We don’t take the slow way back to watch the sunset.
Instead, after checking for a pulse to ensure that Shek had shuffled off this mortal coil, even though he’s pale and has a dead-eyed stare fixed at the sky, Captain Marco and Oliver carry Shek’s body below deck, while Sylvie calls the local police to tell them what happened, and the rest of us sit frozen, our Champagne flutes discarded at our feet, the remnants of our drinks mixed in with the salt water we tracked in earlier when we went swimming.
If I were writing this scene, I’d say that a deathly silence enveloped us, but I’m not sure that’s quite right. I think there are at least two of us who are contemplating life instead. Our lives, and how we’re still here despite numerous attempts to push us out of frame.
Or maybe that’s all of us, because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Shek drank Connor’s Champagne, and caught the sentence someone tried to mete out to him. It could’ve been any of us who took that glass and swallowed that poison and spent their last moments on earth suffocating and in pain while a bunch of people stood around and did nothing.
But it’s hard not to be grateful for the little things when you watch someone die in front of you.
So we’re silent as the boat beats against the waves, and when we pull into the dock, there are blue cars with white stripes and police lights, and a black van without windows to greet us. The local police take our names and the basic information about the tour from Sylvie, and then two officers from the polizia provinciale escort us off the boat. The young capitano, who looks like he’s about Emily’s age and has a rash of acne along his chin, tells us we’ll be escorted back to our hotel for questioning, but we’ll have to wait until the senior officer—the ispettore capo—arrives from Naples.
At least I think that’s what he says. As I mentioned, I never completed the Duolingo course I meant to do before this trip.
And yes, in case you were wondering, I can make jokes at a time like this.
I keep these thoughts inside, though, as we climb into the white van that will take us up the hill to our hotel.
Harper sits next to me. She hasn’t said a word since Shek hit the deck, just hugged herself like she used to do when she was a kid and something was frightening her. I put my arm around her shoulder, and she rests her head on mine.
It’ll be okay, I want to say, but how can I?
Because now there’s no doubt at all: The murderer is one of us.
When we get back to the hotel, the officer escorts us to the library.146
I’m not sure why, but we end up in the same chairs and positions we were yesterday.
I’m on the couch to the right of the roaring fire, still perversely necessary because they’ve got the air on high, and Harper’s sitting next to me. Oliver is seated across from us with Allison and Emily, and Connor is standing behind a wing chair with Isabella sitting in front of him. The other wing chair is empty because that was Shek’s chair, and when Guy went to sit in it, everyone glared at him. Instead, he’s standing by the fireplace, holding his hands out to it like they need to be warmed from a blizzard.
A police officer is stationed outside the door, and we’ve been told not to dispose of anything on our person. He hasn’t told us not to talk to one another, though, which seems like a mistake.147
“Well,” Allison says after we’ve been staring at one another for several minutes, “don’t everyone all talk at once.”
Nervous laughter spreads through the room; then Guy speaks. “You really did it, didn’t you, Connor?”
“Did what?”
“Pissed someone off enough that they wanted you dead.”
Connor speaks through clenched teeth. “I thought we’d established that days ago.”
“You expect me to believe everything you say?”
“Is this helpful?” Oliver asks. “Someone is trying to kill both Eleanor and Connor, and now Shek is dead.”
“I agree,” Emily says. “We need to do something.”
“What?” I ask.
She waves at me and Oliver. “Solve it. Haven’t you written, like, a million mysteries between the two of you?”
“It’s not the same in real life.”
“It can’t be that different. And Connor and Guy are private detectives. Or is everything in When in Rome fake?”
“They’re more like … consultants,” I say.
Connor raises a finger to his lip, then quickly lowers it. But he doesn’t have to worry. I’m not about to spill my secrets or his.148, 149
“But yes, they solved some crimes.”
“Including a murder.”
“Yes,” I say, “but…”
Allison shifts in her seat. “I agree with Emily. It’s obviously one of us, and I, for one, am not looking forward to leaving my fate in the hands of the local police.”
“Why not?”
“Look at what happened to that girl. The one they thought was involved in the sex-crime killing of her roommate? Only it turned out she barely even knew her.”
“Amanda Knox?”
“Yes. Her. She spent years in jail before she was exonerated. And did you see that documentary about it? That policeman thought he was Inspector Clouseau. It was ridiculous.”
