Lunch turns out to be a pleasant surprise. The pizza is delicious, with gooey fresh mozzarella that bubbles around bright green basil. When I bite into a piece, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever tasted, that perfect mix of tomato and cheese, and my God, I’d eat nothing but this crust if I wouldn’t end up needing a new wardrobe.
The BookFace Ladies are happy. Now that they’re up close, I can see that their T-shirt today has their Death on the Thames BookFaces. I avoid Cathy but say hi to some of the others after I polish off an entire pizza by myself and sign a few books. I’m distracted, though, searching out Shek in the crowd, wondering if he’s truly dangerous or just another one of Connor’s victims.
He’s sitting at a table with Harper and Emily. He’s holding court about something, and they keep making faces at each other that he doesn’t notice. I feel a tug of jealousy. What can Harper and Emily have in common? And how did they get so close so quickly?
But that’s a stupid way to think. Harper needs friends and a life outside of me. I should be encouraging that. Even if the source of their bonding is their current unhappiness with yours truly.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Oliver asks, tapping me on the shoulder.
“Yeah, of course.”
I follow him out onto the veranda that juts out over the cliff, but not to the railing. “Careful, Oli. Don’t get so close.”
Oliver smiles. “Still afraid of heights?”
“Definitely. Plus, someone is trying to kill me, so…”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Did you learn something?”
“I’m not sure … Do you think what happened to Allison today was an accident?”
“I thought that at first, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Maybe someone was in on it with Captain Marco? If that area is prone to jellyfish…”
“I…” I think back to this morning. How I felt like Shek and Allison had goaded me into the cave. Or was that just Shek? “Did you notice Shek acting oddly?”
“More than usual?”
“Yeah, listen to this.” I fill him in on what Connor’s told me. The dead pedestrian, Davide. His investment in crypto, and Shek’s potential involvement, and how he stole Shek’s idea to cover it up.
“Yikes,” Oliver says.
“Yeah.”
“How would Shek know that he stole his plot?”
“Good point. Connor didn’t say.”
“That man and his secrets.”
I stare out at the water. I think I can see our boat down at the dock. Is Allison in danger as she sleeps below deck?
No. Everyone loves Allison. Even Connor, though I doubt he’d admit it.
“Does it all fit together?” Oliver asks. “When did Shek arrive in Rome?”
“He wasn’t on my flight. I think he came from New York.”
“So he could’ve been at the Vatican?”
“We’d have to check. But he wouldn’t need to have been there … if he’s working with someone else…”
I think about Davide, the innocent bystander. Killing Connor I can understand, but a stranger? Could Shek do that?
Then again, he’s a man who’s spent his life writing about clever murders. That does something to a person. Reveals something about them, too.130
“Does he know anything about cars?” I ask.
“Doesn’t he famously have a classic car collection?”
“Oh, he was on an episode of the show Leno does, right?”
“That rings a bell. Has he been in LA recently?”
I pull out my phone and google Shek. He has an Instagram account that appears quite active. I navigate to it and check his posts. There’s one from our trip—the street where the restaurant was, and—oh! “Look, he was at the Vatican. Two days ago.”
Oliver takes my phone and scrolls down. “And in LA. He had an event there. When did the car thing happen?”
“I’m not sure. A couple of weeks ago, Connor said.”
“We need a timeline.”
I take my notebook out of my purse, flipping past the pages of my outline for Amalfi Made Me Do It.
June X—Connor’s car
July 2—Vatican attempt
July 3—Connor’s savior killed
July 4—Eleanor attempt
July 5—Jellyfish?
“Where was Shek during the day on the third?” I ask. “He wasn’t at the Colosseum or the Forum.”
“Only the dinner.” Oliver looks at his Instagram again. “Nothing here.”
“What about Twitter? Didn’t he get in some flame war with someone on there recently?”
“You know I don’t follow all that stuff.”
I take my phone from him and go to my Twitter app. I search for Shek and find him. Turns out, he’s been posting a regular travel log of our trip, tweeting every couple of hours. On July 3, he visited a bunch of sites in Rome—the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and a restaurant near the Colosseum. I show the tweets to Oliver.
“Where did that guy get killed?” Oliver asks.
“Near the Pantheon … Check this out.” I point to one of Shek’s tweets. On July 3 at 2:42 P.M., he tweeted, The Pagan gods would be pleased, along with a photo from inside the Pantheon. “He was there.”
“That was before we were in the Forum.”
“Yes. Our Colosseum tour was at two.”
