Kiss Me While I Sleep cs-3 Page 2

  “Very well,” she said, seizing the glass. Without hesitation she carried it to her mouth and tilted it, letting the wine wash against her closed lips, but she didn’t swallow any. Could the poison be absorbed through the skin? She was almost certain it could; Dr. Speer had told her to wear latex gloves when she was handling it. She was afraid her night might now be very interesting, in a way she hadn’t planned, but there was nothing else she could do. She couldn’t even knock the bottle to the floor, because the wait staff would inevitably come in contact with the wine while they were cleaning up.

  She didn’t bother to repress the shudder that rolled through her at the thought, and hastily set the glass down before patting her lips with her napkin, then carefully folded the napkin so she wouldn’t touch the damp spot.

  “Well?” Salvatore asked impatiently, even though he’d seen the shudder.

  “Rotten grapes,” she said, and shuddered again.

  He looked thunderstruck. “Rotten—?” He couldn’t believe she didn’t like his wonderful wine.

  “Yes. I taste its antecedents, which unfortunately are rotten grapes. Are you satisfied?” She let a hint of temper show in her own eyes. “I dislike being bullied.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did. With the threat of not seeing me again.”

  He took another sip of wine, buying time before answering. “I apologize,” he said carefully. “I am not accustomed to—”

  “Being told ‘no’?” she asked, mimicking him by sipping her coffee. Would the caffeine speed the poison? Would the cream in the coffee slow it down?

  She would have been willing to sacrifice herself in order to take just one well-placed shot at his head; how was this any different? She had minimized the risk as much as she could, but it was still a risk, and poison was a nasty way to die.

  He shrugged his burly shoulders and gave her a rueful look. “Exactly,” he said, showing her some of his legendary charm. He could be a very charming man, when he chose. If she hadn’t known what he was, she might have been taken in; if she hadn’t stood beside three graves that contained two close friends and their adopted daughter, she might have philosophically decided that, in this business, death was a fairly normal outcome. Averill and Tina had known the risks when they got into the game, just as she had; thirteen-year-old Zia, however, had been an innocent. Lily couldn’t forget Zia, or forgive. She couldn’t be philosophic.

  Three hours later, the leisurely meal consumed, the entire bottle of wine now sloshing in Salvatore’s stomach, they rose to leave. It was just after midnight, and the November night sky was spitting out swirls of snowflakes that melted immediately on contact with the wet streets. Lily felt nauseated, but that could well have been from the unrelenting tension rather than the poison, which was supposed to take longer than just three hours before the effects began to be felt.

  “I think something I ate isn’t agreeing with me,” she said when they were in the car.

  Salvatore heaved a sigh. “You do not have to pretend illness in order to not go home with me.”

  “I’m not pretending,” she said sharply. He turned his head and stared at the Parisian lights sliding by. It was a good thing he’d drunk all the wine, because she was fairly certain that he would have written her off as a lost cause in any case.

  She leaned her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes. No, this wasn’t tension. The nausea was increasing by the moment. She felt the pressure increase in the back of her throat and she said, “Stop the car, I’m going to be sick!”

  The driver slammed on the brakes—odd how that particular threat made him instinctively go against his training—and she threw the car door open before the tires had rolled to a stop, then leaned out and vomited into the gutter. She felt Salvatore’s hand on her back and another on her arm, holding her, though he was careful not to lean so far that he exposed himself to the line of fire.

  After the spasms had emptied her stomach, she slumped back into the car and wiped her mouth with the handkerchief Salvatore silently passed to her. “I do beg your pardon,” she said, hearing with shock how weak and trembly her voice sounded.

  “It is I who must beg yours,” he said. “I didn’t think you were truly ill. Should I take you to a doctor? I could call my own doctor—”

  “No, I feel somewhat better now,” she lied. “Please just take me home.”

