A Very Venetian Murder Read online

  “He didn’t want the gondoliers singing his masterpiece even before the first performance,” Reuben said. “You want to hear more?”

  “No, dear, and I don’t want to hear Questa o quella, either.”

  * See Appendix.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Peace and Quiet: Wednesday

  Wednesday morning Frost was deep into planning his sightseeing when Cynthia joined him at the pool. “Where are you off to today?” she asked.

  “I haven’t decided yet. Most of the monuments I’m interested in turn out to be in San Zanipolo, but I’m going to save that for last.”

  “Oh, look what’s happening here,” Cynthia said, nodding toward the door of the hotel. A procession was coming down the sidewalk. In the lead, by himself, was Gregg Baxter. Barely forty, he was tall, thin and suntanned, with golden hair that had been bleached either by the sun or the contents of a dye bottle. He was wearing small, round steel-rimmed sunglasses, and, as befitted the creator of the “gray look,” light gray shorts and a dark gray polo shirt.

  Dan Abbott, his business partner, and Doris Medford followed at a respectful distance. Behind them was a stunning black couple. Reuben did not recognize them, but Cynthia pointed out that the man, Tony Garrison, was Baxter’s up-and-coming design assistant—and lover, according to rumor—and that the woman was Baxter’s favorite model, called simply Tabita.

  Running ahead of the parade, which was moving at a stately pace, was a hotel functionary who frantically assembled five chaises at poolside, directly in front of the Frosts’ semi-isolated enclave. Eventually the group reached its destination, but only after Baxter had stopped to embrace and kiss several women, including two wealthy customers from Fort Worth and New York recognizable from the pages of W.

  Frost tried to recall the details of a Time cover story on Gregg Baxter that he had read a year earlier. He remembered that it had called Baxter the most gifted American designer since the young Halston and contained a wealth of biographical detail: Baxter had grown up in the Bronx, in New York City, and had attended the Bronx High School of Science before going off to Brown.

  While at Brown, he had begun sketching at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. After college he had come to New York and signed on with Liz Claiborne, where he worked hard and learned the designing trade. By the end of the seventies, he was ready to try high fashion and go out on his own. He started his successful ascent almost at once, when the chief buyer for Bergdorf Goodman bought several of his creations.

  Menswear followed in the mid-eighties, along with a more broadly distributed lower-priced women’s line, which competed with the clothes of his old employer, Liz Claiborne.

  The Frosts watched as Baxter, realizing how strong the sun was, sent Garrison back inside for a cap. The assistant was dressed from head to toe in black—a declaration of independence from the gray look?—starting with heavy shoes and moving up to a black felt baseball cap that said PADRES in yellow letters on the front. He came back with a second baseball cap that he handed to Baxter, this one for the New York Mets.

  Baxter put on the cap and sent Garrison to find a waiter, who soon hustled over with cups of cappuccino. Then the young man was dispatched again to the hotel, from which he returned with a stack of Italian fashion magazines. Baxter immediately began tearing through them as if looking for a specific item.

  He was jittery and nervous, to the point where it made Reuben jumpy simply to watch him. “You say that young black man is the great man’s design assistant?” Reuben asked Cynthia. “I hate to say it, but Stepin Fetchit’s more like it. The kid’s done nothing except run his legs off since they came out here.”

  Cynthia did not have a chance to comment. Doris Medford had spotted the Frosts and was coming toward them. Reuben was sure she was around forty, though her swimsuit revealed that she had a well-shaped figure, free of the flab that so often comes with growing older. Her bright red lipstick would normally have made a pleasing contrast with her dark, black hair, but the effect was at least partially spoiled by her flushed, ruddy complexion.

  “How’s the flower girl?” Reuben asked. “They let you back in, I see.”

  “Oh yes. But I almost had to go back. We were going to be two hundred and fifty at our party. Then we decided to use a second room at the Palazzo Labia, so we can handle three-fifty. But that means another ten centerpieces. Thank God those stupid flowers I brought back could be subdivided without looking scrawny.”

  “That’s a lot of people, three hundred-fifty,” Cynthia said.

