A World of Two

I picture my mother lying on her hospital bed, the same one she has occupied for the last twelve days. The space is in shadow, the only light coming from the hallway. The room smells empty. No flowers or scented candles—she wouldn’t have wanted those. The sound of retreating footfalls in the corridor or a muffled voice from another part of the hospital occasionally interrupts the silence. Her breathing is shallow, until the moment it stops altogether. It happens so quietly, no one notices at first.

When my mother died in Concord, I was an ocean away, in a Paris hotel. Another day had already started. That remove feels familiar—geography and time following an established pattern.

In the morning’s early hours, I lay next to my husband, Tom, on a king-sized bed in a room of marble-inlaid tables and still-life paintings in gilded frames, the walls covered in red-and-gold-striped paper. I heard only the sounds of the night, a faint breeze moving through the magnolia trees in the courtyard and an occasional car gliding along the boulevard. While Tom slept, I lay awake, thinking about my mother. I had started to understand that we wouldn’t make it back in time. My mother would either be dead or so unresponsive that there could be no last words between us.

Tom read my brother Billy’s email while I was taking a shower. I knew from the way he walked into the bathroom, but he still had to say the words: “Your mother is dead.” Years from now, I thought, I will be able to replay this moment in my mind. He stood there, naked, looking both vulnerable and strong, his hand on the shower wall ready to reach for me.

My brothers and sister wanted to touch our mother after she died because she had not welcomed that while living. She would allow a hug or a kiss in greeting or farewell but shrugged you off if you lingered in the embrace.

Henry would have stroked her sparse hair, cut short after she could no longer shape it into a twist. He might have teased her about finally being able to touch her hair, something she loathed. Lydia might have rubbed her feet, those odd feet, with such high arches her toes curled to reach the ground. Her feet shaped by childhood polio and old age, missing the little toe on one foot, removed because of frostbite suffered during the Second World War. She could never find comfortable shoes, so she wore Birkenstock sandals year-round, donning socks with them in winter.

Billy would have rested his hand on her shoulder, let his fingers travel the length of her arm. He might have held her hand, bent at strange angles by arthritis and with the bones loose under the skin. Had I been there, I would also have been drawn to her hands, so small that they reminded me of a child’s. She kept her nails short and immaculate, a habit she’d adopted in medical school, and one I try to emulate. I might have traced the line of her aquiline nose and the contour of her jaw, fondled her cheek and pressed my fingers to her high cheekbones, a sign of her Slavic heritage, she once told me.

Her sandals and the pair of socks she last wore with them are mine now, safeguarded in a box in the back of my closet. Those Birkenstocks, the insoles shaped over time by the pressure of her feet, her navy-blue socks. I wanted the last of her clothing, something that had touched her. I run my hands over the smooth cork, hold the socks to my cheek, the much-washed cotton soft. I thought the socks might retain the cool, dry scent of her.

Our plane to Massachusetts departed in the afternoon, so Tom and I filled the morning with small errands—the purchase of a journal of good paper with a red ribbon to mark my place—and one last view of Notre-Dame. Each gesture, every step I made, accompanied by a voice in my head repeating, Your mother is dead.

The air smelled of diesel fuel and wet earth. My left arm entwined with Tom’s right, I rested my hand on his steady forearm, eavesdropped on the conversations around me, catching only phrases. I thought how these strangers knew nothing of my grief and I nothing of theirs. A rare winter’s morning, fresh with rain-washed skies, and sunlight bathing the bone-colored stone of centuries-old buildings. I noticed the quality of the light, its unusual clarity. Tom and I had introduced my mother to Paris on a trip years before. She will never see it again, I thought, trying to absorb its beauty on her behalf.

***

Excerpt from THE HISTORY WE CARRY by Margaret Whitford. Copyright 2026 by Margaret Whitford. Reproduced with permission from Margaret Whitford. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Alpha and Omega
Sunday, February 1, 2015 – 1:47 a.m.

Twenty-plus years with the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office taught Jonathan Gray to expect the unexpected. But Washington Square Park had always been a tranquil haven on the fringe of the French Quarter. So crime-scene tape draping the square’s wrought-iron fence presented the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Moonlight filtering through stately live oaks cast eerie—almost funereal—shadows, adding to the dissonance.

Fluttering in the nippy midwinter breeze, the neon-yellow ribbon communicated

a mute warning. On this side, normalcy. On the other, insanity. Stepping into the dysfunction never got easier. Regardless, turning back wasn’t an option. As if speaking the incantation aloud would immunize him against the unfolding drama, he repeated his trite pre-crime scene mantra: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” His breath lingered in the frosty air before evaporating.

After checking in with the uniformed officer monitoring access, Jonathan angled toward floodlights illuminating a temporary canopy above the city’s AIDS memorial. More tape—red as opposed to yellow—identified the innermost “Do Not Cross” perimeter. Crime scene technicians in white Tyvek protective suits busied themselves measuring and photographing what must be the reason he’d been summoned. A male corpse sitting upright on the ground—its arms and legs twisted at seemingly impossible angles—leaned against the memorial’s circular cut-glass and steel panels surrounded by a pool of thick, dark-crimson liquid.

A curved, nearly rectangular piece of wood with brass edges—most likely a knife handle—protruded from under the right side of the dead man’s rib cage. A portion of his intestines spilled out of the wound. A second knife—its handle and part of its blade visible—had been thrust downward into the soft tissue between the left collarbone and neck.

Cause of death seemed too obvious to require someone of Jonathan’s seniority. A first-year med student could have made the call. But markings carved into the dead man’s forehead and chest hinted at something more sinister. No wonder Mitch Broussard from NOPD had called him in the middle of the night. The man’s heavy flannel shirt lay open, exposing his chest and a series of

capital letters etched into his skin. The letters—G I D I A I D I V—made no sense, at least not in English. A folded piece of paper with similar letters and other symbols, not quite readable from that distance, lay under the man’s left hand. Lack of blood covering the letters in the chest signaled they had been added postmortem. Jonathan focused on two marks in the man’s forehead. An uppercase “A” and what looked like an upside-down horseshoe—the Greek letter Omega—apparently cut while the victim was still alive.

It couldn’t have been two years already. But there it was. Alpha and Omega. Jonathan bit his lip and cursed under his breath. Then, a silent prayer. Looked like the nightmare was about to begin—again.

One of the CSTs stood and raised her clear face shield. “Hey, Doc. Welcome to Funsville.”

Excerpt from SHADOWS OF FRENCHMEN by Michael Rigg. Copyright 2026 by Michael Rigg. Reproduced with permission from Michael Rigg. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

“Americans,” said my goddaughter, licking cheese and tomato sauce off her fingers, “eat twenty-three pounds of pizza every year.”

I looked at her suspiciously. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that Lily is precocious for a seven-year-old, but she also sometimes falls prey to what in artificial intelligence is known as hallucinations, and makes things up if she believes they’ll create a better story. “I don’t eat twenty-three pounds of pizza,” I said, even though we were in fact sitting at the Provincetown House of Pizza and contributing to the statistic.

“Not every American,” Lily conceded. “It’s an average.” She brightened. “So that means, some people eat way more than that!”

“That’s a lot of pizza,” I agreed. The truth is, I do regard it as a treat of sorts. I am part-owner of the Race Point Inn in Provincetown’s East End, and pizza is never featured on our Michelin-starred restaurant’s menu.

Besides, I like spending time with my goddaughter. When my best friend Mirela brought Lily back from Plovdiv in Bulgaria—where her sister had regarded the baby as an inconvenience and readily signed adoption papers so Mirela could bring Lily to the States—I hadn’t been quite as enthused. (To be fair, neither had Mirela: if there were ever someone who manifested zero maternal instincts, it’s her. As a mother, she’s something of a work in progress. That had not, however, stopped her from once becoming the fiercest mother bear ever out in the dunes when the baby’s life was threatened.)

In my defense, there aren’t that many non-parents who can truly embrace the demands of a baby, which morphed into the demands of a toddler, which finally metamorphosed into the very smart conversations one could now have with the girl sitting at the table with me.

“Did you know,” she said, “that some indigenous people call the earth Turtle Island?”

“I did not,” I said. She knows the word indigenous. Of course she does. “Are you going to eat that piece?”

She shook her head, intent on her thought. “The way the turtle shell is curved works okay for half the earth,” she said. “That makes sense. But what about the bottom half? And where does the turtle sit, or stand, and how come people don’t fall off the turtle? And if we’re on Turtle Island, why don’t we just float away? But if we did, what would we be floating on top of?”

“Good questions,” I said. Somewhere in the back of my mind an expression flitted by, turtles all the way down, but I couldn’t remember who said it or what it meant, and didn’t want to further complicate the conversation. I picked up the last slice of pizza and took a bite. “You could look them up and see.”

“Aunt Sydney,” she said to me with dramatic excessive patience, “I already did. I know how to do research! But no one knows.”

When I was seven, I probably didn’t even know the word research. I sighed. Maybe she could make it her dissertation topic. At the rate she was going, that was probably going to happen sometime next year. “It’s their story,” I said. “Lots of cultures have stories to explain how things work.”

