Talia she couldn’t stop staring at Marco’s lifeless body. She felt numb. Frozen. This had to be yet another bad dream. But instead it was a waking nightmare that refused to end.
Signora Nicolai, who’d been a neighbor of the family for decades, grabbed her arm, her face turning to a chalky gray.
“I just spoke to him a couple days ago,” the older woman said in Italian, her breathing suddenly labored. “He’d come by to water his mother’s plants and check on things. Told me he’d come back today and hang up a new mirror I just bought. He was such a nice young man.”
Talia glanced up at Joe. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
Joe kneeled down by the body to feel for a pulse, then looked back up at the two of them. “I’m sorry. He’s gone. Ask her if she heard anything. A gunshot? People shouting? Anything.”
Talia quickly translated the questions into Italian.
“No, I didn’t hear anything,” the older woman said. “We need to call the police.”
Talia nodded. “Why don’t you go call them now? We’ll wait here with the body.”
She turned back as the woman hurried away, the soles of her shoes clicking against the sidewalk. It was strange the things that she noticed. The buzz of the overhead light. A fly landing on the coffee table. The slightly musty smell from having the house closed up in the heat.
All in an attempt to avoid what was right in front of them.
The only reason she was alive was because Anna thought she still needed her. But if she couldn’t find the paintings, or if she discovered Talia had recognized her, it was going to be her body lying dead on the ground somewhere.
Like Marco.
Like Thomas.
She walked over to Marco’s body, stopping a few feet from him. This was no accident. Blood had pooled on the floor beneath him from a gunshot to the head. How long had he been there before he’d died? Alone? No one should have to die that way.
A surge of anger shot through her as she fought back the tears. Anna had gotten to him. But why? Marco had nothing to do with any of this. She leaned against the back of the leather couch to steady herself. Her legs and hands were shaking. Her mind was spinning with implications...
Her mind flashed back to Thomas’s death. She’d sat in the interrogation room and they’d shown her photos of his body at the crime scene as they’d tried to determine if she was connected to his crimes. The photos would always be imprinted on her mind.
“Talia?” Joe stepped between her and the body and pressed his hands against her arms. “Take a deep breath. I know this is hard.”
She took a step back.
“It looks as if Marco walked in on her,” Joe stated.
Talia glanced up at the tall ceiling, the large chandelier hanging in the center and the familiar blue walls. She noticed now what Joe was seeing. The living room had been searched. She could tell from the photos hanging askew on the wall. From the way her father-in-law’s books lay strewn on the floor. And how the narrow rows of white shelves going up the wall with dozens of knickknacks and photos were a jumbled mess.
Anna had been here, looking for the paintings, and somehow Marco had gotten in the way.
“So what do you think happened?” she asked. “Anna was searching the house when Marco arrived. She panics and shoots him?”
“Makes sense.” He nodded at a broken lamp. “There was definitely a struggle.”
“He tried to fight back.”
“And she shot him,” Joe said.
“Someone had to have heard something,” she said.
Joe was walking around the room, systematically studying the scene. “But if the shooter knows anything about guns—like Anna would—and if she used a suppressor, it would change the sound enough that it might not be recognized.”
“Once the police arrive, they’re going to start asking a slew of questions, and we still haven’t found the paintings,” she said. “Even if they are here in the apartment, we won’t be able to search for them.”
She felt the heat of the space press against her chest. “How much time do you think we have until the police get here?” he asked. “Five...ten minutes?”
“At the most.”
“Then we need to work fast. Because you’re right. Once they get here, they’re going to block off the house and won’t let us look, but if we can find the paintings—assuming she didn’t find them—before the police turn up, we might be able to end all of this before someone else is hurt.”
Talia looked around the trashed living space of her mother-in-law’s normally perfectly clean house. “And if the paintings have already been found?”
“Until we know otherwise, let’s assume they haven’t at this point.”
She was staring at the body again, remembering Marco’s karaoke attempts at the annual family gathering. His insisting that his mom make his grandmother’s recipe for homemade cannelloni stuffed with veal, pork, ricotta and parmigiano. Her breath caught. And she remembered Thomas lying just as still in a wooden casket at his funeral. The brothers had looked so much alike, with their dark hair, tan skin and lighter eyes. This never should have happened. If she hadn’t come here in the first place—
“Talia, I know this is hard, but you need to stay with me,” Joe said, stepping back in front of her. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
She drew in a deep breath and tried to focus. She could do this. She’d deal with Marco’s death later, but for now, Joe was right. If the paintings were still here, they needed to find them.