  He did, with many solicitous questions and a promise to call her first thing in the morning. When the driver finally pulled to a stop in front of the building where she rented a flat, she patted Salvatore’s hand and said, “Yes, please call me tomorrow, but don’t kiss me; I might have caught a virus.” With that handy excuse, she pulled her coat around her and dashed through the thickening snowfall to her door, not looking back as the car pulled away.

  She made it to her flat, where she collapsed into the nearest chair. There was no way she could grab her necessities and make it to the airport, as she had originally planned. Perhaps this was best, after all. Endangering herself was the best cover of all. If she was also ill from poisoning, Rodrigo wouldn’t suspect her, wouldn’t care what happened to her when she recovered.

  Assuming she survived, that is.

  She felt very calm as she waited for whatever would happen, to happen.

  2

  Her door was kicked open with a splintering crash shortly after nine o’clock the next morning. Three men entered, all with weapons drawn. Lily tried to lift her head, but with a low moan let it drop back to the rug that covered the polished dark wood of the floor.

  The faces of the three men swam in front of her as one knelt beside her and roughly turned her face toward him. She blinked and tried to focus. Rodrigo. She swallowed and reached for him with one hand, a silent plea for help.

  She wasn’t faking. The night had been long and difficult. She had vomited several times, and had been seized by alternating waves of hot and cold. Sharp pains had stabbed through her stomach, leaving her curled in a fetal ball, whimpering with distress. For a while she thought her dose must have been lethal after all, but now it seemed the pains were abating. She was still too weak and sick to climb from the floor onto the couch, or even to phone for help. Once last night she’d tried to get to the phone, but her effort had come too late, and she hadn’t been able to reach it.

  Rodrigo swore softly in Italian, then holstered his weapon and rapped out an order to one of his men.

  Lily gathered her strength and managed to whisper, “Do not . . . get so close. I may be . . . contagious.”

  “No,” he said in his very excellent French. “You aren’t contagious.” Moments later a soft blanket settled over her, and Rodrigo briskly wrapped it around her before gathering her into his arms and, with easy strength, rising to his feet.

  He strode out of the flat and down the back stairs, where his car waited with the motor idling. The driver jumped out when he saw Rodrigo, and opened the rear door.

  Lily was roughly bundled into the car, with Rodrigo on one side of her and one of the other men on the other. Her head lolled against the back of the car seat and she closed her eyes, whimpering in her throat as sharp pain once more daggered through her stomach. She didn’t have the strength to stay upright and felt herself slowly begin to topple. Rodrigo made an exasperated sound, but shifted around so she could recline against him.

  Most of her consciousness was taken up by her sheer physical misery, but one clear, cold portion of her brain remained separate and alert. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, with either the poison or Rodrigo. For now, he was withholding judgment, but that was all. At least he was taking her somewhere for medical treatment—she hoped. He probably wasn’t taking her anywhere to kill her and dump her body, because killing her in the apartment and walking away would have been far easier. She didn’t know if anyone had seen him carrying her out, but the odds that someone had were good, even though he’d taken her out the back way. Not that he cared if anyone saw him, at least not much. She assumed S
alvatore was either dead or dying, and Rodrigo was now the head of the Nervi organization; as such, he’d inherited a lot of power, both financial and political. Salvatore’d had a lot of people in his pocket.

  She fought to keep her eyes open, to pay attention to the route the driver was taking, but her lids kept drifting shut. Finally she thought to hell with it and gave up the effort. No matter where Rodrigo was taking her, there was literally nothing she could do about it.

  The men in the car were silent, not making even idle comments. The atmosphere seemed heavy and strained, with grief or worry or even rage. She couldn’t tell which, and since they weren’t talking, she couldn’t eavesdrop. Even the outside noise of the traffic seemed to fade away, until at last there was nothing.

  The gate to the compound slid open as the car approached, and the driver, Tadeo, slotted the white Mercedes through the gap with only inches to spare on each side. Rodrigo waited until they were stopped under the portico and Tadeo had jumped out to open the passenger door before he shifted Denise Morel around. Her head lolled back and he realized she was unconscious. Her face was a pasty yellowish-white, her eyes sunk back in her head, and an odor clung to her—the same odor he’d noticed on his father.

