Page 6 of Edge of Secrets

“And they match?”

“Yes. They match,” Nancy said quietly. “Lanaghan just called and told me.”

We sat silently, for almost a minute. Then I let out a slow breath. “The clotheshorse must be Marco,” I said. “Lucia’s long-lost husband. That poor guy.”

“Yeah,” Nancy said. “It has to be him. He came to find her, and got himself murdered that same night, by the same person who killed Lucia. Maybe even at the same time.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hand against my cold, clammy forehead. “That poor guy. After not seeing the love of his life for, what, fifty years? Finally they reunite, and then … oh God, Nance. It’s just so damn sad.”

“At least they’re together now,” Nancy said softly. “And she loved him to the very end. She stayed single all those years. With all those men beating down her door.”

“You could look at it that way, I guess. If you believed in love and eternity and all that good stuff, dusted with bright, hazy sparkles.” I hated the edge in my voice.

“And you don’t believe it?” Nancy asked.

“Not right now, I don’t,” I admitted. “Sorry to be a downer, but you’re in love. You’ve got hazy sparkles by the bucketful. In my world, they’re a rare commodity.”

Nancy paused. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to cheer you up. I really love you, sweetie. I’m sorry you’re having a hard time. I know exactly how you feel.”

I felt guilty. Look at me, scrooging on my poor sister, whose only crime was getting lucky in love, and after a dry spell every bit as long as my own. “I love you, too,” I said. “And I’m sorry I’m being such a sourpuss. I’m glad for you. Really. Did you tell Detective Lanaghan about the letter in the picture frame?”

“Yes, and she said it’s a great lead, but since all we have is the guy’s first name and the name of his town, it’s going to take a while. She has to contact the local police in Italy, find an interpreter, et cetera, et cetera. So I started to think, in the meantime ... since you studied Italian … you know?”

“You want me to call the cops there? In Italy?”

“Would you?” Nancy asked eagerly. “Just to facilitate things? To speed things up?”

I looked up at the clock, calculating time zones. “I could try tomorrow morning, before I leave for work, I guess,” I said. “But don’t get your hopes up. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, no matter what country you’re talking about.”

“I understand. Where are you now? Are you still up in Silvana’s apartment?”

I gritted my teeth for what I knew was going to be a big fat overreaction. “Ah. About that. Actually, no. I’m back in Brooklyn, at my own apartment.”

“Nell! What the hell? You promised!”

“I know, I know, but Silvana’s fiancé came to visit, and I was clearly cramping their style. I did put in the new locks and the new alarm. And when Elio leaves, I can go back up there and stay with her again. It’s just a couple of weeks.”

Nancy carried on, I soothed and cajoled—all familiar conversations after our recent adventures. Then we went through our now near-obsessive routine of admonishing each other to be careful. When we finally hung up, I stared at the wall for a long time.

I was grateful for a job to do, something that might yield some answers. But I was going to have to brace myself. Any answers I found were not going to be comforting.

A sheaf of student papers later, I laid down the red pen, rubbed my eyes, stretched, and flopped onto my bed with a groan. There wasn’t much room there, since the surface of my bed was covered with books. There was a strip the exact size of my body to sleep on. It was a poetic metaphor for my life. I couldn’t take a lover. Where would I put him? Between The Riverside Shakespeare and my twenty-pound annotated Dante’s Divine Comedy? Would I perch him on top of the seventeenth-century religious poets? Drape him over Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? It sounded uncomfortable as hell.

Mr. Hyper-Focused popped into my mind, predictably enough. He was my default mode, whenever I needed to steer around an uncomfortable thought. I wondered why my brain had latched onto him so intensely. I’d never been the type to fixate like that.

Maybe it was not in spite of, but because he was so oblivious to me. He was completely inaccessible, and what could be safer for a scaredy-cat like myself? I knew nothing about him. Only that he had a truly stunning capacity for concentration, and he really, really liked strip steak.

But thinking about him was better than thinking about that poor old man whose body lay in the morgue in Jamaica Plains. Nameless, unclaimed, unmourned.

The bleakness of it made me roll over and shove my face into the pillow.

Maybe tomorrow I could put a name to the man who may or may not have been Lucia’s husband. I could give the man the dignity of recognition, at least.

That was the best I could offer, and it wasn’t too goddamn much.

Chapter Three

“What’s she doing now?”

---