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Barry White sang to me at six o’clock in the morning. I forced my eyes open, groaned at my whiskey headache, and reached for my phone.
I intended to sound bright but came across more like Gollum coughing out, “Nick, hi.”
“Morning, Lise. Sorry for the early call. I was hoping you’d be up.”
“Had a late night celebrating at Gabe’s.”
“Oh, man, wish I could have been there.”
I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. Taking a deep breath, I said, “Nick. I have a confession. I called and spoke with Professor Gildersleeve.”
“I went by this morning to introduce myself in person, and he told me. That’s why I’m calling, Lise. What’s going on?” Instead of accusation, there was concern in his tone.
“There’s a lot going on.” My emotions started to get all jacked up. I tried to get control of it, but my voice was quavering. “That crazy fuck posing a woman like The Floating Ballerina, which, as we all know, was part of a case I was working. Not to mention that the same crazy fuck broke into my house while I was there, and—it’s—it’s all grating on my nerves. And... and...” My voice broke as I got to the meat of it. “And you’re not here, which is fine because of the fellowship, but you haven’t started the fellowship yet, because it begins in two fucking weeks.” My voice turned weepy and high-pitched. “You kept the fellowship from me until the last minute, and now add to it the fact that you left three weeks before your fellowship starts. And you didn’t tell me you were going early. That gives my ego a real boost.”
“Ah, Lise. I’m so sorry.”
“And I’m halfway across the world, questioning your motives and questioning whether you really are in Vienna, or maybe still here in—”
“What? San Marco? No, no. Why would I—”
“And then I’m wondering if we’re as rock solid as I thought, and if maybe you have someone on the side, and then worst of all I wondered—I wondered if... oh, fuck it.”
Nick groaned. “Shit, this is all my fault. When I originally accepted the fellowship, I arranged to come early and take in the sights. When you got mad at me for not telling you about the fellowship, I chickened out and couldn’t bring myself to tell you that little tidbit.”
A little of my anger started to rise up, but I managed to put a muzzle on it. “I think we need to have a serious talk.”
“Oh? Well, yeah, sure.”
“Not on the phone. In person. When we see each other. If I go to Vienna or when you get home.”
“Do you want me to come back now?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “Yeah, I’m coming back.”
“What about Vienna?”
“Screw Vienna.”
“Don’t you dare. I’d feel a million times worse if you gave up the fellowship.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “Are we—our relationship—is it in danger?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, then my stubbornness kicked in. “No. No, it’s not. I love you, and I know you love me. But maybe our relationship isn’t as strong as we thought.”
“Baby, we can fix that. Right?”
“Yeah. We can.”
“Hey, why don’t you come out now?” Nick said suddenly.
“Now? I really don’t have any cases right now. But it’d be awfully expensive.”
“I’ve got money,” Nick said. “And a steady paycheck and a place to stay. Hell, you’d put a lot of miles between you and that crazy-ass killer.”
Wow, being with Nick and not having to worry about Michelangelo, a win-win situation. “It’s not a dormitory room, is it? I don’t think I could go back to dorm life.”
Nick laughed. “Picky, picky, picky. But no, I have an apartment. A little on the small size, but nice. It’s a couple of blocks from the university.”
“Sounds good.”
“Best of all, it has a really big bed and a very comfortable mattress you just sink into.”
I grinned. “You sold me.”
“So you’ll come out?”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, Lise. Get out of town, at least until they catch the guy,” Nick said.
“Yeah, okay. God, I miss you, Nick.”
“And I miss you.”
“Give me a few days to plan things, get a flight and all.”
“Sure. It’s so romantic here. We’ll have a great time. Hell, you can stay as long as you want, for my entire fellowship if you want.”
I was instantly excited. I hated to leave my business, but to spend time in Vienna with Nick... well, it was one of those things in life that shouldn’t be passed up.
“It’ll be great,” I said. “But I’d like to get one thing off my chest. No more secrets between us, okay?”
“I’ve learned my lesson.”
Knowing I would be heading to Austria made both of us giddy, and I felt warm as we talked about it. When we hung up, I felt that buoyancy that love could instill in a person. Soon, I could say goodbye to San Marco and the psycho killer, and hello to Nick and Vienna. Maybe I felt a little guilty about saying that we shouldn’t have any more secrets when I hadn’t told him about my brief suspicion that he was Michelangelo. I would tell him, but that was one of those in-person kind of things.
I got some ibuprofen, swallowed them with a glass of OJ, and decided another hour or two of sleep would be beneficial. Sliding under my comforter, I cuddled into myself. Before I nodded off, my mind replayed the phone call with Nick, then it went back to dinner at Gabe’s and his studio. I saw his new painting, the covered one where I’d seen the hand he’d painted, just as I touched on sleep, then I was instantly awake and sitting up in bed. I was panting hard, envisioning Beverly Raine mounted on her wall. Angela Lopez popped up next, dead and positioned as the Little Mermaid in the fountain in the park. Her beauty, her wounds, her blood.
I reached for my phone and brought up a number on my contacts.
After three rings, Baker answered, “Norwood. Thanks for waking me up.”
“You’re welcome, Baker,” I said in monotone. “Angela Lopez...”
“Yeah. What about her?”
“Is there anything I don’t know about the crime?” I asked.
“Whaddaya mean?”
My mouth was dry and my voice husky. “Anything you’ve been keeping quiet? Anything about blood?”
“What are you onto, Norwood?”
By the sound of his voice, I knew I was looking in the right place. Louder, I said, “Come on, Baker. All that blood—not all of it was hers.”
“What are you getting at?”
I shouted into the phone, “Just tell me!”
After several seconds of silence, Baker sniffed. “Yeah, sure, why not. Sometimes we hold back certain details. You know, helps verify if someone confesses. If they don’t know that little detail, then they’re just a crazy person seeking attention or something. Sometimes that unknown detail can lead to figuring out who the guilty party is. We have one with Angela Lopez, though you seem to have figured it out.”
“The blood?” I asked.
“Yeah. Some on her face, around her mouth, and on the duct tape gag. Most was her blood, of course, but a little was his. We think she gnawed through the tape and bit the killer bad enough that he bled. What’s this all about, Norwood?”
My head spun enough that I felt dizzy. A remembered image came to mind—the stain on Gabe’s white long-sleeve T-shirt. I’d thought it was fra diavolo sauce, but now I realized it had been redder than that.
“Norwood! Why the call? What’s up?”
And the bartender at Coyote Lick had mentioned the man he’d thrown out had gauze wrapped around his arm above the wrist.
“Lise?”
Gabe had been cryptic when our dinner party ended, when he’d said I would always be able to put two and two together to find a solution.
“Lise, you there?”
My mind bounced back and forth between the covered painting in Gabe’s studio and Beverly Raine mounted on her wall. Her right arm was outstretched, the fingers of her right hand relaxed, except for the index finger, which seemed to have been pointing. Her red nail polish...
“Lise?”
I closed my eyes. “I know who Michelangelo is.”