Read Online Dying on the Vine by Aaron Elkins - Free Book Online Page A

carton—carefully—and we’ll head back to Florence. We’ll finish this up tomorrow morning.”
    Rocco was frowning hard. “Wait, wait, wait, at least tell us—”
    Gideon shook his head. “Tomorrow.” He was a longtime believer in the Creed of the Artful Professor:
    Always leave ’em wanting more.

SIX
     
    ROCCO , John, and Gideon all drove back to Florence in different vehicles; the same ones they’d come in, but when the cars pulled into the
Carabinieri
parking lot alongside the Great Cloister, Rocco was waiting for him. He was still scowling. “Listen, Gid, I can’t figure out what to make of what you were telling us back there. If the shot didn’t kill her, what did?” This was the second time that Rocco had called him Gid, and Gideon resisted the impulse to ask him to knock it off. For whatever reason—he didn’t know himself—it annoyed him to be addressed by diminutives or nicknames—he liked his own full name—and he didn’t hesitate to say so. He had only one friend, none other than John Lau himself, who was granted the privilege. John had been calling him Doc since the day they’d met, and Gideon had had no choice but to go along with it. Gid was even worse than Doc, but somehow, coming out of Rocco’s mouth, it couldn’t have been more natural. It fitted with his brash, wise-guy manner in a way that the prissier Gideon wouldn’t have. So now there were two who were allowed to get away with it. He was mellowing with age.
    “The fall is what killed her,” he said.
    “The fall?” The scowl deepened. “The
fall
?”
    “The fall.”
    “But . . . I don’t get it. The cop from Gibraltar, Clive, he said the bullet would have killed her then and there, and you agreed with him. I agree with him, for that matter.”
    “I do agree with him. A .32, back to front, right smack through the middle of the head? It should have killed her, it would have killed her—well, it would have if she hadn’t already been dead.”
    “What do you mean, already dead?” John had come up behind them. “Why shoot her if she was already dead? And how do you know that, anyway?”
    Rocco was equally bewildered. “Gid, stop messing with us, will you? What exactly are you telling us here?”
    “What I’m telling you, Rocco . . . John . . . is that the fall came first,
then
the bullet. She was already dead—from the fall—when he shot her.”
    Rocco, hands spread, looked to one side, then the other, as if searching for someone to explain it to him, but no luck. “Gid, she fell sixty
meters
—that’d be, uh . . .”
    “Almost two hundred feet.”
    “Yeah, two hundred feet. That’s a lot of feet. So what the hell would be the point of shooting her after that?”
    “Beats me, Rocco.”
    “Take a guess,” John said.
    “All right, all I can think of would be that he was taking out some insurance. He wasn’t positive that the fall had done it, so he came down and finished the job. Administered a coup de grace. That’s all I can think of, but I have to say I’m not real confident about it, considering that she fell off the equivalent of a twenty-story building onto a rocky surface and must have looked it. But it fits the facts. Sort of.”
    Rocco was suddenly irritated. “Okay, tell me something, Mr. Expert—”
    “That’s
Doctor
Expert to you, buddy.”
    Rocco was unmollified. “How the hell
do
you know which came first? I mean, I swear to God . . . you ‘experts’ . . . that’s just the kind of thing . . .” He jerked his head, muttering to himself.
    “Fun, isn’t it?” John said, grinning. “I always love when he does this.”
    “Well, good for you. I don’t.”
    “Rocco, what are you getting worked up about?” Gideon asked. “Does it really make any difference exactly when he shot her? Obviously, it doesn’t change the outcome.”
    “Yeah, it makes a difference. It’s weird, it’s inconsistent, it’s . . . well, it’s a loose end, it doesn’t