Death of an Obnoxious Tourist Read Online Free PDF Page A

and his fiancée for a wedding present. Talk about a guy who has everything. And she has everything, too.”
    “She paid five hundred Euros for it!” Lettie, subtle as always, broke the suspense.
    “The knife of love is an old tradition.” Beth patted her hair and wiggled primly in her seat as the knife made its rounds. “A man may give it to his bride to symbolize how he will always protect her,” she informed us as she cast a wary eye on Victoria, who drew her thumb across the sharp edge of the blade and hefted it several times from one hand to the other. “And the woman gives one to her new husband, to symbolize . . . oh, I don’t know . . . something or other. Sometimes they would put the two knives, crossed, over their bed.”
    “Don’t get any ideas, Wilma. It’s bad enough you leaving all those whips and chains behind our bed. Knives are out of the question.” Jim Kelly got a laugh all around for that remark, and Wilma swatted him.
    “How do you think you’ll get that thing home? On the plane?” Paul Vogel asked.
    “Don’t put it in your carry-on,” muttered Lettie. “Not unless you want to model your underwear for the whole Italian army.”
    “Huh?” Meg’s ears perked up.
    I scowled at Lettie lest she explain and give Meg more ammunition for her dignity-smashing artillery. I could just hear what Meg might do with the story of Lettie and the strip search.
    “I’ll have it shipped home when I get to Florence. I just took it with me today so I could show it off a bit first.” Beth retrieved her knife and nestled it in its gift box.
    As we shuffled back to our seats, Michael Melon whispered over my shoulder, “If I had to share a room with that harridan, Meg, I wouldn’t trust myself with a knife.”
    ———
    The next morning, a Friday, dawned bright and hot in Florence. Fortunately, our hotel was air-conditioned and centrally located because I could already predict I’d want to nip back to our room periodically for breaks. Lettie, Beth, and I started with a short trek to the Duomo, actually the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, topped by Brunelleschi’s famous dome. When we rounded a corner and got our first sight of its glorious façade of pink, green, and white marble, a gasp rose from all three of us.
    “Unbelievable!”
    “Oh, my God.”
    “Almost too much, isn’t it?”
    From there, we wandered down a side street called the Via della Studio and stopped at a Gypsy sidewalk vendor’s display of paper Disney character puppets. Minnies and Mickies with string legs and weighted feet danced on a board, their string arms bouncing, powered by the vibrations from the Gypsy’s boom box. Lettie had to have one, and Beth was mesmerized. I warned them that they’d probably never get a jiggle out of them once they got home, but they paid no attention to me.
    We were back at the hotel before Beth discovered that her cash, a credit card, and the card that opened the door to her room were no longer in her fanny pack. It wasn’t too hard to figure out where they were, since she had last opened it to pay for a Minnie Mouse puppet. We dashed back to the Via della Studio, but the Gypsy had apparently folded up shop and gone out of business.
    It’s Friday the thirteenth, I thought. It was Friday, but I had lost track of what day of the month it was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Then it popped into my head: Bad things come in threes.

Chapter Four
    I knew it was Lettie as soon as I swung through the big lobby door. Perched in a wing chair facing the elevator and with her back to me, her wispy red hair stuck out above the bargello upholstery like reeds in a needlepoint swamp. One foot dangled, not quite touching the floor, the other probably crossed over and swinging to the rhythm of whatever tune was making her fingers tap on the chair’s arm.
    “I’m doing elevator duty.” Lettie turned and saw me at the same moment the elevator opened and Wilma Kelley popped out. Lettie caught her eye.