  Medford covered her eyes with her hands. “You have no idea what a mess it is,” she said. “Can you imagine … no, don’t get me started. There are at least five hundred who want to come—all of Paris, Rome and Milan, it seems like. Gregg has intimate friends he didn’t even know about. And now we have a war about who goes in the main room and who in the anteroom. It’s something, that’s all I can say.”

  As they chatted, Dan Abbott joined them.

  “Do you know Dan Abbott?” Doris Medford asked.

  Cynthia said no, and Medford made the introduction. Reuben reminded him that they had met “when you were at First Fiduciary.”

  “Jesus, that was a thousand years ago. In my other life. On days like this one I wish I’d never left.”

  Abbott was the oldest member of the Baxter entourage. Mid- to late fifties, Frost estimated. He was also the most unprepossessing, with a freckled face and a high-pitched voice. He had been going bald when Reuben first knew him, but now wore an obvious toupee. Observing it, Reuben could not help thinking of that emblem of the Watergate scandal, Howard Hunt’s ill-fitting red wig. Not only was Abbott’s hairpiece ill-fitting and red, it looked to be knitted of yarn, like the hair of a Raggedy Ann doll. It was so bad Reuben felt it must be a fashion statement, or antistatement, by its wearer.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Cynthia asked.

  “Maybe push a hundred people or so in the Grand Canal,” Abbott said. “There’s going to be a riot over there tonight.”

  “Dan, we’d better get back. Gregg’s going to start feeling lonely and neglected,” Medford said.

  “Yes,” Abbott said, sighing. “Along with everything else, let’s not have him throwing one of his fits.”

  “Good luck to you both,” Cynthia said. “We look forward to the party.”

  After Abbott and Medford had returned to their leader, Reuben noticed Medford whispering to Baxter. He looked around and stared at the Frosts, then got up and came over. He took off his sunglasses, which revealed piercing blue eyes. The kind of eyes, Cynthia later told Reuben, that could break a girl’s heart if that had been Baxter’s inclination, which they knew it was not.

  “The Frosts, I believe,” he said as he approached and, when invited, sat on the edge of Cynthia’s chaise.

  “I’m surprised to see you here by the pool,” Reuben said.

  “I came out to relax for half an hour and then it’s back to work,” Baxter replied. This prompted Reuben to reflect that if the frenetic behavior he had been observing was relaxation, he wondered what the designer was like when keyed up.

  “Everything’s ready for the party,” Baxter said, “but I expect it’s going to take most of the day to finish the seating list.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Cynthia said.

  “Not when you may offend your customers—and the prima donnas in the press. It’s damned hard work.”

  “Well, it’s the party of the year,” Cynthia said. “I know, because the Tribune said so.”

  “Pure hype,” Baxter said, smiling.

  “I hope it compares with the party that was held in Venice,” Reuben said.

  “When was that?” Baxter asked.

  “Middle of the sixteenth century. I’ve just been reading about it. It was a banquet for Henry the Third of France. In the Doges’ Palace for three thousand guests. All the women wore white and there were twelve hundred items on the menu. Plus trick napkins at each
place sculpted out of sugar.”

  “We’re operating on a more modest scale,” Baxter said, smiling again. “Without any tricks.”

  “And of course there’s the modern party that was held right where yours is going to be, at the Palazzo Labia,” Cynthia said.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard about that one. Some rich Mexican,” Baxter said.

  “Carlos de Beistegui,” Cynthia said. “Charlie, I believe everyone called him. He spent a fortune buying and fixing up the Palazzo Labia and had a costume ball to end them all back in nineteen fifty-one.”

  “There are old ladies who still talk about it,” Reuben said. “Though I think it’s a little like the Mayflower and a good many more people say they were there than actually were.”

  “We’re not quite up to Charlie’s standards, either,” Baxter said, as he stood up and tipped his Mets cap. “See you later.”

  “Oh dear,” Cynthia said, when he had gone. “He seemed to leave in a huff. Did I make a mistake by mentioning the Beistegui party?”

  “I don’t think so. He’d heard about it. He said so.”

  Cynthia was mollified and again asked her husband whose tomb he was going to visit that day.

