Murphy's Law Read Online Free Page A

know where the rest of the Southbury contingent was lodged. She only knew where Professor Kane was because she’d checked last night.
    She had to report this to the authorities. But this was a foreign country, and who knew what passed for authority here?
    She’d seen the reception area last night—a small cubicle just inside the vast iron-studded wooden entrance gate to the monastery. Last night, there’d been a guard posted in the cubicle. That might do for a start.
    Faith hurried down the stairs and along the portico rimming the quadrangle. A slight mist rose from the grassy center as the sun’s rays started heating up the cool ground. It was going to be a hot day.
    There was no one about and before she could wonder about that, she heard laughter and the clinking of silverware coming from one of the big, wrought-iron-barred windows across the way. Where they’d had dinner last night, she remembered.
    There’s no one about because everyone’s having breakfast, she thought as she walked up the steep stone-cobbled incline to the guardhouse and the entrance to the monastery.
    She’d rather be there having a real Italian espresso instead of scurrying off to report a murder. Faith rushed into the guardhouse.
    “Excuse me.”
    A handsome, middle-aged man looked up from his newspaper with a smile. When he saw her, his smile became flirtatious. “ Si, signorina?”
    “I’d like to—” How to say this? “I’d like to report a—a murder?”
    The man’s smile broadened, showing acres of strong, blindingly white teeth. “ Si, si .”
    He raised his hand and pointed to a wooden door across the way. Faith was halfway across the room when she saw what he was pointing at. She turned back with a sigh.
    “No, no.” Faith shook her head. “I don’t need a bathroom. I have one of my own, thank you. No, I need to report a murder. ” The guard looked at her blankly. Faith pantomimed a knife going into her chest. “A murder .” She knocked on her chest with the edge of her fist and the guard’s eyes followed her hand with interest. “You know. Murder?”
    “Muh-duh,” the guard said amiably and shrugged his shoulders. He lifted his eyes reluctantly from her breasts and raised an eyebrow. Out of politeness, he beat his chest, too. He probably thought this was some strange American gesture of goodwill.
    “No, no.” She knew it was ridiculous, but she raised her voice, as if that would make him understand. “Murder! Murder! A—man—has—been—murdered.”
    Exasperated, Faith put her hands around her neck and shook it. She jerked her head at an angle, rolled her eyes up and allowed her tongue to loll slightly out.
    The guard’s smile slipped and he eyed the door. “ Prego, signorina?”
    “ Mortus .” Remnants of high school Latin swam up. “ Homo mortus .” She couldn’t remember her numbers in Latin, though, so she reached behind the guard. He jerked back, wary now of the crazed foreigner.
    “It’s okay. You’re not the dead guy,” Faith said reassuringly. There were forty small cubicles with hooks for the keys to the cells. Most of them were empty. She tapped number seventeen, Professor Kane’s room.
    “He’s the one who’s dead. Seventeen. Professor Roland Kane. Mortus .” Faith met the guard’s eyes. Comprehension was dawning. She nodded and tapped seventeen again. “ Mortus .”
    The guard picked up the phone, never taking his eyes off her, punched out a three-digit number hastily and spoke in quick liquid tones into the receiver. Faith could catch only one word that sounded familiar. Morto . Dead.
    Shaken, Faith sank down on a cane-bottomed chair. She tried to make it look natural, but her knees were weak. The reality of what she’d seen was starting to sink in.
    Professor Kane was dead. Murdered. Faith wasn’t surprised he’d died by someone’s hand—she’d contemplated offing him herself any number of times, as had just about everyone on the faculty of Southbury.
    But there was an