“But if everybody’s got a different story, how do we know which one is true?”

We’d gone from alimentation to geography to metaphysics in under four minutes, which had to be a record of some kind. I was rescued by the arrival of my husband. “I see you didn’t save me any pizza,” he said, sitting down at the table and reaching over to tousle Lily’s hair.

“Didn’t know you were coming,” I said.

“Uncle Ali,” said Lily, “How do we know whose story is true?”

“Story?” He raised his eyebrows, amused, and gave me a smile, which always—even after twelve years together—takes my breath away. Ali is Lebanese-American, and is the most beautiful man I have ever seen.

“Origin myths,” I told him. “Turtle Island.”

He said to Lily, “Truth can be different from facts, you know? Different stories are true for different people. In my religion, we don’t think the world started with a turtle. We think Allah created it, and did it in seven days.” He paused. “Does that sound like a fact to you?”

She shook her head. “My mom can’t even do a painting in seven days, sometimes,” she said.

“So they’re not facts, our stories, but even if we know they’re not factual, they tell us some truths about who we are,” he said.

“What truths does your story tell?”

He considered the question. Ali always treats Lily like a miniature adult. It works okay more often than not. “Well, it tells me that Allah is good, because the earth is good. It tells me Allah pays attention. It reminds me that he wants me to live in a way that I pay attention, too. And I think that people who tell the story of Turtle Island must be very close to the earth and nature, and the turtle reminds them of that.”

“Okay.” She was probably filing it all away to ask Mirela about later. “Are you going to order a pizza?”

Ali smiled. “I think not,” he said. “I was just passing and saw your Aunt Sydney’s car here so thought I’d stop in to say hello, because I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“It hasn’t been forever, Uncle Ali,” Lily said seriously. “It was last week.”

“Well, it feels like forever,” he said. “What are you ladies doing after lunch?”

“I don’t know about Lily,” I said, “but this lady has work to do.”

“You have to take me home first,” Lily said.

“I know.”

“My mom gave me the key,” Lily said.

“I know. She told me. And you haven’t lost it?”

She made a face. “Of course not, Aunt Sydney. I’m responsible.”

“You certainly are,” I said, smiling. I stood up and began clearing the table. “Want to help me with this? What time’s your mom coming home?”

She finished her soda, sucking noisily on the straw. “When she’s done at the gallery.”

That could be anytime. Mirela isn’t just any artist; even in Provincetown—itself an important art colony, the oldest continuous one in North America—she’s one of the town’s hottest artists. She came to P’town from Bulgaria one summer to work, back when Bulgarian students came here in droves; they still come, but in somewhat smaller numbers; Provincetown is changing. She spent that first summer waiting tables at Joon Bar and The Mews, driving a pedicab, and painting seascapes, mostly of the harbor. The paintings sold, and she stayed on, eventually becoming a US citizen; but over those years her style changed. Now she creates abstract works that sell for tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. She’s also marginally psychic, and some of her paintings carry eerie messages that scare the hell out of me.

Lily is, of course, her loudest critic, and often complains that her work doesn’t look like anything in particular; I privately agree with that assessment.

Very privately.

Ali stood up and opened his arms for a hug. “I’ll see you soon, habibi,” he said. It’s an Arabic endearment he reserves for Lily. He generally uses Italian ones with me. He thinks they make him sound sexy.

He’s right.

Lily duly deposited at Mirela’s house in the West End, Ali and I returned to the Race Point Inn, which was doing its usual brisk business. It was late June, the start of the tourist season, when Provincetown’s population makes the switch from three thousand residents in the winter to eighty thousand in the summer. The inn’s open year-round, and we’re generally booked up completely from April to December. I’ve been part of the inn now, one way or another, for over fourteen years, and yet am still absorbing what that entails: people, people, and more people.

Ali disappeared into our residence, which is the penthouse on the top floor of the inn, and I went in search of Wendy, the inn’s manager and—I could swear—magician. She soothed ruffled feathers, dealt with crises, handled difficult people, all the things I’m not terribly good at. We all have our areas of specialty.

Mine is murder.

***

That’s not really true, of course; I haven’t actually killed anybody yet, though I’ve come close a few times. In my fantasies, anyway. No; as Julie Agassi, the head of the Provincetown Police detective unit, tells it, if there’s a dead body anywhere in town, I’m going to be the one to have found it. Or known about it. Or been somehow involved with it. And it’s true that I seem to have a Jessica Fletcher/Miss Marple-level of amateur connection to crime.

It started one summer morning when I went to take an early dip in the Race Point’s pool—at the time, I was employed as the inn’s wedding coordinator—and found the body of my boss floating in the water with me. A thousand times ick, as well as a sorrow I’ve never really gotten over: Barry had been the kindest, gentlest man I’d ever known.

So of course I wanted to be part of bringing his killer to justice.

After that, it felt somehow natural for me to be on the scene of other crimes. Provincetown isn’t very big, and my work brings me into contact with a tremendous number of people, so it’s logical, really, that I’d have more success in figuring things out than would the State Police, dispatched from up-Cape to investigate homicides and not necessarily all that familiar with our little quirks down here.

And quirky doesn’t even begin to describe Provincetown. The town is a vibrant art colony. It’s also a gay-resort destination. And an old fishing village that still retains the remnants of the commercial fleet, along with the Portuguese families who worked it. Once upon a time, one of the whaling capitals of the world. And before that, the summer home of an indigenous population. All that history, all that mix makes for people who most decidedly do not do things by the book. Some outsiders find that disconcerting.

I find it… home.

Wendy was sitting in the empty restaurant drinking coffee and going over the evening’s menu with Martin, the maître d’. “It doesn’t matter; she says we have to take it off,” he was saying.

I pulled up a chair. “Take what off?”

“The salmon en croute,” said Martin. “She is not pleased with the quality of today’s delivery.”

Wendy was shaking her head. “Seriously? I don’t get it. Everybody likes salmon,” she objected. “Even people who don’t like fish, like salmon. She’s got it; for heaven’s sake, what else does she want to do with it?”

Martin made a face; I could only imagine what “she” had said to do with it. She was, of course, Adrienne the diva chef, by whose graces we had earned and kept our Michelin rating. She also had absolutely no care for anybody’s feelings; staff had been known to quit their first night of service because she’d completely terrorized them. My co-owner, Mike, seemed to be the only person who took her tantrums in stride. “It is not a local fish,” Martin was saying, his French accent somehow making the remark more persuasive. “And she has two other piscatory dishes on the menu…”

Wendy snorted. “For heaven’s sake,” she said again, but she said it with resignation. We all knew the truth: what Adrienne the diva chef wanted, Adrienne the diva chef got. “I’m going to have to reprint the menus.”

“Such is the nature of our curious enterprise,” said Martin, shrugging; he knows which battles to fight. He turned to me. “Sydney? Was there something you needed?”

“I wanted to check in with Wendy about the TV crew,” I said. We were being featured on one of the local-things-to-do, early-evening programs out of Boston, which was both a Good Thing—it helps to be known as a Weekend Waypoints destination—and also was going to be disruptive of staff and guests alike.

“Arriving tomorrow morning,” she said, changing gears briskly and seemingly effortlessly. “Mike wants you to do the interview, did he tell you?”

“He did.” Mike and I had become co-owners of the inn when its former owner gave up Provincetown for Amsterdam and his new love. Mike had been the manager, so he slipped easily into the role of keeping on top of the practical side of things, whereas once I gave up coordinating weddings, I tended more toward the public-relations side of ownership, attended business guild meetings, helped organize events, went off-Cape to conferences… and, apparently, did interviews for Boston television stations.

I also valued Wendy’s impressive organizational skills. “Where do you suggest it will disrupt people the least? The interview, I mean? The part I’m doing?”

“You’re doing the whole part,” she corrected me. “You’re going to have to stick with them, and take the producers to lunch here, I have a table for you at one o’clock.” She pulled out her smartphone and started scrolling. “Juliet Mills and Bruce Peterson,” she read. “And rooms thirty-four and eighteen will be empty and prepared for the cameras, but you have to be out of eighteen by lunchtime because we have an early arrival for it.”

I raised my eyebrows ever so slightly. “Thirty-four? Do you think that’s a good idea? You know they’ll have done their homework.” I could still hear Lily’s voice saying she knew how to do research; there was absolutely no way television producers didn’t.

It wasn’t that thirty-four is a bad room—it’s actually quite nice, with antique furnishings and a window overlooking the largest of our patios, the one with the arbor. It had been two years since Ali and I had stood on that patio exchanging wedding vows when we were interrupted by a man’s body falling very nearly on top of us.

From room thirty-four.

“They requested it,” said Wendy. “It adds a little pizzazz, knowing a murder happened here.”

Two murders, in fact, if you counted the body in the pool years before that. My instinct was to downplay that particular facet of the Race Point’s claims to fame. But Wendy leaned into it, and her decision had proved successful. There was even talk, sometimes, of a possible haunting. And people liked that. “Your call,” I said, making a face.

