Stephanie silently wondered if Daniel had any inkling of how self-centered he was himself. “I hope you are not leading up to saying I shouldn’t have gone into the egg room.”
“No, not at all,” Daniel admitted. “I understand that you did what you felt you had to do. I’m just glad that ultimately our project hasn’t been derailed. But this episode has made me realize something else. We’ve been so busy and preoccupied that we haven’t taken a moment to ourselves other than to eat.” Daniel put his head back and looked up through the palm fronds at the star-speckled sky. “I mean, here we are in the Bahamas in the middle of the winter, and we haven’t taken advantage of it in any way or form.”
“Are you suggesting something in particular?” Stephanie asked. Occasionally, Daniel surprised her.
“I am,” he answered. He took his napkin off his lap and plopped it onto his dinner plate. “Neither of us seems particularly hungry, and we’re both stressed. Why don’t we take a moonlit stroll up through the hotel’s formal garden and visit that medieval cloister we saw from a distance on our walk our first morning here. We were both curious about it, and it would be awfully appropriate. In the middle ages, cloisters were shelters from the turmoil of the real world.”
Stephanie lifted her own napkin and put it on the table. Despite her current aggravation with Daniel and the further questions it raised about her future relationship with him, she couldn’t help but smile at his cleverness and razor-sharp intellect, traits that had had a lot to do with her initial attraction to him. She stood up. “That might be the best suggestion you’ve made in six months.”
This looks promising! Gaetano said to himself as he saw Stephanie’s head and then Daniel’s appear over the top of the oleander that blocked his view of their table. He’d seen Stephanie’s for a moment earlier, but she had apparently sat back down. Gaetano hunkered down in his chair, lest Daniel chance to look up at the ensemble on the balcony. Gaetano fully expected the couple to make their way in his direction and pass the hostess desk directly below on their way back to their suite. But they fooled him. They started off in the opposite direction and never looked back.
“Crap!” Gaetano mumbled. Every time he thought he had everything under control, something unexpected happened. He glanced over at the lead musician, with whom he’d made eye contact during the time he’d been waiting. The man had been demonstrably appreciative of Gaetano’s attention. Gaetano smiled and gave a little wave as he got to his feet.
At first Gaetano walked at a normal pace along the balcony to avoid giving the impression that he was hurrying. But once he was far enough away from the musicians, he upped his pace while keeping a hand on the gun in his pants pocket to keep it from banging against his leg. In the courtyard below, the professor and the girl had already disappeared into the spa that occupied the first floor of the eastern end of the building.
At the opposite end of the balcony, Gaetano skidded to a stop at the head of the stairs. He descended rapidly, still clutching the gun through the fabric of his slacks. When he arrived at the spa door, he stopped, briefly composed himself, made sure he wasn’t being observed by anyone in the restaurant, and then slowly opened it. He had no idea what to expect. If the professor and the girl were in sight, signing up for a treatment, he’d just back out and rethink what he should do. But the spa was shut for the night, as evidenced by a sign on the empty reception desk illuminated by a single votive candle. All at once, Gaetano remembered having passed through the same area on his first visit when he had been searching for the hotel’s pool. Guessing the pool was the professor and his girlfriend’s destination, he hurried across the empty room and out the other side.
Gaetano was now in the section of the hotel grounds composed of individual villas. Splotches of dim light defined each entrance, but the area was otherwise dark beneath a canopy of palms. Gaetano walked briskly, remembering the route. He was pleased. Guessing the pool and its snack bar would also be closed and deserted, he’d have his choice of appropriate locations to do what he needed to do.
As he rounded a sharp right-hand turn in the walkway, Gaetano caught a glimpse of the professor and Tony’s sister before they disappeared down a short run of stairs beyond a baroque limestone balustrade. Gaetano picked up his pace again. Reaching the balustrade, he looked out over the pool area. As he had expected, it was closed for the night, and the surrounding buildings were dark. The pool itself was illuminated with underwater lights and appeared like a huge, flat emerald.
“I don’t believe this!” Gaetano whispered to himself. “It’s so perfect!” His excitement was palpable. Daniel and Stephanie had walked around the edge of the pool and were now starting off into the extensive, dark, and deserted formal gardens. In the darkness, Gaetano couldn’t see many of the details beyond some isolated suggestions of statuary and hedges. But what he could see clearly was the lighted medieval cloister. It stood gleaming in the distant moonlight like a crown capping a series of rising, shadowy garden terraces.
Gaetano’s hand slipped into his left pants pocket and wrapped itself around the handle of the silenced automatic. He shivered from the sensation the cold steel caused, and in his mind’s eye, Gaetano could see the red laser dot on the professor’s forehead, which would precede his pulling the trigger.
twenty-one
9:37 P.M., Monday, March 11, 2002
“I recognize this statue from somewhere,” Daniel said. “Do you know if it’s famous?”
Daniel and Stephanie were standing on a manicured patch of grass, gazing at a white marble reclining nude that appeared to glow in the humid, misty semidarkness of the Ocean Club’s Versailles-inspired garden. A silvery blue illumination washed over the formal landscape and contrasted sharply with the deep purple shadows.
“I think it’s a copy of a Canova,” Stephanie replied. “So, yes, it’s reasonably famous. If it is the one I’m thinking of, the original is in the Borghese Museum in Rome.”
Daniel shot an awed glance in her direction, which she missed. She was absorbed in lightly touching the woman’s thigh. “It’s amazing how much like skin the marble appears in the moonlight.”
“How on earth did you know it is a copy of a Canova, whatever the hell that is?”
“Antonio Canova was a renowned eighteenth-century neoclassical Italian sculptor.”
“I’m impressed,” Daniel said, with continued awed disbelief. “How do you happen to have such arcane facts at your fingertips? Or are you pulling my leg from having read about this garden in the brochure in the room?”
“I didn’t read the brochure, but I saw you reading it. Maybe you should be giving us a tour.”
“Not a chance! The only part I read carefully was about the cloister up on the hill. Seriously, how did you know about Canova?”
“I was a history minor in college,” Stephanie said. “That included a survey course in art history, which I remember more about than most of my other classes.”
“You amaze me sometimes,” Daniel commented. Following Stephanie’s example, he reached out and touched the marble cushion on which the woman reclined. “It is uncanny how these guys were able to make marble appear so soft. Look at the way her body indents the fabric.”
“Daniel!” Stephanie said with sudden insistence.
Daniel straightened up and tried to read Stephanie’s expression in the darkness. She was staring back toward the pool area. He followed her line of sight but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the shadowy moonlit landscape. “What’s the matter? Did you see something?”