pushed the button that ended the call and went out to the parking lot. Her mother followed, anxious and looking stricken as was her way, and only managed to solicit a few obscene words of explanation—fucking police, fucking lady liar—which Angie finally offered when she was in position behind the wheel and about to close the car door on her.
It took the sight of their small split-level house in Manassas to change her mood—and radically. How could she continue to fume when bouquets and bouquets of flowers under cellophane were stacked up against her front door? Jesus, they even over-spilled the stoop. Her TV viewers, her lovely audience. She pulled a slew of get-well notes off the cellophane and flipped through them as she entered the house, followed by her exclaiming mother, carrying most of the flowers in a large rustling pile. The note Angie liked most said, "You can weather this, Weather Girl!" It might be corny but she was touched that someone had thought to write that to her.
They hadn't been home very long when Stan rang the doorbell.
He gave Angie a long, careful, affectionate hug. "You're a heroine, lovely. Now if only you'd gone to Georgetown instead of to George Mason for college you'd be goddamn perfect."
Their old joke made her smile within his embrace. If Stan, a well-built man with sandy hair and regular features, had been older than thirtyish when he'd met Delia, fiftyish, at a town hall meeting, taken a liking to her, and spent the following three years working side by side with her on the citizens' steering commission for the new park center, he might have become Angie's stepfather instead of just a family friend, and she always remembered this when he got close physically.
"Come on in, Stan."
Entering, he hugged Delia in greeting as well. "This is all just so incredible."
"Oh yes," said Delia, grimacing.
They sat at the kitchen table and they told him about the strange things the police in Gettysburg had said.
"Information is what we need," he responded. He owned a TV station, did he not? He paid a salary to a news director. He would find out more about Gettysburg and Mrs. Reilly. "Why don't you two ladies just sit down over there on the couch for a bit?" He lifted the cordless kitchen phone from its stand.
And as Stan made his round of calls, the two studied the medallion.
"It's the flip side that's strange," said Angie. "Do you think it's a sort of warped, bent-over tree or something?"
Delia, undecided, pursed her lips.
"Mom, how do you think Nonno Goffredo came by it really?"
"I don't know. I have no secret to tell you. It could even have been Nonna Eleonora's, instead of Goffredo's. She kept the suitcase. Many of those letters in Italian are addressed to her."
"Do you think we need to get them all translated?"
"Who knows how much that'd cost."
"But Mom, if we need to."
Delia shook her head. "I don't remember any stories about this medallion."
The people Stan was talking to made promises to get back to him. As lunch time approached, Delia quietly proceeded to make hamburgers and baked beans for three.
"Oh, that looks good, Delia, thank you." Stan put aside his cell phone as his steaming plate arrived. Every time an answer came from his TV station staff, however, he put down his bun and took notes there at the table.
At the meal's end he said, "I think you're right, Angie. That woman in Gettysburg is lying. My people tell me that recently there's been a suspicious amount of over-development around there. Too many shopping centers, theme parks, bed and breakfasts, and converted inns like the one you ate at. A southern investment company has been having a field day of late, coming to the rescue of just about one and all. I checked up on its founder and chairman for you. He's one Marc-Alexandre Brandeau, of French origin, a billionaire; nobody's really sure how he made so much money so fast. The family had some colonial ties and so Brandeau's father was able to get in on all sorts of money-making ventures, like building airports and military bases in African countries, especially in the Congo. Marc-Alexandre grew up there, when on vacation from boarding school, and may have even been a mercenary. At a certain point, however, he gets himself a college degree in business in America and American citizenship. His real estate investment group is called the Golden Palmetto, and he's been quietly operating across the East Coast for some years, investing in and financing commercial assets and properties, including development projects, but also buying up scores—and I mean scores—of private homes and apartment blocks on the other. It seems people don't have to move out of their defaulted property with him—they just become renters. You can imagine the media coverage he's gotten for that."
"And this is the man who helped out Mrs. Reilly in Gettysburg?"
"Ninety percent sure. And the guy with the goatee, who was making Mrs. Reilly so unhappy, probably works for him, don't you think?"
"Why would he shoot Angie?" Delia intervened. "Why did this Brandeau want him to shoot Angie?"
"Did he shoot Angie? Did Brandeau want him to?"
"This is incredible," said Angie. "What I am to him?"
Stan cramped the last bite of hamburger into his mouth, and when he'd swallowed it he said, "OK, let me see the famous medallion again."
"I don't know, my friends," he said after a moment of fresh scrutiny. "I don't remember ever studying lion-men. Say, Delia, could I ask you for a beer? That burger's left me thirsty." He drank from the can with gusto, his chin raised so the two women could watch his Adam's apple pulse. "Man, that's good." Then he turned satisfied eyes towards Angie. She really liked Stan. As a boss and a person. He was the kind of man so inwardly programmed to be thoughtful with his friends that he sent text messages to buddies when he read that their favorite football teams had won big. "We're trying too hard to understand something beyond us. I want you to go talk to Father Giovanni Martini at Georgetown in the history of world religion department. He was a terrific professor, one of my favorites. Italian like your medallion. He'll be able to tell you something for sure. Forget George Mason—," he began.
"Georgetown," Angie mouthed.
He laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at. "Ready for his phone number?"
Along the Po River, Italy - March 27, 1849
By noon the first day, Goffredo and Sandor had walked twelve miles. The river was deep, broad, and swift, and they'd walked much of that time through the grass and sand, hopping here and there over small irrigation canals. Sometimes Goffredo pointed to remains—of ancient animal bones or to the submerged village of Borgofranco, and Sandor would nod vigorously. But did he really understand that Goffredo was trying to show him how the river was alive and that it was merely returning what it had taken? Surely Sandor's Dunai did that too, but other things about the Po were probably unique. The Po's river bed was never at rest, for instance; its gravel was always churning noisily under your boat. You could say that it talked to you. Yet as he ate his cheese and bread there in the grass, he couldn't think of gestures to make that clear.
In the afternoon, Goffredo kept purposely to the path used by the mules or horses or men that pulled the barges or flat-bottomed boats against the current or in the absence of wind. He reckoned it was the quickest way to Isola Sant'Antonio. There, the Po met the Scrivia, the choppy little river that would take them south through a run of mountain valleys to Genoa, then on to Rome. In the meantime the sun was growing warmer; it made gleaming patches on the waterway and lit up the small green buds of the poplars on the opposite bank. The Po made an immense bend here, never shrinking however from its place on the flat horizon. The result was that it seemed suddenly still—not only, but the very air was still.
"There's nobody," Goffredo said, frowning. Usually the Po—and its facing banks—were dotted with people and their small boats. He himself had more customers from across the river than he did from the inland hamlets.
"War makes no people. Rampaging soldiers," replied Sandor.
"Rampaging