“She has a point,” Oliver says. “They’re already violating basic police procedure by leaving us all here together to get our stories straight.”150
“You think we can figure it out before the inspector gets here?”
“It doesn’t hurt to try. We know each other better than the police ever will. We were witnesses to what happened. And we do have some skills in this department.”
“Yes,” Allison agrees. “You can plot it all out just like in one of your books.”
“I’m a pantser, not a plotter,” I say.
“What does that mean?” Guy says.
“She writes by the seat of her pants and makes it up as she goes along,” Harper says, finally coming out of her shock long enough to speak.
“I mean, I have a general idea of where it’s going when I start writing. I know the killer, for instance, and the main twists, but yeah.”
“Why is this relevant?” Connor asks.
“I’m just explaining my process…” I stop myself. Who cares how I write a book? It’s not relevant to solving Shek’s murder. “We need to make a timeline. If we write down who was where when, we might be able to figure out who did it.”
“That’s a good idea.”
I take out my notebook, the one I used this afternoon with Oliver when we made our timeline for Shek. Oliver catches my eye, and we both realize at the same time that if Shek’s dead, then he probably wasn’t the one who tried to kill Connor or me.
But what about the evidence we’d uncovered? Was it just a coincidence that he’d been on the scene when the other attempts had taken place? Hadn’t I just established that the law of coincidences was that there were more than you thought, but not as many as this?
So, no, it wasn’t a coincidence that Shek was around when the attempts took place, but that doesn’t mean that he was behind them.
“We can use this,” I say, waving the notebook.
“It would be helpful to have somewhere that we could all see,” Allison says. “Like an easel or a—”
“Whiteboard,” Oliver and I say together.
It’s this joke we used to make when we watched cop shows. At some point, the suspects were always going to go up on a whiteboard. Maybe sometimes there’d be string involved in tying the pieces together. But are real crimes ever solved that way? Crazy people have whiteboards, too, only we call them “crazy walls” and act like they’re different.
“I think I saw something like that,” Isabella says.
She jumps up from her seat and walks to the corner of the room, where there’s a folded screen in bright colors with a flower design on it cornering off the room. She returns with a large easel with white butcher paper on it and several colored markers.
“Where did that come from?” Oliver asks.
“The guy at the front desk said there was some kind of conference here before us? I noticed it yesterday and asked.” She puts it near the fireplace so we all have a view. “Shall I write? I have good handwriting.”
I look around the room. This is usually the point in movies where someone with a guilty conscience gives it away with a look or a resistance to the process. But no one looks any different from usual, and everyone seems to think this is a good idea.
You see what I mean about reality versus fiction?
“We need to know where everyone was at the key times,” Oliver says.
Isabella makes a series of boxes with our names in them.
|
Eleanor |
Connor |
Oliver |
Harper |
Guy |
Allison |
Emily |
|---|
“What about your name?” Guy says.
“Don’t be daft, Guy,” Connor says. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“I’m happy to include me if you like.” She adds her name to the list.
|
Eleanor |
Connor |
Oliver |
Harper |
Guy |
Allison |
Emily |
Isabella |
|---|
“What now?” Isabella says, tapping the board.
“We need some more squares down the left,” Oliver says.151 “And then under everyone’s names.”
Isabella adds the boxes. “What do I put in the left-hand boxes?”
“Motive, means, opportunity.”
She writes it down.
|
Eleanor |
Connor |
Oliver |
Harper |
Guy |
Allison |
Emily |
Isabella | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Motive | ||||||||
|
Means | ||||||||
|
Oppo |
“What’s the difference between means and opportunity?” Allison says. “I never get that one right.”
“Opportunity is whether they have a chance of doing the act,” Oliver says. “Means is whether they’re capable of doing it.”
“Like, if someone was shot,” I add, “did they have access to a gun, and did they have the ability to shoot the gun.”
“Mr. Green in the library with a knife.”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” Emily says, “we know what the means are, don’t we? Shek was poisoned by his drink.”
“Right,” I say, thinking back to the glasses on the tray, arranged in a half circle just like we were. But then Connor turned his glass down, and Shek grabbed it before anyone could stop him. “That was supposed to be Connor’s glass.”
“That’s one thing the killer got wrong,” Allison says. “Connor hates Champagne.”
“You’re right, I do.”
“Did everyone know that except for me?” Isabella asks.
There’s a chorus of yeses.
