To her relief, Beatrix’s door was opened almost instantly by a man who looked like a butler from Downton Abbey.
Quickly she stepped inside the courtyard, for a moment forgetting everything else as she looked around in wonder. Water splashed down a multitiered fountain worthy of the palace of Versailles; white fairy lights twinkled in the bare tree branches and along the high stone walls. At the other end of the courtyard, golden light spilled from the open doors of the palazzo, and Olivia was reminded of the heavenly light in Titian’s painting. The Assumption of Olivia, she thought absurdly.
The butler wished her a good evening as he took her invitation, and Olivia walked toward the light, where a maid dressed to match the butler in her Downton Abbey-ness appeared and asked for her coat. Now feeling like Cinderella going to the ball, Olivia climbed the wide marble stairs and entered a piano nobile even grander than Silvio’s. Above her, huge Murano glass chandeliers hung from a ceiling painted with mythical scenes. Priceless paintings adorned richly colored walls, and precious antiques lined the walls.
At the very far end, outside the windows, the dome of the Salute was lit up against a purple night sky. A string quartet tuned up in front of the French doors, and a young woman dressed in the exact same costume as her own, minus the mask, rushed toward her.
“My first guest!” she cried.
Olivia could see that Beatrix shared Alessandro’s good looks, though while Alessandro was tall, Beatrix couldn’t have been more than five feet.
“Thanks for coming!” Beatrix exclaimed, throwing her arms around Olivia. “I think it must be good luck that my first guest looks exactly like me! We could be twins! I have to get my cousin Roberto. Roberto! Roberto! Come here and take a picture!”
A young man in Renaissance costume complete with wig instantly appeared and, dutifully pulling an iPhone from the pocket of his brocade doublet, took their picture.
“Wonderful!” Beatrix exclaimed, turning to Olivia. “Now let me guess who you are. Rosanna? No, she has short hair. Adriana?”
Olivia shook her head; she’d yet to say a word.
Beatrix peered into her eyes. “I don’t know anyone with eyes that color. Such an unusual shade of violet.” She crinkled her nose. “Wait. I know! You’re the girl my cousin Alessandro mentioned last night at the recital!”
Olivia sighed. So much for her costume.
“It is you!” Beatrix exclaimed, as she stood on her toes and kissed Olivia on both cheeks. “The girl with eyes the color of violet Murano glass. Oh my God, that was so, so romantic! Absolutely everyone is dying of curiosity. Roberto, fetch her a glass of champagne. No one can believe Alessandro has finally met someone new. After Katarina died . . . Oh no!” she exclaimed, clapping a plump hand over her mouth. “Maybe I shouldn’t say anything. You know about Katarina?”
“Yes, a little . . .”
“Well, I don’t want to get into any trouble. But after she died, he was so heartbroken, we didn’t think he’d ever fall in love again. And yet, here you are! I don’t blame him—you are so absolutely beautiful.” She clasped her hands together and, seeming unable to contain her glee, jumped up and down.
Olivia couldn’t remember ever having such an enthusiastic reception. “I don’t know how you can tell anything under all this stuff . . .”
“Oh, I can see enough to tell you’re very pretty. Besides, I saw you last night at the concert. I wanted to meet you, but you disappeared into thin air! I was so disappointed, and then Alessandro said you had to go to America today.” Beatrix raised herself back onto her toes and peered into Olivia’s eyes again. “He is so right. What eyes! ‘Eyes the color of violet Murano glass.’ I love that line. But,” she said in a mock-serious tone as she dropped back to her true height. “I should also tell you that I am hideously jealous.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m madly in love with Alessandro, and he refuses to marry me. I said, why not? Cousins do marry. But he said it would be more like marrying his kid sister. I told him that didn’t bother the ancient Romans and Greeks, nor the Egyptians, for that matter, but he won’t hear of it. Now Roberto here”—Roberto had just returned with a champagne flute in each hand—“is also my cousin, on my mother’s side. He wouldn’t have any problem marrying me, would you, darling?”
“Just say the word,” he said, handing them each a glass. “But you know I’d only be marrying you for your money.”
