“Try the door,” Cindy said.
Jared did so. “Locked. Bolted tight.”
“I just know that she wouldn’t have forgotten,” Jordan said.
“But you said that you hadn’t heard from her today,” Cindy reminded her.
“And I arranged for a lot of the tickets for Anna Maria’s party,” Jared said. “I can’t show up too late. If she hasn’t even let us in yet.. .”
“Look,” Ragnor said, “why don’t you three go on ahead to Anna Maria’s? I’ll wait around here for a while and see if she does show up.”
“I think I should stay, too,” Jordan said.
Now, even Ragnor seemed impatient with her. “Go on, Jordan. I’ll give Tiff a few minutes, then I’ll be right behind you.”
Jordan shrugged. Well, if Tiff did return in the next few minutes, she’d be elated to find Ragnor waiting there for her?alone.
She should happily walk off.
But something didn’t feel right.
“I’ll be here,” Ragnor said firmly.
“All right,” Jordan said at last.
She turned and started away with Jared and Cindy. Looking back, she saw that he did remain, a tall, caped figure, arms crossed over his chest, as if standing sentinel.
“Jordan, come on,” Jared said.
She stumbled; he caught her arm. They headed through narrow streets to catch a vaporetto to Anna Maria’s ball.
Ragnor watched them go.
He waited until he was certain they had rounded the corner. Then he tested the lock again. The doors were firmly bolted. He looked around the square.
Darkness, shadows. No amblers passing through.
Then he entered the palazzo.
The foyer was empty. There was no sign of a struggle. Marble floors gleamed. “Tiff!” he said, calling the woman’s name.
He walked up the stairs, to the balcony, through the rooms. He came to the master suite. Nothing appeared to be amiss. The great bed was neatly made in its silken splendor. He turned and started to leave, but then, the faintest hint of an odor teased his senses.
Blood.
He came to the bed, stared at the silk.
There, the tiniest drop.
Perhaps Nari hadn’t meant to, but she had left her calling card.
“Marisa, come on!”
Marisa Kosolovich turned her head to see that her friends, Josef, Ari and Lizabet, were waiting for her.
She tossed back the rich wealth of her auburn hair, impatiently. They’d been standing at the bar at the trattoria, and while her friends had spent some of their precious money on their own espressos, she had managed to get hers bought for her by the tall Italian man in the handsome suit. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old, somewhere between thirty and forty. He was very appealing, a businessman with bright hazel eyes and a quick smile. She’d chatted about her arrival with her friends?making it sound as if they had come by plane and were young people seeing the world, rather than a group from a war-torn nation on a bus that was now parked near the train station. They were nearly broke, sleeping on the bus that had brought them here. They were willing to come with no accommodations and food from home, just so that they might see the sights and sounds of Venice at Carnevale.
She sighed. The others seemed fine with their situation. She was not. She’d actually planned on finding some Americans?they usually had the most money to spend and were easily influenced by any foreign accent. She liked Americans, and she really wanted to get to America. When the soldiers had come to her village to dole out food, they had all been taken with her. She’d developed the plan then to marry and get away, but the troops hadn’t stayed long enough for her to get to know any of the men. They had told her, though, that she was beautiful. They had said it with their eyes as well as their words.
And more than anything, she wanted to get away.
Carnevale was always full of foreigners?lots of them American. She had been certain that in the two nights the bus stayed in Venice she could find the right person.
She had chosen the trattoria for their splurge, and there hadn’t been a single American in it. But the Italian had been cute and kind, buying her an espresso and offering her something to eat. She’d accepted the espresso but demurred on the food, though God knew why, she was hungry enough. She didn’t want to look hungry, that must be it. And she didn’t want to look like a woman who would balloon into someone as round as a tomato in a few years.
Lizabet was at the door, looking stern. Ari just looked impatient. Josef was concerned.
They weren’t together as couples, just friends. They came from the same village. Or what was left of it.
She lifted a finger, ready to swing back into conversation with the tall Italian businessman. But, to her disappointment, he had turned to his friends. Some sporting event had come on the television over the bar, and his back was actually to her.
