Life feels different when you kill someone.
There’s a heaviness to it that wasn’t there before, and even if that person deserved it, even if they were trying to kill you in the moment that you killed them.
That I killed her. Sylvie.
This isn’t a theoretical conversation but something that happened.
Not on paper but IRL, as the kids say.
I don’t know if it’s something I can ever get over.
Time will tell.
But for now, I have questions.
We all do.
And if this ever gets made into a TV show, this part will be in slow motion.
We’ll emerge from the villa one by one, but after the body does, of course.
It will be loaded into a body bag, resting on a stretcher, surrounded by police, and a song will be playing over the shot. Maybe “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” by Taylor Swift.
Because I always have been.
They’ve brought us back to the hotel in separate cars.
Me, Harper, Oliver, Connor, and the others. We’re all going to be questioned again, but their questions won’t be like mine.
Because I killed Sylvie. I did.
And I saw it in their faces when I was led out of the villa—the accusation that this might have been the plan all along.
They stood in a half-moon, watching me, supporting one another.
I’m apart from them now.
It’s a distance I don’t know how to breach.
Maybe when the truth comes out—when they learn that I was the victim—then it will all be okay.
Then again, maybe not.
Again, time will tell.
For now, my lawyer meets me in the lobby, and we’re given an hour alone where I tell him everything that happened. We agree together that I should tell my story to Inspector Tucci, nothing left out, nothing added. I haven’t done anything wrong, but someone is dead.
More than one person.
There are questions that need to be asked and answers that need to be given.
So I’m back in the room I was in when Inspector Tucci questioned me. Was that only this morning?
The room feels different. I didn’t notice the wallpaper before—a faded print of multicolored peacocks. And the windows full of sunshine. Were there always windows? The light hurts my eyes, and my lawyer closes the blinds when I put my hand up to shade them.
What was I saying? Oh, right. The room. I was trying to describe it, but I can’t latch onto the details.
The truth is—I feel drunk. Maybe I still am.
Only I don’t think so.
But it feels that way. Like everything is sped up and slowed down and I’m being very careful with my words, though I haven’t said anything yet.
Maybe if I catalog everything slowly, I’ll be able to come to some kind of solution in my mind. A solution for myself.
So:
—My hands are folded on the table.
—It’s still daylight outside.
—The air is a bit cold in here.
—Someone offers me coffee, but I don’t take it.
—My lawyer is seated to my left, and we’re both facing an empty chair, waiting.
I memorize these details like I’ll have to write them down later.
Eventually, the door opens and Inspector Tucci walks in with the other officer he was with this morning. Don’t ask me to remember his name.
I barely remember my own.
He sits across from me and puts a recording device down on the table. My lawyer nods. I’ve forgotten his name, too. Inspector Tucci starts the recording and notes the date and time. He says who’s present and then we begin.
“Before I take your statement, Ms. Dash, are there any questions that you have for me?”
“I … Yes.”
“Please go ahead.”
“Is … Is Sylvie really dead?”
I know she is, they don’t put live people in body bags, but I have to ask anyway. Because that’s the kind of day it is. One where even something I witnessed with my own eyes feels made up.
“Yes, her neck snapped on the stairs.”
So that was the sound. I feel like throwing up, but I choke it down.
“And Isabella?”
“She’s in custody. We apprehended her at the train station in Napoli.”
“She was running away?”
“She is not speaking. But yes, that is what we believe.”
“And she’s Sylvie’s daughter?”
“Yes. She had been going by the last name Joseph.”
“It is Giuseppe in English,” my lawyer says.
“Yes,” Inspector Tucci says. “We believe she changed it when she emigrated.”
I blink slowly. “To Canada?”
“There were three children who were still underage. They were sent there after the capo went to jail. They had relatives there.”
“Do you know where Marta is?”
“We do not. But we have established that she entered the country with Isabella. They were on the same plane.”
“The one that Connor was on?”
“And Mr. Abishek, yes.”
“How do you know all this if Isabella isn’t talking?”
He flips open his notebook. “I was conducting an investigation … These facts came to light this afternoon. We were about to alert you when we received the call about the incident in Ravello.”
“Marta was working for my publisher. In the publicity department. She was the one who put together the tour.”
Inspector Tucci writes this down. “Who can I contact about this?”
I give Inspector Tucci the name and contact information of my editor.
“They didn’t hide what they were doing very well,” I say.
“I do not think they ever expected anyone to look. But criminals make mistakes all the time. That is how they are caught.”