  “Pasquale Cicogna.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Cigogna commissioned the Rialto Bridge. A wonderful example of bureaucracy at work. He held a competition and got entries from Michelangelo, Sansovino and Palladio, among others. But he picked a hack named Da Ponte—of all things—who had done some work for him on the Doges’ Palace. The result is what we see over the Grand Canal. It reminds me of when Marty Lenmeade hired his shiftless, no-talent brother-in-law to redo the Chase & Ward offices.”

  “Where is Cicogna’s monument?”

  “In the Gesuiti. Why don’t we have a late lunch at Harry’s Dolci and I can sneak over there when the church reopens this afternoon?”

  “Fine. I’d just as soon get out of here. With the party, there’s bound to be lots of Euro-trash here at lunch.”

  It was exceptionally clear, with no clouds in the azure sky, and thus a perfect day to eat outside at the Dolci, the modest offshoot of Harry’s Bar down the way on the Giudecca. The Frosts went out the back entrance of the Cipriani and strolled down past the Zitelle church, now wrapped like a mummy while in restauro; past the youth hostel, with a United Nations of young backpackers lunching outside; past the Redentore, Palladio’s finest church.

  At Harry’s Dolci, they sat at a table fronting directly on the water. This created a unique immediacy with the heavy traffic in the Giudecca Canal: water-buses, tour boats, car ferries, tankers, barges, a Norwegian cruise ship. The world seemed just about perfect as they watched the passing traffic, drank Bellinis—that nectar of Prosecco, the sparkling white wine of the Veneto, and peach juice—and ate their club sandwiches, here formidable behatted structures that had to be attacked with knife and fork.

  After lunch Cynthia walked back to the hotel alone and Reuben took the circolare from the Sant’Eufemia stop next to the Dolci around to the Fondamente Nuove. He paid the fare for the forty-minute trip.

  He was happy to be returning to the Baroque church of the Gesuiti, or Santa Maria Assunta, which he regarded as the most idiosyncratic sight in all of Venice, its interior enveloped with green and white marble carving that looked like damask drapes. The sarcophagus of Cigogna (1585–95) framed the door to the sacristy. It was worth the trip, topped as it was by a delightful sculpted likeness of the reclining Cicogna, wearing his ceremonial regalia and corno, the traditional headdress of a Doge. His head rested comfortably for eternity on one elbow. The monument seemed splendidly irreverent and Reuben liked it.

  Given the oppressive heat, which showed no signs of letting up, Reuben had planned to take another swim when he returned to the hotel but then decided against it. He didn’t want to be tired for the evening ahead, which he was sure would be long. And hot.

  CHAPTER

  4

  A Hot Night

  With an expletive or two, Reuben assembled the components of his formal evening wear: studs and cuff links, waistcoat, suspenders and black bow tie, white pocket handkerchief and silk black stockings.

  Cynthia, meanwhile, checked over her long dress. There had been much discussion back in New York about which of her gowns would be most suitable. It didn’t have to be a Baxter, she realized, but she had finally chosen a dark-green silk of his. “It’s two years old,” she had said, “but everyone agrees his best designs are timeless, so it will do.”

  “All I can say is, this dinner better be good enough to justify hauling a tuxedo all the way from New York,” Reuben grumbled, as he struggled to put his gold studs into his dress shirt.

  Outside the front door of the Cipriani, an informal queue began shaping up shortly before nine o’clock, waiting to board the fleet of water-taxis massed in an aquatic traffic jam in the lagoon. The unseasonable heat continued and two of the formally dressed men at the head of the line took off their jackets. This sent a signal back through the ranks and a majority of the men eagerly followed their example.

  Efficient as always, Virgilio directed the guests into the waiting motoscafi, admonishing each in the appropriate language: “Careful, sir,” “Prenez-garde, madame,” “Piano, signore.” The Frosts shared a boat with six others, two strangers and four they knew slightly from New York. One was a Junoesque blonde whose trademark was an upswept coiffure that almost defied gravity and extended out many inches from her head; the effect was to make her diminutive wheeler-dealer husband appear to be standing under a tree. Tonight the tree was in full, resplendent blossom. The other couple known to the Frosts were a pair of prominent fun-lovers who had been hyperactive in the Kennedy era; their wrinkled appearances made Reuben aware of just how long ago Camelot had been.

