Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death Read Online Free

laughing apologies for their tardiness, claiming they had gotten lost, more than once. Not for the first time I wondered how we’d ended up with leaders whose names were so similar, which was bound to cause confusion. This was the first time I’d seen them in person since the official reunion at the college a year ago. I’d known them both but not well.
    Cynthia spotted me and made her way over to our table.
    “Laura, there you are! Are you all settled in already?”
    “I got here a couple of hours ago. You remember Connie and Pam and Ginny?” I waved vaguely at the other women at my table.
    Cynthia cocked her head. “I think so, but my head is swimming right now. I’m a terrible navigator—can’t tell north from south. Can you squeeze me in at your table? I’ll go cajole some food from the hunky staff.”
    We found an extra chair just as Cynthia returned with a full glass of wine, followed by the guy who had been tending bar carrying a laden plate. She gestured to her seat and he set it down with a grand flourish. “Grazie mille,” Cynthia thanked him, and he bobbed his head and all but blushed before retreating. Cynthia dropped into the chair. “Isn’t this great? Tell me what I’ve missed so far, while I stuff my face.”
    While Pam and Ginny obliged, I studied Cynthia. Back in the day, when we were both young, we’d struck a good balance: tall blonde Cynthia was the charmer, the social butterfly, but with a sharp mind and an eye for long-term strategy. I was shorter and darker, and I was the steady plodder, dutifully collecting footnotes and polishing my thesis. Cynthia had dated a lot of guys, none for long; I had dated not much at all. After we’d gone our separate ways, Cynthia had married twice—that I knew of. The first marriage, for which I’d been a bridesmaid, had ended in a nasty divorce; I wasn’t sure what had happened with the second. She did something I didn’t begin to understand for a high-tech firm that she’d joined when it was a start-up, and if I remembered right she was now an executive vice president for the same firm, thirty-plus years later. She should have great tales to tell about the evolution of the electronic universe during that time. But she was looking stretched thin now, speaking a little too gaily, focusing high beams on whoever she was listening to at the moment. We clearly had some catching up to do, but there was time enough for that later, when we weren’t in the middle of a crowd.
    We were halfway through the dessert course and many people’s eyelids were just beginning to droop, when there was the sound of a metal utensil clinking on a glass. Announcement time, apparently. I turned in my seat to see Jean and Jane standing at the far end of the long room.
    “Benvenuto, viaggitrice!” Jean said cheerfully. “I’m so glad you’re all here, and I hope you’ve settled in. I know this place can be confusing, and maybe if I give you the short history it will make more sense. I hope most of you have met the owners, who have so graciously made their place available to us. Please, Barbara and Gerald, stand up so everyone can see who you are!”
    A couple only a few years older than our own age stood and waved. American, from what I’d overheard, although apparently they had lived in Tuscany for quite a while. He was a professor, I thought, and I couldn’t remember what she did—other than run the place where we were now staying.
    Jean went on, “I hope you’ll all have a chance to get to know them while we’re here. They won’t mind if I tell you about the place. This used to be a working farm, but Barb and Gerry were driving around this area years ago and saw it, and they fell in love with it, just like that. They bought it only a few months later. Now, when they first saw it, only the villa up where we parked was habitable. Believe it or not, all the rest of the buildings here, the ones you’re staying in, were farm buildings. This one was the hay