The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (17 page)

“He gave me a hundred euros to get my attention. Then he gave me your picture. He told me to watch for you at the
Circumvesuviana
train station. He told me, if I ever saw you, to give you a message. He gave me a cell phone and texted the message to it, to make sure I got it exactly right and also so I could contact him if I needed to. He told me that if you came to Naples and if I told you everything you needed to know, there would be fifty thousand more euros in his will for me.”

“And you agreed to this? Why did you believe him?” I asked.

“It’s not like I have very many things to do. I’m usually at the train station anyway. Besides, if there is one skill I have, it is reading people. I was sure he was telling the truth.”

“But my husband was very young. Why would he leave money for you in his will instead of paying you in a timely manner for a job done?”

“Again”—and this time there
was
a hint of malice in his eyes—“I can read people. Your husband was rich. He was American. He walked into a church in Naples and begged a homeless man to help him. I agreed because he was desperate. He never told me how desperate, but I could see that I would not be waiting very long for the money. Your husband knew he was going to die.”

“Is that the entire message?” I asked.

“That’s it,” he said. “I had no idea you had received the message until you texted me today from your husband’s phone. Texting it back to him was an accident. But I was to show you the exact text message and then tell you how I met him and about our financial arrangement.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me the message? Why didn’t you approach me at the train station when I first saw you looking at me? You scared the shit out of me when you followed me into the castle.”

“Your husband was specific that you had to see it typed and that nobody else could know about it, so I had to speak to you absolutely alone. No privacy, no money. He made it clear that specification would be in the will.

“But by the time I got you alone,” he said, “you were running from me. When we got to the terrace of the castle, away from those two kids you were following, I was planning to show you the message as he instructed. I had no idea you would jump over the wall.

“I have done everything your husband asked me to do. Now all I care about is my fifty thousand euros. Your husband said that everything would be taken care of, and I believed him. But if I were you, I would confirm that his will is in order according to our deal. If it is not, you should get out of Naples and not come back because Naples will no longer be safe for you if your husband did not live up to his word.”

I felt my eyes flash at the matter-of-fact threat, and I could see from his stern expression that he meant it.

This time, I did not take the bus. Instead, I began walking. I followed the bus route I had now memorized, the one leading from
Stazione Circumvesuviana
toward my hotel. I knew it would be a long walk, but I needed to think.

Jeff solicited a complete stranger’s help. He solicited a complete stranger who could not possibly be involved in whatever Jeff was running from. He solicited a stranger in Italy. He gave that man a message for me. He told him to watch the train station, the one from which trains leave for Pompeii. He knew that, if I came to Italy, I would follow him there.

Smart.

He knew that, if I came to Italy, I would be facing the same danger he was. And he knew that he would not be able to help me himself.

He solicited a stranger to help me.

Because he knew that if I came to Italy he would already be dead.

I snapped out of my thoughts and glanced up to get my bearings. Before me was an AT&T store. On a whim, I stepped inside and asked if there was any way to retrieve lost data from an iPhone.

The attendant laughed. “Of course there is!” he said in perfect English.

“What do you mean?”

“Madam,” he said, his eyes twinkling with amusement, “every time you receive a phone bill, your recent activities are on it! All we need to do is pull your last bill, and you will see all of the numbers you have recently called or sent messages to and all of the numbers that have called you or sent you messages. This should provide a great deal of information. If you want more, we can go back into previous months. I can also provide you with unbilled activities, which will, of course, be the most recent.”

It was so obvious that I felt stupid.

On one hand, I was relieved. But I was also mortified. Why hadn’t the Apple store reminded me of this?

I could only come up with two possible reasons. They did not want me to have my own information. Or they wanted it for themselves.

It was clearly someone working from within that store that had deleted Alexis’ contact information from Jeff’s phone.

The AT&T attendant asked me to step behind the counter and enter a string of security information into the computer in order to access my account. Moments later, we had retrieved and printed my last two months’ phone records.

I thanked the man and left the store. I scanned the documents as I walked. With phone numbers and cities before me, it was easy to place them with names.

The majority of calls, of course, were to or from Jeff. There were a few other San Diego numbers as well, which I quickly noted as my lab, a couple of colleagues, and my mother’s nurse. And there were two phone numbers with San Francisco area codes. My daughter and my sister.

I skimmed through the numbers to the end where the unbilled, most recent activities were listed. The information was completely current, a real-time transaction record of everything up to the moment I had pulled it up on the computer in the AT&T store.

I recognized the phone call I had received the previous day when I was in the Naples Archeological Museum. That was the one from the mortician. I recognized the outgoing calls I had made from the seafood café where I had first met Dante.

Then I saw the calls that had come in over the twelve-hour time frame while my phone was down, and I gasped. My sister had called me five times.

There is a phone call, and my marriage ends. Then there is a gunshot, and my life ends.

I am an invalid. It is Kathy who feeds me. It is Kathy who cleans up after me. It is Kathy who cares for my daughter.

And it is Kathy who forces me back to life.

It was the middle of the night in San Francisco, but my sister was not one to sleep through a ringing phone. It rang for a fourth time nonetheless, and I knew the call would now go to voicemail.

“Kathy, where are you?” I asked aloud.

“Kathy—,” I began when voicemail picked up, and then I heard the tone of call waiting. I clicked into the call. “What’s wrong?” I blurted out. “What’s wrong? You don’t call me five times without leaving a single message unless there is something you don’t want to say on an answering machine.”

“Hold on,” Kathy whispered, and for a few moments I could hear nothing but soft, rushed footsteps and my sister’s quiet breathing into the phone.

“Sorry,” she continued a moment later. Her voice was still a whisper. “I had to get outside so she wouldn’t hear me.”

“Who?”

“Lexi.” Her voice was now stronger, and the word was piercing. “I’m camped out at her apartment until she tells me what’s going on, but she won’t tell me. You need to get up here and see your daughter, Trina. Now.”

“What about her?” A chill ran up my spine.

“I got this weird call from her earlier. She was sort of rambling. Something about needing to talk to Jeff. I didn’t understand it, and I thought she sounded nuts. When I started asking questions, she hung up on me. So I came to her apartment to check on her.

“She looks like
shit
, Katrina. I don’t know when you last saw her, but I barely recognized her. She’s thin. She’s drawn. Her eyes, they look crazy. She’s not herself. I think she’s on drugs. I told her that I’m not leaving her apartment until she tells me what is going on with her. But she won’t tell me.”

Oh, God, no! NO!

Trust nobody. Her 2.

NO! Not her too!

“Wake her up and put her on the phone,” I said. “Tell her it’s Jeff.”