Oliver thinks it over. “And we were in the Forum around three thirty.”
“So, enough time to get from one location to the other if he’s working with whoever mugged Harper.”
“Right. But why would he signal his location? Why tweet at all?”
I tap my pen against the notebook. “Maybe he thinks he’s creating an alibi? Or it’s a way to cover up his phone signal? An explanation of why he’d be in the area if anyone went looking?”
“That’s smart,” Oliver says. “Do things near tourist sites when you’re a tourist…”
“What is it?”
Oliver takes my phone and types something. He reads for a moment, then his face pales. “I thought so … That’s what the murderer does in Tourist Trap.”131, 132
“You’ve read Shek?”
“You haven’t?”
“I mean…” I check the timeline. “So he was everywhere he needed to be. And he was on the balcony last night. Everyone was…”
“And today? How could he know about the jellyfish?”
I take my phone back and google “Mediterranean jellyfish.” Pelagia noctiluca comes up as the first hit, the most venomous jellyfish in the Mediterranean. “The Med is full of them, apparently. I bet there are maps of places to avoid, even.”
“Are they deadly?”
“I’m sure the worst ones can be in large doses. But maybe he’s just trying to keep us off balance?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“More importantly, why would Shek want to kill you? Because Connor, I get…”
“I got his marketing budget.”
“People don’t kill people because their books aren’t selling.”
I cock my head to the side. “I don’t know about that. Does logic apply to killers?”133
Capri itself is a trip of dualities. The beautiful boat ride was ended by the stinging jellyfish. The island was picturesque from the water but choked with people and noise when we get to shore. The views were breathtaking at the top, but the bus ride was scary.
And then there’s the whole someone’s-trying-to-kill-me thing.
No, not someone, Shek.
That’s a hard one to wrap my head around. Thinking some unnamed person is trying to kill you is one thing, but settling on a perpetrator is something else. Even if it’s someone I don’t much like, I know him.
It wasn’t always like this between Shek and me.
I remember when I met him for the first time nine years ago. It was at Killer Nashville, which is not a conference for murderers, but for those that write about them.
I was a newbie, one book out, nervous about my first author talk, and sitting at the bar nursing a glass of something when he told me I was in his seat. He was wearing a three-piece suit and a black felt fedora, and didn’t I know this was Noir at the Bar? 134 Didn’t I know that he always sat at this very corner of every Noir at the Bar, whether it was at ThrillerFest, or Bouchercon, or Left Coast Crime?135 Who did I think I was just sitting there not waiting my turn, not standing in a line I didn’t know existed?
He didn’t say all of these things out loud.
Some of them were subtext, but I could read it loud and clear.
If a murder had happened that night, he would’ve been the victim, because he was the one barreling through the crowd, full of bravado, creating antipathy wherever he went.
I know this because I didn’t challenge him for my seat. Instead, I moved to a corner spot, right next to the wall, and watched the other participants, my new colleagues, mostly men, regale one another with stories. One man with a thick Irish accent even stood on the bar and recited Keats.
It was a lot.
And to be honest,136 I felt like I should be taking notes the whole time because who’d believe me if I didn’t have some kind of evidence?
Eventually, I went to bed and woke up with a hangover, wondering if the hotel was going to be clogged with police and wannabe detectives who thought they could be helpful.
But Shek didn’t die that night. Instead, he showed up for our panel with shades on and a better attitude and spent a patient ten minutes beforehand explaining to me how to answer questions. And then he gave me a compliment. He’d read When in Rome, and I was a fresh voice, he said. I was going places. I was going to be a star. Wait, I already was.
I went to bed that night feeling like I’d made a friend, and he had been friendly for a while. We’d trade emails sometimes or have lunch when our paths crossed at conferences. He felt like an ally in a business where it’s sometimes hard to make friends when you start out on top.137 And that’s how it was between us right up until he hired Connor to work on a screenplay.
I never got the full story of what happened; I only know it ended badly and Shek somehow blamed me. And because I was used to that by now, people blaming me for bringing Connor into their lives, I didn’t push to get the full story.
But now, on the minibus back down the mountain, seated next to Oliver, I wish I had.
If Shek wants me dead, I’d like to know what I’m supposed to have done besides take his marketing budget. Because only a lunatic would kill someone over marketing dollars. And whoever planned all this is too methodical for that.
But Shek is methodical.
He’s a plotter.138
It says so right there on his website under “Writing Tips.”
“You all right?” Oliver asks as the bus drives too fast for my liking down the hill. I’m in the aisle seat this time, but I can still see disaster coming.