  The Frosts’ motoscafista cut across to the Grand Canal and sped down it, past the Salute and the Gritti, under the Accademia and Rialto Bridges and then into the Cannaregio Canal, off to the right. The boat waited its turn near the pali, the blue-and-white striped poles in front of the Palazzo Labia that matched the striped awnings over the twenty windows on the two upper floors. Reuben observed with awe the lighted fiaccole illuminating the palazzo and the elaborately liveried figures helping passengers from the boats.

  A noisy collection of reporters and paparazzi was herded behind a barrier a short distance from the entrance, but no one on the Frosts’ boat detonated an explosion of flashbulbs. The photographers were more interested in a jam of demonstrators gathered on the Ponte delle Guglie, fifty yards away. Apparently students, they screamed incomprehensible taunts and waved their arms as their pictures were taken.

  Once inside, those arriving encountered an assembly of young women, dressed uniformly in black cocktail dresses unquestionably by Gregg Baxter. There was also a crew of young men with slicked-back hair, all in what appeared to be black tuxedos but were probably Baxter charcoal gray. Reuben thought that the effect was designed to make the guests feel that they were among beautiful people (and therefore must be beautiful themselves); but then, he realized, wasn’t a purpose of fashion to make people feel beautiful or handsome?

  One of the young women approached and softly asked Reuben’s name. She went to a table at the side of the entry and returned with an envelope marked “Mr. and Mrs. Frost,” which contained a slip showing their table assignment for dinner. The woman pointed them to an inner courtyard across a vast checkerboard floor of red and tan marble squares. Here a small army of waiters in white mess jackets with gold epaulets passed drinks and served a variety of canapés.

  Although the building was wired for electricity, the ground floor was lit by candles. The effect created was exceedingly alluring—and exceedingly hot. Mercifully, the courtyard where drinks were being served was in the open air. Hoping for relief, the Frosts went outside, where they joined Emilio Caroldo, a local cardiologist, and his American wife, Erica Sherrill.

  Dr. Sherrill, an art historian specializing in the early
Renaissance, spent part of each year in New York, where she taught at the Institute of Fine Arts. The rest of the time she lived in Venice, where her husband practiced year round. Reuben and Cynthia had met the Caroldos in the course of the couple’s tireless fund-raising efforts for Save Venice.

  “Hot in the sun,” Dr. Sherrill said, laughing. The Frosts just shook their heads. “It’s such a pity. Gregg Baxter has obviously gone all out to make this a wonderful party, but the heat’s going to overwhelm everyone.”

  While they were talking, a chamber orchestra began playing on the balcony above.

  “Vivaldi,” Dott. Caroldo said. “Very fitting. Venice’s eighteenth-century answer to Cole Porter. By the way, Reuben, do you read the local newspapers while you’re here?”

  “I can’t say that I do,” Reuben answered.

  “Too bad. Il Gazzettino has been filled with amusing stories about this dinner. This palazzo is now owned by the Italian state television network, R.A.I. The Milan designers are making a grande clamore about the decision to rent it to Baxter, to allow him to get publicity from a party in Venice. Why should a national enterprise deal with one of their foreign competitors, they’ve all been screaming. The answer, of course, is money. Your Baxter is paying very much to use this splendid place.”

  At this point, the male models originally hovering around the entrance moved through the crowd and announced dinner.

  “Where are you sitting?” Reuben asked.

  “Nove,” Dott. Caroldo said.

  “Nine—splendid, so are we.”

  Two of the decorative young men offered their arms to Erica Sherrill and Cynthia, and led them up the two-tiered marble stairway, carpeted for the evening with a rich, claret-colored runner.

  The ballroom, rightly called one of the most beautiful interiors in Europe, was truly dazzling. The dried flowers Doris Medford had brought back from Paris decorated each of the round dining tables; they were superfluous in this setting, which was dominated by Tiepolo’s frescoes depicting the story of Anthony and Cleopatra. The tables and wooden banquet chairs were covered with a white silk fabric, which turned out to have been designed by la marchesa Scamozzi. The discerning, among whom Reuben counted himself, noted that the design picked up the one from the gown of Cleopatra in one of the frescoes. The room was illuminated by four magnificent chandeliers of Murano glass; out of respect for the Tiepolos, there were no candles—and no smoking.