Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death Read online

  “Nope,” Ann said promptly. “They sounded kind of sappy to me. I took modern poetry to satisfy the requirements, and contemporary women writers.”

  Dorothy was not to be deflected. “Anyone?”

  Nobody else had, or at least not that they were willing to admit. I decided to stick my toe in the water. “What was he like as a teacher, Dorothy?”

  Her eyes gleamed. “Oh, he was wonderful! He made the poets come alive. I loved to listen to him recite in Italian—it was so mellifluous. Even if you didn’t know Italian, you could hear the soul of the poem, the music of the words. He was something special …” Dorothy trailed off, lost in her misty memories.

  Someone behind me snorted. Dorothy turned quickly. “Do you disagree?”

  To my surprise, it was Denise who retorted, “Yes, I do. I took a class with him, and it was clear that he was a good-looking guy talking to a room full of impressionable young women. He ate it up. And I heard he did a little more than that.”

  Aha, now we were getting to the meat of it.

  Our driver, Brenda, climbed into the van and did a quick head count. “Good, everybody’s here. Take this, Denise—you’re navigator.” Brenda handed her a map, plus a printed sheet of instructions. Since the vehicle had a GPS that had worked just fine so far, this was kind of belt and suspenders thinking, but I’d rather we had an idea where we were rather than roaming aimlessly along pretty roads in the Italian countryside.

  “Right, Chief,” Denise said. “GPS programmed?”

  “Check it,” Brenda snapped back. “Everybody buckled up? Then we’re off!”

  We waited while the first couple of vans started making their slow way down the hill and pulled in behind them. We were on our way.

  I debated about trying to return to the discussion of the character of the late Professor Gilbert, but then Sharon, sitting next to me, said, “Hey, Laura, there’s a rumor that you found the body?”

  How had that gotten out? The only people who knew were Jane, Barbara and Gerry—and Cynthia? And the police, of course. Had someone else been watching?

  I decided to stick to the truth. “Yes, I did.”

  “Ooh, was it … awful?” Dorothy said in a hushed voice.

  “No. He looked peaceful enough, but I wasn’t very near to him.” The police had confirmed that his neck was broken, but I wasn’t going to go into details. Let the other women use their own imaginations.

  “The poor, poor man …” Dorothy said softly. I was sure if I turned around to look at her, she would have tears in her eyes. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure if her sentimental reactions suggested any closer sort of relationship, past or present. She’d always been a bit sappy, I recalled.

  “Media vita in morte sumus,” she went on. Show-off.

  “Gerry must feel terrible about this—I heard he was the one who invited the professor,” I tossed out. “How did they come to know each other?” I’d heard one version and I wondered if the stories would match up.

  “I heard they met in the States,” Ann volunteered.

  “I thought it was over here?” Sharon said. “Some local symposium or something.”

  “Is Gerry an academic too? I haven’t had much chance to talk with him,” I said. Apart from telling him there was a body in his olive grove.

  “I think he used to be. Now mostly he does research and publishes, and manages the property. Maybe he teaches a course now and then, or gives lectures,” Brenda said. She might know, since she had arrived earlier than the rest of us and had possibly spent more time with our hosts.

  “How did Jane and Jean come to know Barb and Gerry?” I asked, out of general curiosity.

  “Didn’t you know?” Brenda asked. “Jean’s daughter was over here on a junior year abroad and stumbled on the place online. She loved it, and when Jean and Jane started cooking up this trip, she mentioned it. It was available for this week, and when Jean mentioned the Wellesley connection, it was a done deal.”

  “Barbara went to Wellesley?” I thought I’d heard that mentioned but I wanted to make sure.

  “Yes, but before us,” someone behind me said.

  I probably wasn’t going to get any more out of the group without looking obsessive, so I thought I’d let it rest—for now. “So, how many of you have grandkids?”