“You didn’t pour it, though,” I say. “Sylvie did.” I look around. “Where is Sylvie, anyway?”
“I heard the police say they’d question her separately,” Isabella says, “and Captain Marco, too.”
“You understand Italian?” I ask.
“I did Duolingo before I came on this trip.”
Of course she did. “Good for you.”
“You think the police think that Marco and Sylvie were in on it?” Allison asks.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Connor says. “I’ve never met Sylvie before this tour, and Marco only today. And neither of them was there for the other incidents.”
“I agree with Connor,” I say.
“But Sylvie poured the Champagne,” Emily says. “She had the best opportunity.”
“And she wouldn’t have known that Connor doesn’t like Champagne,” Harper adds.
“It wasn’t them,” Connor says.
“How do you explain it, then?” Oliver says.
Connor works his jaw, like he’s trying to decide what to say.
“Now’s not the time to hold back, Connor,” I say. “Someone is already dead. Two people, in fact.”
“Two?” Guy says.
I explain about the man outside the Vatican, and the information is received with a sobering silence. Because you can make sense of one murder, but two?
“What did you want to say before, Connor?”
“Yes, well, Allison said I didn’t like Champagne when I didn’t take the glass. Which conveniently provides an alibi for everyone but Marco, Sylvie, and Isabella.”
“Why is it convenient?” Isabella asks. “Oh, you think someone is framing me?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Allison says.
“Is it?” Connor says.
“Who’s supposed to be the one doing the framing?”
Connor just stares at her.
Allison stares back. “This is why police interrogate people separately. So they can find out what people actually know without spoiling it.”
“You suddenly know so much about police procedure?”
“It’s common sense,” Allison says. “But if we must play this stupid game, then we’re better off filling in the motive boxes. Because we all had the opportunity.”
“Not all of us,” Connor says. “You were the one who stayed back on the boat. You had plenty of time to put poison in that bottle.”
“I didn’t even know there was a bottle.”
“Easy enough to say that now.”
“It was your girlfriend who gave out the glasses.”
“I did that in front of everyone,” Isabella says. “You all saw me.”
“Well, I didn’t touch the glasses. And if it was in the bottle, then we’d all be dead, wouldn’t we?”
“You didn’t drink any, I noticed,” Connor says. “And we wouldn’t all be rich if I died.”
He walks to the board and takes the pen from Isabella’s hand. He turns his back on us and starts to write. When he’s done, the board looks like this:
|
Eleanor |
Connor |
Oliver |
Harper |
Guy |
Allison |
Emily |
Isabella | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Motive |
$$ | |||||||
|
Means |
Poison | |||||||
|
Oppo |
Botany Mechanic |
“You’re going to have to decipher this for the rest of us, Connor,” Oliver says. “What does botany have to do with any of it?”
“Allison did a minor in botany when she was studying acting. When we first got together, she was doing this whole unit on poisons.”
Allison looks unperturbed. “You remember? I’m flattered.”
“Please, I was worried for myself.”
“Didn’t keep you away.”
“I think everyone in this room knows I don’t always make the best decisions.”
Allison stares at him with an amused glint in her eye. Or maybe she’s gloating?
“She was always saying back then that there were poisons all around us. All you had to do was know where to look.”
“We don’t even know what killed Shek,” I say.
“Mark my words, it will be something she could’ve made once she got here that looks innocuous.”
“So you think I brought a beaker and a Bunsen burner with me?” Allison drawls.
“I know what I know. And I bet that jellyfish was only a diversion.”
“Now I stung myself with a jellyfish on purpose?”
“You needed a reason to stay on the boat.”
“Couldn’t I have simply feigned seasickness? Why go to the trouble of something so elaborate?”
“You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
“As I think we’ve already established, that’s you.”
I listen to the ping-pong of their conversation while staring at the columns and rows on the easel. There’s a lot more information that could be filled out, but for now, I want to understand what Connor’s getting at. “What does ‘mechanic’ mean?”
He glances at me. “Allison’s father was a car mechanic. He taught Allison everything about cars when she was a kid.”
“So, she’d know how to cut your brakes.”
“Anyone can google that on the internet,” Allison says.
“How do you know?”
“Because you can google anything on the internet.”
