over her shoulder. Pointing up to Francesca’s studio, Roberto escorted the visitor around the massive travertine fountain and led her up the front stairs.
When Francesca heard the footsteps in the hall, she walked over to her desk, closed her laptop computer, then crossed the polished terra cotta tiles to open the door, even before her visitor knocked.
Roberto hovered behind the woman, who flipped open a credential case containing an ID card and a gold shield. Her left hand was bandaged, and there were a few scrapes on her face. “I’m Sydney Fitzpatrick, Special Agent, FBI. And you’re Francesca Santarella?”
“Yes. Come in.” She glanced at Roberto, smiled, and said, “We’ll be fine. Thank you.”
Roberto, ever protective, nodded, then headed back down the stairs as she smiled at the agent. Even though Francesca had never come into contact with a federal agent before, she had no reason to doubt her visitor’s identity. Francesca might be American born and bred, but this was Rome, and during her prolonged stay, Francesca had rubbed elbows with famous scholars, notorious novelists, the embassy crowd—many of whom she suspected were spies—minor royals, even foreign ministers of hostile countries, whom she had guided on special tours of Rome’s ancient monuments. It was all part of what Francesca counted as “Roman experiences.”
Of course that didn’t mean she didn’t examine the ID; she did. And then she asked, “And what brings the FBI all the way to Rome?”
“Alessandra Harden.”
Francesca glanced over toward the package, still sitting on her desk, then back at the agent, stating the obvious. “You’re the person to whom I spoke on the phone this morning…”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Griffin’s associate.”
“Yes.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of the FBI’s interest in Alessandra, but she wasn’t about to make a decision about it until she’d had her morning tea. “Would you like a cup of tea? I was just on my way to the kitchen, when you arrived. The Academy won’t let us have hot plates in our studios. Might burn the place down, and where would we all be?”
“I’d love a cup.”
Francesca led the agent out the door, locking it behind them.
As they rounded the corner of the long hall, the agent gazed up at the forty-foot-high ceilings. “Amazing building. It reminds me of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.”
“Probably because it was designed by some of the same architects. A bit of a mystery surrounds them, in fact, because one was murdered. Stanford White,” she explained, as they walked past open bedroom doors where various Fellows of the Academy were lolling about. “Jealous rival. Trial of the century, circa 1906. Actually White was dead when this place was built a few years later, but his name was still used by the firm. Kitchen’s at the end of the hall. We can talk there, since most of the Fellows won’t be using it at this hour.”
The kitchen—another huge room with tall windows—was happily empty, and Francesca immediately filled a battered teakettle with water, then set it on the stove. Dishes, some washed, were piled haphazardly in the dish rack, others with congealing egg were piled in the sink. Francesca moved the offending plates with a clatter. “Sorry about the mess,” she said, filling a clean teapot with hot water from the tap, then setting it aside.
As the teakettle came to a boil, Francesca started rinsing some of the dishes in the sink. That done, she dumped out the water used to warm the teapot, then spooned in two heaps of Darjeeling. “So, what is it you need to know?”
“How did you and Alessandra meet?”
An odd question. But since she was curious as to where this was leading, she decided to answer. “We first met when she was visiting her father during spring break last year. The ambassador held a party—just across the street there; you can see the garden from the window—and invited some of the senior Fellows from the academy. My interest in ancient history and archaeology mirrored Alessandra’s own academic interests. Of course, that wasn’t the only interest we had in common. We both held a distinct distrust for big government,” she said, pouring boiling water over the tea leaves to let them steep for a few minutes.
“As in government conspiracy?”
Francesca returned the kettle to the stove, glancing over at the agent, somewhat surprised. “Yes. How did you guess?”
“I spoke with her professor at UVA. Did she ever mention anything about any conspiracy that came from personal knowledge?”
“No. I think her suspicions had more to do with rigged