“You only say that to save face because you know it’ll never happen, even if I do love you to bits. But if all Alessandro wanted was my money, I wouldn’t care. Alas, he doesn’t need it. A billionaire cop, how sexy is that?”
A billionaire? Olivia thought. Until last night, she’d assumed he was a cop on a cop’s salary. When she learned he belonged to a race-car dynasty, she’d known he had to be rich, but a billionaire? Surely Beatrix was exaggerating—she clearly wasn’t one for subtlety.
Not waiting for Olivia’s answer, Beatrix plunged on. “Can you believe he’s a billionaire, a cop, a concert pianist, and a race-car driver?” She turned to Roberto. “What did you call him? It was another word for a Renaissance man.”
“A polymath,” Roberto said. “There are lots of examples of actors and musicians who are race-car drivers.”
“Really?” Beatrix said. “Like who?”
“Paul Walker, for starters.”
“Oh yes, of course. That was so sad when he died. I made Alessandro promise he’d be extra careful after that. Who else?
“Paul Newman, Elio de Angelis, Rowan Atkinson—”
“Mr. Bean is a race-car driver?” Beatrix exclaimed. “That’s amazing. But when Alessandro gets out of his car and takes off his helmet, you can hear a sigh go up from every woman in the stands. It’s all I can do to not swoon on the spot.” She flipped open a painted fan and started to wave it wildly as if to prevent herself from collapsing at the very thought of him. “I bet that doesn’t happen to Mr. Bean.” She snapped her fan shut. “No. If I can’t have Alessandro, I won’t have anyone. Except maybe a pirate or a sultan.”
“There isn’t a pirate or sultan anywhere on God’s green earth brave enough to marry you,” Roberto said wryly.
“Perhaps not—but this is Venice and doesn’t count as part of God’s green earth. I’m counting on at least one pirate here tonight brave enough to let me trim his jib.” She laughed and drained her champagne in a single gulp that would have put the hard-drinking Blackbeard himself to shame. Alessandro had warned her that Beatrix’s parties could be wild, and Olivia could tell Beatrix wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It was so nice of you to come early so we could have a little chat. Alessandro told you he’s going to be late, didn’t he?”
Olivia decided a nod would suffice.
“He texted me about an hour ago. Some trouble at the airport earlier today. A drug bust or something—one of the suspects fled the scene. But he promised to come later. Do you want me to text him and let him know you’re already here?”
“No, no,” Olivia said quickly, thinking if he knew she was here, he might be obligated to bring backup and arrest her. “He’s busy. He’ll be here soon enough. When he arrives, will you point him out to me? I may not recognize him if he’s in costume.”
“Of course. Though I probably won’t have to. It’s pretty hard to disguise those good looks,” Beatrix said with a wink as a noisy group entered the room. “Oh look, more people at last! Let’s get this party going! Maestro, let’s hear some Vivaldi! Roberto, you’re to look after . . . Oh my God, I never even asked your name!”
Olivia thought quickly again. Had her name been plastered all over the news? “I’d like to stay incognito until Alessandro shows up, if that’s okay with you.”
“Absolutely. This is a masquerade, after all. If anyone asks, I’ll just refer to you as the mystery woman. You have to see my shrine to Alessandro in the study,” she said over her shoulder as she bounced off to greet the guests now pouring into the room.
“I apologize for my cousin’s lack of subtlety,” Roberto said. “She takes a little getting used to.”
“She’s charming,” Olivia said. On anyone else, Beatrix’s relentless glee would have seemed artificial, but on Beatrix it seemed natural and unaffected.
“Come on. I’ll show you the view.” He held out his arm to Olivia. “Your Italian is perfect, but do I detect an accent? American, perhaps?”
Olivia was saved from answering when Beatrix, now flanked by not one but two swashbuckling pirates, called out to Roberto for more champagne.
“Don’t worry about me,” Olivia said. “I think you have your hands full already.”
Roberto rolled his eyes. “Why do I have the feeling that before this night is over, there’ll be a sword fight on the balcony that ends with someone in the canal?”
Relieved to be left alone, Olivia stepped out onto the narrow stone balcony. Below her on the canal, gondolas bobbed on the waves left in the wake of a lumbering vaporetto. A water taxi pulled up below, spilling out dandies and their damsels onto the dock.
