Dying For Siena (3 page)

Siena, Italy

Commissario
Dante Rossi kept his voice low. “Miss Murphy?”

The young woman didn’t answer for a moment. She was utterly white-faced and he supposed she might be in shock. Finding a dead body would do that to a person. He was about ready to repeat the question when she answered in a steady voice.

“Yes, I’m Faith Murphy.” She peered at him closely. “Rossi.
Commissario
Rossi. Are you Lou’s cousin?”

He inclined his head. He leaned forward and took her hand gently in his. “The same. I was going to call the
Certosa
today. Lou called me to look out after you. A murder wasn’t quite what she had in mind.”

“No.” Faith Murphy’s smile was shaky. “No. It, ah, came as a shock to me, too.”

“I imagine it did.” Dante looked around the small reception area. The
Certosa
had changed since he and Nick had run wild as teenagers through the ruins of the old monastery. Now it was restored and elegant, even stately. He turned to the night porter and asked in Italian, “Where can I speak with the American lady in private?”

“More or less every room in the main cloisters is set up for the conference and the University of Siena people are everywhere. You’ll have to go into the next courtyard. Go down the ramp and turn left, then right, then left again. Through the archway, fourth door on the right. There’s a meeting room called the San Francesco room. That will give you some privacy,
Commissario
.”

Dante narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you?”

The man grinned. “Egidio Pecci. You went to school with my boy Carlo.”

“Ah, Carlo Pecci. From the Caterpillar.” Now Dante remembered the laughing, black-haired boy he’d gotten into endless scrapes with. He resembled his father.

The family was from the Caterpillar
contrada,
one of the seventeen districts in Siena, seventeen little mini-states with their own flags, colors, symbols, mottos and songs, and all locked in an endless thousand-year-old battle to win a silken banner, the
Palio
, twice a year, in a horse race. Being from the Caterpillar was all right.

The Rossis were from the Snail
contrada
, which had been allies of the Caterpillars for going on seven hundred years. “What’s Carlo doing now?”

The man’s grin disappeared and he lifted his hands heavenward. “Gone,” he said mournfully. “Carlo works for the
Monte dei Paschi
and they sent him to Milan.”

In Siena, working for the
Monte dei Paschi
, the oldest bank in the world, was the equivalent of working for God. You followed His inscrutable ways, even when they meant exile. The way Egidio had said “Milan”, Dante knew he might just as well have said his son had been posted to Devil’s Island.

Dante understood. He, too, had been posted for three tedious, interminable years to the
Questura
, the police headquarters, of Bolzano, the northernmost city in Italy, practically in Austria’s lap, where the food had been bad and the women Teutonic and boring. The four years in Naples with good, spicy food and bad, spicy women had been better. But it hadn’t been Siena. He knew what exile from Siena was like.

“Too bad,” he said sincerely, placing a hand on Egidio’s shoulder.

“Particularly
this
year, when the Caterpillar is bound to win the
Palio
,” Egidio said with a sly look at Dante.

“In your dreams, Caterpillar,” Dante said cheerfully. “In your dreams.”

He turned to the woman, sobering up immediately. She had been watching them carefully, big light-brown eyes moving from him to Egidio and back. Dante nodded to the door. “We can talk more easily in another room,
Signorina
Murphy. Over in the other cloister. Down the ramp, through the archway, fourth door to the right. It says
Sala San Francesco
on the door. I’ll be right there.”

After she had left, Dante leaned close to Egidio. “There used to be only this one entrance to the
Certosa
.” Except for the west wall, which fifteen years ago presented few obstacles to agile teenagers. “Is that still the case?”

“Yes.” Egidio turned and picked up a huge cast iron key, suitable for the lock of a medieval castle. He hefted it in his hand. “And I have the only key.”

“Okay. I want you to make sure that no one from the
Certosa
leaves the premises until I say they can. Where’s the body?”

“Room seventeen, the lady said,” Egidio answered promptly. “That’s on the first floor.”

“In about fifteen minutes, my men from
La Scientifica
will be arriving. Tell them I’ll be up straight away.”