  Rodrigo’s stomach clenched as he fought to contain his grief. He still couldn’t quite believe it—Salvatore was dead. Just that fast, he was gone. The news hadn’t got out yet, but it was only a matter of time. Rodrigo wouldn’t be allowed the luxury of grieving; he had to move fast, consolidate his position and take up the reins, before their rivals moved in like a pack of jackals.

  When the family doctor had said Salvatore’s ailment looked like mushroom poisoning, Rodrigo had moved quickly. He dispatched three men to take M. Durand from the restaurant and bring him to the house, while he himself, with Tadeo driving, took Lamberto and Cesare to find Denise Morel. She was the last person his father had been with before falling ill, and poison was a woman’s weapon, indirect and indefinite, depending on guesswork and happenstance. In this case, though, the weapon had been effective.

  But if his father had died at her hand, she had then poisoned herself, too, instead of fleeing the country. He hadn’t truly expected her to be at her flat, since Salvatore had said she was going to Toulouse to visit her ailing mother; Rodrigo had taken that as a handy excuse. It seemed he’d been wrong—or at least the possibility of error was strong enough that he hadn’t shot the woman on sight.

  He slid out of the car and hooked his hands under her arms, then dragged her out behind him. Tadeo helped support her until Rodrigo could slide his arm under her knees and lift her against his chest. She was of normal height, about five and a half feet, but on the lanky side; even though she was dead weight, he handled her easily as he carried her inside.

  “Is Dr. Giordano still here?” he asked, and received an affirmative reply. “Tell him I need him, please.” He took her upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms. She would be better off in a hospital, but Rodrigo wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. Officials could be so annoyingly official. And if she died, then she died; he had made all the effort he was willing to make. It wasn’t as if Vincenzo Giordano wasn’t a real medical doctor, even if he no longer had a practice and instead spent all his time in the lab on the outskirts of Paris that Salvatore had funded—though, perhaps if Salvatore had called for help earlier and asked to be taken to a hospital, he would still be alive. Still, Rodrigo hadn’t questioned his father’s decision to have Dr. Giordano brought in, had even understood it. Discretion was everything, when vulnerability was involved.

  He laid Denise on the bed and stood looking down at her, wondering why his father had been so besotted with her. Not that Salvatore hadn’t always had an eye for the ladies, but this one was nothing out of the ordinary. Today she looked awful, her hair lank and uncombed, her color as terrible as if she were already dead, but even at her best she wasn’t beautiful. Her face was a bit too thin, too austere, and she had a slight overbite. The overbite, however, made her upper lip look fuller than the lower one, and that alone gave her features a piquancy she would otherwise have lacked.

  Paris was full of women who were better looking and had a better sense of style than Denise Morel, but Salvatore had wanted this one, to the point that he’d been too impatient to completely investigate her background before approaching her. To his astonishment, she’d refused his first two invitations, and Salvatore’s impatience had turned into obsession. Had his preoccupation with her caused him to relax his guard? Was this woman indirectly responsible for his death?

  So great was Rodrigo’s pain and rage that he might have strangled her just because of the possibility, but beneath those feelings was the cool voice that said she might be able to tell him something that would lead him to the poisoner.

  He would have to find out who had done this, and eliminate him—or her. The Nervi organization could not let this go without retaliation, or his reputation would suffer. Since he was just now stepping into Salvatore’s shoes, he couldn’t afford the least doubt about his ability, or his resolve. He had to find his enemy. Unfortunately, the possibilities were endless. When one dealt in death and money, all the world was involved. Because Denise had also been poisoned, he even had to consider whether the perpetrator could be a jealous ex-lover of his father’s—or one of Denise’s old lovers.

  Dr. Vincenzo Giordano tapped politely on the frame of the open door, then stepped inside. Rodrigo glanced at him; the man looked haggard, his usually neat salt-and-pepper curls disordered, as if he’d been pulling at them. The good doctor had been his father’s friend since boyhood, and he’d wept unashamedly when Salvatore had died not two hours ago.