Looking to her right, where she could see Silvio’s balcony, she remembered standing there on her first night in Venice, blissfully unaware she’d soon be caught up in a drug-smuggling ring.
Two women in powdered wigs and elaborate regalia joined her on the balcony. They wished her a good evening but didn’t introduce themselves. Like her, they wore masks. If I could go back in time three hundred years, Olivia thought, this scene would be the same: the view of the Salute, the costumed men and women, the string quartet playing Vivaldi . . .
“Did the police release the woman’s name yet?” one asked.
“Yes,” said the other. “No one I recognized, so it didn’t stick.”
Olivia froze. Were they talking about her? She grasped the cold stone railing and tried to look as if she were just enjoying the view.
“Come on. You can’t tell me a woman’s body was pulled out of a dumpster and then not remember her name. That’s mean.”
Okay, they weren’t talking about her. At least not yet. But she didn’t know a woman had been found dead!
“She worked at the airport. Beatrix said there was a drug bust there today too. That’s why Alessandro isn’t here yet.”
“Speaking of Alessandro, have you seen that YouTube video?”
“Of course. I think everyone has seen it. I love the comments. You can tell the ones from the guys because they’re all about how the police are stupid, but the ones from the women are all OMG—is that cop gorgeous or what! Then someone posted he was also a race-car driver known as ‘the Billionaire of Venice,’ and now there’s a Facebook fan page. I think he’s just become Italy’s most eligible bachelor. Maybe all of Europe’s!”
“What do you mean, just? He’s always been, except for the year he was married, and even then. When she died, there wasn’t a woman who didn’t wonder—”
“Shhh. How do you know he isn’t standing right behind you?”
“But he’s going to be late, right?”
“I hope that business at the airport doesn’t keep him away all night. A suspect fled the scene.”
“I’m sure they’ve got him by now.”
Not him, Olivia thought—her.
“I don’t know. It is Carnival. Just buy a mask, and you could hide out for a week. The suspect could be at this very party and no one would ever know.”
“It sounds like an Agatha Christie mystery. How much do you want to bet one of the guests is going to be found impaled with a cocktail fork . . .”
They started to giggle.
“And Alessandro will gather us all in the library and say, ‘The murderer is in this room,’ and we’ll all look at each other suspiciously . . .”
Olivia went back inside to the significantly more crowded piano nobile. Noisier now, too: the string quartet was in danger of being drowned out. A waiter offered her Prosecco, but she declined, setting her empty glass on the tray.
The party wasn’t confined to the piano nobile, and Olivia slipped into one of the rooms that surrounded it. She’d kill some time by finding the study and viewing this “shrine to Alessandro” Beatrix had referred to.
She had no trouble finding it, occupying an ornate antique desk. All that was missing were candles. Beside a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, a constant parade of photos faded in and out of a digital frame.
Alessandro standing next to a race car, wearing a leather jacket with the car’s name emblazoned on it, helmet in hand. When Alessandro gets out of his car and takes off his helmet, you can hear a sigh go up from every woman in the stands. She had no trouble believing Beatrix on that point.
Alessandro standing next to the car with a trophy in hand. Alessandro wins again, the photo was captioned.
Alessandro in a tuxedo standing with Beatrix dressed in a glittering gown in an equally glittering ballroom. Christmas Gala for the Save Venice Foundation.
Alessandro caught in profile looking out over the lagoon, his expression thoughtful and serious. No caption.
Alessandro at the piano, the lid reflecting the light of overhead chandeliers. Alessandro plays Mozart for Mama’s birthday.
Alessandro at the Venice Film Festival, sharing a laugh with George Clooney. The two sexiest men alive!
Alessandro standing with his arm around another woman. Alessandro and Katarina’s engagement party: the Billionaire of Venice finds his princess.
And now Olivia had a face to put to his wife. A beautiful face. And he was looking at her with adoration. She felt a moment of unease that had nothing to do with her current predicament.
She flipped through the scrapbook. The clippings followed the themes of the photos: galas, racetrack wins, old concert programs. Nothing about his wife’s murder. No, that wouldn’t be kept in a scrapbook such as this. As a matter of fact, there was a gap of a couple of years, and then Alessandro Rossi of Race-Car Fortune Joins Guardia di Finanza.
