Meet Me in Venice (29 page)

She jumped as the phone’s shrill beep split the silence again. Maow yowled, and she stubbed her toe on the foot of the bed as she ran to answer it. Wincing with pain, hopping on one foot, and with the other foot clutched in her hand, she grabbed the phone. She just knew it was Sam and boy was she gonna let him have it for letting the phone ring and ring like that.

“If it’s you, Sam Knight,” she said frostily, “I don’t want to speak to you ever again.”

There was a long silence, then a familiar voice said, “Preshy, it’s Bennett.”

She stood for a minute, rigid with shock. The blood seemed to drain from her brain and she thought she would faint. Her knees gave way and she sank onto the bed, the phone still clutched in her numb hand.

“Preshy? Please speak to me,” he was saying. “I need to talk to you. I need to explain . . . .”

Bennett was talking to her . . . he was saying that he needed to see her, to explain . . . .

“Speak to me, Preshy, please just
speak
to me,” he said in that soft urgent tone that brought back a thousand intimate moments spent right here in her bed. “You may not forgive me but at least allow me to tell my side of the story. Please Preshy, please, my love, just talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk to you ever again,” she said, surprised to find that she even had a voice.

“I understand. Believe me, I know what you’re feeling, but I want you to know this, Preshy, that no matter what happened, I always loved you. All I’m asking is that you see me, even if it’s just for the length of time I need to explain. Preshy, I can’t go through life with this burden of guilt on my shoulders.”

She lay back against the pillows, eyes tightly shut. Tears trickled sideways across her cheeks and into her ears.
She hadn’t expected to feel like this. She’d thought she was over him. No more Pity Days . . . . Move forward . . . . A new life ahead . . . . Life with a capital
L . . . .
And within minutes she had been reduced to a trembling wreck . . . .

“I always loved you, Preshy,” Bennett was saying urgently. “But I hadn’t told you the truth, and that’s what I couldn’t live with. It’s why I couldn’t go through with it. And it was too late, I saw no way out. The truth is I had no money, Preshy. I was a poor guy faking it because I was in love. Remember that night we met? I told you I followed you? I fell in love in that moment, and nothing’s changed. When it came down to it I couldn’t cheat you, I
couldn’t marry you and live the lie I’d constructed around me. And I couldn’t tell you the truth. It all became too much. The only answer was for me to leave. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It just seemed the right thing to do.”

She said nothing.

“Preshy, are you still there?” There was a long silence as he waited for an answer. “Speak to me, sweetheart,” he said with a catch in his voice, as though, like her, he was crying.

“I don’t know why you’re calling me, Bennett,” she said at last, sitting up and drying her tears. She wasn’t going to be caught out again by his honeyed words and declarations of love.

“I must see you,” he was saying. “You have to let me explain. You have to forgive me, Preshy, because only then can I . . . can
we
. . . go on. I’m here in Venice,” he said. “The place where we were so happy. Meet me in Venice, my darling. I’m begging you. If only you could
see
me, Preshy. I’m on my knees
begging
you to at least meet me here and let me explain. You have to
trust
me.”

She closed her eyes again, silent, imagining Bennett down on his knees, begging her. “There’s something else,” he said, in a suddenly quiet voice. “I know who killed Lily. And it wasn’t me. Believe me. I’ll tell you everything when you get here. But you are in danger too, Preshy.”

Oh my God.
What was he saying? She thought of poor Lily telling her she was in danger, and now Bennett was telling her the same thing. She had to see him. To find out the truth. And for her own peace of mind. To finally put this thing to rest. Or it would haunt her all her life.

“I’ll meet you, Bennett,” she said quietly. “I’ll be there tonight.”

His voice seemed to lift with joy and relief as he said, “Oh, sweetheart, it’ll be so wonderful to see you again. You’re gonna love it here. It’s Carnevale time, the pagan festival when everyone wears masks and dresses up and pretends to be someone they’re not. I know,” he added, sounding inspired, “I’ll get tickets for a ball. Why don’t you bring a costume too? We’ll pretend we don’t know each other, start all over from the beginning, like two new people.”

