The Body in the Piazza (26 page)

She wished she knew the music on the program better. Unless the terrorists wanted to cause a riot, which was a possibility—they'd have chosen a moment when a shot would be obscured by some kind of crescendo. The minister was sitting in a box directly over and to the left of the stage. He couldn't have made himself any more of a target unless he'd pinned a bull's-eye to his chest.

The musicians finished tuning their instruments, there was dead silence, and the first piece began, Ravel's “
Pavane pour une infante défunte,
” “Pavane for a Dead Princess”—heartrendingly beautiful and slow. No sudden loud drumrolls or cymbals to muffle the attack. The concert continued with Couperin and Satie—it was bridging many centuries. There was no intermission. Faith kept scanning the seats. She recognized no one except Jean-Luc, and he'd never glanced her way, his eyes fixed on the left of the stage. It was getting late. The concert was almost over. Could Tom have heard wrong? Or had they changed the plan?

The last piece was Debussy's
La Mer
. Everyone seemed to be leaning toward the stage in anticipation. This
was
music Faith knew well. It was one of her father's favorites—and it was tailor-made for the nefarious act the FLNC had planned. If they didn't try a shot during the early staccato punctuations—ones mimicking the crashing of waves—the climax at the end would provide the opportunity. And it was her opportunity as well. She'd spotted her quarry. They had just entered, poised behind the last row above Jean-Luc. Insurance? Or was this the plan? That the shot would come from the shadows and the two slip away in the confusion? She saw a glint of metal. It could be a bracelet, or . . . ? No time to speculate.

She stood up as the harp played the opening chords.

“Call yourself an orchestra!” she shouted. “Why, my ten-year-old kid could do better on her kazoo! And as for this place! Hey, how about getting some comfortable seats since we have to listen to this terrible stuff!”

The hisses and boos started to drown her out. Ushers were closing in on her as she continued to scream, “Just ask those people. Over there. She pointed at Jean-Luc, who was scrambling up the aisle. He had certainly recognized her voice. “Ask Constance and Roderick Nashe! They know music.”

Admittedly she'd cribbed the idea from Cary Grant in
North By Northwest,
but it worked for her as it had worked for him. Jean-Luc and the Nashes were surrounded by a number of plainclothes police who had been unobtrusively occupying the rows around them and Faith had no doubt others were stationed as ushers in the halls as well.

It was time for her to leave, too. She pushed past the concertgoers in their row with Olivia behind her and Faith felt a woman pinch her arm, spitting out a single word, “
Americana!
”

Sorry to have had to cast aspersions on her native land, Faith nevertheless felt it was worth it. All three had been captured.

Outside on the narrow street, Faith felt herself start to collapse. It was almost over. Olivia was on her phone.

“Tom? Have you heard about Tom!”

“Your husband is safe and sound. He's being supplied with some
panforte
from Siena and dropped off at the Rossis'. His ‘friend' drove him back.”

There was nothing to do save hug the girl very hard—and Olivia hugged her hard back.

S
lightly delirious from the wine, and even more the food—the banquet's
Il Primo
pasta: cannelioni stuffed with prosciutto
cotto
and fresh ricotta—Faith excused herself to freshen up. Their table overlooked the lake and they had been sitting, watching the surrounding towns disappear in the dusk. Stars above, mirrored in the surface of the
lago,
and spots of light from the shore seemed to enclose the group in a celestial cocoon. Of course some of their number were missing.

Olivia had sat the Rossis down with Tom and Faith upon their return and given an abbreviated version of events. It had been no accident that Olivia had signed up for Cucina della Rossi. She'd been selected for her food expertise. Both the Nashes and Jean-Luc were on a watch list, and recent activity picked up from the Internet suggested something big was being planned. Freddy's death had confirmed it. He was on to them. Tom was able to identify one of his guards from photos taken when the police raided the farm building as the man he saw both in the Piazza Farnese and by the Duomo in Florence.

The Rossis were speechless and Olivia promised that someone would be out to talk with them further, but that they were under no suspicion themselves. They just happened to have an extremely bad neighbor. The plot was many years in the making, giving Jean-Luc, with his Napoleonic desk—Faith chided herself for missing that obvious clue—time to insinuate himself into the local scene. Likewise, the Nashes, also Corsicans, had done so in Britain, easy, as both had gone to school there. Faith learned that what she had overheard them speak in Montepulciano was not their own “pet language” but Corsu, the Corsican language. All those independent side trips had been to rendezvous with the other terrorists, particularly Jean-Luc. What had been a shock, an enormous shock, was that Roderick, the archetypal Wodehouse doddering clubman, was anything but—he had been the brains of the operation and, under his real name, was on Interpol's most wanted list!