A man dressed like Napoleon chased a giggling Josephine Bonaparte into the room and pushed her onto the settee. Oblivious to Olivia’s presence, Napoleon nuzzled his face into Josephine’s breasts, which swelled over the top of her low-cut dress. I warn you it’ll be a bit wild, Alessandro had said. And the night was still young.
Olivia closed the book and went to stand in the doorway. There had to be close to a hundred people in the room now, everyone in costume. It was testament to the size of the room that it hardly seemed crowded. She saw Beatrix talking to a plague doctor and a masked sultan. Olivia waved, and Beatrix, excusing herself, came hurrying over.
“Have you seen Alessandro yet?” Olivia asked hopefully.
“No, not yet.” Beatrix said. “I thought maybe I’d found my sultan for the evening, but that was the art dealer Silvio Milan I was talking to, and he seems to be with that plague doctor. First time I’ve heard of a female plague doctor. Not a very sexy costume, but maybe that’s the idea, and she isn’t wearing anything underneath!” Beatrix giggled. “Still, to go out like that with Silvio Milan—she must be very confident in her femininity.”
Or she doesn’t want to be recognized, Olivia thought to herself. Maybe she should have worn a plague-doctor outfit herself.
“Anyway,” Beatrix continued, “Silvio owns a palazzo just a few doors away. Would you believe some of the men who work for him were arrested for drug smuggling this afternoon? The police even suspected Silvio! Silvio says they’re looking for another of his employees, a woman. Can you believe it? She was supposed to be taking some glass to his art gallery in New York. But she ran away from the police, and no one knows where she is. I bet Alessandro’s caught her by now. Small world, isn’t it? And Venice is even smaller.” She grabbed Olivia by the hand. “Come on. Let me introduce you to Silvio. He’s very important in the art world.”
Olivia didn’t know what to say. Silvio would recognize her eyes, if not her voice. She started to make some lame excuse about being tired when Beatrix dropped her hand.
“Oh my God! There’s Alessandro now! Wait here, I’ll go get him!”
Olivia stepped back into the shadows of the study doorway. Napoleon and Josephine were gone, and the room was empty. Alessandro was wearing his jeans and black leather jacket over a dark shirt. But it wasn’t just the lack of costume that made him look out of place. Among all the glitter and gaiety, he was serious and tense, his hair looking as if he’d run his fingers through it too many times that day.
“Would you believe that guy in the silver mask is Johnny Depp?” said a woman dressed as a mermaid complete with sparkly green scales.
“Who cares?” said her companion, a sexy peacock. “Did you see what just walked into the room? Who is that god?”
“God is right,” the mermaid agreed. “That’s Alessandro Rossi. And he’s as gorgeous as his photos. I never quite believed they were real.”
“He’s the only person here not in costume,” said the peacock.
“I should hope not. It would be a crime against humanity to cover that face with a mask.”
By now, every woman in the room had turned to look, a wave of murmurs rippling through the crowd. Beatrix all but ran across the room to welcome him, nearly colliding with a waiter balancing a tray full of champagne glasses. The waiter, barely flinching, pirouetted gracefully to avoid her and continued on his way. She launched herself at Alessandro and covered his face with kisses. As she was at least a foot shorter, this was accomplished by jumping up and down.
Beatrix whispered something in his ear, and Alessandro started across the room toward Olivia, his path blocked as people stepped forward to greet him with kisses on both cheeks.
Heart pounding, Olivia tried to rehearse what she would say to him, but no words took shape in her mind. This wasn’t going to work. He thought she was guilty. It was going to be so humiliating to be arrested in front of all these people!
She backed into the shadows, placing her hand on a chair to steady herself as he entered the room. “Come with me,” he said in a low voice as he took her arm.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Don’t take me out there.”
“I won’t. We’re going to calmly walk to the other end of this room and go somewhere where we can talk in private. Now come quietly, and hopefully this won’t make the gossip magazines too. Italian Billionaire Cop Dates Drug Smuggler.” There was no amusement in his tone, so she walked with him into a smaller room lined with art, art she would have noticed any other time, but tonight all she saw were those angry eyes. Why had she thought this meeting would go any differently?