  The topic of grandchildren carried us well until we arrived at Medici villa number whatever. “Poggio a Caiano was purchased in 1473 by Lorenzo the Magnificent, although he did not live to see it completed,” Dorothy intoned, reading from her handout. “His son Giovanni—later Pope Leo X—finished it, and the place was used by the Medici Grand Dukes for quite a while. It includes paintings by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, and a few artists I’ve never heard of. There used to be twin ramps in the front for horses to ride up and deliver people—they’ve been replaced by staircases. The garden was redesigned in the nineteenth century.”

  “Thank you, Dorothy,” Denise said sweetly. “Brenda, pull in on the left, there.”

  “Well, I thought somebody might like to know,” Dorothy replied, hurt. It looked to me like tempers were a bit short this morning.

  The villa was lovely, and not too crowded. The rooms, with their paintings by artists well known and less known, were magnificent and many—so many that it was easy to get lost. I wandered happily, admiring moldings and wallpaper (later additions) and furniture (ditto) and one amazing bathtub. It was hard to imagine living in a place like this, even with scores of servants. But then, it was hard to imagine being a Medici. My sole accomplishment was asking one of the guards standing in the palatial dining room an actual question in Italian: Dov’è la cucina? I’m pretty sure she said it was somewhere below where we were standing, since she pointed down a lot while speaking very quickly, and I was left wondering how the staff ever managed to transport the food from the kitchen to the dining room—or if the Medicis ever even ate food while it was still hot, after having been carried through a half mile of chilly corridors.

  I ran into Cynthia somewhere in the maze. “Anything new?” I asked.

  “Can’t talk here. I’ll fill you in later.”

  Several other classmates drifted in. “Isn’t it glorious?” Cynthia sighed, quickly changing the subject.

  “I have to agree,” I said amiably. “Amazing what endless money can buy. Do you think anyone just had fun here? Or were they too busy plotting and scheming?”

  “Who cares?” Denise said, coming up behind us. “Just enjoy it.”

  I turned to her. “How can you enjoy it when you know how it was paid for?” And that led to a discussion of pure art versus artistic context, and patronage, and where the heck the kitchen in the place was, and we entertained ourselves until it was time to regroup for lunch.

  Lunch was held in a restaurant about half a mile away, and we all trekked along the sidewalk like a ragged army regiment. At the restaurant we filled the back room, painted a color somewhere between yellow and cream and ringed with large glass windows overlooking a leafy patio. Each table held eight or ten of us, and the food was served family style. We ate, and ate more, cleaning each plate that appeared. The wine bottles circulated. A woman sitting across the table from me held up a piece of bread and contemplated it seriously. “You know, I don’t think there’s any salt at all in this, and it still tastes great. I wonder how they do that?”

  We talked and talked some more. Nobody mentioned the late professor or death, or even the Medicis. Instead, we were still busy filling each other in about the last forty years of our lives. From the bits and pieces I overheard from all directions, people had done a lot of interesting things, and I wondered if I’d have time to talk to all of them, not about the murder but about what they’d done, who they’d become. Funny—when we’d been applying to colleges, in another century, no one had considered that we’d come together like this to see what we’d done with the education we had been given. We’d all worked hard, and it was clear that we’d used what we’d learned in different ways.

&n
bsp; It was again past two when Jean stood up and said, “I hope you aren’t villa’d out yet, because we’ve got one more villa to see.” A few groans issued from the crowd. Jean ignored them. “At this one we can’t go inside the building, but the gardens are spectacular. Everybody powder your noses and we’ll hit the road.”

  After our potty break, we hit the road again. I was totally lost by now. I knew we were sort of circling around Florence, but I couldn’t have retraced our steps if you’d paid me. Still, it was kind of nice, not being responsible for any of it. If we got lost, we got lost. We’d get unlost soon enough.

  Once again Dorothy treated us to snippets from the detailed handouts as we rode along. “All these gardens we’re visiting aren’t just pretty—they embody any number of symbolic elements, not to mention showing off some pretty fancy technology with fountains and such. Very formal though—you know, central axes and grid patterns. I guess the fake natural gardens came later.”