No one seemed to be missing the Nashes much. Before the group left for the farewell banquet, Francesca had convincingly explained that the couple sent regrets but had to leave early, as their travel plans had changed. Which was true. Likewise, Jean-Luc sent his regrets. Faith was sure he had many, but doubted they were for anything other than his thwarted plot and the loss of his magnificent villa.

The stall in the bathroom was occupied. Faith was about to leave and wait outside the door when she realized that whoever was using it was probably not engaged in the task for which it was designed; rather the woman inside was crying her heart out.

“Excuse me.” No, wait she knew this. “
Scusi.
” Now for the “Are you all right” part. Before she could put the phrase together, a trembling voice said, “Is that you, Faith?”

“Yes—Terry?”

The door opened; Terry Russo emerged, clutching a wad of toilet tissue that she had been using to stem the tide of her tears. Her mascara had run. She looked like the band Kiss on a rainy day. Given the frequency of this sort of emotional outpouring—at least on this trip—the woman really should be investing in waterproof makeup, Faith reflected.

“I don't know what to do. You have everything so together. You and Tom. I thought we did, but—oh, Faith, have you ever thought your husband could do something so bad you couldn't stay with him!”

She wasn't crying out loud now, but the tears kept streaming down her cheeks, puddling in her neck, the toilet paper a sodden mess and useless. Faith took a packet of tissues from her purse and handed it to her.

“We've had our ups and downs—some pretty major ones, but I don't know. I guess I'd trust he had a reason, and it had better be a pretty darn good one.”

That brought a small smile.

“We're never going to see each other again. That's the way it is on trips, so I can tell you, and besides you're kind of like a priest yourself, being married to one.”

Faith had never thought of it this way, and didn't really want to, but she did want to hear what had happened to change the Russos' course from happily ever after to Splitsville.

“A week before we were due to leave, the doorbell rang and it was a young man—early thirties, nice-looking. He asked for Len. It was a Saturday afternoon and he was in the backyard putting the tomatoes in.”

Faith nodded. Jersey tomatoes were the best.

“I took the guy back and he announces that Len is his dad. Long story short, when Len was eighteen he got his girlfriend pregnant. They were class couple, wouldn't you know. He wanted to marry her, but she didn't want to, but she
did
want to have the baby. Her family was moving to Florida and her parents must have thought it was fine. Who knows? Anyway, Len kind of forgot about the whole thing. At least that's what he told me. How can I ever trust him again? And how could he forget that he had a kid, for gawd's sakes!”

Her voice was shrill.

First things first. “Why did his son look him up after all that time? What did he want?”

“Nothing. He just found out himself. The man he thought was his father all these years told him after his mother died from cancer. He said he didn't want Len as a father—he had one, as far as he was concerned—but he was curious and wanted to fill in the blanks on his health history. Like he has asthma. Len does, too.”

Which, Faith realized, was why the man hadn't looked well at times. All the acacia pollen and everything else floating in the Tuscan air.

Terry was repairing her makeup. A good sign.

“You've been married thirty years. Do you want to be married to him for thirty more? Do you love him, Terry?”

The woman smiled. “As Cher said in
Moonstruck,
‘Aw, Ma, I love him awful.' Yeah, Faith, I love him awful.”

“Okay, so let's go have the next course. And, Terry, he's a guy. I have no doubt he was totally able to put the whole thing out of his mind once a couple of years had gone by—maybe sooner.”

“Like the moment she crossed the Jersey line with her family on her way to Florida.”

When Faith and Terry returned to the table, the waiter was pouring a different wine for the next course and there was a lull in the conversation. Len pulled the chair out for his wife, but remained standing himself. Once he'd seen that all the glasses had been replenished, he said, “I want to propose a toast. Please lift your glasses.” He turned toward the Rossis, who were sitting together at the head of the table.

“To Francesca and Gianni for one of the best weeks of my life. I wish you much success and,
paisan,
we'll be back.”

“Hear hear,” Jack said, and everyone drank. Olivia wasn't on duty anymore and Faith was amused to see her cheeks lose their white pallor as the meal wore on.

Len didn't sit down. He put one hand on his wife's shoulder. “Now some of you know this is our thirtieth wedding anniversary. This toast is for my wife, Theresa, for putting up with me all these years. I hope she'll stick around for the rest of them.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a small box, which he put in front of her. “Because I'd marry you all over again,” he said—and Faith could hear the catch in his throat before he was able to say the rest—“and because I hope it's true for you, too.”

Jewelry, definitely jewelry. Terry opened the box, stood up, and threw her arms around her husband.