“It still would take some expertise to do it so that it didn’t give out right away, though … What about the attempt on my life? And the second attempt on yours?” I think back to last night. All that wine in my system. The booms of the fireworks. The hand on my back. “I don’t know if it was a man that pushed me. But I don’t remember Allison being near me on the veranda.”
“I saw her outside the Vatican,” Connor says. “Half an hour before I almost died. And we were all near you on the veranda. You were just too wrapped up in Oliver to notice.”
Oh my God. We’d had an audience for that? That’s embarrassing.
Oliver coughs discreetly. “What about the accomplice?”
“Which accomplice?” Guy asks.
“The one who mugged Harper.”
Harper stirs next to me. “Oh!”
“What is it?”
“Remember after I tackled Allison? She said she had the same bag as me. But maybe it was her, and I chased after the right person.”
My eyes go wide. I’d forgotten about that. I am bad at this.
“That’s ridiculous,” Allison says. “I didn’t steal your purse. I do have the same bag. I can show it to you if you like. And you would’ve recognized me.”
“We’ve only met a few times…”
“Connor would’ve recognized me.”
“I’m not sure…” Harper stares at her, like she’s trying to remember back. “If you were wearing sunglasses and a wig and a hat … It all happened very quickly.”
“Where would I have put those?”
“In your bag. My bag. It’s big.”
“And the clothes I was wearing?”
“Maybe you had another layer on and you ditched it.”
“What am I, Houdini?”
“No,” Connor says, “you’re just very motivated.”
“Motivated by what?”
“Revenge, obviously.”
“I already got my revenge. It’s right there in our divorce settlement.”
“Exactly.” Connor taps where he wrote the “$$.” “This is about money.”
“What do you mean, Connor?” Oliver asks. “Did she invest in crypto?”
“Crypto?” Allison says. “That was real? Your newsletter wasn’t hacked?”
“You knew about the newsletter?” I ask. “Did everyone?”
Everyone but Oliver nods slowly.
“Harper, did you unsubscribe me?”
“Of course. You never look at that email address anyway.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“I—”
“Um,” Connor says. “Excuse me? We’re in the middle of something here.”
“We were talking about the money,” Emily says. “Please go on. This is all fascinating.”
“Taking notes for your next novel?” I ask.
“You’re the one who uses real-life situations.”
“And you’ll just wait until it’s published, then crib it.”
“Honestly?”
“Sorry, Connor,” I say. “Go ahead.”
“Yes, thank you. As I was saying … If I die,” Connor says, “then Allison will benefit.”
“How?”
“Her remaining alimony will become due in a lump sum payment, and I have to maintain life insurance to cover the payout.”
Allison doesn’t say anything, just looks at Connor like a slightly proud parent for figuring this all out on his own instead of stumbling around in his usual fashion.
“Is that true, Allison?” Oliver asks.
“About the insurance? That might be in the divorce settlement. My lawyer took care of that.”
“Your very good lawyer,” I say, remembering our earlier conversation. “And the payout? It’s due if he dies?”
“Yes.”
“Has he been making his payments?”
“Until now.”
“But he’s in financial trouble, and my book sales are declining…”
“What do your declining book sales have to do with anything?” Isabella asks.
“I get a percentage of her sales,” Connor says. “Since she uses my name.”
My face burns, and I don’t make eye contact with Oliver or Harper. I’ve never told either of them this.
“Yes, yes,” Allison says, “all of that would give me an excellent reason to kill Connor, wouldn’t it? Except for two things.”
Why is it always two things?152
“What?”
“I didn’t do it.”
“No, you killed Shek instead,” Emily says. “He didn’t deserve that.”
“You have no idea what he deserved.”
“What’s the second thing, Allison?” I ask.
She looks at me frankly. “I have no motive to kill you.”
“You must hate me, though. For the affair?”
“A hate I’ve waited ten years to do something about? Please.”
I sigh. She’s right. And there’s the rub. When I look at the board, I come up against the same thing. No one has a motive to kill me and Connor. Not now, anyway. Not so many years after our crimes.
“I’m sure there’s some explanation,”153 Connor says.
“So no cuffs quite yet?” Allison says. “Though you did like to play a bit rough, didn’t you?”
Connor’s eyes narrow, and he’s about to say something when the lock on the door to the library squeaks.
We all turn expectantly toward the door. It opens, and a man walks through.
I suck in my breath, feeling like I’ve been put in a time machine.
“Not you,” Connor says.
And for once, I can’t help but agree with him.