“I’ve put together a schedule,” Wendy went on, her voice brisk. Potential ghosts weren’t playing into her agenda—for the day, at least. “They’ll spend the morning shooting the inn, then after lunch they’ll go down Commercial Street, do shots of the town. They call it B-roll. Back here for a wrap-up before dinner service starts. Nine of them in all: producers, director, the on-air talent, and cameras and sound.”

“Okay.” I knew better than to argue: Wendy knew what she was doing. Nothing could go wrong.

Which just goes to show how little I understand about fate, or life, or anything.

***

Excerpt from Trafficking in Murder by Jeannette de Beauvoir. Copyright 2026 by Jeannette de Beauvoir. Reproduced with permission from Jeannette de Beauvoir. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will.
—Dylan

‘Hi love, you just dropped your glove.’

When she turned to face him, he was amazed. He remained totally in shock to the extent he became a blabbering idiot.

‘Just now as it fell from your coat pocket…’ he continued, ‘I caught it before it hit the wet ground… Honestly it didn’t get wet. I mean it’s a little wet, but only from the rain and not the pavement…agh…’ and mid-sentence he reluctantly turned and chased after his two mates.

She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever set his eyes on during his seventeen years on this earth. When she’d passed him a few life-changing seconds beforehand, she was walking, arms interlinked in the midst of two friends with her head bowed to the pavement. Consequently, he’d missed her green eyes, hidden by her long black hair, and he’d missed her quiet demeanour, but, most of all, he’d also missed the chance to make a connection.

He insisted his two mates, Brendan and Lefty, continue walking around the streets of Portrush with him until darkness fell ninety minutes later. He was working on the theory they’d bump into the three girls again. They’d discovered, to his cost, the only thing more difficult than finding someone in Portrush in the peak holiday season was finding someone on the deserted streets of Portrush during the off-peak season, when Ulster’s number one tourist centre reverted to its more comfortable status of winter ghost town, aka Ghostrush.

Thomas Barry—Tommy to his acquaintances, Tom to his good friends—minus his two mates was back on the streets the following morning, just before eight o’clock. He walked the short distance from his parents’ house in the sedate Antrim Gardens to the nearly (but not quite) refurbished railway station in Eglinton Street, passing the moth-balled Barry’s (historic) Amusement Arcade on the way. It was a journey just like he’d done most days of his life. Most other days of his life. though, he’d just taken Barry’s (no relation) and every other local landmark, for granted. That Sunday morning in October 1976 though he’d studied every nook and cranny around the streets of the Port as if his life depended on it.

He felt it did.

When his friends met up with him just before lunch time, he admitted to them he’d already had tea and toast in Portrush’s Holiday Hostel, with its ultra-colourful rooms; the once elegant Adelphi Hoteland The Atlantic Hotel, with its spectacular views, in the vain hope the three girls were out-of-towners. The other hotels and guest houses were all closed for the winter, he claimed. Still, he’d tried them all, “just in case, you understand.” He also, for one who’d always gone to great trouble to keep the majority of his feelings inarticulately to himself, articulately explained he felt for the sake of his well-being, if not his life, he needed to find this girl. He also admitted that, not only did he not know what he was going to say to her when, and if, he met her, but if such an accidental, on purpose, meet happened he’d be so tongue-tied again, he might even need to walk on past her. He just knew he really needed to find her. He told them he’d been awake all-night thinking about her. Lefty put him out of his misery by offering to take him to some of the out-of-town hotels. The two of them hopped on Lefty’s trusted red Vespa 125 scooter and headed off out past Kelly’s trailer park and bar and on to Castle Rock, Portstewart, Portballintrae and even Bushmills.

They returned just over an hour later with the Vespa’s petrol tank empty and their four arms all the one length.

Thomas Barry admitted to his two best friends he’d never felt so convinced about anything before in his life. A real-life girl had never ever had such an effect on him before. Isabella Adjani on the silver screen yes, but a real live human, certainly not. He most certainly accepted the fact he was never ever going to meet the long-haired, green-eyed girl again in his life.

He admitted how weird this feeling was to him.

Nonetheless he continued his search.

He thought of all the things he could have done, should have done. Perhaps all of them were things capable of scaring her off for life. But what did it matter now? He’d most certainly lost her for life.

The lads wanted to go to the Old Harbour Bar. Even with the new glitzy restaurant extension, accessed by a half a flight of wooden stairs, it was still the cosiest bar in the winter and their favourite watering hole. He declined, suggesting he might join them later. Once again, he took to the streets of Portrush. The same familiar streets he had taken for granted all his life, but which now took on major importance due to the fact they may be keeping him from finding the green-eyed girl. He tried chastising himself for feeling sorry for himself. It didn’t work. How could it possibly work when someone, something, a God even, if such a spirit existed, had allowed him to experience this special creature and then not equip him properly about how to approach her? He chastised himself further for not considering what he’d say to her if, or when, he met her. He’d already let himself down once by blabbering away when he had the perfect excuse to greet her. Equally he felt if he had something rehearsed it would have sounded too false, stifled, insincere and a chat up line. He kicked himself over his rap about her glove being wet not because he had let it fall on the wet pavement but because it had gotten damp in the rain.

He’d never been one for the chat up lines. They’d left those to Lefty. Funny enough this approach hadn’t worked out for their lead wingman either. Thomas Barry had often wondered if they’d become mates, “blood brothers” just so they could hang out together and look for girls. Anyway, they had launched their little gang, the BLTs. They even had their own unique motto: May the Sauce be With You. It was funny at the time. They’d picked it over a meal together in Morelli’s as they simultaneously chased the food-saving flavouring known as HP. They’d also debated using: Life is a Beach and Then the Tide Goes Out,. Considering their endgame objective, they had unanimously voted against this option on the grounds it was too negative. As he wandered around the deserted streets, now it had gotten down to the nitty-gritty, he wasn’t so sure about their motto either, or even about their gang in the first place. Lefty was always complaining three wasn’t a good number to hang out in. If they met two girls and got through the even more complicated task of chatting them up, then the girls would surely feel sorry for the additional boy they would have to exclude due to the mathematical impossibilities. He reckoned maybe they could possibly have made the problematic maths work down in the more liberal Belfast. In the meantime, they had agreed they would figure out such a scenario as and when it arose. Lefty had claimed the girls would probably make their preference known and they, the boys, would just have to deal with it. They’d been happy to leave the tactics to Lefty. Even though Lefty’s tactics had, so far, been 100% unsuccessful, they still left him in charge. The alternate didn’t bear thinking about.

Tommy wondered if it would be any easier if, and when, one of them found a girlfriend and peeled off their gang as it were. He wondered who’d be the first to find a girl. He thought if you were a betting man and you followed the odds, then Lefty should be the first to find a girl. But then what would they do? They’d surely be lost without the tactics man. Or would they?

‘At least the rain has stopped,’ he said aloud, as he rounded the corner of the forsaken Mark Street Lane and into the desolate Atlantic Avenue.

‘Hi Love,’ he thought he heard a ghostly breathy voice say, not much above a whisper, ‘you haven’t found another glove, have you?’

There she was, there right in front of him on what would now become the hallowed, Atlantic Avenue. His green-eyed girl’s green eyes were smiling straight at him.

He was so intent on finding her he pretty much nearly walked straight into her. He knew if she hadn’t spoken first, he would have walked past her. Lucky enough before he’d a chance to figure out what he was going to say she spoke again.

‘What am I like?’ she started, ‘I’m forever losing a glove, thankfully never both at the same time, mind you, always just the one at a time. The one you picked up for me I…’

‘I’ve been looking for you all day,’ he admitted, his voice sounding a lot calmer than he felt.

‘Mmmm,’ she replied, studying his face and sounding like she knew, and accepted, such an admission wasn’t as weird as he feared, ‘you’d look good with a moustache.’

Of all the things he’d imagined her to reply, and most of them also included her rushing off as quickly as her shapely legs would carry her, this was not even in the top 1000. It wasn’t as though he had actually come up with more than three possible replies.

Before he knew it, they were involved in a natural freewheeling conversation.

She seemed inclined to linger rather than to walk away.

At a very brief lull in the conversation, they both silently acknowledged they didn’t want the conversation to be stifled, so they spurted out their next questions simultaneously.

‘Do you live here?’ Tommy asked.

‘Who were you talking to as you walked around the corner?’ she asked over the top of his question.

‘No, I’m at the University of Ulster in Coleraine and one of my course mates invited me and another friend over to her parents’ house for the weekend. Her parents own a wee guest house over by the West Strand,’ she said in response to his question.

‘I was talking to myself,’ he admitted, ‘what’s your friend’s name?’

‘Gilly Hutchinson.’

‘Oh,’ he said, without even meaning to.

‘You know her?’

‘Well I know of her,’ he replied, ‘I know her sister.’

‘Which one?

‘Gilly would have been a few years ahead of me,’ Tommy replied.

‘Right,’ she replied, without allowing him to finish, ‘so you’d know the youngest, Emmi Mae.’

‘Yeah we were really good friends when we were…oh 13 ish and then she outgrew me.’

‘Ah yes, it happens at 13 or even 13-ish.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he offered more to himself, ‘so was that Gilly the blonde-haired girl with you yesterday?’