Preshy tried to imagine that but couldn’t. The past was too fixed in her mind to pretend she was someone else. He seemed temporarily to have forgotten all about Lily, and her own danger, he was so caught up in seeing her again. “Give me your number” was all she said. “I’ll call when I get there.”

“I don’t
still
love you, Preshy” were his last words before she rang off. “I always have.”

And despite herself, despite all the progress she’d made, despite Lily, despite all the questions in her head, Preshy still wondered if it were true.

She sat on the bed for a long time, thinking about Bennett. She had no doubt she was doing the right thing. She needed to put closure to Lily’s murder and this whole disastrous episode. And she also needed to know the truth about him, and who he really was.

Q
UICKLY
, before she could change her mind, she called and got a noon flight to Venice. Then she began to pack. Maybe Bennett’s suggestion of the carnival disguise was a good idea after all. She could watch him and he wouldn’t know it was her.

Her wedding outfit still hung in the very back of her closet where she had buried it in its plastic shroud. Now she took out the fur-trimmed cape. It would be the perfect disguise; the wedding cape the groom had never seen. She rolled it mercilessly into a bundle and stuffed it in her carry-on. She was wearing black jeans, a black turtleneck and slouchy flat boots. She wouldn’t need much else because she wasn’t planning on spending time there. Which reminded her, she needed somewhere to stay.

She rang the Bauer but they told her that because of Carnevale
they were full. All the hotels in Venice were full, they said. So she called Tourist Information and got the name of a small
pensione
near the Rialto. It would have to do.

She called the concierge downstairs and bribed her to come in and feed the cat again, then she considered who else to call.

She certainly wasn’t calling Sam because he’d only interfere, and besides she wasn’t speaking to him. And she needed to do this alone. She wasn’t calling Sylvie for the same reason, and because she would raise hell and tell her she was mad, which she was, but that was the way it had to be. Nor would she call Daria. But she had at least to let Aunt G know where she was going. And why.

She was relieved, though, when she got no reply, because she knew what the Aunts’ response would be. That she was out of her mind and absolutely must not go. The housekeeper, Jeanne, never answered when the Aunts were out because the messages were often in foreign languages and she got them muddled, so now the message center picked up.

“Hi, it’s me, I just want to tell you that I’m going to Venice to meet Bennett,” she said. “He wants to see me, to explain. He said he knows who Lily’s killer is. And that it wasn’t him. I have at least to give him that opportunity to prove himself to me. Don’t I?” she added, sounding less sure than she’d meant to. “Anyhow, I’m going to Venice to meet him. I need to do this. It’s Carnevale there and all the hotels are full so I’ll be at the Pensione Mara, near the Rialto.”

She left the number and then said, “I’m only there for one night. That’s all it’ll take to straighten this out. At least I hope so.
And I really need to know the truth about Lily. Don’t worry though, I’m not going to do anything ‘foolish,’ “ she added with a nervous little laugh. “I’ll be fine. It’s just something I have to do alone. Love you . . .”

Soon she would see Bennett again and as the plane circled over Marco Polo Airport, she wondered how she would feel about that.

GRIZELDA’S SCREAM BROUGHT EVERYBODY RUNNING
. It came from her room and Mimi, Jeanne, Maurice and the dogs all arrived there at the same moments. Unable to speak, Grizelda was on the bed, wafting her face with a hand to stop herself from fainting. She pointed to the phone and mouthed the word
message.
Mimi pressed the button and Preshy’s voice came on.
“I’m going to Venice to meet Bennett . . . . He wants to see me, to explain . . . said he knows who Lily’s killer is . . . I need to do this . . . “

“Oh . . . Mon . . . Dieu . . .”
Mimi sank onto the bed next to Grizelda, while Jeanne rushed to get glasses of ice water and Maurice opened the windows for some air. “The silly little fool,” Mimi exclaimed. “We have to stop her.”

Grizelda nodded. “Call Sam,” she said, gulping down the water. “Send a plane for him. Tell him we’ll meet him in Venice.”

Mimi did as she was told. Sam answered on the first ring. “If it’s you, Rafferty,” he said, “remember we are not speaking.”

“Well soon you will be, I hope,” Mimi said briskly. And then she told him the story. “Drive to the airport at Orly,” she said. “A
plane will be waiting for you. We’ll meet you at Marco Polo. Right away, Sam.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice. He was in a taxi in less than five minutes, and an hour later was in a private four-seater Cessna on his way to Venice.

