No Stone Unturned: A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book Eleven Page 20

  Lexi

  I enjoyed the best night of sleep since coming to Italy. Even though things weren’t completely right with us, especially the unresolved Congo issue, it felt like we were healing—getting back on the right track as a couple. Perhaps getting stronger. But there was still a ways to go.

  Since I’d been in Italy, I’d received four texts from Elvis, one from Finn, and two each from Basia and Gray. I’d answered all of them by saying I’d arrived in Italy, I was fine and I would explain everything later. I’d sent a special apology to Elvis without going into detail, and promised to come see him when I returned. I didn’t imagine anyone was satisfied by my abbreviated response. It was difficult to believe I actually had friends who cared that much about me.

  I woke before Slash but stayed in bed. The balcony doors were open, the breeze felt wonderful. The curtains fluttered as sunshine dappled across the sheets. I snuggled against him, smiling as he pulled me tighter, resting his face in the crook of my neck. When he finally woke, we spent another hour or so in bed, cuddling and talking about things that had nothing to do with paternity, statues or Vatican intrigue. We’d stolen this time just for ourselves. While I wasn’t naive enough to think we could avoid confrontation forever, I wanted to hold these moments close.

  When we finally got dressed, we sat on the balcony sipping coffee and watching the boats sail by. Finally Slash suggested we visit the Salerno Cathedral and do a little sightseeing downtown before we left for Gaeta. We packed up our stuff, but I was reluctant to leave our little haven. Slash seemed to sense my reluctance, because he pulled me in for one last lingering kiss on the balcony.

  “We’ll come back, cara, when we have no other cares but each other,” he murmured.

  I wondered if that would ever happen with us. Even though I doubted it, I touched my engagement ring with my thumb and said, “Deal.”

  We checked out of the hotel and put our bags in the car. I returned the floppy hat to my head as Slash drove us downtown. We were detoured several times due to a huge city-wide parade in honor of the saints.

  “You still want to fight the crowds to see the church?” Slash asked me as we inched along.

  “We don’t have anything better to do, right? We’ve got time to kill and you told me the Salerno Cathedral is spectacular.”

  “It is.”

  “Then, let’s do it.”

  Slash managed to find a parking spot near the bottom of a hill. We were getting out of the car when Slash’s phone rang. He motioned that he needed to take it, so I walked around to the back of the car and leaned against the trunk, waiting for him.

  An elderly woman heading to the parade a couple of streets over was pushing a wheeled cart filled with colorful flowers and tacky saint souvenirs. She passed me and started up the path. She was struggling, as the cart was apparently heavy. Several people walked past her, but not one offered to help. I looked over at Slash, but he was still sitting in the car talking, so I approached her.

  I spoke to her with a mixture of gestures and the few Italian phrases I knew. She seemed surprised I offered. I took the handles of the cart from her and pointed to me and then the top of the hill.

  “I push it for you, okay?” I said.

  She looked at me warily and then nodded.

  I started pushing it up the hill and immediately understood why she was having problems. It was hard work. A third of the way up, I started panting. She walked beside me, gesturing and offering a constant stream of advice in Italian that I didn’t understand. A minute later I got it to the top of the hill, but I was sweating profusely beneath my hat. My T-shirt was dripping with perspiration. I wished I weren’t wearing jeans. Moisture slid from my scalp into my eyes, so I blinked rapidly and ignored the burning sensation.

  The vantage from the hilltop was great. The parade was in full swing, a trio of musicians were playing an up-tempo song and two white horses with men sitting atop them in uniforms clopped past. A couple of cars with people waving motored by. Behind the cars a bishop in a white cassock and a tall miter on his head was walking, wielding an enormous wooden cross. It had to be made of cardboard or maybe balsa wood, because he seemed to be moving it with ease. Behind him was a choir, singing a religious hymn. Two priests dressed in black cassocks trailed immediately behind him, holding life-size posters of the saints-to-be on long wooden poles.