“In the circumstances.”
He smiles at me, then takes my right hand and holds it on his lap, our fingers intertwined. “I don’t know if we have enough to go to the police.”
“I know.”
“You’re thinking we should investigate.”
“That’s stupid, right?”
“It makes sense.”
“It’s how people get killed in my novels.”
He smiles. “Mine, too.”
“One question too many. One action. Confronting the killer. Bashing around like they’ve got an invisibility suit on.”
“All part of the genre.”
I watch our hands together. I don’t want to let his hand go, but we’re almost at the bottom and it’s going to end sometime. “But in real life … I don’t think I’m very good at it.”
“We’ve come this far. We have the timeline, the Instagram photos, the tweets.”
“I should screenshot all those.”
“Good idea.”
I make no move to do so.
“Not now?” Oliver asks.
“My hand is occupied.”
He looks down at our hands like he didn’t know he was doing it, and I curse myself. Why do I always have to state the obvious?
Why can’t I leave well enough alone?
“You can do it on the boat,” he says, and my body flushes.
He doesn’t want to let go either.
I’m taking that metaphor for the win.
“Shek will be on the boat,” I say.
“He will. It’s just hard to believe that he’s … I mean, he’s Shek.”
“The man who famously brought his cat to the Anthonys139 because it would be too lonely if he left it alone.”
“I forgot about that.”
“He’s a complicated guy.”
“I guess we all are.”
He nods slowly. “We should be sure it’s him before we say anything.”
“How can we be sure?”
“We need more evidence.”
“We can’t just wait till he succeeds in killing someone.”
“No, I know, I … Let’s just keep our eyes peeled. We can reconvene tonight.”
That word—“tonight”—hangs there like a promise as the bus pulls to a stop and the other passengers start to shuffle out. Oliver and I are locked in, though. Maybe both of us want to say something and can’t quite manage it.
Or maybe we both know that once we leave this bus, nothing good lies ahead.140
Back on the boat, Allison has recovered and enjoyed her day reading a beat-up old paperback of one of Shek’s books—natch—she found below deck and sleeping in the sun.
Apparently, Captain Marco caught some fish and cooked it right there in butter, garlic, and wine, and it was “divine.”
And against the odds, everyone seems happy, busy chatting and filling us in on how they spent the afternoon.
Isabella gushes about the views from Anacapri and shows off a cute scarf she bought in one of the shops while Connor beams at her indulgently.
Emily and Harper tell us about the hot men they’d met at a bar, where it’s clear they consumed several double somethings by the way they’re giggling.
Shek and Guy spar good-naturedly over something that happened today back in the States,141, 142 and Sylvie tells us that Marco’s going to take a slow ride back to Capri so that he times it right with the sunset. Apparently, the sunset in Sorrento is “So romantic, yes? In the meantime, I have a surprise for you!”
She bends down, and then stands, brandishing a bottle of Champagne. “Thanks to Eleanor and her team, we will be sipping on Champagne143 as we watch the sun set.”
This news is received generally well—this isn’t a teetotaling crowd, and any grumbling is probably because she seems to have only one bottle with her, which isn’t enough for the numbers who’ll want to imbibe.
Oblivious, Sylvie pulls out some plastic Champagne flutes and a tray and asks Isabella to help her. They busy themselves pouring out the glasses, making the pours even144 while we chatter about the reckless drivers on mopeds that our buses almost hit on more than one occasion.
Isabella starts to pass the glasses around—Emily, Harper, then Allison, me, and Oliver. When she gets to Connor, he waves a hand at it, and before she can ask why, Shek picks up his glass and holds it aloft. “We should toast.”
“To what?” Guy asks.
“Life.”
“Live long and prosper?” I say.
“No Star Trek, you nerd,” Harper teases me, and I stick out my tongue in response.
“To life,” Oliver says holding his glass up and looking at me.
“To life,” everyone repeats as they raise their glasses and drink.
“You don’t want to toast, Connor?” Isabella says in a teasing voice.
“Connor doesn’t like Champagne,” Allison drawls. “Everyone knows that.”
And it’s true—everyone does know that, but not the killer, obviously, because oh, shit!
Shek, who downed Connor’s glass, and then his own for good measure before I’d finished my first mouthful, is foaming at the mouth and clutching at his neck.
He falls to the boat deck making a strangling sound, and it’s all over before anyone can do anything but stare.
Shek is dead.
Actually, totally dead.
And this time it’s for real.145