He closed the door behind them. She raised her hand to remove her mask when he caught her wrist and held it in a firm grasp. “If I see a certain Olivia Moretti, I have to arrest her. So it’s good I don’t see her.”
“I can explain,” she said desperately.
“Maybe you can start by explaining why she ran away from me at the airport.”
“I . . . she doesn’t know. She just went with the crowd. She wasn’t aware of what she was doing . . . I didn’t know the drugs were in the suitcase,” she said. “It wasn’t even the same suitcase. You have to believe—”
“Stop! It’s okay. I do believe you,” he said, taking her into his arms, tearing off her mask, and covering her mouth with his.
She kissed him back urgently. First with relief, then with desire. And he thought Beatrix’s parties were wild before . . .
“God,” he swore. “If there’s anything good in this, it’s that I didn’t have to wait a week to kiss you again.”
“I know I joked about calling in a bomb threat, but I didn’t set this up, I swear!”
“I’m sorry I sounded angry right now. It was wrong. It’s me I’m angry with. I’ve been kicking myself for letting you get away and putting you in danger. Did I wonder for a moment whether you were involved? Of course. But I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“You were just doing your job, and I did have a suitcase full of heroin.”
They both smiled at the absurdity.
“I’ve been searching for you all day,” he said, “praying I wouldn’t find you in a dumpster too. We picked up both Dino and Luigi, and we’re ninety-nine percent sure Luigi is innocent, but Dino is not. We searched Dino’s place and found the red carry-on bag you described.”
“I could identify that bag.”
“That’s good. We suspect Dino switched the glass into the one he gave you. Everything was timed for you to arrive at the last minute, since there was only a small window of opportunity to get the suitcase around Security. We have Benito too. He’s Dino’s cousin. We persuaded him to tell us everything he knew or we’d charge him with being an accessory to murder. What is it detectives say in American movies—he sang like a canary? Anyway, he didn’t seem to mind turning his cousin in. We just don’t know if we have everyone, or how many details Benito isn’t privy to.”
“So now what? Do you still have to arrest me?”
“Technically, yes. But I think I can convince my boss to let me take you to my family’s villa in the country. You’ll be safe there.” He smiled. “We’ll call it house arrest. And if I’m really lucky, you’ll let me kiss you again properly.”
She managed a smile in return. “I’ll get my coat.”
“We’ll take the servants’ staircase. We’ll never get through that crowd,” he said, taking off his jacket and holding it out for her.
“But you’ll be cold,” she protested.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, gently replacing her mask and taking her hand. “I’m glad I gave you that invitation. Still, it seemed like a chance in a million you’d be here . . .”
Outside, a fine misty rain was falling. From somewhere above came the sound of fireworks.
“We’re going to take the vaporetto to Piazzale Roma,” he said. “My car is there. But I don’t want you seen with me. Someone might be hoping I’ll lead them to you. It would be better if I had a costume, but it’s too late for that. I’ll follow you to the vaporetto stop. Do you know which one to take?”
She nodded.
“Good. Take it all the way to Piazzale Roma and meet me at the other side of the ticket office. I’ll be right behind you the whole time. Got all that?”
She nodded again and turned to go, but he still had her hand in his. He brought it up to his lips and kissed it. “It’s going to be okay, I swear.” He released her hand, and after taking a deep breath, she reluctantly started down the narrow street, trusting he wouldn’t lose her.
When she arrived at the busy vaporetto stop, water was lapping over the dock. “Just a slight shift in wind, and we’ll hear the high-water sirens,” said an old man in the line ahead of her.
The shelter rocked as the boat pulled up and the attendant slid open the gate, ordering, “Inside, inside.” Olivia pressed through the crowded deck into the equally crowded cabin, where she was forced to stand in the aisle. There was no sign of Alessandro.
Most of the passengers got off at the Rialto, where the restaurants and bars were blazing with light, and by the time they reached Piazzale Roma, she was almost alone.
Feeling panicked, she disembarked and walked through the brightly lit ticket office to the other side.
There, waiting for her as promised, was Alessandro.