Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death by Sheila Connolly

I thought the playwrights did a good job of catching the flavor of the era—lots of intrigue, and people pretending to be something they weren’t.”
    “Don’t forget the murders, plural.”
    “Well, that went on too. Why the two, I wonder?”
    “Well, if I understood it, maybe, the baby that didn’t exist was supposed to be the heir to the count’s riches and worldly goods, which means that the pillow stood to inherit a fortune. Wonder how they would have handled that a few months down the line when no baby appeared?”
    “So who killed her? I mean, she was killed, right? She didn’t die of a stroke or heart attack or the vapors?”
    I squinted at Cynthia. “Do the vapors kill? No, don’t answer that. I think somebody fed her belladonna, although from what I’ve heard, the dying part of belladonna poisoning takes more than a minute or two and is a lot messier. You know, vomiting and stuff.”
    “Hard to stage, on short notice. Consider it artistic license: she was poisoned. So who slipped it to her?”
    “Either the count’s son—there was a son there, wasn’t there?—or his faithful servant, or somebody he paid to do it to throw us all off course. Which worked very well.”
    “So who killed the count, outside?”
    “Uhh …” For the life of me I couldn’t come up with an explanation.
    Cynthia laughed at my confusion. “Oh, come on—admit you enjoyed it.”
    “Kind of. It was fun watching the actors enjoy themselves. I didn’t expect it from a few of the people up there.”
    “People can change over time. And fun never gets old. What’s the agenda for tomorrow?”
    “Firenze,” I said, rolling the syllables on my tongue. “I haven’t been there since right after my senior year. I always thought I’d go back, but then life kind of happened.”
    “I know what you mean. I haven’t done half as much traveling—I mean as a tourist, not just for business—as I always thought I would. I was in Florence once too. What I remember is the Duomo, which you could see from everywhere. The Ponte Vecchio and the goldsmiths there. A place that made incredible lasagna …”
    “You don’t remember the museums?” I asked.
    Cynthia smiled. “I remember them as being very large, with lots of art hanging everywhere, most of which was boring. Oh, sure, there were a few high points, but beyond that I was hot and my feet hurt.”
    “Sounds like the Uffizi,” I said. “It’s huge. You kind of have to pace yourself and not try to look at everything. If you don’t, you burn out fast and then you miss the good stuff.”
    “Now you tell me. I don’t know how many museums I can take tomorrow. I may just find a table out of the sun and a cool drink, and sit and watch the world go by.”
    It sounded like a nice idea, but I thought I owed it to the former me to visit old friends—Botticelli, Bronzino, Michelangelo—and see if they still meant anything to me. “Dibs on the first shower.”
    And so we settled in for the night, with a busy day ahead of us.

Chapter 6
     
    I awoke before Cynthia again the next morning and lay there fuming at myself. Why couldn’t my body take advantage of this rare opportunity to sleep late? And if I couldn’t sleep, what was I supposed to do with my time? Read? It seemed wrong to travel all the way to Italy to read a book that I could read at home. If I practiced yoga this would be a good time to do that, but I’d never taken it up. A stroll around the grounds? Maybe. There were parts I hadn’t seen, like a swimming pool someone had mentioned. I could go study an olive tree or a grapevine up close. There was said to be a church dedicated to a local martyr—St. Cresci, was it?—at the top of the hill beyond; he’d achieved his status when somebody cut his head off.
    Mostly I wished there was a way to get a cup of coffee without disrupting the staff’s preparations for our breakfast. At least today the time for breakfast had been moved up to seven thirty so we could all