"Yes," she said. "I'm afraid he does." I thought of the man I knew as Crawford Lake, that first and only time I'd seen him in person, tanned and standing in a beam of sunlight in the apartment in Rome. Oh shit, I thought.
ELEVEN. ROME
SO THE MAN I KNEW AS CRAWFORD Lake, wasn't. There was no other possible interpretation of what I had learned. To say that one fact put a different spin on the situation was merely facile. It was much more fundamental than that. Three people were dead, two of them, at least, at the hands of someone else. Another innocent was in jail.
It was a very long trip back to Italy, not just in the hours spent traveling but in the mental ground I had to cover. The most generous interpretation of what had happened was that Lake, given his medical condition, had asked someone to stand in for him in his discussions with me. In this rather halcyon version of events, Lake really had chosen me to find him the Bellerophon, the whole affair was perfectly legitimate, and the deaths a horrible coincidence. It was a scenario I found I could not cling to for long, and I soon sank into gloomy self-pity and blame. Why had I ever thought that someone like Crawford Lake would ask me to do anything? I wouldn't get to carry out the garbage of someone like that, let alone buy him a bronze horse. Was it vanity that had made me so vulnerable? I didn't play in Crawford Lake's league. I just liked to think I could.
Still, I'd been skeptical, hadn't I? I'd asked him why he'd called on me. His reply had been that he had been looking for someone no one had ever heard of. Surely that was not an appeal to my vanity. On the other hand, he'd praised my ability to do research and get things done. Was that so terrible?
The point was that it didn't matter why I'd done it, why I'd believed him. What counted was that it happened at all. Was it a hoax, a practical joke gone terribly wrong? Then who was the joker? I couldn't think of anyone who'd do anything that elaborate, nor could I think of anyone who'd stoop to murder to protect the hoax.
Was it worse than a joke? Was it a deliberate attempt to discredit me in some way? Why bother? I co-owned a nice little shop in Toronto, had my regular customers, got occasional mention in the design and antique magazines. Why did that make me a target? Thinking that someone would go to such trouble for poor little me was perhaps even more vain than I'd been in the first instance, when I'd accepted the assignment.
So, what to do? The sensible choice would be to simply go home. I hadn't been accused of anything, no one knew, really, about my involvement in the sorry affair. I could get on a plane at any time, be in my usual spot in the little office off the main showroom in the shop within twenty-four hours. I would feel chastened for awhile, but I'd get over it. Life would go on.
But pictures kept floating across my consciousness: Antonio rescuing me from robbers in Paris and then practicing his English over a bottle of wine, Lola sitting on the edge of my bed eating cheese and telling me about her love life and her search for Lars Porsena's tomb. And then, more sadly, Lola in prison and Antonio, his lovely smile stilled for all time, swaying ever so slightly in the breeze.
Suddenly, I was no longer feeling sorry for myself. I was really, really angry. Someone had made a fool out of me, but much worse, had used me in a horrible plot. And I was damned if I was going to slink home, tail between my legs, leaving Lola starving to death in prison and Antonio swinging, figuratively now, from a hook on a Tuscan farmhouse, no matter how lovely the view! To be a friend was a joy, but it was also a responsibility, Antonio had said. He was right.
Yes, I would have to be careful. I would have to get used to the idea that any event, no matter how innocuous it seemed, carried the potential for menace. And I was going to have to go back over a lot of ground. I would reinterpret every event since the first moment I walked into that apartment in Rome from this different vantage point, hoping a pattern would emerge. I would have to try to reconnect with all the people I'd come in contact with, however peripherally, in the last several days, to try to find out how it all fit together: Boucher and Leclerc; Dottie and Kyle; Signore Mauro, the owner of the farmhouse; Palladini, the owner of the apartment; Cesar Rosati, the nice man at the restaurant in Volterra, just because he was there. But first and foremost, I could somehow track down the man who had passed himself off as Crawford Lake and force him to tell me who'd talked him into doing it. I had no idea how I was going to find him, of course, but I was just going to have to do it.
Finding Dottie, however, was easy. Or to be more accurate, she found me. "Lara!" she trilled, and I turned to see her ensconced at a table in the cafe in the piazza near my hotel. "Over here! Isn't this just amazing, the way we keep running into each other?" It certainly was, just way too amazing, despite the fact I'd known her for years, and it is, as they say, a small world. She got up and hugged me, holding me for a second or two longer than really necessary, as if she really was glad to see me. "Here," she said, pushing some newspapers aside. "Come and sit with me. This is Angelo, by the way. My new beau."
Angelo was almost as good-looking as Kyle and, if anything, even younger. "Why don't you go and buy yourself that lovely suit you liked, sweetheart," she added, getting some rather large bills out of her wallet. "So Lara and I can have a little gab, just us two girls." Angelo pouted, as if he couldn't bear to be away from her for even a few minutes, but then got up and swaggered off.
"I'm so happy to see you," she said. "And glad you're okay."
"Why wouldn't I be, Dottie?" I said, looking at her suspiciously.
"Oh, I don't know," she said. "The last time I saw you, you'd just found that poor man Godard. You didn't look too good that night." There was no arguing with that, but taking a closer look at Dottie now, on this occasion, she was the one who didn't look so hot. She had lost weight, and there were dark circles under her eyes that her makeup, which looked as if it had been applied with a trowel, couldn't hide.
"What happened to Kyle?" I said.
"I got bored with him and sent him packing," she said. "Anyway, when in Rome, take up with a Roman, isn't that what they say? Angelo is such a darling," she rattled on. "I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying Italy. I'm really glad you mentioned it when we saw you in Nice. I don't think I would have come here, otherwise. Now I'm wondering why I spent all those years just going to France. My business, of course. I'm thinking of adding some Italian antiques. Just try out a few, and see how it goes. Where have you been since I saw you last?"
"I've been a few places," I said, with what I thought was considerable understatement. "Tuscany, primarily, as I told you." Maybe she knew exactly where I'd been. That was the trouble now. Everyone was a suspect in my mind.
"Isn't Tuscany wonderful? Florence: absolutely fabulous. Siena: if anything, even lovelier. Now Rome. I thought I was just going to hate it. I'd heard it was so noisy and dirty and that the Roman men were all old lechers. Instead, I just adore it. I've already extended my European trip by a couple of weeks, and I may keep right on going. Until I get tired of Angelo, anyway. He's an actor," she added.
"Where do you find all these younger men?" I said. I was just making conversation and didn't expect an answer, but I got one anyway.
"An escort agency," she replied. "They call it an agency for actors. I know that's not a good idea, but I was kind of lonely after Kyle and I busted up, and I didn't feel like going home just yet, so I called one of those places. I really just wanted someone to have dinner with, but it has kind of worked out, if you know what I mean."
I suddenly felt grateful to Dottie because she had given me an idea. Antonio had told me he was an actor, at least a wannabe, and he'd mentioned an agency. If Antonio had been hired from this agency, then why not the other one, the Lake impersonator, too?