Read Online Dark Passage by Marcia Talley - Free Book Online Page B

sisters.’
    Pia smiled. ‘You won’t be sorry.’
    I thanked Pia again and carried my wine over to a comfortable, white leather chair decorated with brass studs. I settled in, arranged my knitting on my lap, and took another sip, transporting myself to the whitewashed houses and brilliant blue sea of Santorini, a place I’d visited only in my imagination.
    I was jolted out of my daydream when a group of teenagers erupted into the lobby from the elevator and breezed into the bar. Each girl carried a sheet of paper and a pencil. ‘Hi, Aunt Hannah!’
    â€˜Julie! What are you doing here?’
    â€˜We’re on a scavenger hunt.’ Julie flapped her list in my direction. ‘We’re supposed to count the number of jeroboams in the Oracle bar. I don’t even know what a jeroboam is!’
    Pia Fanucci pointed behind her where four giant wine bottles were arranged, like pillars, supporting a glass shelf on which was displayed a sterling silver plate with an engraved inscription commemorating an international wine award. ‘Those are jeroboams.’ Pia explained, ‘They hold about four litres of wine each.’
    â€˜Four!’ shouted one of Julie’s three companions. Heads down, they scribbled the answer onto their worksheets and disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.
    â€˜Your niece is a pretty girl,’ Pia commented after they were out of sight.
    â€˜I know. She’s going to break hearts some day.’
    â€˜How old is she?’
    â€˜Just turned fourteen.’
    â€˜She looks older.’
    â€˜I know. They grow up so quickly. Seems like just yesterday she was playing dress up with her Barbies.’
    â€˜Keep an eye on her,’ Pia said as she swiped up a few drops of water from the polished surface of the bar with a damp rag.
    I’d set my drink down on a circular end table and had reached for my knitting, but the cautionary tone in Pia’s voice brought my hand up short. ‘Should I be worried?’
    Behind the bar, Pia appeared to be checking the rag for imperfections. After a moment, she dropped it into a sink. Her gray-green eyes met mine. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that working as a bartender I see a lot of alcohol-related craziness. Sometimes I think they should raise the drinking age to thirty. After the hormones have stopped raging, anyway. But in some guys, the hormones never stop raging, you know? Had an eighty-something-year-old in here the other day …’ she started to say when the elevator doors slid open and Liz Rowe stepped out into the lobby. Liz carried an oversized crewelwork bag; the business end of a pair of knitting needles protruded from the top. I waved at my new friend. ‘Over here, Liz.’
    Liz joined me, set her bag down in the chair next to me to reserve it, then hustled over to the bar to get herself a glass of sparkling wine, cutting my private chat with Pia short. If only I’d had five minutes – and maybe a glass of Ode Panos – more, I might have been able to cut through the rhetoric about alcohol and hormones and find out why Pia had neatly avoided answering my question. I drained my glass. By the time Liz rejoined me, I was ready for a refill, too.
    More passengers trickled in, until the knitting group numbered around twenty. Projects ranged from small, like my hat, to highly ambitious, like a queen-sized lace-weave afghan. I had no idea how the woman had fit it into her luggage. One guy, who wielded his hook with the lightning speed of a gunslinger, was crocheting – I am not making this up – a Stetson hat. I was listening to him explain how he’d modified the handle of the crochet hook to accommodate rug yarn in order to make the tiny, tight stitches he needed for his project when I noticed that David Warren had showed up. He was leaning on the bar, talking to Pia.
    â€˜David knits? That’s a surprise,’ I