“Do you know where his mother kept Thomas’s things?”
“There’s a trunk in the guest room. It seems like the most logical place to start.”
“Go see if there’s anything still there, and I’ll see what I can find in here.”
Talia moved quickly through the familiar apartment. The police would see it initially as a home invasion gone wrong, but she knew better. And knew how Marco’s parents’ lives would never be the same again. Surprisingly, the guest bedroom looked untouched. Apparently Marco’s arrival might have gotten him killed, but it seemed like it also had scared their burglar into fleeing.
Inside the guest room, she glanced at the brushed orange wallpaper and solid wood furniture. The trunk sat at the end of the bed. She pushed away the memories of staying here with Thomas and concentrated instead on finding the paintings.
Her heart raced as she searched. Any second now she’d hear the sirens. She lifted the lid of the trunk and breathed in the musty smell of mothballs. She found a leather box with Thomas’s name written on the outside. Talia took in a deep breath before opening it up. Inside was the watch she’d given him for his thirtieth birthday. Postcards he’d sent her and his parents. Birthday and anniversary cards. A couple ball caps he used to wear. His class ring...
All things she hadn’t been able to look at after his death.
She kept going through things until she got to the bottom of the box.
But there were no paintings.
She looked around the room, then decided to pull open the door of the armoire next to the window. Inside were coats and a pile of winter blankets.
I don’t know what to do, God. I don’t know how to end this.
She pulled open a dresser drawer and started rummaging through neatly folded towels and tablecloths. After Thomas’s death she’d found herself in a downward spiral. Faced with not only his death, but also his guilt, she’d blamed God for what had happened. Slowly things had changed. She’d realized that Thomas’s guilt didn’t change who God was. He was still God.
Death was never a part of God’s original plan.
Joe’s words ran through her mind again. Living in a fallen world had brought the grief and pain and death. And despite all that had happened today, God’s faithfulness was just as real after a tragedy as it had been before. Even when it seemed impossible to see. It was what she had to hold on to when the countless doubts began to surface.
* * *
Joe made a quick sweep of the room. It was clear someone had been searching for something. What wasn’t clear was if they’d found what they were after. The clock on the wall clicked down the seconds, a steady, rhythmic beat, reminding him that they only had a few minutes—if that—to find what they were looking for.
He crouched down on the large rug in the center of the living room and glanced under one of the couches. A cell phone had slid under the edge. He pulled it out, clicked it on, then swiped the unlock.
Bingo. Unlocked.
It was amazing to him how many people didn’t use any kind of lock for their screen, but not locking the phone was common. The background photo was of Marco and a dark-haired woman. He glanced at the body a few feet from him, then checked the call log. Nothing stood out. Next he ran through the emails and wished he knew Italian. He stopped at one sent the previous day with three attached photos.
Joe clicked on the attachments. One by one they popped up. They were photos of the three paintings. The paintings they were looking for. Which meant Marco’s parents had to have told him about them. He ran through one of the probable scenarios in his mind. Marco’s parents called to tell him Talia was coming for some of Thomas’s possessions. He’d looked for them and found them. Maybe he’d been curious about why she wanted them. Or perhaps suspicious as to why she would suddenly want a look at some of Thomas’s possessions. They knew what their son had been involved in. Did they think she knew what he’d been doing?
He glanced at the message in the email. He might not speak Italian, but he could figure out a couple of the words. The email address was to a gallery. Marco had been asking someone for the value of the paintings. Which meant he tried to find out how much they were worth.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. Three minutes had passed.
“Talia?” Joe hurried to the doorway of the bedroom, where she was going through a trunk. “We’re running out of time. I figure we’ve only got a couple more minutes before the police show up, but I think I’ve found something.”
“Good,” she said, stepping back from the trunk. “Because I’ve gone through everything, and the paintings aren’t here.”
