Kiss Me While I sleep (3 page)

Lily gathered her strength and managed to whisper, “Do not… get so close. I may be… contagious.”

“No,” he said in his very excellent French. “You aren’t contagious.” Moments later a soft blanket settled over her, and Rodrigo briskly wrapped it around her before gathering her into his arms and, with easy strength, rising to his feet.

He strode out of the flat and down the back stairs, where his car waited with the motor idling. The driver jumped out when he saw Rodrigo, and opened the rear door.

Lily was roughly bundled into the car, with Rodrigo on one side of her and one of the other men on the other. Her head lolled against the back of the car seat and she closed her eyes, whimpering in her throat as sharp pain once more daggered through her stomach. She didn’t have the strength to stay upright and felt herself slowly begin to topple. Rodrigo made an exasperated sound, but shifted around so she could recline against him.

Most of her consciousness was taken up by her sheer physical misery, but one clear, cold portion of her brain remained separate and alert. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, with either the poison or Rodrigo. For now, he was withholding judgment, but that was all. At least he was taking her somewhere for medical treatment-she hoped. He probably wasn’t taking her anywhere to kill her and dump her body, because killing her in the apartment and walking away would have been far easier. She didn’t know if anyone had seen him carrying her out, but the odds that someone had were good, even though he’d taken her out the back way. Not that he cared if anyone saw him, at least not much. She assumed Salvatore was either dead or dying, and Rodrigo was now the head of the Nervi organization; as such, he’d inherited a lot of power, both financial and political. Salvatore’d had a lot of people in his pocket.

She fought to keep her eyes open, to pay attention to the route the driver was taking, but her lids kept drifting shut Finally she thought to hell with it and gave up the effort. No matter where Rodrigo was taking her, there was literally nothing she could do about it.

The men in the car were silent, not making even idle comments. The atmosphere seemed heavy and strained, with grief or worry or even rage. She couldn’t tell which, and since they weren’t talking, she couldn’t eavesdrop. Even the outside noise of the traffic seemed to fade away, until at last there was nothing.

The gate to the compound slid open as the car approached, and the driver, Tadeo, slotted the white Mercedes through the gap with only inches to spare on each side. Rodrigo waited until they were stopped under the portico and Tadeo had jumped out to open the passenger door before he shifted Denise Morel around. Her head lolled back and he realized she was unconscious. Her face was a pasty yellowish-white, her eyes sunk back in her head, and an odor clung to her-the same odor he’d noticed on his father.

Rodrigo’s stomach clenched as he fought to contain his grief. He still couldn’t quite believe it-Salvatore was dead. Just that fast, he was gone. The news hadn’t got out yet, but it was only a matter of time. Rodrigo wouldn’t be allowed the luxury of grieving; he had to move fast, consolidate his position and take up the reins, before their rivals moved in like a pack of jackals.

When the family doctor had said Salvatore’s ailment looked like mushroom poisoning, Rodrigo had moved quickly. He dispatched three men to take M. Durand from the restaurant and bring him to the house, while he himself, with Tadeo driving, took Lamberto and Cesare to find Denise Morel. She was the last person his father had been with before falling ill, and poison was a woman’s weapon, indirect and indefinite, depending on guesswork and happenstance. In this case, though, the weapon had been effective.

But if his father had died at her hand, she had then poisoned herself, too, instead of fleeing the country. He hadn’t truly expected her to be at her flat, since Salvatore had said she was going to Toulouse to visit her ailing mother; Rodrigo had taken that as a handy excuse. It seemed he’d been wrong-or at least the possibility of error was strong enough that he hadn’t shot the woman on sight

He slid out of the car and hooked his hands under her arms, then dragged her out behind him. Tadeo helped support her until Rodrigo could slide his arm under her knees and lift her against his chest. She was of normal height, about five and a half feet, but on the lanky side; even though she was dead weight, he handled her easily as he carried her inside.

