Staci took me to a dark tunnel. She pulled a flashlight from her tote and switched it on.
I saw a dark spot in the dirt. “What’s that by your shoe?”
She aimed the light at her feet.
There was a row of purplish spots along the path.
“Oh my gosh.” Her voice was a whisper. “Is that blood splatter?”
I knelt and took a whiff of the stained soil. “It smells like . . . berries.”
Fragolino.
It’s fuchsia.
And it’s scattered like Glenda’s feathers at the Colosseum.
I shot up. “It’s a trail, like breadcrumbs. Only they used liqueur.”
Staci trained the flashlight on the drops. “I’m sure they were trying to avoid getting lost in the maze of tunnels, poor things.”
We followed the fragolino until we came to a dead end at a makeshift wall with a door.
“The crypt is behind this,” she said.
I jiggled the handle. It was locked. “David?” I knocked, and then pounded. “Vassal?”
No answer.
“Stand aside.” I kicked the door. It didn’t budge. I tried again, but my back spasmed.
“Let me try something.” Staci pulled the S pin from her scarf and picked the lock like a pro. She opened the door and shined the light inside.
My adrenaline surged like lava from Mount Vesuvius, and I rushed into the room.
David and the vassal lay supine next to a statue of a slain woman.
And they were snoring.
Beside four empty bottles of fragolino.
8
We need an aperitivo to toast to the boys’ safe return.” David’s father signaled to the waiter from our outdoor table at Tre Scalini restaurant in Piazza Navona. “Could we get a round of Campari?”
“Really, Bill.” David’s mother touched her Dorothy Hamill hair. “They spent the last two days drinking liquor when their water ran out, and you want to give them more?”
“As much as I love Italian liqueurs, I’m going to pass.” The jet lag, the investigation, and Glenda had caught up with me, but not so much that I didn’t have time for my favorite dessert. I looked at the waiter. “Un tartufo, per favore.”
“What’s that?” David grabbed a menu.
I pointed to the description. “It means ‘truffle,’ and it’s gelato made from thirteen kinds of Swiss chocolate with a cherry inside. This restaurant is famous for it, and the recipe is a secret.”
“Dude, I’ll have one of those.”
The vassal pushed up his coke bottle glasses. “Me three.”
Our waiter left to place the order.
The vassal’s mother stared at him through thick bifocals. “I don’t know if you deserve dessert, Standish. You did try to buy an illegal sword.”
“We thought it was legal, honest.” David’s cheeks turned fuchsia from embarrassment, or from a possible overdose of fragolino. “I got the sword the police confiscated at a flea market called Porta Portese, but the vassal—uh, I mean Standish—figured out it was fake.”
The vassal nodded, slack-jawed. “He wanted an authentic one, like my Godric Gryffindor sword.”
I sat motionless, but in my mind my head was shaking. Godric Gryffindor was a fictional character, so by definition his sword was fake too.
My phone rang.
“Excuse me for a minute.” It was my nonna, and I didn’t want to subject other families to her. I stood and walked toward Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, the Fountain of the Four Rivers.
An old woman sitting on the edge of the fountain rose and blocked me. “Tu no, eh?” She turned to a man beside her. “È quella della Fontana di Trevi!”
I turned to stone—like the statue of that slain saint. Was I forever the Italian poster child for fountain frolicking?
My phone resumed ringing.
I tapped Answer and walked among the street artists’ paintings and caricatures. “Nonna, it’s one o’clock in the morning there. You need to give the meddling, and yourself, a rest.”
“Not-a while there’s a breath in-a this body.” She spoke like a cross between Marlon Brando and the Grim Reaper. “My friend Pasqualina’s grandson is in-a Roma, and he wanna take-a you to dinner.”
“Not-a while there’s a breath in-a this body,” I quipped.
She laughed, but like a hyena. “Where are you?”
“This being Rome and all, I couldn’t say.” I glanced at the Baroque façade of the Sant’Agnese in Agone church, and for once I felt no Catholic guilt about fibbing to my grandma. In agone meant “in agony,” so I knew Saint Agnes understood my pain.
“Don’t-a mess-a with me, nipote mia.”
I didn’t like the sound of that “granddaughter mine,” so I decided to do damage control. “Nonna, the trip took twenty hours, and then I had to track down the boys. Even if I was single, which I’m not, I’m too tired to go on a date.”
“You think-a you’re tired? I’ve been-a trying to get you married for-a fourteen years.”
My gaze drifted to Bernini’s fountain. And if the old woman hadn’t still been there, I would’ve thrown myself in.
The waiter approached. “Il tartufo è arrivato, signorina.”
“Tartufo,” Nonna shouted. “Tre Scalini!”
The line went dead.
Since I couldn’t jump into the fountain, I returned to the table to drown my sorrows in gelato. With Rome’s notorious traffic, I was certain I had time to eat the dessert that had outed my whereabouts to my nonna before making my escape. I took a bite of the delicious chocolate and savored the flavor, but it curdled in my mouth.
Glenda glided across the cobblestones like she’d been born in Rome in a cut-down version of the coat.
I don’t know why the alterations caught me off guard. After all, everyone knew that a leopard-bird couldn’t change its feathered spots.
“Sorry I’m late, y’all.” She flopped into a chair, and her striped pasties flopped too. “Gaetano wanted to show me the sights.”
I’ll bet he did.
She removed the coat to reveal a stripper gondolier getup, which prompted the vassal’s mom to grab his glasses, and then her own.
“What did the commissario say when she got to the catacombs, sugar? Was she mad we’d searched for the boys?”
My smile reflected a concept appropriate to the context and the culture—vendetta.