I lean back in my chair. I can feel the hard wood between my shoulder blades. “How long do you think they’ve been planning this?”
“Since shortly after the capo died. I imagine that his death, how do you say, stirred up all of the feelings again.”
“It must have taken a lot of planning. Marta getting the job at my publisher … suggesting the tour…”
“Yes.”
“And they planned all of it together?” I say. “They decided to have someone in the group … Isabella.”
“I imagine that it was easier than they hoped to get close to Mr. Smith.”
“She is a beautiful girl.”
“He should not be so trusting.”
“Agreed,” I say. “And how did they plan to kill us?”
“That is less clear … The first attempt on Mr. Smith near the Vatican…”
“That was Marta?”
“We assume,” Inspector Tucci says.
“And that pedestrian, he saw what happened?”
“Yes, we believe so.”
“Who killed him?”
“Marta again, likely, though we have not mapped out all of Isabella’s movements.”
“She wasn’t there at the Colosseum tour…” I remind him about our movements that day. The church, the gelato, the Forum. “I didn’t meet her until dinner that night.”
“We will pull the street camera footage … We will find out what happened.”
“But she’s missing? Marta?”
He makes a notation. “We will find her.”
“Should I be worried?”
“I would keep an eye out, yes.”
I think through the last few days. All those near-death experiences. “Do you think the jellyfish was on purpose?”
“It is hard to know. It is a known risk in that area. We are also looking for the captain of the boat…”
“Maybe they were just trying to torture us?”
“That is possible, yes.”
“But the gunshot,” I say, “that would have been final.”
“Yes. They took a risk given that the police were involved at that point … Perhaps they felt like it was their last chance.”
I shudder. “To kill me and frame Connor for it?”
This had occurred to me earlier. That’s why I thought he had done it. Because that was the plan all along.
“Yes.”
“But Allison saw Isabella?”
“She did. It was a stupid decision not to tell us what she had seen. Your life was almost sacrificed for that.”
“Isabella drugged Guy earlier on and took the gun? And Connor took an Ambien after they…”
“Yes.”
“What about the hotel cameras?”
“Disabled.”
“By her?”
“Sylvie, perhaps. Maybe Marta … We will find all of this out.”
“And the blackmail? Blackmailing Connor? That, too?”
“We do not know everything yet, but we will find out who was behind that as well.”
I’ve run out of questions, so he takes my statement.
I take him through my day, remembering it as I go.
I feel better getting it out, like a poison I’m expelling. He listens and asks good questions and doesn’t act like he’s assuming that I’m making this up to cover some bigger crime.
When I’ve finished, he tells me that he needs to check in on the others, and leaves.
But not before another warning: I need to stay in the hotel. No more sightseeing for us. Not until they find Marta. Not until they figure all of this out.
I leave in the room in a daze and walk into Oliver’s arms. He wraps me up tight and tells me it will all be all right, and this also feels like it’s happening in slow motion, like in a montage. Harper is there, too, full of questions, but I can’t answer any of them now. I want to sleep for a week, and maybe, tomorrow, in the cold light of day, there will be answers.
So that’s what I do.
I go to bed and I try to sleep, but it’s fractured. I’m skimming along the surface like sleep is a thin sheet of ice on a lake.
Any minute, I’m going to break through and fall into the cold black water.
And maybe, given everything, I’ll never surface.
I do, though. Life, after a fashion, goes on.
I turn the page on a horrible day. Impossibly, I wake up and realize that it’s only the seventh of July. I check the tour schedule for some grasp at normality, even though we’re not going anywhere. We have a free day in Sorrento.
Is the tour schedule laughing at us?
Maybe.
My phone is a nightmare of notifications and missed calls from “Maybe: New York Times” and “Maybe: CBS News.” I have thirty-eight voicemails and hundreds of emails, including panicked ones from my editor and agent. I text them both to let them know I’m okay, that I’ll call them when I can, then shut off my phone.
I don’t want to talk to anyone about any of this, but I know my immediate punishment is going to involve a day with what’s left of our group, and maybe, if I’m very lucky, the BookFace Ladies.
I get up and get dressed. I meet Oliver and Harper in the dining room and eat breakfast. Allison joins us, while Guy, Emily, and Connor sit together at another table. Connor looks deflated and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him. Which shouldn’t be a surprise given that he’s been sleeping with someone who wanted to murder him.219
It’s another hot day, the heat shimmering through the windows like a mirage on a hot highway, and I’m glad to be inside.
Under the circumstances.
“El?” Oliver squeezes my hand under the table like we’re kids in school with an illicit romance.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“I’m getting there.”
Harper shakes out her napkin over a huge plate of food. “I’m strangely starving.”
“Death will do that to you.”
She gives me a look.
“Think of Irish wakes.”
“That’s the alcohol.”
“Oh, right.” I look down at my plate of eggs and bacon and a flaky croissant. I need to eat, but it all tastes like sawdust in my mouth. I try anyway, and we take our time over it because we have nowhere to go.
And we can’t help but talk about what happened, some clues popping into our memories like popcorn.
—How I thought that whoever thought it was a good idea to book a tour in Italy in July was a lunatic.
—How Connor said he thought the person who mugged him was Italian.
—How Connor had Davide the pedestrian’s number, which meant that Isabella then had it, too, so was able to find him.
—How Marta must’ve planned for Harper to have the master key.
“But why the mugging? They didn’t actually use that key, right?”
“Maybe they meant to, and Connor’s stupid plan to fake his own death got in the way.”
“Hmmm,” Oliver says.
“What?”
“They’re an odd mix of competence and incompetence, like more than one person was holding the reins.”
“There were three people holding them. All the Giuseppe women.”
“Not all of them. There’s one more sister—Rosa.”
I shiver. “Let’s not think about her, shall we?”
“Hard agree. You know, Sylvie never knew anything about any of the sites we went to,” Harper says. “It’s so obvious now.”
“The way she parroted Google.”
“And anyone can visit the catacombs at the Colosseum. I checked last night.”
“She must’ve studied. But not much.”
“And why did we just accept Isabella like that? She must’ve laughed at us so hard.”
“And she never said ‘sorry.’ Not like real Canadians do all the time.”
Pop!
“Oh my God,” I say. “Remember at the dinner, when she said her mother was a huge fan and she had a shrine to me?”
“And you took a selfie?”
“And she sent it to her!”
Harper breaks her croissant in two. “She must’ve been gloating. Look, Ma, I did it.”
“Do you think the part about the shrine is true?”
“Maybe it’s like, a set of voodoo dolls.”
“Or a stalker’s shrine,” Oliver says. “Like those creepy ones from the movies.”
I shudder again. It’s not funny being stalked, though I’m sure I’ll see the humor eventually. “They must’ve arranged for Cathy to come on the trip.”
“Why?”
“To torture me. Or to make her the scapegoat. The more suspects around, the better.”
“How did they know about her?”
I think about it. “The restraining order. That’s public. It must’ve come up in their research.”220
“Where is Cathy, anyway?” Oliver asks.
“The BookFace Ladies are under the watchful eye of two police officers at their hotel down the road,” Harper says. “They’ve been told they’re not allowed to post anything on social media, but you’ve already been tagged in a bunch of posts this morning.”
“What a shit show.” I sigh. “They were trying to frame Connor for my murder.”
“How do you reckon?”
“I figured it out before I figured it out.”
“What now?”
“All the attempts on his life were when he was alone. Not provable. But mine were public and undeniable.”
Oliver nods. “So it would look like he was acting as if it was the both of you who were targets, but it was really just you?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“But what if he’d died?”
I shrug. “Then they’d blame me. One of us in jail, one of us dead. Then no one would look anywhere else. Either way, they’d get rid of us.”
“What was going to be your motive, though? How did they know you wanted him dead?”
“They knew he was involved in the robberies, but I left that part out in the book. They must’ve assumed I knew about it and made the connection that he was holding it over me.” I bite my lip. “Plus, I think they were trying to reverse what he’d done.”
“How so?”
This occurred to me late last night. The one thing I’d never asked Connor or got an answer to. “He used me as a shield. All those years ago. That’s why he got involved with me, I think. Why he brought me into the investigation. I was his cover.”
“Bastard,” Oliver says through his teeth.
“He is.”
“You don’t seem mad at him.”
“I know, right? It must be the shock.”
We finish breakfast, and then collect in the library like it’s a ditch we’ve driven into.221
We go to our usual positions and more things drop out of the memory hole they fell into.
“How did they get us all here?” Allison asks.
“Marta,” Harper says. “She was working for the publisher. In the publicity department. She started there last year. She was the one who came up with the idea for the tour.”
“Why steal your purse, then?” Emily says. “If not for the itinerary?”
“For the master key.”
