Kills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2)

Chapter Twenty

“What do you mean you lost him?” I demanded an hour later when we all met back up at the house in the Campo Santa Margherita.

“I mean we lost him,” Mary Alice said testily.

“He’s a husky blond opera singer in a city full of Italians,” I reminded her.

“What can I say? He moves like Baryshnikov. Besides that, I am a sixty-two-year-old woman with bad knees,” she shot back.

I glanced at Natalie. “What’s your excuse?”

“Let me count them. One,” she said, lifting up her middle finger, “you missed out on chasing him too, Billie.”

“She knows,” Helen said mildly. “That’s why she’s annoyed and taking it out on you.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” I said.

She shrugged and turned back to Natalie. “I’m not taking that personally and neither should you. She’ll get over it.”

I headed to my room then and I might have stomped a little as I went. It wasn’t mature, but it felt damned good. I sat in the chair by the window, sulking and smoking, watching life in the campo go by. A market had been set up with stalls of lettuces and onions. A tiny section of it was devoted to fish, freshly silver and gleaming on their beds of crushed ice in the afternoon light. They’d probably been swimming that morning. I watched the housewives move from stall to stall, carefully choosing the freshest artichokes, the fattest bulbs of fennel. It was oddly peaceful watching people go about their lives.

After a few minutes, Helen joined me. She didn’t say anything when she took the chair next to mine. She just sat and watched the market, clocking the comings and goings of the Venetians. The fish vendor was having a good-humored argument with a man about the state of an octopus and kept waving its little tentacles around to indicate freshness. Across the aisle, a woman was running a finger over an embroidered tablecloth.

“Those table linens are a nice color. I should pick up a set,” Helen mused. She was always Wendy to our Lost Boys, sweeping up the hearth and setting a place for everyone.

“You don’t have a house anymore,” I reminded her. “Thanks to me.”

She shrugged. “I like to nest, even in temporary accommodations,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the safe house.

“You’d hang curtains in hell if the devil would let you,” I replied.

She turned to me with a curious expression. “Are you happy? Just living quietly on your Greek island with Taverner.”

“I was,” I told her. “I am.”

“What do you do with your time?”

“Mostly what I always did between missions. I have translation work, I do yoga. I run. I’m learning to sail.”

“Sounds as if you keep busy,” she said mildly.

“I do. I miss the job,” I admitted. “And I miss all of you.” I waited a beat before launching into what I really wanted to say. “Helen, about Benscombe—”

“I know.” When you’ve been friends as long as we have, you can shorthand a lot. With those few short words, I’d apologized and she’d accepted. She knew I’d never completely forgive myself. “I’m still mad at you, though,” she added.

“I would be too. It was a nice house.”

She shrugged. “It was a money pit with termites and dry rot. But I loved it.”

“I know,” I said. “What will you do now?”

She considered that a minute before answering. “I could rebuild, I suppose. But maybe it’s time for something new. Kenneth bought that house for me, and there was never a minute I spent there that I didn’t think about him, about Constance. I adored it, but there were a lot of ghosts in those walls.”

“Where would you go?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m still mad at you. Not because I lost Benscombe, but because now I have to figure out what’s next. I had that all mapped out, and suddenly it’s gone. There’s this whole emptiness stretching out in front of me, and I’m not sure if it’s terrifying or exciting.”

“Maybe it’s both,” I suggested.

“Maybe it’s both,” she agreed.

We were silent a minute, still watching the market. Below us, the fish vendor was wrapping up the octopus, stuffing its tentacles gently into a bag as the customer held out a banknote.

When she finally spoke, she didn’t look away from the market to face me. Sometimes it’s easier to tell a truth sideways. “I want to call Benoit, but I don’t know if I’m ready to take that step. What if he doesn’t want a future with me?”

“Is this where you’d like me to quote a ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ plaque? Tell you that you’ll never know unless you try? Sing you a few bars of ‘I’m Every Woman’?”

She eyed me up and down. “Don’t think that just because we’ve been friends for forty years, I won’t inflict harm on you.”

I smiled. “You’re not afraid he’ll say no, Helen. You’re afraid he’ll say yes. Because then you have to figure out how to build a life with him. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not. I’m a coward. I think of the things I’ve done in my life—terrible, wonderful things—and I can’t even believe I did them. But I did, and I did them well and for a very long time. But this? Every time I think about picking up the phone to ask him to move in together, I want to be sick in my own handbag.”

“Well, don’t. It’s Hermès,” I reminded her.

She reached out a hand for my cigarette and I gave it to her. She took a long drag, holding the smoke inside her, then exhaling it like a prayer.

“Billie, tell me the truth. How often do you do something that scares you? I mean really, really chills you to your marrow?”

I took my cigarette back and blew a smoke ring that drifted out over the market, past the fish vendor, dissolving into a tiny cloud of nothing. And I thought of the man I lived with who could see right through me to every broken bit and who insisted on loving them anyway.

“Every damned day.”

—

Dinner was tense. Taverner had overcooked the roast chicken and the rice was tough. Mary Alice carped at Natalie, and Natalie bit back which meant Akiko waded in to defend her wife. Minka sniped some just because she enjoys a good fight. That set Helen off, and I detonated in her direction on Minka’s behalf. None of it was serious, but it set everybody’s teeth on edge.

We’d just descended to general bickering when Taverner stood up.

“Right. I know what we need. Get your coats.”