“Is Dr. Giordano still here?” he asked, and received an affirmative reply. “Tell him I need him, please.” He took her upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms. She would be better off in a hospital, but Rodrigo wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. Officials could be so annoyingly
official.
And if she died, then she died; he had made all the effort he was willing to make. It wasn’t as if Vincenzo Giordano wasn’t a real medical doctor, even if he no longer had a practice and instead spent all his time in the lab on the outskirts of Paris that Salvatore had funded-though, perhaps if Salvatore had called for help earlier and asked to be taken to a hospital, he would still be alive. Still, Rodrigo hadn’t questioned his father’s decision to have Dr. Giordano brought in, had even understood it. Discretion was everything, when vulnerability was involved.

He laid Denise on the bed and stood looking down at her, wondering why his father had been so besotted with her. Not that Salvatore hadn’t always had an eye for the ladies, but this one was nothing out of the ordinary. Today she looked awful, her hair lank and uncombed, her color as terrible as if she were already dead, but even at her best she wasn’t beautiful. Her face was a bit too thin, too austere, and she had a slight overbite. The overbite, however, made her upper lip look fuller than the lower one, and that alone gave her features a piquancy she would otherwise have lacked.

Paris was full of women who were better looking and had a better sense of style than Denise Morel, but Salvatore had wanted this one, to the point that he’d been too impatient to completely investigate her background before approaching her. To his astonishment, she’d refused his first two invitations, and Salvatore’s impatience had turned into obsession. Had his preoccupation with her caused him to relax his guard? Was this woman indirectly responsible for his death?

So great was Rodrigo’s pain and rage that he might have strangled her just because of the possibility, but beneath those feelings was the cool voice that said she might be able to tell him something that would lead him to the poisoner.

He would have to find out who had done this, and eliminate him-or her. The Nervi organization could not let this go without retaliation, or his reputation would suffer. Since he was just now stepping into Salvatore’s shoes, he couldn’t afford the least doubt about his ability, or his resolve. He had to find his enemy. Unfortunately, the possibilities were endless. When one dealt in death and money, all the world was involved. Because Denise had also been poisoned, he even had to consider whether the perpetrator could be a jealous ex-lover of his father’s-or one of Denise’s old lovers.

Dr. Vincenzo Giordano tapped politely on the frame of the open door, then stepped inside. Rodrigo glanced at him; the man looked haggard, his usually neat salt-and-pepper curls disordered, as if he’d been pulling at them. The good doctor had been his father’s friend since boyhood, and he’d wept unashamedly when Salvatore had died not two hours ago.

“Why isn’t she dead, too?” Rodrigo asked, indicating the woman on the bed.

Vincenzo took Denise’s pulse, and listened to her heart. “She might still die,” he said, rubbing a hand over his weary face. “Her heartbeat is too fast, too weak. But perhaps she didn’t ingest as much of the poison as your father did.”

“Do you still think it’s mushrooms?”

“I said it
looked
like mushroom poisoning-for the most part. But there are differences. The speed with which it acted, for one thing. Salvatore was a big, robust man; he wasn’t feeling ill when he returned home last night at almost one o’clock, he died just six hours later. Mushrooms are slower acting; even the deadliest will take almost two days to kill. The symptoms were very similar; the speed was not”

“It wasn’t cyanide or strychnine?”

“Not strychnine. The symptoms weren’t the same. And cyanide kills within minutes, and causes convulsions. Salvatore wasn’t convulsive. The symptoms of arsenic poisoning are somewhat similar, but different enough to rule that out also.”

“Is there any way to tell for certain what was used?”

Vincenzo sighed. “I’m not certain it is a poison at all. It could be a virulence, in which case we have all been exposed.”

“Then why hasn’t my father’s driver become ill? If this is a virus that works within hours, then he, too, should be ill by now.”

“I said it
could
be, not that it
is.
I can do tests, with your permission examine Salvatore’s liver and kidneys. I can compare his blood analysis with that of… What is her name?”

“Denise Morel.”

“Ah, yes, I remember. He talked about her.” Vincenzo’s dark eyes were sad. “I think he was in love.”

“Bah. He would have lost interest in her eventually. He always did.” Rodrigo shook his head, as if clearing his mind. “Enough of that. Can you save her?”

“No. She will either survive, or she will not. There is nothing I can do.”