“That’s because Marco already found them.” He held up the cell phone and showed her one of the photos. “He sent an email with photos of the paintings attached to a gallery.”
She moved beside him and shook her head. “I never told him specifically what we were coming here for.”
“Maybe your in-laws told him because he took pictures of the paintings and sent them to someone for an appraisal.”
“Who did he send them to?”
Joe glanced at the email. “The address says Sienna Gallery. Do you know where that is?”
“It’s an art gallery here in Venice on the other side of the island.”
“There’s also a response,” he said, handing her the phone to translate the Italian.
“Looks like he received a response from a Signor De Luca, who told him he would need to look at the paintings in person in order to do any real evaluation of their worth.” She looked up at Joe. “He didn’t trust me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that if he’d never come here looking for them, he might be alive today.”
“You can’t be sure of that, either.” He instantly regretted the sharpness in his tone, but neither of them needed to be playing guessing games on what might have happened. “It doesn’t matter what Marco was thinking at this point. We need to go talk to this signore. See if there was any further conversation between them. See if he went ahead and took them in to be appraised in person.”
She glanced toward the front door. “But what about the police?”
“If we stay, they’re going to detain us for questioning. We can always come back later and answer their questions.”
He could hear the sirens from the police boats in the background. Time was running out.
She nodded.
Five minutes later, he was following her onto the crowded floating jetty of the public ferry, the quickest way, she’d told him, to get to the gallery. He rested his hand against the small of her back as they pressed onto the vaporetto, ensuring they got a spot near the exit in case he decided they needed to get off at one of the stops in a hurry.
The boat moved away from the platform, then made its way down the canal, past rows of docks. He could see the green dome of a building in the distance. Birds dove under a bridge as they passed under the structure. Tourists flooded the walkways, their thoughts on nothing more than experiencing first hand St. Mark’s Square, an iconic gondola ride down the Grand Canal and a plate of fresh pasta.
He shifted his attention to the passengers on the boat, and to each person on every subsequent platform they stopped at. Because if Anna was here, he was going to find her.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The river. The buildings,” Talia said, breaking the silence between them. “All this beauty, and yet all I can think about is Marco.”
He glanced down at her, realizing she hadn’t had time to grieve, let alone process what she’d just seen. And for her, this case had just become even more personal. She might not be married to Thomas anymore, but he’d sensed the affection she still had for his family despite any tension still lingering between them. She was the kind of person who loved intensely. Which meant a situation like this had to continuously drag up places in the past she’d probably prefer to leave undisturbed.
“Do you think we should have stayed?” she asked.
“I think we have to first find a way to make sense of all of this. Marco’s death. Thomas’s death. My brother’s death. Staying would have simply delayed that process.”
“You know this is my fault,” she said. “Marco’s death.”
“Talia, stop right there. I meant what I said earlier. That’s a place you can’t go, because none of this is your fault.”
“But it is.” She looked up at him. “I knew they would figure out we were coming here, and that they didn’t trust me to deliver the paintings. They had to make sure they got here first. And now Marco is dead because he somehow got involved. He probably had no idea what he getting into when he found those paintings and started asking how much they were worth.”
“All of that might be true, but his death is still not your fault.”
“How am I going tell his parents?” The wind blew against her hair, blowing strands across her face. She pushed them away. “This has to stop.”
He took her hand, wishing he could make all of this go away for her. Wishing he could take her back to the day before all of this happened. But they could only move forward through this together. “The local Italian police have the photo of Anna and are looking for her.”
“And if that’s not enough? That wasn’t enough for Marco. If she manages to get to my sister or me, or—”
“Don’t go there, Talia.”
He wished he could tell her that all of this was going to have a happy ending. Except he knew he couldn’t. Not when someone out there was bent on destruction.
He stared out across the water. The breeze from the water was the only thing relieving the heavy humidity hanging in the air. What if there was nothing he could do?
She squeezed his hand, then nodded as the boat approached the next floating jetty. “This is our stop. The shop’s just a couple minutes off the beaten path.”
Talia led them quickly away from the water, down a maze of narrow passageways lined with heavy wooden doors. He was going to need to call his boss and tell him what was going on, but he was worried that once he did, he’d be pulled off the case. Which was why for the moment it was better to figure things out on his own.