We weren’t good at following orders, but whatever he had in mind was bound to be better than sitting around snarling at each other. We left the dinner dishes on the table and headed out, hats pulled low and walking almost single file through the narrow alleys. Taverner and I were in the lead since he knew where we were going. The temperature had dropped since the afternoon, and a brisk breeze was blowing in off the Grand Canal. Taverner set a quick pace until we got to a landing where a few private water taxis were idling. The price was extortionate, but Taverner paid it, giving the driver a set of instructions I couldn’t quite hear. We slipped into the Grand Canal, the water black and oily in the evening light. We crossed it in a few minutes and the driver swung left at the ducal palace, heading up the narrow length of the Rio del Palazzo where he cut the speed.

A few minutes more and we were there, alighting at the Donà Palace. It was a boutique hotel, small and elegant, but we weren’t there for the rooms. Canalside, the hotel had a terrace garden. It was small and secluded, bordered by high brick walls thick with creeping vines twined with tiny lights and wide planter boxes full of mandevilla. Candles glowed on each table, illuminating a scene that resembled something out of a fairy tale. The terrace was deserted, probably due to the chill. But the waiter behind the bar came over and lit the patio heaters before guiding us to a table. It was a tight fit for seven and the waiter explained they didn’t serve food except to hotel guests, although he’d be happy to bring wine and bar snacks. I was just beginning to wonder why we’d even come when I saw what was lying on the table: water pistols.

I picked one up and grinned at Taverner. “Seriously?”

Pigeons are the bane of Venice, and Venetian waiters have a particular hatred for them. The birds peck and shit and generally make nuisances of themselves on every terrace and open square. Only the seagulls prey on them, and there aren’t nearly enough seagulls to handle the problem. Some waiters will turn hoses on the pigeons when they get too close and scold children who try to feed them. But the Donà Palace had figured out a solution that discouraged the pigeons and amused the tourists at the same time.

“Seriously,” Taverner affirmed, collecting enough pistols for everyone. The waiter reappeared with a few bottles of Valpolicella and little jars of nuts and tortilla chips. He poured out the first bottle of wine, and it wasn’t long after that the first pigeon appeared.

It turned into a quick-draw contest, and soon we were formalizing it with rules, handicaps, and a spreadsheet Akiko had roughed out on the back of a napkin. Not surprisingly, Helen was the clear leader—she was our sharpshooter, after all—and Nat clawed her way to second place. I was just aiming at a particularly aggressive pigeon when my phone buzzed in my pocket. It cost me the shot, but I checked the number, waving the others to silence as I answered.

“It’s him,” I mouthed.

“This is Wolfgang Praetorius,” said the voice on the other end. He sounded unhappy which I figured was good for us.

“Good evening, Wolfgang. I’m pleased to hear from you.”

“I’m not pleased to be calling,” he said. “Someone followed me to my apartment.”

“Who?”

“Galina’s bodyguard. A small woman named Tamara.”

“You’re sure it was her?”

“Her hair is very black. She wears it in a short bob. Very severe. She is difficult to mistake.”

I could hear vague restaurant noises in the background.

“Where are you now?” I asked. “We could come and get you.”

“Tomorrow,” he said shortly. “I did not go into my apartment. When I realized I was being followed, I jumped into a water taxi and she could not follow me. I got away.”

“Good thinking,” I told him. “But if Galina’s people are tailing you…”

I let my voice trail off, hoping he’d put the pieces together.

“I do not feel safe,” he replied.

“Because you aren’t safe, not until Galina is out of the way,” I explained. “If she had you followed, she may already know that you met with me.”

“She has tried to call me, but I have not answered.”

“Keep it that way,” I instructed. Now that Wolfgang was leaning our direction, the last thing we needed was Galina talking him around. “Tell me where I can find her.”

“Not on the phone,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “She is clever. Maybe even now she is tracking my phone and knows I’ve called you.”

He sounded panicky, and I knew I had to do some damage control.

“If she were tracking your phone, she’d have found you already and she wouldn’t need someone to surveil you,” I said. “Where are you?” I asked again. “I can meet you.”

“Tomorrow,” he repeated quickly. “I will bring you the information you want. I am very tired now.” He rattled off a location and a time and I agreed.

“Wolfgang, are you sure you’re safe tonight?” I asked. We had manufactured the threat Galina posed to him, but if she had him under surveillance, he was in greater danger than we’d anticipated. And I didn’t like the idea of him roaming loose for a night with Galina’s henchwoman prowling after him.

“I will stay with a friend—someone she does not know,” he said quickly. “I will see you tomorrow. Do not be late.”

He ended the call then and I looked up to find the others watching me. A pigeon was edging closer to the table, eyeing a peanut that Helen had dropped.

“Tomorrow morning at six,” I told the others. “The Scala Contarini del Bovolo.”

The Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo was a tiny palace a stone’s throw away from St. Mark’s Square. The palazzo was unremarkable, but its staircase, the scala, was the most famous in Venice, beloved of filmmakers and photographers and selfie-takers. It was a good choice for a rendezvous, public but not too public, and theatrical enough to suit an opera singer.

Mary Alice grabbed the napkin Akiko had been using as a scorecard and turned it over, roughing out the plan as we discussed it. Nat pulled the scala up on her phone and Minka found us satellite maps to study from every direction. We batted around loads of possibilities before finally settling on a plan.

“You realize it’s a trap,” Taverner said coolly.

The pigeon was back, pecking at bits of tortilla chip. I picked up a water pistol and in one fluid motion raised it and fired, hitting it right between the eyes. It flew off in a squawk of offended feathers. I put the water pistol down and grinned at Taverner.

“I’m counting on it.”