‘No, Gilly was swotting, you saw the eldest sister, Adele, who’s just great craic altogether.’

‘Okay, figures, I don’t know her at all,’ he replied.

He looked at his green-eyed girl out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t see her as well as he’d seen her yesterday when they’d met face to face. She still looked stunning even though her long dark hair covered the side of her face. He couldn’t see those amazing green eyes though. On the upside what he’d missed yesterday was her personal scents. She smelt of a blend of soap, shampoo, mixed with little hints of a heather based perfume. The combination was totally intoxicating. ‘I’m Tommy,’ he offered, extending his hand, and knowing it was an excuse to steal another glimpse of her stunning emerald eyes, ‘Tom Barry.’

‘I know,’ she said, offering her own hand in return.

‘You know?’ he said, surprised while noticing two of her top teeth protruded a wee bit to the extent it looked like her top lip was going to have trouble covering them.

‘Yes, Adele told me,’ she said, as she smiled, ‘she also said you weren’t part of the other Portrush Barry family.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ he said, still holding her soft skinned hand and shaking it gently, determined to never let it go again if he could get away with it. ‘’Fraid it also means I’ll not be able to get you free rides on the dodgems.’

‘I’d be more of a Barry’s Big Dipper kind of girl, anyway.’

‘Ditto on the Big Dipper, although I can’t pull any strings there either,’ he offered regretfully, while thinking he didn’t see her as being a Big Dipper kind of girl. All that screaming seems so alien to one so reserved and private. ‘I could get you a pony ride on the beach though if you wanted?’

‘Accepted,’ she replied, seeming content to leave her hand where it was, she leaned towards him, her nostrils wriggling the more they bridged the gap to his ear, ‘but not being part of the amusements also means you won’t smell of petrol and grease and candyfloss.’

‘Or Daulse and Yellowman,’ he added, attempting to complete her list and praying it was a compliment, ‘oh look…’ he continued and pointed with his free hand to the cuff of her red duffle coat, ‘there’s your missing glove, stuck up the sleeve of your coat.’

Sadly, for Tommy, this gave her an excuse to break away from him.

‘I’m Isabella,’ she said, retrieving her glove, ‘Isabella Scott and the pleasure to meet you on this wintery weekend, is all mine. That’s twice you saved me, Tommy, which means I’ll never forget you.’

And that, was how Tommy Barry and Isabella Scott first met.

Neither Isabella, her two friends, Gilly Hutchinson and Jane Murray nor Tommy Barry’s two friends, Lefty Kelly and Brendan ‘Brendy’ McCusker, would ever forget Tommy Barry. This fact was even more definite now that forty-three years later (bar three months) on Wednesday July 17th, 2019, the very same Tommy Barry died a very unnatural death.

***

Excerpt from Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove by Paul Charles. Copyright 2026 by Paul Charles. Reproduced with permission from Paul Charles. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The car bumped hard, the undercarriage hitting the edge of the shoulder, as it careened off the Garden State Parkway, heading for a stand of trees. The bump woke me up, and I jammed on the brakes and fought the steering wheel, cutting it hard left, but it was too late. The car fishtailed as the front smashed into a tree, the rear swinging right as the brakes took hold and crashing into another tree. I was flung forward, my hands coming off the wheel and banging against the console.

My hands were cut and bleeding as I sat staring at the road, the car twisted at a forty-five-degree angle. Pain throbbed from my right temple, and I realized I must have hit the windshield or the roof. A heaviness pressed down inside my head above my eyes, and I felt an urge to close them and go to sleep.

I forced myself to stay awake and get out of the car. I knew I was still technically drunk, but the crash had pumped enough adrenaline into my veins that I was hyper-aware, despite the likely concussion. I tried to open the trunk, but it was stuck shut, the right fender crunched in and bent on the top where it met the hatch.

A car passed going north on the other side of the Parkway. I looked back up the south-bound lane and saw no traffic. I stepped onto the road and half-jogged across, stepping over the median and across the north-bound lane. I glanced back at the car, slanted cock-eyed in the grass just past the Exit 6 sign for North Wildwood, then hurried through the grassy stretch alongside the road and into the woods that bordered it.

My only thought now was to avoid getting a DUI. I could deal with the car later. What a disaster. I had just bought the damn thing yesterday afternoon from a guy in Buena with a badly running nose and a burning desire to take my cash and go meet someone to make him well. That’s what I got for taking a lead on a cheap car from a guy holding up the end of the bar at a beer-and-a-shot place down the street from my house. I could have asked Lou to hook me up, but the price was right, and I just wanted something to get me through the summer. So I hitched a ride to Buena from a buddy who was headed to Margate, where I met Drew, the guy with the dripping nose. Drew had that pressing business to attend to, so he was fine with giving me the uncompleted paperwork.

Drew said, “Just see Mitch at the title place here next week, he’ll handle it.”

I trudged through the patch of woods, distancing myself from the Parkway. I came to a two-lane road and ran across that into deeper woods on the other side. I was about ready to just sleep under a tree there, when through a gap in the branches I saw an open field.

I pushed forward to the perimeter of the woods and stopped, trying to make out where I was. If it was somebody’s back yard, I would have to be careful. But there were no lights, just a dark field spreading out before me. I looked to my left and saw a brighter patch on the ground and a hundred yards beyond that a low building, maybe a garage?

I walked through tall grass to shorter grass, and as I got closer to the bright patch, I realized what it was: a sand trap.

I was on a fairway of Wildwood Country Club, the home course of my friend Lou Scolletta, whose house I was supposed to have been at four hours ago. There was probably a caddie shack I could hide out in, but I opted for a makeshift bed in the grass of a hollow a few fairways over. I lay down and, in the brief period before I passed out, wondered if this was the best way to prepare for the first day on my new job.

* * *

There was no way I wanted a full-time job working for Lou. I knew just enough about Lou to know not knowing anything more was the prudent path. The fact that he had just fired the prior manager for dipping in the till did not make the opportunity more appealing.

But there was a crazy part of me that thought running a place—a restaurant, not McNabb’s Tavern, the decrepit neighborhood tappie in Southwest Philly where until last year I humped kegs, mopped up fluids, breathed a lot of smoke and told myself I was the “manager”—might be something I could do. Because I was nowhere right now. No degree, no trade—just fifteen years of bartending that had ended when the last McNabb standing decided—wisely—that this was no way to make a living. The new owners didn’t need a mug like me in the fern bar that McNabb’s was to become.

I knew The Seabreeze, the quintessential Jersey Shore restaurant. When Lou bought it six years ago, I helped out a few weekends bartending when some of the corner boys he had hired just disappeared on him. It wasn’t hard finding someone to cover for me at McNabb’s. Our weekends were slower in the summer anyway, with a lot of folks going to the shore.

Lou and I hung out more back then. He bought the place in 1977 when I was thirty and Lou maybe thirty-seven. It was sort of a vanity project for him; his main business was a Cadillac dealership in South Philly. The following summer, he showed up at my bar with his son Davy—guess the kid was sixteen. He wanted Davy to get a summer job. Could we take him on, washing dishes, whatever? I wondered why he didn’t hire him at the dealership, but I guess he wanted him to work for someone else.

So I hired him, and he was okay, typical teenager, hardly said a word. There really wasn’t that much to do—we had a kitchen and did some sandwiches, but it wasn’t much to keep a dishwasher busy.

I guess that was the first favor I did for Lou. And I did owe him big, seeing as how his dad got me out of the draft back in 1967. Plus, Lou got me my first restaurant job, which was really a pretty good gig at a nice South Philly restaurant. But with Lou, you never felt like he was looking for payback. He just came off as a great guy, not like he was some connected dude that you had to say yes to. I’m sure he sold a lot of cars seeming like a great guy.

I used to give Davy a ride home sometimes, which often led to Concetta—Lou’s wife—asking me in to eat. There was always food, loads of food. She’d give me a plate of pasta, red wine out of a jug—might be ten o’clock in the evening, but so what? Then Lou would show up, and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash that I was there. Then he had me down to a little mom-and-pop restaurant near his dealership for dinner, and I met some of his friends. They were mostly older and had gone to Bishop Neumann or Southern, but a few knew guys from Kingsessing, my old neighborhood in Southwest Philly.

I thought about that pasta and how a mick like me was going to run a real restaurant, and, as I passed out in the wet grass at 3:30 AM, whether Davy was still having the same nose-dripping problems as Drew from Buena, a path I saw him starting down two and a half years ago.

* * *

The sound of a mower woke me up. The guy running it looked like he had seen worse. He pointed me to the caddy shack and gave me some coins for the payphone. Thank God Lou picked up, but then that’s Lou, he’s not surprised if some fuckup calls him at dawn. I washed up as best I could with cold water and no soap in the filthy sink in the shack’s bathroom, then waited outside the locker room, not wanting to meet up with anyone, until Lou arrived.

What a night. Blitzed out of my mind, drinking stingers like I was twenty in Somers Point, dancing with those crazy chicks, trying to teach me to moonwalk like Michael Jackson on that Motown show a couple of months ago. It was the Friday after a Monday Fourth of July, and it felt like the bar itself was stumbling under the strain of a week-long bender.

