularly anatomy. Hey,” he mused, “Maybe I could become a doctor.”

Dante’s laugh came out harsher than he’d intended. Pushing through the big glass swing doors, he was assailed by the smell of alcohol and sickness. His skin prickled with dread and his stomach took a little warning leap. He needed something to take his mind off where he was.

“You? A doctor?” He laughed. “Yeah, right.”

To Dante’s chagrin, Nick didn’t nudge him in the ribs and grin. Instead, Nick’s mouth tightened, his shoulders hunched and Dante felt as if he’d kicked a puppy…a big one, a St. Bernard, but a puppy all the same.

Uneasy, Dante looked up at the big board showing which department was on what floor. He’d only been to see Guzzanti once before in his professional capacity, for the death of a child, which had turned out to be SIDS and not abuse.