Rodrigo left Vincenzo to his tests and went to the basement room where his men were holding M. Durand. The Frenchman was already the worse for wear, with thin rivulets of blood trickling from his nose, but for the most part Rodrigo’s men had concentrated on punches to the body, which hurt more and weren’t as readily visible.

“Monsieur Nervi!” the restaurant manager croaked when he saw Rodrigo, and began weeping with relief. “Please, whatever has happened, I know nothing about it. I swear to you!”

Rodrigo pulled up a chair and sat down in front of M. Durand, leaning back and crossing his long legs. “My father ate something in your restaurant last night that disagreed with him,” he said with massive understatement.

An expression of total bewilderment and astonishment crossed the Frenchman’s face. Rodrigo could read his thoughts: He was being beaten to a pulp because Salvatore Nervi had
indigestion?
“Rut-but,” M. Durand sputtered. “I will refund his money, of course, he had only to ask.” Then he dared to say, “This wasn’t necessary.”

“Did he eat mushrooms?” Rodrigo asked.

Another look of bewilderment “He knows he did not. He ordered chicken in wine sauce, with asparagus, and Mademoiselle Morel had the halibut. No, there were no mushrooms.”

One of the men in the room was Salvatore’s regular driver, Fronte; he bent down and whispered in Rodrigo’s ear. Rodrigo nodded.

“Fronte says that Mademoiselle Morel became ill just after leaving your restaurant.” So she’d been stricken first, Rodrigo thought. Had she been the first to take whatever poison they’d ingested? Or had it worked faster on her, because of her lower body weight?

“It was not my food, monsieur.” Durand was highly insulted. “None of the other patrons became ill, or had any complaint The halibut had not gone bad, and even if it had, Monsieur Nervi didn’t have it.”

“What food did they share?”

“Nothing,” M. Durand replied promptly. “Except perhaps the bread, though I didn’t see Mademoiselle Morel eat any. Monsieur drank wine, an exceptional Bordeaux, Chateau Maximilien’s eighty-two vintage, and Mademoiselle drank coffee as usual. Monsieur did prevail upon her to taste the wine, but it wasn’t to her liking.”

“So they shared the wine.”

“A small sip only. As I said, she didn’t care for it. Mademoiselle does not drink wine.” Durand’s very Gallic shrug said he didn’t understand such peculiarity, but there it was.

But last night she had drunk wine, even if it was only a small sip. Was the poison so potent that one sip would threaten her life?

“Was there any wine left?”

“No. Monsieur Nervi drank it all.”

That wasn’t unusual. Salvatore’s head had been remarkably hard, with the result that he drank more than most Italians.

“The bottle. Do you still have the bottle?”

“It will be in the refuse box, I’m certain. Behind the restaurant”

Rodrigo ordered two men to go search through the trash and find the empty Bordeaux bottle, then turned back to M. Durand. “Very well. You will remain my guest”-he gave a humorless smile-“until this bottle and the dregs have been analyzed.”

“But that can-”

“Take days, yes. I’m sure you understand.” Perhaps Vincenzo could get his answers faster than that, in his own lab, but that remained to be seen.

M. Durand hesitated. “Your father… he is very ill?”

“No,” said Rodrigo, rising to his feet. “He is dead.” And once more the words arrowed straight through his heart.

*    *    *

By the next day, Lily knew she would live; it took Dr. Giordano another two days to make the same pronouncement. She needed the entire three days before she felt well enough to get out of bed and take a much-needed bath. Her legs were so shaky she had to hold on to furniture to make her way to the bathroom, her head swam and her vision was still a little blurry, but she knew the worst was past.

She had fought desperately for consciousness, refusing the drugs Dr. Giordano tried to give her to ease her pain, give her sleep. Even though she had passed out during the drive over to what was obviously the Nervi compound, she hadn’t been drugged. Despite the excellence of her French, it wasn’t her first language; if she were sedated, her native American English might slip out. She had pretended to be afraid she would die in her sleep, that she felt she could fight the poison so long as she remained alert, and though Dr. Giordano knew that was medically ridiculous, he had nevertheless bowed to her wishes. Sometimes, he’d said, the patient’s mental condition meant more to recovery than the physical condition.