The Sonnet Lover by Carol Goodman

suggestion I’ll offend her and she won’t tell me anything more. And whatever I might think of Camille’s…hobbies…, there’s no doubt that she has her ear to the ground. “Besides,” I say, “he had a girlfriend. A girl with pink hair named Zoe Demarchis. A boy who came here from Italy yesterday seemed to be jealous of Robin.”
    “Very handsome? With dark curly hair and a face like an Adonis?” Camille asks, her eyes sparkling.
    “Yes, that sounds like Orlando. Where did you see him?”
    “He came in here yesterday with a bald man in a white suit. They had their heads together, whispering like spies. You say he came all the way from Italy because of that pink-haired girl? I think I’ve seen the girl—” Camille purses her lips and narrows her eyes, assessing and dismissing Zoe Demarchis’s charms. “I don’t believe the young Adonis came all the way from Italy for her. ”
    “Perhaps not,” I say, remembering, though, the way Orlando watched Zoe and Robin in the park yesterday. “He accused Robin of stealing something from him, but it had to do with the film and not Zoe. That man he was here with sounds like Leo Balthasar, a Hollywood producer. I think Orlando was trying to get credit for a script Robin had written.”
    “And where is the young Adonis now?”
    “He ran out of the party after Robin…after Robin jumped.” I don’t mention seeing Orlando in the park afterward. “I don’t know if the police were able to find him last night, but you might want to alert campus security if you see him in here again.”
    “Oh, yes, I’ll make a code word to tell Francesco and then I’ll keep him entertained until the police come.” The lines around Camille’s eyes crinkle with delight—she would have made a wonderful spy—but then her gaze shifts and she looks over my head to the bar, where Francesco is taking a long and complicated to-go order from a harried—and pretty—office worker.
    “I’ve taken up enough of your time, Camille, and I need to read the newspaper story before going to the emergency faculty meeting this morning.” I stand up with my coffee cup in my hand.
    “ Va bene, bella, I’ll have Francesco get you a refill while I do this order for him. I’ll send over something sweet.” She kisses my cheek as she brushes past me on the way to the bar, where she plucks the office gofer’s to-go list out of her hand and sweeps behind the bar in one fluid motion.
    I take my coffee to a table in the back, in the corner between the fireplace and the window overlooking the cafe’s little garden. The green metal tables and potted plants Camille put out in yesterday’s sun are coated with a sheen of rainwater. I’m glad for the warmth of the fire. Yesterday’s glimpse of spring seems like a winter’s dream now. As I open the paper to Robin’s picture for the second time this morning, I wish it really were a dream, that winter’s long sleep had never been interrupted by the false promise of spring.
    “Witnesses said that Mr. Weiss, who had won first prize in Hudson College’s Invitational Film Show, was accused at the celebration following the show of plagiarizing parts of the film,” I read in the paper. “According to Hudson College president Mark Abrams, an argument over credit for the film may have precipitated Mr. Weiss’s suicide.”
    I’m surprised that Mark had ventured such a theory to the press without first interviewing Orlando Brunelli. Perhaps Orlando had gone to the police last night and given more information, but when I scan the rest of the article I find no mention of Orlando’s name. I put down the paper and notice that Francesco is standing behind me, a plate of biscotti in his hands, reading over my shoulder.
    “Camille told me to keep an eye out for that Italian boy who was here yesterday,” Francesco says, putting down the plate. “The one who was talking to the film producer.”
    “You knew he was a film producer?”
    “Well, I didn’t mean to