I had just stopped in for something to eat, then met these girls, three of them, late teens, which led to my dancing lesson. As it got late and the stingers took their toll, I figured maybe I’d just crash in the back seat for a couple of hours, then get breakfast somewhere, rather than roll in drunk at four in the morning and freak out Concetta.

Then two of the girls disappeared and the last one, Sharon, became glued to a chair at my table—that is, her butt was glued to the chair, but her face ended up stuck to the table itself, her long brown hair straggling out into the sticky remains of many ungodly drinks. At closing time, I struggled her to her feet and managed to get her to moan out where she was staying in Sea Isle City, a couple of towns south. After she vomited in the parking lot, I got her into the back seat and drove as carefully as I could, taking Route 9 to avoid the faster traffic.

I got the girl out of the car at her shabby rental duplex, leaving her sprawled on a chaise lounge in the screened porch. I banged on the door until one of her roommates appeared in a long t-shirt. We got her into bed and I talked the roommate through how to make sure Sharon didn’t choke on her own vomit.

I sat in my car, worrying about the girl. I was old enough to be her father, but being plastered in a Somers Point bar at closing time didn’t exactly qualify me to be in loco parentis. I was just a more experienced wastrel, a thirty-six-year-old failed bartender who would have been a disappointment to someone, if there was anyone left to fill that role.

When I left the girl’s rental, I figured it wasn’t much farther to Wildwood, and what the hell, why not take the Parkway? But of course, that’s what impaired judgment is all about. So fatigue and drunkenness once more exacted their toll on a stupid Irishman, and here I was creeping around at dawn like an escaped convict.

***

Excerpt from Wildwood Exit by Joel E. Turner. Copyright 2025 by Joel E. Turner. Reproduced with permission from Joel E. Turner. All rights reserved.

Prologue

Vatican City, Rome – February 1740

The first symptom of the poisoning began as a fever.

Sitting at one of two long, white-silk-draped tables in the Sistine Chapel, along with sixty-seven of his fellow cardinal-electors, Pietro Ottoboni cast his vote for pope on the eighth day of the conclave to replace the late Pope Clement XII.

Enfeebled by fever, the seventy-three-year-old Ottoboni made his way toward the front of the chapel to a small altar below Michelangelo’s majestic fresco The Last Judgment, dropped his ballot onto a brass saucer, then tipped the saucer, letting the ballot fall into the large brass urn beneath it.

A few moments later, having returned to his seat, the cardinal collapsed onto the table, the high temperature having sapped his energy. Shocked, the other cardinals stood to better see what was happening to their colleague. The master of papal liturgical celebrations suspended the conclave while they moved Ottoboni to his apartment under the care of a Vatican physician.

Long considered favorite among the papabili to succeed Pope Clement, Pietro Ottoboni was born in the Most Serene Republic of Venice to a rich and noble family, whose most distinguished member was his grand-uncle, Pope Alexander VIII. Ottoboni had held every important post in the Vatican during an illustrious career and, as cardinal-bishop to several churches in Italy, his annual salary exceeded fifty thousand gold scudi—the present-day equivalent of six million dollars per year.

Cardinal Ottoboni had been a prolific paramour with a countless number of lovers, many of whom were married to the great patricians of Venice. In fact, the famous masks unique to Venetians were introduced not to ward off the plague, as many later believed, but to officially disguise the wearer’s identity—thus permitting anyone, noble or peasant, to do or say whatever one pleased. With this ingenious permissiveness, affari di cuore—affairs of the heart—were as common as the fleet of gondolas plying the canals of the celebrated city, without legal recourse. Having taken full advantage of this liberal device, Cardinal Ottoboni was known to have produced up to seventy children in his lifetime among his various mistresses.

Though he lived well in Rome’s grand Palazzo della Cancelleria, Ottoboni’s greatest passions were music and art, and he was a generous patron to some of the most renowned masters in both fields: Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Giuseppe Crespi, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese—and most of all, to his close friend and protégé, the prodigious maestro di violino of Venice, Antonio Vivaldi.

As he lay on his deathbed, Ottoboni summoned Vivaldi to his side. In a low, rasping voice, the cardinal confided to his friend a tale of great importance, a scandalous operation run by the notoriously corrupt Cardinal Niccolò Coscia in league with the feared secret Mafia organization known as the Camorra.

In fact, he added with struggling breath, he was convinced it was Coscia, acting on orders from the Camorra, who had poisoned him to keep him from acting on what he knew. With information gleaned from one of his many spies, Ottoboni had discovered the ongoing scandal days earlier and approached Cardinal Coscia with a warning that he and his Camorra would soon be out of business, at least as far as the Vatican was concerned. Were it not for his required attendance in the papal conclave, he would have put a stop to it sooner, especially if he was elected pope, an elevation to supreme power that was expected by everyone.

The following day, however, Cardinal Ottoboni succumbed to the poison, killed for a secret now known only to Antonio Vivaldi.

Like most Italians, Vivaldi survived cautiously within the Camorra’s Venetian sphere of influence. The secret society’s tentacles reached into everyone’s life, and their strict enforcement of the seal of omertà—the sacred code of silence—ensured clan activities remained discreet and wholly within la familia. The family.

Since the late seventeenth century, the Camorra had carved out its territories, starting in Naples and moving northward into the Lombardy and Veneto regions of Italy, encompassing its most lucrative prizes, Milan and Venice. Competing with La Cosa Nostra in Sicily and the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria, the Camorra’s criminal enterprises included prostitution, gambling, smuggling, kidnapping, and art theft—but also the unusual niche of producing and selling fine art forgeries of the highest order.

During the earlier reign of Pope Benedict XIII, who cared little for managing his vast realm of Papal States, Cardinal Niccolò Coscia oversaw all Vatican government operations, taking advantage of his authority to carry out substantial financial abuses, virtually draining the papal treasury. But his ongoing misdeeds eventually caught up with him. In 1731, he was charged with corruption, tried and convicted to ten years’ imprisonment, and excommunicated from the Church.

However, still not without influence, he managed to get his heavy sentence commuted to a mere fine. He was also mysteriously reinstated as a cardinal, allowing him to take part in the papal conclave of 1740—the one during which Cardinal Ottoboni had died.

* * *

With Ottoboni out of the way, Cardinal Niccolò Coscia could now carry out his master plan without hindrance. In his not-so-secret role as capo of the Roman Camorra, Coscia led development of the Veneto branch of the Mafia clan, based in Venice and headquartered in his own newly acquired Palazzo Feudatario on the Grand Canal. Purchased with funds he had discreetly absconded from the Vatican treasury, Feudatario would be a most fitting place to carry out his planned forgery operation of the Vatican’s most profound works of art.

Niccolò Coscia was a meticulous diarist and, owing to all the business he conducted outside the Church, he had created the first book to record the activities of his new organization, naming it Il Giornale Coscia della Camorra Veneta—The Coscia Journal of the Veneto Camorra. In it he would secretly record careful notations of all paintings by artist and title, including each work’s provenance and to whom the forgeries or originals were sold, depending on which he chose to return to the Vatican—for many were prominently displayed in public, while most were simply returned to the Vatican’s vast art storage vaults, unseen by anyone.

The Coscia Journal would be passed down to each capintesta, head of the Veneto Camorra, for generations.

Unfortunately for Coscia, Cardinal Ottoboni’s spies had discovered not only the Camorra’s abhorrent plan for art forgeries, but the very existence of the Coscia Journal for recording such transactions. At that point Ottoboni’s death was preordained, for no one could ever know such proof existed.

* * *

Antonio Vivaldi, who at age twenty-five was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, was now at a crossroads. He feared possessing knowledge of the treacherous secret passed on to him by his esteemed patron in his dying moments. Putting himself at odds with the Camorra was not just an unappealing prospect; it could end up costing him his life, depending on what he did with what he knew.

But Cardinal Ottoboni had one last request of his protégé.

Intent on stopping the sinful and unlawful activities of Cardinal Coscia, Ottoboni had pleaded with Vivaldi to see that Coscia was brought to justice, to pay for his felonious actions. Distressed by letting his friend and mentor die without the satisfaction of such a promise, Vivaldi agreed to do what he could. He would ensure that the authorities were informed, the Coscia Journal would be found, and the matter would be settled.

After the cardinal’s stately funeral, Vivaldi waited for the right moment to fulfill his promise. But as he waited, he became more apprehensive. He was just a lowly priest, after all, and not a very good one at that. The violin was his life, and teaching it was his life’s work. Besides, who would believe him? Where was the proof? And what would the Camorra do to him if he were to expose its business? He had seen the results of their retribution—those who crossed the Mafia were dealt with harshly. Beheadings were not uncommon, and those who weren’t beheaded were drawn and quartered—alive. No, he must find a way to honor his pledge without exposing himself to such horrible consequences.

An idea came to him: he would hide the messages in plain sight, in his musical compositions.

Picking up a sheet of staff lined manuscript paper, Vivaldi began to assemble the first of many, his Scherzo Tiaseno in Sol.

