“We don’t have a good lead, just a Bavarian opera singer who might be anywhere and a Venetian phone number,” I told Nat.
“Let’s try it,” she said, pulling out her phone. She tapped the numbers in and put it on speaker. It made a series of odd beeps and clicks before a melodious woman’s voice told us in liquid Italian that the number was no longer in service.
“Not a surprise,” Mary Alice observed. “We already theorized that she’s the one who burned Benscombe and left the wolf for us and that she likely has eyes at the nursing home. She’d cover her tracks and ditch that phone.”
“Only if she knew we had the diary,” Helen put in. She’d been quiet for the last several minutes, thinking hard, it seemed. “Billie didn’t get the number from Aunt Evgenia, she got it from the diary she stole from Pasha Lazarov.”
“ ‘Stole’ seems a little harsh,” Mary Alice said. “She didn’t lift it on purpose, and anyway how would Galina know that she’d taken it?”
“Exactly,” Nat put in loyally. “It’s not Billie’s fault.”
“Yes, it is,” I told them. “Helen’s right. Someone would have made an inventory, the butler, the bodyguard. And that inventory could have been sent to Galina from the ship. Pasha was a creature of habit. If the planner was missing from the inventory, it would have told her someone had been in his room.”
“But it could have been stolen by anyone,” Nat argued.
I held up a hand. “I don’t imagine Galina is the kind of woman who gives most folks the benefit of the doubt. She intended this to be some sort of nasty little game from the beginning—that’s why she left a calling card at the scene of Lilian’s murder. And when Pasha’s planner went missing, she would have suspected we were involved, and she’d have been right. I think that’s why she burned Benscombe.” I leveled my gaze at Helen. “I’m sorry, Helen.”
“That doesn’t bring my house back,” she said.
“No, it doesn’t. But we’ve got a job to do. You can hate me when it’s finished, okay?”
“Oh, I’m planning on it,” she told me, and there was a little flash of the cobra about her when she said it.
A stillness had settled, as if the room itself had been holding its breath. It wasn’t often that we squared off against each other and meant it, but this was one of those times. The silence might have stretched on forever, but Natalie spoke up in an artificially bright tone.
“So the number is out of service, but we have a lead. I say we go to Venice,” she said, looking around.
“We just go to Venice,” I repeated.
“Italy has opera,” Mary Alice said in a thoughtful voice.“The best in the world. Chances are, if Galina is pulling strings for her little toy, she’s gotten him in with a company somewhere like Venice or Milan. Starting our search in Venice isn’t the worst idea. If nothing else, it puts us closer to where we know she’s been.”
There was a chorus of agreement from the others.
“This just got a whole lot more complicated,” I said, suddenly tired. I started ticking items off by holding up fingers. “We have to get to Venice. We have to set up a safe house, do surveillance, and figure out how to take out Galina Lazarov—sorry, Dashkova. And I don’t have contacts there. Do you?”
I looked around the group but everybody just shrugged or shook their head.
Taverner tipped his chair back, whistling. I whipped my head around. “Do you have something to add, Taverner?”
He took his time, lacing his hands behind his head and drawing out the moment like the drama queen he was. “Oh, I was just thinking of my friend Signora Bevilacqua. Lovely older woman. She owns several properties dotted around the lagoon. She rents them out on VRBO for a bit of extra cash. Did I mention she owes me a favor?”
“How big of a favor?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“Enormous,” he said with a shit-eating grin. “Her daughter was married to a Sicilian mafioso and in the course of assassinating him, I made sure her daughter was safely returned to her parents in Venice. I spent a wonderful fortnight skiing with them in Torino. I still have her grandmother’s recipe for risotto al nero di seppia. You remember that dish, Billie. I cooked it for you over that one remarkable weekend in 1983.”His eyes were fairly dancing—with malice or mischief I couldn’t quite tell. Probably both.
Mary Alice looked to where the cats were still batting the dates around. “Then I suppose we’d better pack up and make tracks. Looks like we’re off to Venice, kids.”
—
By the time Taverner reachedthe signora—who as it turned out was actually a contessa—and made the necessary arrangements, it was too late to leave that night. We made a plan to head out in time to catch the first ferry from Olbia straight to Livorno. From there it was a four-hour train ride to Venice. If our luck held, we’d all be settled into our lodgings in the Campo Santa Margherita by dinnertime—Minka, Akiko, and Taverner included. Minka stayed up late to forge passports for the cats, but everybody else turned in. I stepped outside to look at the stars. In the distance, a nuraghe, one of the Bronze Age towers that dotted the Sardinian landscape, punctuated the horizon. Overhead, the sky was a peculiar, oily shade of black, sometimes slicked with blue or green or purple. Here and there smudges of white showed the edges of the galaxy and spots of silver hung like Christmas ornaments.
I heard a step behind me and I kept my back turned, rummaging in my pocket for a packet of cigarettes.
“I saw no Way—The Heavens were stitched—
I felt the Columns close—
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres—