“Oh my God, it’s Connor Smith!” The BookFace Ladies rush us, pushing past me and Harper with books in hand and Sharpies at the ready.
“Can you sign this, Connor?”
“When’s the next book coming?”
“You and Eleanor are still together, right?”
“Is it true you guys are having a baby?”
Um, what?
“Deep breaths,” Harper says.
“Did you hear that?”
“You know there’s always crazy rumors about you guys in the Vacation-verse.”
“I hate it when you call it that.”
“At least I didn’t call you Connel.”
I shudder. That’s our mash-up name in the fandom, though sometimes it’s Elcon. Both are on the long list of reasons I want out of this relationship.
I mean, would you want to be called something that sounds like it came from the planet Krypton? Especially if it was a constant reminder of the first guy to break your heart?
“You’d be on the hit list if you did,” I say to Harper.
“Ha ha.”
We watch Connor as he interacts with the fans. He is good at it, signing every book and smiling at each of the women like he might consider taking them to bed if they asked. Something I’m sure he’s done more times than I know about.
Then the selfies start, and he does his trademark move—cocking a finger gun at the camera while he makes a queek-queek sound with the side of his mouth—and the moment’s over.
“Can you sign this, Eleanor?” One of the BookFace Ladies pushes her book toward Harper.
Uh-oh.
“I’m not Eleanor,” Harper says, her voice tight.
“That’s me,” I say, stepping forward.
“Oh, um…” She glances between me and Harper. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“What happened to you?”
I reach up to smooth down my hair. “Oh, I fell into some ice cream.”
“Gelato,” Harper amends.
“Right. Anyway, you wanted me to sign?”
“Yes, please.”
I take the book and flip it open to the signature page. This isn’t the first time Harper and I have been confused for each other, and I get it. She looks like the kind of person who’d have adventures on the French Riviera and write about them. Next to her, I look like who I am: a woman who spends most of her days in stretchy pants with her hair in a messy bun.
On the other hand, my photo is right there on the back cover, and they’re supposed to be uber-fans. Would it be so hard to get it right?
Ugh. I sound awful, even to myself. In my defense, incidents like this play right into my imposter syndrome. Any normal person with my level of success would question whether they deserve it, but when it happened by accident?30 When it was never the plan? When it was the life plan of your best friend and sister?
Hell yeah, I have trouble looking at myself in the mirror sometimes.
“What’s your name?” I ask the woman. She’s in her fifties, and her face is already sunburned.
“Susan.”
I sign the book to her as Harper takes a few photos with her phone, then hand it back.
I wait to see if anyone else wants my signature, but apparently not.
Whatever. My ego doesn’t depend on the number of books I sign at an event.31
Susan clutches the book to her chest, then walks back to another woman in her forties who’s snapping pictures on her phone.
Oh, no.
“What’s she doing here?”
“Who?”
“Her.” I start to point, then lower my finger. “Crazy Cathy.”32
Harper follows my gaze. Cathy’s bleached-blond hair is in a topknot on her head. She’s wearing a BookFace shirt, white shorts, sturdy walking sandals, and long dangly earrings that I’m pretty sure have my face on them. She started showing up at my events six or seven years ago, and it got weird, fast.
“I don’t remember seeing her on the list. Maybe she was one of the last-minute replacements?”
“Isn’t she supposed to be banned?”33
“Not sure it’s legally enforceable here.”
“So, you’re telling me I’m on a tour with Connor, nineteen fans, and my stalker?”
Harper takes out her phone. “I’ll call Marta, the publicist, and find out how this happened.” She steps away and I take a moment to collect my thoughts.
It’ll be fine. It’s not like she’s ever threatened me. Well, just the one time. But she’s been quiet for the last year. And we’ll never be alone together. She hasn’t even talked to me yet.
Harper comes back.
“Well?”
“Couldn’t reach her. I’ll try again later.”
“Keep an eye on Cathy.” I check the time, wishing I’d insisted on that drink. “Is this tour starting or what?”
“I think this is our guide.” She points to a blowsy woman in her fifties with tawny, windblown hair and loose clothing that makes it difficult to determine her exact shape.
“Hello, hello! Are you Harper?” the woman says as she approaches us. She talks in a singsong voice with a slight accent.
“Sylvie?”
“Nice to meet you.” Sylvie looks around. “Is this our group?”
“Yes. These twenty, plus Connor and us two.”
Sylvie smiles in Connor’s direction. He’s talking to Susan and Cathy like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Is this the guy who was cowering on the ground twenty minutes ago?
He probably made that whole thing up for some stupid reason of his own. But what if he didn’t? Am I going to help him stop someone from killing him?
“He is handsome, no?” Sylvie says.
I give her a fake smile. “Yes. Very handsome.”
“Too bad about the personality,” Harper mutters.
Sylvie frowns. “Shall we begin?”
Harper calls the BookFace Ladies over, and Sylvie starts the tour, giving us some background facts about the Colosseum. It quickly becomes apparent that Sylvie has a tenuous grasp of history.
I’m pretty sure, for example, that they did not film the Gladiator movie here, despite Russell Crowe’s tongue-in-cheek tweet about taking the family to the “old office” when he was visiting Rome. But this is the proof she offers that it happened. After she says that Spartacus fought in the Colosseum’s inaugural gladiatorial bout,34 I decide to tune her out.
I have a murder to plot, after all, an attempted murder to solve, and a stalker to avoid.
More than enough to keep me occupied.
Harper, on the other hand, is not so lucky.
“That’s not true,” she says ten minutes later after Sylvie says that there weren’t any women gladiators. Harper’s first degree was in literature with a minor in history. “There’s evidence that women did fight here.”
“Evidence?” Sylvie says.
“The frieze on the arena floor? The one that shows Amazon and Athena fighting?”
Sylvie’s forehead creases like she’s trying to remember. “Oh, yes. But that is just decoration. Roman men, they liked their strong women, no?”
Harper’s horrified, but Connor starts to laugh. “Harper always knows better, Sylvie. You’ll see.”
Harper shoots Connor a look that could, well, kill, but Connor simply winks it off, then takes the arm of the youngest fan. She’s pretty but probably forty, fifteen years above his usual age bracket.
This is the man who told me once that he was the “Leonardo DiCaprio of private detectives.”35, 36
Gross, right?
I should put that in the next novel. Then everyone will understand when he turns up dead.
“Now,” Sylvie says, “let us examine the friezes on the west portico.”
We follow Sylvie down a hall, and I try to go back to my plot, but I’ve lost it.
Not for the first time.
The tour winds on, up and down stairs, around corners, and through the crowds, and I’m tired and thirsty, and the sun is touching my skin like it wants to kiss it.
Please, God, let this be over soon.
Jesus. Rome is making me religious.
“And now, because you are an A-one special guest, I have gotten you a tour of the catacombs.” She points to the floor of the Colosseum, where the structure for a series of underground rooms still exists.
Sylvie leads us down a long set of stone steps until we get to a velvet rope that’s being manned by a burly older man with a fierce expression. “You may take as many pictures as you like. Please do not use flash.”
The BookFace Ladies twitter in excitement and I sigh internally. It was like this yesterday at the Vatican, where I found myself being pulled into a private tour of the Sistine Chapel while a massive line wound its way through the stone courtyard in the full sun. I don’t like getting things because of my celebrity; I can wait in line with everyone else. But I’ve learned over the years that you often aren’t given a choice.
It’s always made me wonder, though, about the celebrities who came before me.
Had they demanded these private audiences with art?
“El?” Harper says.
“Yeah?”
“You’re up in the clouds today.”
“You should be used to it by now.”
“We just need to do a quick tour around the Forum after this, and then you’re free.”
“To drink a million Aperol spritzes?”
“At least two.”
“Sounds like heaven.”