“Marisa! The music starts in the square any minute! ”Josef announced. Tall, skinny and awkward, Josef had gone the last few years without enough to eat.
She left the bar and came to the door. “Marisa, you mustn’t just attach yourself to people like that. They will get the wrong idea.”
Ari and Lizabet were already walking ahead. “And what would the wrong idea be, Josef?” she asked.
“That you are easy, that we are easy?that we are left with no pride, no sense of self-worth.”
“That would be a wrong idea?” she queried.
“Our home has been through a great deal. We should have a stronger character,” he admonished.
“Our home is a hellhole, and soldiers will come again and again. Bombs will fall.” Josef shook his head. “No, there is peace now. And we will rebuild.”
“You will rebuild. I’m not going home.”
Josef looked at her with surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I’m staying in Venice.”
“You cannot stay in Venice. You don’t have papers. You don’t speak Italian!”
“I’ll learn.”
“And what will you do?”
“Get by.”
“How?”
“I’ll make friends.”
“You’ll be a prostitute.”
“I’ll make friends,” she hissed to him. “Look, Josef, you tell me all the time that I am beautiful. I will manage on that.”
“To me you are beautiful. There are scores of beautiful young women. To me, you are special. To others
.. .”
“To others?what?”
“You are ... too loose.”
“I’ll be what I need to be!” she said angrily. “I am attractive only to you, eh?” She walked on ahead, angrily. She passed Lizabet and Ari. “Hey!” Ari called, “now you’re in such a hurry?”
She was dressed as a harem girl?the best outfit she could piece together from old scraps of clothing, but she was proud that she looked much better in rags than many of the rich tourists in Venice looked in their expensive hand-made or rented costumes.
“You intend to act like shy little refugee schoolchildren!” she informed them. “I came to Venice to have fun.”
“She came to stay,” Josef called out in a sulky tone.
“She is going to meet a rich American, and he is going to take her away.”
“Josef says that I am special only to him,” she pouted.
“We are all only special to our friends!” Lizabet told her with a troubled frown. Lizabet was very religious. She had prayed on the floor of the bus for what had seemed like hours last night before finding her seat to sleep in cramped discomfort.
Marisa walked on ahead of her friends. Masked and costumed characters paused to bow to her; she bowed playfully in return. One man, tall and sleek, though he was costumed and in a mask that covered most of his face, did more than bow. He took her hand. Bent low over it, he kissed her. He spoke to her.
In Italian. His voice was deep and pleasant.
“Beautiful,” he said in English.
“Grazie!” she told him.
“And where are you going?”
“To the square, to listen to music.”
“Ah, perhaps I will find you again, cara mia.”
He walked by. Josef, Ari, and Lizabet reached her. “There, you see!” she told them.
“Can we please get to the music?” Lizabet asked. “We all know that you are beautiful, and you will go places.”
“Or stay in Venice,” Josef repeated acidly.
Josef felt more for her than she had realized, Marisa thought, but Josef had nothing and would go nowhere. If she was foolish enough to love Josef, she would have a child each year and grow as fat as a house and spend her life in her little village doing laundry and baking bread and washing dishes. She was sorry if she had hurt him, but she could see what he could not. There would always be war. Soldiers would come again, and men would go out and fight, and the villagers would be weak-willed and defenseless, able to do nothing as stronger enemies came and dragged them out, raped their wives, and burned their houses.
“I am sorry, Josef,” she said, under her breath.
They hadn’t gone much farther when Josef determined that they had made a wrong turn. The stream of human traffic was no longer with them. “We must go back.”
“Do you have the map?” Ari asked.
As they pulled out the map, Marisa looked around the street. It was very dark here. The waters of the canal beyond them were black in the night. The few lights in the streets created blacker shadows against black streets and walls.
“This way,” Ari said.
“No, I think, look here ...” Lizabet told them.
Marisa wasn’t paying attention. As her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she saw a man ahead, going up the steps of a building. He was wearing a cape and mask. She felt her heart pounding. Was it the same man who had kissed her hand?
As she stared at him, he turned. He drew a finger to his lips?well, as close to his lips as the mask would allow. Then he beckoned to her.
And disappeared behind a door.