So were Mimi and Grizelda, though they were in a Gulf-stream. For once they were tense and silent. Every now and then Grizelda would moan, “How could she be so stupid? How could she?” And Mimi would answer, “Because she still hasn’t learned about men, that’s why. The poor fool still believes she’s in love.”

At Marco Polo they waited an hour for Sam. Finally, he came racing toward them, lanky and lean in his black leather jacket and jeans. They took a water taxi to the Rialto and walked to the Pensione Mara, where they were told that the
signorina
had checked in, but she was not there right now.

Sam tried Preshy’s cell phone but it was switched off, so Grizelda called the Cipriani and using her influence, got them rooms. While they waited by the canal near San Marco for the Cipriani’s launch to pick them up, Sam called Preshy again. Again no reply.

At the hotel while the two aunts went to freshen up, he found the bar and sat brooding over a triple espresso. He was on the wagon—he’d need all his wits about him to get Preshy out of this one. He was very afraid for her.

AS DARKNESS FEEE, VENICE CAME
to life. Gondolas full of bizarrely masked and costumed revelers poled down the canals,
and crowded motor launches sped back and forth in a surge of spray, with cargoes of beak-nosed plague doctors and redheaded harlots in fishnet tights with scarlet plumes in their hair. Music pounded as the parties started and the narrow streets teemed with masked revelers. Laughter and song bounced from the old walls, echoing across the lagoon, and fireworks split the sky into a million stars. It was Carnevale in Venice.

Sam was on his second espresso when he dialed her number again.
Nothing.
He called her at the
pensione.
Nothing. Grizelda and Mimi had rejoined him and were sitting silently, watching the fireworks without really seeing them. Their faces were drawn with worry and he had no words to comfort them. “I don’t know where she is,” he said, “but I’m going over there.”

They jumped up. “We’re coming with you.”

“No. No, you can’t.” He didn’t want to scare them by saying it might be dangerous. “Please,” he said. “Let me take care of this. I’ll call as soon as I know anything.”

“Promise?” they said together, and he nodded, but he thought that unless he could get her on her phone, his chances of finding Preshy in a city whose narrow crowded streets were filled with anonymous revelers, were less than slim. But anyway, the Aunts didn’t take him at his word. Instead they took the next launch to the Piazza San Marco. They were right behind him.

VENICE

P
RESHY
was sitting in Quadri’s, but she wasn’t thinking about Bennett, she was thinking about Sam. She was even sitting at the same table by the window where they had sat together, bickering, over their drinks. She almost wished he were here with her now.
Almost,
she thought, but not quite. She was her own woman now and she needed to prove to herself that she could do this alone.

She was wearing the brocade wedding cape with the fur-edged hood thrown back and a feathered eye mask. With her new short hair, she doubted Bennett would even recognize her, and that suited her just fine. Of course
she
would know
him.
How could she not when every aspect of his face and body were permanently engraved on her mind?

Nervous, she took another sip of the hot grappa coffee. Now
she understood why Sam drank. He was looking for Dutch courage, drinking just to get through day-to-day since his wife disappeared. Except unlike Leilani, Bennett had come back.

It was dark outside now and the mist was starting to roll in, the way it did over the lagoon in winter, in great curls of gray vapor, like something from the black-and-white mystery movies of the fifties, about Zombies, and creatures from Black Lagoons.

She took her phone from her bag, switched it on and called Bennett’s number. He answered immediately, as though he’d been waiting.

“Preshy,” he said, in a husky voice, filled with emotion. He’d known it would be her; he’d been waiting for her call for hours. “I’m so happy, I can’t wait to see you.”

She did not respond to that. “Where shall we meet?” she asked instead.

“You’ll never guess where the ball is. At the Palazzo Rendino. I thought it would be a perfect place for our reunion. Why don’t we meet there? And then we can talk.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“I’ll be in costume, I hope you brought yours?”

“I did.”

“I’m a Plague Doctor,” he said with a laugh in his voice. “Like about a thousand other guys tonight. Black cloak, black britches, tricorne hat and a white face mask. Think you’ll recognize me?”