Free Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death by Sheila Connolly Page A

and dinner. Thank you so much for your warm welcome.” He turned off his smile and turned away to speak to Barbara, and the energy in the room dropped.
    Women stood up quickly and headed for the door. I had a strong suspicion they were going to go to their various rooms and primp for dinner. Cynthia and I left more slowly; Cynthia never seemed to need to primp, and I really didn’t care.
    Once we were a discreet distance away, Cynthia said, “Well, that was enlightening.”
    I thought I knew what she meant, but I asked anyway, “What do you mean by that? I assume you don’t mean intellectually.”
    “No, I don’t. A nice bit of theater, don’t you think? He knew what he was doing back in the day. He knows that some if not all of us know too, or if there are some classmates here who spent their four years in a barrel doing quadratic equations, somebody is bound to fill them in now. He’s playing us all and enjoying every minute of it. Frankly I’m amazed he lasted as long as he did at the college.”
    “Times were different when we were there. Nobody had even coined the term ‘sexual harassment.’ We were all in a romantic fog anyway—or do I mean hormonal? Do you think he took advantage of any or all of those crushes, or did he know where to draw the line?”
    “Since he hung on until retirement age, I’d have to guess the latter. I would like to hope that the college didn’t turn a blind eye toward that sort of thing. But I could be wrong. Wonder what dinner will bring?”
    “We’ll find out soon enough,” I said. I had to admit I was curious.
    When we strolled down to the dining hall at seven, I smiled to myself: I had guessed right and a number of the other women now sported pretty shawls and makeup. Did we never outgrow that need to preen for a handsome man? My daughter didn’t play that kind of games with her male friends, as far as I had seen. But some of us who had come of age in the sixties still clung to vestiges of the old ways: simper and flirt.
    Inside I snagged a glass of white wine and insinuated myself into the crowd, all of whom were talking with great animation and many expansive hand gestures. I debated for about two seconds about introducing myself to the Great Man and decided there was no point—I’d never known him and I had no desire to know him now, based on what I’d seen. But I admitted to myself that I was curious to see who had known him—and who gave that away by their demeanor, rather than by anything they said.
    I ran into Xianling, who was scrolling through images on her omnipresent iPad. “Xianling, are you trying to document the whole holiday?” I asked.
    She looked up at me. “The thought had crossed my mind. But I do enjoy simply taking pictures. The professor is very photogenic, I find.”
    “I’m not surprised,” I said.
    Xianling tilted her head at me. “Not a fan?”
    I shook my head. “I find him a bit too full of himself, even at his age.”
    “And yet he has his adoring followers still.” Xianling gestured toward the group that surrounded him, now that he’d armed himself with a fresh glass of wine.
    “You weren’t ever one of them?”
    “Hardly. Excuse me,” she said, tucking her iPad in her shoulder bag. “I think I’ll find myself a drink.”
    After she’d left I joined some of my companions from earlier in the day. “Hi, Sharon. Interesting lecture, wasn’t it?”
    “Oh, it was!” she gushed. “I wish we could have spoken so openly when we took classes. I feel I missed so many of the nuances of Italian poetry. You never took a class with him?”
    I shook my head. “Nope, I took poli sci and psychology instead.” Which had proved a lot more useful to me than poetry and literary analysis. “I wonder how Barbara and Gerry knew where to find him. Does he live near here?”
    “Closer to Florence, I think, but that’s not too far. I wonder what kind of expatriate community there is around here?”
    “It sounds as though Professor