Egidio’s mouth formed an O at the mention of the
Scientifica,
the Crime Scene Squad. He swallowed and nodded.

Dante knew that a thousand TV scenes of polished pros poring over a dead body were flashing before Egidio’s eyes. Little did Egidio know that the Siena Crime Scene Squad saw murdered bodies about as often as the Snail
contrada
won the
Palio
. Which was never.

With a sigh, Dante made his way down the ramp, wishing the American had waited until after the
Palio
to get killed.

It was the heart of
Palio
season, the period the entire city waited for, dreamed of, schemed for all year round.

Today was the feast day of the patron saints of his
contrada
, Saints Peter and Paul. All of the Snails would be out in the streets celebrating, from the youngest to the oldest. It was the day in which kids, and the odd infatuated foreigner, would be baptized into the
contrada
at the little fountain that spouted wine whenever the Snail won.

Alas, wine hadn’t flowed from the fountain in far too many years.

This morning would be the drawing of lots to assign the horses to each district, after the horses had a trial run around the unusual race track, the fan-shaped central square which turned into a golden track of magic twice a year.

It was a tradition stretching back a thousand years, one that would doubtless continue for another thousand. So whether Dante was there or not would make no difference whatsoever to the outcome. But he wanted to be there. He didn’t want to be embroiled in the investigation of the death of a foreigner.

He wanted to watch the horses race, wanted to stand there listening to the old timers judging legs and breadth of chest and stoutness of heart. Word had it that the best horse of all was Lina, a bay. Who knew if fate would assign Lina to the Snail
contrada
?

Only ten
contradas
out of the seventeen raced at every
Palio
. There were two
Palios
a year, one in July and one in August. This year, the Snail was running in both. All Sienese took life one
Palio
at a time.

There was a chance in ten that fate would allow his Snail
contrada
to draw Lina. They already had the nastiest, craftiest jockey in Italy, Massimo Ceccherini, known to all as Nerbo, after the whip made of calves’ phalluses the jockeys used in the race. Considering Nerbo’s reputation as a skirt chaser—and catcher—the nickname was an apt one.

Maybe the goddess Fortuna, notorious bitch that she was, would smile on them this year.

God knew the Snail needed all the help fate could give it. The Snail was the
nonna
, the grandmother, of all the
contradas
, the
contrada
that had gone the longest without a victory. Seventeen long years in the desert…seventeen long years with the grandmother’s bonnet that was a mark of shame. Surely this year…

Murder is so…so un-Sienese,
he thought, as he walked along the cloister skirting the central courtyard of the
Certosa
. Why risk spending your life in prison where the food was bad and the company worse just to kill someone?

Particularly since God or biology—depending upon your faith—would eventually take care of that problem in time. You just had to wait, that was all.

With a sigh, Dante walked toward Miss Murphy and his duty.

Fleeing four thousand miles from one Rossi only to find another Rossi and a dead man was perfect Murphy luck,
Faith thought as she walked on the herringbone brick walkway.

The cloister was spectacular, as if the careless gods who botched looking after the Murphys were trying to make up for years and years of things gone wrong. A large grassy swath with an enormous oak so old the first branch was a hundred feet from the earth, a wishing well with an ornate wrought iron cupola, broad topiary evergreens, all ringed by the graceful arches of the arcade. And roses. Everywhere. In full, spectacular bloom.

The intense smell of roses, ancient tightly furled roses with bees hovering over them just waiting for the day to heat up enough to entice them to open, tickled her nose.

Trust Kane to get whacked in a gorgeous place.

Faith was sure her own fate was to end up a week-old dead body in some musty motel in Bumfuck, Nowhere, with the wind whistling down from the North Pole. She’d be dead for days and days, and they’d find her body by the smell.

Down the ramp. Through the archway, fourth door to the right.
She entered the smaller courtyard—the one she’d seen from her window this morning, delicate and welcoming—and counted four doors.
Sala San Francesco,
a terra-cotta tablet informed her.

Faith knocked briefly, then walked in. It was high-ceilinged with cream-colored stucco walls and the vestiges of a fresco on one wall. Some anorexic saint willing improbable miracles.