We follow the group into a tunnel made entirely of sandstone. I reach out to touch the thick stone walls. I try to picture it. How terrified the gladiators must’ve been while the lions roared overhead and the crowds screamed for blood.
“No touching of the cave!”
I pull my hand back like a scolded child, and we shuffle through the tunnel until we’re back out in the hot sunlight on the stadium floor. We’re on a metal walkway, the walls rising up on both sides. Above us, in the rostrums that surround the floor, a crowd looks down on us like they must’ve done to the gladiators centuries ago.
It’s beautiful and overwhelming, and I experience that feeling of transference I get sometimes when I’m writing. Like I’m one of the people waiting to do battle, the crowd howling its pleasure and delight. Like I can smell the blood and sweat and fear of those expecting the same fate.
Like my death is waiting for me.
I shiver, a shadow passing over my grave.
This would make an excellent setting for a murder.
But how?
I’ve committed so many literary murders that the possibilities cycle through my mind quickly. If Connor tripped and fell onto the grate, would the blow to his head be enough? Or if one of the stones was loose, and just a bit of pressure could drop it on him …
“I do need your help,” Connor says, coming up next to me.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve tried to figure this out on my own and I almost died yesterday.”
“I already gave you a solution. Go to the police.”
“You know why I can’t do that. Come on,” he says, smiling down at me. “We work well together. You’re good at this. Think about the Giuseppe case. You figured all that out on your own.”
Ugh. I hate it when he’s nice to me.
“I’m not some naive twenty-five-year-old anymore, Connor. If this is some scam, I’m not going to go along with it.”
“It isn’t a scam, it’s my life.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Okay, then. Forget it.” He strides away, pushing past the BookFace Ladies.
I feel a moment of regret, but it’s quickly replaced by relief.
Whatever game Connor’s playing, he’s let me off the hook.
I should take the win.
The tour comes to an end as Sylvie leads us to the exit. “And now, Miss Author, you enjoyed the tour, yes?”
“Yes, Sylvie, thank you.”
Harper steps in to tip her, and Sylvie smiles, then bustles away with a mention over her shoulder that she’ll see us tomorrow.
I shudder at the thought of what her mix of fake and real history will do to Pompeii.
But that’s a problem for another day.37, 38
We walk back into the courtyard full of tourists, and Harper tells the BookFace Ladies we’ll see them tomorrow, then leads me toward the Forum to get some photos. I make sure that Cathy isn’t following us, then exhale and try to focus on the real history in front of me.
This part of Rome still looks like an archeological dig, with the modern street hovering above the enormous complex, its red dirt floor dotted with Corinthian pillars in various states of preservation. Tourists swarm through the structure like ants, phones at the ready.
“It won’t be long,” Harper says, reading my mind as we reach the entrance. “We only need a few photographs.”
“For the book?”
“For the Gram.”
“I hate social media.”
“Sure, sure,” Harper says. “Until twenty-four hours go by and no one praises you or the books.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Forty-eight, then?”
I stick out my tongue. “If I stopped posting, I doubt anyone would notice.”
Harper glances over her shoulder and I follow her gaze.
Connor’s twenty feet behind us, snapping pictures on his phone like a tourist, though he lived in Rome for a year.39
“Maybe you should ask Connor to do your socials?” Harper says.
“Ha! But wait, you never said, what did Connor do?”
Her face clouds over. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You know you can tell me—”
“Did I hear my name?” Connor says, taking a couple of long strides toward us.
“Not in a good way,” I say.
Connor raises his hand to his chest. “You wound me.”
“I wish.”
His eyes turn cold. “You don’t have to be such an absolute cow about everything.”
“Moo.”
He grabs my arm, holding me tightly. “Now listen here, Eleanor, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but—”
“Take your hand off of her,” a voice commands from behind me. “Now.”
A shiver runs down my spine. I’d know Oliver’s voice anywhere.
What I don’t understand is what he’s doing here.
“What are you going to do about it?” Connor says, spitting out the words as he releases me.
“If you touch her again, I’ll kill you.”
I really should’ve read the itinerary.