  I was amazed when we turned out to be the first van to arrive at our latest destination. GPS worked! We parked, and once we climbed down from the van we gave Brenda a standing ovation for her achievement. She bowed proudly. Then we strolled back the way we had come until we found the discreet entrance to the Villa Medicea di Castella, the latest in our string of Medici homes. Yup, Lorenzo the Magnificent had owned it but had given it to a cousin also named Lorenzo, and then Cosimo—the one who later became Grand Duke of Tuscany—had restored it. End of history lesson. The formal garden was lovely, with row upon row of lemon trees in massive pots. Who knew there were so many lemon varieties? Big ones, small ones, round ones, lumpy ones, all ensconced in massive terra-cotta pots that the pamphlets claimed were stashed in warm greenhouses each winter. I couldn’t imagine trying to move a pot that large. I suspected in the modern world forklifts were involved—but in the past?

  The highlight of the garden was an amazing grotto built into the rear wall, farthest from the house itself. It was filled with carvings of exotic animals (who would never have appeared together in life, but still). I was admiring them all (and taking pictures) when Ann came up beside me.

  “Interesting—gorgeous and creepy, all at the same time,” she said.

  “I know what you mean. Did this qualify as entertainment back then? Instead of television, the counts and dukes and assorted guests came out here and contemplated the flowers and lemons and the weird animals?”

  “It was a simpler time,” Ann said, then giggled. “Oh, look—the rest of the gang finally showed up.” She pointed at the people from the other three vans, who were just now straggling in through the entrance. Way to go, Brenda!

  Even with all of us meandering around the garden, it wasn’t crowded. I climbed the steps to the upper terrace, where I found I could see the airport where we had arrived a few days earlier. Then I leaned on the parapet and lost myself in calculating how many guest rooms the villa might have, and where the heck they put all the servants. What was the ratio of servant to guest, if you were a Medici offering entertainment to your peers? For that matter, where did they park all the horses and carriages?

  Cynthia wandered up beside me. “We got lost.”

  “We didn’t. This is nice.”

  “Yes, it is. Can you imagine living like this?”

  “Nope. Does anyone anymore?”

  “No one I know. Although I gather that Newport was something like this in its heyday. And I’ve seen some pretty swanky spreads in Manhattan. All it takes is lots and lots of money.”

  “Bet it’s hard to find good help these days.”

  “Speaking of help …” She stopped, uncharacteristically hesitant.

  “What?” I demanded, turning to look at her.

  “I should tell you now, I did go out again, after you fell asleep.”

  “Not to meet the slimy professor, I hope!” The thought was unpleasant.

  “No, not him. But I did meet someone else … you know the bartender guy?”

  “At the villa? What, you got together with him?” I wasn’t sure I believed what I was hearing.

  “Not just him. He has a twin brother.”

  I stared at her, and then I burst out laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Cynthia looked hurt. “Why? I’ve always wondered about twins … Hey, it’s not like it’s going to happen again. Ever. Call it a last hurrah.”

  “What happens it Italy stays in Italy, eh? Did they live up to your expectations?”

  “Yup, and that’s all I’m going to say. But I did learn one thing from the bartender. Our dead professor? He asked for a bottle of wine and two glasses, and one of the twins dropped them off at his room after dinner.”

  I stopped laughing. “So either he was planning to get really drunk or he was meeting someone. Who hasn’t told anyone. Shoot.”

  “Exactly. Maybe you were right.”

  Of course, anything resembling evidence was long gone by now. I looked back over the lovely, peaceful lemon garden spread out below us. The Medici may have been schemers and connivers, but it looked like we had one of our own.

  Chapter 11

  Compared to some, it had been a relaxing day, wallowing in art and gardens and good food. It was bittersweet coming back to the villa at Capitignano because we all knew we were leaving it the next day. After the chilly start, even the weather had warmed for us. When the vans drove up the driveway and parked, the lowering sun cast gold light on everything. In the parking area we milled around a bit aimlessly, reluctant to retreat to our rooms but unsure of what we wanted to do.