There were chairs arranged in rows in front of a steel desk. Clearly, the room was used for lectures on some thorny topic, because the chairs looked lethally uncomfortable, with tiny hard seats and spindly legs. She thought of some of her obese students back home. They’d never get an education over here.

Behind her, she heard the door open then close.

The
Commissario
, whatever that was. Of the Siena police, he’d said. She didn’t know what rank
Commissario
was, but it sounded pretty high.

Commissars in Soviet Russia had held the power of life and death over people
,
she remembered.

She hadn’t even had time to contemplate the insane coincidence of having a Rossi show up to investigate Kane’s murder. The same Rossi cousin Lou had urged her to call when she’d told Lou she was, improbably, going to Siena, Italy. At the very last minute yesterday, Kane had called to say Tim Gresham was sick and she was taking his place at the Quantitative Methods Seminar in Siena.

She had had two hours to pack and had met Lou as she was rushing out of the building they shared.

Sort of shared.

Faith low-rented a damp bedsit in the basement and Lou owned the spacious penthouse, but it was the same building so that counted. Lou’s father taught at St. Vincent’s and she’d met Lou at a university fundraiser. They’d discovered they lived in the same building and, improbably, she and Lou had become friends.

Lou had introduced her to her brother Nick, who in turn had introduced her to sex—good sex, at any rate—which had led her to Siena and murder and another Rossi.

Nothing like circularity.

Just before leaving, Lou had pressed a piece of paper in her hand. “Here’s my cousin’s number. His name is Dante, and he’s cute and fun and he’s not married and I want you to call him, now.” Lou’s eyes had narrowed. “Wait. Knowing you, you won’t, so
I’ll
call him and have him call you. You’ll like him.”

Well, Faith hadn’t had to call him after all. He’d come all on his own.

Ain’t life grand?

Faith sat down in one of the spindly chairs and expected
Commissario
Rossi to take a seat behind the desk and play power politics, but he surprised her by grabbing one of the uncomfortable chairs and sitting next to her. He took out a notepad and pen.

“So, Miss Murphy,” he began, “I understand you found a body this morning.”

“A dead one.” Faith nodded. “And you can call me Faith, if you want. I know your cousin Lou very well.”

“Lucrezia.” He smiled faintly.

Dear God, he looked so much like Nick it was scary.

“And you must call me Dante.”

He was tall and well-built without giving the impression of being a mountain, like Nick did, but he had the same bright blue eyes, dark hair—chestnut instead of blue-black like Nick—and the same olive skin and strong features. No wonder she’d mistaken him for Nick.

“Lucrezia called me yesterday to say you were coming and to look you up. I was going to call today. I didn’t imagine I’d be meeting you this way.”

“No.” Faith smiled faintly. “Not even Lou could think up this much excitement.”

“I see you
do
know her well.” He even had the Rossi charm. His English was excellent, with only a faint hint of an accent. He leaned forward. “So, Faith, what happened?”

It was smooth and friendly, but Faith was under no illusions that this was anything but a police interrogation.

“Nothing actually happened, in the sense of action. The man was dead after all.” She spoke slowly. Dear God, she was so tired. “I knocked on Professor Kane’s door at eight o’clock this morning.”

Reflexively, Faith looked down at her wristwatch.
Only an hour and a half ago.
It felt like a century. “I needed to ask for some information. His door was ajar so, when I didn’t get an answer, I pushed it open slightly. Then I saw him stretched out on the floor.” Her lips tightened. “I thought he was drunk.”

“Hmm.” He looked down at his notepad. “You must have known him well to make such an assumption.”

“Well, I’ve worked under Professor Kane for a year now, so I was aware of…of his habits.”

Dante Rossi wrote quickly in his notepad, bold, certain strokes, unlike Nick who wrote painstakingly slowly, a letter at a time.

A bird chirruped loudly outside, interrupting the silence. Faith swayed in her chair with exhaustion. Part of it was hunger—she hadn’t eaten much last night and hadn’t had breakfast yet—part of it was sleep deprivation, but a goodly portion of it was emotional burnout.

Too many things happening all at once, none of them good.