Free Home Before Dark by Charles Maclean Page B

sultry heat ofWashington DC. It was a dangerous contrast
and the music didn’t help. I found myself wishing I was over
there with her.
Take it easy, Ed . . . Had to be coincidence.
    Leaning over the bridge, Sam aimed her camera at the
illustrated wake left by the vaporetto. Wanting to get the way
the lemon sky heaved and shivered on the surface of the
canal; the facades of houses that rippled along its banks until
they dissolved into shadow. You had to be an artist like Turner,
she thought, to capture the nuances of light, the broken
reflections . . . the timeless aspect of Venice.
A figure in a black shawl appeared on the landing-stage,
giving the picture the focus it needed. Sam hesitated, and
got off a shot just as the next herd of sightseers strayed into
her viewfinder.
When she looked again the landing-stage was empty, the
light gone from the water . . . well, sugar. She moved on
before anyone could ask her directions to San Marco, or what
part of the US she was from. One thing about digital – you
could always edit out the aliens later.
On the other side of the bridge, she crossed a small, tree
shaded square and ducked into a church that from the outside
looked like an ordinary house with shuttered windows. Its
dark, stone-scented interior felt deliciously cool. She sank
down on an empty pew in front of the altarpiece, an insipid
ascension attributed to Veronese, which you had to feed coins
into a light-box to illuminate.
Sam just wanted to take the load off.
She was staying out on Burano, fifty minutes by vaporetto
from the centre of Venice – a schlep, if you happened to
forget your credit card or needed to run back (as she had just
done) for a shower and to change clothes. Not that she was
complaining: the secluded little island felt like sanctuary and
her room at the Albergo Zulian, a modest hotel in a row of
bonbon-coloured fishermen’s houses recommended by Jimmy
Macchado, had a view over the Lagoon.
She’d called Jimmy yesterday to let him know she’d arrived
safely. And then again this morning. So far she’d heard nothing
back, which sucked – the SOB could at least have thanked
her for the robe – but was not that unusual for him. Sometimes
he’d hole up at the house in Fiesole and go 'off the air’ for
days at a time. He’d mentioned having a backlog of scripts
to read this weekend.
She looked at her watch: just after seven, plenty of time
to get to the restaurant.
Unlike Jimmy, an old Venetian hand, Sam didn’t know
the city well. She’d spent the past two days sightseeing,
discovering for herself the shimmering glory of the place:
it had helped keep her mind off things. Revived by the salt
air and strong clear light of the Adriatic, she was starting
to unwind.
What happened in Florence – the creepy phone-call, the
suspicion someone had been in her apartment, her own almost
hysterical reaction – now seemed remote and unreal, like a
dream she had to make an effort to recall. Unpleasant though
it had been, the episode had allowed her to close a door on
the past. The compulsion to look over her shoulder was just
about gone.
Then, last night, a chance encounter had given Sam’s still
fragile sense of security a boost. At a chamber concert in the
Chiesa San Bartolomeo, she’d found herself sitting next to a
couple from Princeton who turned out to know her parents.
Balfe and Fern Rivers were 're-doing Europe’, and when they
heard that Sam was on her way to Paris, had insisted she
drive up to Vienna with them. She found their company
    numbingly dull, and Balfe had a louche gleam that could
turn out to be a problem; but she saw the advantages and
didn’t hesitate.
Dinner tonight was with them, and some Italians they knew.
She took off her glasses and rubbed the lenses on the hem
of her silk shirt. Then rose and with a token bow, still polishing
her glasses, walked slowly down the aisle. At the back of the
church, starting to fill now for evening mass, she noticed a
woman in a black shawl who