Pasta Imperfect - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,54

excuse me? I see something that needs my attention. I'll get back to you later. Okay?"

"Ofcourse, darling." And then in a throaty, seductive undertone, "Ti vorrei mangiare per colazione. Ti voglio. Ti amo." Click.

"Etienne? Wait! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" I was pretty sure ti amo meant "I love you," but I had no idea what the other words meant. Nuts! Maybe Jackie would know.

I stashed my phone, dug out my camera, and scrambled across the terrace to find the group lined up at the door of the cathedral and passing through quickly. I caught Keely's attention and waved my camera at her. "You want me to take your picture?"

"I'd rather you just keep your distance," she said, backing away from me.

"It's the skin thing, isn't it? Hey, I'm on a new medication. It's under control."

"Yeah, well, I was itching a lot last night, and if it turns out to be fatal, I'm suing!"

I smiled serenely and nodded at her tight slacks and skimpy top. "Looks like you spent some time shopping yesterday."

She glanced down at her outfit and popped a huge pink bubble that she sucked back into her mouth. "Duh? I had to go shopping after what you pulled on me yesterday." She scratched her shoulder and worked her way across her collarbone to her throat.

"Looks as if a lot of people went shopping," I said, indicating the stragglers in their new togs filing through the cathedral door. "But I guess Jeannette Bowles never found the time."

"Jeez. Jeannette. Too bad about her accident. She was hanging around Gabriel so much yesterday, I thought I'd never get him alone, and then...splat. Gross way to die."

"I heard the three of you climbed the Duomo together."

She worked her gum as if it were a wad of chewing tobacco. "Yeah, we were both following him around yesterday, but she cornered him at the baptistry, so when I saw them get in line at the cathedral, I hopped right in there behind them. Did she ever hog the conversation though. Yak yak yak about her food columns and stupid awards. Talk about being a shameless self-promoter."

"Sounded to me as if she'd won as many awards as you."

"My awards actually mean something in the romance world. So she gets a food critics' award. Who cares what she thinks of the foot-long hot dogs on Mount Washington? What does that have to do with romance?"

Nope. I wasn't going there. "She'd won a few romance awards. Seemed to me she was providing you with some pretty stiff competition."

"No way. She was way out of her league. I'm a veteran at this."

"Were you on the gallery when she fell?"

Keely slitted her eyes at me. "Who are you? The police? Jeez, you ask more questions than they did. No, I wasn't on the gallery when she fell. I got sick of listening to her brag about herself, so I split. But I split too late to avoid the police. I guess they hadn't identified the body yet, so they wanted to know if I was missing a companion. But even when I told them no, they still needed a bunch of information from me. What a pain."

"So the last time you saw Jeannette, she was on the gallery with Gabriel?"

"She was telling him how wonderful her writing was. It was nauseating." She blew another bubble. "I probably could have been more helpful if the police had told me that the woman who jumped was wearing a peach sweaterdress, but they said she was wearing orange."

"It was coral."

"Unh-uh. Peach."

"It was coral! I should know. It was my dress!"

"No kidding?" She scratched the back of her neck. "Well, I'm not surprised the police said orange. Men never get their shades right. They think almond is beige. Rust is red. Good thing electrical wiring comes in primary colors. That's probably added decades to the life expectancy of male electricians." She sighed. "That was some hot dress though. Gabriel even mentioned how great it looked on her...when he could get a word in edgewise."

"And she never mentioned it was my dress?"

Keely's eyes shifted nervously. She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "Well, she might have said something about the dress being yours, but I was pretty much tuning her out."

"So she told you the dress was mine, and you never bothered to tell her about my contagious skin condition?"

"Hey, you said it was under control!"

"It is! But you didn't know that yesterday! Why didn't you warn her?"

She stared me in the eye,