* * *

Venice, Italy—Present Day

An enormous flight of pigeons, hundreds of them, flocked overhead, diving for potato chips and bits of bread sticks tourists had enthusiastically tossed out for them, as Father Michael Dominic and Hana Sinclair made their way across the Piazza San Marco.

Despite the ban on pigeon-feeding in St. Mark’s Square, little children were oblivious to the law and more amused by the flapping gray-and-white spectacle than frightened by the few gendarmerie patrolling the square, whose policing efforts to stop the feeding were futile. Venetian health experts estimate over 130,000 pigeons had roosted in the historic center—well over optimal concentrations for such a small public space—and efforts to rid the city of the determined birds had failed miserably. The damage to the marble buildings and statuary was considerable, not to mention possible pathogenic health hazards.

Locals knew it was often prudent to cover one’s head with a newspaper or magazine when crossing the vast piazza, lest strollers subject themselves to the inevitable bombardment of bird droppings from above.

An old hand at the practice, Father Dominic had kept pages of the newspaper he had read at breakfast for that very purpose, knowing he and Hana had to cross the piazza in order to get to Venice’s Biblioteca Marciana, the Library of Saint Mark.

The director of the library had requested the Vatican’s help with a planned exhibition of manuscripts held in its stacks, and as Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, Michael Dominic had accepted the invitation, while also taking a week’s vacation time in the fabled city. At only thirty-one years old, his access to the Vatican’s vast number of historical manuscripts still humbled him. The Biblioteca Marciana was yet one more repository of ancient wonders that fascinated him.

Lovingly named La Serenissima by Italians devoted to its “most serene” natural and historical wonders, Venice was also Michael Dominic’s favorite city in the world. He loved its vibrancy, its rich history as a major world trading port up to and through the Renaissance period and, of course, the inherent romantic nature of the people and their ancient ways.

“I’m so glad you could join me, Hana,” Dominic said as they walked through the piazza. “Have you ever experienced Carnivale before?”

Holding the newspaper awkwardly over her stylish wide brim straw hat, Hana replied with a contented sigh. “I was here once, years ago, but Carnivale had just ended. I’ve been meaning to be here for the real festivities for some time now, and since my editors wanted a piece on the celebration for Le Monde’s Weekend Section, I volunteered for the assignment.”

She looked up at the priest and smiled. “Thanks for letting me tag along with you, Michael. I don’t mind that you have a little business to attend to. I need some time off myself and can always float around in a gondola and take notes while you’re occupied.”

Dominic laughed as he removed the newspaper from over his head, having passed the worst pigeon zone. He took Hana’s paper and tossed them both in a trash receptacle alongside the library façade. “I can just see you now, laid out on a shiny black gondola, that fetching hat drawing everyone’s eye as you cruise the canals. A fashion photographer’s dream. But let’s have some fun together while we’re here as well.”

“Agreed. I can get some writing done after dinner each night,” she said with a sly grin. “So, what’s in this library that you’ve been asked to weigh in on?”

“I’m meeting with Paolo Manetti, the curator of the Marciana’s Cardinal Bessarion Library, a special wing containing the original founder’s collection of books and precious manuscripts from 1468. The Vatican has an original translation of Homer’s Iliad, a companion version to his Odyssey, but the Marciana has the oldest actual texts of the Iliad. Manetti has asked me to consider lending ours to the Marciana for a temporary exhibition on Homer. They also have the only autograph copy of commentary on the Odyssey from the twelfth century, so it should be a fine showcase.”

Fascinated as she was by Dominic’s explanation, Hana’s eyes glazed as the warm sun took hold of her, her white cotton midi skirt fluttering in the light breeze. They had passed the tall brick Campanile and were now walking through the piazzetta between the Marciana Library and the Doge’s Palace, heading toward the entrance to the Grand Canal. It wasn’t quite noon yet, the appointed time for Dominic’s meeting, so they settled onto a stone bench near the traghetto, the gondola landing overlooking the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore on the island across the lagoon. Vaporetti, gondolas, and sleek mahogany water taxis plied the calm waters as they sat there, each in their own dreamy state of mind, an effect Venice had on every visitor.

As the tower bells of the Campanile struck twelve, Dominic leaned back for a deep stretch to rouse himself, then stood and reached out for Hana’s hand to help her up. With one last glance over the lagoon, they headed toward the library.

Chapter 1

Present Day

The entrance to the Marciana Library Palace—heavy wooden doors flanked by two larger-than-life Greek marble statues—opened into the opulent vestibule, where a two-flight staircase took visitors to the upper loggias.

Looking up as they walked the marble halls, Hana fixated on the ceiling, which featured twenty-one roundels, circular oil paintings by seven notable Renaissance artists commissioned in 1556. They looked as fresh today as at the time they were painted, Hana mused, overwhelmed by their unusual spherical beauty. Reaching one of the reading rooms, sunlight streamed in from the high glass ceiling, bathing the three-story room in a diffused natural light. Surrounding the reading tables on all sides were a series of Doric arches with a handsome frieze on one wall featuring rosy-faced cherubs and garlands of fruit and flowers.

A slim, well-dressed man with long, black hair who looked to be in his fifties was walking toward them, a welcoming smile on his face. Dominic smiled in response as the man approached.

“Padre Michael, welcome back to the Marciana!” he beamed as he extended his hand.

“Paolo! What a great pleasure to see you again. This is my friend and colleague, Hana Sinclair. Hana, this is Paolo Manetti, curator of the Bessarion Library here.”

The three exchanged handshakes and pleasantries. Then Manetti turned, gesturing for them to follow him.

“We’ll be using my private office to view the Iliad. Better to keep tourists from flocking around us. I already have it set up.”

He led them through the upper loggia and down a corridor leading to various offices, entering a corner room that overlooked the piazzetta and the lagoon.

“Not only do you have a stunning library here, Signor Manetti,” Hana remarked, “but you probably have the best office in the building!”

Manetti grinned shyly. “Please, call me Paolo, Miss Sinclair. And yes, I am very fortunate to have such a wondrous place to work. What you see around you is my life. Like our friend Michael here, my love for antiquities of the Old World has no bounds.”

Dominic nodded in agreement, then turned to his companion. “Hana, if you’d like to better explore the library while Paolo and I are working, please feel free. We should only be a half hour or so. Take it all in; it truly is a marvelous old building filled with treasures you won’t find anywhere else.”

“I’ll do that, thanks. Just come find me when you’re ready.” Hana turned and left the office, making her way back to the reading rooms and their glorious artworks and statuary.

A large table in the center of Manetti’s office held several reference books, various implements for examining documents—a digital microscope, magnifying glass, blacklight, leather sandbag weights—and several large parchment manuscripts which had been laid out on it. One in particular was the chief item of interest: the only copy of the commentary on Homer’s Odyssey written entirely by the hand of the author.

Putting on a pair of white gloves, Dominic handled the manuscript guardedly, gazing at the beautiful script by the hand of Eustathius of Thessalonica, the Byzantine scholar and rhetorician of the twelfth century.

“This is our finest treasure, Michael, and one of the oldest in the library,” Manetti said. “It will be one of the principal features of our exhibition. But now, look at this.”

With a gentle flourish, he reached across the table and pulled over two comparable manuscripts.

“These are Venetus A and Venetus B, the oldest texts of Homer’s Iliad, with centuries of Greek scholia written in the margins.”

As Dominic recalled, since the first century, ancient commentators known as scholiasts would insert grammatical or explanatory notations, even critical commentary, in the margins of the manuscripts of early authors. Over time, centuries in fact, successive copyists or those who owned a particular manuscript altered the scholia, and sometimes the practice expanded so much that there was no longer room for scholia in the margins, so it became necessary to produce them as separate works. No copy machines, just dedicated scribes working with Egyptian reed pens and feather quills to patiently reproduce one-of-a-kind originals.

“These are truly extraordinary, Paolo,” Dominic declared, his hands shaking slightly as he held the ancient parchments. “I can certainly see why you’d want to share these in your exhibition. I can confidently say the Vatican will cooperate in any way we can. I’ll make arrangements for the original translation of Homer’s Iliad to be couriered to you when I return to Rome. I assume you’ll have appropriate security arrangements in place?”

“Of course, Michael. Apart from our own security detail, the federal Carabinieri has offered to provide full protection for us. We are simply the custodians of these masterpieces, but they are part of Italy’s proud heritage and the government takes that responsibility quite seriously.

“And thank you for your generous contribution, Michael,” he continued. “Your Iliad will be in excellent hands, I can assure you.”

“When we spoke last week,” Dominic said, “you mentioned another piece you wanted to discuss?”

Manetti turned somber. “Yes, there is something else I need to show you, and I’d like to get your opinion on it. This came to us recently from a local donor who wishes to remain publicly anonymous, and while its value is undeniable and a welcomed donation to our collection, I am not quite sure what to make of its meaning.”

The curator rummaged about the other manuscripts on the table, his gloved hands repositioning each document carefully, until he found what appeared to be an autograph musical manuscript, with staff lines and bars of musical notations, placed inside a small Mylar protective sleeve. While it was in relatively good condition, given its apparent antiquity, its corners had been chipped and there were many creases across the paper, as if someone had folded it many times at some point. Its size was quite small, a half sheet of standard paper at most.

