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“The two stewardesses were there. The older lady and the hot one. The other guys had already left.”
Daisy scanned the page of notes. Though she’d been meticulous, as she read it over, she realized she didn’t have very much to go on. The blonde he’d been with, who he’d met in Monaco? Without more information, she’d be all but impossible to find.
“Do you know Dorrance Calloway?” she asked, since he was next on her list of suspects to interview.
“Dorry?” He shrugged. “Only knew him from the group we were in. He seemed okay. A little bit of a snob. He and Frankie went way back. College, I think? From what I hear, Dorry lent Frankie the capital to start his first venture in shrink-wrapping.”
“He lives in downtown Venice. I was thinking of tracking him down, next.”
He shook his head. “Eh. Wouldn’t bother with that. The only one more blitzed out of his mind was Dorry. He was smashed from beginning to end.”
“And yet you said he was gone when you woke up?”
His brow lifted. “Yeah. That’s right. I guess I missed out on a lot.” His lips twisted. “But I can’t see it being Dorry. The two of them were even closer than we were. They had a long history.”
She sighed as she looked over her notes. “So you don’t have any idea who you think itcouldhave been?”
A cloud had slipped its way over the sun. Matteo pulled off his glasses and stared out at the harbor. “I don’t have a clue. But I’ll tell you this. I had a feeling from the moment I stepped on the plane. I’ve gone on trips with Frankie before, but I can’t explain it. I felt like something bad was going to happen. And I think he knew it, too.”
“What makes you say that?”
He pressed his lips together. “Nothing I can put my finger on. He was always Mr. Happy Go Lucky, in it to have fun. And he was. He was having a good time. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that under that regular façade, he was worried about something.”
Daisy blinked. This was news to her. “What do you think it was? If you had to guess?”
“Again, no clue. And I can’t say what it was, maybe just intuition. But there was something off about him.”
“Did he mention anything about Kiki? Apparently he’d had a fight with her. Maybe that was what you sensed?”
“I don’t think so. He’d been fighting with Kiki for the past week. About what, I don’t know. He was never one to let his wife get in the way of his having a good time. So I don’t think it was that.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
He may have been, but it was still something worth thinking about. Franklin Tate had taken his friends on a party trip, and yet, he’d been worried about something. Was he worried for his life? Did he know someone was out to get him?
“I’ll look into it,” she said, standing and scanning the harbor. There were no boats near, at all. “Do you happen to know when the next ferry will get here?”
He grinned. “Tomorrow morning.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Ferries only stop here once a day. In the morning.”
“Oh. Are there any hotels on the island?”
He laughed. “This isn’t exactly on the beaten path as far as tourist destinations go.”
She looked around, helpless. What good was having a black card if there was no way to use it?
“If I were you,” he said as she wondered exactly what she was going to do next. “I’d track down that woman Tate met at the baccarat table in Monaco. I think she might be the key to everything.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
About two hours later, Daisy found herself in Little Blue, soaring high over the Ligurian Sea.
She had her hands locked together in her lap, a pair of headphones clamped tight over her ears, giving her a headache. They did nothing to drown out the whirring of the propellers, which sounded like a sputtering lawn mower, a second before it gave out.
Making things worse was the dizzying spectacle below. Flying in a commercial jet was one thing, but this contraption felt a little like a tin can with wings. Despite Arlo’s assurance that it was safe, she still wasn’t sure it was a good idea to have it be the only thing standing between her and certain death.
As they flew, Arlo, sitting relaxed and now—hopefully—sober in the pilot’s chair next to her, pointed out things. His voice, piped through her earphones, was clear, but she couldn’t bring herself to respond.