“Oh, right. That master key. Was that her doing, too?”
“Of course,” Harper says.
“Where is she?” Emily asks. “Are they going to catch her?”
“I hope so,” I say. “I don’t like the thought of her being still out there.”
“Same,” Connor says.
Oliver bunches his fists. “This is all your fault, Connor. Getting El involved in the first place. Taking up with Isabella.”
“I was taken in by a con woman…”
“Please, Connor,” I say. “Just go away.”
He doesn’t, though, just slumps down in his chair in a way that makes me feel sorry for him.
That’ll teach me.
And maybe it does, because it occurs to me that Connor and I, we’re the same. I was taken in by him for his scheme, and he was taken in by Isabella for hers. It could happen to anyone.
That’s what I tell myself.
We spend the morning bandying about theories; then the hotel serves us lunch. We have a choice between gnocchi alla Sorrentina222 and spaghetti Nerano223 with a dessert of delizia al limone, a lemon cake with a sweet glaze. I have the spaghetti, and it’s creamy and wonderful, and it reminds me of how Shek just wanted a plate of carbonara. Maybe he’s eating at an unlimited pasta bar in the Good Place.
I hope so, at least.
I spend the afternoon on the balcony, watching how the light shifts across the water, wishing I were on one of the crisp white boats that dot the harbor. Or maybe Capri when the crowds dissipate. Despite everything, I love this place. I hope it’s not ruined now for me, forever.
When we’re starting to think about cocktails and dinner, Inspector Tucci comes back.
He’s been asking questions today, too, he tells us, and he has some answers. Not from Isabella—she’s still not talking—but from the fruits of their investigation, he says, a bit proudly, because he has something to prove.
Some of it we’ve worked out for ourselves and some of it is news. Marco the boat captain is a relative, too, for instance. Sylvie’s brother. Sophia’s brother.
This murder plot was a family affair.
“But what about the blackmail?” I say. “Was that them, too?”
“No, that was Mr. Botha.”
“What?” Harper says. “Seriously?”
“How?” Emily says.
“We found an encrypted app on his phone…”
“That’s how they communicated with me,” Connor says. “Whoever was blackmailing me.”
“Yes, we found the messages.”
Connor puts his hands on his hips. “So Shek was blackmailing me? That’s just a coincidence?”
“No,” Inspector Tucci says. “It was not.”
“I don’t follow,” I say.
“He was working with them.”
“With the Giuseppes?”
“Yes. I understand he lost a significant sum of money in an investment with you, Mr. Smith?”
Connor puffs up his chest. “That is not quite what happened, but he might see it that way.”
“How did they know?” I think it through. “Oh, wait, Marta? Marta was his publicist, too?”
“Yes.”
“He confided in her?”
“She encouraged the relationship, I believe … A young, sympathetic ear.”
“See, I’m not the only one who fell for it.”
“Shut up, Connor!” It’s our chorus now—we all say it together.
“Please go on, Inspector,” I say.
“He was upset at Mr. Smith for many reasons,” he says. “Once we had access to his phone … There was a script that didn’t work out, I believe. And then Mr. Smith encouraged him to invest in that cryptocurrency scheme. The final straw seemed to be when it all fell apart and Mr. Smith helped the CEO escape…”
“I didn’t do that—”
“Let him finish, Connor. You’re not on trial.”
“Not yet,” Harper murmurs.
“This is what he thought you did, you understand?”
Connor nods.
“And then using the plot of one of his books to cover it up…”
“Go on.”
“Marta used of all that to get him to participate.”
“Did he know about killing me?”
“I think he only wanted to scare Mr. Smith. And to get his money back.”
“What did he do?”
“The car brakes, we think … if that happened.”
Connor scoffs. “It did.”
“If it happened,” Inspector Tucci repeats, “he might’ve been involved. The messages we found are suspicious but not as clear as the others.”
“Wait … the car brakes,” Allison says. “Didn’t he kill someone that way in Whisper of Iron?”224, 225
We all look at her.
“What?”
“You read that?”
“Didn’t everyone?”
No one wants to admit to the sin of reading (or not reading) Shek, so the silence rests there for a moment.
“Is that everything?” I ask.
“We might never know all of it,” Inspector Tucci says, looking at us like we might have the missing answers.
“Some mysteries are never solved,” Oliver says, and I love him for it.
“Yes, that is true. Speaking of which … What is this I’ve heard about you and Mr. Smith being behind the robberies in Roma?”