“Oh, honey, an eternity ring! You shouldn't have, but I'm awfully glad you did!”

And awfully in love.

“A
nd was this completely your own idea, Reverend Fairchild?”

Tom and Faith were sitting on the terrace of the Sky Lounge Bar on top of the Hotel Continentale's medieval Consorti tower. The Duomo and Palazzo Vecchio were so close, it almost seemed as if they could reach out and touch the bricks. This morning, instead of whisking them off to their train, the Rossis had dropped them off at the luxury hotel.

“Yes it was, Mrs. Fairchild. I wrote to Francesca as soon as I knew for sure we were coming and I even found this place online. The flight home is tomorrow, not today.”

“And this, too?” Faith held out her wrist, admiring the Italian Fope rose gold mesh bracelet Tom had given her a few minutes ago after the bartender had brought them two flutes of cold Prosecco. She might never go back to champagne after this Prosecco-drenched trip.

“I have to admit Hope helped on that one.”

It was good to have a sister—in more ways than one. Faith couldn't see the consulate from where they were, but it was just down the street. She raised her glass.

“To Hope.”

“
Cin-cin,
” Tom said as they clinked.

From an open window nearby they could hear the familiar strains of the Stones singing, “This could be the last time.”

Tom took his wife's hand. “It almost was.” He kissed her hard.

“To us,” she said a moment later. “Always, to us, my love.”

C
ODA

“I
t seems like a very long time ago,” Tom Fairchild said to his wife, Faith.

“It was.”

She closed the small travel journal she'd been reading parts aloud from and stood up. They'd been sitting on the deck of their cottage in Maine, watching their family kayak in the cove. Everyone had come for the Fourth of July. Faith had found the notebook in one of the boxes she had brought up to sort through this summer. There had never seemed to be time before, but now they had it in abundance.

“You were a little in love with Freddy,” Tom said.

Faith did not disagree but countered with, “And you with Sky, that woman from California.”

He smiled. “Very lovely—and very troubled. I can tell you now. They were married, but to other people. She was trying to decide whether to leave her husband. Jack, that was his name, right?”

Faith nodded. This was the sort of thing she remembered. She sat back down.

“Anyway, Jack wanted to leave his wife. He'd run into a neighbor in Florence that day we all went to the big market and he'd realized he couldn't live like that. I guess he'd had to duck into an alley or something.”

Or something, Faith said to herself. She remembered this, too.

“She wrote to me that winter care of the church to thank me for listening. She was leaving her husband, and Jack was leaving his wife, but they weren't rushing into anything. They wanted to be sure they loved each other and it wasn't just the excitement of an affair.”

“Could never understand that notion,” Faith said. “It seems to me you'd be so nervous covering things up that any excitement wouldn't be worth it. All those lies to keep straight, schedules to mesh. Which also reminds me. That's where you bought me the first Fope bracelet—at the jewelers on the Ponte Vecchio.” Tom had added two more since then.

“I have very good taste,” Tom said.

Faith was still back in the past. “No one was who they seemed at first—except us and the Rossis. All kinds of masks. The terrorists of course. The Nashes weren't even British. I totally missed that one. Even that young man the Rossis hired to be Francesca's assistant turned out not to be who he seemed in the beginning. The Russos, Sky, Jack—everybody was hiding something. And Olivia, big-time. What do you think ever happened to her? No way to find out.”

Faith had hoped to stay in touch with the young woman for many reasons, but Olivia—if that was her name—had immediately vanished into the black hole that was Whitehall and the MI6.

“And don't forget those two Southern ladies.” Tom started to laugh, and Faith joined him.

Two years after their return from the trip, a cookbook, lavishly illustrated with color photos, had arrived in the mail at the parsonage with Hattie Culver listed as the author. The title was
Buon Giorno, Y'All: A Southern Chef Cooks Italian
. Sally Culver was listed as her assistant in the acknowledgments. There was no note. Faith had immediately called Francesca, who had received one, too. “I would have helped them! They didn't have to be so sneaky. They must have gone all over Italy doing the same thing from what I can tell from the recipes,” she'd said. Cucina della Rossi was not in the acknowledgments, and yes it had been sneaky, maybe worse. But the Rossis had let it go. The
cucina
had been a huge success, and now Gianni and Francesca's children were running it. The Rossis had bought Jean-Luc's villa, expanding their vineyards, olive groves, and the school. It was year-round now, functioning in the winter months also as a language program.

Yes, it had all been a long time ago.

“Happy, darling?” Tom asked.

“Very,” Faith said.

Far from the Tuscan hills, they sat hand in hand quietly watching the tide go out—and they'd watch it come back in the morning when they woke up.