“Well, this looks interesting, though I must admit I know little about musical manuscripts. Who is it by?” Dominic asked.

As he peered closely at the manuscript, Hana returned from her brief tour of the library and walked up to stand silently next to the two men. She glanced at the object of their attention while Manetti continued.

“This, my friend, was penned by the hand of Venice’s own maestro di violino Antonio Vivaldi. He gave it the title Scherzo Tiaseno in Sol, and it appears to be a scherzo in the truest, most literal meaning of that word—a joke! It is a fair enough piece of music, but nowhere near the level one would expect from a Baroque master like Vivaldi. If it is a joke, then the question is, why? And for whom? There must be more than meets the ear.

“This is marked as page two, so there may still exist a page one somewhere. The donor was rather circumspect on the matter, but as Vivaldi was her sixth great-grand-uncle, the provenance is well established.” Manetti looked up at Dominic questioningly and shrugged.

As Hana read the notes, she weighed in. “You’re right, Paolo. This isn’t anything close to what Vivaldi was known to have composed. And scherzos are normally in three, like a waltz, but this has the bar lines in the wrong place. There must be some other meaning to it.”

“You read music?!” Dominic asked her, somewhat taken aback.

“Of course, I studied music for years at St. Stevens School, and I play both the piano and cello,” she replied, a shy smile playing across her face.

“Will wonders never cease with you?” Dominic asked, grinning mischievously.

“Oh, please,” she said modestly. “We all have our secret talents. And I can hardly travel around with a cello.”

Turning to the curator, she asked, “Paolo, may I have a closer look at this?”

“Of course, signorina,” he said encouragingly.

Hana accepted the Mylar sleeve from Dominic and took a seat by one of the windows. Reading the music, she hummed the notes, emitting a series of high, low, and mid-range sounds which produced no tune whatsoever.

“Okay, this is really strange. There is nothing here that might even imply that an artist with Vivaldi’s genius was creating anything good, much less great. But why would he do that? From what I know, he wrote beautiful music feverishly, wasting not a precious second on something like this. But there must be a reason.”

“I completely agree, signorina,” Manetti said, nodding. “But what are we to do with this? We must have some kind of explanation for such an artifact if we are to display it.”

Hana had a thought. “Paolo, can you make a copy of this for me? I have an old friend, Dr. Livia Gallo, my former music teacher at St. Stevens, who is an expert in Vivaldi and other Baroque masters. Maybe she has some idea of what this might represent?”

Manetti was delighted. “Yes! I would be happy to provide you with a copy if it helps to better understand this. You must assure me that you will not share it with anyone else except your colleague, yes? Until we understand it better, I wouldn’t want speculations to be awkward for our donor.”

“Yes, of course, only Dr. Gallo will see it. For that matter, it’s small enough that I can just take a photo of it with my iPhone. Would that be acceptable?”

“Better yet,” Manetti replied. “That way there are no loose copies to get lost. Oh, and please do not use the flash.”

Hana returned the manuscript to the table, removed her phone from her bag, then took a full frame shot of the piece under natural light.

“Paolo,” Dominic asked, “might we get an introduction to your donor, this Vivaldi descendant? Hana and I may be able to get more relevant information from her that can assist Dr. Gallo. Where does she live?”

“Here in Venice, in one of the great palazzos on the Grand Canal. I don’t think the contessa would mind at all, actually. She’s quite the conversationalist.”

“A contessa?!” Hana asked, surprised.

“Oh yes, she comes from a very old noble line herself and married well, besides. Contessa Donatella Vivaldi Durazzo. She must be in her eighties now, a delightful woman, very generous in her philanthropy. She is one of the jewels of Venice, a wonderful patron of the arts, adored by everyone. She lives in Palazzo Grimaldi in the Dorsoduro, not far from the Guggenheim Museum. I would be pleased to make an introduction.”

“Excellent! We’ll be here all week, Paolo, and it would be a treat to see one of the famed palazzos on the Grand Canal,” Dominic said excitedly. “Not to mention meeting Italian nobility.”

Manetti smiled assuringly at his old friend.

“We’re staying at the Ca’ Sagredo, Paolo,” Hana said. “You can reach us there, but here’s my mobile number if you need us at any time.” She wrote down her number on a slip of paper and handed it to Manetti.

“Grazie, signorina. I will make the call this evening and let you know when she is available.”

“Where to now?” Hana asked Dominic as they left the building, having said their goodbyes to Manetti.

“I thought we’d have a bite of lunch at Quadri, then saunter over to St. Mark’s Basilica and say hello to a friend of mine from my seminary days. We’ve come all this way, and I’d hate to miss seeing him.”

“Lead the way,” Hana said breezily, placing her wide-brimmed straw hat back on her head. “I’m ready for some fresh seafood, aren’t you?”

“You bet. Just watch out for pigeons, though, as I’ve tossed the newspapers.”

Chapter 2

Among the many fine palazzos lining the Grand Canal is an understated, three-story ocher palace, somewhat more slender than its neighbors but nonetheless impressive. Its more observable features include a grand entrance off the gondola traghetto, with a black, scalloped awning over the brick staircase leading up from the water’s edge; several full-width balconies with ornamental balustrades at each end; heavily draped, arched picture windows overlooking the canal—and a cadre of armed security guards posted around the grounds of Palazzo Feudatario.

As a glossy mahogany water taxi approached the dock, two beefy men appeared from the palazzo’s entrance to greet the sole visitor on board, a priest called to administer last rites to the dying master of the house—a man known to all of Venice as Don Lucio Gambarini, the capintesta, or head-in-chief of the Veneto Camorra.

A stout man in his sixties, Don Gambarini had suffered a paralyzing stroke some weeks prior, and as his health had further declined, his death was not unexpected. In the meantime, the capintriti, heads of the twelve districts under Don Gambarini’s leadership, had assembled in the grand house, set to squabbling as to who would take over as leader of the clan when the great capintesta met his end.

But that was hardly on Gambarini’s mind when Father Carlo Rinaldo entered the formal master bedroom to hear the Don’s confession and administer extreme unction, the final anointing with last rites before death. Rinaldo had never met Gambarini before, though he was aware of the Don’s reputation, one deserving of a robust confession if he were truly repentant.

The large, well-appointed bedroom had many people standing around, vying for the boss’s attention should he wish to suddenly name one of them as his successor. But Gambarini would have none of it yet, demanding the bedroom be cleared except for the priest, who would hear his confession privately.

As everyone ambled out of the room, giving each other dark glances, the door was closed as Rinaldo placed a violet stole around his neck, then reached into his black leather bag and withdrew a small bottle of holy water, a crucifix, and his Bible.

“Don Gambarini, my name is Father Rinaldo, from St. Mark’s. Do you wish to make a confession?”

“Where is my regular priest, Father Viani?”

“I’m afraid he is on sabbatical, signore, and will not return for some time. He entrusted his duties to me in his absence.”

Gambarini looked wide-eyed at the priest for a long while, trembling, gauging his predicament. Rinaldo found terror in the man’s eyes. Not an uncommon occurrence for one so close to death, but there was something more. Some heavy burden the man was struggling with. All the priest could do was wait for his penitent to make the first move.

“Father, I do wish to make a confession,” Gambarini began, “but it is not one you are going to like.”

“I make no judgments at all, signore. I am but the Lord’s servant in this matter. He alone passes judgment. But that depends on how you wish to leave this life, carrying with you the dark burden of your transgressions, or absolved of sin in His light.” Rinaldo gestured upward as he said this.

Gambarini paused, glanced around the room, then looked deep into the priest’s eyes. “Before we begin, Father, I must ask of you an important favor, for my sins are so great, my penance must include some action on your part—but only after I am dead.

“What I am about to tell you involves a serious crime against the Vatican itself, an offense which has been ongoing for centuries, and still takes place to this very day. I fear I will not have God’s full absolution unless this matter is revealed once and for all. And you must be the one to tell it to others, so that it will stop. Is that agreeable?”

Such an unusual request completely mystified Rinaldo. Never had he been asked to play a part in a confessor’s penance. And to do so, he would have to break the sacred seal of the confessional; he was uncertain if having permission to do so by the penitent absolved him of that restraint. He would have to speak with someone about that later.

He walked across the room and picked up a chair. Placing it next to Gambarini’s bed, he took a seat. He paused a moment to consider the situation.

“Let me hear your confession, my son. If it is within my power, I will do my part as you ask.”

***

Excerpt from The Vivaldi Cipher by Gary McAvoy. Copyright 2021 by Gary McAvoy. Reproduced with permission from Gary McAvoy. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE

The blot of ink stuck to her finger, tacky like drying blood. Leona scrubbed at it with her handkerchief as the clock chimed two hours after midnight. She capped the inkwell, and while the ink dried on her most recent entry, she organized the copies with ribbons. Blue for Daphne and red for Ruth. With shaking hands, she slipped the copies into stiff cardboard folios and tied them closed. Sighing, she set them on the desk in front of her.

