Sailing to Capri (14 page)

It was raining in Venice. The hard, drenching, torrential kind of rain that, combined with an exceptionally high tide, had already flooded the Piazza San Marco to a depth of over a foot and was still rising. The domes of the basilica were lost in the mist, and the famous rival caffès, Florian and Quadri, where Filomena spent too much money on expensive cups of coffee, were shuttered, their awnings closed, chairs and tables stacked inside, the string quartet gone. There were no tourists to delight with sweet music today.

Narrow wooden planks had been placed across the flood as a temporary walkway. Accustomed to them from birth the Venetians strode confidently across while the inexperienced and foolhardy tottered then stumbled up to their knees in the oily water.

Unfortunately for Filomena, she could get to her apartment only over those planks or else via a long, circuitous route involving many back alleys and at least half an hour more in the pouring rain. She chose to walk the planks. High heels were not the ideal footwear for such a journey and she stepped slowly, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, the way high-fashion models did when “pony-walking” the runway. Swathed in a fashionable white trench coat that did little to keep out the rain, she had tucked her expensive Fendi alligator bag inside to protect it and pulled a plastic bag over the blond hair she’d inherited, along with her blue eyes, from her northern Italian mother. The woman Montana had assigned to follow her was not so expert. She slipped off the plank and stood scowling angrily, almost knee-deep in the water as Filomena disappeared in the gloom and the rain.

Filomena made it safely across and into a side street, sloshing through the puddles, giving up any hope of saving her expensive shoes. Her apartment was in an old palazzo fronting onto a wide canal where in weather like this the first floor inevitably flooded, making her second-floor apartment surely the dampest in all Venice. Anyhow,
apartment
was too grand a word for the single large room with a tiny bathroom carved from one corner. She’d taken it only because the address—the Palazzo Breva—was a good one, even though in the heat of summer the place stank of the canals, and when winter came it was freezing. And whatever the season, it was eternally damp. The saving grace was that the old building had a certain elegance and charm and the corner view across the canal of the gold-domed churches and secret leafy patios was magical.

Filomena waded through the narrow alleys until she came to the street entrance of the Palazzo Breva. A grumbling woman concierge greeted her sourly as she stepped inside, informing her that she’d mopped up the worst of the floodwater in the foyer but that the canal side was inundated. Shivering, Filomena walked up the flight of marble stairs, worn to a groove in the middle from centuries of use, as was the ornately carved balustrade. The ceiling frescoes were still lovely, though dulled by decades of smoke and grime, and a chill emanated from the paneled walls that had once been a pretty celadon green but from long neglect were now somewhere between a sad beige and a dull gray.

Filomena was a woman who loved sunshine; she loved heat and tropical climates, the beaches of Rio and Saint-Tropez. With her shiny golden hair, her sexy pout and her lithe body, she could still adorn any beach with her own particular style. The trouble was, she was getting older. Filomena was twenty-eight, and in her kind of world eighteen was the only age to be. Even twenty-five was considered over the hill. How could it not be when there was an endless supply of nubile young beauties, eager for the gold and glitter of a life they couldn’t afford? Just the way she had once been.

Opening the door, she stepped into her one-room world. What a comedown, she thought, hurling her soaking trench coat, uncaring, onto the floor. She kicked off her ruined stilettos and dragged the dripping plastic bag from her hair. She looked like an old bag lady. No man in his right mind would give her even a first look, never mind a second. Her skirt was wet too. She unzipped it, stepped out of it and left it where it
fell. Her shirt followed. Wrapped in a blanket and still shivering, she walked to the window, staring out at the lashing rain and the angry waves sweeping from the storm-tossed lagoon, sending the overflowing canals into a whirling frenzy.

It was the end of April and the weather should not have been misbehaving like this. For Filomena, May, with its pale sunshine, was the most beautiful month in Venice, though she loved November best, when the alleys and bridges were mysteriously aswirl in a dense woolly fog that rolled quickly through, muffling footsteps and shrouding people in mystery. In Venice in November you could be anonymous and sometimes Filomena preferred that.

She was brought up in the Veneto, the region of hills and vineyards behind Venice, in a small village where her father was the baker. It was far from the social glitter of the city but though poor, Filomena had had a happy enough childhood, attending school in the nearest small town, where she was a good student. Her disgruntled father used to tell her that she had brains but she was just too lazy to use them.

It wasn’t just laziness. Filomena had discovered she was beautiful. At the time she believed the two assets, brains and beauty, to be an unbeatable combination. Now she wasn’t so sure. After all, look where she’d ended up: alone in a second-rate studio apartment, selling clothes she could no longer afford to buy, waiting to see if everything would work out as she’d hoped and planned, and that with Bob Hardwick, finally dead and buried, he had left her some of his damn millions.

She’d gone to the funeral, of course, wanting to stake her claim over his very grave, make the lawyers and everybody else
aware that she was someone who counted. Including his bitchy ex-wife, with her crocodile tears sending black mascara rivulets down her cheeks. Filomena had been careful not to wear eye makeup, and certainly no blusher. She had planned to look pale and interesting and had succeeded in drawing more than a few appreciative glances from the mourners, two of whom pressed their business cards into her hand as they said good-bye, but she knew they would all be married and she wasn’t about to go that route again. When she got what was coming to her from Bob—he’d always promised he would take care of her in his will, otherwise she wouldn’t have done what she had done—she would be her own woman, able to pick and choose her man from the world’s available best. And this time she would stick out for marriage.

So far, though, it hadn’t worked out that way. After the funeral, the will had not been read as she’d expected, and there had been no word on when it might be. Now her grandiose plans had disappeared into the rain swirling around Venice.

Staring out the window, she wondered gloomily if her father had been right after all. Perhaps she should have stayed home and become a schoolmistress instead of a tycoon’s mistress, taught class instead of teaching older men how to enjoy life. Maybe she should have married the local builder or someone like him, and had a nice warm villa and three sons to look after her in her old age.

There she was, back to age again. She was too old to model, though she’d done some of that when she was in her teens. She was not a natural in front of the camera, nor could she act, though she’d tried that too. And it was too late now to consider
becoming a schoolmarm. She shivered, wrapping the blanket closer. The truth was, no man, not even the village builder, had ever asked her to marry him. All Filomena was good for was to be a mistress.

Tears stung her eyes, running over the delicate planes of her cheekbones, down her lovely face until she tasted their salt on her lips. “What happened to me? What did I do wrong?” she asked the bare four walls. “What’s to become of me?”

There was a rap at her door. Hastily brushing away the tears, she went to answer it. It was the concierge, old and brown and withered, wrapped in knitted woolen shawls with clumpy granny shoes and wrinkled stockings. Sunk in her misery, Filomena thought one day she would look like that: she’d become a concierge, ignored by everyone, spying on other people, living vicariously.

“A letter for you. Delivered by messenger,” the woman said, holding out a large square envelope. “Though how he got through in weather like this I don’t know.”

Filomena took the envelope, thanked her and shut the door quickly in her face. She could tell the nosy old woman was dying to know what news needed to be delivered so urgently but it was none of her business.

Sinking onto the narrow bed that pretended in the daytime to be a sofa, Filomena studied the envelope. It was fine-quality stationery and looked the right size for an invitation. She ripped it open and took out the engraved card. Her eyes flew wide. It
was
an invitation, though not one she’d ever expected to receive. It came from Bob’s personal assistant, bidding her to join them to “celebrate” Bob’s life on a Mediterranean cruise. If
she accepted, she would receive one hundred thousand dollars.
If she accepted.
Were they
crazy?
Did Daisy Keane seriously think she would
refuse?
Plus, it said Bob’s will was to be read on the final night.

Filomena’s quick brain sifted through the infinite number of possibilities implied by this invitation. It was obvious to her that all her plotting, all her campaigning had not been in vain after all.

She was smiling for the first time in days as she wrote her RSVP. Of course she accepted, but just to make sure, she also telephoned Miss Daisy Keane at the London number. It was answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Miss Keane?” she said. “Filomena Algardi here.” She positively purred into the phone. “About the invitation to poor dear Bob’s wake. Yes, of course I’m planning to be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. See you there, Miss Keane.”

Snuggled on her bed in her blanket, Filomena began planning out the rest of her life.

Charlie Clement laughed when he read the invitation and immediately tossed it into the wastebasket. He had to hand it to that bastard Bob Hardwick, he’d even come back from the grave to get you. He was a man who always got what he wanted. Still, Charlie was nervous; he was sure there was more to this invitation and its bribe than met the eye.

Sitting behind the dull slab of steel that was his modernist version of a desk, he leaned back in the leather chair, fingers steepled, still smiling, though it was not a smile of pleasure. He was a tall, fleshily handsome man in his early fifties, with long slicked-back dark hair that curled just a little at the nape. His restless dark eyes missed nothing, and his mouth was a thin sensual line. As always, he was impeccably dressed in a dark pin-striped suit with a handmade shirt of the kind he ordered by the
dozen from Ascot Chang, monogrammed, of course, on the cuffs. His shoes were made by Lobb, and his large gold watch was a Rolex. He looked like what he was—a smooth operator.

Charlie Clement played the role of upper-class Brit to the hilt. After all, hadn’t he been to the best schools and grown up with some of the top names in society? He was certainly not aristocracy, though, or even landed gentry. Charlie’s father had made a bundle in paper goods, then lost it all in bad long-shot investments, which had left Charlie, aged eighteen, at a loose end because he’d counted on that cushion of money to provide him with the playboy lifestyle he preferred.

They say everyone gravitates to what they know best and Charlie knew what was best for him. He’d opened up what he advertised as the first “high class” escort service, providing traveling businessmen and tourists with a “companion” for the evening. Because of Charlie’s connections it had been a big success from the word go, and High-Class was never short of customers, nor of willing “escorts,” both male and female. Despite the rumors, there was never any mention of sex. What Charlie always told people who inquired with a smirk about the nature of his business was that loneliness was “a commodity.” Take care of that, he said, and you have a business. Not everyone believed an antidote to loneliness was the truth about what Charlie sold, but he was clever enough to ward off any implications of sexual favors. His girls, he said, were gorgeous; they were well-dressed, good conversationalists, fun companions. They made good money and got to dine at the top restaurants and dance at the best clubs. No more than that was expected of them.

He’d met Bob Hardwick at a dinner party, and spotting
what he thought was a prospective client, he’d talked to him about loneliness. Hardwick had invited him a couple of times to Sneadley Hall and later for the grouse shoot that took place every August. He’d gone, of course, but he’d been forced to leave early after a little misunderstanding. At least Charlie considered it little; in fact, Hardwick had punched him. Then Hardwick had had his escort business closed down and threatened further retribution.

Bob Hardwick was a man with clout in the corridors of power and his threat sat uneasily on Charlie’s mind. For months he’d felt like Damocles with the sword hanging over him by a hair, ready to drop any second. He hadn’t really felt safe until he’d made sure Bob Hardwick was dead and safely in his grave. Now the man was coming back to haunt him. And this woman, Daisy Keane, had the balls to ask him to celebrate Bob’s life on some crazy Mediterranean cruise.