even more the food—the banquet’s Il Primo pasta: cannelioni stuffed with prosciutto cotto and fresh ricotta—Faith excused herself to freshen up. Their table overlooked the lake and they had been sitting, watching the surrounding towns disappear in the dusk. Stars above, mirrored in the surface of the lago, and spots of light from the shore seemed to enclose the group in a celestial cocoon. Of course some of their number were missing.
Olivia had sat the Rossis down with Tom and Faith upon their return and given an abbreviated version of events. It had been no accident that Olivia had signed up for Cucina della Rossi. She’d been selected for her food expertise. Both the Nashes and Jean-Luc were on a watch list, and recent activity picked up from the Internet suggested something big was being planned. Freddy’s death had confirmed it. He was on to them. Tom was able to identify one of his guards from photos taken when the police raided the farm building as the man he saw both in the Piazza Farnese and by the Duomo in Florence.
The Rossis were speechless and Olivia promised that someone would be out to talk with them further, but that they were under no suspicion themselves. They just happened to have an extremely bad neighbor. The plot was many years in the making, giving Jean-Luc, with his Napoleonic desk—Faith chided herself for missing that obvious clue—time to insinuate himself into the local scene. Likewise, the Nashes, also Corsicans, had done so in Britain, easy, as both had gone to school there. Faith learned that what she had overheard them speak in Montepulciano was not their own “pet language” but Corsu, the Corsican language. All those independent side trips had been to rendezvous with the other terrorists, particularly Jean-Luc. What had been a shock, an enormous shock, was that Roderick, the archetypal Wodehouse doddering clubman, was anything but—he had been the brains of the operation and, under his real name, was on Interpol’s most wanted list!
No one seemed to be missing the Nashes much. Before the group left for the farewell banquet, Francesca had convincingly explained that the couple sent regrets but had to leave early, as their travel plans had changed. Which was true. Likewise, Jean-Luc sent his regrets. Faith was sure he had many, but doubted they were for anything other than his thwarted plot and the loss of his magnificent villa.
The stall in the bathroom was occupied. Faith was about to leave and wait outside the door when she realized that whoever was using it was probably not engaged in the task for which it was designed; rather the woman inside was crying her heart out.
“Excuse me.” No, wait she knew this. “Scusi.” Now for the “Are you all right” part. Before she could put the phrase together, a trembling voice said, “Is that you, Faith?”
“Yes—Terry?”
The door opened; Terry Russo emerged, clutching a wad of toilet tissue that she had been using to stem the tide of her tears. Her mascara had run. She looked like the band Kiss on a rainy day. Given the frequency of this sort of emotional outpouring—at least on this trip—the woman really should be investing in waterproof makeup, Faith reflected.
“I don’t know what to do. You have everything so together. You and Tom. I thought we did, but—oh, Faith, have you ever thought your husband could do something so bad you couldn’t stay with him!”
She wasn’t crying out loud now, but the tears kept streaming down her cheeks, puddling in her neck, the toilet paper a sodden mess and useless. Faith took a packet of tissues from her purse and handed it to her.
“We’ve had our ups and downs—some pretty major ones, but I don’t know. I guess I’d trust he had a reason, and it had better be a pretty darn good one.”
That brought a small smile.
“We’re never going to see each other again. That’s the way it is on trips, so I can tell you, and besides you’re kind of like a priest yourself, being married to one.”
Faith had never thought of it this way, and didn’t really want to, but she did want to hear what had happened to change the Russos’ course from happily ever after to Splitsville.
“A week before we were due to leave, the doorbell rang and it was a young man—early thirties, nice-looking. He asked for Len. It was a Saturday afternoon and he was in the backyard putting the tomatoes in.”
Faith nodded. Jersey tomatoes were