  The old woman said something to me, and I realized I’d totally forgotten about her. “Oh, I’m sorry. Scusate. Here’s your cart.”

  I angled the handles toward her, waiting patiently until she had a firm grasp on them before I let go. She profusely thanked me, and I turned to go back to Slash, feeling proud of my Good Samaritan moment.

  At that moment, a teenager on a scooter zoomed past me on the right. He clipped my shoulder hard as he rocketed past, then shouted an apology. I stumbled forward, knocking into the elderly woman, who lost her grip on the cart. She lurched around me trying to grab the handles, but slipped, banging into the cart, which gave it a hard push forward. I managed to catch her beneath her elbow, but the cart started to accelerate down the hill, pausing for only a moment as it came to a slight rise.

  Holy runaway cart!

  I ensured the lady was stable before I dashed after it, my hat flying off my head. Four steps forward, I collided with another female passerby who must have seen the cart and had decided to stop it, too. Grabbing on to each other for balance, we watched, horrified, as the cart charged even faster downhill, picking up speed and bouncing merrily along toward the parade.

  “Oh, crap!” I bolted after the cart.

  It wasn’t a fair race because (1) the cart had a head start, and (2) I was wearing sandals, but I chased it just the same. I made respectable progress anyway. However, dealing with the sandals made it difficult to calculate whether I could reach the cart in time—especially if I factored in the exhaustion from pushing the cart up the hill in the first place, and adjusting for adrenaline. I also had no idea if I had the mass and distance to stop the cart once I reached it, given the coefficient of friction from the sandals.

  My calculations, though admittedly hurried, suggested I had a slim chance, and that gave me an extra burst of speed. Though I was focused on the rampaging cart, I could see people turning and pointing. I wondered if they had heard the cart...or maybe they’d heard me. Was I screaming? Shrieking? Amid the slap, slap, slap of my sandals, I wondered under which tab on my Little Black Cloud Spreadsheet this moment would go. Most Humiliating Moments or Most Heroic Save?

  The handles were almost within reach when the cart veered slightly and hit a curb. It went airborne, spinning on several axes while raining kitschy flowers, tea towels, keychains and pins across the crowd before it took out the bishop and crashed to a stop upside down on the far side of the street. The wheels kept spinning.

  At this point, I was running too fast to stop cleanly, and the sandals fought my best efforts to slow my momentum. I managed to jump over a downed drum and avoid a small dog, but I ricocheted off two musicians, lost a sandal, pirouetted, stumbled and fell face-first into the bishop’s lap, slamming my jaw against his knee.

  I lay facedown for a moment, trying to catch my breath and process what had happened, when the bishop said something in Italian in a deep voice. I scrambled to a seated position, my cheeks burning hot. I watched in silence as the bishop rearranged the robes in his lap where my face had been, then turned for assistance from a nearby parade-goer for help back to his feet. A small girl picked up, dusted off and returned his miter.

  Suddenly I became aware of the pandemonium surrounding me. People were shouting, crying and laughing. I stood, turning around in the middle of the street, apologizing to the bishop and the parade marchers, and trying, in a mixture of English, pantomime and random Italian words, to explain to two policemen what had happened with the wheeled cart and the old woman.

  At last Slash appeared, carrying
my hat. He looked around at the stopped parade, the scattered instruments, the bishop gathering the pieces of the broken cross, the policemen holding my arm, and everyone talking and shouting at once.

  Just then, the old woman shoved her way through the crowd and, to my astonishment, hugged me hard, before she started shouting at the policemen and gesticulating wildly. When anyone tried to get too close to me, she snarled at them like a lioness. Everyone seemed a little afraid of her, even Slash, who wisely kept his distance.

  Slash met my gaze across the street and I lifted my hands. “I know this looks bad, but it wasn’t my fault...exactly.”

  He finally stepped forward, but the elderly lady came between us. I tapped her shoulder, pointed at my engagement ring and then Slash. “It’s okay. He’s with me.”

  The woman eyed him mistrustfully but stepped aside. Slash gently tipped my chin to the side, examining my jaw. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, I think. My jaw, however, got up close and personal with the bishop’s knee, and I may or may not have planted my face in his lap.”

  Slash raised an eyebrow but said nothing, thank God. A kindly gentleman retrieved the lady’s wheeled cart—now rolling crookedly—and returned it to her.

  Slash tipped his head toward the elderly lady. “She told the police you helped her with the cart and it’s her fault it went barreling down the hill.”

  “That’s somewhat accurate. I handed the cart off to her after I pushed it up the hill, but a guy on a scooter clipped me and I bumped into her. She didn’t have a good hold on the handles, so it got away from her. If I’d had my tennis shoes on, and not sandals, I might have caught it.”

  The policeman started to ask me something in halting English, but Slash interceded, speaking Italian on my behalf, presumably explaining what happened. People started crowding around listening. At one point I heard Slash say “Americana” and everyone burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked him, my hands on my hips.

  “Not a thing.” He looped an arm around my shoulders. The policemen moved away and Slash began to check out my arms and legs to make sure I was okay.

  “Nothing broken,” I insisted. “Just my pride.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay, cara.” He placed the hat on my head.

  “I may be okay, but I don’t think I made a good impression on the bishop.” I glanced nervously over at him. He was examining the cross, but it definitely hadn’t survived my onslaught.

  The bishop saw us staring, so he started coming our way. Thankfully, Slash moved to intercept him, and they started a conversation. At one point during the discussion, the bishop smiled and waved at me. Slash smiled at me, too, over his shoulder.

  What the heck?

  I waved back warily, wondering what Slash was saying about me. That I was the biggest dork in the universe? That a little black cloud followed me around nonstop and I destroyed things and injured myself and others on a regular basis? Planting my face in the bishop’s lap might be a new personal low for me, though.

  While they were talking, I reached into my purse and pulled out all the euros I had, which equaled $316. I pressed it into the elderly woman’s hand. She looked shocked and tried to refuse the money, but I insisted. After a bit of a shoving match, she finally put the money in her purse.

  A minute later, Slash returned to my side. People were thankfully starting to lose interest in the sideshow. The elderly woman said something to Slash and he turned to me. “She says you gave her $300.”

  “Well, it was $316 to be exact, and it was the least I could do. I would have given her more, but that was all I had in my wallet. I feel terrible.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  I loved him for saying so, but somehow I was involved in a statistically high number of accidents and there had to be some crazy force in the universe that I kept being in the center of them. “Regardless, she lost all her wares and now she has a damaged cart.”

  Slash took out his wallet and gave her some additional bills. The woman’s eyes went wide and she tried to press the money back into his hands, much like she had done with me. But Slash insisted, so she finally hugged him, hugged me again and then shuffled away with her lopsided cart.

  The policemen eventually shooed us and the other bystanders off the road so they could resume the parade. I assumed that meant I wasn’t under arrest.

  “Everything’s okay?” I asked Slash. At least I hadn’t been handcuffed or led away in a police car.

  “Everything’s okay. Accidents happen.”

  “Especially with me around. What about with the bishop? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. I think it may have been the most excitement he’s had in three decades. All is good with you and the Bishop of Salerno.”

  Yep, this was definitely a new low for me. “While I’m relieved, being the sole source of excitement for the Bishop of Salerno over the past three decades does not make me feel any better.”

  Slash smiled as he adjusted his sunglasses on his nose. “I leave you alone for five minutes, and this happens.”

  “I was trying to help!”

  “And help, you did. The elderly woman you helped walked away with significantly more money than she would have made. The bishop has an exciting tale to tell during mass, and the parade viewers had a lot more interesting fare to watch than the Salerno civic choir singing off-key. Good job.” He placed a hand on my back, moving me forward. “Now let’s go check out the cathedral.”