  “Anybody want to walk up to the church?” Bonnie asked of no one in particular.

  “Sure,” I said, to my own surprise. I wasn’t one to take walks for their own sake, but I wanted to see what lay up the hill—and take pictures of more views, preferably without bodies. Yes, I knew that I took too many pictures of the same things, but I was always hoping for that one perfect shot, and modern cameras made it easy to keep trying.

  Nobody felt like joining us, so Bonnie and I set off. I had known her but not well, so I wondered what we’d find to talk about. We had to go down the long driveway to go up the hill to the church, but we weren’t in any hurry. The drive bordered the vineyard and was flanked by a row of tall thin cypresses. It was as close as I had come to the vines, but it was too early in the season to see much in the way of grapes, so I contented myself with admiring the orderly rows, neatly staked.

  “What made you decide to come on this trip, Bonnie?” I asked as we set out.

  She trudged forward intently, watching where she put her feet. “I wanted to do something different. I can’t recall the last time I took a real vacation—one just for fun, and just for me. And I guess I was curious to see how we all turned out. You?”

  “About the same. I majored in art history but I never got a chance to use it much. I keep trying to remember why I chose that in the first place, other than the fact that I had idealistic—or do I mean unrealistic?—ideas about what the academic world was like. Plus, I thought it meant that I would be able to travel regularly and make it tax-deductible.” I grinned at her.

  “How’d that work out?”

  “Not too well. Couldn’t find work in my chosen field, so I found what my parents would have called a ‘real’ job, and got married, and had a child, and the travel part kind of kept slipping down the list. I haven’t been to Italy since right after I graduated, and you know how long ago that was. As for being here, I guess that like you, I kind of wondered if everybody else had taken the same kind of roundabout path as I did, or if they’d managed to stick to their first choices. And how I’d feel if they had succeeded.” I stopped myself: that was more frank than I had intended to be. But it was honest: I’d often wondered if I had stuck it out just a little longer in art history … No, that was water under the bridge; there was no going back.

  “Are you enjoying the trip?” Bonnie asked.

  “Yes, I am. I have to say I was kind of worried before I got here—I thoug
ht everybody would be more successful than I am, more content with who they are and where they are in their lives. Almost like when I first arrived at the college, you know? Everybody was smarter and more sophisticated, and I felt like such an imposter.”

  Bonnie flashed a shy glance at me. “We all felt like that, but we didn’t know anyone else well enough to admit it, not at first. And it’s probably not much different now. You think everyone on this trip has led a perfect life? I haven’t, I can tell you. And you know something? The perfect ones probably wouldn’t bother coming to something like this. It’s the ones with questions who showed up.”

  I laughed. “Damn it, Bonnie, I wish I’d known you better. But I’ve learned something about myself since I got here. I thought I’d feel more nostalgic about all the art, since I was an art historian. I’ve always wondered, what if, you know? But now that I’m here, it’s been great to see it, but mostly I have to laugh at the Medicis—they were so into impressing everyone by throwing a lot of money around. Now I guess I take a broader view of the context of the art than I used to. You know, back when I first studied art history, everybody was so busy analyzing style that they never looked at how it came about. I mean, medieval cathedrals wouldn’t have existed without somebody to pay for them, right? But nobody ever talked about the finances.”

  Bonnie laughed. “I hear you. I think students today have a much more comprehensive view than we did. Where did the time go?”

  “I wish I knew. Is that a fig tree?” I pointed.

  “I think it is—how cool is that? Wonder what else grows around here?”

  “Are you a gardener?” I asked, more to be polite than because I cared.

  “Nope, no time for it. Besides, everything I touch dies.”

  “Ditto. But I like to look. I love to see things I’ve only read about. That thing there looks like a dandelion on steroids, doesn’t it?” I pointed to a large yet airy puffball.