  “Why isn’t she dead, too?” Rodrigo asked, indicating the woman on the bed.

  Vincenzo took Denise’s pulse, and listened to her heart. “She might still die,” he said, rubbing a hand over his weary face. “Her heartbeat is too fast, too weak. But perhaps she didn’t ingest as much of the poison as your father did.”

  “Do you still think it’s mushrooms?”

  “I said it looked like mushroom poisoning—for the most part. But there are differences. The speed with which it acted, for one thing. Salvatore was a big, robust man; he wasn’t feeling ill when he returned home last night at almost one o’clock. He died just six hours later. Mushrooms are slower acting; even the deadliest will take almost two days to kill. The symptoms were very similar; the speed was not.”

  “It wasn’t cyanide or strychnine?”

  “Not strychnine. The symptoms weren’t the same. And cyanide kills within minutes, and causes convulsions. Salvatore wasn’t convulsive. The symptoms of arsenic poisoning are somewhat similar, but different enough to rule that out also.”

  “Is there any way to tell for certain what was used?”

  Vincenzo sighed. “I’m not certain it is a poison at all. It could be a virulence, in which case we have all been exposed.”

  “Then why hasn’t my father’s driver become ill? If this is a virus that works within hours, then he, too, should be ill by now.”

  “I said it could be, not that it is. I can do tests, with your permission examine Salvatore’s liver and kidneys. I can compare his blood analysis with that of . . . What is her name?”

  “Denise Morel.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember. He talked about her.” Vincenzo’s dark eyes were sad. “I think he was in love.”

  “Bah. He would have lost interest in her eventually. He always did.” Rodrigo shook his head, as if clearing his mind. “Enough of that. Can you save her?”

  “No. She will either survive, or she will not. There is nothing I can do.”

  Rodrigo left Vincenzo to his tests and went to the basement room where his men were holding M. Durand. The Frenchman was already the worse for wear, with thin rivulets of blood trickling from his nose, but for the most part Rodrigo’s men had concentrated on punches to the body, which hurt more and weren’t as readily visible.

  “Monsieur Nervi!” the
restaurant manager croaked when he saw Rodrigo, and began weeping with relief. “Please, whatever has happened, I know nothing about it. I swear to you!”

  Rodrigo pulled up a chair and sat down in front of M. Durand, leaning back and crossing his long legs. “My father ate something in your restaurant last night that disagreed with him,” he said with massive understatement.

  An expression of total bewilderment and astonishment crossed the Frenchman’s face. Rodrigo could read his thoughts: He was being beaten to a pulp because Salvatore Nervi had indigestion? “But—but,” M. Durand sputtered. “I will refund his money, of course, he had only to ask.” Then he dared to say, “This wasn’t necessary.”

  “Did he eat mushrooms?” Rodrigo asked.

  Another look of bewilderment. “He knows he did not. He ordered chicken in wine sauce, with asparagus, and Mademoiselle Morel had the halibut. No, there were no mushrooms.”

  One of the men in the room was Salvatore’s regular driver, Fronte; he bent down and whispered in Rodrigo’s ear. Rodrigo nodded.

  “Fronte says that Mademoiselle Morel became ill just after leaving your restaurant.” So she’d been stricken first, Rodrigo thought. Had she been the first to take whatever poison they’d ingested? Or had it worked faster on her, because of her lower body weight?

  “It was not my food, monsieur.” Durand was highly insulted. “None of the other patrons became ill, or had any complaint. The halibut had not gone bad, and even if it had, Monsieur Nervi didn’t have it.”

  “What food did they share?”

  “Nothing,” M. Durand replied promptly. “Except perhaps the bread, though I didn’t see Mademoiselle Morel eat any. Monsieur drank wine, an exceptional Bordeaux, Château Maximilien’s eighty-two vintage, and Mademoiselle drank coffee as usual. Monsieur did prevail upon her to taste the wine, but it wasn’t to her liking.”