Deadly to the Sight by Edward Sklepowich Page B

you’re looking for,” the Contessa told her, “you won’t find it in one of these places.”
    â€œUnfortunately, Barbara, I don’t have your large purse. Nor your good taste, I am sure. Please indulge me. I need a special piece of lace for my costume for your ball. I will be Scheherazade, and wear a lovely lace veil instead of a mask, yes!”
    While the Contessa waited impatiently as Frieda started to look through the lace items, she felt a tug at her coat sleeve. Turning around, she was face to face with Nina Crivelli. It would have been almost comical to the Contessa, the way the old lace maker seemed to be popping up out of thin air—comical, that is, if she didn’t find it more than a little alarming. And in a few minutes she had even more reason to be dismayed.
    â€œYou are kind and generous, Contessa,” Crivelli said in Italian without any preliminary.
    A foul odor emanated from the old woman, a smell of decay and death. She lifted a gnarled hand in the air, with one finger pointing toward the Contessa. The Contessa drew back. The woman gave her a mocking smile as her finger moved slowly through the air between them. Crivelli nodded and put her hand down.
    â€œIs poor woman, Nina Crivelli,” the lace maker said in English. “Money.”
    She rubbed the fingers of one hand together, still with her mocking smile.
    The Contessa made no response except to open her purse and take out three ten-thousand-lira notes, feeling a sense of desperation as she did it. If this was all she needed to get rid of the woman for good, she thought, she would give her double or triple that amount. She was, in fact, about to extract another ten thousand lire, when she noticed Crivelli’s reaction.
    She was staring at the money in the Contessa’s hand with her alarming eyes. Whether this was because she was offended at being offered such a relatively small amount or any money at all, despite her plea, it was impossible to determine.
    â€œLater!” Crivelli said in Italian. She slipped behind the neighboring lace kiosk. The Contessa waited for her to come back, but she appeared to have vanished.
    Frieda didn’t seem to have observed the encounter, but all the way back to Venice she kept asking the Contessa if she was feeling all right. The Contessa’s halfhearted assurances that she was fine didn’t seem to satisfy the German woman, who was reluctant to part with her new friend.
    Five days later, after making the necessary arrangements for the changes at the little house on Burano and Frieda’s smooth move there from the Palazzo Uccello, the Contessa took the train to London. She was caught up in visits, shopping, theaters, and museums. Only at odd moments did she think about her encounters with Nina Crivelli. When she did, however, she felt the same sense of premonition as she had that day on Burano, a premonition that neither distance nor time had weakened.
    As a consequence, it wasn’t a total surprise when one of the first things Vitale told her on her return was about the “strange old woman” who had been loitering outside the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini and who, on one occasion, had rung the bell and asked for her. Vitale had been cautious enough to inform the woman only that the Contessa was not at home and to ask for a message.
    There had been none.

11
    If the Contessa had no doubts that her path would cross with Nina Crivelli’s again, it wasn’t because of the nature of Venice, whose waterways and alleys and profusion of squares made privacy impossible as soon as you stepped out of your door. Nor was it because she was obliged to visit Frieda and thus was treading the even more public spaces of Burano where the old woman lived.
    Her certainty came from the echo in her mind of the lace maker’s urgent “later!,” which, now that she was back in Venice, sounded with a particularly disturbing loudness. Anxious to get the next