  “Fine.” I hoisted my purse on my shoulder and took the hand he offered. “As long as it can be done in anonymity, I’m in.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Lexi

  We followed the parade route toward the church. The crowds were heavy as we pushed our way through the people who had gathered for the celebration. I noticed the stares Slash got as we walked past. Even in a crowd, his presence was compelling.

  “So, who called when I was helping the elderly lady?” I asked as we walked.

  “Work. It was Charlie. They have an issue and were asking my opinion.”

  “An issue? Is it safe to talk NSA-business on your phone?”

  “No. But we don’t talk specifics.”

  “Do they miss you?”

  “Perhaps. I need to get back, but I’m also finding I quite enjoy showing my girl around Italy, despite the less-than-ideal circumstances.”

  “Well, this girl is enjoying it...minus those particular circumstances and the runaway cart, of course.”

  He smiled, but said nothing as he guided me through the crowd. When we finally arrived at the cathedral, the first thing that struck me was the bell tower with mullioned windows.

  “Wow, that’s incredibly intricate,” I said.

  Slash gazed up, shading his eyes with his hand even though he wore sunglasses. “There are eight bells, all perfectly tuned. And, if you check out the front façade, you’ll see it contains fifty-six panels depicting various stages of Jesus’s life.”

  “Wow. How do you know all that? Is it from your time spent at the Vatican?”

  “Nope. I looked it up on Google this morning while you were in the bathroom, so I could impress you.” His mouth twitched as if trying to keep from smiling.

  “Hey!” I hit him on the arm as he leaned in with a mischievous twinkle in his eye and planted a kiss on my cheek. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

  I took a few more photos before we entered the church. Slash dipped his fingers in the holy water and crossed himself as I removed my hat, thankful for the cool dimness of the church. The cathedral was understandably crowded, but we wandered around, stopping often in apses to admire the paintings, the ceiling frescos and intricate stained-glass windows.

  It was hard to explain how being in church made me feel, especially side by side with Slash. The engineering part of my brain was already
calculating the loading on the walls and the columns from the golden vaulted ceilings. I tried to imagine how they completed the construction, given the tools and technology of the day. But another part of my brain was reminding me that not everything can, or should, be computed. For a moment, I just stopped in wonder and enjoyed the beauty and majesty of the structure.

  We made a full circle inside the church before Slash asked me if I wanted to see the tombs. I did, so we descended below, and spent a few minutes jostling with other tourists to get a good view of Matthew’s tomb, as well as that of Pope Gregory VII’s.

  Before we headed back outside, we stopped at the makeshift shrine of the two sainthood candidates. Slash dropped a few bills into the collection box and asked if I wanted to light the votive candles. I lit two, and Slash bowed his head, murmuring a short prayer for them.

  The heat and bright sunshine blinded us the second we stepped outside, so we put our sunglasses back on. The parade had ended in the courtyard shortly after the arrival of the bishop, but the celebration was still going strong.

  “How long does the celebration last?” I asked Slash.

  “As long as it takes. My guess is all day and well into the night. We Italians like a good party.” He looked around. “I’m going to find a bathroom. You good?”

  “Good, but thirsty.” I spotted a food stand with a line of people in front of it. “I’ll get us a couple of waters and wait here for you. Sound good?”

  “Perfect. Just stay out of trouble.” He reached into his wallet and handed me some euros. “Since you gave all your money away.”

  “Oh, right. Thanks.” I tucked the money into my front jeans pocket.

  I got in line and did some people watching. Women dancers in colorful skirts and blouses were twirling around in one part of the courtyard with a large crowd gathered to watch them. Musicians were playing, and I found myself enjoying the moment, relaxing and watching the spectacle instead of being a part of it.

  As I shuffled forward in line, I saw a group of children forming under the direction of a nun. It looked like I was going to have a front row seat to a performance by a children’s choir. For a moment I could feel my little black cloud part with the sunshine of the courtyard.