The flames in the hearth beckoned. This wasn’t the first night she’d yearned for obliteration. It wouldn’t come if she gave in to the urge to throw her labor into the fire. Only paper and ink would vanish, leaving the memories behind.

Pen and ink or back to the laudanum.

A grim thought, the grimmest of all.

The words had clawed their way out tonight. She’d begun the memoir of her time as a Union soldier months ago with the hope her drowning spirits would revive once the words dropped to the page. Yet the foreboding crept through her and tightened around her throat as the little study filled with familiar shadows. This old terror had become a second skin, like the tattered and dirty uniform she’d once worn.

Over the monotonous chatter of the rain, the clock ticked away the seconds until her husband came home. Leona moved to the window, pushed aside the heavy velvet curtains, and looked out at night-shrouded Cranberry Street. A lamp glowed in a window across the street. Homesickness for Boston, for life before the war, for herself before the war, settled on her. The wind threw a heavy splash of rain against the window, and she jumped back, letting go of the curtain.

Pacing the study, her restless thoughts rushed on without fatigue. To keep the memories inside only fed the persistent mental return to the battlefield, and the outpouring of words somewhat tamed her tormented soul. She stopped and touched the folio. Work would save her: work, family, friendship, and love. Maybe she’d write a story about two clocks. A natural clock which kept good time and a mad clock that twisted time out of true.

The street door below opened and closed. At last Gil, home safe. She couldn’t even bring herself to scold him for being so late. Leona listened for his footsteps as she crossed the room to tuck the folios into her desk drawer and locked it. She closed the gaslight apertures in the study and turned up the flame on the wall sconces in the drafty hallway so he could find his way. In the bedroom, she shed her dressing gown, stepped out of her slippers, and kicked them under the bed. Gil made his clumsy climb up the stairs. When he stumbled into the room, she pulled the covers back. He fell into bed fully clothed beside her, mumbling and fretful, the sharp ripe scent of whiskey lacing his breath.

She laid her hand on his shoulder. Beneath the cloth of his shirt, his skin was cold and damp. “Rest now, go to sleep,” she whispered.

***

At first light, Leona had dressed in a blue and cream day gown and made her way downstairs for breakfast. The creeping dread of the night before had waned. She rubbed her gritty eyes and yawned again. Mrs. McCarthy poured coffee from the silver pot, the familiar, civilized table a welcome sight. The scent of bacon made her stomach growl.

“Are you well, m’um?”

Leona glanced into the broad face of their cook and housekeeper, a sturdy and mature woman with a comforting Irish burr. She wore her fading blonde hair in a crown around her head.

“I didn’t sleep much.” Leona yawned again behind her fingers.

Gil’s heavy tread on the stairs made them both jump, and Mrs. McCarthy squeaked.

“I’ll bring more breakfast in a jiffy.” She fled through the side door to the kitchen just as Gil ducked through the hall entrance.

Leona rose and smiled at her husband. He’d made a great effort to come down early after returning so late. She accepted his peck on the cheek, poured him coffee and set it between them, wifely mask in place. He glared with bloodshot eyes at the letter in his hand, and her stomach clenched.

“It’s not all bad news, Gil.” She’d read the contents of the letter before leaving it on his desk in his study, as Grandfather had addressed it to both.

He raised his hazel eyes to her. “You recall Henry has absconded with all our funds?” he asked in a sarcastic tone, squinting at the letter, then back at her.

She no longer knew what to say about Gil’s former business partner, Henry Caldwell-Jones. The police were still looking for him. It put the devil in Gil’s eyes to speak of it, so she tried to let it be, not wanting to distress him even more.

“Of course, I remember, Gil. I—”

“And now your grandfather won’t give me a second loan. I’ll have to go back to the bank and ask them again.”

“He only wants to speak with you face to face about our situation,” she said, in her grandfather’s defense. “He’ll help us, Gil. He did offer to speak at the lyceum on his return from Ohio, to help raise funds. It isn’t as if—” Or was it? “We won’t lose the house, will we?”

The muscles in his lean face twitched as Gil fought to hide his disappointment, and her heart broke a little more to witness it. “Your grandfather does not bring in the interest he once did.”

It was true Leona’s grandfather, poet, abolitionist, and Transcendentalist, didn’t bring in the money he used to at readings in New York and Brooklyn, but he didn’t suffer for it.

Gil raked his fingers through his thick, brown hair and opened his mouth. Mrs. McCarthy entered with his breakfast, apparently stopping what he meant to say next. He reached inside the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small notebook and pencil. Laying them on the table, his frown deepened.

Once Mrs. McCarthy had bustled out again, Leona said, “I could write to Aunt Louisa.” Who was not truly an aunt, but a friend of her mother’s.

He opened the notebook and touched the tip of his tongue to the pencil. “We cannot afford to feed and house a man of Bronson Alcott’s caliber,” he replied with heaviness. He bent his head to the columns of numbers on the pages.

His confidence and spirits were usually high, and it hurt to see him laid so low. She did mean Louisa Alcott herself, not her father Bronson Alcott, as the speaker for the lyceum to draw a crowd. Her novel, Little Women, published two years before, had become hugely popular.

“I’ll sell the lyceum, that should help,” Gil murmured, eyes downcast.

Leona winced. It was where they’d met nearly a year before. At a loss again, she glanced down at her lapel watch—9 o’clock already. She stood and set cups and plates on the tray.

“Let Mrs. McCarthy do that.” His pencil went on calculating their precarious position.

“I don’t mind. I’m off to see Daphne this morning. I won’t be home until the late afternoon.” Taking a deep breath, she dared to ask, not expecting an answer. “How much do we owe?” She blew out her held breath, apprehension biting at her. “Why won’t you tell me how much Henry has stolen?”

“He’s made me a laughingstock.” His handsome lips formed a tight smile, but he didn’t look at her. “Don’t you worry, Leona, leave it to me. This will all be over by Christmas.”

***

On the street, she began to walk, then turned to observe the window where Gil labored, smoke curling from the chimney. The image stayed with her as she made her way to the newsstand around the corner and waited patiently for her turn to buy a paper. The sunny day, though cold, had driven people outdoors, well wrapped in fur-collared coats and wool scarves. Woodsmoke and the sharp tang of the river mingling with the scent of baking bread drifted on the breeze. She chewed on the frustration that he wouldn’t share their financial details with her. It made her more fearful not to know. Though she kept the memoir and chapter stories a secret from him, this was hardly the same.

Passing the newsstand, an article about the new bridge caught her eye so she bought the latest Brooklyn Eagle. The previous summer, the four of them, Henry, his wife Helen, herself, and Gil, had stood at the end of Noble Street to watch the construction of the giant caissons in the naval yard. Though approval of the bridge was a long-foregone conclusion, the article was typical of the Eagle’s awful anti-consolidation fear mongering. The article repeated the claim linking the boroughs would only bring the dregs of Manhattan’s Lower East Side into Brooklyn’s pure white Heights. The wrongness of such an attitude churned her stomach.

Leona folded the paper and tucked it under her arm with the folio, sighing. Who would save the poor of this world from the hatred of the rich? Her spirits drooped lower.

She breathed deep the November air on familiar, tree-lined Remsen Street, where she’d lived for two years before marrying Gil in August. The red door of the brownstone opened, welcoming her in. Timothy, the butler, took her hat and coat. Before he disappeared with them, his eyes met hers with a familiar blue twinkle.

“I’ll tell her you’re here,” he said.

“Thank you.” She inhaled the sweet smell of hothouse roses set in vases along the long hallway and waited for word of her arrival to reach Daphne and her nurse Audrey.

Audrey approached from the depths of the house. Her eyes, though hooded, were a pure delphinium blue, blonde hair pinned tight to her head. She wore a plain uniform of dark gray with long cuffed sleeves and a white apron.

“Mrs. Van Wyn is in the Lavender Room.” With a curt nod, she turned away.

When they first met, Leona and Audrey had often shared tea and conversation, but of late Leona felt nothing but a wall of smothered animosity between them. They hadn’t argued, as such, though she had an idea where the strained relations came from.

“Is she well?” Leona asked.

For a moment, she didn’t think Audrey would answer, but the woman turned toward her again. “She passed a quiet night. The laudanum helps.”

Leona frowned. Audrey flicked a dismissive hand and went on her way.

The introduction of laudanum in Daphne’s life began not long after Leona moved to Cranberry Street with Gil that summer. The spas and cures Daphne’s grandson Benedict and his wife arranged didn’t seem to help anymore. The family hired Audrey, who administered the laudanum, a common enough panacea. Laudanum’s presence always disturbed Leona, and she had protested to the family, but no one listened. Audrey had become cold after this discussion. Leona believed some of Daphne’s pain came from her daily battle with grief. Leona often feared her own grief and the overuse of laudanum, prescribed by a respected doctor in Boston, had killed the child from her previous marriage to Jack Davenport. Poor dead Jack.

***

Excerpt from The Last Fatal Hour by Jan Matthews. Copyright 2026 by Jan Matthews. Reproduced with permission from Jan Matthews. All rights reserved.